‘Jim Crow Capital’ explores role of African-American women in DC in early civil rights struggles

A new book from historian Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy reveals how African-American women used the national and international platform of the nation’s capital to press the struggle for civil rights forward.

In Jim Crow Capital: Women and Black Freedom Struggles in Washington, D.C., 1920-1945, Murphy examines how the anti-lynching movement of the early 20th century — as well as organized struggles against police brutality, segregation, economic oppression and voter disenfranchisement in the District — elevated local women’s activism to the stage of national politics.

The book’s narrative begins on Tuesday, June 14, 1922. The Senate is poised to begin debate of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which has already passed the House of Representatives. Five thousand African-American Washingtonians are gathered and marching past government buildings at the end of the workday, as officials and federal workers are preparing to commute home. This Silent Parade of support for the bill is the work of the Committee of One Hundred — an all-African-American women’s coalition formed around agitating for passage of this crucial legislation, which members hope will save the lives of friends, family members and fellow African-Americans across the nation. As Murphy tells it, the social has become political, and the local has been leveraged to influence the national.

The anti-lynching movement provided a focal point for the type of public campaign that is unique to the place and culture of DC. How many other places could 5,000 African-American citizens demanding protection and justice march in orderly fashion past the halls of power, as elected officials, civil servants and the national and international press look on? “In parading past important government buildings and offices, including the U.S. Capitol and the White House, African Americans pronounced themselves as citizens and claimed federal spaces in Washington, D.C.,” Murphy writes.

The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920 granted women the right to vote and created a wave of optimism that, if such a monumental achievement could come to pass, then it must be possible to accomplish further progress. African-American women in DC decided to seize the moment and to do their part to press civil rights agendas, both national and local, despite the fact that Washingtonians lacked congressional representation then, as now, and could not directly vote for such changes.

“Even though no resident of the nation’s capital could cast a ballot, women nonetheless proclaimed their first-class citizenship rights by working to influence congressional legislation, lobby politicians, shape policy, and secure freedom and justice for all African Americans, both in Washington, D.C. and across the country,” Murphy writes.

A major and salient point the author makes — which modern DC residents know very well — is that political activism is hard work, so the civil rights campaigns of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s were organized at great sacrifice of time and energy, often by those already laboring for a living. Though the DC African-American population ran the gamut from middle-class doctors, lawyers, tradespeople and government workers to low-wage-earning laborers — and members of all classes found their way into the civil rights movement — there were almost none who had the time or opportunity to make activism a career. The dedicated few made great sacrifices to organize for political goals. Murphy explores this tension, as well as how the Great Depression placed new strain on the nascent organizations agitating for rights.

The hook in Jim Crow Capital is its narrow focus on the efforts of African-American women in a limited place and time to end segregation and better the lives of their communities throughout the city and across the country. It focuses both on broad demographic changes and individual freedom fighters, especially those who led the civic groups that formed the backbone of African-American women’s political lives, such as the National Association of Colored Women, the Women’s Political Study Club and the National Association of Wage Earners. Murphy dedicates particular attention to civil rights leaders who founded or headed those and other organizations, such as: Mary Church Terrell, Marian Butler and Nannie Helen Burroughs. The book’s limited scope allows Murphy to illuminate the power that even the most marginalized group can wield here.

Murphy’s book grew out of her doctoral dissertation at the University of Maryland. Murphy, now an associate professor of history at Eastern Michigan University specializing in U.S. history, women’s studies and African-American history, also presented some of the information in the book at the 42nd annual Conference on Washington, D.C., History in 2015.

The tone of Jim Crow Capital is fairly academic, making it ideal for reading lists of college-level American and African-American history classes. However, avid readers of Washington or civil rights history will gain much from the DC-specific lens on the early-20th-century civil rights movement — particularly its examination of the methods DC residents have used to exercise citizenship rights even without the right to vote for direct representation.

Jim Crow Capital: Women and Black Freedom Struggles in Washington, D.C., 1920-1945, by Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy is a publication of University of North Carolina Press released in November. It is available in 292-page hardcover and paperback editions, as well as in ebook form, on the UNC Press website (for $22.99 to $90), through online book retailers and at area bookstores.