African History Commons^™

"Neither Bedecked Nor Bebosomed": Lucy Randolph Mason, Ella Baker And Women's Leadership And Organizing In The Struggle For Freedom, Susan Milane Glisson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation examines the feminized and racialized strategies of women organizers in the struggle for freedom. The lives of Lucy Randolph Mason and Ella Jo Baker suggest much about the ways in which women reject and change traditional leadership roles in order to create, build, and maintain the momentum of mass movements. Both women believed in the fundamental necessity of local people determining the responses to their oppression. This work, therefore, is an attempt to offer a description of Mason and Baker's organizing strategies and leadership styles, a description which can be read as a manual for creating social change.;Each …