African-American women in southern-based civil rights movement organizations, 1954-1965: Gender, grass roots leadership and resource mobilization theory.

Abstract

Recent resource mobilization theorists have emphasized the importance of pre-existing institutional networks for the development of collective action. They credit the emergence of mobilized activities to rational planning by well-trained leaders, who are supported by established community-based institutions. This study provides a different analysis by examining grass roots or behind the scenes leadership, which in the case of southern-based civil rights movement organizations, was the only acceptable leadership domain for women. Through an analysis of thirteen personal interviews, archival data, including eighteen additional interviews, and scholarly accounts of the civil rights movement, the exact nature of African-American women's leadership participation in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Montgomery Improvement Association, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, is determined. This research outlines the extent to which grass roots leadership and titled leaders of movement organizations worked in a symbiotic, but often conflictual, relationship to mobilize collective action. While mobilization through organizations is performed through rational planning, financial resources, charismatic leaders, and established community-based institutional networks, grass roots leaders provide the interpersonal networks and day-to-day, one-on-one interactions necessary for the mobilization and sustenance of mass support. Neither rational planning nor institutional networks can persuade the masses to risk their lives through participation in protest activities. Within this context, grass roots leadership is no less important to collective action than the resources of movement organizations. This paper argues that the basic tenets of resource mobilization theory, which have emphasized organizational and institutional resources, have neglected to analyze an important, and relatively autonomous, grass roots level of leadership.