Until There Is Justice: The Life of Anna Arnold Hedgeman by Jennifer Scanlon is the first biography (published in 2016) of the African-American civil rights leader who helped organize the 1963 March on Washington that Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have” a dream “speech.
Anna Arnold Hedgeman, a discerning feminist, devout Christian, and savvy grassroots civil rights activist, has played a key role in more than half a century of social justice initiatives.
But so far, Scanlon says, it has only received a fraction of the attention it deserves. A Q&A with Scanlon follows:
How would you characterize Hedgeman’s relationship with the civil rights movement?
Hedgeman was too often ignored by her contemporaries, even when depended on her efforts, and since then she has mostly been ignored by historians who record the movement.
Hedgeman’s story concretizes some of the gender complications of the civil rights movement, but also illustrates that Hedgeman and other black women of their time as intellectuals played a formative role in the development of civil rights, black theology, and feminism.
An example is the simple but enduring narrative of feminism that it has been a white, bourgeois women’s movement since its inception. However, as a founding member of the National Organization for Women (NOW), Anna Arnold Hedgeman assured that issues of opportunities for poor women, issues of racial discrimination and understanding the way in which race, class and gender are intertwined are part of the founding documents of the association. In my view, it complicates any simple narrative about the social movements of the 20th century.
Do you find it ironic that the civil rights movement, which was founded to combat one type of prejudice, is itself guilty of another type of gender discrimination?
African American women found a variety of ways to respond to the sexism of their time. As the only woman on the March 1963 Washington Organizing Committee, Hedgeman urged her colleagues to give the women a vote during the march, but the men were adamant. She and other women expressed their protest in various ways, and eventually a compromise was reached that allowed a brief tribute to African American women during the trial. Hedgeman did not hesitate then or afterwards to point out contradictions she had experienced, be it among whites, with African-Americans, with Christians, with their nation. She was an advocate for a fairer study of American history, including the study of the lives of women. For example, Hedgeman noted that the anniversary of the March on Washington could well have been celebrated as Rosa Parks Day. The ironies, as you put it, frustrated them, but I wouldn’t say they surprised them.
What is Hedgeman’s legacy today?
At this moment we would benefit enormously from Hedgeman’s sensible and sophisticated presence, but since she is not with us, we should listen to her call for dignity and opportunity for all marginalized people.
Did Hedgeman say it shouldn’t matter what color we are?
Hedgeman felt that color shouldn’t matter, but he understood how deeply it did. As she put it, “I waste half my life talking about racing when I could do so many other things. That doesn’t allow me to be the whole person I am or to make the full contributions that I could. “
Nevertheless, she continued to fight for civil rights because she saw no way out.
It was really an affair of the heart. At the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Ohio, I was given access to 200 boxes of unprocessed papers. With the help of Bowdoin and the American Philosophical Society, I made many trips to Ohio to uncover the bits and pieces of this complex and fascinating story.
What did you learn most about Hedgeman?
During the Great Depression, Hedgeman and her husband, well-known tenor Merritt Hedgeman, hung a “Declaration of Independence” on the curtain of their Harlem apartment during the Great Depression most important found. regardless of the associated risks. When I read through the countless papers in her archives, this act still seemed to me to be a symbol of her life and work.
Jennifer Scanlon, PhD, is John S. Osterweis Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies; and Senior Vice President and Dean of Academic Affairs, Bowdoin College
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