This Black History Month, tip your hat to the women who rallied and led the Civil Rights Movement.
When director Ava DuVernay decided to helm the Martin Luther King, Jr. biopicSelma, she noticed something missing from the script.
"When I first came on board the project, the women were not there at all," she told Melissa Harris-Perry in an MSNBC interview.
SEE ALSO: 7 black female directors earning incredible Hollywood reviews
In order to be more accurate, DuVernay fleshed it out with the important women who bolstered the movement — the women who helped shape important world events, but get lost in the narrow, unforgiving filter of time.
Everyone knows the boldfaced icons of the civil rights movement: MLK, Jr. and Malcolm X. However, there are so many names deserving of praise.
While some women loom large in the canon — Coretta Scott King and Rosa Parks among them — there are many whose voices and actions were just as powerful.
1. Dorothy Height
Dubbed the “godmother of the civil rights movement” by President Obama in 2010, Dorothy Height was a leader to be reckoned with. President of the National Council for Negro Women for 40 years, Height was a contemporary of Martin Luther King, Jr., even standing on the stage as he gave his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. She was also a staunch feminist, organizing workshops to assist freedom schools and provide for low-income families.
2. Diane Nash
Diane Nash was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. She coordinated and monitored lunch counter sit-ins and freedom rides. Nash was also one of the organizers who brought MLK, Jr. to Montogomery, Alabama to support the Riders.
Nash was prominently featured in Selma, played by actress Tessa Thompson.
3. Amelia Boynton
An iconic image from Bloody Sunday — the violent attack on civil rights marchers from Selma to Montgomery on Marcy 7, 1965 — is of a black woman beaten unconscious, laying in the street. That woman was Amelia Boynton. Before that day, Boynton and her husband, Samuel, sheltered young activists, such as members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She was one of the leaders who convinced MLK, Jr. to come to Selma in the first place (a plotline that’s also fleshed out in the film Selma).
She was also actually the first African-American woman to run as a Democratic congressional candidate in Alabama. Though she didn’t win, she managed to grasp 11% of the vote.
4. Daisy Bates
A leader who wanted to end segregation in Arkansas, Daisy Bates’ most high profile achievement was as the guiding light of the Little Rock Nine. She led the first nine African-American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957, after first taking the school to court in 1954 for denying black students, even after the Supreme Court called for an end to segregation. Bates was also the presidentof the Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP.
5. Fannie Lou Hamer
Famous speeches from the civil rights era tend to begin and end with MLK, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. However, Fannie Lou Hamer’s testimony at the 1964 Democratic Convention was its own force of nature.
The civil rights activist fought for the right to vote, encouraging and recruitingpeople in her native Mississippi and all throughout the South. At one point, her activism got her arrested and thrown in Montgomery County Jail, where she and her comrades were viciously beaten. She continued on, helping to found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which raised national attention on the deep discrimination in the South.
Her true spotlight came at the 1964 convention, where she spoke of her harrowing experiences in Mississippi and chastised leaders for ignoring the way black people were murdered for trying to exercise their rights. “Is this America?” she asked.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, not happy about her testimony’s potential to stir controversy, called a last-minute press conference that effectively distracted the press and any live TV coverage Hamer was getting. However, his attempt eventually backfired, and Hamer’s stirring speech was aired on news programs anyway, sparking big support for the MFDP. Listen to her speech here.
6. Jo Ann Robinson
After Rosa Parks was arrested for famously not giving up her bus seat, Jo-Ann Robinson jumped in to organize support for the Montgomery Bus Boycotts in 1955. She created thousands of flyers spreading the message of the boycotts to African-Americans all over Alabama. She was a crucial member of the movement, also assisting with the carpools that took people to and from work during the boycotts.
7. Yuri Kochiyama
Immortalized in a 1965 photo as the woman supporting Malcolm X’s head as he lay dying after being shot at a Harlem ballroom, Yuri Kochiyama was an ally and leader in her own right. The Japanese activist met X in 1963 after getting involved in the civil rights movement in Harlem, using her home as a hub for activists. “Our house felt like it was the movement 24/7,” her eldest daughter, Audee Kochiyama-Holman, told NPR.
8. Septima Clark
Once dubbed the “Mother of the Movement” by none other than Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, Septima Clark was a teacher and leader in the education realm. The South Carolina native began volunteering for the NAACP in 1919, going on to lead civil rights workshops in Tennessee.
She worked with Thurgood Marshall on getting equal pay for black teachers, and even accompanied MLK (who simply insisted) to his Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.
