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A Place to Speak Our Minds Locating Women's Activism Where North Meets South

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  • Mary E. Frederickson

    (Mary E. Frederickson is a faculty member in the Department of History at Miami University, Ohio. Her PhD is from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she served as Assistant Director of the Southern Oral History Program. Previous positions include Visiting Bye-Fellow, Selwyn College, Cambridge, UK; faculty in History, University of Alabama, Birmingham, where she established and directed the UAB Oral History Program; and post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Research on Women,Wellesley College. Named the Miami University Distinguished Educator for 2005–06, Frederickson trains MA and PhD students in addition to undergraduates, in women's history, oral history, and race and ethnicity. Her research on women's labor history has both academic and activist components. Her recent scholarship is on gendered resistance and the concealed strategies women and men have used to emancipate themselves and their children from slavery and economic oppression. Address: Miami University, 254 Upham Hall, Oxford. [email: frederme@muohio.edu])

Abstract

Eighty years ago, a sizable cohort of activists, scholars and labor organizers argued that the future of the North American labor movement depended on the successful organization of women workers in the US South. In 2005, activists, scholars and labor organizers make markedly similar arguments about the important role being played by young women entering ‘maquiladoras’ in the Global South. Divided by time and place, these two groups of workers share the legacy of paying the human costs of industrialization and globalization. In both groups, a significant minority of women responded to the economic and social changes confronting them by turning to activism and fighting back. Collective organization, workers’ education and feminist cooperation were hallmarks of women's activism for social and economic justice in the US South in the mid-20th century. The success of these efforts depended on women locating places where they could develop historical consciousness, find their voices and openly ‘speak their minds’. The experiences of women workers of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s in the US South, provide concrete models for women in the Global South today.

Suggested Citation

  • Mary E. Frederickson, 2007. "A Place to Speak Our Minds Locating Women's Activism Where North Meets South," Journal of Developing Societies, , vol. 23(1-2), pages 59-70, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jodeso:v:23:y:2007:i:1-2:p:59-70
    DOI: 10.1177/0169796X0602300204
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