By Emily Kubota, Curator

*NAACP members, courtesy of the News and Advance (click for larger view)*

Women were integral to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1950s and 60s.

Major organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) benefited from women’s participation. Women were protesters, educators, organizers, lawyers, and leaders. History remembers national figures like Fannie Lou Hamer, Dorothy Height, and Angela Davis, but local women were just as important to the movement. Throughout the South, including Lynchburg, women protested segregation by organizing sit-ins, participating in protests, and leading school integration initiatives. Many of these initiatives were led by the local advocacy group founded by Dr. Virgil Wood, the Lynchburg Improvement Association.

*Patterson’s Drug Store on the 1000 block of Main Street in 1948. Gift of Charles Wright, 99.16.7.*

The first Lynchburg sit-in occurred on December 14, 1960. A group of six college students—four white and two Black—walked into Patterson’s Drug Store on Main Street. The “Patterson Six” as they were known, attempted to order coffee, were immediately denied service, and then arrested. Out of the group, three were women: Barbara A. Thomas from Virginia Theological Seminary and College (now Virginia University of Lynchburg), and Rebecca M. Owen and Mary Edith Bentley from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (R-MWC). Their court hearings and trial held the public’s attention for months. Ultimately, they were sentenced to one month in jail for trespassing, and they continued their school work while imprisoned. They were released early for good behavior.

Immediately following the Patterson Drug Store protest in December, five women conducted a sit-in at the lunch counter of People’s Drug Store on Main Street. The group included four students from R-MWC, as well as Miriam Gaines, the younger sister of Barbara A. Thomas, one of the “Patterson Six.” This time the students were not arrested, and the store simply closed early that day.

Women continued to sit-in and picket local businesses in 1961. Essie Gordon, a 28-year-old dental assistant from Lynchburg, and Mandeline Thompson, a 16-year-old high-schooler from Madison Heights, were arrested with six men at another Patterson Drug Store sit-in on February 14, 1961. They were joined by several students from the all-women Sweet Briar College who picketed outside the store.

*Owen Cardwell, Jr. and Lynda Woodruff, Lynchburg Museum System*

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling brought legal segregation in schools to an end. In Virginia many school districts were slow to change, and Lynchburg did not begin to desegregate until January 1962. After a lawsuit forced Lynchburg City Schools to integrate, students from the all-Black Dunbar High School gradually began attending the all-white E. C. Glass High School. The first students to begin classes at E. C. Glass were Lynda Woodruff and Owen Cardwell, Jr. They were followed by two more students, Brenda Hughes and Cecilia Jackson, in September 1962. Out of the first four students who integrated, three were women.

Locally, women leaders emerged in the following decades. Women like Arelia Langhorne, Joan Jones, Joan MacCallum, and Hazel Boulware ran for public office; Delores Fowler worked for voting rights; and Rosel Schewel organized women through leadership and education.

Issues of equity and inclusion are still at the forefront for many women in Lynchburg. To learn more about local women leaders, be sure to visit Part II of our We the Women exhibit, coming soon.

Women in Lynchburg’s Civil Rights Movement

Lynchburg Museum System