3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

The women propared food, and served in the communications grapevine to alert the
community of impending throats~" ed for self-defense, too.(!!!] In one of the glaring
discrepancies of the struggle for black equality, the men involved in soliciting civil rights
reform often ignored the rights of women in their midst. As the movement evolved, this
creeping sexism would become more and moro apparont . Self-defense was clearly a
man's rosponsibility and duty ; whether it was a woman's right too was less cut-and-dry.
Women did not fit into Williams' conception of self-defense as a male
prerogative . To him, being a man required resorting to force, if circumstances required it .
He did not expect women to rosort to force, particularly when men were willing and able
to do so for them . Indeed, his vision of manhood, like other males involved in the
movement, seemed to rely on a certain objectified vision of womanhood : virtuous,
retiring, and dependent . Women needed men to defend them and men-in osier to be
men-needed to defend their women . But, of course, black women had need for self-
defense, too . In one of the glaring discrepancies of the swggle for black equality, the
men involved in soliciting civil rights reform often ignore the rights of women in their
midst. As the movement evolved, this creeping sexism would become more and more
apparont .
Ironically, it was a woman who came to model Williams' idealized requisites for
black manhood . On a sweltering evening in early September 1962, twenty-one-year-old
Rebecca Wilson was staying in Georgia at the house of her mother, Kate Philpot, with her
'sWilliams, interviewed by James Mosby, July 22, 1970, transcript, Ralph J. Bunche
Oral History Collection (Civil Rights Documentation P~+oject), Moorland-Spingam
Research Center, Howard University .
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