Brownie Ledbetter | |
---|---|
Born | April 28, 1932 |
Died | March 21, 2010 |
Occupation | Political activist |
Mary Brown Williams Ledbetter (April 28, 1932 – March 21, 2010), better known as Brownie Ledbetter, was a political activist, social justice crusader and lobbyist who was involved in the civil rights, feminist, labor and environmental movements in Arkansas, United States and abroad.
Ledbetter was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on April 28, 1932. The first of four children born to William H. Williams (dairy farmer) and Helon Brown Williams (homemaker), the family lived on the Tall Timber Jersey Farm. As a young child she was given the nickname Brownie as a descriptive of her brown eyes. Her mother died in 1947, and her father in 1950 leaving Ledbetter and her three siblings in the care of her aunt and uncle Grainger and Frances Williams.
She attended and graduated from Little Rock Central High School, which would later be the locus of her first involvement in political activism. From 1950 to 1953 Ledbetter attended Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She was married on July 26, 1953, to Dr. Calvin Ledbetter, Jr., an attorney who would later become a political science professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The couple lived for two years in Germany where Ledbetter's husband was stationed with the U.S. Army Judge Advocate Corps. Ledbetter and her husband eventually settled down in Arkansas and had three children.
Ledbetter had a long, dedicated and varied career. Bill Kopsky, executive director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel said of her : "Brownie was an innovator in that she created a model for public policy work based on helping people find common ground, even when they were unaccustomed to working with each other. Her ability to establish a rapport with anyone was legendary, and she used that ability to bring people to the table in the hopes of finding common ground and common goals. First and foremost, she was a bridge builder," and "She really believed strongly in respecting where people were coming from and bringing them together to create common ground and use that common ground to create change." [1]
Ledbetter became politically active around the time the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957, after nine African-American students were barred from entering her alma mater, Little Rock Central High School by a blockade of the Arkansas National Guard under the direction of Governor Orval Faubus. She joined the work begun by Adolphine Fletcher Terry, Sara Murphy, and Vivion Brewer in the Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC), an advocacy group.
After the WEC dissolved in 1963, Ledbetter went on to work with the Little Rock Panel of American Women which had been founded by Sarah Alderman Murphy. The panel provided a structured forum for open discussion about racial, religious and cultural difference. Moderated by Ledbetter, the participants shared their personal experiences in a bridge building exercise with the communities they visited in an effort to broaden the discussion and reduce opposition to desegregation. Later, the panel would also develop programs enabling students in fighting discrimination, and provide human-relations training for teachers.
In 1981, the panel evolved into the Arkansas Public Policy Panel and Ledbetter served as its executive director until her retirement in 1999. Under her leadership, the panel served the interests of agriculture, civil rights, economic justice and development, education, environment, and government and corporate accountability. The panel also expanded the local voice in matters of public policy by training grassroots organizations, community leaders, and city lobbyists, sixty of which were personally trained by Ledbetter.
In addition to her work on economic and cultural justice, Ledbetter was an outspoken feminist and a vocal participant in the women's movement. She was a strong supporter of the ERA and was an organizing member of the ERA/Arkansas Coalition. She was called to be part of President Jimmy Carter's National Commission on Women and served as an executive board member of the Women's Environmental Development Organization (WEDO), a group that lobbies the United Nation on women's issues. She was organizer of the first Planned Parenthood Affiliate and clinic in Arkansas, and she led the campaign to defeat the first ballot effort to prohibit abortion rights for women. She was also involved in several non-governmental international organizations: Grassroots Organizations Operating Together in Sisterhood, WEDO, and US Women Connect.
Ledbetter also acted as an organizer and consultant in many political campaigns. Among them, she was the campaign manager for her husband's successful run to stand for the Arkansas General Assembly. She was herself a delegate to the National Democratic Convention in 1968. She also managed the McGovern campaign for the state of Arkansas in 1972.
Ledbetter died at her home in Little Rock on March 21, 2010, six months after she had been diagnosed with a brain tumour. Upon her death, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton eulogized that Ledbetter was “a fierce champion for women’s rights, civil rights, and the right of all Americans to education and opportunity. Brownie… was one of those tireless citizen activists who set out to improve their community and end up helping change the world. She began as a concerned volunteer in the struggle to desegregate the schools of Little Rock, and became an accomplished advocate for the rights of Arkansans and people everywhere.” [2]
Little Rock Central High School (LRCH) is an accredited comprehensive public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States. The school was the site of the Little Rock Crisis in 1957 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation by race in public schools was unconstitutional three years earlier. This was during the period of heightened activism in the civil rights movement.
Adolphine Fletcher Terry (1882–1976) was an American political and social activist in the state of Arkansas. Terry leveraged her position within the Little Rock community to affect change in causes related to social justice, women's rights, racial equality, housing, and education. Fletcher is most remembered for her role on the Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC) that was primarily responsible for reopening the Little Rock, Arkansas, public school system and bringing to a close the school district closing in 1958, following the Crisis at Little Rock Central High. In its "Millennium Poll" in 2000, the Arkansas Historical Association named Terry one of the state's 15 most significant figures in state history.
The Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC) was an organization formed by a group of socially prominent white women in the city of Little Rock, Arkansas during the Little Rock Crisis in 1958. The organization advocated for the integration of the Little Rock public school system and was a major obstacle to Governor Orval Faubus's efforts to prevent racial integration. The women spoke out in favor of a special election to remove segregationists from the Little Rock school board.
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Vivion Mercer Lenon Brewer was an American desegregationist, most notable for being a founding member of the Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC) in 1958 during the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
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Sara Alderman Murphy was a civil rights activist living in Little Rock, Arkansas during the school integration attempts in the 1950s. She was born in Wartrace, Tennessee. She earned her BA in Social Studies and English from Vanderbilt University in 1945 and a MS in Journalism from Columbia University. She was a faculty member of Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana and then at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Sara Murphy joined the Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC) after the attempt to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. She was on the WEC board in 1962 and 1963. In 1963 she founded a branch of the Panel of American Women (PAW) in Little Rock and became vice-president of the national PAW from 1971 to 1974. From 1972-1975 she was the vice-chairperson of the Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women. In 1982 she founded Peace Links, an organization to ease international tensions through discussion and personal interactions. She was the president of Arkansas’ Peace Links from 1982-1984. She wrote Breaking the Silence, a book about the role of the WEC in the Little Rock integration crisis.
Women's suffrage had early champions among men in Arkansas. Miles Ledford Langley of Arkadelphia, Arkansas proposed a women's suffrage clause during the 1868 Arkansas Constitutional Convention. Educator, James Mitchell wanted to see a world where his daughters had equal rights. The first woman's suffrage group in Arkansas was organized by Lizzie Dorman Fyler in 1881. A second women's suffrage organization was formed by Clara McDiarmid in 1888. McDiarmid was very influential on women's suffrage work in the last few decades of the nineteenth century. When she died in 1899, suffrage work slowed down, but did not all-together end. Both Bernie Babcock and Jean Vernor Jennings continued to work behind the scenes. In the 1910s, women's suffrage work began to increase again. socialist women, like Freda Hogan were very involved in women's suffrage causes. Other social activists, like Minnie Rutherford Fuller became involved in the Political Equality League (PEL) founded in 1911 by Jennings. Another statewide suffrage group, also known as the Arkansas Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) was organized in 1914. AWSA decided to work towards helping women vote in the important primary elections in the state. The first woman to address the Arkansas General Assembly was suffragist Florence Brown Cotnam who spoke in favor of a women's suffrage amendment on February 5, 1915. While that amendment was not completely successful, Cotnam was able to persuade the Arkansas governor to hold a special legislative session in 1917. That year Arkansas women won the right to vote in primary elections. In May 1918, between 40,000 and 50,000 white women voted in the primaries. African American voters were restricted from voting in primaries in the state. Further efforts to amend the state constitution took place in 1918, but were also unsuccessful. When the Nineteenth Amendment passed the United States Congress, Arkansas held another special legislative session in July 1919. The amendment was ratified on July 28 and Arkansas became the twelfth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.