Marching Across the Putative Black/White Race Line: A Convergence of Narratology, History, and Theory

Abstract: This Article introduces a category of women who, until now, have been omitted from the scholarly literature on the civil rights movement: northern white women who lived in the South and became active in the civil rights movement, while intending to continue to live in the South on a permanent basis following their activism. Prior to their activism, these women may have been viewed with suspicion because they were "newcomers" and "outsiders." Their activism earned them the pejorative label "civil rights supporter." This Article presents the stories of two such women. It examines their stories from the perspective of the legal narratology movement and compares them with white female activists in other categories. Next, it analyzes their experiences through the lens of therapeutic jurisprudence. This analysis provides another perspective and voice, and deeper understanding of the tumult of the civil rights era. Like works on other categories of women who participated in the civil rights movement, this Article enhances our knowledge of the civil rights movement, race relations, and the roles played by women.IntroductionOn February 11, 1968, several hundred black1 Memphis sanitation workers agreed, by a show of hands, to go on strike for higher wages and improved working conditions.2 The strike began the next day, February 12, 1968, Lincoln's birthday.3 It quickly became apparent that, in reality, this was a racial struggle. The strike escalated into a riveting civil rights confrontation of national significance. Not quite two months later, it "culminated in [the] assassination [of Martin Luther King, Jr.] that triggered a storm of racial violence that stunned white America. For one [shocking] moment, this southern riverfront city served as a microcosmic reflection of the domestic forces in conflict during [that] traumatic decade."4 This Article tells the story of two white women, Jean T. Yehle and Barbara B. Vidulich who became active in the civil rights movement on behalf of those workers and describes their experience as two of the white participants in the Memphis march of April 1968. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. planned to lead that march.5 Instead, it was led by his widow, Coretta Scott King, only a few days after Dr. King's assassination.6This Article adds another category of white woman participants in the civil rights movement to the historical record: northern white women who called the South home and planned to remain in the South after their involvement in the civil rights movement concluded. The two women whose stories are told here are not famous; they played very minor roles. One's activism lasted for only a few months. The other's commitment to the civil rights movement had, by then, extended over most of her adult life and concluded immediately following the events described in this Article. They are but two of what is likely well over a half million7 individuals who took overt action in support of the civil rights movement. Nevertheless, and especially in the South where they lived, the moment that these two women engaged in their first act of overt support, they were irrevocably branded with the pejorative label, "civil rights supporter." At the time, that label could cost a person everything.8As I read the 1966 position paper of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)9 in preparation for writing this Article, I admit that, as a white woman, I can never fully comprehend the black experience, psyche, or any black individual's situation during the 1960s.10 Nor could the two white women whose stories are told in this Article. Nevertheless, they participated at risk to themselves and their families based on their strongly held moral convictions. This Article communicates their experience at that momentous instant in this country's civil rights history-forty-five years after the fact. It adds another voice and perspective to those tumultuous and critical times-the voice of two northern white women who did not travel to Memphis to work on behalf of civil rights,11 but who lived in this southern city and would have to continue living there during and after their civil rights work. …