- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Parsons talks about desegregating the League of Women Voters in Atlanta (3:56)
- Creator:
- Parsons, Sara Mitchell, 1912-
- Contributor to Resource:
- Paulk, Janet, 1932-
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 1999-05-05
- Subject:
- Feminism
Social movements
Women's studies - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Fulton County, 33.79025, -84.46702
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Atlanta, 33.749, -84.38798 - Medium:
- audiocassettes
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- Sara Mitchell Parsons was born in Canton, Georgia in 1912, and graduated from Atlanta Girl's High in 1930. After high school, Parsons completed a total of two years of public affairs coursework at Georgia Evening School (now Georgia State University), Emory University, Humboldt State University, College of the Redwoods, and Mills College. After college, Parsons began a lengthy career in public affairs as a member of the Atlanta Board of Education (1961-1968). After moving to California, she served as an elected member from the 3rd District to the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, the first woman elected in the 120-year history of the county. From 1977 until 1980, Parsons served as board representative for several different organizations, including the County Mental Health Advisory Board, the Juvenile Delinquency Commission, the CETA Advisory Board (Chairman), the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission, the Courthouse Beautification Committee (Chairman), the Eureka Chamber of Commerce, and the Convention and Tourist Bureau. She also served as the chair of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors in 1980. From 1978 until 1980, Parsons was the governor's appointee to the California Solar/Cal Committee as well as vice-chair of the Employment Steering Committee of the National Association of Counties (1979-1980). Parsons was also elected by the Democratic Party of Northern California as a delegate to the National Democratic Convention in New York City in 1980. In addition to a career in politics, Parsons also participated in various community service projects. She served as president of the North Fulton High School PTA (1956-1958), as a member of the Official Board of the St. James Methodist Church (1958-1963), and as president of the Atlanta League of Women Voters from 1958 until 1960. She also acted as a visiting lecturer at Emory University and was invited by President Lyndon Johnson to the White House Conference on Education in 1965. In the same year, Parsons was awarded the Atlanta "Good Neighbor of the Year" award. Recently, Parsons completed the book From Southern Wrongs to Civil Rights that chronicles her transformation into a civil rights activist and her friendship with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King.
Parsons describes her childhood as being happy, even after her parents divorced when she was eleven years old. She says that her mother was a very strong and active woman, belonging to DAR, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Women's Temperance Union. Parsons was married at 21, and quickly had children. She says that it was through her work with her church, and with the PTA, that she became involved with the League of Women Voters, and that that subsequently led to her involvement with the Civil Rights Movement. She describes how, in 1961, she ran for a position on the Board of Education and won. Her position on the Board introduced her Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with whom she remained in contact for a number of years. Her main focus during this time was the integration of schools and she describes visiting black and white schools, and seeing very clearly that "separate but equal" was not working. She goes on to discuss the contentious integration of the Atlanta League of Women Voters. Parson's involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and in the Women's Movement took a toll on her personal life: she and her husband divorced after more than 30 years of marriage. She says “I felt sorry for my husband because he had married a sweet southern girl. And I turned out to be this civil rights activist, flaming feminist. Parsons joined NOW and was introduced to Betty Freidan: She says that during a visit to Atlanta, Freidan was interested in writing about black women in the Civil Rights Movement, and wanted to meet some. Parsons goes on to describe their less-than-successful experiences. Parsons believes that the Christian right was the greatest obstacle to the Women's Movement, and that during the period of the Civil Rights Movement, some churches were a "big disappointment" because of their hesitancy to speak out and do "the right thing." She ends by discussing her book, From Southern Wrongs to Civil Rights.
Transcript of this excerpt: SP: And as far as talking about it, we can get together and talk forever about the Civil Rights Movement, but one of the interesting things, when it got -- we got into it deeper and deeper, as the League of Women Voters. We had bylaws that said that any white woman could be a member of the League. Well, the League is a national organization, and so the national League knew that we weren't abiding by the rules. So I attended a meeting of the League -- the annual meeting, and I had just been elected to the Board. And so at this meeting, this woman got up, and she, it turned out, was what we called a Yankee. And she said, "I see by your bylaws you have that any white woman can be a member," and she says, "That's not right." And so she says, "I call for a vote on the motion that we will strike the word 'white.'" And I had never heard anything about this. I guess I hadn't really read the bylaws, or I hadn't thought about it, you know. Of course, this was -- I'm talking about '60 -- well, let's see; this was about -- I guess it was '58, somewhere in there. But anyway, so they put the motion right up before the meeting. And everybody voted. And so they said, "Everybody that's in favor of leaving the word in, you know, vote," and they did, and everybody that would go along with striking the word and having Negro members, you know, hold up their hands, and so we won. And I say "we" because I'm sitting there thinking about this, and I didn't think long -- I mean, I knew what side I was on, right from the beginning. And we had -- immediately the group that voted not to have black members went to the League office and stole -- we said "stole" the key, and locked the door. And this made all the [news] papers. It even made Time magazine, that we had integrated the Atlanta League of Women Voters, the first big organization that had integrated in Atlanta. Well, the group that dissented, they said we would just kill the organization if we had black members. But we had a wife [member] who had a husband who was a lawyer, and he said that we had the legal right to the office. So we got a locksmith, and they went down there and changed the locks, and then we had the key. It was all in the [news] paper back in those days, and it was very traumatic for a lot of us who had just been housewives, you know, all of our life. But anyway, it was a wonderful experience for us because then I immediately got to be -- the officers resigned. But the ones that were left -- and I had just come on the Board, so I was a vice-president, and somebody said, "You sure went up fast in the League," and I said, "Well, that was it." And then we had -- the woman who had an office, was the president, and I was the vice-president, and the next year, I was the president of the League. So we went through this period that was very rewarding in a lot of ways, and we got some wonderful black members. We got Grace Hamilton, who was the first black woman elected to -- JP: The legislature? SP: To the [Georgia] legislature. And we got Prentiss Yancey's wife, Johnnie, who was head of the voter registration for Morehouse College. And we just got women you wouldn't believe, you know, that were very talented, and they came and joined us, and it just opened our eyes to a whole new Atlanta, a whole new -- we thought we had trouble; they had more trouble than we ever even heard of. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2083
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2083/manifest.json
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Copyright to this item is owned by Georgia State University Library. Georgia State University Library has made this item available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
- Extent:
- 38 pages (two audio cassettes)
- Original Collection:
- Georgia Women's Movement Project Collection
Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
