- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Davis talks about protest activities during her college years (5:51)
- Creator:
- Davis, Jean
- Contributor to Resource:
- Millen, Susan A. (Susan Ann), 1951-
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 2005-01-22
- Subject:
- Feminism
Social movements
Women's studies - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Coweta County, 33.35346, -84.76337
United States, Georgia, Coweta County, Newnan, 33.38067, -84.79966 - Medium:
- audiocassettes
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- Born in the segregated South to politically active parents, Jean Davis became politically aware as a young girl in Newnan, Georgia. Her early aspiration was to work as a missionary in Africa but instead, she attended Morris Brown College and taught public school in Atlanta. As a student at Morris Brown, Davis was involved in the Civil Rights Movement and participated in boycotts of Rich's Department Store and sit-ins at Woolworth's. Davis also worked with the A. Philip Randolph Institute as well as the Georgia AFL-CIO and the National AFL-CIO. Through her work with different union organizations and her activism in civil rights, Davis became interested in the Equal Rights Amendment. She felt strongly that the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) was necessary in order to bring union women on board with the ERA and also to establish an organization that would place women in leadership positions. In addition to her work with the ERA, Davis worked on a number of campaigns from local school boards to notable politicians and continues the struggle for human rights.
Aware of racial discrimination at an early age, Davis begins by recounting her childhood in segregated Newnan, Georgia. Her emerging activism, she believes, was influenced by her community-oriented parents and by her cousin, a railroad worker, and union member. Davis discusses her internship at the A. Philip Randolph Institute, and how that led to her work with several different social justice organizations, including the AFL-CIO. Davis articulates her struggle to find a way to support both the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Movement -- which was largely considered to be a white, middle-class effort. She recalls, "I couldn't see how I wanted to be a person who advocated for white women; when white women weren't advocating human rights for everybody." Davis also explains that one of the reasons more women of color were not involved in the ERA was because there was economic disparity between white women and women of color. She says that her opinion of the women's movement changed when Sarah Butler couched the issue not in terms of race or class but in terms of human rights. Davis ends the interview by talking about the importance of community activism for all generations, and discusses the various causes and organizations she continues to support.
Transcript of this excerpt: SM: So you had this family activist background and then you went to Morris Brown College. What kind of things did you do on the campus there? JD: Well I got involved -- At that time, you know, that was during the era when there was students' unrest for the Civil Rights Movement. We organized a student non-violent committee. We would meet at the different schools. That’s what I was telling students this year; we put away our differences without my school’s [inaudible]. We met at different campuses, planning strategies on what we would do for [the] Civil Rights Movement. Our first act was to stage a boycott in front of Rich’s Department store that was getting a lot of -- Black people spent their money at Rich’s Department Store and the only people that worked there were people who were in maintenance. Cleaners of the bathrooms, maybe dishwashers or something like that. Because we knew that all of these people spent their big bucks there, we were ready to march and say that we wanted them hired in meaningful positions. SM: In what year was this? JD: This was in -- it had to be in ‘61 -- or ‘60 or ‘61. SM: ‘60 or ‘61, ok. And how successful was that demonstration? JD: It was very successful. People stopped going into Rich’s. Carolyn Longbanks, who was a city council person, was working at Rich’s, but not in a position -- she was the first clerk they hired. SM: Really? I did not know that! JD: Yeah. And we were proud of that. We did sit-ins at Woolworth’s, which was a 10 cent dime store -- at the lunch counters there. SM: You don’t have any pictures of that, do you? JD: No. SM: Oh, that would be wonderful. JD: It sure would. We also sat on buses; because, see Morris Brown was right on the bus line and we would go sit on the bus, at the front of the bus. SM: What happened to you then? I mean, this is before Rosa Parks, or -- after? JD: This was after. Right after the boycotts started in Alabama. That’s when the Student Non-violent Committee got together. When all of these things were happening all over the world, and students started coming together to make changes. We were right at a Mecca with Atlanta University Center, and then Atlanta being a metro, with all of these things in the city that we couldn’t go to. I remember going to the Fox Theatre twice and hated it because of having to climb the outside steps to get up to the loft because that’s where we could -- we could only sit there. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like heights anyway. [Laughs] I'm already scared to cross the bridge; now I've got to climb up these steps! So I didn’t go there. We just -- what was happening is, is that the word -- nobody said that this -- as quiet as it was kept, adults couldn’t do these things. Students could do it, because we didn’t have anything to lose. We didn’t have a job, we didn’t own a car, we didn’t own a house. So nobody could threaten us to take these things away from us. So that’s why, it was just that – that’s who had to do it. The students had to do it. I remember one Saturday when we were marching at Rich’s, Counselors [?] were on this side and we were on Forsyth Street, the Ku Klux Klan was marching in front of the Counselors [?], right? They were jeering us and threatening us and my brother who had finished college at A&T -- my mother and father were watching it on the news in Newnan, and because they were so afraid for me, my brother came and took me off the picket line and carried me home to give me the riot act -- to tell me that all of these pictures were being taken, the FBI was going to have a copy of it and I was going to never get a job. (Laughs) Well my father said, that, “Ok, you know her. You know that she’s going to be in the mix.” And I’m like, “I don’t care whether they’ve got my picture or not. This is the right thing to do.” So after they talked and counseled me all evening long, and I was just ready to get back on the line, they finally brought me back to school, you know, to let me be ok, and to be who I was. But they were scared for me. They really cared for me. And that changed a lot of things in Atlanta. We were able to go to Woolworth’s and sit down and eat. (Laughs) SM: How long did that take though? You started the demonstrations from that point -- to when you finally got the right to do that? JD: It was like -- I was still in school, in college. And I finished in '61. I finished at Morris Brown in '61. So, before I left school, we were doing those things. SM: Ok, well that’s good. JD: I remember the first time I rode the bus home, I had to sit on the back seat, because that was the only seat designated for black folk if the bus was full. SM: Is this to ride the bus home in Newnan, or ride from Atlanta to Newnan? JD: From Atlanta to Newnan. Because someone always brought me to school, but I would have to ride the bus home if I was going home or something. And I remember the first time I rode the bus and didn’t have to sit on the back seat, was really something else. It was amazing. It felt good that I was a part of that. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2106
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2106/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:
- 51 pages (two cassette tapes)
- Original Collection:
- Georgia Women's Movement Project Collection
Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
