Voices of the African Diaspora Series

304 pages, 6 x 9

978-0-86554-976-0

$55.00s, Cloth

Bibliography, index, illustrations

MUP/H695

Voices of the African Diaspora Series

304 pages, 6 x 9

978-0-86554-938-8

$25.00t, Paper

Bibliography, index, illustrations

MUP/P292

Spelman College and the Civil Rights Movement, 1957–1967

Harry G. Lefever

Spelman women who stood up to segregation

Undaunted by the Fight is a study of a small, but dedicated, group of Spelman College students and faculty who, between 1957 and 1967, risked their lives, compromised their grades, and jeopardized their careers to make Atlanta and the South a more just and open society.
Lefever argues that the participation of Spelman’s students and faculty in the Civil Rights Movement represented both a continuity and a break with the institution’s earlier history. On the one hand their actions were consistent with Spelman’s long history of liberal arts and community service; yet, on the other hand, as his research documents, their actions represented a break with Spelman’s traditional non-political stance and challenged the assumption that social changes should occur only gradually and within established legal institutions. For the first time in the eighty-plus years of Spelman’s existence, the students and faculty who participated in the Movement took actions that directly challenged the injustices of the social and political status quo.

Too often in the past, the Movement literature, including the literature on the Atlanta Movement, focused disproportionately on the males involved to the exclusion of the women who were equally involved, and, who, in many instances, initiated actions and provided leadership for the Movement.

Lefever concludes his study by saying that Spelman’s activist students and faculty succeeded to the extent they did because they “kept their eyes on the prize.” They endured the struggle, he says, and, in so doing, eventually won many prizes—some personal, others social. “Undaunted, they liberated themselves, but at the same time they liberated their school, their city, and the larger society.”

Harry G. Lefever has a BA from Eastern Mennonite College (1955), a MA from the University of Chicago (1962), and a Ph.D. from Emory University (1971). He has been a member of the Spelman College Sociology Department since 1966 and served as chair of the Sociology Department (now Sociology and Anthropology) from 1975–1992. In 2003 he was promoted to the rank of professor emeritus of Sociology. Prior to coming to Spelman, he taught for three years at Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Titles of Related Interest

W. E. B. DuBois and Race An Ex-Colored Church

An Ex-Colored Church: Social Activism in the CME Church, 1870–1970

God and Human Responsibility: David Walker and Ethical Prophecy

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