“If There Are Men Who Are Afraid to Die, There Are Women Who Are Not”: African American Women\u27s Civil Rights Leadership in Boston, 1920-1975.

Since the 1980s, narratives surrounding the Boston Busing Crisis focus on South Boston white working-class’s reaction to Judge Arthur W. Garrity\u27s forced desegregation order of 1974. Yet, by analyzing the crises from such narrow perspective, the narratives leave out half of the story. This dissertation challenges these narratives by situating the busing crisis as the culmination of more than half a century of grassroots activism led by Black working-class mothers. By taking action at the neighborhood and the city levels, these mothers succeeded where the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People and the Urban League had failed. This study is the first one to analyze the role of these “ordinary mothers,” who, through their actions and influence, transformed the civil rights leadership in Boston between the 1920s and the mid-1970s