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From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues

Women’s Political Council

Founded in 1946, the Women’s Political Council (WPC) played a critical role in the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott and helped launch the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The WPC had threatened a boycott of the city’s buses since 1950 and Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her bus seat and subsequent arrest provided the catalyst to spark the boycott. Under the leadership of the WPC, the boycott began four days after her arrest and lasted for more than a year.

A group of well-educated African American women had formed the WPC after the Montgomery branch of the League of Women Voters (LWV) refused to admit black women members. About 40 women decided to create the WPC to provide themselves with a means to be politically active, focusing their efforts on fighting racial segregation and improving the lives of all African Americans, particularly women and children. To achieve its goals, the WPC sponsored a variety of programs, including Negro Youth Day, which sought to inspire African American youth to become leaders and to believe in the possibility of change through electoral politics. Several of the students trained in WPC programs became leaders in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, registering voters in Mississippi and other states in the Deep South. The organization also organized letter-writing campaigns, taxation protests, and meetings with the mayor.

As the news circulated that Rosa Parks had been arrested on December 1, 1955, WPC leader JoAnn Robinson, head of the English Department at Alabama State College in Montgomery, used the college’s mimeograph machines to print leaflets calling for a bus boycott. Other WPC members went into action, distributing the leaflets and organizing support for the boycott, which began on December 5, 1955, and involved almost all African Americans in the community. Robinson continued to use the college’s mimeograph machines throughout the boycott, which provided a vital means of communication, despite the fact that she risked her job and her safety by doing it. Although she attempted to keep her role as invisible as possible, she was among the first arrested as a result of the boycott and later lost her teaching position for her activism.

After members were subpoenaed during the trials relating to the boycott, they destroyed the organization’s records out of fear that the information would be subpoenaed and the meeting minutes and membership lists publicized, resulting in retaliation against them. The WPC dissolved in 1960 as members lost their jobs, feared being fired or being subjected to other forms of retaliation, and discontinued their activism. The remaining core continued the work through churches.

See also: Civil Rights Movement, Women in the; Parks, Rosa Louise McCauley

References: Barnett, “Black Women’s Collectivist Movement Organizations: Their Struggles during the ‘Doldrums’” (1995).

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"Women’s Political Council." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, edited by Suzanne O’Dea, Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_1020.
APA 7th
Women’s Political Council. From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, In S. O’Dea (Ed.), Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_1020.
CMOS 17th
"Women’s Political Council." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, Edited by Suzanne O’Dea. Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_1020.