| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3

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| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3 | The History Cooperative

Movie Reviews

Standing on My Sisters' Shoulders. Prod. by Joan Sadoff, Robert Sadoff, and Laura J. Lipson, 2002. 60 mins. (Women Make Movies, 462 Broadway, Suite 500WS, New York, NY 10013; 212-925-0606, ext. 317; < orders@wmm.com >; < www.wmm.com > [Sept. 13, 2004])

Standing on My Sisters' Shoulders is an important sixty-minute documentary on the civil rights movement in Mississippi and the female leaders and rank-and-file activists who constituted its "grass-roots foundation." Standing highlights those "black sisters who lent their shoulders for us to stand on."

Veterans of the civil rights movement, pictured here in 2003, are (left to right) Victoria Gray Adams, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, Constance Slaughter Harvey, Betty Pearson, Flonzie Goodloe Brown Wright, Dorie Ladner, Gloria Carter Dixon, and June Johnson. Standing on My Sisters' Shoulders tells the story of these and other Mississippi women who participated at the grass-roots level in the civil rights movement as leaders or as rank-and-file members. Photograph by J. D. Schwalm.

The film argues that women rose to prominence in Mississippi's freedom struggle in part because "it was less risky" for black women than for black men "to be in positions of high profile." In addition, women were most of the "doers and organizers" in the black church, the backbone of the movement, and so it was unsurprising that they rose to prominence. White southern female liberals provided another source of support, from lone journalistic voices to students who joined the 1963 sit-in at the Woolworth's in Jackson, Mississippi. Such women faced the loss of jobs and firebombings of their houses as well as beatings and shootings to ensure that all Americans enjoy the right to public education and the vote.

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