Of these important women, only Dorothy Cotton, who was in the audience, was recognized at the luncheon. But what she did wasn’t described, and the black woman sitting next to me had no idea who she was.

There were some excellent speakers, plus an original poem read by Maya Angelou. But what wasn’t mentioned says a lot about how history is remembered.

Much has been made of the fact that Dr. King is the first African-American to be honored with a memorial on the National Mall. True enough, but Mary MacLeod Bethune has a sculpture in Lincoln Park on the eastern side of the Capitol, one of a dozen statues and memorials to African-Americans in Washington, DC.

Nor did anyone note that the luncheon was being held on August 26, the day that the 19th amendment giving all women equal suffrage with men was proclaimed a part of the US Constitution.

Since Mississippi didn’t even ratify the amendment until 1984 — and none of the Southern states did so before 1952 — has anyone given thought to how different the civil rights movement would have been had not a lone Tennessee legislator followed his mother’s advice to vote yes? Could Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine and Victoria Gray have run for Congress in Mississippi in 1964 had Mississippi still not enfranchised any woman?

Rev. Bernice King, the only one of Dr. King’s four children to inherit the preacher gene, gave a stirring tribute to her mother, Coretta Scott, and her importance to his life. She didn’t mention that CSK wanted to do more than be a supportive wife and mother. She was a peace activist as early as 1962. However, like most men of his time and place, Dr. King thought women’s place was in the home so CSK never got to stretch her wings very far.

©2011 Jo Freeman for SeniorWomen.com

Jo Freeman is currently writing a book on her experiences in the Southern civil rights movement. Her experiences in the Bay Area civil rights movement are in her 2004 book At Berkeley in the Sixties (Indiana U Press)

Image:  Mary MacLeod Bethune's Council House in DC, a National Historic Site, Wikipedia.

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