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Chapter 10
“The Whole Matter Revolves around the Self-Respect of
My People”: Black Conservative Women in the Civil Rights
Era
Joshua D. Farrington
Eastern Kentucky University
INTRODUCTION
In response to Brown v. Board of Education, the foundational case reflecting decades of
hard work by civil rights activists to desegregate public education, famed Black novelist
Zora Neale Hurston remarked, “I regard the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court as
insulting.” 1 To her, “the whole matter revolves around the self-respect of my people…I
see no tragedy in being too dark to be invited to a White social affair.” 2 Black schools,
run and operated by Black communities, were Hurston’s ideal, and the idea of holding
integrated White schools as the standard bearer ran against her deep-seated racial
pride. Though Hurston joined many White conservatives in opposing Brown, her
reasons were altogether different, as was her distinctly Black brand of conservatism.
Indeed, it was Black conservatives of the 1950s, not the decade’s mainstream
integrationist civil rights leadership, who in many ways were closer to the more militant
Black Nationalists of the 1960s in their joint emphasis on Black self-determination and a
racial pride that rejected integration as a cure-all.
By focusing on conservative Black women during the civil rights era, this chapter
highlights the myriad of political ideologies that have always existed within Black
communities. This diversity of political expression, however, has not always been fully
delineated by scholars. Almost all of the leading scholarship of the conservative
1
Zora Neale Hurston, “Court Order Can’t Make Races Mix,” Orlando Sentinel, August
11, 1955.
2
Ibid.