Sisters of Dignity and Courage

Rosa Parks stands tall, the light streaming behind her through the window of the bare church, her face a statement of gentle pride. Jazz singer Ernestine Anderson looks ready to explode with joy, the light above her like a halo that cascades and sparkles off the sequins of her dress.

Eva Jessye, eyes closed, face resting on her hand and cane propped between her knees, sits on a piano bench, tired but triumphant. This internationally acclaimed choral director of the Broadway production of Porgy and Bess has earned her rest -- and a place in history by her piano and in our hearts.

Septima Poinsette Clark, an unsung hero of the civil rights movement, was born in the last century. Her profile shows thin, gray hair in tight braids to her shoulders, a wrinkled hand under her prominent chin. Her portrait says dignity.

On a winter day in Washington, D.C., I walked out of the cold and into the warmth of these women and 71 of their sisters at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The exhibit by photographer Brian Lanker was titled, "I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America."

The photographs included such renowned women as Alice Walker, Coretta Scott King, Cicely Tyson, Shirley Chisholm, and Marian Anderson. But also among them were Cora Lee Johnson, who dropped out of school at age 13 and was told she didn't exist because she had no birth certificate, but went on to improve housing and health care for her people in rural Georgia; and Josephine Riley Matthews, a midwife who delivered more than 1,300 babies and graduated from high school at the age of 74.

These women are organizers and actresses, politicians and Pulitzer Prize winners; singers and Olympic athletes and college presidents; a sculptor, a storyteller, and a prima ballerina; an architect and a bishop; a neurosurgeon and a master chef. The book that accompanied the exhibit tells their marvelous stories.

THREE WOMEN LED EFFORTS to desegregate schools in the South. Riots erupted on the University of Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa when Autherine Lucy tried to attend in 1956; she was expelled after three days. Just last year -- 32 years later -- she received a letter from the university explaining that she is no longer an expelled student and should feel free to re-enroll there.

These women tell of the hatred, the name-calling, the bricks through windows and death threats that accompanied their actions three decades ago. Many of the other stories are filled with this kind of suffering as well -- with slavery and near-slavery, with burning crosses and bombs, and rape.

But these stories are infused with courage and faith as well -- and humor even when there seems to be little in life to laugh about. As Maya Angelou put it, "I weep a lot. I thank God I laugh a lot, too. The main thing ... is to try to laugh as much as you cry."

Every one of these women has had a long odyssey to victory. Ernestine Anderson's first "piano" was a window ledge on which she had drawn black and white keys with a pencil. Folk singer Elizabeth Cotten swept floors and washed dishes for 75 cents a month and saved enough money to buy her first guitar.

United Methodist Bishop Leontine T.C. Kelly was baptized at three months old by a black bishop, who said as he handed her back to her mother, "How I wish you were a boy, so that my mantle could fall on you." Kelly says that, rather than being proud, the bishop would "probably turn over in his grave" to know that the church has a woman bishop now. Unita Blackwell of Meyersville, Mississippi reflects on her journey, "The very place where I am now the mayor, the people used to arrest me and harass me every day."

Willie Mae Ford Smith, the mother of gospel music, asserts, "When you're walkin' with God, you don't worry about what you're gonna get in this life." Each of these women welcomed what God had in store for them. Clara McBride Hale opened her Harlem home to children, and within two months she was caring for 22 babies in a five-room apartment. In her lifetime she has cared for more than 600 drug-addicted infants. God "kept sending them," she says, "and He kept opening a way for me to make it."

With the help of God and their own resources, these women overcame the racism and sexism that threatened to keep them bound. And many acted alone. As civil rights advocate Mary Frances Berry puts it, "If Rosa Parks had taken a poll before she sat down on the bus in Montgomery, she'd still be standing."

Maya Angelou calls these women "precious jewels all." Indeed, they sparkle with dignity and courage. And the collection of their triumphs is a rare celebration of sisters who have left their indelible marks on history.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.