From the Wednesdays In Mississippi documentary film website -www.wimsfilmproject.com

“The only civil rights project run by a national women’s organization, “Wednesdays in Mississippi” (WIMS) was the brainchild of National Council of Negro Women President, Dorothy Height and her close friend, Polly Cowan. Their plan brought Black and White women from Northern cities like Boston, New York, and Chicago into Mississippi in 1964 during Freedom Summer.

Each week, both interracial and interfaith teams of women known as “Wednesdays Women” traveled to Mississippi on Tuesdays. On Wednesdays, the women brought supplies and much needed support to small rural communities. There, local Black citizens and young civil rights workers from the North faced daily violence and constant harassment as they worked side by side to end legalized segregation. The women experienced first hand the devastating results of racial injustice, but also witnessed the hope and promise of change.

However, it was on Thursdays that the quiet revolution took root. This was when the “Wednesdays Women” put on their white gloves and pearls and secretly met with Black and White Mississippi women. In living rooms over tea and cookies the Southern women openly discussed their fears and suspicions about the civil rights movement. Many, for the first time, voiced their support for change. At that time in Mississippi, mixing with outsiders had dire consequences. Yet the women came, they listened and their hearts and minds began to open. Their clandestine meetings became the catalyst for great change.

In 1965, the Southern women invited the Northern women back to Mississippi. This groundbreaking alliance between Black and White women from the North and South continued until 1967. Working together, the women started economic, health and educational programs, including the well known Fannie Lou Hamer Daycare center, which continues to thrive today.”

You can check out the documentary film-in-progress at http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/2008/11/07...

“In terms of organizing, you can go back to something that you know, the YWCA of the USA. And people forget that because they have been around for so long. But I feel that in terms of the issue of race and class across the country wherever they have been, particularly in the 40s, 50s and up through the 80s, they were really out there in front and stood firm.

And in many of the communities where the YWCA was, where there were segregation laws, they as a board, had a mixed board always. In the Southern states and other states, their role was to have Black and White women working together. And they did it in spite of whatever kinds of habits that people had in their types of communities. And they dealt with the issue of race and in fact as a national organization one of their rules was, their guidelines, was the elimination of racism wherever it exists and by any means necessary and that’s the wording and where I learned it. (Laughter).

We worked on the usual things in an organization — keeping it alive, finances — but one of the things that all of the chapters of the YWCA had at that time, they had to set a time during the year that a further discussion of the issue of race happened.

And so the way we did it was to be sure first of all that there were people on the board who were mixed and willing to participate in that discussion, but then also to hire somebody who would lead us in a discussion in terms of the changes but also in the YWCA’s case, reminding us of our history. Because a lot of people come into an organization and they don’t know the history. They know a little bit. But they don’t know the history in terms of a struggle. And in the early years, the YWCA did some remarkable things around the issue of race and class.

It has changed since then because people don’t think we have to keep on doing that any more. But during those early years, they were remarkable. The book to read is Gerta Lerners’ — the first one I think had to do with women — in that book she uses letters and minutes of meetings of these organizations and in it there’s a section on the YWCA and I read the book and I think I have it upstairs somewhere.

So that to me — it’s an old organization, the YWCA, so people tend not to look at it as a model, but I think it’s a better model than the later women’s movements that came along.”

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