By using lunch counter sit-ins, organizing into national networks like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and reaching into college campuses through the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Civil Rights Movement was able to bring together northerners and southerners, older and younger citizens and men and women to work for a single cause (Lawson et al, 1998, p. 21). Women took inspiration from this in the creation of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and other feminist groups – NOW even states in its Statement of Purpose that "there is no civil rights movement to speak for women, as there has been for Negroes and other victims of discrimination" and that NOW must take on that responsibility (MacLean, 2009, p. 72). Similarly, important was the role black women on an individual level played in offering a model for white women to follow. Because black men had a harder time finding employment, black women had a history of working outside the home while balancing their role as a mother. They were able to combine employment, child rearing and homemaking in ways that white women would later emulate. Black women eventually earned college and graduate degrees and sought full time employment in higher rates than either black men or white women, while maintaining a community service ethic. This served as a great inspiration to white women (MacLean, 2009, p. 70).
The civil rights movement broadened the definition of leadership to include women, and left an impression of women as powerful and determined activists. Jo Ann Robinson and Ella Baker are just two of the many women who were able to take charge and make an impact on the movement. Robinson led the Women's Political Council, which plotted strategy for a one-day bus boycott in Montgomery following Rosa Parks' arrest. The Council was able to recruit clergy to lend their churches for mass meetings and was able to tap into a new minister in town, Martin Luther King, Jr.