Beside the more visible black male leaders of the Civil Rights Movement both black and white women played important and key roles in the struggle for racial equality. Women's experiences in the Civil Rights Movement can tell us a lot about the lives of ordinary and extraordinary women and their ability to access and be denied power in a movement for black liberation that was based on the idea of equality. There was an inherent contradiction within the movement for although many women were doing much of the organizing work they still remained largely invisible while the men shone in the spotlight. Women of all different social classes and racial backgrounds participated in many different capacities throughout the black liberation movement.
Women were an indispensable part of the movement that could often be found working behind the scenes or in the trenches along side the men helping to bring about social change through the movement. These revolutionary black and white women could be found putting their bodies on the line along side the men in protest at segregated lunch counters in small towns, on buses for the Freedom Rides traveling throughout the segregated south, as well as working door-to-door on voter registration drives throughout the south.
It is true that women organizers throughout the movement no matter whether they were working with the male public and private leaders of the movement or men at the grassroots level, at some time or another probably had to face the opposition and ridicule of many of the men whom they worked along side of in the movement simply because they were women. One such woman is Ella Baker who for nearly 50 years worked within many different areas of the civil rights and black liberation movement in various capacities. She helped not only to organize and run many of the larger civil rights organizations, but also profoundly influenced the direction that newer organizations such as Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) would take within the movement.