"Be ye doers of the word, not just hearers only": faith and politics in the life of Victoria Gray Adams.

African American women's leadership significantly influenced the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet, while this is true, many of the early movement histories focused on national organizations and the men who led them. Within recent years, however, a shift in emphasis has brought women into fuller view. Historians have documented the important, yet neglected roles that "ordinary" people played in social change and underscored the fact that many of these were women. Building on this body of scholarship, new biographies as well as social and political histories center on the lives of African American women, sharpening our understanding of how race, class and gender impacted women's leadership in the movement. (1)

While male leadership primarily dominated at the national and regional levels of the twentieth century freedom struggle, women's activism was strongest on the local level where African American women extended their roles within church communities and secular organizations to work for social change. One important, yet under-researched dimension to black women's work for social change is the connection between faith and politics. Oral history testimony of African American women suggests that religious faith is a significant factor shaping the distinctive nature of their activism. Moreover, recent scholarship in the sociology of religion and black womanist theology, sheds greater light on the role faith plays in womens' identities, values, and political involvement. Womanist theologians such as Cheryl Gilkes, Katie Cannon, Jacqueline Grant and Delores Williams, for example, have contributed significant scholarship in this area. In her book Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion and Civil Rights, womanist theologian Rosetta Ross, examines the social and religious influences in the lives of female activists. (2) She argues that Black women's spirituality fostered self-dignity, an ethic of community responsibility and a source of strength that materialized into concrete action. In another important study, If It Wasn't for the Women, Black Women's Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community, Cheryl Gilkes underscores the role of religion within the lives of African American women and points out that within church communities, women have a powerful influence across denominations. Since women comprise the majority within black church communities, it comes as no surprise that during the civil rights era, many would extend religious beliefs and practices to political action.

Victoria Gray Adams, for example, was a Mississippi woman whose Christian faith and religious beliefs permeated her life to the extent that she became one of the most influential grassroots leaders in the Civil Rights Movement. The story of her activism illustrates the strong connection between faith and political action in the movement.

Along with Fannie Lou Hamer and Annie Devine, Victoria Gray represented the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in its historic challenge to the all-white state delegation at the Democratic National Convention held, in 1964, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. By this time, all three women were veteran activists whose local leadership in their respective communities had significantly advanced the movement. Prior to the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, none of these woman knew one another, but in reflecting back on their personal histories, Victoria Gray stated that "the one common denominator is that we are all deeply spiritual people. We come from three totally different places, three totally different environments, and ... somehow as we journeyed our paths came together." (3) Among the three, Fannie Lou Hamer is perhaps the most widely known, the subject of at least two biographies. Mrs. Hamer made history when she went before the House Credentials Committee, in August 1964, to testify about the disfranchisement of local black Mississippians. While lesser known, Victoria Gray's leadership was equally as effective and critical to the events that unfolded during that time.

Victoria Jackson Gray Adams, was born on November 5, 1926, in the Palmer's Crossing community, a historically black settlement which is now a part of the city of Hattiesburg. Located approximately ninety miles from New Orleans, Mobile and the Gulf Coast in Forest County, Hattiesburg was the fourth largest city in the state of Mississippi, known for its timber industry and railroads. Relatively speaking, this region of the state was not considered as racially oppressive as the Delta where the plantation economy thrived on the exploitation of black labor. Victoria Gray's parents were Mack and Annie Mae Ott Jackson. She was reared by her paternal grandparents following the untimely death of her mother when she was only three years old. Like others in the self-contained community of Palmer's Crossing, Victoria Gray's grandparents were independent, self-reliant farmers. They did not depend upon local whites for survival; self-reliance was instilled in Victoria Gray at a young age and this remained an important value to her. (4) Victoria Gray attended Depriest Consolidated School in Palmer's Crossing with the exception of one year that she spent living in Detroit with her father and his sister. She later attended Wilberforce University, in Ohio, for one year then tried her hand at teaching until "the regimentation became a bother." (5) Meanwhile, Gray married, and followed her first husband, Tony West, who was stationed overseas in Germany during the Korean War. The couple had three children-Georgie Roswitha Gray, Tony West Gray, Jr. and Cecil Conteen Gray. Following the stint in Germany, the young couple returned to a segregated U.S. where Gray's husband was stationed at Fort Meade in Maryland. They found housing in the district and Gray set out to find a job. This was particularly difficult since employers were reluctant to hire transitory military families. Also, Gray was very protective of her children and sought a job that would allow her to spend time with them. Eventually, she found work as a sales representative for an all-black cosmetics company known as Beauty Queen. Gray excelled in this work, but her marriage began to decline. Having worked at the marriage without success, by 1955, Gray divorced Tony and made the decision to return to her Mississippi birthplace. She moved back into the family house left by her grandparents, bought a Studebaker and set about establishing a market for Beauty Queen products in the southwest Mississippi town of Hattiesburg. Gray recruited a sales team of two additional agents. In a few years, business had grown so rapidly that she would eventually hire twenty-five representatives and lease an office in the black business district of downtown Hattiesburg. (6)

By this time, the Civil Rights Movement had escalated in Mississippi with the arrival of young activists in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Curtis Hayes and Hollis Watkins were among the few local people to join them. After helping to organize blacks in nearby McComb, Mississippi, they were led to Hattiesburg at the request of the local branch of the NAACP. From the outset, there was a tremendous pocket of resistance from some local people, especially ministers who feared their presence. On the other hand, the young activists were welcomed by residents who realized that change would hasten with outside involvement. Curtis Hayes and Hollis Watkins looked for jobs in McComb and began to settle in when they happened into a local television and electronics shop owned by the brother of Victoria Gray. After several minutes of small talk, the conversation turned to a discussion of civil rights when Hayes and Watkins explained that they were having a tough time getting local churches to hold meetings. Gray's brother commented that Hayes and Watkins should try talking with his sister, Victoria Gray, whose strong influence in the church might help them out. As suggested, Mrs. Gray influenced her pastor, Reverend Ponder, of St. John Methodist Church, to open the church to the SNCC workers. Watkins and Hayes visited the church and held their first civil rights meeting. On a Thursday night, they asked who would be willing to meet and go to the courthouse the next day to register to vote. Victoria Gray recalled that "I was one of the very few hands that went up to say 'yes,' we'll meet you there." Among the others who stood up were the pastor and three school bus drivers. By the end of the next day, after leaving the courthouse, the bus drivers had been fired." According to Gray, "that was designed to scare people off and it did. But, it did not stop the movement. When things like that happen, a lot of people will step back, but a lot will step up." (7)

While operating a business, Gray became increasingly more involved with the young SNCC workers who suggested that she attend a citizenship education workshop in Dorchester, Georgia. This entailed a week of intensive training in helping adults learn to read, write and comprehend their rights as citizens in a democratic society. The Citizenship Education Project (CEP) was sponsored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and was the brainchild of its founder Septima Clark. Dismissed from her teaching job in South Carolina for refusal to withdraw membership in the NAACP, Septima Clark, was a veteran activist who worked alongside labor leader Miles Horton, the director of the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. At Highlander, Clark perfected the citizenship education model that was later adopted by SCLC in developing grassroots leadership throughout the South. The citizenship schools were staffed by adults who often did not have high school nor college degrees, but who desired to help others in the community acquire basic literacy skills. Fresh from the workshop in Dorchester, Victoria Gray returned home to establish the first such citizenship education program in Hattiesburg. Among basic reading and writing skills, she provided information about democracy, its institutions, black history, and "instruction necessary for a meaningful existence and participation in a democratic society." (8) She recalled:

    We taught what they didn't teach in the schools. Parents and
    grandparents didn't know their stories, histories or about their
    voting rights This was very important and this is the role we
    filled. Education was one of the most important parts of the
    strategy of the movement. Where you found the most successful and
    dynamic campaigns later on, it was in communities like ours, where
    the education work had been done extensively. (9)

Victoria Gray pointed out that when people understood the relevance and the connection between being registered to vote and improving their communities, they were more likely to overcome fear and take action. By this time, in the mid-1960s, Victoria Gray was in her thirties, a unique and different person actively involved in the movement. Most of the rank-and-file among local activists were either very young or very old, with the exception of those civil rights workers who came from outside the state. The people who had the responsibilities of raising families and maintaining jobs were less willing to take risks. She recalled that "there were just not a lot of thirty-year-olds in the movement at the time.... As I became more and move involved with citizenship education and organizing in the community,... I decided to give full-time to the movement." (10) Victoria Gray closed her business, got divorced and rolled up her sleeves to work tirelessly for the expanding black freedom movement. It was then, during the early spring of 1964, that she was first approached about getting involved in the newly formed Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

Among the various initiatives taken by civil rights activists working in Mississippi was the creation of an independent, third political party that would challenge the exclusion of blacks from the political process in the state. At this time, blacks represented 40% of the state's population, yet only six percent was registered to vote, a result of various disfranchisement schemes created by local whites following Reconstruction. (11) The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was formed on April 26, 1964. (12) To demonstrate that Mississippi blacks sought the franchise, but had been systematically denied, in 1963, over 80,000 blacks were registered in a mock election that was called the Freedom Vote. Many of the local organizers who walked door-to-door canvassing potential new voters were African American women. With the success of the Freedom Vote, in 1964, the MFDP decided to challenge the seating of the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention. Among the sixty-eight local people elected to represent the party were several African American women. Moreover, Victoria Gray, Fannie Lou Hamer and Annie Devine were elected to the party's national staff. In the challenge, the MFDP sought to bring attention to the severe conditions in Mississippi and force the Democratic Party and its politicians to open its doors to black representation.

After much political maneuvering on the part of Democratic Party politicians, the MFDP delegates failed to unseat the Mississippi regulars; they would still be recognized by the national party. (13) Instead, MFDP delegates were offered two seats at the convention, at-large. Unwavering in their stand to be recognized as the true representatives of the Mississippi electorate, the MFDP ultimately turned down the proposal. After a great deal of discussion, an outspoken Victoria Gray commented: "... I took the floor and I simply said to people in no uncertain terms why we were there and reminded them of what the people back in Mississippi were expecting from us and that I, for one, was not going back to Mississippi and tell those people a lie. (14)

For the MFDP delegates and those working with them, the defeat in Atlantic City was a turning point. Following this, people were less optimistic that the democratic process could bring about significant change. Nevertheless, a year later, MFDP decided to mount a Congressional Challenge, in 1965, that would be both legal and political. The MFDP elected Victoria Gray, Fannie Lou Hamer and Annie Devine to unseat the white Mississippi representatives to Congress on the grounds that they were unfairly put in office. With the exclusion of the state's large number of black voters, the MFDP argued that the election had violated their fourteenth and fifteenth amendment rights. The congressional challenge required tremendous work on the part of activists and their lawyers. Hundreds of people gave depositions testifying to violence, harassment and other means used to disfranchise African Americans in Mississippi in hopes that Congress would invalidate the election of the all-white representatives. Victoria Gray, Fannie Lou Hamer and Annie Devine, the three MFDP candidates who ran for office, were now required to work even harder. Victoria Gray recalled that "we didn't see our families sometimes for long periods of time. Eventually we rented an apartment in D.C." (15)

On September 17,1965, after days of proceedings and reports, the House took a vote and the challenge was defeated. Victoria Gray, Fannie Lou Hamer and Annie Devine were there; they had been asked to be present while the vote was taken. This marked the very first time that black women would sit on the floor of Congress. Victoria Gray remarked "until the time comes that they [House members] are ready to argue the Constitution instead of technicalities, the Constitution will not be real to me or to hundreds of thousands of other people. (16) While the Congressional Challenge had failed in one sense, its symbolism was unmistakenly apparent. It was proof that African Americans were serious about gaining their constitutional right to vote. Despite the Congressional defeat, Victoria Gray returned to Mississippi and remained active in the fight for social justice. The movement was at the center of who she had become. She recollected:

    ... In spite of the defeats, the strength of my decision [to join
    the movement] stemmed from my faith journey. There's just nothing
    else that would supply that kind of strength aside from the kind of
    rearing we had of self-sustainment, believing in yourself.... I can
    see all the training from the farm ... it was all training for what
    I would be doing. I can never remember a time when I was not
    conscious about what I was doing ... There were some very hard
    decisions being made; there weren't a lot of local people in my age
    group, there were so many obligations, and people were just not
    willing to take the risks that were involved. But, by the grace of
    God, I somehow understood that I had been given a very special
    blessing that I didn't have to worry about anybody firing me, and I
    didn't have to worry about anybody kicking me outside of their
    house, because I had a little shack that belonged to me, that was
    mine, the land that it stood on had been mine before I was born. And
    I had been reared with that sense that if there is a need, you have
    a responsibility to respond ... that be ye doers of the word and not
    hearers only.... My faith connection is my mainstay. My faith
    connection has been with me in all that I've done, whether it was in
    the community at large, whether it was in the political arena ... I
    think people who are involved in the political arena who do not have
    a spiritual base are the people who want to build bigger and bigger
    jails, spend more and more on defense, and get people off of welfare
    onto workfare, but they don't have any jobs for them to work on. The
    lack of a spiritual base on which one functions is just so
    destructive as opposed to those who have one." (17)

Victoria Gray's reflections indicate how faith framed her ability to engage in a persistent struggle against racial injustice. The risks were immense for stepping forward in Mississippi in the 1960s. One could suffer violence, harassment and even death. While the events of the 1960s left many activists deeply disappointed, angry and defeated, she was able to maintain the capacity to move forward and redirect her energies. For Victoria Gray, it was spiritual faith that made it possible. She reflects:

    I see the civil rights movement as the journey towards the
    establishment of the kingdom of God, that's the way I saw it then
    and that's the way I see it now ... Church is a representation of
    the spirit of God; we are a spirit people; I don't care what you
    call yourself, Christian, Jew, Muslim ... the things that happened
    could not have happened if you weren't a spirit person. The
    commonality was reaching deep down within and finding what I call
    spirit. My understanding of the kingdom of God is a place of right
    relationships. And certainly the civil rights journey was an effort
    to create in this country a place of right relationships which
    throughout the history of America has been a place of totally
    unrighteous relationships. So, the civil rights journey was and is
    and must continue to be a movement towards the establishment of the
    kingdom of God. (18)

Oral history offers a valuable opportunity to investigate the personal, internal aspects of individual religious faith. For historians, it expands the narrative of black women's lives to consider the interplay of religious beliefs, social activism, and other factors shaping their experiences. An analysis of my own personal interviews with female activists collected through the years as well as those in various oral history collections demonstrates that women have identified faith as an important dimension in their own activism. Recent studies in disciplines such as sociology and black feminist theology have utilized oral sources to uncover connections between faith and politics, though historians have been less likely to draw upon these interdisciplinary reserves. Historian Tracy K'Meyer argues that "oral history interviews can provide a more diverse representation of religious expression in contemporary society ... and can capture how people understand and articulate their beliefs." Through oral history, she explains "historians could convey the role of faith in family relations, community, work, politics and culture." If we are to deepen our analysis of black women's roles in the civil rights movement, it is important that we consider how spirituality and radical views of Christianity have informed political agency. Moreover, it is critical that we study the varieties of women's activism and examine both the commonalities among women and the differences. Victoria Gray's life is one important exemplar.

Notes

1. See John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995); Charles Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Charles Payne and Adam Green, eds. Time Longer than Rope: A Century of African American Activism, 1850-1950 (New York: New York University Press, 2003); Belinda Robnett, How Long? How Long? African American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Chana Kai Lee. For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999); Kay Mills, This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. (New York: Dutton, 1993); Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

2. Ross, Rosetta. Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion and Civil Rights. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).

3. Personal Interview with Victoria Gray Adams by Vicki Crawford, July 26, 1995, Petersburg, Virginia.

4. Interview with Victoria Gray Adams by the Civil Rights Documentation Project of the University of Southern Mississippi Oral History Program,

5. Personal Interview with Victoria Gray Adams.

6. Personal Interview, July 26, 1995.

7. Personal Interview, July 26, 1995.

8. Victoria Gray Adams Papers, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi, Box 6, Folder 10.

9. Personal Interview, July 26, 1995.

10. Personal Interview, July 26, 1995.

11. John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

12. Chana Kai Lee, For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 85.

13. John Dittmer, Local People and Chana Kai Lee, For Freedom's Sake, 99-100.

14. John Dittmer, 301.

15. Personal interview, July 26, 1995.

16. Leslie McLemore, "The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party: A Case Study of Grassroots Politics" (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1971), 227.

17. Personal interview, July 26, 1995.

18. Personal interview, July 26, 1995.