Gender, Bennett College, and the Civil Rights Movement in Greensboro, North Carolina
$20 Trade Paperback 227 pgs. ISBN:978-1-959104-03-2
The historic Greensboro, North Carolina lunch counter sit-In on February 1, 1960 is one of the most well known incidents in Civil Rights history. This singular event was universally credited to four young men from North Carolina A&T State University. The integration of public accommodations in Greensboro and many other cities followed.
Belles of Liberty: Gender, Bennett College, and the civil Rights Movement in Greensboro, North Carolina recalls a more complete story, illuminating what many historians have overlooked: that the first sit-In in Greensboro was carefully planned on Bennett College’s campus; and without the women who sat down, marched, and were incarcerated in the hundreds from 1960 to 1963, the Sit-In effort and subsequent desegregation of Greensboro, might not have happened.
“Required reading for anyone who wants to know more about how women have changed the world. Written with the authority of one who was there, Linda Beatrice Brown has expanded our understanding of a turning point in American history in the 1960s. Excellent!”
-Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, Director, National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian
“From Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, to Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer and Septima Clark, to our Black feminist foremothers, the Combahee River Collective and the founders of Black Lives Matter, the Belles of Liberty deserve a seat at the table of history’s freedom fighters. Their story, quiet as it’s kept, is a guide for mobilizing and building power, especially when we feel alone because we are Black and woman and presumably powerless and small. See what these barely young women imagined and fought for our world to be. May we say their names, know a deeper truth, and (à la Lucille Clifton) ‘pass it on.'”
-E. Gale Greenlee, Ph.D., Independent Scholar of African American Literature
Until her retirement in 2014, Linda Beatrice Brown served as the Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Bennett College. During her long teaching career, she previously taught at Kent State University, UNC- Greensboro, and Guilford College, as professor of English, African American Literature, and Creative Writing. She is the author of three published novels, Rainbow ‘Roun Mah Shoulder, Crossing Over Jordan and Black Angels. Black Angels was the “Okra Pick” for the 2009 annual conference of South Carolina Independent booksellers, and was named one of the best books of 2009 by the Chicago Public Libraries.
Also a poet, Linda has been a guest lecturer at many schools and colleges in different cities throughout the country. She has poetry in several anthologies and magazines. Her newest collection of poems, The House of Gratitude, was published in 2021.
Plays include, Wildfire: Black Hands, White Marble, about Edmonia Lewis, a Black Indian Sculptor who broke historical barriers with her art. It was performed in both Greensboro, and Winston Salem. Other plays are: Kitchen Talk, and Stop Right There and Let Me Tell You About My Children, which is the Story of Harriet Jacobs, a slave in hiding. Both were performed at Bennett College. Another play, Congo’s River Song, was produced by the NC Museum of Art.
