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Thelma McWilliams was born in Mobile, Alabama in 1916, where she spent her early years. She moved to Montgomery to attend Alabama State Teachers College and, after graduating in 1941, she went on to get an MA degree from Columbia University in 1947. She returned to teach Geography at her
alma mater soon after, and became secretary to the Women’s Political Council, an organization founded by a group of teachers at Alabama State University in 1947 to fight racial injustices and oppression in Montgomery. Though the best-known accounts of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, focus on the organizing actions of Martin Luther King Jr., and the resistance of Rosa Parks, the boycott had its genesis in work begun earlier, work in which the Women’s Political Council played key strategic and tactical roles. In Mrs. Glass’ own words to an interviewer years later, “The men talked about it, you know, but we were ready to take action.”
Put away your textbooks and pull out your cellphones: some of the best Black history lessons are happening on TikTok.
Across the app, Black creators are posting videos that confront America’s racist past in graphic detail, use history to add context to the way race is viewed today and view history through a lens that addresses the way homophobia, colorism, age and respectability politics influence who history remembers best. They go beyond the surface level explorations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks that run rampant during Black History Month to examine lesser-known figures, and they don’t limit themselves to February.
When Julian DeShazier, a 37-year-old Black pastor, marches in Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, he removes his clerical collar – a symbol of authority – and follows the instructions of organisers, many of whom are younger than him, and many of whom are women.
DeShazier and members of his Hyde Park University Church in Chicago, Illinois, decided that the youth, whom he describes as “faithful, but secular”, are “best positioned to lead this movement right now”. The role of the Church is “to be supportive of them in offering ourselves in the ways they show us they need us and to fill in the gaps as well.”