Gainesville native launches book about Black women in the civil rights movement

A church in the Springhill community of southeast Gainesville is where the Rev. Dr. AnneMarie Mingo grew up learning Black history and the power of faith.

The lessons she learned at the church inspired her to write “Have You Got Good Religion?: Black Women’s Faith, Courage, and Moral Leadership in the Civil Rights Movement.”

“It’s the small action we take every day that can change the world,” Mingo said during a book launch and signing Monday at the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center in southeast Gainesville. “My mother and others like her is why I talk about women of the movement. Their actions were rooted in the fact that the movement was bigger than themselves.”

Mingo, daughter of long-time Gainesville community leaders Dr. G.W. and Cynthia Mingo, said it is important to acknowledge the impact her hometown had upon her life's work.

Mingo’s church home is Mount Olive AME Church, which is behind the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center.

She is an associate professor of Ethics, Culture and Moral Leadership and director of the Metro-Urban Institute at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Gainesville Eastside High School in 1991 before going on to earn several collegiate degrees.

Mingo talked during the event Monday, which drew about 75 people, about how faith turned the one-day Montgomery bus boycott into a boycott that lasted 381 days.

Freedom fight: 'Freedom must be taken'

“People would ask, ‘How did they do that?’ It was their faith,” Mingo said. “The singing and the praising encouraged them to go one more day.”

The event also included a book discussion featuring Mingo and retired University of Florida professor Dr. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, a civil rights activist who was an organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

Mingo said she spent many years conducting oral history interviews with Black women whose participation in the civil rights movement are unknown. In her 232-page book, Mingo shares the wisdom of eight grassroots leaders who were active in the north and south during the movement.

“It is not one person who makes the movement,” Mingo said. “It is the masses of people that make the movement.”

The eight women Mingo featured in the book are Lilian Sue Bethel, Doris Virginia Brunson, Peggy Lucas, Rose Davis Schofield, Bessie Smith Sellaway, Marjorie Wallace Smyth, Beatrice Perry Soublet and A. Lenora Taitt-Magubane.

She also features four Movement for Black Lives leaders who are Christian pastors - the Rev. Dr. Karen Anderson, Rev. Traci Blackmon, Rev. Dr. Leslie Callahan and Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey.

Most research for the book was done at Big Bethel AME Church and Ebenezer Baptist Church, both in Atlanta, and Abyssinia Baptist Church and First Bethel AME Church, both in New York City, Mingo said.

“I lived two months at a time in New York during the summers,” Mingo said. “I went to church with them and took the bus with them. I didn’t want to step in and take. I wanted to be a part of the process.”

The lecture was followed by Simmons sharing her experience on the front lines in Mississippi registering people to vote and acknowledged Eberta Spinks as a heroine of the movement.

Spinks played a crucial role in helping the Mississippi Freedom Riders find places to rest and organize during the movement in the city of Laurel.

She lived in Spinks’ home for 18 months during her time in Mississippi and remembers what Spinks told her when she was at her door, Simmons said.

“She told me, ‘I’ve been waiting on you my entire life,’” Simmons said.

Simmons thanked Mingo for writing the book.

“I’m so glad you are lifting these women up,” Simmons said. “I was so elated when you did that because she’s an unsung heroine people don’t know. Spinks, like so many women in Mississippi, made the movement happen.”

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Civil rights movement aided by faith of Black women