"Local leadership": the role of women in the Louisiana branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Louisiana, 1920-1939

Historians have generally characterized black women in the early civil rights strauggle as a collective body of activists who contributed their social networks to fundraising, memebership drives and campaigning. This has tended to obscure the talents of minor(and in the main -historically invisible) charaters who were leaders of the local branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the interwar period. It has been seen that men led the civil rights struggle, while women organized and kept to the backgound to support the male leadership. Howerver, the NAACP headquarters in New York during the 1920s and '30s encouraged women to ctake a leadership role in the local organizations.