A Place to Speak Our Minds Locating Women's Activism Where North Meets South

Abstract

Eighty years ago, a sizable cohort of activists, scholars and labor organizers argued that the future of the North American labor movement depended on the successful organization of women workers in the US South. In 2005, activists, scholars and labor organizers make markedly similar arguments about the important role being played by young women entering ‘maquiladoras’ in the Global South. Divided by time and place, these two groups of workers share the legacy of paying the human costs of industrialization and globalization. In both groups, a significant minority of women responded to the economic and social changes confronting them by turning to activism and fighting back. Collective organization, workers’ education and feminist cooperation were hallmarks of women's activism for social and economic justice in the US South in the mid-20th century. The success of these efforts depended on women locating places where they could develop historical consciousness, find their voices and openly ‘speak their minds’. The experiences of women workers of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s in the US South, provide concrete models for women in the Global South today.