Standing in front of her class, Georgina Hickey asks students to list civil rights activists who were women.
The students respond loud and strong. “Ella Baker.” “Fannie Lou Hamer.” “Rosa Parks.” But after a few names, the responses trail off.
Women have always had significant leadership roles in movements, Hickey says. But most have been overlooked. Some had the credit taken by someone else. Or historians omitted them. Sometimes, they found it advantageous to organize outside the spotlight.
“Women’s leadership has traditionally been undervalued or gone unrecognized altogether by contemporaries and historians alike. This course demonstrates that women have left an inspiring and instructional legacy of leadership,” says Hickey, a professor of history in the College of Arts, Sciences and Letters at UM-Dearborn.
For the past 12 years, she has taught the seminar Women, Leadership and Social Change. It examines women’s leadership in movements for social change through case studies from 19th and 20th century U.S. history. It was created in 2004 to support the Women in Learning and Leadership Program. It highlights activists from a variety of movements surrounding economic justice, race relations and gender equality.
Senior Danielle Warren says the class provides information that seems to have been erased in the popular media. “And it gives a more intersectional perspective than you get in history or even in women’s history,” she says.
Hickey says it’s important to understand the experiences of women and the unique challenges and rewards they encountered as leaders.
“It is more than just adding women to the historical record, though that is important. It is about understanding the ways in which race, class and gender intersected in real people’s lives and what happens when people start to look critically at their place in society,” she says.
“It is about understanding the process by which individuals come to understand and challenge structural inequality through collective movements for social change.”
Q&A
What moment in the classroom or lab stands out as the most memorable?
For the last day in a seminar, I asked students to choose one passage from the reading that particularly resonated with their own lives and share it with the class. People were amazingly brave in what they shared and the discussion that followed was a testament to the power of learning history. There were some tears and hugs. It wasn’t your typical history class.
What can’t you live without?
Post-It notes — the little ones. I use them to code everything I read.
What is your favorite spot near campus?
It is the nature area/trails surrounding the Ford estate (Fairlane) or the faculty lounge in the library, which is filled with some of UM-D’s beautiful art glass collection.
What inspires you?
Libraries, especially libraries housed in big brick and stone buildings, with old wood, musty smells and maze-like stacks.
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What are you currently reading?
Daphne Spain’s new book “Constructive Feminism: Women’s Spaces and Women’s Rights in the American City,” Diane Wood Middlebrook’s “Suits Me: the Double Life of Billy Tipton” (about a 20th century jazz musician who passed as a man), and a romance novel written by a friend but published under the pseudonym Kim Amos.
Who had the greatest influence on your career path?
Professor Paul Lucas. He was a scholar of the American colonial period and my undergraduate adviser, but he also turned out to be my biggest advocate and source of encouragement when I moved from studying the 17th century to studying the 20th. He taught me about reading the subtext of sources through the trial of Anne Hutchinson but he also taught me that these skills were portable.
