Womens History Month Keynote Speaker to Present on Female Social Justice Activists in Mississippi Methodist Church March 7

Dr. Janet Allured, professor of history and director of the Women's Studies Program at McNeese State University, will present “Mississippi Methodist Women and The Woman's Society of Christian Service: Leaders of Social Justice in the South” Thursday, March 7 at 6:30 p.m. in room 116 of Asbury Hall on The University of Southern Mississippi's (USM) Hattiesburg campus.

Dr. Allured's presentation is sponsored by the USM Committee on Services and Resources for Women (CSRW), and will be the keynote address for Women's History Month at USM. Admission is free.

The focus of Dr. Allured's talk will be on how a select group of mid- and late-20th century Mississippi Methodist laywomen made their voices heard in advocating for social justice, crusading to eradicate racial and gender inequities in their life's work, and who have been the subject for her research examining southern Methodist women as agents of change.

The foundation of the power of these women was autonomous, female-dominated religious organizations that provided financial backing and a grassroots constituency they mobilized to bring about shifts in attitudes and—ultimately—laws and practices regarding race, gender and even global human rights.

“Too often when we hear about Mississippi's history, it's bad. Many Mississippi Methodists were extremely conservative and actively worked against the black freedom struggle and the Brown decision of 1954,” said Dr. Allured. “There have been a spate of new books out recently that detail that dark history, including Carolyn DuPont's Mississippi Praying and Joseph Reiff's Born of Conviction. 

“My work takes a different view, and discusses progressive [southern Methodist] women who lived in or came from Mississippi, and who devoted themselves to stamping out racism and all of its attendant ills, including lynching.”

Allured will talk about women like Thelma Stevens, born in 1902 into a family of white sharecroppers that included Methodist preachers, who dedicated her life to ending racism and racial oppression in church and society. Stevens was head of the Department of Christian Social Relations in the national Woman's Division of the Methodist Church from 1940 until her retirement in 1968.  After her retirement, she dedicated herself to advancing gender as well as racial equality in church and society. 

Among the black Methodist women Allured will discuss include Clarie [sic] Collins Harvey, a Methodist in Jackson, Mississippi who organized Womanpower Unlimited to assist the civil rights movement, and later became president of Church Women United.

“I want to foreground the link between church membership, piety, and reform activism, and for my audience to learn that there have always been brave women from Mississippi who risked social opprobrium, and even worse, in pursuit of justice for all, women who were not put off task by their opponents,” Allured said. 

“In other words, while the state produced an almost oppressive, smothering conservatism that favored the status quo, it also produced rebels who sought to destroy that status quo, but they were rebels wearing dresses, white gloves and hats.”

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