Date of Award
6-26-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Heritage Studies, Ph.D.
First Advisor
Lauri Umansky
Committee Members
Dinah Tetteh; Edward Salo
Call Number
LD 251 .A566d 2024 M66
Abstract
In the mid-to-late twentieth century, through outstanding and transformative leadership, rural Black women activists in the Arkansas Delta worked to confront significant problems facing their communities, in the contexts of health, education, and social justice; their efforts were often apolitical in nature, at least overtly. These women went beyond the demands of many mid-twentieth-century civil rights activists to create spaces to articulate and demand human rights, broadly conceived. This in-depth study explores the community activism of Gertha Bailey Trice of Lee County, Arkansas, who engaged in broadly defined African American self-help traditions through her work with the Lee County Self Help Project (LCSHP), founded in Moro, Arkansas in 1965 and the Lee County Cooperative Clinic (LCCC), founded in Marianna, Arkansas in 1969. By examining the activism of one woman through her work with two different but related organizations, this research highlights the self-help activism of rural Black women in the mid-to-late twentieth century- women who spearheaded grassroots efforts to improve the “quality of life” of their communities. This research looks into the ways these women carved out spaces for holistic health support for rural African American people in the Arkansas Delta region. Moreover, it evaluates how this activism fits within a broader human rights framework. The argument presented here is that such grassroots activism should be recognized, valued, and acknowledged across cultures, and the results of such activism should be viewed as a form of intangible cultural heritage. The study advocates for the celebration and transmission of these women's efforts as a form of heritage that should be passed on to future generations working towards social justice in the Arkansas Delta and beyond. The goal is to recognize and celebrate such rural women’s self-help activism- human rights activism- as expressed and transmitted both as regional and local heritage- as an important aspect of worldwide intangible cultural heritage. This study, therefore, explores how such regional heritage is locally valued, and focuses on safeguarding local rural women’s self-help activism within the scope of Intangible Cultural Heritage policies at both the national and international levels.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Monni, Swity Sultana, "Rural Black Women’s Self-Help Activism in the Arkansas Delta, Local Heritage, and Global Resonance: Mrs. Gertha Bailey Trice and the Lee County Self-Help Project" (2024). Student Theses and Dissertations. 93.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/93
