Deep in our Hearts

Michelle Soucier
Professor Johnson
HSPC 106
08 December 2010
Deep in our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement
Deep in our hearts is a book about nine essays from young white women during the time of the civil rights movement. Each of the young women’s essays reflects a sense of who they have become during that period of the civil rights movement and the d5vers5ty that they had re*resented d4rng the 1960’s. The stories told within this book, involve personal tales of fear and courage, familial rejection and support, romance and loneliness, and fear and isolation. Overall, these stories define a greater stereotype about white women during the civil rights movement, 06re than they have ever d6ne. In the book, Deep in our hearts, these young white women who were part of the movement not only shaped the face of American race relations, but also enriched the legacy of a minority white antiracists traditions. Ransby states that, “Deep in our Hearts gives us another lens through which to view the politics of race and gender in the civil rights movement” (Ransby, x). In the 1960’s, college students, high school students across the states would come and join one another in groups for the fight to end violence and hatred for the blacks. It was a long and tiring journey for everyone who had participated in these movements, but the end result was the equality that America needed.
Theresa Del Pozzo, one of the white female authors who wrote “The Feel of a Blue Note”, is just only one of these stories with a remarkable story to her sudden change during the civil rights movement. Growing up, Theresa Pozzo and her family lived behind her father’s butcher shop, which was where the neighborhood hangout took place. Her father was a butcher, and she referred to him as a handsome young man with a charming character who would give advise while he cut your meat. Although once he cam home after work, he paid no attention to his wife or family, he would always be hanging out with other men where no women would be allowed. So Theresa Pozzo’s mother would stay at home and cry. One message that her mother gave her was, “There’s a better life out there. Don’t get trapped into a marriage and kids like I did” (Pozzo, 174). From then on, Theresa Pozzo wanted to make her life meaningful and not to be tied down by American standards at that time. During high school she had taken advanced classes, and decided to attend college where she felt like it was her only escape out of the life she was living. University of Wisconsin is where she had decided to go to college, and only shortly after Theresa Pozzo became involved in black southern movement. Shortly after college, opportunities presented themselves to Theresa Pozzo offering her to be part of this history making movement. She believes that working in the civil rights movement was the start to seeing and understanding the world through black’s perspectives. The whole experience Theresa Pozzo had been through had made her the person she chose to be in the future.
In addition, one other white female, Sue Thrasher, had written her story on the “Circle of Trust”. In the beginning she states her beliefs about what the 1960’s had meant for her, and how it all began when Rosa Park’s refused to sit in the “colored section”. Sue Thrasher came from a farming family in McNairy Country in West Tennessee; her father was a farmer and a carpenter, while her mother was not a traditional housewife. Due to her mom’s absence in the household, she did not learn female roles. From early childhood is when her independence had become her character. Being raised on a farm, she had to fulfill the responsibilities of being a famer’s daughter. Unfortunately she had to pick cotton, which begun her own kind of rebellion. Ex: Sur Thrasher would sit on cotton sacks and sing, forming her own form of a sit-in. Bother of her parents were good people, who neither hated black people nor installed the hate in other people about the blacks. Once she became old enough to understand the civil rights movement, she developed her idea of her personal hero, which became known as one of America’s finest hero’s, Martin Luther King. Just like every other teenage women, college was the ticket of their lives at home. While attending college, is when she participated in her first interracial event. An organization by the Nashville Christian Leadership Council (NCLC), was the night that had changed Sue Thrasher forever, she would never go back to the person she once was. From that moment on, she knew who she wanted to be and how she wanted the south to be different, and to free itself from segregation.
Life during the 1960’s was a time of fear and violence. With one tragedy after the next, the greatest impact was the civil rights movement. Many young white women had experienced the happiness of sharing their voice during the interracial movement for justice and equality. During the 1960’s, thousands of young adults had become victims for violence, in which had caused head-turns for fellow parents whose children were participating in these interracial movements. For these fellow nine white women describing their lives during the 1960’s had interacted in a racial barrier. These women had given their life stories to others so that they may embrace their forever change.