A Kind of Memo as Message for the Movement
Toward the end of A Kind of Memo, Hayden amplified what she hinted at from the start, that the open dialogue and community support were the best organizing strategies.
The YWCA provided Hayden with both an early analysis of sex roles, as well as a method for organizing women that directly influenced A Kind of Memo.[ii] During college, Hayden was first formally introduced to what was known in Y language as the “relations of men and women.”[i] At the 1959 national conference of the YWCA and YMCA, Hayden had the opportunity to attend workshops on “changing relations of men and women.” As a 1960 Y report succinctly noted,
"The culture being what it is the sex roles of men and women are learned and are not completely democratic ones." [1]
The organizing strategy Hayden advocated for in A Kind of Memo came from “the YWCA's Way of Work," … create a group, talk about a topic personally, create a program to meet the questions and issues raised.” (doc 86A) Hayden's became familiar with this method while working on a human relations project of the YWCA, a position held subsequently by Mary King and Bobbi Yancey after she left. From the spring of 1961 to the summer of 1962, Hayden travelled to colleges throughout the south facilitating small interracial "human relations" seminars. As Erica L Whitington notes in “Interracial dialogue and the southern student human relations project” “human relations” functioned as a coded term for the more provocative “race relations” during an era of Jim Crow segregation. Human relations theory posited that "interpersonal contact to alter societal dynamics" (Rebellion in Black and White 84).
“A Kind of Memo” mirrors this strategy. Women's informal conversations, stretching back to Hayden's days in Ann Arbor with other SDS women, through the literacy house in Tugaloo, created informal discussion groups. The women, in sharing their personal struggles, raised questions and identified issues, and now the Memo moved toward trying to develop something more programmatic out of that by "talk[ing] with each other more openly.” and creating a “community for discussion.”
A Kind of Memo then, was less about women’s subordinate role in the movement, and more about how women might help to create change in the movement itself at a moment when it seemed to be faltering. Hayden found herself on one side of an increasingly divided SNCCC. She remained committed to the practice of nonviolence she adopted when first participating in sit-ins, but the violent reaction to freedom summer raised questions about continued dedication to this ideal for other members of SNCC. Additionally, the trip to Africa by SNCC's leaders in September of 1964 led to increased questioning about the role of whites in the movement, as well as a stepped up emphasis on linking "the struggle- for self-determination of black peoples' abroad and the struggle of black people in the United States against exploitation."[2]
In the summer of 1965, following the idea that whites should focus on organizing whites, Hayden therefore left the South to work with SDS.
[i] Although Evans emphasized the importance of the Y for women in the movement that aspect of her argument is less cited. See also Susan Lynn progressive women in conservative times on the Y.
[1] Dan William Dodson, The Role of the YWCA In a Changing Era
[1] Dan William Dodson, The Role of the YWCA In a Changing Era
[ii] Acknowledged
Just as the Memo began with a reference to women's talking to one another privately and separately from men, these "chance conversations" now needed to be expanded to "open up dialogue." While the “basic human problems” in the Memo revolved around the Sex Caste system, society’s failure to address its “deepest problems” was indicative of the need for radical approaches. Only by pursuing the “radicalizing question” of why "Nobody is writing, or organizing or talking publicly about women" raised in the Memo could the movement reach “new alternatives … [for] personal and institutional change." In particular, A Kind of Memo stresses the need to move "beyond legalistic solutions" to get to these problems that existed outside the law and are instead embedded in they way individuals lived and worked.
The tensions underneath the Memo, the increasingly divided SNCC, the "problems … between white and black women," are only hinted at.
Perhaps we can start to talk with each other more openly than in the past and create a community of support for each other so we can deal with ourselves and others with integrity and can therefore keep working. (emphasis added)
Hayden addressed the Memo to women because she saw them as more capable of guiding the movement back to its original ideals. In a sense, because the sex caste system forced them "to work around or outside hierarchical structures of power," women were closer to the founding vision of SNCC. At that second SNCC conference, which Hayden attended as one of two delegates from Texas,a system of rotating chairmanships was adopted, along with recognition that "All members of the committee shall have equal status." These principles were what drew Hayden to the movement.
Notes
[1]Recommendations passed by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. October 11-14, 1960. Civil Rights Movement Veterans. web,
[2]Dona Richards, "STAFF MAILING Richards, Dona. Re: A SNCC African Project Memo" in King--SNCC Position Papers & Reports, undated (Mary E. King papers , 1962-1999; Z: Accessions, M82-445, Box 1, Folder 19) ND