Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Whitney Young, Stokely Carmichael, and John Lewis are the men that come to mind when thinking about the civil rights movement. The narrative today is that of great Black men fighting for racial equality. Women are rarely mentioned in the movement’s focus on race relations and efforts to improve the life of Black people who were systematically oppressed and had to endure racial harassment. While women were involved in the civil rights movement, they were often overlooked and not seen as significant figures or leaders. Consequently, the problems faced by Black women were often overshadowed and disregarded by the movement's leadership.

One specific issue that uniquely affects Black women within the United States is reproductive justice, stemming from their distinct historical struggles. Despite its significance to Black women's autonomy and liberation, reproductive freedom was not a prominent part of the civil rights movement's agenda. Simultaneously, in the 1960s and early 70s, the fight for women's autonomy gained momentum. However, this struggle was predominantly led by white, primarily middle-class women who took centre stage in advocating for reproductive justice and freedom. Consequently, Black women appeared less involved than white women and Black men in their respective movements. Both the civil rights movement and the women's movement aimed to achieve equality and freedom from oppression during a similar timeframe. The interlinked identity within both struggles is that of a Black woman who was pushed into the background of the civil rights movement. Her concerns and historical battles were often overlooked by white women fighting for self-determination. Both movements address critical concerns and struggles faced by Black women, including the racial discrimination they endured and the lack of self-determination resulting from years of reproductive dispossession, yet they are sidelined by both.

The scholarship on reproductive freedom and the struggle to legalise abortion and have access to birth control has had a predominantly white middle-class focus. Most literature is concerned with the years leading up to the legalisation of abortion or white activists such as Margaret Sanger. Abortion and birth control scholarship often mention Black women’s contribution and historical struggle on the margins. In recent years there has been a growing amount of literature that centres on Black women at the core of the struggle for reproductive freedom. Scholars like Dorothy Roberts, Loretta Ross, and Saidiya Hartmann significantly contributed to this research. They focus on Black women’s experiences during slavery and how the afterlife of reproductive slavery influenced their reproductive choices in the 20th century. It is also noteworthy that scholarship on the Civil Rights movement is male- dominated, and focus on Black female activists is scarce compared to scholarship on men. Just like the scholarship about reproductive freedom sidelines, Black women “have remained anonymous, a category of invisible, unsung heroes of one of the most revolutionary periods of modern American history.”1 The invisibility of Black women within feminist scholarship on reproductive freedom and within social movement scholarship results from gender, race, and class biases. Feminist scholarship has almost exclusively been focused on white middle-class women and their efforts. In contrast, scholarship about the Civil Rights Movement has almost solely been concentrated on the leading roles and charisma of great men within the Black community.2 The connection between Black women’s reproductive freedom activism and a male-dominated civil rights movement is rarely made. Ross asserts in one sentence only that Black women“opposed the myopic racial focus of the male-dominated civil rights movement, which ignored gender equality.”3 While gender discrimination in the civil rights movement is addressed, it is only done so in a limited capacity. The research on Black female activism needs to be expanded, in addition to what we consider activism. It is crucial to research how gender discrimination influenced Black women’s visibility on a quintessential Black feminist issue. This paper seeks to answer how Black women were involved in the fight for reproductive justice and why the civil rights movement did not include reproductive justice as a demand in its agenda. First, this paper will establish that reproductive justice is a Black feminist issue by positioning Black women’s historical struggles as integral to the fight for reproductive justice and highlighting their activism. Then, it will examine the civil rights movement and the oversights of gender discrimination that prevented the inclusion of reproductive justice as a demand within its agenda.