March 23, 2023 at HCC West Loop Campus

Debbie Harwell, Ph.D., is an instructional assistant professor in History and Honors at the University of Houston, where she teaches U.S. History Since 1877, Houston History, Houston Migration and Immigration, Oral History Methods, and Public History Writing. A Houston native, she serves as the editor of Houston History magazine published by the UH Center for Public History and directs students and interns in CPH projects such as Resilient Houston: Documenting: Hurricane Harvey, and 100 Years of Stories: Documenting a Century at the University of Houston. A believer in the adage, “you can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you have been,” Harwell is particularly interested in the civil rights movement. She is the author of Wednesday in Mississippi: Proper Ladies Working for Radical Change, Freedom Summer 1964, which highlights one of the many undertold stories of how women worked behind the scenes to secure social change. The book won the 2015 Julia Cherry Spruill prize for the best book in southern women’s history from the Southern Association for Women Historians.

The only civil rights program organized by women for women as part of a national women’s organization in 1964, Wednesday in Mississippi effectively opened lines of communication across race, region, and religion as a first step toward reconciliation and acceptance of an integrated society. Longer Paragraph: Wednesdays in Mississippi (WIMS) brought interracial interfaith teams from the North and Midwest to Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964 to open lines of communication with southern women across race, region and religion. WIMS participants used their gender, age, and class as an entrée to meet with southern women to listen to and discuss their concerns about the civil rights movement. Progress was slow at times, but the conversations revealed both groups shared common goals for their families and communities, and this kind of understanding eventually led to acceptance of an integrated society. The only civil rights project organized by women for women as part of a national women organization that summer in MIssissippi, WIMS broke down barriers that produced real change for decades to come. It is a model that could prove valuable today.