"Be ye doers of the word, not just hearers only": faith and politics in the life of Victoria Gray Adams

African American women's leadership significantly influenced the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet, while this is true, many of the early movement histories focused on national organizations and the men who led them. Within recent years, however, a shift in emphasis has brought women into fuller view. Historians have documented the important, yet neglected roles that "ordinary" people played in social change and underscored the fact that many of these were women. Building on this body of scholarship, new biographies as well as social and political histories center on the lives of African American women, sharpening our understanding of how race, class and gender impacted women's leadership in the movement. (1)

While male leadership primarily dominated at the national and regional levels of the twentieth century freedom struggle, women's activism was strongest on the local level where African American women extended their roles within church communities and secular organizations to work for social change. One important, yet under-researched dimension to black women's work for social change is the connection between faith and politics. Oral history testimony of African American women suggests that religious faith is a significant factor shaping the distinctive nature of their activism. Moreover, recent scholarship in the sociology of religion and black womanist theology, sheds greater light on the role faith plays in womens' identities, values, and political involvement. Womanist theologians such as Cheryl Gilkes, Katie Cannon, Jacqueline Grant and Delores Williams, for example, have contributed significant scholarship in this area. In her book Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion and Civil Rights, womanist theologian Rosetta Ross, examines the social and religious influences in the lives of female activists. (2) She argues that Black women's spirituality fostered self-dignity, an ethic of community responsibility and a source of strength that materialized into concrete action. In another important study, If It Wasn't for the Women, Black Women's Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community, Cheryl Gilkes underscores the role of religion within the lives of African American women and points out that within church communities, women have a powerful influence across denominations. Since women comprise the majority within black church communities, it comes as no surprise that during the civil rights era, many would extend religious beliefs and practices to political action.

Victoria Gray Adams, for example, was a Mississippi woman whose Christian faith and religious beliefs permeated her life to the extent that she became one of the most influential grassroots leaders in the Civil Rights Movement. The story of her activism illustrates the strong connection between faith and political action in the movement.

Along with Fannie Lou Hamer and Annie Devine, Victoria Gray represented the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in its historic challenge to the all-white state delegation at the Democratic National Convention held, in 1964, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. By this time, all three women were veteran activists whose local leadership in their respective communities had significantly advanced the movement. Prior to the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, none of these woman knew one another, but in reflecting back on their personal histories, Victoria Gray stated that "the one common denominator is that we are all deeply spiritual people. We come from three totally different places, three totally different environments, and ... somehow as we journeyed our paths came together." (3) Among the three, Fannie Lou Hamer is perhaps the most widely known, the subject of at least two biographies. Mrs. Hamer made history when she went before the House Credentials Committee, in August 1964, to testify about the disfranchisement of local black Mississippians. While lesser known, Victoria Gray's leadership was equally as effective and critical to the events that unfolded during that time.

Victoria Jackson Gray Adams, was born on November 5, 1926, in the Palmer's Crossing community, a historically black settlement which is now a part of the city of Hattiesburg. Located approximately ninety miles from New Orleans, Mobile and the Gulf Coast in Forest County, Hattiesburg was the fourth largest city in the state of Mississippi, known for its timber industry and railroads. Relatively speaking, this region of the state was not considered as racially oppressive as the Delta where the plantation economy thrived on the exploitation of black labor. Victoria Gray's parents were Mack and Annie Mae Ott Jackson. She was reared by her paternal grandparents following the untimely death of her mother when she was only three years old. Like others in the self-contained community of Palmer's Crossing, Victoria Gray's grandparents were independent, self-reliant farmers. They did not depend upon local whites for survival; self-reliance was instilled in Victoria Gray at a young age and this remained an important value to her. (4) Victoria Gray attended Depriest Consolidated School in Palmer's Crossing with the exception of one year that she spent living in Detroit with her father and his sister. She later attended Wilberforce University, in Ohio, for one year then tried her hand at teaching until "the regimentation became a bother." (5) Meanwhile, Gray married, and followed her first husband, Tony West, who was stationed overseas in Germany during the Korean War. The couple had three children-Georgie Roswitha Gray, Tony West Gray, Jr. and Cecil Conteen Gray. Following the stint in Germany, the young couple returned to a segregated U.S. where Gray's husband was stationed at Fort Meade in Maryland. They found housing in the district and Gray set out to find a job. This was particularly difficult since employers were reluctant to hire transitory military families. Also, Gray was very protective of her children and sought a job that would allow her to spend time with them. Eventually, she found work as a sales representative for an all-black cosmetics company known as Beauty Queen. Gray excelled in this work, but her marriage began to decline. Having worked at the marriage without success, by 1955, Gray divorced Tony and made the decision to return to her Mississippi birthplace. She moved back into the family house left by her grandparents, bought a Studebaker and set about establishing a market for Beauty Queen products in the southwest Mississippi town of Hattiesburg. Gray recruited a sales team of two additional agents. In a few years, business had grown so rapidly that she would eventually hire twenty-five representatives and lease an office in the black business district of downtown Hattiesburg. (6)