. . "Women, Black Education Mississippi." . . "Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.). Department of History." . . "Mississippi." . . "Racism in education Mississippi." . . "Women, Black Mississippi Economic conditions." . . "Child Development Group of Mississippi." . . "Women, Black Mississippi Social conditions." . . "Women, Black Education." . . "Race discrimination Mississippi." . . "Women, Black Social conditions." . . "Head Start programs Mississippi." . . "Race discrimination." . . "Women, Black Economic conditions." . . "Head Start programs." . . "Racism in education." . . . . . . . . . . "To be free of fear black women's fight for freedom through the Child Development Group of Mississippi" . . . . . . . . . . . . . "To be free of fear : black women's fight for freedom through the Child Development Group of Mississippi" . . . . . . . . . . "This dissertation considers how the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM), a statewide, federally sponsored Head Start program, produced a political battle between poor black mothers and grandmothers and white southern Congressmen. Between 1965 and 1968, Mississippi's black working-class participants collaborated with the federal government to seek bottom-up change in the most repressive state in the country. They moved beyond teaching shapes and colors to challenge the state's closed political system and white supremacist ideology. Black women who had previously worked as sharecroppers and domestics now had significantly higher salaries as preschool teachers in jobs that provided them with the financial freedom to vote and send their children to previously all-white schools. Their challenge antagonized the local white power structure and provoked opposition that significantly diminished the transformative possibilities of Head Start and other War on Poverty programs. For a significant number of black women in rural Mississippi, Head Start offered the only viable employment in a state that systematically denied most of them education and held many of them hostage in menial labor positions. In the process of preparing children for first grade, black women began to think differently about themselves and the opportunities available to them. Beyond earning higher wages than any they had ever received, for example, participation also prompted many CDGM women to return to school and obtain an education denied them earlier in life. In response, the state's white power structure led a pitched attack on CDGM. Its members recognized that if former sharecroppers could teach and run centers, they could also run towns and make decisions for themselves. The program's end, despite its unparalleled successes, demonstrated that political exigencies in Washington would continue to limit black attempts at achieving full citizenship in the Deep South." . . . . . . .