Hazel and the "Hacksaw": Freedom Summer coverage by the women of the Mississippi Press

Abstract

The only woman editor or publisher of the Mississippi press to openly support the civil rights movement in her 1964 Freedom Summer editorials was Hazel Brannon Smith, who defined the issue in positive terms and emphasized the importance of equal rights for all people, not just for whites. Eleven of the other seventeen women editors and publishers in Mississippi during Freedom Summer, including "Hacksaw Mary" Cain of the Summit Sun, urged continued support of traditional white supremacy and resistance to the civil rights movement—in complete, and almost verbatim, agreement with the men who edited the state's newspapers. These findings, though historic and prior to the feminist movement of the 1970s, contradict the findings of a 1997 survey by the International Women's Media Foundation which suggested that women journalists offer a "different, more human perspective to the news."

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