'Freedom's Sisters' exhibit honors women of the civil rights movement

"Much of our national memory of the civil rights movement is embodied by male figureheads whose visibility in boycotts, legal proceedings, and mass demonstrations dominated newspaper and television coverage in the 1950s and 1960s," according to the creators of a new museum exhibit about black women in the civil rights movement.

In addition to the men, there was also a strong group of women, who while "less prominent in the media," helped to shape "much of the spirit and substance of civil rights in America, just as their mothers and grandmothers had done for decades," the creators say.

Now, thanks to a new exhibit at the Cincinnati History Museum, the women's stories are finally being told too. The exhibit, called "Freedom's Sisters," honors 20 women who played a significant role in the struggle for equality. Underwritten by the Ford Motor Company Fund and created by the Smithsonian, the interactive exhibit features contemporary leading men Nick Cannon, Blair Underwood, James Pickens Jr., Henry Simmons, and Hill Harper, all of whom help to tell the women's stories. Using state of the art special effects, Kevin Frazier Productions placed the actors in photos with the women.

Described as the first and most comprehensive traveling exhibit on women in the civil rights movement, "Freedom's Sisters" focuses on the lives and contributions of 20 African American women from the 19th century to contemporary public figures. The list includes  Ella Jo Baker, Shirley Chisholm, Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, Barbara Jordan, Sonia Sanchez, C. Delores Tucker, Ida B. Wells, Betty Shabazz, Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Harriet Tubman.

And who were Mary, Mary and Myrlie? That would be Mary McLeod Bethune, Mary Church Terrell and Myrlie Evers-Williams.

Freedom's Sisters continues until September 14, 2008 at the Cincinnati History Museum.

See the video below...