Church Ladies

More than simply ushers and Sunday School teachers, the women of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church were influential leaders in the congregations of Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Senior and Junior. Church Ladies: Untold Stories of Harlem Women in the Powell Era explores these women's lives at the church and their roles in a Northern civil rights movement that took them and their pastor, the fiery Powell Junior, from protests for jobs on Harlem's 125th Street in the 1930s to demonstrations for justice in the halls of the United States Congress in the 1960s.

Testimony from over a dozen little-recognized women paints a vivid picture of that historic church and the struggles against Jim Crow in New York City and beyond. Their stories also shed light on Congressman Powell's social and legislative impact on the American nation during a time of strict racial segregation and unchecked racial violence. It was time when the Church ladies and all of black America whispered and shouted, "Give 'em hell, Adam!"