My name is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamel.

It's this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hook,

because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live

as decent human beings in America.

I'm Greta Johnson.

I'm Trisha Bobita.

And this is the Nerdat Podcast.

This week, as we all remember, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Nerdat Podcast is going to take a look at some of the ladies of the civil rights movement, female performers, activists, the women of the civil rights movement who often get left out of history books.

We'll talk with Professor Keona Irvin to get to know some of the women who took a more

traditional activist role. Women like Dorothy Height, Ella Baker, and Fannie Lou Hamer. But first,

Professor Ruth Feldstein. Ruth is the author of the new book How It Feels to Be Free, Black

Women Entertainers, and the Civil Rights Movement. She's also Associate Professor of History at Rutgers

University.

In my book, I look at women entertainers who were involved in different ways in the civil rights movement,

starting with Lena Horn and then moving on to singers Nina Simone,

Abby Lincoln, who was a jazz singer, and also appeared in several films.

Elegant bar, beautiful girl, dancing for joy, delicate world.

Shades of delight, Coco you, rich as the night Afro Blue. Mayor McCabe, who's a South African singer who was in the United States for 10 years from the late 50s into the late 60s,

actresses, Cecily Tyson, and Diane Carroll.

Be here at 9, and make yourself as handsome as you can manage.

I'm tired of looking at ugly nurses.

I married one.

...