The Struggle of Struggles

Vera Pigee

Aug 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Lisa Reneé Pitts

About this audiobook

From 1955 to 1975, Vera Pigee (1924-2007) put her life and livelihood on the line with grassroots efforts for social change in Mississippi, principally through her years of leadership in Coahoma County's NAACP. Known as the "Lady of Hats," coined by NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins, Pigee was a businesswoman, mother, and leader. Her book, The Struggle of Struggles, offers a detailed view of the daily grind of organizing for years to open the state's closed society. Fearless, forthright, and fashionable, Pigee also suffered for her efforts at the hands of white supremacists and those unwilling to accept strong women in leadership. She wrote herself into the histories, confronted misinformation, and self-published one of the first autobiographies from the era. Women like her worked, often without accolade or recognition, in their communities all over the country, but did not document their efforts in this way. The Struggle of Struggles, originally published in 1975, spotlights the gendered and generational tensions within the civil rights movement. It outlines the complexity, frustrations, and snubs, as well as the joy and triumphs that Pigee experienced and witnessed in the quest for a fairer and more equitable nation.

About the author

Vera Pigee (1924-2007) managed Pigee's Beauty Salon in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and worked as a civil rights activist, serving as branch secretary to the Coahoma County chapter of the NAACP, a chapter she helped organize with Aaron Henry.

Lisa Renee Pitts is an award-winning actress in theater, television, and film, as well as an accomplished audiobook narrator and an AudioFile Earphones Award winner.

Françoise N. Hamlin is the Royce Family Associate Professor of Teaching Excellence in Africana Studies and History at Brown University. She is author of Crossroads at Clarksdale and coeditor of These Truly Are the Brave.