Historical accounts of the southern-based civil rights movements of the 1950s and '60s generally trace the movements' success to charismatic leaders, thorough planning, ample financial resources and the support of local community organizations, especially churches. Often overlooked is the pivotal role played by women, according to Belinda Robnett, an acting assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis. Based on extensive reviews of archival material and interviews with 14 former women leaders in the civil rights movements, Robnett says that women working at the grassroots level made equally important, if largely neglected, contributions to those movements. Her case is contained in a paper to be delivered Sunday, Aug. 25, at the 86th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association at the Cincinnati Convention Center. Men such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other church ministers are customarily cited for identifying objectives and outlining strategies for voter registration drives and protest activities. However, Robnett said, it was primarily grassroots leaders who carried out the task of persuading the masses to risk their lives in pursuit of those objectives. When organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) appealed to people to take part in their plans, local women leaders persuaded people to participate by vouching for the organizations' credibility. The organizations, on the other hand, gave these women the authority to act on their behalf. In fact, the majority of participants in the civil rights movement were women, said Robnett. Part of the reason is due to the belief that women would be less likely to be subjected to violence. But it also is because certain women generally already were widely regarded as figures of authority and respect, Robnett said. They were viewed as people to seek for advice and assistance. Their role has not been widely recognized partly because historians and researchers have tended to focus on the most visible figures, equating their high profiles with power and influence. "But they haven't gone on to show what linked the grassroots to these people and organizations," said Robnett. As a result, the contributions of women such as Ella Baker, whose actions were influential in New York and throughout the south, remain largely unknown. Baker played a direct role in the formation of both SCLC and SNCC, Robnett says, and also was instrumental in the development and adoption of mobilization methods successfully practiced by those organizations. Another such figure is Fannie Lou Hamer, a charismatic leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Hamer was among a slate of candidates for statewide office nominated by the party for an alternative election, sponsored as a way of protesting the exclusion of blacks from the electoral process in Mississippi. She also headed an alternative delegation sent by the party to the Democratic presidential convention in Atlanta in 1964 to challenge the legitimacy of the state's all-white delegation.