We also seek to expand what activism entails because Civil Rights Movement scholarship centers efforts to influence electoral politics including strategizing for voting rights and access to public accommodations. By listening to and trusting the voices of ordinary Black women, this panel will expand what constitutes freedom and freedom work. Pamela Walker and Christina Thomas broaden the scope of freedom work to include local efforts to combat poverty and secure education for children. Focusing on everyday Black women, Jasmin C. Howard interrogates how Black women at higher education institutions in North Carolina transformed their local and national environments. And Telisha Dionne Bailey encourages us to think about the experiences of Black women in the southern carceral state. In short, this panel delves into what happens to our understandings of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements when Black women are at the core and the South is recognized as a gendered space.