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Fight Like a Girl: 50 Feminists Who Changed the World By Laura Barcella TABLE OF CONTENTS: Mary Wollstonecraft Sojourner Truth Elizabeth Blackwell Marie Curie Amy Jacques Garvey Frida Kahlo Simone de Beauvoir Pauli Murray Rosa Parks Florynce Kennedy Shirley Chisholm Maya Angelou Yayoi Kusama Faith Ringgold Yoko Ono Audre Lorde Jane Goodall Judy Blume Judy Chicago Frances Beal Wangari Maathai Wilma Rudolph Angela Y. Davis Alice Walker Wilma Mankiller Rep. Barbara Lee Shirin Ebadi Hillary Clinton Kate Bornstein Pam Grier Leslie Feinberg Sally Ride bell hooks Cindy Sherman Oprah Sandra Cisneros Geena Davis Anita Hill Poly Styrene Madonna Renee Cox Wendy Davis Kathleen Hanna Margaret Cho Queen Latifah Ani DiFranco Roxane Gay Beyonce Tavi Gevinson Malala Yousafzai INTRODUCTION: I've been pro-choice since before I fully understood what that meant. I don't remember which one of us got the abortion-rights bug first, but a few girlfriends and I started attending pro-choice rallies in our hometown (D.C.) when we were …show more content…
in the sixth grade. We'd wear purple outfits and wave handmade signs and shout along with the surging crush of mostly older, mostly female masses demanding "abortion on demand without apology." At twelve, I didn't quite grasp all the specifics (or even the basics, having yet to experience so much as a proper kiss at that point), but I knew enough to believe, firmly and wholeheartedly, in women's freedom to choose what happens to their bodies, and how, and when. I don't recall all the details of the rallies themselves, but I do remember how they made me feel. Namely, I felt addicted. I got completely swept up in the blustery power of so many impassioned women smushed elbow to elbow on the National Mall. I loved the life-affirming awesomeness of hearing tens of thousands of people recite a chant in unison. I was taken with how huge it felt, how persuasive and real and tangible and… important. The foundation of my passion for feminism started then, and over the years it’s only grown. In high school, my best friend and I launched our own fanzine, and in college I grew completely smitten with the burgeoning riot grrrl scene, again turning to the world of zines to help me process the changing world around me. I launched two new zines in college, as well as serving as my college newspaper’s Women’s Issues editor. After college and a five-year stint in New York City in which I began dabbling in feminist journalism, I moved to San Francisco and became a trained domestic violence counselor, while continuing to work in indie media and trying to spread feminism’s crucial messages far and wide. I’ve dreamt about writing a book about some of the world’s most powerful, enduring, and ballsy lady-heroes for a long time. Right now feels like a pretty solid time to tackle such a project because there’s such a sweeping variety of kick-ass women — of all ages, races, faiths, and cultures — doing such fierce, emboldening things (Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani activist and youngest person ever to win a Nobel Peace Prize, instantly comes to mind). Also, you might have noticed: despite the fact that not everyone agrees on what it represents, feminism has been having a bit of a media moment lately. There is no cohesively defined women’s right movement these days — not like the ones of the ‘70s. Feminism today can admittedly feel a bit splintered and amorphous; there is divisiveness and uncertainty about who it’s all FOR. Intersectionality — making sure every woman has a seat at the feminist table, that the causes we fight for have a far broader reach than simply focusing on the concerns of white middle/upper class women— is crucial, and it’s more than a buzzword. Every movement or ideology is flawed, and we have a long, long way yet to go. But it’s heartened me to see more and more powerful women publicly aligning themselves with women’s rights. Feminism doesn’t mean subscribing to a certain newsletter or marching on the Mall three times a year. It doesn’t mean you have to listen to a certain kind of music or date a certain kind of person or read only a certain kind of book or stop loving the cheesy reality TV shows you’re secretly obsessed with. Your feminism can be self-defined. I would have devoured a book like this when I was a teenager, but … I couldn’t find one. That’s why I wanted to write this, as a sort of “feminist heroes” primer for folks who are interested in women’s rights but may not know where to begin. The women selected for inclusion are from a range of feminist eras, from today through the early days of the suffragist movement. There are popular names you’ll instantly recognize (hi, Beyonce!), and lesser-known ones with colorful histories. Those lesser-known figures made powerful social and political strides that benefited women, but for whatever reason they weren’t always widely embraced or celebrated by the mainstream. Those names still deserve to be remembered and included in feminist history. I didn’t want this book to exist solely as a refresher on a bunch of stuff you already know about people you already know (for that reason, some big-name feminist mainstays weren’t included, like Gloria Steinem). I wanted this book to be as broad and inclusive as possible, showcasing the important work of the underdogs alongside the power icons. The way I picked some of those power icons relied on a variety of factors — cultural impact, social relevance, concrete ways they shape women’s lives. Sometimes personal taste came into play, too — I won’t lie about that. For instance, Madonna and Kathleen Hanna have both played a huge role in shaping my own personal brand of feminism; I know, from talking to other women, that they’ve helped many others, too. You can’t make everyone happy, and I’m not trying to do that here. Also, some of the women on this list don’t necessarily identify as feminists; some of them never specifically worked on “women’s issues.” But brave women like Rosa Parks who stood up for the rights of African Americans everywhere were intrinsically standing up for the rights of African American women, too, and her contribution to feminist history shouldn’t be ignored. Alongside these written portraits are beautiful portraits by ARTIST TK, capturing each woman’s colorful, visionary spirit. This combination of words and pictures, I hope, will help you notice deeper layers and get a fuller picture of the women being described. Now go forth and get your feminist on! 1. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1759–1797) “I do not wish [women] to have power over men, but over themselves.” Claim to Fame Philosopher, writer, women’s rights activist, teacher Country of Origin England Wave First Her Story Mary Wollstonecraft was a philosopher, a theorist, and a liberal feminist author (some have called her “the first feminist”), whose pot-stirring writing caused a major disturbance in the eighteenth century. She wrote a number of books that suggested that women should be autonomous creatures of their own making. Wollstonecraft felt that women were generally treated as little more than pretty, servile playthings for their husbands. She believed that expecting women to stay home and be, essentially, “convenient domestic slaves” wasted their talents and led them to become mothers and wives by mandate, rather than by choice (at a real cost to their happiness as well). Confining women to such rigid roles was destructive to society, she argued; providing more education to them would only make women — and, by extension, everyone else! — stronger and happier, both at home and out in the world. Wollstonecraft grew up in London with an alcoholic, abusive father, who beat both her and her mother. The nightmare at home only fueled her desire to escape her family and forge her own way in the world. Though she didn’t have a formal education, the resourceful Wollstonecraft began supporting herself by age nineteen as a teacher, governess, and “lady’s companion.” She went on to found a school with her sister Eliza and her best friend Fanny, though it eventually went bankrupt. After living in Ireland for three years before moving back to London, Wollstonecraft began working as a translator for Joseph Johnson, who published radical books. She contributed to his publication, The Analytical Review, and then published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman four years later (after first putting out a political pamphlet called A Vindication of the Rights of Men, a response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France). At this time, Wollstonecraft noticed that some boys were gaining access to a national education system. Why shouldn’t girls have the same high-quality education opportunities as well? Recognizing the hypocrisy, Wollstonecraft publicly argued that exempting women from full civic status held back society as a whole. She also argued for women’s right to support themselves via the same career paths as men (law, medicine, etc.), and that women should have representation in Parliament. In a time when women had significantly fewer rights than they do now, Wollstonecraft’s ideas about gender equality were nothing less than revolutionary. In late December of 1792, Wollstonecraft went to France and took up with the blooming intellectual and philosophical circles there. One of those was the Enlightenment school of thought, which centered on reason, science, and individualism rather than old-school customs, tradition, and blind faith. She was also a member of the Rational Dissenters, a religious group that did not believe in sin or damnation. Critics attacked Wollstonecraft for her unconventional lifestyle and her progressive beliefs, misinterpreting them as a hatred of men. Some of those critics even felt the need to offer their nasty opinions years after Wollstonecraft’s death, including authors Ferdinand, Farnham, and Marynia F. Lundberg, who wrote in the 1949 book Modern Woman: The Lost Sex: “Mary Wollstonecraft was an extreme neurotic of a compulsive type... Out of her illness arose the ideology of feminism.” Why She’s Awesome -Wollstonecraft was an early proponent of atheism — she believed women should live independently and form their own opinions that aren’t based on blind faith in some divine deity. -She was married to Romantic poet/philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley and gave birth to an awesome daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the pioneering author who wrote Frankenstein. -When she decided to pursue a career as an author, she dreamed big. She didn’t want her books to fizzle out of the public consciousness; instead, she intended to become “the first of a new genus,” as she expressed in a 1787 letter to her sister. Quotables “Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives; that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers.” “Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.” “Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.” 2. SOJOURNER TRUTH née Isabella Baumfree (1797–1883) “And ain’t I a woman?” Claim to Fame Abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Country of Origin USA Wave First Her Story Sojourner Truth was a former slave who accomplished lots of extraordinary things in her lifetime. First, and arguably most importantly: she escaped slavery — a major coup in and of itself. But she didn’t get free only to sink into a life of isolated silence. She used all the horrors she’d witnessed as motivation to dedicate the rest of her life to ending slavery as an institution. She became a prominent abolitionist and women’s rights activist who played a big role in launching the suffrage movement that eventually gave women the right to vote. She was a fighter all around. Truth was famous for her impassioned mix of religion and activism when she worked on behalf of freed slaves during the Reconstructionist era (a time after the Civil War when the United States tried to atone for the political, social, and economic blights of slavery). She was also a deeply powerful orator who frequently spoke out about the importance of working toward a just society for all people, not just the lucky few who happened to be born white and male. Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, which she presented at a women’s convention in Ohio in 1851, is considered one of the most important feminist speeches of all time, and it’s been referenced in countless other works by feminists who came later. Truth (her original name was Isabella Baumfree, but she changed it in 1843, to “Sojourner,” which means “wanderer”) was born into slavery in the late 1700s in Ulster County, New York. Growing up, she only spoke Dutch, and she never learned to read or write (which was common among slaves). She was bought and sold as a slave four times, and was “owned” by various families, some of whom were violent. In 1827, New York law finally emancipated all the slaves, but by then Truth had already escaped to freedom with her baby daughter after her owner reneged on a promise to free her. Soon after she’d made a run for it, Truth learned that her five-year-old son Peter had been illegally sold to someone in Alabama. She brought the matter to court and eventually won — she was thrilled when Peter was returned to her. It was one of the first cases in which an African American woman successfully battled a white man in an American court. Truth became a traveling preacher in 1843; by then she had embraced Methodism after having an intense spiritual experience in the woods one day. She traveled around the country advocating for human rights, the end to slavery, women’s rights, prison reform, temperance, and banning capital punishment. Amid her travels, she met and sometimes befriended many important figures in the abolitionist and suffrage movements, including William Lloyd Garrison, Amy Post, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony. She was among a handful of escaped slaves, including Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, to become big abolitionist leaders, and in 1850 she published a celebrated memoir called The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, which helped spread her convictions to a wider audience. That year, she also spoke at the first National Women's Rights Convention in Massachusetts. Some of Truth’s opinions were considered “out there,” even among the more radical circles she was part of. She advocated for political equality for every woman, both black and white, and scolded abolitionists who didn’t work to gain civil rights for black women as well as men. She was worried that the movement would leave women in the cold, without fundamental rights of their own (like, duh, the right to vote). During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black soldiers for the Union Army. She had a chance to meet with more than one US president: in 1864 she met Abraham Lincoln at the White House, and later she convened with President Ulysses S. Grant to try to help ex-slaves secure land grants from the government. (Sadly her attempts didn’t work, though she worked on that cause for seven years). Truth died in1883 at her home in Michigan, where she was commemorated in a "Michigan Legal Milestone" raised by the State Bar of Michigan. Though she died impoverished, she had a full life of rule-breaking and change-making, a legacy that still stands and inspires today. Why She’s Awesome -She challenged Frederick Douglass. At a meeting in 1852, Douglass suggested that blacks must use force to win their freedom. Truth, a proponent of nonviolence as a key component of her Christian faith, exclaimed, “Is God gone?” [http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/people/sojourner_truth.html] She was ballsy when she had to be. In 1858, during a speech, someone interrupted her to yell out that she was actually a man. To prove a point — and showcase her womanhood without shame — Truth opened her top and revealed her breasts. (She was almost six feet tall and had a very deep speaking voice that led some impressively rude people to question her sex.) Harriet Beecher Stowe once attested to Truth’s potent charisma, saying that she had never “been conversant with anyone who had more of that silent and subtle power which we call personal presence than this woman.” Quotables “If women want rights more than they got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it.” “I am glad to see that men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs, and while the water is stirring I will step into the pool.” “And ain’'t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man — when I could get it — and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?” 3. ELIZABETH BLACKWELL (1821–1910) “If society will not admit of woman’s free development, then society must be remodeled.” Claim to Fame First female physician and first woman to obtain a medical degree in the US Country of Origin England Wave First Her Story Elizabeth Blackwell may not be a household name, but she should be. Dr. Blackwell was the first woman to receive an M.D. from an American medical school. This means that Blackwell singlehandedly set the stage for countless future women to follow in her footsteps within the hallowed halls of medicine, a traditionally male profession rife with sexism and nepotism. (For some perspective: today, women make up 47 percent of med students and 46 percent of medical residents. That’s a lot more women in the medical profession than ever before.) [https://www.aamc.org/members/gwims/statistics/ ] Though Blackwell was vehemently anti-abortion — a position that many of today’s mainstream feminists disagree with — her impact on both women and the world at large can’t be overstated. She contributed in changing perceptions of what a woman could do and be, and proved wrong all the naysayers who claimed that medicine was only a man’s world. She was also a women’s rights activist until her death, fighting to help other women go to medical school and follow their dreams of becoming doctors. She said about her own passion, “The idea of winning a doctor’s degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle, and the moral fight possessed an immense attraction for me.” [http://bit.ly/1wBkeni] Blackwell was born near Bristol, England, but her family moved to America when she was eleven years old. They moved there in part because her father wanted to join in the fight to end American slavery. [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_35.html] Her family was very active in the abolitionist community and was friends (and relatives) with a bunch of prominent folks in that world. (For instance, Dr. Blackwell’s sisters-in-law included suffragists Antoinette Brown Blackwell and Lucy Stone, and Blackwell was also reportedly close with the anti-slavery novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe.) Blackwell didn’t always want to be a doctor. In fact, when she was young she was repulsed by the human body and all its bizarre intricacies: “My favorite studies were history and metaphysics, and the very thought of dwelling on the physical structure of the body and its various ailments filled me with disgust." [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_35.html ] That changed though after she was implored to pursue medicine by a female friend who was dying of cancer. The friend believed she would have experienced less pain if her own doctor had been female. “If I could have been treated by a lady doctor, my worst sufferings would have been spared me,” the friend reportedly said. When Blackwell decided to apply to med school, it was, unsurprisingly, her gender that hindered her. A professor at the largest Philadelphia school told her “she could enter if she disguised herself as a man,” [https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news/schlesinger-newsletter/elizabeth-blackwells-struggle-become-doctor] and Blackwell was rejected by every school she applied to... except one. Geneva Medical College in upstate New York admitted her — but, outrageously, they did it assuming her application was a joke. (The dean left the decision up to the 150 men of the student body, who voted “yes” unanimously, though not remotely for the right reasons!) [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/elizabeth-Dr. Blackwell-becomes-the-first-woman-doctor-in-the-united-states/] They were shocked when Blackwell showed up on campus ready to learn, and her admittance caused an uproar. In med school, Blackwell’s experiences were fraught with sexism. In one class about reproductive anatomy, her professor asked her to go into the hall to spare her the embarrassment of learning about her own organs; she convinced him to let her stay. [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/elizabeth-Dr. Blackwell-becomes-the-first-woman-doctor-in-the-united-states/ ] In 1849, she graduated first in her class and moved to Paris to work for two years at a maternity college. She moved to New York City in 1951, where she applied for various positions as a physician and again faced rejection because she was a woman. She decided then to take matters into her own hands and formed her own private practice, starting a small clinic for poor women in a small rented room. (She was also joined by her sister Emily, the third woman to obtain a medical degree in America!) This eventually led to their founding the New York Infirmary and College for Women, which was run exclusively for and by women, and served the poor. Blackwell became more and more committed to issues like women’s rights, family planning, and medical education, and she traveled across Europe to help campaign for these causes. She also kept working with women to help them get into med school. Eventually, Blackwell moved back to England, and in 1875 she became a professor of gynecology at the new London School of Medicine for Women. Dr. Blackwell died after failing to recover fully from a stroke. Of course, the mark she made on medicine is still felt, and today Blackwell serves as a reminder of how far women in medicine have truly come — and how far we have yet to go. Why She’s Awesome -Dr. Blackwell helped found the National Health Society and was the first woman to be placed on the British Medical Register. -She taught at England’s first college of medicine for women. -Blackwell was the author of various books that are still widely read today. Quotables “If society will not admit of woman’s free development, then society must be remodeled.” “It is not easy to be a pioneer — but oh, it is fascinating! I would not trade one moment, even the worst moment, for all the riches in the world.” “A blank wall of social and professional antagonism faces the woman physician that forms a situation of singular and painful loneliness, leaving her without support, respect or professional counsel.” 4. MARIE CURIE née Maria Salomea Skłodowska (1867–1934) “I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.” Claim to Fame Physicist and chemist Country of Origin Poland Wave First Her Story Marie Curie is the most famous scientist in history, and one of the most celebrated scientists of her time (along with none other than Albert Einstein). Though she’s known primarily for discovering radium, Curie actually made other huge scientific advancements as well, including reaching the conclusion that radioactivity is an intrinsic atomic property of matter, not the result of more superficial chemical processes. She faced tons of obstacles — both internal and external — throughout her career, including chronic depression, grief, and intense sexism. Curie grew up in Warsaw, Poland, during a time when Poland was not an independent country but was split up among Austria, Prussia, and czarist Russia. She and her family lived in the part of Poland that was run by the Russian tsar, who did not believe women should be allowed to go to college. Her parents were teachers though, so education and learning were encouraged in her family. They were also Polish nationalists who supported uprisings aimed at bringing Poland back to independence from Russia, which negatively affected their careers. When Curie was ten, her mother died. Curie remembered her mother’s passing as “the first great sorrow” of her life, which “threw [her] into a profound depression.” Curie did extremely well in school, but at one point she had to leave due to a “nervous disorder” (later believed to be the depression she reportedly continued to struggle with throughout her life). She planned to continue her studies to get an advanced degree, but the medical school at the local University of Warsaw did not allow entrance to women. In 1891, however, the University of Paris (a.k.a. the Sorbonne) granted Curie admission on a scholarship. “So it was in November, 1891,” she later said, “at the age of 24, that I was able to realize the dream that had been constantly in my mind for several years.” Though she’d feared she was unprepared for the rigors of the program, Curie finished first in her master’s degree physics course in the summer of 1893 and second in math a year later. Before finishing her math degree, she was commissioned by the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry to do a study concerning the magnetic properties of different kinds of steels. While searching for a lab to do this work, she met Pierre Curie, a scientist and lab chief who was also researching magnetism. They began working together, then fell in love and married in 1895. (By the time of their marriage, she had already two master’s degrees!) Having successfully published some of her research, Curie decided then to pursue a doctorate, a feat no other woman in the sciences had accomplished at the time. Her doctoral thesis focused on uranium rays, and in the course of her work Curie formed a hypothesis that would revolutionize the science world: that the emission of rays by uranium compounds could be an atomic property of the element uranium — which means it could be something built into the core structure of its atoms. At the time, no one understood the complicated internal composition of atoms, so her theories were pretty revolutionary! Curie also went on to discover polonium and radium (two of the 100 natural elements in the universe) and essentially coined the concept of radioactivity, which became its own new scientific field altogether. Curie’s career, though great, was marred by sexism. In 1911, she received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for her earlier discovery of polonium and radium and for her studies of their chemical makeup, but the fantastic news was offset by a bit of a scandal. A weekly newspaper published letters that were believed to prove that Marie Curie and the married physicist Paul Langevin were having an affair. When Nobel Committee member Svante Arrhenius asked her in a letter not to attend the award ceremony, Curie pushed back and told him that “there is no connection between my scientific work and the facts of private life.” Earlier in the year she also had suffered a major disappointment when she was denied election to the French Academy of Sciences by a margin of two votes, reportedly because she was Polish and (of course) female. Academy member Emile Hilaire Amagat told her, “Women cannot be part of the Institute of France.” She never put herself in the running as a candidate again. Curie died at age sixty-seven of cancer caused by her exposure to radioactive substances. At the time she worked, no one knew that radioactive elements were deadly. Why She’s Awesome -Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize (in physics, in 1903, shared with her husband Pierre), and was one of the few Nobel laureates (and only woman!) to win the prize twice (she won again in 1911 for chemistry). -Curie’s wedding ceremony with Pierre was not religious. They didn’t exchange rings, and she wore a navy outfit instead of a white dress. These were all pretty notable feminist actions, especially back then. -She is the first and only woman to be entombed in France’s national mausoleum, the Pantheon, based solely on her incredible achievements. Quotables “If [men] don’t want to marry impecunious young girls, let them go to the devil! Nobody is asking them anything. But why do they offend by troubling the peace of an innocent creature?” —letter of Marie Curie to her cousin Henrietta Michalowska, April 4, 1887 “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” “I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.” “I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.” 5. Amy Jacques Garvey (1896–1973) “No line of endeavor remains closed for long to the modern woman.” Claim to Fame Editor, feminist, anti-racist activist, poet Country of Origin Jamaica Wave First Her Story Amy Jacques Garvey was a radical leader in the community feminism and Pan-African movements of the 1920s, committed to fighting racism and offensive cultural ideas about black people. Pan-Africanists generally believe that people of African descent should live together in one separate, united nation on their own because they’re so commonly mistreated and marginalized by the non-black masses. Though Jacques is most famous for being the second wife of Marcus Garvey (a black nationalist who was an icon in the future civil rights movement), she undoubtedly deserves major props in her own right for the great strides she made for her community. Jacques served as the cofounder and first president-general of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA) — the biggest Pan-African movement of the twentieth century. She courageously vocalized her bold ideas about race and nationhood that would benefit women of color for years to come. Jacques was born in Jamaica, where she grew up in an upper-class household. She immersed herself in books and ideas at a young age and went to very good schools, and with her dad’s encouragement and help, she became interested in international issues, politics, and current affairs. When she moved to Harlem in 1917, she got involved in the Universal Negro Improvement Association after hearing Marcus Garvey speak about racial inequality. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/peopleevents/p_jacques.html) The UNIA became one of her passions — maybe even her biggest one — for many years to come. Its mission was to empower black people all over the world, with a focus on creating professional and educational opportunities for people of African descent. Though the organization was a bit slow to take off, by 1918 it had branches everywhere and was gaining more supporters all the time. (http://www.blackhistorypages.net/pages/agarvey.php) When her husband went to prison on charges of mail fraud, Jacques began serving as his personal representative, traveling all over the country to give speeches at local UNIA divisions and conferring with public officials to continue spreading the group’s message. From 1924 to 1927, Jacques worked as the associate editor of the UNIA’s newspaper (which was also the biggest black-owned newspaper in the world then), The Negro World, where she launched a new section called “Our Women and What They Think” that centered on feminism, black nationalism, and profiles of famous black women. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/peopleevents/p_jacques.html) As a journalist, her work was notable because she wrote about black women as political beings in their own right, a concept that wasn’t exactly popular at the time. She believed black men needed to stand up for their black female counterparts, not repress women’s choices and voices. Though she didn’t disagree with some concepts that other feminist activists would go on to disdain — like the idea that men should be the breadwinners and “women should be self-sacrificing wives” [http://bit.ly/1EsJQUE] — her contributions to the public discourse on these matters are seen as a key step in the advancement of black feminism, and she was an avid proponent of women taking strides to better themselves intellectually, politically, and personally. When her husband Marcus Garvey was released from prison, he was deported, and Jacques followed him back to their homeland of Jamaica. After he passed away in 1940, Jacques kept plowing forward in the fight for African independence and women’s rights. In 1944 she wrote “A Memorandum Correlative of Africa, West Indies and the Americas,” which she used to push UN reps to launch an African Freedom Charter. She later published her own book called Garvey and Garveyism, and went on to also publish two essay collections: Black Power in America and The Impact of Garvey in Africa and Jamaica. She died in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1973, but she left behind a legacy of devotion to furthering the strength and power of black women that has secured her place in the history books. Why She’s Awesome -After her husband’s death, she experienced “a political rebirth.” She stopped focusing so much on the issues she’d previously centered on and began expanding her horizons to include helping exploited workers and other issues. http://bit.ly/1EsJQUE -After her husband died, Jacques became a contributing editor to a black nationalist journal called the African. -In the late ’40s, she formed the African Study Circle of the World in Jamaica. Quotables: “No line of endeavor remains closed for long to the modern woman.” “The women of the East, both yellow and black, are slowly but surely imitating the women of the Western world, and as the white women are bolstering up a decaying white civilization, even so women of the darker races are sallying forth to help their men establish a civilization according to their own standards, and to strive for world leadership.” “The doll-baby type of woman is a thing of the past, and the wide-awake woman is forging ahead prepared for all emergencies, and ready to answer any call, even if it be to face the cannons on the battlefield.” “Negroes everywhere must be independent, God being our guide. Mr. Black man, watch your step! Ethiopia’s queens will reign again, and her Amazons protect her shores and people.” 6. FRIDA KAHLO Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón (1907–1954) “Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?” Claim to Fame Painter Country of origin Mexico Wave First Her Story Frida Kahlo is probably the most famous, respected, and, arguably, revolutionary female painter in history. Though some people question whether she would be considered a feminist by today’s standards, she was ahead of her time in nearly every way when it comes to traditional ideas about womanhood. She succeeded in a time when women were routinely held down, both personally and professionally, and transcended other norms of that time, too — her art explored taboo topics like miscarriage, gender inequity, abortion, death, and sex. She also rebelled against traditional ideals of female beauty, not only refusing to remove her unibrow and mustache, but making them darker with a black pencil. Kahlo was born in Coyoacán, Mexico, in 1907, to a Mexican mom and German Jew immigrant dad. From a young age, Kahlo experienced physical suffering and illness that later became prevalent themes throughout much of her artwork. When she was just six years old, Kahlo got polio and her right leg became visibly shriveled, which her bully schoolmates didn’t let her live down. This made Kahlo turn to her own imagination for comfort. (Alcántara, Isabel, and Sandra Egnolff. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Munich: Prestel, 1999. Print.) While studying to be a doctor at the exclusive Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (she was one of only a handful of girls who were admitted), she began dabbling in leftist politics and joined a student socialist group. But then at age eighteen, Kahlo was in a terrifying bus accident in which she was impaled by a handrail. She endured thirty surgeries, and doctors weren’t sure if she’d ever walk again (she did); the accident also caused her to be incapable of giving birth. It was while she was bedridden that her father, Guillermo Kahlo — also an artist — recommended she start painting. During her long recovery, Kahlo started creating colorful paintings, mostly self-portraits, in a style that would become her trademark. She once explained, “I paint myself because I am so often alone, because I am the subject I know best.” Her work during that time was very emotional, some of it difficult to look at. Much of it centered on her recovery — images of her alone in a series of hospital beds — and also on childbirth and babies — the babies she would never have. A few years after she started painting, she married the famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who would prove to be a source of simultaneous pain and inspiration for her throughout the rest of her life. Their relationship was passionate and stormy; though there are many accounts of his frequent infidelities in their relationship, Kahlo had her own fair share of extramarital dalliances with both men and women. Rivera once wrote of his wife, “I recommend her to you, not as a husband but as an enthusiastic admirer of her work, acid and tender, hard as steel and delicate and fine as a butterfly’s wing, lovable as a beautiful smile, and as profound and cruel as the bitterness of life.” [ http://bit.ly/1D68KIM ] Diego and Kahlo shared a passion for politics, and both belonged to the Mexican communist movement. Her beliefs were also strongly informed by Marxist theory (Marxism is a social theory constructed by philosopher Karl Marx about how class struggle dominates society), and was “an intellectual and a revolutionary who read Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hegel and Marx, amongst others, in her youth.” [http://www.researchgate.net/publication/230249975_Unsettling_bodies_Frida_Kahlo%27s_portraits_and_individuality1] She fought for a variety of issues, oftentimes featuring them in her work; the personal really was political when it came to Kahlo. Among other things, in her art she questioned the power dynamics between first and third world countries, and the role of women in a patriarchal society; and she also tried to combine the “global histories and religions of East and West.” (Tate Modern, 2005) From 1926 until her death of a pulmonary embolism in 1954, Kahlo created almost 200 paintings. She’s a legend: a fiery, supremely resilient risk-taker who bucked the trends of the time to be wholly, unapologetically herself. Her artistic epilogue continues to serve as a huge inspiration to women artists — and regular women — everywhere. Why She’s Awesome -Though Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, she listed July 7, 1910, as her birth date because it also marked the beginning of the Mexican revolution. She wanted her personal story to align with the start of modern Mexico. - In 2010, to mark the anniversary of her birthday, Google changed its logo to include a portrait of Kahlo done in her artistic style. -All over the world people loved Kahlo, and she had many noteworthy friends and lovers. For example, she was praised and befriended by the French surrealist André Breton, and wined and dined with Picasso in Paris. Quotables “I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me, too.” “I was born a bitch. I was born a painter.” “Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light.” “I must fight with all my strength so that the little positive things that my health allows me to do might be pointed toward helping the revolution. The only real reason for living.” “My painting carries with it the message of pain ... Painting completed my life ... I believe that work is the best thing.”" 7. SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR Simone Ernestine Lucie Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (1908–1986) “I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself.” Claim to Fame Existentialist philosopher, author, activist, professional feminist Country of Origin France Wave First Her Story Some consider Simone de Beauvoir the “grandmother” of the second wave of feminism, and her monumental 1949 book The Second Sex has been dubbed “the feminist bible.” No female writer before her had opened up in quite such a brazen way about “the intimate secrets of her sex.” A wildly controversial figure who wrote about wildly controversial subjects, people today still debate about de Beauvoir’s feminist cred. (In our eyes, anyone who makes such a powerful, long-lasting impact on cultural attitudes about women is someone worth knowing about.) A prolific author of novels, biographies, and poems, de Beauvoir didn’t necessarily consider herself a philosopher (which she was) or even, back then, an avowed feminist; she believed women couldn’t be truly free as long as they were living under a capitalist society. But she’s widely thought of as one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century — and certainly one of the most celebrated thinkers in France — whose ideas were way ahead of their time. For instance, she was outspoken in her criticism of gender essentialism (the idea that men and women are different because of certain innate traits), arguing in The Second Sex that “one is not born a woman, one becomes one.” She later explained: “There is no biological or psychological destiny that defines a woman as such… Baby girls are manufactured to become women.” De Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908 to a family descended from aristocracy. Her father was an atheist and her mother a devout Catholic, and de Beauvoir, who learned to read at the age of three, at one point wanted to be a nun. Her parents eventually hit major financial troubles, sending the family to live in squalid apartments with a “no waste” policy. This helped fuel de Beauvoir’s lifelong disdain for materialism. At fourteen, de Beauvoir turned to atheism, a belief system that stayed with her forever and also prompted her interest in philosophy. She took classes at the Sorbonne in Paris (she was only the ninth woman to receive a degree from the esteemed university at the time), and when she was twenty-one she became the youngest philosophy teacher in France. As a young woman, de Beauvoir fell in love with Jean Paul Sartre, the famous existentialist philosopher who would become her fifty-year-long partner, both intellectually and romantically. The couple never lived together, had kids, or married (he proposed, but she rejected it because she disapproved of the institution of marriage). Instead, when they met they signed a pact of “transparency,” allowing them both to take lovers (de Beauvoir was bisexual, so many of her dalliances were with women). She gained some success after writing the novel She Came to Stay and publishing essays about existentialist ethics, but de Beauvoir didn’t completely blow up until the publication of her 700–page master-work, The Second Sex. The book was revolutionary in its ideas about female oppression. De Beauvoir believed that throughout history, men had relegated women to the status of “the Other,” a sort of separate, unequal, and profoundly misunderstood second class. The book was both passionately celebrated and intensely attacked for its assertions that women’s subpar treatment in the world was a result of messed-up social attitudes and mores, not innate characteristics. De Beauvoir was a very prolific writer and remained active in both feminism and existentialism throughout the 1970s. Though she remained famous for the rest of her life, people often demeaned her intellectual contributions, claiming she leeched off Sartre’s theories (not true). Plenty of major mainstream feminists recognized her significance though. In fact, Gloria Steinem once said that "if any single human being can be credited with inspiring the current international women's movement, it's Simone de Beauvoir." Why She’s Awesome -In 1971, when abortion was still illegal in France, she signed the Manifesto of the 343. This was a groundbreaking list of famous women who claimed to have had abortions themselves. The political power of being open about having an abortion became more common — though still not accepted — much later, and she might have been among the first to do it. -When de Beauvoir died of pneumonia in 1986 at the age of seventy-eight, a newspaper headline blared, “Women, you owe her everything!” -She hung out with a range of awesome luminaries, from Che Guevara to Kate Millett. Quotables “It would never occur to a man to write a book on the singular situation of males in humanity. If I want to define myself, I first have to say, ‘I am a woman.’ All other assertions will arise from this basic truth.” —The Second Sex “She [woman] is the inessential in front of the essential. He is the Subject, he is the absolute. She is the Other.” —The Second Sex [On the futility of marriage:] “The middle class has… invented an epic style of expression in which routine takes on the cast of adventure, fidelity that of a sublime passion, ennui becomes wisdom, and family hatred is the deepest form of love.” “For me, my books were a real fulfillment, and as such they freed me from the necessity to affirm myself in any other way.” 8. PAULI MURRAY Anna Pauline Murray (1910–1985) “I am determined that my country shall take her place among nations as a moral leader of mankind. No law which imprisons my body or custom which wounds my spirit can stop me.” —Common Ground, 1945 Claim to Fame Civil rights and women’s rights activist, attorney, author, priest Country of Origin USA Wave Second Her Story Pauli Murray, an African American activist, lawyer, writer, and priest who worked with luminaries like Martin Luther King, Jr., President John F.
Kennedy, and Eleanor Roosevelt, was once dubbed a “one-woman civil rights movement.” Though she might not be among the most glamorously bold-faced names of that era, her feminist legacy is towering, and she’s considered an unsung pioneer of her time. She was one of the most instrumental figures to help bridge the chasm between civil rights and women’s rights, making sure people realized the importance of including black women in both movements. As she wrote in her book Words of Fire, “By asserting a leadership role in the growing feminist movement, the black woman can help to keep it allied to the objectives of black liberation while simultaneously advancing the interests of all women."
[http://bit.ly/1DOVGtD] Murray fought for a wide swathe of intersecting human rights, and not just the ones that affected her personally. Though she wasn’t gay, she was passionate about fighting for LGBTI causes; she once said she was “convinced that she was really a man, forced…to occupy a woman’s body.” [Rosenberg, Rosalind. “The conjunction of race and gender.” Journal of Women’s History 14.2 (2002): 68+. Biography In Context. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.]. Murray was a founding member of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and a cofounder of the hugely important civil rights organization CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), which was one of the “Big Four” civil rights groups of that time. She coined the term “Jane Crow” in the 1940s as a way to describe a life lived through the harsh lens of simultaneous racial and gender oppression. After spending her early life in Baltimore, Maryland, Murray moved to Durham, North Carolina, to live with her grandparents (her parents died separately when she was young). Durham was a segregated city that Murray was itching to escape, so she hightailed it out of there after graduating from high school with distinction. After getting her degree in English from New York’s Hunter College, in 1938 Murray applied to graduate school at the then-all-white University of North Carolina. She was denied entry because of her race, even though her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee of the university. Though she was turned away, her bold move gained national publicity thanks to support from the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). After graduating from Howard Law School at the top of her class and then getting a Master’s of Law degree at the University of California’s Boalt Hall Law School, Murray became the first African American female deputy attorney general of California. After moving back to New York, she was hired as the only black attorney at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton, and Garrison, and was also just one of only three women lawyers there. Murray’s dedication to activism was the most enduring thread throughout her life. She was arrested and imprisoned for refusing to sit at the back of a bus in 1940 (fifteen years before Rosa Parks did the same). She organized desegregation protests and sit-ins in Washington, DC, and was an advocate of using nonviolent resistance techniques popularized by Mahatma Gandhi. Though she shared Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of a fair, equitable society for all Americans, Murray didn’t think King or anyone else was above criticism — she was one of several black women activists who were vocal in their anger about the lack of female leaders included in the planning of the historic 1963 March on Washington. Never one to sit idly by and watch injustice happen, Murray said women’s lack of inclusion in preparation for the March was “bitterly humiliating,” and she called out the men involved, saying in one speech, “There is much jockeying for position as ambitious men push and elbow that way to leadership roles. Not a single woman was invited to make one of the major speeches or to be part of the delegation of leaders who went to the White House. This omission was deliberate.” [http://nowandthen.ashp.cuny.edu/2010/04/when-women-battled-jim-crow-and-jane-crow/] A board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, in 1961, President Kennedy put Murray on the President’s Commission on the Status of Women Committee (PCSW) on Civil and Political rights. In 1965, she published an article with fellow NOW founder Mary Eastwood, called “Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII.” The authors noted that “the most serious discrimination against both women and Negroes today” took place in the workplace, and wrote that employment discrimination based on sex/gender was as detrimental and messed-up as the kind based on race. When the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, it prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, and national origin — but it didn’t include sex. Murray and other activists lobbied to have sex discrimination included in Title VII of the bill, and their efforts paid off — a huge coup. [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jowh/summary/v014/14.2hartmann.html] Her groundbreaking accomplishments didn’t end there, either. Murray wrote many articles and books, including, in the early ’50s, a powerful biography of her family’s journey from slavery to emancipation entitled Proud Shoes. And at age sixty-six, Murray became the very first African American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest! Why She’s Awesome -A lifelong friend of Eleanor Roosevelt’s, Murray also maintained a long correspondence with Langston Hughes. -In 1947, Murray was named “Woman of the Year” by Mademoiselle magazine. -She was the first African American to earn a JSD from Yale Law School. -Thurgood Marshall, head of the legal department at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), described Murray’s book, States Laws on Race and Color, as the Bible for civil rights lawyers. Quotables “One person plus one typewriter constitutes a movement.” “As an American I inherit the magnificent tradition of an endless march toward freedom and toward the dignity of all mankind.” “I speak for my race and my people — the human race and just people. —Dark Testament, and Other Poems “Negroes are the most oppressed and most neglected section of your population. 12,000,000 of your citizens have to endure insults, injustices, and such degradation of the spirit that you would believe impossible.” —letter to President Franklin Roosevelt, 1938 “I am determined that my country shall take her place among nations as a moral leader of mankind. No law which imprisons my body or custom which wounds my spirit can stop me.” —Common Ground, 1945 9. ROSA PARKS née Rosa Louise McCauley (1913–2005) “I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free.” Claim to Fame Civil rights activist, writer Country of Origin United States Wave First Her Story Rosa Parks, once called “the first lady of civil rights,” is a legend known all over the world for that one Super-Famous Instance in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. (Not that that simple move wasn’t awesome; it did help spark a huge boycott.) Though the former seamstress is often described as a quiet, humble woman — a sort of accidental activist whose interests were generally more traditional and domestic — that isn’t the reality. Parks has a much richer legacy of activism and audacity than people give her credit for, and it deserves its share of accolades. (As one writer noted in a Ms. Magazine blog post, “Rosa Parks did more than sit on a bus!!!” http://msmagazine.com/blog/2012/02/03/rosa-parks-did-way-more-than-sit-on-a-bus/ ) For example, Parks created a group called the Alabama Committee for Equal Justice expressly to investigate the brutal gang rape of a black Alabama woman named Recy Taylor; she attended secret meetings to help defend the Scottsboro boys — nine young African American men who’d been accused of raping two white women in Alabama; and Parks was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, during a time that was rife with unimaginable violence, injustice, and inequality for African Americans. (As a child she was told to sleep with her clothes on in case she had to run from the Ku Klux Klan in the middle of the night.) She later said of that time, “Back then, we didn’t have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down.” With her grandparents being former slaves and firm advocates for racial equality, her family’s experiences with racism set the stage for Parks’ future activism. She dropped out of high school in her junior year to take care of her ailing mother and grandmother, and then went to work as a seamstress in Montgomery. (She got her high school diploma later on, in 1934.) After marrying Raymond Parks, who was involved with the NAACP, she actually became the first woman to join the NAACP in Montgomery, where she served as the chapter’s youth leader. She also worked as the secretary to the organization’s president. In the 1930s, Parks participated in secret meetings to help defend In 1943, twelve full years before her famous showdown on the bus, Parks refused to give up her seat on another bus, and was thrown off for it. That same year, she tried to register to vote, but was denied. This helped spark her decision to travel through Alabama to chronicle “racialized voter intimidation and brutality.” (She eventually earned a voting certificate after trying to register three times.) On December 1, 1955, Parks was riding home from work on a Montgomery bus when the bus driver asked her to move to the “colored” section so a white boarder could take her seat. “When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up, and I said, ‘No, I’m not,’” she remembered about the incident. “And he said, ‘Well, if you don’t stand up, I’m going to have to call the police and have you arrested.’ I said, ‘You may do that.’” When the policemen came and asked her why she didn’t stand, she calmly explained, “I didn’t think I should have to stand up.” Parks’ basic refusal prompted the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in which African Americans refused to ride local buses to protest segregated seating. It also launched a nationwide movement to end segregation in public areas in general. She was put in prison and found guilty of disorderly conduct, but she appealed her conviction, thereby formally challenging the legality of segregation altogether. The bus boycott lasted 381 days, until the US Supreme Court finally changed its tune and ruled that the segregation law was unconstitutional, and the buses were integrated. She continued her gutsy commitment to activism, routinely challenging racism, violence, and oppression on both a larger and more intimate scale. For example, an essay she reportedly wrote in the 1950s emerged in 2011. It was a painful but powerful piece describing a time she was almost raped by a white man she dubbed Mr. Charlie. She wrote, “I would never yield to this white man’s bestiality. I was ready to die, but give my consent, never.... If he wanted to … rape a dead body, he was welcome, but he would have to kill me first.” Parks received many accolades during her lifetime, including the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP’s highest award, and the prestigious Martin Luther King, Jr. Award. She was also given the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award given by the US legislative branch. She died in 2005, but Rosa Parks will be forever remembered not just for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, but for spending so many years of her life valiantly leading the fight against racist hate and oppression. In 2010, Time Magazine named her one of the twenty-five most influential women of the twentieth century. [http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2029774_2029776_2031835,00.html ] Why She’s Awesome -In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The medal is considered the highest honor given to a US civilian. It was at that ceremony that she was called “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement.” -During her life, Parks wrote four books: Rosa Parks: My Story, Quiet Strength, Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today’s Youth, and I Am Rosa Parks. -In 1998, the Rosa Parks Museum and Library opened to commemorate her activism and indomitable spirit. It is located at the site of her arrest in Montgomery. Quotables: “Each person must live their life as a model for others.” “Knowing what must be done does away with fear.” “I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free.” “I had given up my seat before, but this day, I was especially tired. Tired from my work as a seamstress, and tired from the ache in my heart.” “Stand for something or you will fall for anything. Today's mighty oak is yesterday’s nut that held its ground.” 10. FLORYNCE KENNEDY Florynce Rae Kennedy (1916–2000) “You’ve got to rattle your cage door. You’ve got to let them know that you’re in there, and that you want out. Make noise. Cause trouble. You may not win right away, but you’ll sure have a lot more fun.” Claim to Fame Attorney, writer, activist Country of Origin USA Wave Second Her Story Florynce Kennedy was an African American feminist rabble-rouser and a high-profile civil rights attorney known for her ballsy, take-no-prisoners stance in the courtroom — not to mention her trademark cowboy boots, pink sunglasses [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/122300-01.htm], and penchant for holding nothing back when it came to speaking her mind. (People Magazine once called her “the rudest mouth on the [feminist] battleground,” which seems a little dramatic, but hey.) Though she hasn’t always gotten the history-book recognition she deserves for her immeasurable contributions to the women’s rights movement of the ’60s and ’70s, Kennedy was actually one of the most prominent black feminists of that time. Friend and colleague Gloria Steinem once said, “Five minutes with Flo will change your life.” [http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Florynce_Kennedy.aspx] Kennedy helped repeal New York’s restrictive abortion laws; launched a new political party called the Feminist Party; and was committed to fighting for civil rights, the Black Power movement, and consumer advocacy (way before Ralph Nader made it his big platform). Gloria Steinem once wrote about the powerhouse in Ms. Magazine, “The name ‘Flo’ alone was enough to evoke images of outrageous and creative troublemaking... from minority hiring to ban-the-bomb. Just as there was only one Eleanor or Winston, one Stokely or Marilyn or Mao, there was only one Flo.” Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1916, Kennedy is said to have inherited some of her chutzpah from her dad, Wiley Kennedy. Wiley owned his own taxi company and bought a home in a largely white neighborhood. When the Ku Klux Klan came calling and demanded that their family leave town, Kennedy recalls in her autobiography, “[Daddy] brought his gun… out with him and said, ‘Now the first foot that hits that step belongs to the man I shoot. And then after that you can decide who is going to shoot me.’ They went away and they never came back.” She also credited her parents with helping to instill self-esteem, confidence, and an anti-authoritarian streak in their girls, noting, “My parents gave us a fantastic sense of security and worth. By the time the bigots got around to telling us that we were nobody, we already knew we were somebody.” [http://www.msmagazine.com/summer2011/verbalkarate.asp] Kennedy knew she wanted to be an attorney way back before she even started high school, and she fought her way to admission at the prestigious Columbia Law School. When she first applied to Columbia, she was turned away, supposedly because the school’s quota of female students had already been met, though it was more likely because she was black. But Kennedy refused to take no for an answer: she threatened to file a discrimination lawsuit against the university, which promptly changed its tune and admitted her. In 1951, she became the second black woman ever to graduate from the school. In 1954, after graduating, she launched her own law practice [http://books.google.com/books?id=ZuzP2yWtmj4C&pg=PA130&dq=florence+kennedy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VKRKVMTdG8PIsATBwoDwBA&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=florence%20kennedy&f=false] and was one of the few black women to practice law in New York City. The legal maven went on to represent influential black musicians like Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, as well as female members of the Black Liberation Front and the Black Panthers. Growing rather disillusioned with the law, Kennedy began to doubt its power to significantly counter oppression. So she turned more intensively to her tru