Burnell, Donna - interviewed by Rose Norman
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Transcript
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- | This is Rose Norman, it's December 21st, 2012, | 0:01 |
and I'm talking with Donna Burnell, | 0:06 | |
I always wanna call you Burrell, Burnell | 0:11 | |
at my home in Huntsville, Alabama. | 0:14 | |
We're interviewing for the Southern Lesbian Feminist | 0:18 | |
Herstory Project, and Donna's gonna talk | 0:21 | |
about her time in Gainesville, | 0:24 | |
where she went to high school and college, | 0:27 | |
got into C-R, NOW, ERA activism, | 0:31 | |
those are the main things we're gonna talk about on this. | 0:36 | |
- | Well, I started at the University of Florida, | 0:43 |
and I was just sort of your typical student those days, | 0:46 | |
a hippie and protesting the Vietnam War, | 0:50 | |
and there just came a time in my life | 0:54 | |
where everybody that I was close to was male. | 0:59 | |
I'd heard about women's liberation, and I think I, | 1:04 | |
oh I'd taken a class at the University of Florida | 1:06 | |
with a professor named Caroline Griffiths, | 1:10 | |
and we started protest movements, and so I was reading | 1:12 | |
a little bit about feminism and I thought, | 1:15 | |
you know, I really should look into that | 1:18 | |
because I don't have any women friends. | 1:19 | |
I kind of wished that I was male, so you know, | 1:23 | |
we didn't have the surgeries in those days, | 1:26 | |
and so I thought well, I better sort of rearrange this. | 1:28 | |
I sought out, and it was I believe an ad | 1:32 | |
in the University of Florida newspaper The Alligator, | 1:36 | |
advertising the C-R groups, and so I went | 1:42 | |
to the meeting to form C-R groups. | 1:46 | |
My memory is that you just chose one | 1:50 | |
based on a time you could show up, | 1:54 | |
but you really had to come every time, | 1:56 | |
you couldn't be sort of a sometime attendee, | 1:59 | |
you really had to make a commitment to show up. | 2:04 | |
I went and they capped the group at 10 or something, | 2:08 | |
I don't know, some sort of number like that. | 2:13 | |
I didn't have any sense of the history | 2:15 | |
of Gainesville Women's Liberation groups until... | 2:18 | |
- | This is '70? | 2:24 |
- | Today I don't remember, | |
it was not a strong leadership, it was very consensus, | 2:27 | |
how does everybody feel about that | 2:34 | |
when the steering committee or whatever they called it met. | 2:36 | |
Anyway, I started going to the groups | 2:39 | |
and I just thrived in consciousness-raising | 2:41 | |
because I found out I was not such a weird person, | 2:44 | |
which growing up in the '50s, I felt like an alien, | 2:48 | |
(wheezes) and I don't mean from another country, | 2:51 | |
I mean another planet, another solar system. | 2:53 | |
To find anybody who felt the same way I did | 2:58 | |
on a number of things was just astounding to me. | 3:01 | |
'Cause I just really thought nobody feels this way, | 3:06 | |
and so just shut up and do your own thing | 3:09 | |
and go your own way but don't talk about it. | 3:12 | |
I'd had one of the things that anybody during that decade | 3:16 | |
or gosh, any subsequent decade unfortunately | 3:22 | |
in Gainesville, is either being raped or a rape experience. | 3:23 | |
Everybody in our group, Gainesville was number one | 3:28 | |
in the FBI Uniform Crime Report so many times | 3:31 | |
and in the '80s it was actually number one | 3:38 | |
of the top 10 for rape, and I just read | 3:40 | |
a very disturbing article last month | 3:43 | |
where that seems to be continuing to be the case. | 3:45 | |
That's one of the issues that comes up in C-R, | 3:49 | |
and all of the women there had had | 3:52 | |
either some really close experience with rape | 3:54 | |
or had been raped, and again, this was something | 3:57 | |
I'd had a really close experience but I fought back. | 4:00 | |
I had no idea why I did, I just did. | 4:03 | |
I'd had no training, nobody'd ever | 4:06 | |
talked to me about it, I just did. | 4:07 | |
To find out that everybody else was in the same boat, | 4:11 | |
again, it was this eye-opening thing of oh my gosh, | 4:13 | |
you're not such a weird bad person that this | 4:16 | |
all this happened to you, this is women's experience. | 4:20 | |
I mean I really got the whole, what you were | 4:23 | |
supposed to get from C-R, I got it. | 4:27 | |
I was very close with that group, | 4:31 | |
eventually we got an overture and came together | 4:34 | |
as a steering committee to consider | 4:38 | |
and hear from this woman named Edna Saffy | 4:41 | |
who was a graduate student as I recall at the time, | 4:43 | |
at the University of Florida, and she wanted | 4:46 | |
to start a National Organization for Women group | 4:49 | |
on campus and she wanted to let people know | 4:52 | |
that they could come and be in the NOW group | 4:56 | |
and also see whatever places they could work together. | 5:01 | |
She made her presentation and left, and I remember... | 5:05 | |
My remembrance of it is that I was... | 5:09 | |
I think most of the women there were fine | 5:14 | |
with what she had to say and liked her personally, | 5:16 | |
but they didn't like the idea of how structured NOW was. | 5:19 | |
It was an organization, and so it was run | 5:23 | |
in a male-like way, and they kind of objected | 5:26 | |
to that 'cause we were so unstructured | 5:29 | |
within Gainesville Women's Liberation. | 5:32 | |
I liked more hard-hitting political protests | 5:35 | |
like I was seeing with the anti-Vietnam War protests, | 5:40 | |
and this actually was another thread into going | 5:46 | |
to C-R groups was how male chauvinist | 5:51 | |
and outright piggy the men were in the Vietnam protests | 5:56 | |
and their total disregard and lack of respect for women. | 6:01 | |
I'd experienced that side of it, and so I knew | 6:05 | |
I didn't wanna put any activist energy there, | 6:08 | |
but I knew that something more had to happen | 6:10 | |
besides consciousness-raising, I couldn't go around | 6:14 | |
with all this consciousness raised and not do anything. | 6:16 | |
So I really liked the idea, and that's what Edna spoke to | 6:19 | |
is actually don't get mad, get even, | 6:22 | |
don't agonize, organize, and that really spoke to me. | 6:26 | |
I wanted to join the NOW group, but maintain | 6:32 | |
my connection with Gainesville Women's Liberation. | 6:36 | |
At some point that became a problem, I guess. | 6:40 | |
Not acceptable, and I kinda think | 6:46 | |
that I was forced to choose. | 6:50 | |
- | So the C-R groups were | |
equivalent to Gainesville Women's Liberation. | 6:55 | |
- | Yeah. | 6:57 |
- | Okay. | |
- | Yeah, the C-R groups, that was... | 6:59 |
There was no real thrust, I mean like I said, | 7:02 | |
my memory's there was a steering committee, | 7:06 | |
and I think why I remember it so strongly was | 7:10 | |
the first time I'd ever seen sort of inter... | 7:12 | |
'Cause you know, we all met as the steering committee | 7:14 | |
in the Student Union, and there was one woman sitting | 7:18 | |
in another woman's lap, and they were all entwined, | 7:23 | |
and it was the first time I'd ever seen that | 7:25 | |
outside of you know, like, a home, (laughs) | 7:27 | |
a very private area, it was like (gasps) | 7:31 | |
oh my gosh, people will see you. | 7:33 | |
And so I was really fascinated by their comfortableness | 7:35 | |
in expressing that sort of romantic energy in public. | 7:40 | |
This was the first time I'd seen it, | 7:46 | |
so I think that's why I remember that. | 7:47 | |
At any rate, like I said, my memory is very vague, | 7:50 | |
but I feel that I was forced to choose, | 7:53 | |
and the C-R groups were winding down, and again, | 7:59 | |
I felt very liberated, I felt like I really needed | 8:03 | |
to take this energy and do something with it. | 8:06 | |
I would have to say that I came down on the NOW side, | 8:11 | |
I was like, well if you're gonna be that way, | 8:14 | |
Edna's not making me choose, you all are making me choose, | 8:18 | |
and so I'm gonna go with the NOW group. | 8:21 | |
Most of the energy in this NOW group, | 8:26 | |
they were older, there was Jeanette Blevins | 8:28 | |
who was staff at the university, | 8:31 | |
Edna Saffy was a graduate student. | 8:35 | |
When we would go to the State of Florida beginning meetings | 8:37 | |
for a state National Organization for Women, | 8:42 | |
everybody was older than me, and what I found when we had | 8:45 | |
about a 10-year reunion later on into the '80s is | 8:49 | |
that I'm constantly running to catch up. | 8:54 | |
They've all let go of it, and I'm still trying to surpass | 8:56 | |
'em, and I've surpassed 'em but I don't realize it | 8:59 | |
'cause I'm always running to catch up. | 9:02 | |
I had that experience so often with this protest stuff, | 9:03 | |
most of the people I hung out with | 9:07 | |
at the Vietnam War protests were older than me. | 9:08 | |
So I'm constantly trying to be, you know, | 9:11 | |
get it together 'cause I'm the younger one, | 9:14 | |
and live up to this ideal that I have in my head. | 9:18 | |
Like I said, it's only years and decades later | 9:21 | |
I realized my God, I've actually done more | 9:23 | |
than they have done, and I'm still | 9:26 | |
in my mind trying to catch up to them. | 9:27 | |
(laughs) That's kind of just a funny aside. | 9:30 | |
Okay, so where are we in the story, | 9:33 | |
so I leave the consciousness-raising groups, | 9:35 | |
I join in with NOW, I'm really kind of on the periphery, | 9:36 | |
I'm graduating from college, I'm getting my first jobs, | 9:40 | |
this sort of thing is going on, | 9:44 | |
and I remember being maybe the first treasurer | 9:47 | |
of the Student University Chapter of NOW | 9:52 | |
and then I participate in the Florida parades for the ERA, | 9:56 | |
which was mostly put on by the Gainesville Chapter | 10:01 | |
and Edna Saffy is the parade leader. | 10:03 | |
It was one of the first and biggest women's | 10:10 | |
marches that we had in Tallahassee. | 10:15 | |
I go through some turmoil in my work life, | 10:21 | |
I get this fantastic job out at Sunland Training Center, | 10:24 | |
which is the state school for the mentally retarded. | 10:30 | |
I'm actually using my Psychology B.A., | 10:34 | |
which is unheard of (laughs), and so I become very involved | 10:36 | |
in that for the longest time, but there's a certain... | 10:40 | |
The grant ends and also who I'm working with there are | 10:44 | |
Carol Martin who's involved in the Women's Center, | 10:50 | |
but I've already told you earlier | 10:53 | |
that she's kind of on the outs with a lot | 10:55 | |
of the main wheels of the Women's Center, | 10:57 | |
but now she writes lesbian mysteries. | 11:00 | |
- | Oh! | 11:03 |
- | I'm trying to remember | |
her writer's name is A.J. Martin, I think? | 11:07 | |
Also Sallie Ann Harrison works out at Sunland | 11:14 | |
at that time, but I know both of them, | 11:16 | |
and I hang out with them, we have a lot | 11:18 | |
of informal networking in Gainesville. | 11:20 | |
I maintain that all through this time, | 11:25 | |
but I'm not really doing a lot of activism. | 11:27 | |
I sort of come back into the activism | 11:29 | |
once I quit that job and I'm kind of homeless, | 11:32 | |
I'm out at the Red House with Corky Culver | 11:36 | |
for maybe a month, I'm living with Marsha West, | 11:39 | |
we end up in a pup tent on Lorelei Esser's property | 11:42 | |
where we eat blueberries all summer and get food stamps. | 11:45 | |
This has to be the summer of '79. | 11:51 | |
What I do then is say well, I've got this nice | 11:55 | |
Psychology degree, which is actually | 11:59 | |
in Experimental Behavioral Analysis. | 12:00 | |
I'm in on operant conditioning and Skinner | 12:05 | |
and behavior modification and hard science. | 12:08 | |
I've actually been working in that area | 12:11 | |
for I don't know, it was about '75 to '78, | 12:15 | |
so about three years maybe-- | 12:19 | |
- | This is Sunland? | |
- | Yeah, I'm working in that area, but I look around | 12:21 |
and I go, gee, I think I'll put in a résumé, | 12:25 | |
a job application at the Women's Clinic. | 12:30 | |
And so I turn the Psychology degree into counseling, | 12:34 | |
actually just let them think it's counseling. | 12:36 | |
And they do (giggles) but where I do have | 12:41 | |
counseling experience is one of the things | 12:44 | |
that Judy, Margaret, and Byllye, Judy Avery, no, | 12:46 | |
Judy Levy, Byllye Avery, and Margaret Parrish | 12:51 | |
are in on starting in, say, | 12:54 | |
1974, so at the end of my college years, | 13:00 | |
is a rape crisis line. | 13:03 | |
- | Uh-huh. | |
- | Because of the experience I had with rape, | 13:07 |
I knew I never wanted to be raped, | 13:11 | |
and I knew it would be pretty awful. | 13:13 | |
Another connection is Alyce McAdam. | 13:19 | |
Alyce works at The Alligator with me, | 13:23 | |
that's how I meet up with Alyce, | 13:26 | |
and she and I are feminists, and one of the things | 13:28 | |
we'd do at the newspaper is we'd take | 13:30 | |
our little Exactos and when somebody writes, | 13:33 | |
well she does the job as well as any man, | 13:36 | |
we sort of rearrange the writing. | 13:38 | |
And nobody ever catches onto that, but... (wheezes) | 13:41 | |
So Alyce and I are friends, I'm hanging out | 13:44 | |
with Alyce sort of socially, and she has gone | 13:47 | |
up to the D.C. Rape Crisis Center. | 13:52 | |
She went to D.C. for awhile, and then she comes back | 13:54 | |
to Gainesville, and that's all she can talk about. | 13:57 | |
And she knows self defense, and she's feisty, | 14:00 | |
and I like Alyce, and she is also, | 14:03 | |
she's the parade marshal I think, no... | 14:06 | |
She organizes the security or something | 14:10 | |
for the ERA parade, so she's a big deal in that. | 14:13 | |
Alyce is able to feed in a lot | 14:20 | |
of energy to this Rape Crisis Line. | 14:22 | |
It's done through the Women's Clinic, | 14:26 | |
so the Women's Clinic is in existence at that time, | 14:30 | |
and the only connection I have is I've gone | 14:32 | |
for training with Judy Levy, who has a PhD | 14:35 | |
in Psychology as I understand it. | 14:39 | |
I can draw on that counseling experience | 14:45 | |
that I've gotten from that Rape Crisis Line. | 14:48 | |
Now I don't know if anybody has talked | 14:50 | |
to you about that Rape Crisis Line, | 14:53 | |
but one of the interesting things is | 14:55 | |
because of the, especially for that time, | 14:57 | |
the radicalism of Alyce McAdam, | 15:00 | |
we will just take calls, and the women remain | 15:05 | |
anonymous unless they wanna tell us their name. | 15:08 | |
Alyce then catches onto, from the calls | 15:12 | |
that we're getting, that there's a number of rapes | 15:17 | |
in Gainesville that are obviously the same perpetrator. | 15:19 | |
She takes this information, we know | 15:23 | |
on such-and-such a date that a rape happened | 15:26 | |
in this approximate area, and this is the M.O., | 15:29 | |
the guy always says this, or he comes through the window, | 15:33 | |
or he holds a knife to her throat, or whatever it is. | 15:35 | |
She takes that data to the police, | 15:38 | |
and they threaten to arrest all of us. | 15:40 | |
For aiding and abetting 'cause we're not | 15:43 | |
making these women report to the police. | 15:45 | |
There's a point at which Alyce and Judy | 15:50 | |
and all come back to the group, | 15:55 | |
to the women who are answering this line and say, | 15:57 | |
if you continue with us, you may get arrested. | 16:01 | |
Well, I don't have anything to lose. | 16:05 | |
I don't own a home, (giggles) I have a motorcycle, | 16:06 | |
you know, I'm like, yeah come get me, you know, whatever. | 16:09 | |
We stand up to the police, we find out, | 16:15 | |
Alyce continues the conversation with them, | 16:19 | |
and she finds out they're asking the women | 16:22 | |
who do get bold enough to go into the police | 16:25 | |
station and say, hey I was raped, | 16:27 | |
did you come, did you like it, | 16:30 | |
what were you doing there, what were you wearing, | 16:32 | |
these were their standard questions. | 16:34 | |
Alyce challenges the police and says, | 16:39 | |
we would never in a million years send a woman | 16:41 | |
who was raped to you all with what you do to them. | 16:44 | |
We end up doing, well mostly Alyce, | 16:50 | |
doing training in sensitivity to the police. | 16:52 | |
To try to get them better, but one of the offshoots | 16:58 | |
out of this Rape Crisis Line is that | 17:00 | |
because we advertised it in a lot of places, | 17:02 | |
that there's this crisis line that you can call | 17:07 | |
and talk to, we start getting women | 17:09 | |
who are calling saying, I'm 70, | 17:11 | |
and my father raped me as a child. | 17:14 | |
So these rapes were 60 years ago, | 17:18 | |
and we're like, whoa, what's with this whole thing? | 17:21 | |
We don't realize until we do the Rape Crisis Line | 17:24 | |
how much incest is going on, how much | 17:27 | |
these women are suffering for decades. | 17:30 | |
But also women are calling up going, | 17:34 | |
I haven't been raped, but my husband | 17:36 | |
beats me every Saturday night. | 17:38 | |
The Battered Women's Shelter is | 17:42 | |
an offshoot of that Rape Crisis Line. | 17:45 | |
There's an early in I think '75... | 17:52 | |
Child Sexual Abuse Conference in Gainesville. | 17:58 | |
Again, because of what we're being told on this line. | 18:05 | |
- | This is something that Judy Levy organizes, or? | 18:11 |
- | The conference I actually organized with, | 18:16 |
oh gosh, I'm trying to remember her name... | 18:18 | |
She was another PhD psychologist. | 18:23 | |
Things that went on in Gainesville, | 18:30 | |
there was so much going on during that time period | 18:32 | |
and even now that it wasn't like, oh | 18:36 | |
I don't wanna participate, it was more like, | 18:39 | |
you go up and do it and I'll help you | 18:42 | |
every way I can and all that, so that's my memory | 18:43 | |
of it, was that people were very supportive. | 18:46 | |
I will have to remember her name later, | 18:49 | |
this PhD psychologist, she had a good friend | 18:52 | |
who worked at the university as well, | 18:56 | |
and I wanna say she was like a dean or somethin' | 18:58 | |
and all I can remember is her nickname was Worm. | 19:00 | |
Margaret Parrish knows who I'm talkin' about though. | 19:03 | |
- | I'll ask her, it may be in her interview. | 19:05 |
- | Yeah, she'll know who I'm talkin' about there. | 19:06 |
I go to the clinic, I put in my résumé, | 19:11 | |
I let them think that I'm just a dynamite counselor, | 19:15 | |
'cause now I have a B.A. in Psychology, | 19:18 | |
and I'm able to use the skills that I've gotten | 19:24 | |
from the Rape Crisis Line 'cause they were so good. | 19:27 | |
To listen and to reflect back, I mean, | 19:31 | |
all things that you still hear today, | 19:32 | |
they were doing as laypeople, and so I'm hired | 19:35 | |
at the clinic in that year. | 19:38 | |
- | So this is '79? | |
- | Uh-huh. | 19:41 |
- | Okay. | |
- | The first thing that happens with the, | 19:44 |
do you want me to go on with the clinic? | 19:45 | |
- | Yeah, yeah, keep goin'. | 19:47 |
- | The first thing that happens with the clinic is | 19:48 |
there's three of us who were hired at the same time. | 19:51 | |
From very different, yeah, we don't know each other | 19:56 | |
until we start working, well, | 19:59 | |
I might have heard of Sharon before. | 20:03 | |
But there's three of us who were hired | 20:04 | |
as counselors at the same time, | 20:06 | |
and we're working, working, working. | 20:07 | |
We're hired as abortion counselors. | 20:10 | |
Now I have very little medical experience, | 20:13 | |
I always swore I'd have nothing to do | 20:18 | |
with medicine, having watched my roommate | 20:20 | |
in '74 go through her first year of medical school. | 20:26 | |
I swore I'd have even less to do with medicine, | 20:30 | |
(giggles) it was just all corrupt | 20:33 | |
and all terrible and it was just awful | 20:36 | |
what they did to train medical students. | 20:38 | |
And their cohort in medical school | 20:41 | |
at Shands Teaching Hospital in Gainesville | 20:45 | |
is the first time they allow women in. | 20:47 | |
And so I become close friends through | 20:52 | |
that group with Kathy Cantwell. | 20:54 | |
- | Is she the one who was in the bad wreck? | 20:59 |
- | Yeah. | 21:01 |
- | Okay. | |
- | And Kathy Cantwell, at that point | 21:02 |
before she goes to medical school, | 21:05 | |
she had been a nurse, and she's married | 21:06 | |
to a man who I think is from Chile? | 21:09 | |
She's you know, going to South America, | 21:12 | |
and she is like the Martha Stewart, you know, | 21:17 | |
she's not really well-known, or even | 21:21 | |
in the feminist community at all, | 21:23 | |
but she goes to medical school | 21:25 | |
and I think it kinda radicalizes her. | 21:27 | |
I hear about that treatment of what's going on, | 21:28 | |
the surgeons failed every female student. | 21:32 | |
No matter how well they did, it didn't matter. | 21:37 | |
- | You're saying these are the first women | 21:40 |
to go through the Shand Medical School, wow. | 21:42 | |
- | Mm-hmm, and so watching medicine... | 21:44 |
Oh and I should say too that I had | 21:49 | |
that same experience with the University of Florida. | 21:50 | |
When I got done with my Bachelor's in Psychology, | 21:53 | |
I had been working with Dr. Pennypacker, Dr. Malagodi, | 21:57 | |
Dr. Adams, a little bit with Dr. Goldstein, all men. | 22:02 | |
And they loved my work, I worked in the experimental lab, | 22:08 | |
I got A's in the courses 'cause I really respond... | 22:12 | |
I thought I would like the counseling side | 22:17 | |
of psychology, but they were all into Jung, | 22:20 | |
and I couldn't do it, it made no sense to me. | 22:25 | |
When I found operant conditioning, I was like, | 22:29 | |
okay, this sounds like something | 22:30 | |
that can go somewhere, I understand it, | 22:32 | |
it's not all about dreams, it's about reality. | 22:36 | |
I went and my advisor was Dr. Malagodi, | 22:41 | |
and I would go and ask him about going | 22:45 | |
to graduate school, and he would get up | 22:48 | |
and leave the office, should've gotten a hint from that. | 22:49 | |
I tried to get recommendations from those three, | 22:52 | |
and to a man, they all told me, | 22:55 | |
you're just going to get pregnant and married, | 22:57 | |
or married and pregnant, and drop out, | 23:00 | |
and we don't want women in graduate school. | 23:02 | |
So that's December, well, the fall semester, | 23:05 | |
the fall quarter I guess we were then, | 23:10 | |
of '74, and when I tell people that today, | 23:13 | |
they're all like, well didn't you sue? | 23:17 | |
And it just never even occurred to me. | 23:19 | |
- | Was it even illegal yet? | 23:22 |
- | I don't know. | |
It didn't occur to me to sue, | 23:25 | |
and so I just accepted it, it was just like, | 23:31 | |
because I had wanted to get a PhD, | 23:33 | |
I had always wanted to get a PhD. | 23:36 | |
When that door just slammed, I was like, well, now what. | 23:39 | |
That's one of the things that really, | 23:45 | |
other than just trying to catch up | 23:47 | |
to the activists that I admired, | 23:49 | |
that really fueled my feminism. | 23:50 | |
Somebody once asked me, how are you going | 23:53 | |
to recruit more feminists, and I said, | 23:56 | |
the patriarchy just cranks 'em out, | 23:58 | |
we don't have to go recruit 'em. | 23:59 | |
(Rose giggles) | 24:01 | |
They make 'em all the time. | ||
And she was actually shocked by that answer. | 24:03 | |
I was like, how could you be shocked, just look around. | 24:05 | |
You just have to go and just advertise you're there, | 24:09 | |
and the pissed off women just come streamin' in. | 24:12 | |
And I was one of those ones who was just | 24:15 | |
so disappointed and angry about, again, | 24:20 | |
through the earlier C-R, you don't just sit | 24:24 | |
and be angry and frustrated and depressed. | 24:27 | |
You go out and you do somethin' about it. | 24:29 | |
So I was like, well, I think this is wrong, | 24:31 | |
and what I do about wrong is I go and I fix it. | 24:35 | |
That was another fueling factor there, | 24:40 | |
thank you Dr. Malagodi. (laughs) | 24:42 | |
That's why there's 22 years between my getting | 24:46 | |
a B.A. and my going back to graduate school. | 24:49 | |
Took me a long time to feel like it was okay again. | 24:52 | |
And they did let women in shortly thereafter. | 24:57 | |
After that year, about maybe in 1976 | 25:03 | |
they started letting women into that side | 25:06 | |
of psychology, and I actually got to hang out | 25:09 | |
with them all at conferences, 'cause remember | 25:12 | |
I'm working in the discipline. | 25:14 | |
We go to the Midwestern Association of Behavioral Analysis | 25:16 | |
or Applied Behavior Analysis, we go | 25:20 | |
to the big conference with Nate Azrin | 25:22 | |
and all the heavyweights in that kind of psychology. | 25:24 | |
I'm able to see my old professors interacting | 25:31 | |
with their female graduate students. | 25:34 | |
The first thing I notice is that these female | 25:35 | |
graduate students are beyond meek and mild, | 25:37 | |
so I'm going, well, I don't think I woulda... | 25:40 | |
I could never have kept that together. | 25:44 | |
And the second thing is I would stand there | 25:48 | |
and watch them, oh hi, good buddy, | 25:51 | |
come over here and meet my graduate students. | 25:54 | |
And they would introduce the men and skip over the women. | 25:56 | |
It was like she wasn't even there, | 26:00 | |
and she'd be standing there smiling, | 26:02 | |
and again I was like, I couldn't hold it together. | 26:03 | |
So even if I had fought my way in, | 26:07 | |
you know, it just wasn't gonna happen. | 26:09 | |
- | I think all of that's kind of a footnote. | 26:14 |
But that's certainly a consciousness-raising one. | 26:16 | |
- | Yeah people are shocked that the University of Florida | 26:21 |
did that, but that's what was goin' on at that time. | 26:23 | |
- | Yeah, I think that was kind of a footnote | 26:27 |
from when you went to the clinic. | 26:31 | |
There's three counselors hired at the same time, | 26:33 | |
doing rape counseling. | 26:35 | |
- | Abortion counseling. | |
- | Abortion counseling, 'cause rape counseling is | 26:39 |
how you got into feeling like you could do counseling. | 26:42 | |
- | I had never really been around medicine. | 26:48 |
I was sure as I was doing the tr, | 26:52 | |
we had this great trainer named Yonah Levin, | 26:55 | |
she was from up north, maybe New York, | 26:59 | |
and she's gone back up to New York. | 27:01 | |
She had some sort of formal training | 27:10 | |
in psychology or counseling, and she was just, | 27:11 | |
a lesbian feminist, she was marvelous. | 27:14 | |
I was sure I was gonna faint, you know, the blood, | 27:18 | |
the surgery, the needles, something, I was gonna faint. | 27:21 | |
But I didn't, and I got through it, | 27:25 | |
and so became more comfortable | 27:28 | |
with medicine from that point on. | 27:29 | |
But one of the first things that happened to us | 27:33 | |
at the clinic was maybe about two or three months | 27:35 | |
after we were hired, there became a $10,000 deficit. | 27:40 | |
Because the bookkeeper had ripped off the clinic. | 27:47 | |
(wheezes) | 27:51 | |
(Rose groans) | ||
And gone off to Alaska. | 27:53 | |
And we had to sit through this meeting. | 27:56 | |
And most of the sort of higher-ups, | 28:00 | |
the clinic wasn't real structured then, | 28:05 | |
it was sort of a Board of Directors or gosh, | 28:08 | |
what are they called, called it something, | 28:13 | |
you know, the committee who ran it. | 28:16 | |
I don't even think there was a CEO or definite leader. | 28:19 | |
They kinda treated us like we were | 28:28 | |
the unwanted children, the three of us. | 28:30 | |
They looked at us like, maybe we could cure | 28:33 | |
that $10,000 deficit if we got rid of the three new ones. | 28:35 | |
They actually had a meeting where they had to decide | 28:40 | |
whether to keep us on or not, so, (wheezes) | 28:42 | |
so that really banded us together, | 28:46 | |
and gave us a good insight, but then the proposal became | 28:48 | |
that they were gonna have bake sales. | 28:52 | |
And I was going, are you serious? | 28:54 | |
You're gonna bake sale your way out of a 10, | 28:56 | |
that's gonna be a lot of brownies. (giggles) | 28:59 | |
I can't remember exactly what happened, | 29:01 | |
but we were able to keep our jobs, | 29:05 | |
but it was just always rocky at the clinic. | 29:07 | |
Now that's after the divorce, I'm curious | 29:13 | |
whether Margaret mentioned the divorce? | 29:15 | |
- | Her divorce? | 29:18 |
- | No the clinic had a divorce. | |
The clinic divorced the Birthing Center. | 29:22 | |
- | Yeah, she did talk about that. | 29:25 |
That was the '80s, though, wasn't it? | 29:27 | |
- | It had to be in the '70s 'cause it was | 29:31 |
before I came, and see, my perspective | 29:32 | |
on that is very interesting 'cause again, | 29:36 | |
I'm able to bridge these groups | 29:37 | |
where I don't have a solid, you know, | 29:39 | |
handle in one or I'm not known | 29:43 | |
to be on this side or that side, | 29:45 | |
and what happens with me is I start working | 29:47 | |
with Judy, Margaret, and Byllye, who are still | 29:52 | |
at the Gainesville Women's Health Center in '78. | 29:53 | |
I start meeting with them over the Mother's Day | 30:00 | |
March for ERA, and they always wanted to meet | 30:07 | |
at the clinic 'cause they were always workin' there. | 30:10 | |
So I go into the clinic, and I can see | 30:12 | |
the staff is looking at them, not so much Byllye, | 30:14 | |
Byllye didn't seem to be around a lot, | 30:18 | |
but Margaret and Judy really caught it. | 30:20 | |
The staff is looking at them with hatred in their eyes. | 30:23 | |
And I'm going, what's up with this place? | 30:27 | |
(giggles) You know, this is no different | 30:30 | |
than where I worked for the state where everybody was | 30:33 | |
at everybody's throat for no good reason. | 30:35 | |
The staff is lookin' at me like, oh you're with them. | 30:42 | |
I'm like, oh boy there's somethin' | 30:45 | |
really big goin' on here, and what happens is | 30:48 | |
there's some crackdown about signing, | 30:55 | |
I don't know, hours or something, | 30:57 | |
yeah okay, they do a management takeover. | 31:06 | |
The place probably havin' money troubles, who knows. | 31:08 | |
Judy and Margaret and Byllye are on the hook | 31:15 | |
as far as they're on the paper as the corporate people. | 31:18 | |
They do kind of a more heavy-handed management thing, | 31:25 | |
and the staff revolts and they take, | 31:29 | |
'cause it's before computers, they take all | 31:32 | |
the patient identification chart records | 31:35 | |
so you can't figure out how to find a patient | 31:37 | |
in all those charts, and the appointment book. | 31:41 | |
'Cause Judy, Margaret, and Byllye locked | 31:46 | |
the staff out or something, now I'm just | 31:48 | |
all hearin' this, you know, in the community. | 31:51 | |
And then the lawyers get involved, | 31:54 | |
and I think Brown and Miller are in on that, | 31:56 | |
and they're on Judy, Margaret, and Byllye's side | 31:59 | |
'cause they're the professionals. | 32:01 | |
And we're all grassroots, but I'm sittin' there | 32:04 | |
and I'm lumped in on the Judy, Margaret, and Byllye side | 32:07 | |
because I'm hangin' out with them | 32:09 | |
doin' the Mother's Day March for ERA. | 32:11 | |
I don't know how a year later, after this divorce, | 32:18 | |
it sort of all comes to pass that I'm not on the hook. | 32:23 | |
But somehow I'm not, they accept me. | 32:27 | |
- | The clinic-Birthing Center divorce is | 32:33 |
while you were there. | 32:36 | |
- | No, it's while I'm | |
in the community, but I don't have links | 32:39 | |
to either one, I'm only linked with Judy, | 32:42 | |
Margaret, and Byllye over this march. | 32:44 | |
- | When is it in relation to when you worked there? | 32:48 |
- | I go to work at the clinic about a year later. | 32:51 |
- | Okay, okay. | 32:54 |
- | About a year later. | |
I think by then, Byllye's getting ready | 32:58 | |
to take off for Atlanta. | 33:03 | |
- | Okay. | |
- | And they're all over at the Birthing Center. | 33:08 |
I don't really see them anymore. | 33:12 | |
- | Oh that's where they went, | 33:15 |
they went to the Birthing, okay. | 33:16 | |
They bought the Birthing Center or something like that? | 33:19 | |
- | Well I think the Birthing Center was created | 33:21 |
off of the Gainesville Women's Health Center. | 33:24 | |
And so that's the settlement of the divorce is, | 33:28 | |
you guys get the Birthing Center, and the staff | 33:31 | |
will own the Gainesville Women's Health Center. | 33:34 | |
- | Which was the abortion clinic. | 33:38 |
- | Mm-hmm. | 33:40 |
- | I think I got that. | 33:50 |
So when you went to work there, | 33:54 | |
you were not with Judy, Margaret, and Byllye, | 33:57 | |
you were with the clinic 'cause you were doing | 34:00 | |
abortion counseling, and they were doing the other stuff. | 34:03 | |
- | Yeah. | 34:05 |
- | Even though originally | |
it was the whole thing, Margaret talked mostly | 34:07 | |
about how what they were doing, that full spectrum, | 34:09 | |
was something nobody else in the country was doing. | 34:15 | |
- | Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, definitely, | 34:16 |
we had Carol Downer come, I mean they did. | 34:18 | |
Shortly after, I think she got arrested, | 34:25 | |
you know, for the yogurt or something. | 34:27 | |
Yeah, they were doin' a whole lot | 34:29 | |
of really cutting-edge medicine | 34:32 | |
with the Gainesville Women's Health Center, | 34:37 | |
and with the Birthing Center too. | 34:39 | |
So it was really sad for me sitting out | 34:42 | |
in the community to get in there and know | 34:45 | |
that this big split had happened, | 34:49 | |
but splits had happened before. | 34:50 | |
I don't remember during my interviewing now | 34:55 | |
that I'm looking at how close these events were, | 34:57 | |
why they weren't sayin' hey, you were just hangin' out | 35:00 | |
with these Birthing Center people. | 35:02 | |
I don't know why that didn't come up, | 35:06 | |
except again, that some of the main energy | 35:08 | |
at the clinic at that time was people from the farm, | 35:10 | |
so Lynda Lou and Marilyn, and they knew Marsha, | 35:15 | |
and really I was more with Marsha | 35:18 | |
than with Judy, Margaret, and Byllye. | 35:21 | |
Once we were done with the march, | 35:23 | |
we sort of went our separate ways. | 35:26 | |
- | What was the farm connection to Gainesville? | 35:27 |
- | Sorry? | 35:29 |
- | How did the farm get | |
connected to Gainesville, was that the Birthing Center? | 35:31 | |
- | Oh no, C-R farm is Lynda Lou Simmons (mumbles) farm. | 35:33 |
- | Okay it's not the farm in Tennessee, okay, okay. | 35:38 |
- | Yeah, yeah not that farm (giggles) | 35:41 |
I know about that farm, but yeah. | 35:42 | |
- | You're now working as an abortion counselor, | 35:46 |
you and two other people, and you narrowly miss | 35:48 | |
getting wrote off when there is an embezzler. | 35:52 | |
How did you eventually get fired or whatever it was? | 35:57 | |
They said you got kicked out (mumbles), | 36:00 | |
no that was something else. | 36:01 | |
- | I was actually at the clinic for 11 years. | 36:04 |
- | 11 years, okay, as an abortion counselor? | 36:07 |
- | Well, yes, and then I eventually was | 36:12 |
the Counseling Director, I think we called it. | 36:16 | |
I worked as a lab tech, I worked in the CSR, | 36:24 | |
the Central Sterilizing, not a lot, but (giggles) | 36:28 | |
when there was no one else, I made a stab at it. | 36:31 | |
- | Was that '79 to '90? | 36:38 |
- | Yeah, yeah, '90. | |
Actually I think I left February of '91. | 36:44 | |
- | Wow. | 36:47 |
- | Mm-hmm. | |
Eventually I was Director. | 36:51 | |
- | Wow, God. | |
Of the whole thing? | 36:54 | |
- | Mm-hmm. | |
- | Okay, and that thing doesn't close down till '97, right? | 37:01 |
- | I think probably more like '94. | 37:05 |
I think it's earlier than '97. | 37:09 | |
Patricia Lassiter and Abby Palmer | 37:13 | |
were kinda in charge then, the deficit, I think. | 37:20 | |
Sorry, Abby, (laughing) this is different | 37:25 | |
from Abby Goldsmith, there's a couple, | 37:27 | |
well actually was a couple of Abby's | 37:29 | |
in on the Health Center, but Abby Palmer was | 37:32 | |
a sweet person, oh, very, very nice person. | 37:34 | |
Not a really good business person, | 37:41 | |
ya had to be tough, ya had to be tough | 37:45 | |
with that place, oh my goodness the things. | 37:48 | |
There was always a deficit, was always, | 37:53 | |
I mean $10,000, ha, we ran with a $30,000 deficit. | 37:56 | |
We just didn't worry about it, but it drove Abby crazy. | 38:01 | |
She went to balance the budget, | 38:06 | |
and in balancing the budget, it either | 38:10 | |
became apparent they couldn't do that | 38:12 | |
or it did the clinic in, I don't know which. | 38:14 | |
If you were gonna pay that close of attention | 38:17 | |
to the money, then you were gonna drive yourself crazy. | 38:22 | |
So I was there during when the protest... | 38:33 | |
When I first went to the Gainesville Women's Health Center | 38:36 | |
it was on 4th Avenue, I think, in Southwest, | 38:39 | |
across from Alachua General Hospital. | 38:42 | |
So we were in the medical district, | 38:48 | |
but that's where we first started having protesters. | 38:50 | |
When I actually first started at the clinic, | 38:55 | |
we didn't have any protesters, that comes a little later. | 38:57 | |
And the church we're dealing with is called Maranatha, | 39:00 | |
this medical district was right up | 39:05 | |
on the university campus, I mean like, | 39:08 | |
down the street from the administration building. | 39:11 | |
And Maranatha is a campus ministry, | 39:18 | |
and they had their headquarters or building | 39:21 | |
or office in that same area, and so it was very easy | 39:24 | |
for them to organize on a Saturday | 39:27 | |
and then come down to the clinic to protest. | 39:30 | |
For some reason, I was always the one | 39:33 | |
in charge of security, again I think | 39:38 | |
I'm following in Alyce's steps. | 39:41 | |
I get charged with very early on, getting out there | 39:49 | |
and going nose-to-nose with protesters. | 39:53 | |
- | Add that to the list of things that you were doing. | 40:00 |
(Donna cackles) | 40:02 | |
- | (mumbles) Counseling, lab tech, in charge of security. | 40:04 |
When would you say that the protesting began? | 40:09 | |
You started in '79, there's no protesters, | 40:13 | |
is it in the '80s, or... | 40:16 | |
- | Oh, yeah, I'm thinking that when Ronald Reagan came in | 40:29 |
that that gave them a real lift. | 40:34 | |
- | Which was '80. | 40:36 |
- | Yeah, it could definitely be | |
in the early '80s. | 40:39 | |
- | Yeah. | |
You know, it's funny, I wanna pause this. | 40:42 | |
So talk about the '80s and your experience | 40:48 | |
with the '80s compared to the '70s. | 40:50 | |
- | Well the '70s, I'm just so young, | 40:52 |
I don't know why I'm so immature then, | 40:54 | |
but looking back on it, I'm like, oh my God, you know? | 40:56 | |
I have to constantly remind myself now | 41:01 | |
that I'm a professor that students forget things, | 41:03 | |
and they promise they'll do, and you know, | 41:06 | |
that that was me, (chuckles) you know, | 41:08 | |
so quit being so hard on them | 41:12 | |
because I did exactly everything that they're doing. | 41:13 | |
Again, I'm doing this I-gotta-catch-up-to. | 41:21 | |
Alyce is gone by then, she'd moved to Tallahassee, | 41:25 | |
I think, and was really into, she's sort of | 41:30 | |
the first lobbyist for State NOW as I recall, Alyce McAdam. | 41:34 | |
Edna Saffy's graduated and gone to Jacksonville, | 41:38 | |
Jeanette Blevins, who was a secretary staff | 41:41 | |
at the University of Florida, she is gone to law school, | 41:44 | |
and gone up and lived in D.C., | 41:49 | |
so my role models that I'm always trying | 41:51 | |
to catch up to have all left town, | 41:54 | |
but I'm still trying to catch up to them. | 41:57 | |
So when I get to the Women's Health Center, | 41:59 | |
of course that takes all kinds of energy, | 42:01 | |
but then this protester thing comes in | 42:04 | |
with the abortion politics, and that's, | 42:07 | |
that to me is just wonderful. | 42:10 | |
A lot of the energy at the clinic at that time, | 42:16 | |
during the late '70s when I start and the early '80s, | 42:20 | |
it's very, we're going to be all about love | 42:24 | |
and connecting and peaceful, and I can do that | 42:30 | |
for a certain time period, and then I get feistier. | 42:34 | |
Being outside with the protesters is a real good use | 42:38 | |
of my energy, 'cause this is people I can mess with, | 42:41 | |
this is people I can yell at or call the police on | 42:44 | |
or be aggressive with, and so I can really | 42:47 | |
get that energy out there and do something | 42:52 | |
that the rest of them don't wanna mess with. | 42:54 | |
And I'm protecting the clinic, | 43:01 | |
so I'm doing it for a good reason. | 43:02 | |
I ultimately become very close to the women | 43:10 | |
in this clinic, there's about 30, 35, | 43:13 | |
there's a pretty big staff, a lot of 'em work part-time, | 43:16 | |
and there's a woman up in the front office, | 43:20 | |
and she is wild and crazy, she is pretty much | 43:22 | |
just like me, she's just not gonna take orders | 43:26 | |
from anyone for any good reason. | 43:28 | |
She comes to work in these really high heels | 43:30 | |
with the little fuzzy feet on them, | 43:33 | |
pink feathery things, and she just wears | 43:37 | |
anything she wants to, which is almost un-feminist | 43:39 | |
in those days, but she's just gonna be her. | 43:43 | |
And her name is Gethan, and she's in a fire. | 43:45 | |
And she's killed, and not even, it takes 18 days. | 43:50 | |
She's in this terrible fire, and so she's gone overnight. | 43:55 | |
Abby Goldsmith, now Abby is a very interesting person. | 43:58 | |
In the '70s, Abby isn't really at the university, | 44:03 | |
she's not a student, but she's | 44:09 | |
in the community, and she's an anarchist. | 44:10 | |
I meet up with Abby during my travels, | 44:15 | |
and I kind of admire who she is, | 44:18 | |
she has people living under her dining room table, | 44:21 | |
she's just totally wild and crazy. | 44:24 | |
She's very forceful, very down-to-earth kind | 44:26 | |
of personality, I really like that about her. | 44:29 | |
She's working at the clinic, and she's very close | 44:31 | |
to Gethan, and so she and I go out | 44:35 | |
and proceed to have too many pitchers of beer | 44:37 | |
at the Windjammer and decide, | 44:39 | |
we've gotta get politically involved. | 44:43 | |
That we're gonna take this energy of feeling | 44:46 | |
like our life could end at any moment and all that, | 44:49 | |
and we've gotta get politically involved, | 44:53 | |
and what's going on in, gosh this woulda been | 44:55 | |
I think '82, is that the ERA is coming due again, | 44:58 | |
it got that extension which is why | 45:03 | |
they didn't want us doing anything in '78. | 45:05 | |
Got an extension, but the extension is only | 45:10 | |
for four years, and so it's coming all due again. | 45:13 | |
The ERA missionaries have come to town. | 45:17 | |
They have been sent by Ellie Smeal | 45:21 | |
and the ERA groups that have gotten together | 45:24 | |
as a coalition, of course National NOW is | 45:28 | |
in the thick of it, there's no NOW chapter functioning. | 45:32 | |
The Student Chapter has gone totally | 45:35 | |
into peace and love and I don't know what they're doing | 45:39 | |
but anytime I inquire about them, | 45:41 | |
I'm told that the leader of the student group, | 45:44 | |
who I actually think I knew her name, and I had met her, | 45:47 | |
she was more interested in navel-gazing | 45:53 | |
or some derogatory thing like that. | 45:55 | |
The ERA missionaries are kind of, | 46:00 | |
and we didn't know they were called missionaries | 46:02 | |
until much later (guffaws). | 46:04 | |
The ERA action team are these folks from, | 46:06 | |
feminists from up north somewhere | 46:11 | |
who've come down to the South, particularly Florida, | 46:13 | |
to get the ERA moving, and they're floundering around. | 46:17 | |
They're lost, they don't know anybody | 46:21 | |
in the feminist community other than people | 46:24 | |
who've just come to town, most of the organized | 46:26 | |
feminists would not deal with them. | 46:29 | |
Abby and I decide we're gonna bite the bullet, | 46:34 | |
we're gonna go work on the ERA. | 46:36 | |
We go over and we start volunteering our services, | 46:39 | |
now I don't know how much Abby did. | 46:42 | |
These people, oh my Lord, they'd get on the phone | 46:46 | |
in front of us, and talk about, | 46:50 | |
you wouldn't believe how large the insects are | 46:54 | |
here and the natives don't seem to notice. | 46:57 | |
I was like (chuckling) this is really | 47:00 | |
not helping the bonding project, you know. | 47:03 | |
I don't know they just, (sighs) ay, | 47:08 | |
there are so many stories like that. | 47:10 | |
They weren't the easiest folks to get along with, | 47:13 | |
but I was again seeing this different, | 47:17 | |
because I was a Northerner, so I wasn't one of them | 47:19 | |
that didn't get it, that we have to come help. | 47:23 | |
(laughs) I wasn't seen as a native. | 47:26 | |
I'm like, I don't know how I always get in this | 47:29 | |
one foot in both camp, but there I was again. | 47:32 | |
- | Because you don't have the heavy accent or somethin'? | 47:39 |
- | Yeah, maybe, I don't know. (laughs) | 47:41 |
So the ERA ends on somethin' like June 6th, 1982. | 47:47 | |
One thing I will say about the ERA action team | 47:54 | |
and the missionaries, they worked nonstop. | 47:56 | |
They might have been as obnoxious as hell, | 48:00 | |
but they worked nonstop, I mean 50, 60 hour weeks. | 48:02 | |
Six of 'em, they organized Gainesville | 48:05 | |
from top to bottom, they knew who was who, | 48:08 | |
how they were connected to somebody else, | 48:10 | |
and slowly I was able to get the community in, | 48:14 | |
as long as I kept 'em (chuckles) far away | 48:18 | |
from the obnoxious Northern people, | 48:19 | |
I could get like Corky and that whole group | 48:21 | |
to come to things or do something. | 48:25 | |
But when their big project was, | 48:30 | |
they came in one day and they must have | 48:33 | |
had orders from Washington, we're going | 48:35 | |
to turn Senator Kirkpatrick around. | 48:37 | |
Well, Senator Kirkpatrick was a good ol' boy | 48:39 | |
who had run on an anti-ERA platform. | 48:42 | |
His wife was more anti-ERA than he was. | 48:46 | |
And we were sitting there going, | 48:50 | |
we're gonna go convince him with green balloons | 48:52 | |
and a plant, I don't think so. | 48:53 | |
We'd be further along in this project | 48:58 | |
if we could figure out who he frequented | 49:01 | |
for sex and blackmail him, I mean, now we're talking. | 49:03 | |
But balloons and a plant aren't gonna do it. | 49:07 | |
'Cause he's got way too much political support | 49:10 | |
to be anti-ERA, so we were like, | 49:12 | |
these people have something going, | 49:18 | |
but they don't have the whole thing. | 49:19 | |
They were going to, at the end of the ERA campaign, | 49:21 | |
take all the resources, all the boxes, | 49:24 | |
'cause again, we didn't have computers yet, | 49:27 | |
all the boxes of cards that people had signed out, | 49:29 | |
signing the ERA petition where they indicated | 49:31 | |
what they were willing to do, | 49:34 | |
what their address was, all this information, | 49:35 | |
they were gonna take that all with them. | 49:37 | |
Unless we started a NOW chapter, | 49:40 | |
then they could leave it with us. | 49:43 | |
So Abby Goldsmith and I started the second town NOW chapter | 49:45 | |
in 1982, and we called it Gainesville Area NOW. | 49:50 | |
Who knew that a name, I mean Abby, | 49:59 | |
Abby's even more cut-and-dried than I am, | 50:01 | |
Abby's like, just slap a name on there, | 50:03 | |
let's get this done. (chuckles) | 50:05 | |
We were gonna call it I think Alachua County NOW, | 50:08 | |
and Felicity Trueblood, who was a professor | 50:13 | |
at University of Florida, and she | 50:16 | |
and Phyllis Meek, who was a dean, | 50:19 | |
were very much in on the ERA campaign. | 50:26 | |
Felicity objected 'cause she lived in Putnam County. | 50:33 | |
She said, if you call it Alachua County, | 50:36 | |
it won't include me, I'm like, | 50:39 | |
oh you're being so picky, who cares? | 50:40 | |
(laughs) We just wanted the resource, | 50:42 | |
we don't care what we're called. | 50:43 | |
I think that's how we got to Gainesville Area. | 50:48 | |
That's the reason we started the chapter, | 50:51 | |
was the negotiated you must start this chapter | 50:53 | |
or we'll take everything with us. | 50:55 | |
They did leave everything, we supported | 50:57 | |
a pro-ERA candidate named Margaret Epps, | 51:00 | |
who was out of the League of Women Voters. | 51:03 | |
For senate, she came really close to defeating | 51:07 | |
George Kirkpatrick, which was astounding | 51:10 | |
in those days, that we could get that much. | 51:12 | |
Because it would be like running a democrat | 51:15 | |
anywhere in Alabama right now, | 51:18 | |
and running against Shelby, and coming really close. | 51:21 | |
The thing with Margaret that was very interesting is | 51:25 | |
Abby and I go up to her campaign headquarters, | 51:27 | |
and we have volunteers that we have all gathered there. | 51:31 | |
They're streaming out the doors, crying, | 51:33 | |
gnashing their teeth, angry like I've never seen. | 51:36 | |
All these young women, I'm like, oh my God, what's going on? | 51:39 | |
Your candidate's anti-abortion! | 51:44 | |
Oh, dear (cackling), and so we have to sit Margaret down | 51:47 | |
in the Windjammer for like three hours | 51:52 | |
and go through it, you can personally be against it, | 51:55 | |
but politically, if you're elected, | 51:59 | |
you have to support Roe v. Wade, and this is why. | 52:02 | |
And just go through all the stories with her. | 52:06 | |
- | (inhales deeply) Wow, think we need to stop. | 52:13 |
Item Info
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