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With Her Fist Raised

Page 16

by Laura L. Lovett


  28. Rowe, “All Kinds of Love—in a Chinese Restaurant.”

  29. Rowe, “All Kinds of Love—in a Chinese Restaurant,” 5.

  30. Rowe, “All Kinds of Love—in a Chinese Restaurant,” 10.

  31. Elinor Guggenheimer, quoted in Michel, Children’s Interests/Mothers’ Rights.

  32. Fousekis, Demanding Child Care.

  33. Moynihan, The Negro Family.

  34. Ickeringill, “Story of a Day Care Center.”

  35. Ickeringill, “Story of a Day Care Center.”

  36. “Mrs. Johnson Heads Pre-School Project,” New York Times, February 5, 1965, 15.

  37. Stone, Head Start to Confidence.

  38. Fitzsimmons and Rowe, A Study in Child Care, 82.

  39. Swinth, Feminism’s Forgotten Fight, 164.

  40. The Children Are Waiting, report of the Early Childhood Development Task Force (New York: June 20, 1970).

  41. Fitzsimmons and Rowe, A Study in Child Care, 8.

  42. Fitzsimmons and Rowe, A Study in Child Care, ii–iii.

  43. Rowe, “All Kinds of Love—in a Chinese Restaurant.”

  44. Rowe, “All Kinds of Love—in a Chinese Restaurant.”

  45. Rose, The Promise of Preschool, 60.

  46. Congressional Record, May 11, 1972, 105–8.

  47. “Ceiling Falls on Children in City Day-Care Center,” New York Times, April 24, 1969, 53.

  48. Steinem, “The City Politic: Room at the Bottom, Boredom at the Top.”

  49. Lovett interview with Hughes, March 17, 2014.

  50. Charlotte Curtis, “Care Center’s Friends Enjoy a Party,” New York Times, December 22, 1969, 37.

  51. Christopher Gray, “Streetscapes: West 80th Street Day Care Center; a Bright Hope for Children Giving Way to Office Condo,” New York Times, March 13, 1988.

  52. Steinem, “The City Politic: Room at the Bottom, Boredom at the Top.”

  53. Steinem, “The City Politic: Room at the Bottom, Boredom at the Top.”

  54. Steinem, “The City Politic: Room at the Bottom, Boredom at the Top,” 10–11; Rowe, “All Kinds of Love—in a Chinese Restaurant.”

  55. Steven V. Roberts, “City Trying to Ease Impact of Renewal on West Side,” New York Times, December 26, 1966, 1.

  56. Roberts, “City Trying to Ease Impact of Renewal on West Side,” 1, 18; Kornbluh, The Battle for Welfare Rights, 20. Although on slum clearance, see Lovett, Conceiving the Future.

  57. Lovett interview with Hughes, March 17, 2014.

  58. Dorothy Pitman Hughes in the film Break and Enter (Rompiendo Puertas), 1971. Cited in Muzio, Radical Imagination, Radical Humanity, 28.

  59. Lovett interview with Hughes, March 17, 2014.

  60. Patricia Lyndon, “What Day Care Means to the Children, the Parents, the Teachers, the Community, the President,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, February 15, 1970, 209.

  61. Alfonso A. Narvaez, “Parents Hold Day-Care Offices Three Hours to Demand Changes,” New York Times, January 27, 1970, 39.

  62. Lovett interview with Hughes, March 17, 2014.

  63. Jule Sugarman was an administrator of the New York City Human Resources Administration. He was also one of the key architects of the Head Start program, which was founded as an initiative of President Johnson’s War on Poverty after 1964. Dennis Hevesi, “Jule Sugarman, Director and Architect of Head Start, Dies at 83,” New York Times, November 6, 2010.

  64. Lovett interview with Hughes, March 17, 2014.

  65. Lesly Jones, “Day Care Heads Are Warned on New State Funding Rules,” New York Amsterdam News, January 15, 1972, C1.

  66. Jones, “Day Care Heads Are Warned on New State Funding Rules.”

  67. Jones, “Day Care Heads Are Warned on New State Funding Rules.”

  68. Lesly Jones, “Rocky Day Care Program Attacked,” New York Amsterdam News, 1971, A1.

  69. Michael T. Kaufman, “Day Care Truce Ends Sit-in at Lindsay Center,” New York Times, January 19, 1972, 45.

  70. Mary Rowe, “All Kinds of Love—in a Chinese Restaurant,” 10.

  CHAPTER 4: “SISTERS UNDER THE SKIN”

  1. On the women’s movement, see Rosen, The World Split Open; Thompson, “Multicultural Feminishm.”

  2. Jones, Eubanks, and Smith, Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around, 215.

  3. Dorothy knew that her friend Flo Kennedy had suffered an abusive marital relationship, although by the time Dorothy met Flo, the relationship had ended and her alcoholic husband, Charlie Dye, had died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1959. Interview with Randolph, Florynce “Flo” Kennedy, 60–64, 69.

  4. Laura L. Lovett interview with Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Gloria Steinem, October 3, 2013.

  5. Laura L. Lovett interview with Bob Gangi, August 2016.

  6. Steinem, My Life on the Road, 46–47.

  7. “What’s on TV?,” New York Amsterdam News, March 1, 1969. Note that the New York magazine article published February 24, 1969, and Dorothy appears on television show on February 27, 1969.

  8. Lovett interview with Hughes and Steinem, October 3, 2013.

  9. Steinem, My Life on the Road, 47.

  10. Hughes, “Free to Be on West 80th Street,” 230.

  11. Steinem, My Life on the Road, 47.

  12. Springer, Living for the Revolution, 3.

  13. Gloria Steinem, “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation,” New York, April 7, 1969, 8.

  14. Lovett telephone interview with Hughes, October 18, 2011.

  15. Lovett telephone interview with Hughes, October 18, 2011.

  16. Hughes, “Free to Be on West 80th Street.”

  17. Jacqui Jackson, “The Black Women’s Movement and Women’s Lib,” Oswegonian, February 11, 1972; Florynce Kennedy Papers, MC555, Box 25, File 6: Black Liberation/Political Action.

  18. Mary Cantwell, “‘I Can’t Call You My Sister Yet’: A Black Woman Looks at Women’s Lib,” Mademoiselle, May 1971, 182–83, 219–21.

  19. Guy-Sheftall, Words of Fire, 15.

  20. Hughes, “Free to Be on West 80th Street.”

  21. King, Freedom Song, 451–52.

  22. Cantwell, “‘I Can’t Call You My Sister Yet.’”

  23. Steinem, “After Black Power,” 10.

  24. Steinem, “The City Politic: A Racial Walking Tour,” 7.

  25. Dorothy kept no record of her speaking engagements, but newspaper articles allow me to reconstruct part of her speaking schedule. For instance, in the fall of 1970, Dorothy and Gloria spoke on September 21 at the University of Oklahoma; on September 22 at St. Louis College in Missouri; on October 2 in Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 13 in Billings, Montana, on October 15 at Atlantic Community College in New Jersey, on November 4 in Lehigh, Pennsylvania, on November 5 at Skidmore College in New York, on November 19 at Monmouth College in New Jersey, and on December 3 at Monroe Community College in New York. Joretta Purdue, “Life Styles Depict the Philosophies of Women’s Liberationists,” Daily Oklahoman, September 22, 1970, 4; Charlene Prost, “2 Feminist Movement Leaders Say Men Need Liberating Too,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 22, 1970, 17; “Women’s Lib Leaders Speak at the Mount,” Cincinnati Enquirer, October 2, 1970, 30; “Lib Gals to Talk at EMC,” Billings Gazette, September 23, 1970, 13; “Women’s Lib to Be Aired,” Morning Call (Allentown, PA), October 29, 1970, 48; “Skidmore Schedules Lecturers,” Troy Record, October 21, 1970, 27; “Two Women’s Lib Spokesmen to Speak at Atlantic College,” Vineland Times Journal, October 15, 1970, 17; “Writer Lectures on Women’s Lib,” Asbury Park Press, November 19, 1970, 31; “Steinem to Speak,” Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY), December 3, 1970, 24.

  26. Steinem, My Life on the Road, 49.

  27. Steinem, My Life on the Road, 47.

  28. “Some Blacks Agree There’s ‘Subtle Racism,’” Capital, May 5, 1972, 10.

  29. Laura L. Lovett interview with Patrice Quinn, February 19, 2015.

  30. Lovett interview with Quinn, Febuary 19, 2015.

  31. Laura L. Lovett interview with Doro
thy Pitman Hughes and Gloria Steinem, October 3, 2013.

  32. “Are Liberated Women Hopelessly Middle Class?,” New York Amsterdam News, December 5, 1970, 11.

  33. “Are Liberated Women Hopelessly Middle Class?,” 11.

  34. “Speech,” Gloria Steinem Papers, no date, 2.

  35. “Wedding Ceremony for Dorothy and Clarence Hughes,” Gloria Steinem Papers, Series III, Speeches, Box 101; Folder Undated Speeches and Appearances, 2–3.

  36. Steinem, “Speech,” 1.

  37. Steinem, “Speech,” 2.

  38. Steinem, “Speech,” 2.

  39. Steinem, “Speech,” 2.

  40. Marilyn Mercer, “Gloria: The Unhidden Persuader,” McCall’s, January 1972, 67.

  41. Mercer, “Gloria,” 68.

  42. Mercer, “Gloria,” 69.

  43. Mercer, “Gloria.”

  44. Toni Morrison, “What the Black Woman Thinks about Women’s Lib,” New York Times, August 22, 1971.

  45. Morrison, “What the Black Woman Thinks about Women’s Lib.”

  46. Alice Steltzer, “If No Trouble, Job Wasn’t Done,” News Journal (Wilmington, DE), March 16, 1972, 33.

  47. Lynn Litterine, “Feminism in Black and White,” Record (Hackensack, NJ), November 30, 1973, 19.

  48. Litterine, “Feminism in Black and White.”

  49. Mercer, “Gloria,” 69.

  50. Mercer, “Gloria,” 69.

  51. Martha Lear named the movement as such in a May 1968 New York Times Magazine.

  52. Mercer, “Gloria,” 69.

  53. See Rotskoff and Lovett, When We Were Free to Be.

  54. Feigen, Not One of the Boys, 43.

  55. Feigen, Not One of the Boys, 43.

  56. Ruth Abram, “Introduction,” in Perspectives on Non-Sexist Early Childhood Education, ed. Barbara Sprung (New York: Teachers College Press, 1978), 17.

  57. Thomas, Free to Be. See, also, Laura L. Lovett, “Free to Be . . . You and Me: Revisiting a Feminist Classic,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 43 (2015): 273–76.

  58. Hughes, “Free to Be on West 80th Street.”

  59. Letty Pogrebin, “When Ms. Met That Girl,” Ms. 22, no. 3 (2012): 60–62.

  60. Letty Pogrebin, “Toys for Free Children,” Ms. (1974): 48–53, 82–85.

  61. Quinn, “A Free Perspective.”

  62. Hughes, “Free to Be on West 80th Street.”

  CHAPTER 5: “RACISM WITH ROSES”

  1. As Flo Kennedy put it: “I also attended the Atlantic City Beauty Contest protest, which was the best fun I can imagine anyone wanting to have on any single day of her life. It was very brazen and very brash, and there were some arrests—Peggy Dobbins was charged with releasing a stink bomb. No bras were burned, though that was a media invention, and that’s when I lost what little respect I had left for the media—they were such clumsy liars. When Gloria Steinem and I would lecture together, all the dumb male media monkeys could talk about were the ‘bra burners.’ I called it the ‘tit focus.’” Kennedy, Color Me Flo, 62.

  2. Morgan, The Word of a Woman; Redstockings, “No More Miss America,” in Morgan, Sisterhood Is Powerful, 586–88.

  3. Craig, Ain’t I a Beauty Queen?

  4. Judy Klemesrud, “Along with Miss America, There’s Now Miss Black America,” New York Times, September 9, 1968, 54.

  5. “Black Beauty to Be Picked,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 7, 1968, 1.

  6. Mary Willmann, “Creation of Miss Black America Pageant Assailed by Rival Contest Director,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 1, 1968, 1.

  7. “Black Beauty to Be Picked,” 1.

  8. “Women with Gripes Lured to Picket ‘Miss America,’” New Pittsburgh Courier, September 21, 1968, 3.

  9. “Women with Gripes Lured to Picket ‘Miss America.’” For a contemporary feminist critique of race in the Miss America contests, see Craig, Ain’t I a Beauty Queen?

  10. “N.Y. Finalist,” Jet, June 1, 1967, 33.

  11. Riverol, Live from Atlantic City, 103, 134n4. Cites Mary Flanagan, “Embarrassing Moments for Miss America,” The Press, September 11, 1984, 28.

  12. “Miss Wyoming: Proud Black Beauty Queen,” Jet, June 6, 1974, 46–47.

  13. “‘Miss America’ Beauty Takes Slur without Tears: A Note to Her Suggested ‘Ticket Back to Africa,’” Baltimore Afro American, September 14, 1974, 2.

  14. Lovett interview with Hughes, March 16, 2014.

  15. Laura L. Lovett interview with Patricia Quinn, November 11, 2019.

  16. Personal communication with Delethia Ridley, 2019.

  17. Lovett interview with Hughes, March 16, 2014.

  18. Lovett interview with Hughes, March 16, 2014.

  19. Lovett interview with Hughes, March 16, 2014.

  20. “New Asst. Commission Named in HRA’s CDA,” New York Amsterdam News, December 21, 1968, 3.

  21. “Veronica Pazge Gives Ancient Egyptian Beauty Secrets to Modern Women,” New York Amsterdam News, December 8, 1979, 36.

  22. Lovett interview with Quinn, November 11, 2011.

  23. Lovett interview with Quinn, November 11, 2011.

  24. “Oops! Sorry!,” New York Amsterdam News, June 21, 1980, 29.

  25. Dworkin, Miss America, 1945.

  26. Lovett interview with Quinn, February 19, 2015.

  27. Laura L. Lovett interview with Dorothy Pitman Hughes, February 20, 2015. Lencola Sullivan also remembered this “Old South” theme. Laura L. Lovett interview with Lencola Sullivan, December 15, 2019.

  28. “Her Bias Suit Is a Beauty,” Daily News (New York), May 14, 1981, 2.

  29. Miss Greater New York City v. Miss New York State, US District Court, Southern District, New York, No. 81 Civ. 2912. Decided October 5, 1980.

  30. Riverol, Live from Atlantic City, 67.

  31. “Black Leaders Praise Choice of First Black Miss America,” New York Times, September 19, 1983, B4; and “First Black Woman Reigns as Miss America,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 19, 1983, 2.

  32. Riverol, Live from Atlantic City, 104.

  33. David Zimmerman, “A Squeaky Clean Miss America,” USA Today, September 17, 1984, 1D.

  34. Press notice from Florynce Kennedy, August 14, 1984, Dorothy Pitman Hughes Papers.

  CHAPTER 6: WHOSE EMPOWERMENT?

  1. Hughes, I’m Just Saying, 7. On the state of housing in New York City and Harlem in particular, see Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City, 325–27.

  2. Hughes, Wake Up and Smell the Dollars!, 29–30.

  3. Fred Shapiro, “I.S. 201,” New Yorker, October 1, 1966, 44.

  4. Goldstein, The Roots of Urban Renaissance, 50.

  5. “Bd of Ed Called ‘Racists’ by Solidarity Group: Black Solidarity Group Calls Ed Board ‘Racists,’” New York Amsterdam News, January 3, 1970, 17.

  6. Marilyn Gittell, “Decentralization and Citizen Participation in Education,” Public Administration Review 32 (1972): 670–86, 673. For the context of this school reform movement, see Gross and Gross, Radical School Reform.

  7. Gittell, “Decentralization and Citizen Participation in Education,” 673. Also see Rickford, “Integration, Black Nationalism, and Radical Democratic Transformation” in Marable and Hinton, The New Black History, 287–317.

  8. Hughes, Wake Up and Smell the Dollars!, 29.

  9. Dorothy does not remember the name of the report. Her daughter Patrice called it Columbia’s redevelopment plan. Lovett interview with Quinn, February 19, 2015. Plan for New York City is included in the Phillips Andover Library Catalogue, New York City Planning Commission. The report was not secret in any way. It was new to Dorothy and her friends, however, who were focused on education at the time.

  10. Richard Reeves, “New Master Plan Outlines Wide Social Changes Here,” New York Times, February 3, 1969.

  11. Hughes, Wake Up and Smell the Dollars!, 30.

  12. “IM to See West Indian Boro Labor Day Parade,” New York Amsterdam News, August 18, 1973, C1.

  13. Caro, The Power Broker.

&nbs
p; 14. Glass and Westergaard, London’s Housing Needs. On reactions to gentrification in Harlem, see Lance Freeman, There Goes the ’Hood: Gentrification from the Ground Up (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006).

  15. Hughes, Wake Up and Smell the Dollars!, 30.

  16. Goldstein, The Roots of Urban Renaissance, 6. See Biondi, To Stand and Fight.

  17. Goldstein, The Roots of Urban Renaissance, 6. On HUDC, see Johnson, “Community Development Corporations, Participation and Accountability,” 109–24.

  18. Goldstein, The Roots of Urban Renaissance, 6.

  19. Hughes, I’m Just Saying, 7.

  20. Lincoln Cushing, “Inkworks Press, 1974-2016: Reflections on a Social Justice Icon,” East Bay Express, February 10, 2016, https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/inkworks-press-1974andndash2016/Content?oid=4673190.

  21. On Black bookstores as sites of activism, see Carolyn A. Butts, “Black Community Viewing Books as Tools of Liberation,” New York Amsterdam News, November 23, 1991, 4; Joshua Clark Davis, “Black-Owned Bookstores: Anchors of the Black Power Movement,” Black Perspectives, January 28, 2017, https://www.aaihs.org/black-owned-bookstores-anchors-of-the-black-power-movement.

  22. Hughes, I’m Just Saying, 7.

  23. Goldstein, The Roots of Urban Renaissance; Emblidge, “Rallying Point,” 267–76; Gerald C. Fraser, “Lewis H. Michaux: One for the Books,” New York Times, May 23, 1976.

  24. Douglas Martin, “Una Mulzac, Bookseller with Passion for Black Politics, Dies at 88,” New York Times, February 4, 2012; Joshua Clark Davis, “Una Mulzac, Black Women Booksellers, and Pan-Africanism,” Black Perspectives, September 19, 2016. https://www.aaihs.org/una-mulzac-black-women-booksellers-and-pan-africanism.

  25. Corinne Claiborne Boggs, Biography, History, Art and Archives, US House of Representatives, https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/B/Boggs,-Corinne-Claiborne-(Lindy)-(B000592), accessed December 4, 2019.

  26. Fairlie and Robb, Disparities in Capital Access between Minority and Non-Minority-Owned Businesses; 21st-Century Barriers to Women’s Entrepreneurship.

  27. Hughes, Wake Up and Smell the Dollars!, 31–32.

  28. “New Harlem Biz,” New York Amsterdam News, June 22, 1985.

  29. Hughes, I’m Just Saying, 7.

  30. Hughes, Wake Up and Smell the Dollars!, 37.

  31. Hughes, Wake Up and Smell the Dollars!, 35. Dillon was based in Brooklyn but published a newspaper for Black Christians in New York City beginning in 1990. See Charles Bell, “Christian Newspaper Seeks Faithful Flock,” New York Daily News, August 5, 1990.

 

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