DOCSLIB.ORG

Women's Liberation and Miss Black America in Atlantic City, 1968 Author(S): Georgia Paige Welch Source: Feminist Formations, Vol

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Women's Liberation and Miss Black America in Atlantic City, 1968 Author(S): Georgia Paige Welch Source: Feminist Formations, Vol "Up Against the Wall Miss America": Women's Liberation and Miss Black America in Atlantic City, 1968 Author(s): Georgia Paige Welch Source: Feminist Formations, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Summer 2015), pp. 70-97 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43860799 Accessed: 22-03-2021 22:24 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Feminist Formations This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Mon, 22 Mar 2021 22:24:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms "Up Against the Wall Miss America": Women's Liberation and Miss Black America in Atlantic City, 1968 Georgia Paige Welch The women's liberation movement's demonstration against the 1968 Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey, widely canonized as the first major action of the second-wave radical feminist movement, coincided with an event more often forgotten : the first Miss Black America contest. Women's liberation denounced the oppressive beauty standards of pageants, while, a few blocks away, African American activists and entrepreneurs staged an alternative pageant to champion the beauty of Black women and protest racial exclusion in the Miss America Pageant This article uses the convergence and incongruity of these two political public per- formances to reconsider the dominant story of the women's liberation movement's protestas told by journalists, second- wave feminists, and historians. Their story, by neglecting the trenchant influence of racial politics and Black activists at play that day, has consolidated the famous protest into a sign of radical feminism's failure to be a multiracial and intersectional political movement. The article argues that it is only through examining the intersection of women's liberation, civil rights, and Black Power that we can fully chart the racism that feminism both confronted and reproduced, and recover the diverse work done by women of color in the name of feminism and antiracism. Keywords: Black Power / Kennedy, Florynce / Miss America Pageant / Miss Black America contest / National Association for the Advancement of Colored People / women's liberation movement ©2015 Feminist Formations, Vol. 27 No. 2 (Summer) pp. 70-97 This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Mon, 22 Mar 2021 22:24:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Georgia Paige Welch • 71 Introduction Outside the 1968 Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Florynce "Flo" Kennedy chained herself to an oversized effigy of Miss America to pro- test women's "enslavement to ludicrous 'beauty' standards" ("No More Miss America!" 1970, 586). Kennedy was an African American lawyer, feminist, and civil rights activist noted for defending Black Power radicals and instigating inventive political protests. Mere blocks away on that same afternoon, a parade of African American beauty contestants in evening gowns rolled down the Atlantic City boardwalk. They were staging another protest against the Miss America Pageant, in the form of an all-Black beauty contest. Wearing her hair in an untreated "natural," the first ever Miss Black America proclaimed, "Miss America does not represent us because there has never been a black girl in the pageant. With my title I can show black women that they too are beautiful" (Klemesrud 1968). The women's liberation demonstration in which Kennedy took part is enshrined in popular memory as one of the first and most significant actions of the second-wave feminist movement. The mere mention of feminism and beauty pageants is sure to generate a series of associations in most people's minds - whether of unruly women setting bras on fire in a hyperbolic gesture against a harmless beauty pageant, or courageous founders of a mass movement taking a stand against sexist oppression. Kennedy's role as an organizer and demonstrator in the action is all but forgotten despite the fact that she was one of the most prominent Black feminists of her day, and current scholarship shows that she had a foundational influence on the women's liberation movement (Fahs 2001; Randolph 2009). Still fewer people recall that in 1968, a civil rights protest also challenged the beauty standards of the bathing-suit contest cum scholarship pageant. Why are these two quite different responses by African American women to hegemonic ideals of beauty absent from narratives of the women's movement? What do they say about the importance of race in interpreting political critiques of beauty, and in conceiving of beauty as a political strategy? How do we make sense of the contradictions between a protest against a pageant, and a pageant as a protest? In this article, I contend that we can answer these questions, and rectify the shortcomings of our scholarly and popular narratives of women's liberation, by reexamining this famous day through the conjunction of women's liberation and Miss Black America. I begin by recounting the lesser known event of the Miss Black America contest within the historical context of antiracist uses of beauty culture, using archival sources that shed new light on who organized the contest. I then consider how popular, activist, and academic accounts of the women's liberation protest have used the iconic event to encapsulate the mean- ing of feminism, resulting in distortions and omissions of its full complexity. I argue for understanding the women's liberation protest and Black contest as This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Mon, 22 Mar 2021 22:24:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 72 • Feminist Formations 27.2 mutually constitutive rather than fundamentally separate events by tracing the intersections underlying their political influences and media reception in 1968. Following the work of Maxine Leeds Craig (2002), I assess the interpretation that the two actions were incommensurate because white women's liberation' ists, in denouncing all beauty pageants, including Miss Black America, failed to grasp how Black women's participation in a beauty contest could itself constitute a political stand against racism and sexism. I find this interpretation limited, in that it relies upon a problematic archive in which the mass media framed civil rights and feminism as competing social movements, with race and sex oppression as their nonintersecting domains, respectively, and in which select women and organizations serve as representatives of late 1960s radical femi- nism. I then return to the manifold deployments and transgressions of feminine respectability onstage that day in order to interrupt the consolidation of the women's liberation protest as a sign of the whiteness of radical feminism and its failings. My purpose is to show that a complete intersectional analysis of the racial and sexual politics of beauty in 1968 demands an expanded archive that reframes the boundaries of the event. Through this new framing, we can better account for the convergences and paradoxical consequences of social movements in the making. Beauty Culture and "Racial Rearticulation" Since Sarah Banet-Weiser (1999) argued for studying beauty pageants as important sites for shaping the boundaries of national belonging in The Most Beautiful Girl in the World , a productive field has grown around tracing the ways in which pageants throughout the world reflect, consolidate, and, at times, reconfigure norms of race, class, gender, and sexuality for national identity (Ahmed'Ghosh 2003; Cohen et al. 1996; Sangari 2002). Scholars have found that for minority and immigrant groups within the US context, beauty pageants and beauty culture have been a means for countering racist representations, demonstrating suitability as citizens, and expressing community pride (Baldwin 2007; Craig 2002; Lim 2005; Peiss 1998; White and White 1998). Craig (2002, 14; 2006, 170) calls this a process of "racial rearticulation" in which African Americans use cultural symbols and practices to challenge and rework the dominant interpretations of race. Shirley Lim (2005) similarly argues that Asian American women's cultural practices are "a set of transformative social acts" that use women's appearances to make a bid for national inclusion (1). This scholarship shows that when certain features of hair, dress, skin color, and physiognomy are deemed desirable beauty standards for individual women of color, they convey larger social meanings about class, race, and gender. These meanings are negotiated and contested within minority communities, even as they are mounted as an outward "community response" to racist stereotypes and prejudice (6). Beauty can, in fact, be a political strategy that marginalized This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Mon, 22 Mar 2021 22:24:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Georgia Paige Welch • 73 communities and individual women use to remake racial identity and its place within the larger society. Beauty as a means of racial rearticulation cannot be separated from the role of respectability in the Black freedom struggle. Evelyn Higginbotham (1994) argues that African American Baptist women during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries combated racism and sexism through a "politics of respectability" (186-88). Several studies use this concept - politics of respect- ability as a strategy to challenge white supremacy by encouraging individuals to adopt bourgeois morals and manners - to shed light on African American women's lives during the Jim Crow era (Greene 2005; Knupfer 1996; Shaw 1996; Wolcott 2001).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • "A Common Fate of Discrimination": Race-Gender Analogies in Legal and Historical Perspective
    "A Common Fate of Discrimination": Race-Gender Analogies in Legal and Historical Perspective Serena Mayeri In her classic work Ain't I a Woman, African-American feminist critic bell hooks excoriated white feminists for their "constant comparison[s] of the plight of 'women' and 'blacks,"'' charging that such analogies "support the exclusion of black women" 2 and represent the linguistic expression of a ' "sexist-racist attitude" endemic to the women's liberation movement. Hooks, writing in the early 1980s, perceived analogies between racial and sexual oppression-at least as articulated by white women who "used black people as metaphors" 4-as a quintessentially opportunistic, parasitic, and marginalizing practice. Two decades earlier, when civil rights attorney Pauli Murray, already a veteran of battles against racial and sexual exclusion, was searching for a means of persuading skeptics that the eradication of "Jane Crow" deserved moral commitment and legal mobilization equivalent to the fight against "Jim Crow," she had emphasized the "strikingly similar positions in American society" of "women and Negroes." 5 Invoking the "parallel and interrelated" histories of women's rights and civil rights movements, Murray articulated an analogy that superficially resembled the very comparison hooks would later condemn. Powerful political and legal imperatives shaped Murray's decision to invoke an analogy between race and sex in the early 1960s. In so doing, she deliberately and self-consciously adopted a long tradition within feminist advocacy traceable to the genesis of the antebellum woman's rights struggle I. BELL HOOKS, AIN'T I A WOMAN 141 (1981). 2. Id. at 140. 3. Id.
    [Show full text]
  • Women's Liberation: Seeing the Revolution Clearly
    Sara M. EvanS Women’s Liberation: Seeing the Revolution Clearly Approximately fifty members of the five Chicago radical women’s groups met on Saturday, May 18, 1968, to hold a citywide conference. The main purposes of the conference were to create and strengthen ties among groups and individuals, to generate a heightened sense of common history and purpose, and to provoke imaginative pro- grammatic ideas and plans. In other words, the conference was an early step in the process of movement building. —Voice of Women’s Liberation Movement, June 19681 EvEry account of thE rE-EmErgEncE of feminism in the United States in the late twentieth century notes the ferment that took place in 1967 and 1968. The five groups meeting in Chicago in May 1968 had, for instance, flowered from what had been a single Chicago group just a year before. By the time of the conference in 1968, activists who used the term “women’s liberation” understood themselves to be building a movement. Embedded in national networks of student, civil rights, and antiwar movements, these activists were aware that sister women’s liber- ation groups were rapidly forming across the country. Yet despite some 1. Sarah Boyte (now Sara M. Evans, the author of this article), “from Chicago,” Voice of the Women’s Liberation Movement, June 1968, p. 7. I am grateful to Elizabeth Faue for serendipitously sending this document from the first newsletter of the women’s liberation movement created by Jo Freeman. 138 Feminist Studies 41, no. 1. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Sara M. Evans 139 early work, including my own, the particular formation calling itself the women’s liberation movement has not been the focus of most scholar- ship on late twentieth-century feminism.
    [Show full text]
  • Toolkit Gloria
    TOOLKITTOOLKIT Artwork: Farver TOOLKIT 2019/20 Season The Off-Broadway cast ofGloria: A Life Photo: Ahron R. Foster Ahron Photo: Welcome! This Toolkit contains resources to accompany Gloria: A Life, a new play by Emily Mann, which runs at the American Repertory Theater January-March, 2020. This play is about Gloria Steinem and the women she has partnered with in a decades-long fight for equality. Fifty years after Gloria began raising her voice and championing those of others, her vision is as urgent as ever. The first act is Gloria’s story; the second act, in which the audience participates in a talking circle, is our own. Gloria believes that these talking circles serve as a catalyst for change offering us all a path forward. Everyone in the audience is invited to speak their truth about the stories that they heard and how they resonated with their own experiences. Inside this Toolkit, you will find materials on the development and context of Gloria: A Life, including insights from the playwright and an overview of the play; information about the Women’s Rights Movement in the United States and Gloria Steinem’s role in it; and more on social movements today. The articles, resources, and activities in this Toolkit are curated for the use of learners of all ages, in and out of the classroom, who are looking to take a deeper dive into Gloria: A Life. BRENNA NICELY ALEXANDRA DANIELS Education & Engagement Education Apprentice Director JULIA SCHACHNIK Community Engagement Apprentice GLORIA: A LIFE TOOLKIT 2 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION
    [Show full text]
  • Women's Studies Newsletter March 1979 Women's Studies
    Denison University Denison Digital Commons Looking Back, Looking Forward Women's and Gender Studies Spring 1979 Women's Studies Newsletter March 1979 Women's Studies Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.denison.edu/lookingback Recommended Citation Women's Studies, "Women's Studies Newsletter March 1979" (1979). Looking Back, Looking Forward. 158. http://digitalcommons.denison.edu/lookingback/158 This Newsletter is brought to you for free and open access by the Women's and Gender Studies at Denison Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Looking Back, Looking Forward by an authorized administrator of Denison Digital Commons. women's studies newsletter March, 1979 Volume 4, No. 3 DENISON WOMEN'S WEEK: March 4-10 This year Women's Week, Denison's annual celebration of the achievements and potential of Its women's community, will be held from March 4 through March 10. Nancy Cable and Julie Panchura, Dean of Students' Office, and Nancy Nowik, Women's Coordinator., have worked together this year to draw particular atten- tion to the need for creative support for women by all members of the Denison community. Schedule for Women's Week Sunday, March 4 — Women in Power: A seminar featuring student presentations: 1) The Earnings Gap: A Brief Description of Where Women Are in the Work Force 2) The Sociological Perspective on Jobs for Women 3) Women in Power—Members of the J-Term group that went to Washington, D.C. to interview women in high positions 4) Plus Judy Clementson-Mohr, Clinical Psychologist, on job satisfaction Curtis West Lounge, 3:00-5:00 Faculty invited to remain for SAGA dinner Monday, March 5 — GLCA Visiting Scholar Florence Howe gives her convocation speech, "Myths of Coeducation," in Slayter Auditorium, 8:15 p.m.
    [Show full text]
  • PDF Download Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in The
    WANT TO START A REVOLUTION? RADICAL WOMEN IN THE BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLE 1ST EDITION PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Dayo Gore | 9780814783146 | | | | | Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle 1st edition PDF Book Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Read more Collectively, the essays will provide activists, students, and academic specialists with powerful insights into post- World War II black feminist thought, and the lives of women who joined and guided movements to transform an oppressive society. Lea Kientz rated it really liked it Jan 11, Bavid rated it it was amazing Jan 19, What about Shirley Chisholm, the first black Congresswoman? Built on the Johns Hopkins University Campus. Contributing authors reveal that these women challenged notions of female decency through their political activities. Uncovers the often overlooked stories of the women who shaped the black freedom struggle The story of the black freedom struggle in America has been overwhelmingly male-centric, starring leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. Twyla Mount rated it it was amazing Apr 25, From Rosa Parks and Esther Cooper Jackson, to Shirley Graham DuBois and Assata Shakur, a host of women demonstrated a lifelong commitment to radical change, embracing multiple roles to sustain the movement, founding numerous groups and mentoring younger activists. Michelle rated it it was amazing Aug 09, Florynce Kennedy Black Power and Feminism. Gore is one of a new generation of young scholars active in preserving and exploring the infrequently chronicled history of 20th-century black women's radicalism, in the US and beyond.
    [Show full text]
  • Florynce R. Kennedy Activist 1916-2000
    Missouri Valley Special Collections: Biography Florynce R. Kennedy Activist 1916-2000 by Susan Jezak Ford Florynce Rae Kennedy relished her controversial reputation. Proudly wearing her trademark cowboy hat and pink sunglasses, she spoke out frankly for the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, and all minorities. Kennedy was born the second of five daughters and grew up on the 2600 block of Garfield Street. Her father, a train porter, reportedly once drove members of the Ku Klux Klan off of his property in a mostly white neighborhood. Kennedy graduated from Lincoln High School. She got an introduction to fighting for civil rights when she organized a boycott against a local Coca-Cola bottler who refused to hire black truck drivers. Kennedy worked at several jobs in town before moving to New York with her sister in 1942. Ignoring advice to become a teacher, she enrolled in pre-law courses at Columbia University. Her application to Columbia’s law school was rejected—supposedly because of her gender—until she threatened to sue the school. She graduated with a Columbia law degree in 1951. As a lawyer, Kennedy represented Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and H. Rap Brown, but she gradually became unhappy with the racism she saw in the justice system. She turned to political activism, founding the Media Workshop in 1966 to fight racism in journalism and advertising. She organized feminist lawyers to challenge New York’s abortion law, which was credited with influencing the Legislature to liberalize abortion the following year. In the 1970s, she joined Gloria Steinem on the lecture circuit, sharing her radical views on feminism and civil rights.
    [Show full text]
  • A Philosophical Account of Feminist Solidarity Between
    A PHILOSOPHICAL ACCOUNT OF FEMINIST SOLIDARITY BETWEEN WOMEN Carolynn O’Donnell Mount Holyoke College Philosophy Department Senior Thesis Spring 2007 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis project has proven to be transformative intellectually and emotionally. My thanks go to my mother and my father for providing fundamental support in my life. Also, my friends Andrea, Andy, Erica, Holly, Jane, Jelena, Jessica, Lisa, Meagan, Sulekha, and Shannon have been there along the way for stimulating discussions, food, and simply being great friends. Special thanks go to Amy Gracey, my FP thesis buddy, for commiseration and motivation—we made it! I would like to thank the many professors who helped me in various ways with references, including Ken Tucker and Dan Czitrom. Thanks to Joan Cocks for her initial support, Sally Scholtz for references and supportive e-mail exchange; and, special thanks to Carol Gould for her encouragement as well as for sending me various drafts of her paper on solidarity. I owe many thanks to Mary Renda for her comments and challenges to parts of this work. Although they made me stumble, I believe they have in the end strengthened my writing and argument. Finally, my utmost gratitude belongs to my two advisors, Ann Ferguson and Carole Lee. Their intelligence, wisdom, foresight, and guidance have made this project stress-free and enjoyable. Thanks to Carole for meeting with me every week and looking over countless drafts, as well as for her thoroughness and structure. Thanks to Ann for her unending knowledge of feminist theory and her gift of choosing just the right articles.
    [Show full text]
  • In Sisterhood and Struggle: Black and White Feminisms in the United States During the United Nations Decade for Women, 1975-1985
    In Sisterhood and Struggle: Black and White Feminisms in the United States During the United Nations Decade for Women, 1975-1985 Inaugural Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophie an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Vorgelegt von Bettina Listl, M.A. aus Schrobenhausen Oktober 2015 Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Michael Hochgeschwender Zweitgutachterin: PD Dr. Ursula Prutsch Datum der mündlichen Prüfung: 04.02.2016 Table of Contents Abbreviations iv Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 I. Social Movement Theory: Understanding Second Wave Feminisms in the United States 30 1. Second Wave Origins: Developing Feminist Consciousness 31 2. Keeping it Together: Constructing a Collective Identity 38 3. Political Opportunity Structures and Resource Mobilization Theories 43 4. Framing, Discourse, and Resources 53 II. International Women’s Year and the First UN World Conference in Mexico City, 1975 59 1. The United Nations and Women’s Rights 59 2. Preparing for the First UN World Conference on Women 67 3. The Governmental Conference and the World Plan of Action 75 4. The International Women’s Year Tribune 79 5. Whatever Happened in Mexico? Mixed Receptions at Home 88 6. Inviting Feminist Activism: The National Women’s Agenda 93 7. Feminist Theory Production during the Mid-1970s 97 7.1 White Feminist Theory 98 7.2 Black Feminist Theory 102 i III. Defending Their Turf: The National IWY Conference in Houston, 1977 110 1. Mobilizing for Women’s Rights 110 2. The Houston Conference: A Peak in Black Feminist Organizing 117 3. Post-Conference Disillusionment: The Carter Administration and Women’s Rights 124 4. The National Plan of Action and Feminist Activism 128 5.
    [Show full text]
  • A Pageant Politicized the Rise of Intersectional Activism in 1968
    A PAgeAnt Politicized The Rise of Intersectional Activism in 1968 hAley cOrmier On September 7, 1968, the miSS AmericA PageAnt tOOk plAce in AtlAntic city, new JerSey, where it fAced twO diStinct cO-Occurring prOteStS. One wAS A SecOnd-wAve feminiSt demOnStrAtiOn thAt criticized the pAgeAnt fOr itS SexiSm And prOmOtiOn Of OppreS- Sive beAuty StAndArdS. the Other wAS miSS blAck AmericA, An All-blAck rivAl pAgeAnt whOSe OrgAnizerS cOndemned the inherent rAciSm Of the miSS AmericA inStitutiOn And puShed the lArger pAgeAnt tO integrAte. AlthOugh the miSS AmericA PageAnt wAS their cOmmOn tArget, the twO prOteStS—Women’S liberAtiOniSt And blAck nAtiOnAl- iSt—Occurred SepArAtely And hAd different goalS. under theSe circumStAnceS, newS- pAper cOverAge preSented the wOmen pArticipAting in the prOteSt AS AntAgOniStic tO eAch Other’S cAuSeS. in light Of further reSeArch, hOwever, thiS perceptiOn prOveS fAlSe. cOnSidering infOrmAtiOn Omitted frOm cOverAge Of the prOteStS And Armed with An underStAnding Of the erA’S JOurnAliStic cOnventiOnS, it AppeArS the femAle prOteStOrS in bOth demOnStrAtiOnS indeed SuppOrted eAch Other’S goalS, which in turn SuggeStS thAt rAdicAl feminiSm And blAck nAtiOnAliSm Of the lAte 1960S were mutuAlly SuppOrtive mOvementS. “Women’s liberation.” “The women’s movement.” “Sec- on their physical characteristics, which ultimately reduced ond-wave,” “radical” feminism. By any of these names, it women to farm animals), “The Unbeatable Madonna- was clear that a particular something came into being—or, Whore Combination” (the paradoxical necessity for more accurately, announced its being to the nation—on women to be both sexy and innocent in order to win social the boardwalk of Atlantic City, New Jersey on September 7, approval), and “The Irrelevant Crown of the Throne of 1968.
    [Show full text]
  • A Discussion of the Problem of Horizontal Hostility
    A discussion of the problem of horizontal hostility [Added November 2003: This paper was not offered for publication nor presented verbally. It was written in response to a friend’s request for my own ideas on horizontal hostility, at a time when she felt she herself was struggling with the kinds of things discussed here. I know when I finished writing it—March 1993—because I dated it.] The term, 'horizontal hostility', was coined by Florynce Kennedy, in her 1970 paper, 'Institutionalized Oppression vs. the Female', printed in the anthology edited by Robin Morgan, Sisterhood is Powerful. (Penelope, 1992: 60) It is a term which dates from the very beginning of Women's Liberation (both in the US and wherever else her paper was read). And if the name is as old as Women's Liberation, the problem is at least as old, if not older. Horizontal hostility is a form of power-as-domination between and among women. Hence the most appropriate context for discussing it is in terms of relations of power among women. The feminist project of identifying and challenging male domination does not mean that only men oppress women, and that women are automatically exempt from male supremacist values, attitudes and behaviours and never behave badly towards other women. It is important to keep in mind the main enemy, i.e. male domination. But because oppression is institutionalised, and because it constitutes the status quo and the world taken for granted, it is all too easy to fall unthinkingly into ways of behaving which reinforce patterns of domination.
    [Show full text]
  • From the Snake Pit to the Supreme Court: the Collapse of the Insane Asylum in Mid-20Th Century America
    From the Snake Pit to the Supreme Court: The Collapse of the Insane Asylum in Mid-20th Century America Lauren Amos Advisor: Dr. Steven Noll 2 Acknowledgements My sincerest thanks to Dr. Noll, who let me borrow all of his books and take up all of his office hours. Thank you for introducing me to Phi Alpha Theta, the students at Sidney Lanier, and the entire field of disability history that I didn’t know existed. Thank you to my parents, friends, and Michael, who had to listen to me talk about asylums for a year and read countless drafts and re-drafts. A special thanks to Colleen, who let me stay at her house while I visited the Tallahassee archives. Lastly, I would like to thank the University of Florida History Department for the best undergraduate major I could have asked for, and a wonderful four years. 3 Table of Contents Introduction: A Predictable Pattern ......................................................................................... 4 Chapter 1: Shaping the Stigma ................................................................................................. 7 Chapter 2: Common Oversimplifications for Deinstitutionalization ........................................ 13 Chapter 3: An Internal Attack on Psychiatry .......................................................................... 16 Reform Rhetoric from the 1890s-1950s .......................................................................................... 16 The Rise of Anti-Psychiatry Literature ............................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Anglo-American Radical Feminism's Constitutionalism in the Streets Yxta Maya Murray
    Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal Volume 9 Article 6 Number 2 Summer 2012 1-1-2012 Creating New Categories: Anglo-American Radical Feminism's Constitutionalism in the Streets Yxta Maya Murray Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/ hastings_race_poverty_law_journal Part of the Law and Race Commons Recommended Citation Yxta Maya Murray, Creating New Categories: Anglo-American Radical Feminism's Constitutionalism in the Streets, 9 Hastings Race & Poverty L.J. 449 (2012). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_race_poverty_law_journal/vol9/iss2/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "Creating New Categories:" Anglo-American Radical Feminism's Constitutionalism in the Streets YXTA MAYA MURRAY* September 7, 1968, Atlantic City The New York Radical Women' ("NYRW") wanted permission for their protest at the Miss America pageant. 2 Robin Morgan, the poet, activist, and New Left Prankster,3 had requested a parade permit for the NYRW members who planned to march in front of the Atlantic City Convention Center.4 The protest was inspired, in part, by the confrontational theater of Yippies5 who had crowned a pig6 at the Democratic National Convention ("DNC") in Chicago a week before. But while the Yippies at the famous DNC action had protested without permits and found themselves at the center of a violent maelstrom, 7 Morgan tried hard to obtain a fire permit so the Radical Women could burn girdles, high heels, and other oppressive paraphernalia in the "Freedom Trash Can." 8 When the city refused to * Thanks to Edward St.
    [Show full text]