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Fried, Marlene Gerber Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Northampton, MA MARLENE GERBER FRIED Interviewed by JOYCE FOLLET August 14 and 15, 2007 Amherst, Massachusetts This interview was made possible with generous support from the Ford Foundation. © Sophia Smith Collection 2008 Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Narrator Marlene Gerber was born June 6, 1945, the only child of Max Gerber, a Russian immigrant, and Ethel Kalinsky of Chicago. Her parents, who had grade school educations, owned and ran a small women’s clothing store together. She grew up in a middle-class Jewish family of shopkeepers in Philadelphia. Marlene graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Girls, a public college-preparatory school, in 1963, and attended Northwestern University for two years before entering a brief first marriage and moving to Ohio. She earned a B.A. in Philosophy (1966) and an M.A. in Philosophy (1968) from the University of Cincinnati, where she was the only woman in her graduate program. She earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Brown University in 1972, then taught at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (1971-72), Dartmouth College (1972-77), and Bentley College (1977-86). Since 1986 she has been Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program (CLPP) at Hampshire College, where her areas of specialization are reproductive rights and feminist philosophy. She has been married to William (Bill) D. Fried since 1970. They have two sons. Fried considers herself an “accidental activist” initially and attributes her politicization to the vibrant social movements of her college years. She has continuously combined social activism and academic work. In the 1960s and 1970s she engaged in anti-war and civil rights protests and was active in the New American Movement. She and her husband Bill lived in a communal household in Boston. As one of the first women in philosophy, she struggled against sexism and other hierarchical practices in higher education and became a founder of the Rhode Island Women’s Union and the Society of Women in Philosophy. By the late 1970s, Fried was devoting her energies to socialist feminist reproductive rights work. She was involved in the Abortion Action Coalition and in the Massachusetts Childbearing Rights Alliance. She became a local and national leader in the Reproductive Rights National Network (R2N2), co-founder and board member of the Abortion Access Project, founding president and board member of the National Network of Abortion Funds, and co-founder and president of the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts. Fried is a member of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective and is currently participating in the Hyde—Thirty Years is Enough! Campaign to reverse the Hyde Amendment and restore public funding of abortion. Fried’s board memberships have included the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights, the General Service Foundation, Raising Women’s Voices, and the Committee for Women, Population and the Environment. From her base at the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, Fried continues to teach, organize, and write about abortion and its place in a comprehensive plan for reproductive health and social justice. She is the editor of From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom: Transforming a Movement (1990) and co-author of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice (2004), which won the 2005 Gustavus Myers Book Award. Interviewer Joyce Follet (b.1945) is a public historian, educator, and producer of historical documentary. She earned a Ph.D. in Women’s History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is Coordinator of Collection Development at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Abstract In this oral history, Fried recalls the loneliness of growing up as an only child and details the conventional class, gender, and racial norms that shaped her world in the 1950s. She describes her involvement in cultural and social movements of her day, with telling anecdotes of political experiences in New Left and women’s liberation groups, personal life in a communal household, and professional challenges as a pioneering radical female academic. Her story highlights setbacks and breakthroughs in the struggle to sustain race- and class-conscious reproductive activism over the last 30 years. Fried also assesses her role as a white ally in a movement increasingly led by women of color and as a mentor to younger activists. (Transcript 110 pp). Restrictions None Format Interview recorded on miniDV using Sony Digital Camcorder DSR-PDX10. Six 63-minute tapes. Transcript Transcribed by Susan Kurka. Audited for accuracy and edited for clarity by Sheila Flaherty- Jones. Reviewed and edited by Fried and Follet. Bibliography and Footnote Citation Forms Video Recording Bibliography: Fried, Marlene Gerber. Interview by Joyce follet. Video recording, August 14 and 15, 2007. Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection. Footnote example: Marlene Gerber Fried, interview by Joyce Follet, video recording, August 15, 2007, Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection, tape 5. Transcript Bibliography: Fried, Marlene Gerber. Interview by Joyce Follet. Transcript of video recording, August 14 and 15, 2007. Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection. Footnote example: Marlene Gerber Fried, interview by Joyce Follet, transcript of video recording, August 15, 2007, Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection, pp. 75-77. Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Marlene Fried, interviewed by Joyce Follet Fried F 09 08 Tape 1 of 6 Page 1 of 110 Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Sophia Smith Collection Smith College Northampton, MA Transcript of interview conducted August 14 and August 15, 2007, with: MARLENE FRIED at Hampshire College, Amherst, MA by: JOYCE FOLLET FOLLET: Okay. We're doing it, we’re rolling. FRIED: It’s okay, good. Do you need a pen, paper, or anything? FOLLET: I’m pretty well set. Do you want anything? FRIED: Do I need anything? FOLLET: No, unless you feel like you do. FRIED: No. I'm all right. FOLLET: So we’ve got two parts to this, right? So my thought, as I wrote to you, is just to take it more or less chronologically, although I know that’s not how we live our lives, but we sort of do. FRIED: We sort of do. (chuckles) FOLLET: If today we could kind of begin at the beginning and get you through your childhood and education, formal and informal, and maybe into the beginnings of your teaching. And then tomorrow, the reproductive rights focus? FRIED: That sounds fine. FOLLET: How does that sound? FRIED: That sounds perfect. FOLLET: Okay. So this is Joyce Follet with Marlene Fried, at Hampshire College on August – FRIED: Thirteenth. FOLLET: Thank you. Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Marlene Fried, interviewed by Joyce Follet Fried F 09 08 Tape 1 of 6 Page 2 of 110 FRIED: Or fourteenth. FOLLET: It’s summer, what can you expect? FRIED: It’s summer, exactly. FOLLET: – 2007, for the Voices of Feminism Project. So, thank you for making the time for this. FRIED: It’s an honor to do this. This is great. FOLLET: Good. So let’s begin at the beginning. Childhood. FRIED: Born 1945, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the only child of Max and Ethel Gerber. Max was an immigrant to the U.S.; had come, when he was 13, from Russia, from a large family, but only — you know, I think only five or six made it to the U.S. Typical immigrant. All of them had small businesses. Uncle Benny had a tap room, which I think was a bar, but no one ever said bar, they said tap room. Uncle Sam had a candy store, and my parents had a ladies’ clothing store. My mother was from Chicago, and my father had been a salesman and had met her when she was 18. My mother had gone only to the eighth grade, and my father's education was not discussed. It was interesting. They were so into assimilation that they never, almost never, talked about the past, although in our household they spoke Yiddish with my aunts and uncles. One aunt and uncle lived around the corner, and they would come over every night after work, every single night, speaking Yiddish, which I then absolutely refused to learn. I could understand it a bit, but I would never speak it because it was the language that the kids were not — they were talking so the kids won’t understand. So I grew up in Philadelphia. My parents worked together all their years in this store. They owned it first with my aunt and uncle, and then themselves. FOLLET: What was the name of the store? FRIED: The Ann-Ette Shoppe. I have, in my basement in Somerville, the cash register, the sign. My mother actually had it for almost 50 years. She sold it the month before she died. FOLLET: You mean 50 years after your father died? FRIED: They owned it together 50 years. She lived 30 years past him. He was much older than she. He was in his fifties when I was born, 54. So she was, like, 22 years younger. They always lied about their ages. I never knew how old my father was until he was in the hospital when he was Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Marlene Fried, interviewed by Joyce Follet Fried F 09 08 Tape 1 of 6 Page 3 of 110 dying and I saw the chart.
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