In the last month I've
gone to memorial services for two friends whose lives were radically
different and strikingly similar: Flo Kennedy and Audrey Meyer.
Flo was famous; Audrey
was not. Flo was black; Audrey was white. Flo was outspoken and
outrageous; Audrey was quiet and cautious.
Both were born and
raised in Missouri. Both lived in New York City and died in their
80s. Both were feminists. Together their lives illustrate the
diverse paths through which social change occurs.
Florynce Rae Kennedy
was born in Kansas City, Mo. on February 11, 1916, the second
of five daughters. After working for a few years, she moved to
New York City and enrolled in Columbia University. She moved on
to the Law School after threatening a discrimination suit when
initially denied admission. On getting her degree in 1951 she
went into private practice. Flo soon soured on the law. She later
said the courts were not the place to go for solutions to social
problems.
Flo's real calling
was as an agitator. She was happiest when stirring things up.
And she was good at it. Although a protester from an early age,
she hit her stride when the women's liberation movement emerged
in the late 1960s. It created a demand for women who could "tell
it like it is," and Flo was one of the best.
Flo had a mouth. But
it was not a 'bad' mouth. Even as she threw verbal darts at powerful
institutions, people and practices, she sweet-talked her audience.
My most cogent memory
of her is speaking from a platform in the square of the Justice
Department at a federal woman's program. President Nixon was under
investigation for what would become known as Watergate. Her audience
was composed of federal employees. Flo started off softly, gently
ridiculing the President. By the time she was finished, she had
a couple dozen Justice Department women on the platform with her
singing anti-Nixon songs. They were having a good time.
Audrey was anything
but an agitator. Her Columbia education was in Missouri. Born
in St. Louis on July 13,1913, she attended the state university
through a M.A. in Sociology. She started a dissertation, but never
finished it. Instead she began teaching, married and raised two
children.
Teaching brought Audrey
to New York City in the mid 1960s. After a career at the Fashion
Institute of Technology, a trade school for the fashion industry,
she was still teaching part time four months before she died.
Like Flo, she had a calling for social justice, but she did her
work behind the scenes, through school programs, classroom speakers
and counseling students. Flo was one of the women she brought
to FIT for a day long program in 1971.
When the feminist movement
began, Audrey added its critiques to her curriculum. She didn't
make outrageous statements and she didn't make the newspapers,
but over ten thousand students went through her classes, where
they imbibed the rudiments of feminism with their sociology. She
created the platforms where other women could perform.
Audrey's public protests
were confined to marches, where her ladylike appearance often
contrasted with the signs she carried. In one pro-choice march
in Washington D.C., she and her friend Helen Hacker captured attention
with a sign saying "Post-Menopausal Women Nostalgic for Choice."
I met Audrey when I
joined the New York City Chapter of Sociologists for Women in
Society (SWS), part of a national organization founded in 1969
as a spin off from the American Sociological Association. NYC-SWS
held monthly discussions of topics related to the study of women.
Audrey was the backbone of the chapter, putting together the programs,
maintaining the mailing list, and sending out regular notices.
When I ran for the
New York State Assembly in 1992 I asked Flo and Audrey (and a
lot of other people) for help. Both came through in their own
way. Flo came to Brooklyn to be the 'draw' for a fundraising party
-- even though strokes and heart problems had put her in a wheelchair
-- and Audrey gave me the SWS mailing list.
Both Flo and Audrey
had memorial services at New York's imposing Riverside Church
-- Flo in the main nave and Audrey in a side chapel. As I listened
to others talk about their lives, I thought about the different
routes each had taken through life and how each had made their
contribution to making the world a better place, not just for
women but for everyone.
The outside world probably
would see Flo as the more important, as reflected in the larger
audience and more famous people giving testimonials at her service.
But it is the Audreys who make it possible for the Flos to strut
their stuff.
We need both inside
and outside agitators to shake up the world. It is not the path
we follow in life but what we do while on it that matters.
