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Radical Women in Gainesville exhibit guide

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 Letter from the Curator
 Overview : a Feminist Mecca Teeming...
 Timeline of Events that Affected...
 Towards a Female Liberation...
 The Paper that Started it All
 Emergence of a Local Anti-Rape...
 Reproductive Rights Take a Front...
 Realization of a Seven-Year...
 Every New Cultural Wave Needs a...
 Nuturing the Intellectual Needs...
 Further Reading
 Thanks
 Contribute
 
Permanent Link: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00081931/00001
 Material Information
Title: Radical Women in Gainesville exhibit guide
Series Title: Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit
Physical Description: Mixed Material
Language: English
Creator: Adams, Leila
Publisher: University of Florida Libraries
Publication Date: 2007
 Subjects
Subjects / Keywords: Presentation or guide materials for exhibit
Genre:
Spatial Coverage:
 Notes
General Note: Presentation or guide materials for exhibit.
 Record Information
Source Institution: University of Florida
Rights Management: All rights reserved by the source institution and holding location.
System ID: UF00081931:00001

Permanent Link: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00081931/00001
 Material Information
Title: Radical Women in Gainesville exhibit guide
Series Title: Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit
Physical Description: Mixed Material
Language: English
Creator: Adams, Leila
Publisher: University of Florida Libraries
Publication Date: 2007
 Subjects
Subjects / Keywords: Presentation or guide materials for exhibit
Genre:
Spatial Coverage:
 Notes
General Note: Presentation or guide materials for exhibit.
 Record Information
Source Institution: University of Florida
Rights Management: All rights reserved by the source institution and holding location.
System ID: UF00081931:00001


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Table of Contents
    Letter from the Curator
        Page 1
        Page 2
    Overview : a Feminist Mecca Teeming with Plans, Ideas, and Energy
        Page 3
    Timeline of Events that Affected the Development of the Gainesville Women's Movement Community
        Page 4
        Page 5
        Page 6
        Page 7
    Towards a Female Liberation Movement
        Page 8
        Page 9
    The Paper that Started it All
        Page 10
        Page 11
    Emergence of a Local Anti-Rape Movement
        Page 12
        Page 13
    Reproductive Rights Take a Front Seat
        Page 14
        Page 15
        Page 16
    Realization of a Seven-Year Dream
        Page 17
        Page 18
        Page 19
    Every New Cultural Wave Needs a Published Organ
        Page 20
        Page 21
    Nuturing the Intellectual Needs of a Community
        Page 22
        Page 23
    Further Reading
        Page 24
        Page 25
    Thanks
        Page 26
    Contribute
        Page 27
Full Text


"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


ll r rl

in Gfainesv

A Letter from the Curator
Why Radical Women?

The Radical Women in Gainesville ELL, c4lr 570P
rO r4&K AIA( AI
collection and exhibit sites represent o 7 4 "/
radical feminists involved in the t' .
grassroots and separatist strands of the arT 7 nyl.-
local movement, while excluding the .R. ftou--
more bureaucratic feminist organizations T"EN rITe'e's 4
that have chapters around the nation N. .o.. ,e-rtv~A
and well-documented histories afir r
accompanying them. Radical feminist ./ .u/I
organizations are less likely to have LI Vou.
coherent histories as most of their V
institutions quickly close down in
resistance to mainstream values, leaving
the task for the ethnographer to compile "
the historiography from movement ;
documents and participants.







Why Gainesville, Florida?

I chose Gainesville as the setting for the collection because the small north Florida college town
holds great significance in the national 1970s women's movement. Gainesville residents not only
wrote the first theoretical framework for the movement in 1968, they also formed one of the first
five Womens Liberation groups in the country.4 Gainesville has since operated as a feminist
Mecca, attracting activists from around the nation as a home away from home, including
pioneering feminists Carol Hanisch, Kathie Sarachild, and Rita Mae Brown, not to mention others.

The Radical Women in Gainesville collection, not only validates the women who participated in
the movement, but also contributes to the cultural memory of the local community, which has
either forgotten or never known about the women who helped establish rape crisis centers,
domestic abuse shelters, natural birth clinics, and other social institutions.

The Curator's Process

This collection is the product of more than a year's worth of listening to women's stories,
collecting their newsprints and papers, reading books and articles, and collaborating with the
Digital Library Center to digitize it all. The outcome is an efficient collection site that allows for the
user to view, zoom, search, and download images of archival documents, and an educational
exhibit site that contextualizes the collection by providing a comprehensive history of the local
movement community.







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


I began collecting oral histories from women involved in the
Gainesville women's movement in November of 2006 under the
auspices of the Ronald E. McNair Scholar Program and the guidance W -T Po wVW
of Dr. Trysh Travis at the UF Center for Women's Studies and Gender HEU, CA '
Research. #H4V 4 R. O
TUaIJSFeA ?
My first interviewee was CWSGR affiliate and UF Associate Dean /
Emerita Phyllis Meek, who gave me a three-hour crash course on the
history of women's activism in Gainesville. Over the course of the next
year, I would interview several more local women, including former
WomaNews columnist Sallie Harrison; former feminist bookstore
owner, Gerry Green; former Women's Center director, Rosalie Miller;
and co-founder of the Rape Information and Counseling Service,
Jacquelyn Resnick. For my last interview in November of 2007, I
would travel to South Florida to interview Beverly Jones, co-founding
mother of the Gainesville women's movement. Furthermore, in the
summer of 2007, I began collecting archives from these women and
others, including former movement participants Abby Walters and
Nancy Breeze. For a list of the collection materials, click here.

With each oral history and archival document I collected, I became
increasingly more aware of the significance of the history I was
recovering. I also came to terms with the fact that the history I was
collecting differed greatly from the one that has been conveniently
nested into our cultural memory by mass media, schools, churches,
and political administrations that, despite the gains of the women's movement, continue to foster
misogyny and anti-feminist consciousness in our society today.

In response to the bombardment of misinformation, even researchers, for example, tend to
default to the errors of the movement, holding it up to an impossible standard, and construing its
history in the process. As a result, the value of the 1970s women's movement was far from being
fully realized.

The more I understood radical feminists and the social and political climates they lived in,
however, the more I valued their oral histories and archives, and the greater responsibility I felt as
an archivist to broadcast their hidden history to the public through pervasive forms of media that
were more likely to penetrate and revise our prosaic ahistorical imaginations with a true historical
narrative. Online exhibits and digital collections seemed to be the best way to accomplish this
goal.

While browsing the exhibit and historical documents, one should keep in mind that the 1970s
Gainesville women's movement was an experiment on social change. It was merely a group of
women, mostly white, but also consisting of some highly-influential African American women and
ranging in class, who began to do something about their dissatisfication with the way in which
men and male-dominated institutions treated them. "Their motivation was unfocused composed
of anger, inchoate need, confusion, and frustration and their purpose was equally unclear."- In
the same process, women gained some clarity and explored the possibility of owning their own
organizations and creating programs to address the issues they felt were most important, like
rape, spousal abuse, improved mental health services, and reproductive rights. The Radical
Women in Gainesville collection and exhibit site affirms the women who participated in this
history and welcomes others to engage it.

Leila Adams
Curator
Radical Women in Gainesville Digital Collection







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


Overview: A Feminist Mecca Teeming with Plans, Ideas,
and Energy

The Gainesville women's movement started in 1968 when two local residents and civil rights
activists wrote and circulated "The Florida Paper." The dissemination of the position paper, which
the authors originally titled "Towards a Female Liberation Movement," led women from other
national women's liberation groups
to recognize that Gainesville was
not just another small, southern ,._4 i I|
college town, it was a feminist
mecca teeming with plans, ideas, R
and energy.1 *. E lo


In the years following, Gainesville
would also be the site of early
Redstockinqs members and the
location at which Carol Hanisch
authored "The Personal is Political."
Numerous women's groups and
collectives would form as well.


5
At[ -
i A o_
_____ pAN .IZAIO


The movement became most visible
to the public in the mid-1970s when
women began founding feminist
institutions. The Rape Information
and Counseling Service was one of
the first organizations to form. Soon
after came the Gainesville Women's Health Center. Perhaps the culminating moment of the
movement, however, was the founding of The Women's
Center, a community space for women.


Throughout the mid-1970s, the local women's movement
flourished as various women's groups collaborated in order to
present events such as the Southeastern Women's Health
Conference. Other protests and boycotts included the Title IV
march and the Women for Decency campaign. Apart from
involvement in local politics, women in Gainesville also
developed a young and vibrant lesbian-feminist community.

But by the 1980s, the rise of the Religious Right, the defeat of
the Equal Rights Amendment, and the County Commission's
ruling to revoke federal funding from The Women's Center all
diffused the excitement of the movement and the once
vivacious Gainesville women's movement faded into a
movement in abeyance.2


Since the curtailment of the movement, women have formed new organizations and groups that
nurture their feminist identities and give them the opportunity to express their pro-woman beliefs
through political action. Yet nothing compares to the time when they once lived as history-makers
in one of the most massive movements of the twentieth century. This exhibit features their history.


.t







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


A Timeline of Events that Affected the Development of
Gainesville Women's Movement Community

1960s

In October, Beverly Jones co-founds Gainesville Women for Equal Rights, a
group of professor wives and local school teachers dedicated to ending
segregation in Gainesville.
1963
Judith Brown meets Congress of Racial Equality leaders Betty Wright and
Patricia Due Stephens and participates in CORE projects throughout North
Florida.

After harassing gay and lesbian teachers, professors, and students in
4 Gainesville and other liberal pockets of Florida for nearly 10 years, Florida State
Senate votes to allow the Charley Johns Florida Legislative Investigation
Committee to expire. 3

Beverly Jones and Judith Brown co-author "Towards a Female Liberation
Movement" and attend the first Women's Liberation Meeting in Sandy Springs,
Maryland where they share the paper with Chicago and New York feminists,
who rename it "The Florida Paper."

1968 Carol Hanisch relocates to Gainesville to start a "freedom for women" project
through the Southern Conference Education Fund and to help in orgaizing the
Gainesville Women's Liberation group (Gainesville Iguana Feb. 1998).

Gainesville Women's Liberation group sends Carol Giardina as a representative
for the protest against the Miss America Pageant.


96 Kathie Sarachild joins Hanisch, Brown, and others in the Gainesville group,
where she authors a consciousness-raising pamphlet.

1970s

SCarol Hanisch authors "The Personal is Political" in the Gainesville student
1970
ghetto.

The Florida Alligator editor Ron Sachs runs an insert listing numbers to contact
1971 for abortion services in New York in protest of Florida Statute 797.02. His
actions contribute to legalizing the dissemination of abortion information.

Female students start The Abortion Information Dissemination Service, a UF
student organization that connected women to legal abortion services in New
York.
1972
Equal Rights Amendment passed by Congress.

After Byllye Avery is denied a rental house due to her status as an unmarried







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008



woman, local feminsts meet with City Hall representatives in order to secure
marital status as part of the municipal discrimination code.

University of Florida and Santa Fe Community College develop Campus NOW.

Roe v. Wade decision legalizes abortion.

The Jacksonville Clergy Consultation Service begins serving women needing
abortion services.
1973
Maxine Margolis, Margaret Parrish, and Judy Levy secure employment records
of all UF faculty and staff and contract an Atlanta Labor Relations Board
employee to investigate the disparite salaries between men and women. They
threaten suit against UF, who agrees to reform their discriminatory practices.
Many of the gains made at this time, have since rolled back.

In April, housewives and female graduate students organize the Rape
Information and Counseling Service (RICS), a 24-hour rape crisis hotline.
1974
May 2nd, Byllye Avery, Joan Edelson, Judy Levy, and Margaret Parrish found
the Gainesville Women's Health Center.

March 21st, Gainesville women attend the first Equal Rights Amendment
parade in Tallahassee.

March 22nd, Women Unlimited found the Women's Center, a local base for
1975 community building and political action.
1975

In May, Women Unlimited publish their first issue of WomaNews, a radical
monthly feminist newsletter.

In June, Womanstore opens, the first feminist bookstore in Gainesville.

In April, Gainesville Women's Health Center presents the Southeastern
Women's Health Conference at the J. Wayne Reitz Union at UF.

RICS officially expands its services to battered women and is now known as
The Sexual and Physical Abuse Resource Center.

New co-owners change the name of Womanstore to "Amelia's."

SPARC assists in bringing a Rape Victim Advocate Program to the State
1977 Attorney's Office.

In June, UF Women's Studies Program is approved.

In July, Women Unlimited secures CETA grant.

By December, Alachua County Commission votes to cut CETA funding to the







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


1978


Women's Center.

In October, Judy Levy, Byllye, and Margaret Parrish establish the BirthPlace,
one of the first seven freestanding birth centers in the United States.

The Women's Center and WomaNews cease operations, although Amelia's
continues serving the community.


Carol Aubin and Gerry Green buy Amelia's from Bonnie Coates and Linda
Basham.
1979
March 22, 1979, original deadline for the Equal Rights Amendment, extended to
June 30, 1982.

1980s

1980 Gainesville Commission on the Status of Women founded.

Carol Aubin and Gerry Green close Amelia's.

1982 Gainesville Area NOW founded.

Equal Rights Amendment not ratified by the June 30, 1982 deadline.


1983 Byllye Avery launches the National Black Women's Health Proiect in
Gainesville.

Lesbian-feminists found the Mama Raqa monthly newsletter.
1984
Florida School of Traditional Midfery founded, working in conjunction with the
Birth Center of Gainesville.


1985 Judith Brown and Carol Giardina revive the Gainesville Women's Liberation
group.


1986 The Gainesville Iquana, an alternative news source, founded and operated by
Jenny Brown and Joe Quarter.

1989 Redstockings Archives for Action created.

1990s

Lavender Menace organized by women wanting to play sports together.
1991
Gainesville Community Alliance founded.







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008



Susan Keel and Kerry Godwin found Iris Books steps away from what used to
1992 be the building that housed Womanstore and Amelia's, the first two feminist
bookstores in Gainesville.


1993 Civic Media Center founded, an alternative library housing documents from
local civil rights and women's movements.

994 Kathie Sarachild teaches a "Feminist Activism" course in the UF Women's
1994
Studies Program


1996 Dotty Fiasbisy and Beverly White purchase Iris Books from former owners and
alter its name to Wild Iris.


1997 After nearly 25 years of serving the community, the Gainesville Women's Health
Center closes (Gainesville Iguana Oct. 1997).

2000s

2004 Cheryl Krauth and Lylly Rodriguez become the new owners of Wild Iris.

2006 Cheryl Krauth and Lylly Rodriquez start Friends of Wild Iris, a non-profit tax-
exempt volunteer organization.







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


Towards a Female Liberation Movement

A former UF political science professor best characterized Gainesville, Florida in the 1960s as
"The Berkley of the South."' The small southern college town's progressive politics contrasted
greatly when compared to its neighboring confederate counties and states thanks to the activism
of local citizens.

Anti-war and desegregation were the
two main issues of the decade,
although a more subtle movement
was forming against homophobia in
response to the Charley Johns
Florida Legislative Invesigation
Committee that harassed gay and
lesbian teachers, professors, and
students in Gainesville and like cities
in Florida from 1956 to 1965.3

Women, mainly those associated
with the University of Florida,
participated in voter registration and
desegregation efforts in Gainesville
and its surrounding areas. Around
the same time, racial tensions
intensified when a handful of African American students were admitted to the University of Florida
in 1958, sparking protests and a riot.

One of the African American
students, along with white civil
rights ally Judith Brown, founded
a first student civil rights
organization at UF during that ,
time, known as the Student
Group. UF professor Marshall .,,
Jones and his colleague Ed .r
Richard would supervise the
group.

The Student Group organized
sit-ins, marches, and boycotts
throughout Gainesville,
especially at the College Inn
Cafeteria and the Florida
Theatre, two racially segregated
institutions that would not
integrate until the late 1960s. It
was through the Student Group
that UF student Judith Brown
and Beverly Jones, wife of
Marshall Jones, would meet.






"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


Beverly Jones and a group of professors'
wives would co-found the Gainesville
Women for Equal Rights organization in
1963 in an effort to propel the static '
movement forward. Meanwhile, that summer "
Judith Brown would join activists Betty le"
Wright and Patricia Due Stephens in
Congress on Race Equality (CORE) projects I-
throughout North Florida.- Both women's
involvement in civil rights activism would
equip them to soon become the leading
writers of a feminist revolution.

Beverly Jones, frustrated with the unequal
gender relations in her marriage and the way ,
in which men ignored women's political ideas
at meetings altogether, would sit down to
write "Towards a Female Liberation
Movement" in 1968.

Judith Brown would join her to write the
second part of the position paper that same
year and would urge Jones to finish her
section in time for the first national Women's
Liberation meeting in Sandy Springs, Maryland where the paper circulated from one feminist's
hands to another and became nationally acclaimed as "The Florida Paper."1







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


The Paper that Started It All

Frustrated with the unequal gender relations in her marriage and the way in which men ignored
women's political ideas at local anti-war and civil rights meetings altogether, Beverly Jones,
activist and wife of a UF professor, would sit down to write "Towards a Female Liberation
Movement" in 1968.

Judith Brown, a member of the UF civil rights student organization of which Jones and her
husband were supervisors, would join her to write the second part of the position paper that same
year. Brown would also urge Jones to finish her section in time for the first Women's Liberation
meeting in Sandy Springs, Maryland where the paper circulated from one feminist's hands to
another and became widely acclaimed as "The Florida Paper."

"The Florida Paper" stated that men had too much at stake to make sincere efforts towards
reforming the New Left to include women as equals; women were naive to think otherwise. Jones
argued:

There is an almost exact parallel between the role of women and the role of black people
in this society. Together they constitute the great maintenance force sustaining the white
American male. They wipe his ass and breast feed him when he is little, they school him
in his youthful years, do his clerical work and raise his and their replacements later, and
all through his life in the factories, on the migrant farms, in the restaurants, hospitals,
offices, and homes, they sew for him, stoop for him, cook for him, clean for him, sweep,
run errands, haul away his garbage, and nurse him when his frail body falters.5

Jones and Brown intended to interrupt this system of maintenance by separating from men in the
local student civil rights organization and addressing their own needs through a nation-wide
campaign for women's rights. Yet Jones noted that women could not separate physically from
men unless they first freed themselves from mental trappings, such as romanticism.

Women who would avoid or extricate themselves from the common plight I've described
and would begin new lives, new movements, and new worlds, must first learn to
acknowledge the reality of their present condition. They have got to reject the blind and
faulty categories of thought foisted on them by the male order for its own benefit.... In
other words, they must reject romanticism. Romance, like the rabbit of the dog track, is
the illusive, fake, and never-attained reward which for the benefit and amusement of our
masters keeps us running and thinking in safe circles.5

In calling for women to put aside romantic notions for a more realistic and strategic perspective,
the paper also cited celibacy as a short-term tactic for non-married women to use in order to "stop
the world and get off'.- In other words, women could use celibacy as a transient space to move in
and out of when they felt the need to separate from men and social pressures in order to become
self-conscious of their own thoughts and considerate of the possibilities outside the perimeters of
"safe circles."

As an important side note, women's all-female communes would also allow for experimenting
with sexuality and relationship structures. Brown, however, criticized communes for their lack of
political direction, structure, and constructiveness while envisioning a more revolutionary type of
space that could establish women's political self-consciousness. Seven years later, The Women's
Center would be the fullfilment of Brown's vision.







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


In 1968, the two women would travel to Sandy
Springs, Maryland for the first Women's
Liberation national meeting. There they
befriended New York Radical Women and
exchanged papers with them: "Notes from the
First Year" for "Towards a Female Liberation
Movement," which would later become well-
known as "The Florida Paper." By forging the
beginnings of a life-long partnership with radical
feminists in New York, Gainesville would soon
become "the southern base" for a "North-South
connection."i

"The Florida Paper" helped mobilize and
transform a small set of inchoate women's
groups into a national force of social change. Chicago West Side Group member, Naomi
Weisstein reacted to the publication saying:

'After we got started, for months we were paralyzed with doubt: was there any need for
an independent women's movement, since the triumph of socialism would surely
dismantle the patriarchy? Then the paper came out. It transformed our thinking... Now we
knew we were doing the right thing. Here was a vision of the liberation of women so real,
palpable, and compelling that our doubts dissolved and we forged ahead... After that
paper, there would be no turning back for us or for the rest of the movement.'

Despite national acclaim for the "The Florida Paper," Gainesville lacked one important component
to take part in the women's liberation movement, a local women's liberation group. In actuality,
Gainesville had only a paper, a theoretical framework, but no one to help spread the word or help
in organizing a local group.

At this time, Gainesville's new-found friendship with New York Radical Women became most
evident. New York women Carol Hanisch, Kathie Sarachild, and Irene Peslikis relocated to
Gainesville and there helped found the Gainesville Women's Liberation Group along with Judith
Brown and Carol Giardina.-

As "The Florida Paper" passed from hand to hand among women across the nation, Brown and
other women inspired by the paper would distribute it throughout the Gainesville community, but
not without opposition. One feminist recalls:

They would distribute it in bars and in women's restrooms and they would try to start
consciousness-raising groups. The hostility was so tremendous that organizing in the
women's restrooms was the only thing that they could do. At the time there was such
antagonism.

In response, women often huddled around bathroom stalls to plan the next consciousness-raising
location. From 1968 to 1973, various women's groups formed in Gainesville as the paper reached
women throughout the community, galvanizing local women's consciousness and increasing
restlessness among women. Not until the mid-1970s, however, would the movement become
most apparent and have the longest-lasting impact on members of the local community as
women moved outside the privacy of their homes and segregated restrooms and transitioned into
the public with the founding of several feminist institutions.






"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


The Emergence of a Local Anti-Rape Movement

In April of 1974, a handful of housewives and female graduate students organized a 24-hour rape
crisis hotline in the broom closet of a local Episcopalian church and called it the Rape Information
and Counseling Service. Jacquelyn Resnick, a University of Florida counselor, trained
paraprofessionals on how to counsel women in crisis.

At night, volunteers transferred the lines to their homes where they
answered calls throughout the night on rotating shifts. By
answering urgent calls, accompanyingn] rape victims to the .-i;
hospital, the police station, court, and providing] getaways for
women to escape town for the day or weekend" (WomaNews April
1976), RICS paraprofessionals weaved the beginnings of an
expansive web of support for area women.

After receiving hundreds of calls from women in distress,
volunteers for the Rape Information and Counseling Service
realized women needed more than moral support through a
telephone wire, they needed a safe living residence and a number
of other services. As a result, RICS changed its name to The
Sexual and Physical Abuse Resource Center (SPARC) and sought to serve spousal abuse
victims in addition to rape victims as the community, along with the nation, uncovered domestic
violence as a rampant reality. But inviting victims into volunteers' homes was dangerous. Sharon
Bauer articulated this concern:

"We feel the community should provide this service and
that it shouldn't be necessary for us to use our homes
for emergency shelter. This is a risky situation since an
angry spouse might show up at our doors"
(WomaNews Dec. 1976). According to one account,
Bauer demanded the county donate an unused city
building in Kanapaha to SPARC in order to provide
safer services for women. In October of 1977, after the
county met Bauer's request, RICS confidently
announced the extension of its services to battered
women (WomaNews Oct. 1977). Bauer and her
husband staffed the house and cared for victims first-'
hand.

In addition to providing shelter, SPARC often networked with local
police officials, particularly with Martha Varnes, an investigator at the
UF Police Department who consoled rape victims immediately after
the assaults. SPARC also collaborated with others in establishing the
Rape Treatment Center at Shands Hospital, which ensured victims
received gynecological exams and information about the importance
of venereal disease and pregnancy tests after the assault rather than
only receiving a general physical at the Alachua General Hospital
(WomaNews May 1977).

Later that same year, Sallie Harrison and other paraprofessionals
secured a Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA) grant for
SPARC, which provided for a private coordinator, counseling
specialist, and project coordinator who would also act as a media liaison.







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


In May of 1977, SPARC would also help bring a rape victim advocate program to the State
Attorney's Office and receive $12,000 per year for training and supervising volunteers out of the
$40,000 state grant. Other rape services objected to SPARC's allotment, but funding guidelines
specified recognition be given to women's groups that first brought forth the issue of rape to the
public consciousness (WomaNews May 1977).

In 1980, SPARC began receiving additional funding from new legislation mandating a portion of
the marriage license fee go to supporting domestic abuse programs. This funding sustained
SPARC while President Ronald Reagan allowed the CETA program to expire during the first year
of his presidency.

As the domestic abuse shelter received more money from outside sources, it also began losing
its feminist base. During the mid-1980s, an exchange occurred in which feminist activists
resigned from SPARC and more business-oriented professionals men and women whose main
purpose was to secure funding for SPARC and ensure the organization met state grant
requirements took their place.

While other feminist institutions closed down due to the economic and political stresses of the
1980s, SPARC continued garnering community support and improving its services. In year 2000,
SPARC changed its name to Peaceful Paths and continues operating today as a domestic abuse
network.







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


Reproductive Rights Take a Front Seat

In 1971 Ron Sachs, a newspaper editor for
The Florida Alligator, ran an insert listing
numbers to contact for abortion services in
protest of the unconstitutional Florida Statute
797.02 that prohibited the distribution of
abortion information (Independent Florida
Alligator 1970s Reprint).

Several meetings later between University
President Stephen O'Connell and the Board
of Student Publications, the University of
Florida pulled funding from the newspaper
and disassociated itself from it. More
importantly, Sachs' actions led to the
overturning of the outdated 1868 legislation
that prohibited the distribution of abortion
information.

As a result, in 1972 feminists were able to
start a legal abortion referral service known
as the Abortion Information Dissemination
Service, a student organization. Female students connected women to abortion services in New
York. Yet not all women could afford to travel to New York to terminate their pregnancies. Byllye
Avery, co-founder of the Gainesville Women's Health Center and National Black Women's Health
Project, described this dilemma.

We found out this New York number we could give them, and they could catch a plane
and go there for their abortions. But then a black woman came and we gave her the
number, and she looked at us in awe: 'I can't go to New York...' We realized we needed a
different plan of action, so in May 1974 we opened up the Gainesville Women's Health
Center.11

Between the years 1972 and 1974, however, two important events
would take place prior to building a feminist health clinic in Gainesville:
Congress would pass the Roe v. Wade decision and the Jacksonville
S. Clergy Consultation Service would begin serving women needing
abortions. By January of 1974, it became undeniable that a women's
health center had to be created in Gainesville as the Jacksonville
clinic could not adequately provide for all women seeking abortion
consultations in the region (WomaNews Feb. 1976).

At this time, Byllye Avery, Joan Edelson, Judy Levy, and Margaret
S. Parrish, a group of women envisioning a type of health care that would
"help women solve the crisis-producing situation of unplanned,
.. ..unwanted pregnancy," at an affordable price for low-income and
minority residents, founded the Gainesville Women's Health Center on
May 2, 1974 at 805 Southwest Fourth Avenue.

In addition to abortion services, the Gainesville Women's Health Center also offered specialized
services for African American women, such as sickle cell anemia testing, as well as other more
general preventative health measures for all women. The health center staff published Sage-
Femme as well, a newspaper that educated women on issues of women's health while training







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


them how to intelligently consume services from the androcentric and sadistic medical
establishment.

The co-founders decided against outside funding in order to ensure "complete woman control" of
the clinic. This decision meant that Gainesville Women's Health Center's services would not be
free clients would have to pay "for services rendered" (WomaNews April 1976). In keeping the
charge for service at a non-profit, affordable level, however, the health center ensured its mission:
"Health Care for People, Not for Profit" (Gainesville Iguana May/June 1998).

In April of 1976, despite not receiving grant money to fund the expensive project, members of the
Gainesville Women's Health Center brought well-known feminists Phyllis Chesler, Pauline Bard,
Barbara Erinreich, and Rita Mae Brown to Gainesville for the most impressive event of the
decade, the Southeastern Women's Health Conference. The conference featured several
workshops such as Lesbianism and the Women's Movement, Motherhood Outside the Nuclear
Family, Abortion and Birth Control Counseling, Black Women and Birth Control, The Healthy
Lesbian, Feminism as a Way to Mental Health, Changing Attitudes Toward Menstruation, and
Incestuous Relationships.

Prior to the event, incest still hid quietly in the social unconscious, far from being conceptualized
in even the most enlightened American mind. At the conference, mental healthcare professionals
shared what was considered the unthinkable at the time: stories about women who had been
sexually molested by their family members. As a result, the workshop on incest brought the issue
to the forefront of the social imagination, attracting both local and national attention to the
shocking realization that incest was not only real, but rampant.

In the following years, while the local movement slowed down, the GWHC continued operating
and the original leaders would develop additional women's health institutions in Gainesville. In
1978, Judy Levy, Byllye Avery, and Margaret Parrish would establish the BirthPlace, one of only
seven freestanding birth centers in the United States, where midwifery nurses provided traditional
birth services in a comfortable, homelike atmosphere. Women's increased education of their
bodies and ownership of their reproductive rights, whether to have an abortion or to choose to
have a natural birth, made both the GWHC and the BirthCenter successful institutions. Today, the
Birth Center of Gainesville operates in conjunction with the Florida School of Traditional
Midwifery. Furthermore, in 1983, Gainesville would be the site that inspired Byllye Avery to launch
the National Black Women's Health Project, which today operates as the Black Women's Health
Imperative in Atlanta, Georgia.

Throughout its history, the Gainesville
Women's Health Center endured "attacks by
anti-abortion forces, hostile pickets,
excessive IRS scrutiny, legislative assaults
on abortion rights, and the failures of other
small businesses" (Gainesville Iquana Oct.
1997) and improved the practice of medicine
with such training as the "art of gentle
pelvic examinations" and numerous other -
alternative healthcare ameliorations.-

In 1997, after nearly 25 years of serving
women's health interests, the Gainesville
Women's Health Center, "an isolated and
embattled beachhead in a sea of for-profit health care providers" lost its foothold due to the
persistent and escalating nature of the health care system's "for-profit dog-eat-dog climate" and
would permanently close its doors in 1997 while the BirthCenter continued the legacy of woman-
centered healthcare in Gainesville (Gainesville clcuana Oct. 1997).







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


For more information on how the Gainesville women's health movement has influenced
healthcare today, see the video presentation given by Byllye Avery and Betsy David Randall at
the University of Florida Changing the Face of Medicine conference.







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


The Realization of a Seven-Year Dream

On March 22, 1975, a day after the first Equal Rights Amendment parade in Florida's state
capital, a small group of women known as Women Unlimited founded the Women's Center in
downtown Gainesville, Florida. Feminist foremother, Judith Brown, played an essential role in
securing the facility (WomaNews April 1976).

Altogether, Women Unlimited,
operated as an umbrella
organization housing three main
organizations: the Women's Center; "
WomaNews, a monthly newsprint;
and Womanstore, a feminist
bookstore. Breakthrough, an
alternative counseling service,
rented space with Women
Unlimited's organizations.

During the open house event that
celebrated the birth of the Women's
Center, a slide presentation voiced
the founding of the Center as "the
realization of a seven-year dream for
Gainesville women" (Gainesville Sun ---
July 1975). This seven year vision '
no doubt dates back to the writing of
"The Florida Paper," in which Judith Brown criticized all-female communes for not being

"self-consciously arranged to serve political as well as personal needs. They are not a
temporary stopping off place for women who need to re-evaluate their lives. They are no
sanctuary from destructive male-female encounters. They are no base for female
liberation work."6

In regards to the separatist aspect of the institution, Brown speaks extensively about the
importance of a sexually-segregated space for women to participate in democracy. After all,
before the founding of the Women's Center,
women had few places to organize in public.

Seven years later, the Women's Center
would be the place at which women felt at
"home in organizing" as an all female space
based on the consensus model, which
necessitated women's political participation.
In addition, the Women's Center would serve
as a "place where one slackens the pace at
the crossroads, and takes a chance to rest."-
Thus, the Women's Center operated as a
space for women to write and obey their own
rules, or simply rest, rather than submit to
the governance of the male class or endure
"destructive" interaction with men.

Upon founding the Women's Center,
members immediately established its


d







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


structure and leadership. By October of 1975, WomaNews published three pages of "Structural
Guidelines." The following newsletter announced three new positions that the Steering
Committee formed in an effort to "legitimize leadership" and the Center. The committee
unanimously elected Rosalie Miller as the director and task leader, Linda Basham as the
maintenance leader, and Charlotte Hunter as the financial affairs officer (WomaNews Nov. 1975).
The establishment of rules and leaders also ensured that the "Tyranny of Structurelessness" that
existed within less successful feminist institutions around the nation, would not dictate the
Center's future. 9

The Women's Center also became a place for women's community. Rosalie Miller, original co-
founder of the institution, speaks about its function in this regard:

The reason that we started the Women's Center was because we realized that there
were all of these different groups of women around Gainesville, but they didn't have
much interaction between them. So we started the Women's Center in part to facilitate
more collaboration and cooperation.

Not surprisingly, however, participants experienced the Women's Center in different ways as its
newfound existence allowed for interpretation. To some, the Women's Center was the
"intellectual hub" of the movement and a "meeting forum for organizing after hours," while for
others it was a type of lesbian "clubhouse" for meeting, dating, and selling books. Overall,
members perceived the Women's Center as both a base for mobilizing political action and a
space for creating and enjoying a lesbian feminist community.

During the height of the movement, the Women's Center brought activist and former UF student,
Rita Mae Brown to Gainesville for the Southeastern Women's
Health Conference, the most impressive event of the decade,
which was mainly coordinated by women from the Gainesville
Women's Health Center. In the wake of the exhilarating wave
immediately following the successful health conference, one
woman wrote, "Within Gainesville, a new cohesiveness has
developed between the different feminist organizations as a
result of the conference, and there has been increased
communication between the groups" (WomaNews May 1976).

Prior to the conference, most members of the Center hoped
that they could create a separate self-sufficient world within the
Center. Now after the conference, with the air still buzzing with
yesterday's synergy, Women Unlimited believed without a
doubt that such a women's community was possible.

Five months later in October of 1976, women relocated the
Center to a larger and more expensive building as part of this
revolutionary vision after Libertas, a local women's group consisting of five members: Bonnie
Coates, Gerry Green, Carol Bradshaw, Barbara Canning, and Grace Fordyce, bought a two-story
building on 12 Northwest Eighth Street and leased it to the Women's Center (WomaNews Oct.
1976).

One Libertas member commented on her investment in the Women's Center saying: "I wanted a
central place for the movement that we could call our own, where we could have an economic
and power base." Soon volunteers were consumed with raising funds to keep the Center open as
the cost for running the new building tripled (WomaNews March 1977).







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


In June of 1977, members secured a federal work grant known as the Comprehensive
Employment Training Act (CETA) in order to cover the new costly edifice and compensate three
new leaders for their public service to the Center: Kayanna Pace, Charlotte Hunter, and Janette
Friel. With the $33,000, the center planned
to expand their services and provide
employment opportunities for Gainesville
women, especially housewives (WomaNews
June 1977).

Women's new space in the political
community disturbed right-wing
conservatives who cringed while reading the
widely-circulated feminist publication,
WomaNews. A columnist for the newsprint,
spoke about their reaction to the publication, -
saying, "The right-wing did not like their tax-
payers money going to promote lesbianism
and witchcraft."

As a result, conservatives pressured the P .
Alachua County Commission and the
Department of Labor to cease funding to the
Women's Center, claiming Women Unlimited
had violated grant requirements by
publishing WomaNews. A local feminist
spoke of this right-wing counter movement:

When we got the CETA grant... of course we publicized it with delight. As Linda [a local
feminist] predicted, that's when they [right-wing members of the community] saw their
opening. They harassed the Labor Department in Atlanta until a woman agent was sent
down to investigate us for alleged misuse of government funds... This fight over the
CETA monies was enraging, mystifying, time consuming, frustrating, exhausting.... and
when it was finally over I certainly felt totally drained and defeated. I put on as good a
face as I could and did what I could to rouse the troops [new members of the Women's
Center] taking over, but then I resigned...

After six months, two investigations, one review, and unrelenting pressure from conservatives,
the County Commission cut funding to Women Unlimited before the case reached Washington
D.C. Women Umlimited filed for an injunction in order to appeal the Commission's decision,
noting that they had passed two prior investigations and claiming that the County Commission
had denied them the right to a trial (WomaNews Dec. 1977).

Their hopes for continued funding and for expanding the Women's Center ended, however, when
Circuit Court Judge John Murphree denied the request. The Women's Center closed soon after
the decision and the movement's momentum began to wane.






"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


Every New Cultural Wave Needs a Published Organ

Women Unlimited published its first issue of WomaNews, a monthly feminist newsletter, in May of
1975, two months after the opening of the Women's Center. The writers of
WomaNews reported most of the movement activity in Gainesville. One
feminist comments on the importance of the newsletter saying,

"I know that during the Civil Rights Movement I think one of the /.
lessons that everyone learned was that we had to have some sort of
written document, some sort of newsletter, some sort of newspaper
that really carried the message. Every new cultural wave needs a
published organ, alternative or whatever one wants to call it...or its
dead in the water."

SThe newsletter centralized The Women's Center by
making public the leaders and leadership responsibilities, policy and
structural guidelines, meeting times, fundraisers, and other pertinent
news and events that organized the institution to function as one unit.

WomaNews issues also reached the hands of local right-wing
conservatives, who cringed while reading articles on women's
sexuality and spirituality. A WomaNews columnist, who wrote the
S"Radical Ravings" section, spoke about their reaction to the
publication, saying, "The right-wing did not like their tax-payers money
going to promote lesbianism and witchcraft."

Once the Women's Center began receiving the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act
grant, community conservatives pressured state and government officials to cease funding to the
feminist institution, making unsubstantiated claims that Women
Unlimited violated grant requirements by publishing WomaNews.

After six months, two investigations, one review, and unrelenting
pressure from conservatives, the County Commission decided to cut
funding to The Women's Center before the case reached Washington
D.C. and prior to giving Women Unlimited a fair trail (WomaNews Dec.
1977). WomaNews staff ceased operations shortly thereafter in 1978.

The end to radical feminist print culture was not near, however. A new
lesbian feminist publication began circulating six years later in
Gainesville called Mama Raga. According to one account, three
women founded Mama Raga in 1984 in response to the blockbuster
hit, Gandhi, which emphasized the importance of the press by
asserting that "Without a journal of some kind you cannot unite a
community" (Sony Studios 1982).

As a result, women compiled newsletters and distributed them once a month, publishing articles
on women's sexuality and politics, poetry, and other forms of creative writing. The publication also
features a calendar of events, listing fundraisers, social events, and other local happenings as
well as a classified section and a directory of local lesbian businesses.






"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


Throughout the decades, the Mama Raga Collective has
struggled to continue operating due to a lack of financial
support and volunteers; however, the collective's small core,
overall minimal expenses, and a steady stream of committed
lesbian feminists has allowed for its continual operation.

Today Mama Raga continues as a group of loosely linked
activists who meet once a month in the Pride Community
Center in order to produce "The Lesbian Feminist Newsletter of
North Central Florida." The group also communicates daily
through a Yahoo message forum in order to assemble the
newsletter a technological advancement that allows for new
ways for coordinating communication in the next cultural wave.


C






"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


Nurturing the Intellectual Needs of a Community

In June of 1975, women officially opened Womanstore to the general public. Womanstore would
operate as a bookstore and would share the same suite with the Women's Center and
WomaNews. In hopes that its profits would eventually "pay for the basic operation of the center,"
Womanstore sold local female artists' crafts and paintings, as well as jewelry, and alternative
literature for children and adults (Gainesville Sun, July 1975).

In Womanstore, women nurtured and educated one another by passing around books such as
Anica Vesel's Feminism as Therapy, Jill Johnston's Lesbian Nation: The Feminist Solution, and
Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle to one another and exclaiming, "Every woman ought to read
this!"


Despite the withdrawal of Comprehensive Employment
and Training Act (CETA) funds from The Women's
Center and the Florida State Senate's refusal to ratify
the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States
Constitution (WomaNews April 1977), feminist
bookselling persisted while the rest of the movement
flatlined. In 1977, new co-owners changed the name of
the bookstore to Amelia's due to their admiration for
Amelia Earhart. Amelia's would serve the community
for five more years as a community space. During this
time, various activist groups, especially newly forming
gay and lesbian organizations, continued using the
store for organizing protests, rallies, and other political
operations.

Amelia's shifted ownership as one lesbian couple
bought the store from another in 1979: Gerry Green


EQUALITY Y
FOR THE OTHER
HALF
INSURES
EQUALITY
FOR ALL.


and Carol Aubin bought Amelia's from Bonnie Coates and Linda Basham. Gerry Green's
professorship at Sante Fe Community College paid for much of the
store's expenses while Aubin and other women of the community
staffed the store and raised funds in order to keep it open.

In 1982, as the national economic crisis worsened, Bonnie Coates,
owner of the bookstore building, doubled the rent. Despite Amelia's
usefulness in the community and affiliation with over 200 members,
Aubin and Green would have to close the store due to their inability to
fund the bookstore's rising rental rate as they were already
experiencing a serious deficit. In 1982, after nearly a decade of
feminist book selling in Gainesville, Aubin and Green put the store's
materials on the auction block, sold most of the 1,000 titles, and paid
the debt they had accumulated in the past three years, approximately $10,000.

Green attributes much of the bookstore's loss of support to the closing down of WomaNews,
saying, "Every new cultural wave needs a published organ, alternative or whatever one wants to
call it...or its dead in the water." Without a publication and community support, Amelia's bookstore
would founder in 1982.






"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


Feminist bookselling reemerged in
Gainesville in 1992 after nearly a decade of
Sits absence. At that time, Susan Keel and
Kerry Godwin founded Iris Books. The store
once again exchanged ownership in 1996 to
Dotty Faibisy and Beverly White, who altered
L its name to Wild Iris.

In 2004, Cheryl Krauth and Lylly Rodriguez
WOMANSTORE became the new owners of Wild Iris. Shortly
after, they founded Friends of Wild Iris a
opn MO h ur, om d uan tax-exempt non-profit organization. This step
was taken to establish the bookstore as a
permanent institution, a feat few bookstores
Over Browsers have accomplished as Wild Iris is the only
500 Titles Welcome feminist bookstore remaining in the state of
Florida and one of less than 70 surviving
me-97 i NH.w. ,tesrE throughout the United States.1l

Furthermore, Wild Iris is the new "intellectual
hub" of the community and a political space for both older and newer generations of feminists.
Student groups such as Feminists Actively Creating Equality (FACE) meet at Wild Iris to discuss
political issues, while other students work on special projects at the store through the internship
program affiliated with the UF Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research.







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008



Further Reading

1. Giardina, Carol. "Origins and Impact of Gainesville Women's Liberation, the First Women's
Liberation Organization in the South." Making Waves: Female Activists in Twentieth- Century
Florida. Eds. Jack E. Davis and Kari Frederickson. Gainesville, FL: U P of Florida, 2003.

2. Taylor, Verta and Leila J. Rupp. "Women's Culture and Lesbian Feminist Activism: A Re-
consideration of Cultural Feminism." Community Activism and Feminist Politics: Organizing
Across Race, Class, and Gender. Ed. Nancy A. Naples. New York: Routledge, 1998. 57-79.

3. Sears, James T. "Closet Crusaders: The Johns Committee and Homophobia, 1956-1965."
Carryin' On in the Lesbian and Gay South. Ed. John Howard. New York: New York U P, 1997.

4. Jones, Marshall. "Berkeley of the South: A History of the Student Movement at the University
of Florida, 1963-1968." An unpublished manuscript. Available at the Civic Media Center
Alternative Press Library and Reading Room

5. Jones, Beverly. "Towards a Female Liberation Movement: Part I." Voices from Women's
Liberation. Ed. Leslie B. Tanner. New York: Signet, 1970.

6. Brown, Judith. "Towards a Female Liberation Movement: Part II." Voices from Women's
Liberation. Ed. Leslie B. Tanner. New York: Signet, 1970.

7. Giardina, Carol. "The Making of the Women's Liberation Movement, 1953-1970." Diss. City U
New York, 2004.

8. Echols, Alice. Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975. Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota P, 1989.

9. Freeman, Jo. "The Tyranny of Structurelessness." The Second Wave, 2(1972).

10. Farmelant, Randie. "End of an era." Off Our Backs, May/June 2003.

11. Avery Y. Byllye. "Breathing Life into Ourselves: The Evolution of the National Black Women's
Health Project." Feminism and Community. Eds. Penny Weiss and Marilyn Friedman.
Philadelphia, PA: Temple U P, 1995.

12. Burg, Mary Ann, Kevin McCarthy, Phyllis Meek, et al. Women at the University of Florida. A
Publication of the University of Florida's 150th Anniversary Committee, 2003. Available at Wild
Iris

13. Giardina, Carol. "Judith Brown, Freedom Fighter." The Human Tradition in the Civil Rights
Movement. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006.

14. Freeman, Jo. Women: A Feminist Perspective. Ed. Jo Freeman. Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield Pub.
Co., 1975.

15. Schneir, Miriam. Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present.
New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

Other Important Publications







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


Brown, Rita Mae. Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser. New York: Bantam, 1997.

Calhoun, Cheshire. "The Gender Closet: Lesbian Disappearance under the Sign 'Women.'"
Feminist Studies, 2 (1995). 7-34.

DuPlessis Rachel Blau and Ann Snitow, Eds. The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices From
Women's Liberation. New York: Three Rives Press, 1998.

Echols, Alice. Shaky Ground: The '60s and its Aftershocks. New York: Columbia U P, 2002.

Faderman, Lillian. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth- Century
America. New York: Penguin Books, 1992.

Freedman, Estelle. "Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism,
1870-1930." Feminist Studies, 5 (1979). 512-29.

Hanisch, Carol. "The Personal is Political."

Jay, Karla. Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation. New York: Basic Books, 1999.

Rudy, Kathy. "Radical Feminism, Lesbian Separatism, and Queer Theory." Feminist Studies, 27
(2001). 191-222.

Sears, James T. Lonely Hunters: An Oral History of Lesbian and Gay Southern Life, 1948-1968.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.

---. Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South. New Jersey:
Rutgers U P, 2001.

Wells, Betty. "Creating a Public Space for Women in US Agriculture: Empowerment,
Organization, and Social Change. Sociologia Ruralis, 38 (1998). 371-91.







"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


Thank You!

I would like to extend my appreciation to the following.

All of the radical women who once lived in Gainesville, including Nancy Breeze, Carol Giardina,
Gerry Green, Sallie Harrison, Beverly Jones, Phyllis Meek, Rosalie Miller, Margaret Parrish,
Jacquelyn Resnick, and Abby Walters, for your liberation work and for allowing me to interview
you and collect your archives.

Dr. Trysh Travis and the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research for your guidance
and encouragement.

Edna Daniels, Earl Wade, and the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program for your continued
support and funding to carry out the project.

Erich Kesse, Laurie Taylor, and the Digital Library Center for your assistance in creating the
online collection.

Astra Stephens, for your personal support.

Leila Adams
Curator
Radical Women in Gainesville Digital Collection






"Radical Women in Gainesville Historical Exhibit" by Leila Adams, March 2008


Contribute

Radical Women and Radical Women in Gainesville are growing collections, and works in
progress, designed to reclaim and preserve the history of the Women's Liberation Movement.

More materials will be added as they are located and Internet Distribution Permissions are
obtained. If you would like to contribute archives to this developing collection or if you have any
questions, please contact us.