Florynce Kennedy & Black Feminism
Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical

http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/4906
Date Written:  2017-03-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2017
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21545

Book review of Sherie M. Randolph's Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

In outlining Kennedy's role, Randolph restores the significance of Black feminist thought to the narrative. Under Atkinson's leadership, the organization was renamed "The Feminists." However as radical feminism became increasingly separatist, and less interested in coalition-building, Kennedy, along with other Black feminists, left the organization.

Randolph's account of Kennedy's role in the reproductive rights movement also restores the significance of Black feminist leadership within that struggle.

In 1966, a Black NY state assemblyman introduced the first bill that would have allowed a mental health exception to the law prohibiting abortion. While it failed, Shirley Chisholm, the Black feminist assemblywoman from Brooklyn, supported a similar bill the following year. It too failed, but Chisholm and others continued to press for changes in the law.