Status Updates From Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The...

Overall interesting though I keep falling asleep but that’s a me issue

Intro. “This book is the first examination of her work that bridges the more mature antiracist movement with the nascent struggle against sexism. Kimberly Springer, Benita Roth, and Stephen Ward, among other scholars, have rescued black feminist organizing in the 1960s and 1970s from historical obscurity to highlight autonomous black feminist organizations.”

🤔 Flo was judged for being too “showy” or performative BUT honestly it’s smart to have an iconic “look” or easily recognizable “look” if you’re gonna cut through the noise! Marketing is very important in America because well…capitalism and so if you’re gonna fight the game you gotta play it.

🤔 when activists are taught in school we only learn 1 part of their activism we don’t learn about the different intersections they often advocate for. “People can only be 1 thing it seems being multifaceted is unheard of and too complicated to understand”

Intro “…they critiqued the multiple and simul-
taneous forms that oppression took in their lives and fought against it in a wide range of groups and movements throughout the postwar period.”

Intro “Contrary to historical representations and popular belief, black feminists, as members and founders of mostly white feminist organizations and as founders of an independent black feminist movement, attempted to shift the mainstream women’s movement away from a single focus on gender-­based oppression toward an agenda more cognizant of the intersections of race and gender.”

Intro “Kennedy’s story challenges the
conventional history of the predominantly white liberal and radical feminist struggles during the 1960s and 1970s through the particular contributions of black feminist politics.“

⭐️Intro “Kennedy expected ‘politics
to be fun,’ so she sang loudly, laughed frequently, and recruited and sustained others with her excitement for challenging one’s own fears by con-
fronting one’s enemies.”

Intro “Kennedy’s street theater demonstrates that her savvy performances were strategically deployed to attract media attention to often-­ ignored issues
and were also a way to make fighting for justice irresistibly pleasurable for would-­ be activists and those already hooked.”

💭ephemera: things that exist or are used or enjoyed for only a short time. Or items of collectible memorabilia, typically written or printed ones, that were originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity
“Junk journaling” or “memory box”

Intro “Once the pages of Kennedy’s unpublished book manuscript ‘The Politics of Oppression’ were placed in the correct order and the chapters were organized in the way she had outlined, the direct line of influence between feminisms and Black Power became clear.”

Intro “The significant role of Black Power in shaping feminism among white as well as black women became evident through Kennedy’s essays, placards, speeches, fliers, and books.“

Intro “More unsettling was the fact that
those who thought they could profit from Kennedy’s work removed certain documents around the time of her death. Debates and legal proceedings between Kennedy’s family and friends over segments of her papers continued for years after Flo passed away.”

Intro “Eventually her activist friends told me that they had purposely destroyed some material when Kennedy became seriously ill for fear that the files would be used against already vulnerable organizers.”

Intro”…family and friends had their own archives and were excited to share their crates of material with me. Sadly, a great deal of the material had not been well preserved and was in total disarray. For more than a year, I sat on the living room floor in the home of Kennedy’s sister Joyce Kennedy Banks…sifting through, organizing, and cataloging seventeen boxes of Flo’s belongings.”

Intro. “With few resources open to the public, I conducted most of my research in the private collections of her family, friends, media producers, and allies. I spent several years tracking down every bit of surviving material on Kennedy’s long life and conducted dozens of interviews with a range of political activists, lawyers, and family members.“

Intro “Moving fluidly between these movements and organizations, she extended what she deemed the most comprehensive theories and effective strategies of each movement to the others. Respected—and sometimes disliked—for her intellect, coarse rhetoric, and compelling charisma, she allied with, debated, and influenced many more well-known radicals:…”

Intro “The black feminist organizing and political theorizing of activist-intellectual Flo Kennedy provides a critical window onto postwar radicalism. Kennedy worked in the civil rights, New Left, Black Power, and women’s movements.”

Intro. “This book, however, demonstrates that black women were present at the creation of post-war feminist movements and articulated a black feminist agenda based on their position as African American women who experienced sexist and racist discrimination in forms that could not be pulled apart and fought separately.”

Intro. “Some major contributions of black feminism are acknowledged, particularly the theory of intersectionality, which emphasizes interlocking systems of oppression by gender and race, but black women’s postwar activism has been recognized primarily in the scholarship of the civil rights movement.“

Intro. “…most works on postwar feminist radicalism
still view black feminism as emerging largely in protest against exclusion by white feminists or in opposition to Black Power.“

Intro. “Many scholars, students, and people concerned with political issues assume black women did not engage in postwar feminist actions until after the development of the predominantly white second wave women’s movement.”

Intro “ Through an activist career spanning more than fifty years, Kennedy targeted the interconnections among racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and various other forms of oppression.”

Intro “If larger and larger numbers of people realized that their exploitation was inextricably linked, she reasoned, they would eventually engage in the radical process of revolutionary change by creating broad-­based political alliances.”

Intro “Kennedy understood that, despite the various institutionalized forms of ‘racist, sexist, classist,’ and imperialist oppression they suffered, they were ultimately more powerful than the forces aligned against them.”

Intro “…bellowing numerous curse words to punctuate her point that for all oppressed people, power rested in their ability to protest individually, collectively, and in inclusive coalitions.”

Intro “In 1976, at the age of sixty, black feminist radical Florynce ‘Flo’ Kennedy stood at a podium in front of college students wearing her signature uni-
form—a cowboy hat and a T-­shirt that read ‘Year of the Woman!,’ her fingernails painted bright red—“