By Dawn Morgan
Eckerd seniors Alex Bush and Galway Traynor said they would have come to the discussion even if it hadn't been required by their professor, Dr. Carolyn Johnston, for her Making History class. Traynor said he likes that the event is open to the community and students alike, and is interested to hear what questions the students bring to the discussion.
Steinem-era feminists and fellow New Yorkers-turned-St. Petersburgers Margaret Manzi and Linda Conesa donned sassy lids and were all smiles to be in the same room as Steinem and company.
Steinem discussed finding feminism through journalism: As a young reporter in New York, she covered a hearing to tighten abortion laws (helming the decision were 14 men and one nun) and interviewed early Second Wave feminist protesters. Steinem said, "I think you're drawn to what you need to learn," and cited conversations with the protesters (and especially their ease in sharing their lives and truths) that led her to become vocal about her own abortion (She was among 20 women featured in Baumgardner's 2003 documentary I Had an Abortion.) It wasn't until that epiphany that Steinem found her public voice. "If one in three or four" are having abortions, she thought, "why is it illegal?"
She started speaking around the country and soon teamed up with Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a black child-care activist and community organizer from Georgia. Pitman Hughes, who recalled the neighborhood ladies gathering on her porch to discuss the weekly Friday night Klan ride-bys, finally understood why all the kids had to sleep on the floor away from the windows every week. She said she knew she was a feminist when Steinem came to Georgia to interview her, but "Before that I was a revolutionary ready to kick butt."
Amy Richards, whose mother left her father when she was seven months pregnant, said she became a feminist in utero, but it wasn't until college that she introduced to feminist language. In the first grade, when asked if she knew the national anthem, she stood up and sang Reddy's "I Am Woman."
When Pitman Hughes commented on how the efforts to integrate school decades ago is coming undone, especially in Florida and in the South, Richards added it's occurring up north as well. As a mother in NYC, she knows the good schools are disproportionately white. She said this is the time to "use ourselves as an example," and that taking it upon ourselves to see that our children have a diverse experience is "the remaining part of the revolution. How are we contributing to the inequality and how can we fix it?"
Jennifer Baumgardner, mother of a 3-year-old, says that the school her son will go to is mostly Latino, but many white families are moving into the neighborhood and are trying to establish their own PTA, side stepping the one already in existence.
Politically, there obviously was not a Republican in the bunch. Steinem was steadfast in her support of Hillary Clinton for eight years, and then Obama for a subsequent eight years, while Pitman Hughes is an avid Obama supporter. "No president has been able to deal with racism the way I need it to be done," she said. "I need to know that I have lived in an America that has respected me as a human being."
Eckerd students Grace Gair and Lee Taylor, who interned at Steinem's office last summer and organized the event, also shared the stage and lent their voices to the conversation.
This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2008.