-: This is Rose Norman,
I'm here with Margaret Parrish
in her home in Gainesville, Florida on November 12th, 2012.
And we're here, I'm interviewing her
for the Southern Lesbian Feminist Herstory Project
and she'll be talking
about her feminist activism in Gainesville
starting off with, the original question was
why was Gainesville such a hub
and then I want you to get to that feminist mafia.
-: Okay.
I believe what the impact of the civil rights movement had
was very important and we were,
we were very progressed
in the civil rights movement here in Gainesville.
Bev Jones, by the way, was one of the founders
of Gainesville Women for Equal Rights.
At the same time there was a student group for equal rights
and they were associated groups,
and what was novel about
the Gainesville Women for Equal Rights is,
that they were not only integrated black and white,
but they were also integrated town and gown.
And it was a very effective group.
And I think out of those movement activities
you had to come to yourself sooner or later.
And I think that's, you know,
that's basically where our jump,
we definitely stand on the shoulders
of the civil rights movement.
(coughing)
We had, in Gainesville, we were connected to New York
with Carol Geordana and Judith Brown
and day to red stockings.
(cat meowing)
The children's mental health unit,
the division of child psychiatry
at the University of Shands
was a very enlightened group of people.
And we were exposed to some of the finest minds
in the country, discussion was,
acted discussion and lively discussion
was had long and often.
Judy Levy, who was the child psychologist,
Billy Avery, who is a special education teacher
and myself, the head of the business office,
became known and child psychiatrist the feminist mafia.
Because we challenged male notions and patriarchal notions
within the context of psychiatry.
In their grand rounds, in their seminars
both adult and child.
And
we became interested and our connection
to the national front was health, women's health,
feminist women's health.
Out of that we put in
the 12th free standing abortion clinic
in the United States outside of New York
and the seventh free standing birth center
in the Unites States.
The one in 1975, the abortion clinic in 1975
and the birth center in 1978.
We were connected to the national front
because of women's health,
we were connected to Carol Downer in California,
who had been arrested for practicing medicine
without a license.
(cat meowing)
And she was the mother of self help
and teaching women about their bodies
And-- -: Spell her name.
-: Carol Downer, it's just like it sounds.
-: Just like a downer.
-: Yeah, just like a downer.
Judy and I went to New York
to see the abortion clinics up there,
not only for our own interest,
but to have some place to refer people.
I had been a part of the Clergy Consultation Services
from 1966
out of New York, who were underground abortion referral.
And I was doing pregnancy tests in my office
and referring women.
And when it was illegal in the state of Florida.
(cat meowing)
And then Billy became the representative,
our representative to the feminist women's health network,
which plugged us into the national scene.
And we were also, Judy and Billy both were associated
with the Boston Women's Health Collective,
which also plugged us into the national scene.
There wasn't much going on,
that we didn't find about immediately
and there wasn't much, that happened here,
that we didn't have a say so about,
I mean, we didn't care who we went to or what we said,
if a women was hurt or...
(laughing)
Yeah, we sort of marched right in,
well, they weren't prepared for us,
so out of shock they did whatever we said.
The doctors took us on because of the abortion clinic
and the birth center, but not that hard.
I mean, they didn't, you know, they didn't like it,
but they didn't really come after us
like they went after the clinic in Tallahassee
and other places, we didn't have that.
And really, when we opened up there was very little,
there was very little antiabortion activity,
that didn't come until the Moral Majority
erupted in the early 70s.
And that didn't come really until a few years
after it really erupted, we really didn't get it until like,
we didn't start really getting a lot of pickets every week
until probably the mid 70s,
mid to late 70s.
So we didn't have any idea, you know,
we weren't living with what these people
are living with now.
But we had a guy,
Charlie Mayhan who was the physician,
who was head of the maternal and infant care at Shands
and then he was later the state of Florida
public health director.
Charlie went to an international convention
in New York city in 1978
and he came back and we wanted, you know,
of course to know everything he knew,
and he came back and he said,
"There's nobody offering the range of services
"for women that we are offering here".
'Cause we had midwives during home birth,
we had the birth center, birth,
we had the abortion clinic, we had Well Woman's,
we were teaching women about their bodies,
we were, I mean,
it was unbelievably,
it was unbelievably advanced
in terms of where we had been 10 years before that.
But it looks like to me we were back at it.
You know, people are still making medical decisions
with less information than they would buy a car with.
Which is disappointing.
(laughing)
-: Yeah, to say the least.
-: And there was, you know,
I think the first,
I'm trying to remember,
but I think the first lesbian health group,
that we did was in
1976.
-: That would've been a CR group associated with the clinic?
-: No, one of the CR group, it was education,
it was education, it was medical education
and I think that was the first one.
A lot happened in 1976, the first incest group,
the Southeast Women's Health Center health conference
had the first incest group,
where people actually talked,
woman actually talked about their incest.
In 76 we help start the battered women's house,
which grew out of the rape crisis
and the rape crisis phone line was in our clinic.
And then later we did second staging,
I did second staging, which was having women
be able to live somewhere for a period of two years so,
that they could get education on whatever
and stay out of the battering situation.
So that, you know, it's a long enough period of time,
where their children and they themselves were protected so,
that they could get education
and provide financially for themselves.
It was six to eight weeks, you're not providing for yourself
and you're not providing for your kids,
and you end up going back.
-: Is that what you usually--
-: Because of financial.
-: Is six to eight weeks the usual for a shelter?
-: Mm-hmm, still is, still is.
We had the first child abuse conference.
-: That was in 76?
-: Mm-hmm.
And Donna,
Donna and Alice from UF NOW
were part of the task force, that presented that.
And it was interesting,
'cause it was University of Florida chapter of NOW,
which is campus now,
and they got together with the junior league.
-: Whoa!
(laughing)
-: With Carol Zagel and the junior league.
And they presented and there were two other groups
and I can't remember who they were.
And they presented the first child abuse forum,
conference in the state of Florida.
We came out, we came out of the university
and Judy and Billy were the face of what we were doing
and they were educators,
so our emphasis heavily became education.
And Judy and Billy spoke in different places
across the country and Judy--
-: I know--
-: Spoke in New York quite a bit.
-: What were there affiliations?
-: Hmm?
-: What were their, were they affiliated with the university,
were they teaching there or what?
-: Yeah, Judy was an assistant professor
and Billy was an instructor.
-: What did Judy teach?
-: She was a clinical psychologist,
so she had doctorate students.
-: This is Judy Levy? -: Levy.
-: Okay.
And Billy was an instructor.
-: Yeah.
-: In the same department. -: Mm-hmm.
-: Is it psychology or psychiatry?
-: We were the division of child psychiatry
and we were in the department of psychiatry,
but we were the division of child psychiatry.
We were separate.
-: Division of child psychiatry.
-: Yeah, although we were still under them.
-: Okay.
So they spoke at conferences around the nation, okay.
-: Judy spoke at a matriarchal conference in New York
in 77, I think, we went up there.
It was interesting, because the speakers were interesting,
one of them was Gloria Steinem,
one of them was whom the Red Stockings loved to hate,
and one of them was
Midge Costanza, who was the press secretary or something
for Clinton,
I mean for Carter. -: Secretary for Carter, yeah.
-: For Carter, she was another one, we met her.
Kate Molat, Robin Morgan,
the only one, who I really wanted to talk to wasn't there
and I'll never get to talk to now,
'cause she just died, it was Shulamith Firestone.
She wasn't there, but
in Off Our Backs this woman wrote an article,
that Judy was the only one who had anything to say
and what Judy said, of course, was,
"Without abortion women can't have equal rights"
and that's just the bottom line,
and it's still the bottom line.
Without the right,
you know, people don't remember,
that when Roe V. Wade came down
we weren't rejoicing, we were furious.
-: Yeah.
-: You know, the very idea, that we were still having
to go to a goddamn doctor, like some parent.
-: Yeah. -: We were furious.
(scratching)
-: So real teaching.
-: So we were, basically, we were connected in pretty solidly
so that anything happen anywhere in the country
it was gonna happen here.
In 74 we organized a boycott at Florida Blue Key,
and Florida Blue Key at the time
had this big dinner,
where all the politics and alumni gathered.
And they were basically the stepping stone
for political power in the state of Florida.
And they had this big, you know, what they called a smoker
before the home coming game every year, okay?
Muskie was supposed to speak at this event,
because he was running for president.
Well,
this is the way it always happened, the dynamics,
Judy came into my office,
we had our offices next to each other,
Judy comes into my office and she's absolutely livid,
just livid, because in her hand was an invitation
from Florida Blue Key
to have her husband come to Florida Blue Key.
I said, "Well, you know, let's call up Muskie's campaign
and tell him they can't come".
'Cause he had just made this big statement
and then we get, oh, so we did,
we called up the Muskie campaign in Washington
and it was just, you know, it was just the two of us.
And pretty soon the Muskie campaign is down here
asking us how many of us there are.
And we're like.
(cringing)
It's just us.
(laughing)
No, really, how many of (laughs), it's just us.
Well,
then the counterpart to that
were the wives were supposed to go, they had Betty Friedan.
So we called up Betty Friedan and said,
"Look, this is what's happening,
"you are keeping the ladies out of the patriarchal
"political power base, that's what you're doing,
"are you sure you wanna do that?
"Or would you like to lead a march into Blue Key".
Well, she was already to lead the march into Blue Key.
The next thing we did was we
put this little item
in the University of Florida student newspaper,
the Alligator, saying, "If you're unhappy
"about Florida Blue Key being solely male
"and keeping females and minorities out,
"come to this meeting".
We got there and there were like a 100 people there.
And Judy's like, "Well, what do we do now?
(laughing)
"Look how many people showed up, oh my God".
(laughing)
(coughing)
What that basically told us was, that it definitely touched
a nerve with a lot of women and some men,
but a lot of women.
We hadn't decided, we got everybody's names and addresses
and their phone numbers so we could contact them,
because we didn't really know what we were gonna do
or how we were gonna do it.
(laughing)
We get tickets to the savant banquet,
where Betty Friedan is gonna be
and then they tried to hold us
by having Joe Muskie speak after Betty Friedan,
which didn't happen.
We also forced savant to open the speaker part,
they didn't have to open their banquet part,
because a lot of students couldn't afford the tickets,
but they had to open up the speaker portion,
'cause Bettie Friedan was important,
we didn't know Joe Muskie was speaking at the time.
But Betty Friedan was an important speaker
and I'm telling you, all these women filed in
to the back of the banquet hall,
which was across the street
from where they were having Blue Key,
which was at that time the gym.
So far as we knew when we got up and asked everybody
to leave and go with us to break up Florida Blue Key
it was the eight of us sitting at our table,
six women and my ex husband, and Judy's husband (laughs),
and that was it.
And the graduate student got up after Betty Friedan stopped
and Betty Friedan wasn't gonna go with us,
Judy and I had to drag her, we had to drag her out.
We made national headlines, it was hysterical.
There must've been 200 women there and our two husbands.
And we went in and Betty Friedan jumped up
and gave the most wonderful in passion speech,
grabbed the microphone out of the hand of Malory Horn,
who was speaker of the house for the Florida legislator,
grabbed the microphone out of her hand,
stood up on table, where people were eating in front of,
I mean, it was great, she was phenomenal.
For all her hard to deal with, she was great.
And then we all filed back out.
And we tried to get, they had conceded,
that women faculty could come and we said, "Yeah, so what".
And they had one table and there were six women there,
and we were like, "You, guys, need to get up and go with us"
and they wouldn't do it.
And one of em was one of the women,
who takes credit for having broken Blue Key barrier
at the university.
(laughing)
And she wouldn't get up and come out with us.
But we were fine with acting out for everybody else,
that was just fine.
I'm waiting for it to happen again.
It may never happen. -: They quit having it
or did they?
-: No, they opened it up to women
and minorities the following year.
It was almost immediate.
That happened like in late October
and in the January session
they admitted women and minorities.
-: You mean there weren't any minorities in it before?
-: Oh, hell no.
No.
We'd only had, I mean, we'd only had minorities
at the university, the first minorities,
that came to the university were
in my sophomore years and that's 62, 63.
And there were only six.
-: I guess they were all men.
-: Two men, four women.
I mean, it was a huge standing
and under O'Connell in the late 70s,
wait a minute, mid 70s, that was still mid 70s,
mid 70s were really active,
'cause we had the Bombing of Cambodia riot
and had National Guard marching
on the streets of Gainesville,
that pissed me off so bad I couldn't stand it.
Standing out there, screaming at them, get off my street.
It was my street and not yours.
(laughing)
That happened and we were running blankets and stuff,
'cause the kids had taken over Tigert hall,
so we were running food to them.
Blue Key happened.
Oh, and Billy got denied housing,
because she didn't have a man to mow the lawn.
So we went eight of us and Bubsy, Judy's husband,
went to city hall
and to the human rights advisory council
and told them, "This was inexcusable",
that they had to include marital status
in their non discrimination code.
And they did, it was in within three weeks.
But I mean, yeah, they weren't ready for us,
so they just did it, you know?
-: This is some kind of housing code, what was it now?
-: She got denied housing, her husband died
and they were kicking her out of married student housing.
He died Thanksgiving
and they were kicking her out in January
at the end of the semester.
So she had to find housing for her and her two kids,
West and Xanya.
And she went to look at this house and she liked the house,
and she wanted the house, and the guy said no,
because she didn't have a man to keep the house up
and to mow the lawn.
And there was nothing she could do about it,
'cause there wasn't any municipal code against it.
-: Aha.
So they were taking marital status out of something or they?
-: Putting it in.
-: Putting it in to something you couldn't discriminate.
-: Yeah. -: I guess.
-: And we had also,
we had this great gay group
and I can't remember Julian's last name,
Julian was just wonderful.
He was a young, black man, who was incredibly articulate,
in fact we had him over for a child psychiatry seminar,
he was just delightful.
And he and Liz, and I can't remember Liz's last name either,
they got a clause against
nondiscrimination on sexual orientation.
And that was in 76 or 77, that was the law in there too.
-: Gay men?
(scratching)
-: Well, they were men and women.
Julian was head of it,
but Liz was very active in it too.
And between the two of em, they really organized everything.
And they got it into our municipal statute.
And somewhere along the line it got taken out
and we don't know when, it got taken out
and we had to put it back in in the 90s.
It must've gotten taken out sometime in the 80s,
when we weren't looking.
But it was in there in the 70s.
You know, at the time we had an incredibly large
feminist community,
I mean you would do a call-out for something
and a 100 women would show up no matter what it was.
(laughing)
Now, you can't get that kind of response just anywhere.
And the fact, it may have been the fact,
that we had the women's bookstore,
we had a really community with businesses in it.
And that may have been why we were more effective
than a lot of communities.
And we had national contacts,
there wasn't anything going on in the nation,
that wasn't going on here.
And we had, you know, we had places
where women could go and focal points.
(scratching)
And Rita Mae Brown, she was one of the speakers
for the Southeastern Women's Health conference
and she talked about getting thrown out
of the University of Florida.
-: Afraid they're gonna knock that--
-: For being gay.
-: I'm worried, that they're gonna knock this off the table.
Okay.
-: And she was here when I was here
and I don't remember it.
And she was in the same residence hall, that I was in.
But I think she was a year ahead of me.
So I think she really enjoyed coming back and speaking.
(laughing)
-: You mean she was at UF?
-: She was at UF when she got thrown out
of the University of Florida.
-: I don't remember that, for being gay, right?
-: Mm-hmm.
And the woman, that she talks about,
Myrna Brady and the other woman, I think it was Hutchins,
I was quite familiar with both of them.
I mean Dean Brady was dean of women
and Mrs. Hutchins was Ms. Hutchins,
I don't know if she was a miss or missis,
was our resident.
She was the head of the residence council,
I don't know, we had in loco parentis at the time,
I guess she was our in loco parentis representative
for Brauer Hall and Brauer Hall was huge,
there were four wings.
I was in the Northeast wing and I think Rita Mae
was in the Southeast wing.
And there were four floors in each wing.
(cat meowing)
And both of these women were gay, I'm sure
and they were both retired military.
(laughing)
And they were both doing what the man wanted them to do,
which was the only way they could make it.
-: Is that cat not bothering you?
-: No, that cat won't play with him.
He wants her to come play and she won't come play with him.
The other cats will come play with him.
All the other kitties will come down
and talk to him, not Dite,
Aphrodite's not gonna do it ever.
Might as well get over it.
-: Okay, we haven't gotten all the 70s, I don't think
when I was living with Sally, we got to the 80s,
she just felt like it was a drag down.
She had trouble talking about the 80s.
-: In the 80s I was diverted into,
in the 80s I was doing like guardian ad litem
for sexually abused kids and then later,
I did that for like 12 years.
The last two years I did custody for guardian ad litem,
which I really had a lot of fun doing that.
Taking money out of the lawyer's pocket
by resolving the issues.
And I was still involved, in the 80s was when I was involved
with doing the second stage battered women's housing
which was based on the British services.
Pumpkin, Max, you, guys, just cool it.
(scratching)
And then I left for two years in the 80s
and went to work for my brother in St. Louis,
God, was that a cultural shock.
I couldn't believe it,
every time I opened my mouth people fainted.
I've never seen such a right wing town.
(dog squealing)
A bunch of Catholics, unbelievable,
I really missed home, I used to come home,
ride for about 12 hours, come every other weekend.
(laughing)
God, oh my, I couldn't believe it
how provincial those people were.
But then when I came back I continued being
a guardian ad litem
and worked with the battered women shelter,
and I was on the board for the late midwifery school,
Florida school for midwives
and helped them get started.
And help them get the birth center,
they bought the birth center.
-: Oh, they bought the birth center from the, oh.
-: Yeah, they bought the birth center,
so they had, in the same building they had the Florida,
they have the Florida midwifery school
and they have the birth center,
it's very nice, it's very nice.
So I've stayed involved in the women's health side,
but I understand Sally
and there was not a whole lot going on politically.
Not really.
-: Mm-hmm, well, she said, that the election of Reagan
just sort of put the wind out.
-: Well, my experience has been,
that when you get involved with movements
you get involved, you eat and drink it
and you implode, so you have to back out
and take a couple of years off.
-: Mm-hmm.
-: And then you can do it again,
but I know very few people who can keep
that kind of intensity up,
very few people. -: Mm-hmm.
-: And I think there was just enough lapsed time
between the civil rights movement
and the women's liberation movement,
that allowed that breather.
You know, it's not, that we weren't doing anything,
because we were,
but it was more like, you know,
(scratching) abilities,
like they say, you sew and break,
you know, that kind of thing,
that didn't take that enormous energy,
that a movement takes.
And then the women's liberation movement came along
and we did, you know, we were in the women's health part,
feminist women's health part,
after that, I mean, all of my advocacy
was for women and kids and I did a lot of school counseling
for IPs for special needs in the school system
and a lot of that kind of thing.
But there really wasn't any,
actually, we didn't do a whole lot,
I mean, we went to the marches when they had the march
when Jeb Bush threw
three black legislators
and the women's advocate out of his office,
'cause they were gonna stay in his office
until he showed up.
And it was over the affirmative actions.
And we did that march, and that was in the 90s, late 90s,
then I ran for city commission in 93
and then I lost. -: Did you win?
Oh. -: No.
Won the primary, lost the general.
And then my mother died, I was taking care of her,
I took care of her for eight years before she died
and she was bedridden.
So I was fairly busy so, that the only things
I really did was advocate for women and kids,
I did it on a case by case basis,
I wasn't involved in any overall--
-: Movement. -: Movement, you know,
I didn't really feel like there was that all consuming,
you know, let's kick ass.
(scratching)
It was great before Kennedy came down
and she was funny, she was great fun.
(scratching)
But she was like--
-: Yeah. -: The best way
to get high is kicking ass.
(laughing)
Kicking ass will make you high
and by God, we kicked a lot of ass.
-: Yeah.
-: Did a lot of drugs too and we kicked a lot of ass,
we were high for the entire time.