Rivers, Diana - interviewed by Rose Norman / Southern Lesbian-Feminist Activist Herstory Project / Duke Digital Repository

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A little louder.

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Okay, this is Rose Norman, and I am interviewing

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Diana Rivers at Indian Springs State Park, on May 24, 2012.

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And, this is for the Southern Lesbian

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Feminist Herstory Project.

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Rose, you asked me when I got involved,

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and I moved to Arkansas in '72--

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From where?

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From New York.

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New York City?

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New York State.

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Stony Point, New York, where I lived in a community.

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It was a mixed community,

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sort of artist and musician community.

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Moved to Arkansas, we started a community on land.

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It was a mixed community.

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At a certain point, probably two or three years after,

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a sort of wave of feminism came through.

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And, most of the women, except for one, all the women there,

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either left and came out, or came out and left.

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And, at a certain point, I had to go up to New York,

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because my son Kevin had died.

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And when I came back, the women were all eager

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to take over the land.

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But there was a lot of anger,

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they really wanted to take it over.

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And I was probably older than most of them,

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and I kept saying, you know, "What do you mean by women?

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"Is it going to be open to everyone?

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"How are you going to deal with the men who are there?

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"Are you going to deal with them fairly and kindly?"

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Anyway, we had an absolute horrific meeting.

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By my, you know, what I think was a terrible meeting,

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in which all this anger came out at these men,

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who were really just well meaning, nice hippie men.

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And, it ended up with the women taking over the land.

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And, I'm not sure we want all of this.

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What I'll do is transcribe, send it to you,

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and you can edit whatever you want out.

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Yeah, but I will say to you that women were

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suddenly empowered, and acted out

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in the worst possible ways on each other.

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And it went on for quite a while.

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In fact, at some point I went out West with my girlfriend,

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and when I came back, the two communes

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that were on the land, were feuding with each other.

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One of them had guns, the other one thought that

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the way to deal with things was to make a big circle

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around the place and chant.

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Which felt like voodoo to the women who had guns.

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The interesting part about this is that there was

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an Ozark woman's land trust in existence.

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And they were having a meeting, and they heard about

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this stuff that was happening at Sassafras,

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and they got in their cars and trucks, and they showed up,

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and they said, "This won't do.

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"You're endangering the women's land movement,

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"You cannot behave this way.

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"We won't have it.

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"And, this group you go over there,

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"this group go over there, for a week"

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"do not speak to each other and do not

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"have any interaction, and just think about

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"what you're doing.

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"And we will be back in a week."

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And the amazing thing is when they came back in a week,

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part of the discussion was

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who was going to cook what for Thanksgiving dinner.

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We got over ourselves.

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But, there was a lot of infighting among women,

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and a lot of horizontal hostility.

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And, if you felt that you had been really oppressed

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it was like a ticket to be the oppressor.

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And this is all my reading of it.

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But I think other women would say the same thing.

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It was that abrupt empowerment and with

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no example of how to handle it or use it.

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Except the oppressors' examples.

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Anyway, that was ...

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And that community went through many turnovers.

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So this is Sassafras,

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was Sassafras the name of the mixed community

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when you first started it?

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Yes.

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And it continued to be called Sassafras after

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Yes.

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it started splitting,

And becoming lesbian?

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Yes.

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Was it every wholly lesbian?

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Oh, yeah! Yes.

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And they actually kicked the men off?

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Yes.

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And also, at that time or earlier, a piece of that land,

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the land on the other side of the creek,

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became our co-herors.

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And it was land for women of color.

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But supposedly of all colors.

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And our co-herors is still in existence,

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and what was Sassafras is now Wild Magnolia.

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And I was the last person signing off,

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who signed it over to,

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our co-herors is the Umbrella Organization.

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Wild Magnolia is under that umbrella.

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And they are making an Earth school there,

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and they are bringing kids,

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L-B-G, you know whatever our initials are.

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Queer kids, from Little Rock and different places for

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Summer camp, and different things are happening there.

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And Sun Hork at Orka Ears could tell you

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a whole lot more about that history.

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Without my destroying it.

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Brianna knows about this because I have interviewed her

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about land groups and she knew some of this history,

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Yeah

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and talked about it.

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She was on Sassafras.

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Okay, so when I transcribe this I'm going to

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send you what she told me too.

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And maybe I'll send her what you said and we can

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compile them or at least put them next to each other.

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Anyways, some of us left there.

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Me and Cedar, we just, what happened was ...

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First all the men got kicked out,

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then pretty much the white women got kicked out.

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And for a while all of it became land for women of color.

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Cedar and I left, and we ended up

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starting another community.

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Okay.

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Which is OLHA, Ozark Land Holding Association.

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And that's not a commune?

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No.

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And Sassafras was not a commune.

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Okay, so it wasn't communally owned land?

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It was communally owned land, yes.

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But it wasn't operated like a commune?

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Well we didn't all live in one building,

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we were sort of scattered in different places on the land.

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You know, you might choose this spot,

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I might choose that spot down there

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to build my little hut or cabin, or whatever.

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So you all had to agree on anything that affected

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like where you build your house, or something?

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Pretty much.

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OHLA is definitely a community.

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We each had our own five--

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It was 240 acres.

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There's 20 members, or there were 20 members.

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Originally or eventually?

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We mostly for a long time maintained a 20 member--

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They weren't all necessarily living on the land.

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Yeah, they were living in town, or they had land out there.

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Land changed hands because women would buy in

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and then they'd decide they didn't ...

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How many lived on the land at its biggest?

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Probably 12.

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And I don't know if you ask me now,

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because some women are very involved with the land,

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but they also have a house somewhere else.

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Several of us that's true of.

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So we now probably have 15 members,

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when we're looking for new members.

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But it's 240 acres of land and each of us has five acres,

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so that leaves a lot of common land.

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So you deeded each person five acres?

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Under a contract with the ...

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It's called a land use contract, with the community.

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You sign that land use contract,

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and it has all the community rules in it.

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And then you owe a monthly payment, which covers

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house insurance, taxes, gas for the main house,

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utilities for the main house, boat upkeep.

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Those are the main things that the money goes to.

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House upkeep, the main house.

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We're always trying to hold that main house together.

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We're probably going to have to get a new roof. (groans)

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So that's the land piece of it.

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Okay,

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And I could answer, you know, this may just be

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a preliminary thing, I could answer a lot more questions.

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Well I'm real interested in the land, the land movement,

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the lesbian land movement.

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Was this lesbian or not?

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Which?

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Or just women?

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OHLA?

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OHLA.

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It was definitely lesbian.

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Okay, so it started as lesbian.

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It started, and in fact that was part

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of the legacy of Sassafras, this is just for lesbians,

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we are starting this as a lesbian community.

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I'm wanting to do a--

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And in fact, when we started it, such awful things

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had happened at Sassafras that we were

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very, very tight when we started.

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And in terms of the main house,

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nobody could claim space there.

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If you were building your house you could maybe

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unroll your bedroll there.

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Well we got it after a while that that wasn't working.

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And now we do things by contract.

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If I was doing major repairs on my house,

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and I wanted to live in the main house,

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I would, at a meeting, ask for a contract,

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we have two potential rooms, and in exchange

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I would pay extra on the utilities and I would maybe,

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mow the lawn and do something else, you know,

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do some work around the house.

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But that room would be mine for

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however long we had contracted for.

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And did you say this is part of the lesbian separatists'

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back to the land movement, at that point?

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Or was that just coincidental?

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I don't think ...

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I think some of the women at Sassafras

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were much more separatists.

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I don't see the women at OHLA as separatists.

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We all have men in our lives,

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we have invited men to the land.

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When I moved there I said I will not live anywhere

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where my sons are not free to come visit.

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In fact my son, Shawn and my daughter-in-law

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just came and spent a little over a week.

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We had a potluck that actually was for somebody else,

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but we made it a potluck for, you know.

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And I think Shawn was the only guy in the room.

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But he sat down next to Shell, who's very butchy,

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and has all these sort of physical experiences,

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and they got into this great conversation.

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I don't think any of us would see ourselves as separatists,

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and yet, in fact, we're living on lesbian land,

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which makes ...

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You know what I mean?

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I do.

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But, you know, when women were so vehemently separatists,

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I kept saying, I don't have that luxury.

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I have three sons who I love, and who are part of my life.

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I can't be angry at all men.

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I can be really angry at the male dominance system,

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which also harms men, but I cannot--

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I mean there are men who are my brothers,

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there are men who have given their lives

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to make the changes that we want to see in the world.

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I can't, you know ...

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And besides which, this was all snotty white women

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who were looking down on the men, and I'm thinking,

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what would women of color say about you?

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You didn't ask to be in that white skin but you are!

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A guy didn't ask to come with that equipment,

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but there he is.

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So, don't get me started on that.

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Yeah, well that was--

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And I understand separatism, and I understand that the

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women that I was meeting at first,

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it's like women's politics.

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I mean, I have been involved with

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civil rights and peace politics, way before.

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This was their first introduction to politics.

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And if you look at history, and you look at

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how men as a class have treated women as a class,

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it's a miracle we speak to any man,

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and don't shoot them all.

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If you look at the history.

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And so for a lot of women it was like, for the first time,

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they were looking at this history, and it's as if all men

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had joined the Taliban or something.

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So, what you're saying is you came from this background,

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these women at Sassafras didn't, by an large.

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No, they were much younger than I was.

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I was much older.

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How old were you?

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In your forties?

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My marriage split up when I was 38,

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I got married at 18, I was 38, and I probably was

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39 or 40 by the time I came down to Sassafras.

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And involved with a much younger man,

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who was probably 15 or 20 years younger than I was.

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It couldn't have been 20 years younger,

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he might have been 15 years younger.

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And these other women were about his age?

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Yeah, yeah, or younger.

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Were these land dykes in the sense of women

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who wanted to get away from patriarchal culture?

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These young women, and young men I guess they were too.

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Yeah, we wanted to make a land community.

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Ah, but wait a minute, it was mixed,

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so they weren't dykes to start with.

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No, no they weren't.

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So it was more like--

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And these women weren't dykes to start with.

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They came, it was a mixed community.

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That's what I'm saying, women

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came out and left, or left and came out.

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But in a fury.

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When we had that meeting with the men,

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I think if we had sat down with them

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in an NVC kind of way, and said,

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"Listen, straight community is collapsing.

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"Women need a turn, a chance to see

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"what we can do with this.

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"Why don't we just amicably shake hands and ..."

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And I think the men would have had a little caucus

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and said to each other, "Hey, it's time to bow out."

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But women were so angry.

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If you can give me something that it means that you own it,

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if I can grab it from you, then I own it.

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If you can give it to me, then it's yours to give.

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Like abortion rights that they gave us.

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So where did they come from these women,

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that were straight and not political?

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But wanted to live on land?

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Did they come from the North?

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Yeah, a lot of them, some from the South.

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I can't track that back for you.

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So it wasn't particularly Southern women

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who were doing that?

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No.

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But it was women who moved to the South?

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Yes.

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That went on to a sort of a border South southern state.

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Yeah, that's why I said,

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I don't know if I fit into all of this.

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Well, I think that that community is an important one

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for demonstrating some things about

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what happened to the land movement.

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And OHLA has been in existence 31 years.

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And we do consider ourselves part of the land dyke movement.

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And when there've been land dyke gatherings,

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we've actually talked about doing one at OHLA.

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it doesn't look like that's going to happen

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but we've gone to land dyke gatherings.

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So 1981, 31 years ago.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Okay.

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I guess one thing I want to try to clarify is where it's--

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Where it's Southern?

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You see that's (coughs)

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We would say it's in the South.

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(coughs) I'm a Yankee.

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I will never be a Southerner.

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Well so was Lorraine Fontana, but she was, what,

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president of ALPHA.

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Yeah.

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Which was Atlanta.

So, doesn't, I don't think we're trying to--

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Is Lorraine the woman who's here doing transportation?

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Yes, the woman doing transportation.

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She still talks like a Yankee.

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I mean, strikingly, you have a more of

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a general American accent.

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Lorraine sounds more like she came from New York.

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Yeah, yeah.

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So, now this whole other thing that we're talking about,

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which is creating venues for women.

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Cultural activism, yeah, let's talk about that.

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Okay, the University of Arkansas, for 10 years,

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had a conference and festival,

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women's conference and festival, it was a long weekend.

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(coughs)

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Sorry. (coughs)

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And the first year they had it, my friend Georgia and I

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put in a proposal for doing a women's art show,

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called Everyday Alters.

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And we actually mentioned the Goddess in it,

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and all kinds of things,

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I think I still have that paper somewhere.

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And the tip that students, it was in the students' union,

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so they had a say over it, and they turned it down.

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And I was in Kansas City,

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furious about this being turned down.

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I was talking about WomenVision, and my friend

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Linda Laurel said, "Let's do it in Kansas City."

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And I said it was impossible.

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I didn't live in Kansas City, I was just up there

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visiting my girlfriend, and I couldn't imagine a venue,

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and I went on and on with all the reasons we couldn't do it,

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and Laurel persisted, and found a venue.

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And we pulled together a little committee,

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and we did WomenVision, which was an incredible success.

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We had a big art show in this basement gallery.

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It was a non-juried art show, and I did what I've done ...

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On principle we said we're not going to jury this.

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But what I did, is if I knew a particular artist

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who I thought did really good work, I chased quality.

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(coughs) Which made space for other people

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to put in whatever they were going to put in.

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And the first year we called it Everyday Alters,

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and we wanted to do an art show that was the way

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women show art in their homes.

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I mean, a lot of our homes are almost like a museum,

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that we might have our favorite rock,

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and a doily that our grandmother crocheted next to

21:35

a painting that our very talented friend painted,

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and then, you know, a sculpture and so on.

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So, we put together, that first show we put together a show

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that was like a series of alters.

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And we softened the room with fabric,

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and then we did a grand show.

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We had a stage put up, and often used the best--

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One year we had a three or four panel screen.

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A really wild woman sort of motif kind of thing.

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And we used that in back of the stage.

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But we put on performances, did readings, did music,

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dance, workshops, whatever else could happen in that space,

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and we considered the art show to be the womb

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in which these things could happen.

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We did that for three years.

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The third year, we had it in three different galleries,

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because it had outgrown the one gallery.

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And there had been a big snowstorm or blizzard,

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and we had already rented the city trolley system.

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So we got people from place to place in spite of the snow.

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And, we had hoped that we would leave a legacy

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where other women would pick this up and do it.

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But actually we had burned ourselves out,

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and it did not get picked up.

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Though we've sometimes talked about it since.

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And we did it once with a whole new group of people,

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called Full Bloom.

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Again, or was that one those three years?

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No, this was later.

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This was either the next year or the year after.

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Full Bloom, and we did it in Eureka Springs.

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And then I think Full Bloom disintegrated.

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And meanwhile, I don't know how I did it,

23:39

it makes no sense to me, but I put together

23:41

the art show at the Woman's Conference for most of

23:45

the 10 years that it took place.

23:49

And that's at the University of Arkansas,

23:53

at the Student Union.

23:56

Simultaneously, it was the same month,

23:58

so I don't know, it doesn't make sense to me,

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I don't know how I did it, but somehow I did.

24:05

And then--

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So, that was 10 years from '91,

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so they were doing that Women's Conference till 2000.

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Something like that.

24:16

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At University of Arkansas.

24:21

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Yeah.

24:23

And I don't have an exact--

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See Elord will have, she'll have

24:27

much better dates and all of that.

24:28

(coughs) And then after that,

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it was a few years after that, my friend Joni came to me

24:35

and said, "I want to do a traveling women's art show."

24:38

Well, it never did travel.

24:42

But we did a show at the Orpheum, called MatriArts

24:46

M-A-R-T-I arts.

24:52

MatriArts.

24:55

Probably like WomenVision.

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Probably capital M, capital A, one word.

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We did it at a place called the Orpheum.

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Which, when we did the first one,

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they had black plastic on the walls.

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And they painted it for us to be able to do this.

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It was a color I hated, but,

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we have artwork coming in, and they are still

25:23

putting in the baseboards, painting the walls.

25:26

There are garbage cans all over the room

25:31

full of construction trash.

25:33

But, we put on a show.

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And same thing, we had a stage, we did music,

25:38

we did all kinds of wonderful, magical things.

25:41

So that ran for three years, and again, we ran out of steam.

25:47

And we tried to do MatriArts for a fourth year,

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I think we had also lost our venue (coughs).

25:54

I think David was out of that building by then.

25:58

So that ran for three years.

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And then, there's a gap in time, (laughs)

26:06

and a bunch of us were out doing a moonlight paddle

26:10

on this little lake, kayaks and canoes.

26:15

And I had been thinking about an art show.

26:20

I come at it, always from the art place.

26:24

I was thinking about an art show, and I wanted to see

26:28

a Goddess show, but then I thought, Goddesses and angels,

26:34

Goddesses, angels, and Amazons.

26:38

So that was our first Goddess production thing.

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And what I was going to say about all being out on the lake,

26:46

I had been thinking and thinking about this,

26:49

Goddesses, angels, and Amazons; Goddesses, angels and ...

26:51

So, we're walking away from being in the lake,

26:54

and my friend Vic is there, about to get in her truck,

27:00

and I went over and I said, "Vic, how'd you like

27:02

"to do a Goddess festival with me?"

27:05

And I think at that point Vic had nothing

27:08

much big coming up in her life.

27:10

And she said, "Sure!"

27:13

Not knowing, I'm sure, what the hell we were walking into.

27:17

So we called a meeting to see if this was

27:22

even remotely possible, and I think we had

27:24

about 15 women at the meeting.

27:28

And we proceeded for three years to do this.

27:32

And each year it was a terrible scramble finding a venue.

27:36

Four years!

27:40

We actually managed to eke out a fourth year.

27:41

Terribly terribly hard to find a venue.

27:44

-

So it was a different venue every year?

27:46

-

It was a different fucking venue every year.

27:47

The first year was the woman who was setting up shop

27:50

in this big old building, that had a leaky roof,

27:54

and a this and a that.

27:58

And she was going to open up in April,

28:00

and we wanted it for March.

28:03

I mean, I was talking to her boyfriend,

28:06

Brooke was in the back room, pacing back and forth,

28:09

talking on the phone, and we kept saying,

28:11

"We'll come back later."

28:13

And he goes, "No, no, no,

28:14

"She's very interested in feminist things."

28:15

So finally, Brooke walks through,

28:18

we sort of toss this to her,

28:20

like throwing her a ball or something,

28:22

and she says, "Yeah, sure fine.

28:24

"And I won't charge you rent."

28:26

And she's gone, somewhere else.

28:27

So, we said, okay, we'll pay utilities.

28:30

And we paid her $500 for utilities.

28:34

This building, I mean I remember at some point,

28:36

people were coming to see the building,

28:39

"The roof is leaking on this great big room

28:42

"where we're going to be hanging all the art."

28:45

But, they had a roof on.

28:47

They never got a decent front door on there,

28:50

they did that afterword.

28:52

It's still her shop, but once she was, you know--

28:54

We were there before she put the runway in and before,

28:59

you know, when it was still an open space.

29:02

And we knew we only had it for one year.

29:05

And then the second year, we got--

29:10

-

Is that the Orpheum?

29:12

-

No, the Orpheum was long gone.

29:13

-

Okay.

29:15

-

David was, I think, trying to buy it, and renovate it,

29:16

and I think he couldn't hold it together.

29:20

-

Okay.

29:22

-

So the Orpheum was gone.

29:24

There's a period of years in between.

29:25

-

Oh, so the first one was at the Orpheum, and there were--

29:29

-

That was MatriArts.

29:31

Three years of MatriArts at the Orpheum.

29:32

-

Okay.

29:34

And then this is something else.

29:38

-

This is Goddess Festival.

29:40

-

This is Goddess Festival, okay.

29:41

-

Goddesses, angels, and Amazons.

29:43

This is Goddess Festival.

29:46

And the space was so huge that I was in a panic,

29:47

and went around and got way more art than we could hang.

29:50

And we hung it all! (laughs)

29:54

It wasn't easy.

29:57

Oh, and also, all of these shows have included crafts also.

30:00

I don't know if WomenVision did the same way.

30:08

But definitively the Goddess Festival

30:14

has always included crafts.

30:18

-

Well that's a whole thing in itself, getting crafts.

30:21

-

It's a whole thing in itself.

30:24

And the second year (coughs)

30:26

we did it at the old Bank of America building,

30:29

which was a super space.

30:32

Part of it was, and part of it wasn't.

30:34

The vendor part of that worked really well.

30:38

We called it Vendor Village,

30:40

and they were able to leave their stuff up permanently.

30:42

In the first venue they couldn't leave it up.

30:46

The third venue, every time it was like,

30:50

we're almost about to do this and we have no venue.

30:55

So the third venue was up in a moral pipe area.

31:00

Every venue had its drawbacks and its good things.

31:06

It was in a moral pipe area, next to Cici's pizza.

31:14

This is all Goddess Festival.

31:19

And this last year we did it at OMNI,

31:23

O-M-N-I, whatever that means, and its our local

31:26

peace, justice, and ecology organization.

31:30

And they own a house, which is not a huge big house,

31:35

so this was way smaller than any venue we have had.

31:40

And I didn't even try and do an art show.

31:46

But I got in touch with Lydia Ruyle,

31:50

who does these incredible Goddess banners,

31:53

and how she wants them shown.

31:57

And how she dealt with it was that she packs up.

32:01

We had 31 banners to hang.

32:05

(exclaims)

And they could be as wide as some of these screen sections.

32:08

-

What is the name of the woman, Lidia Ruyle?

32:13

-

Lydia Ruyle, she lives in Colorado.

32:15

So she's not a Southerner either.

32:18

Lydia Ruyle.

32:21

I mean the shock to me was that we were doing

32:22

a Goddess Festival in the Bible Belt.

32:24

-

Of course it's a college town,

32:31

that would make it possible?

32:34

-

Yes, I would not, and it's not a progressive

32:36

college at all and I don't think we have

32:39

bunches of college students, but it's not only

32:40

a college town, but Fayetteville is a center

32:43

of back to land folks.

32:47

People who came, they bought land, maybe they

32:50

couldn't stay there, had to come into town to get a job.

32:52

But it's that kind of area, whereas Rodgers,

32:55

Spring Dale, Rodgers, Bentonville, much more conservative.

32:59

Fayetteville is the only area I would live in there.

33:03

It's way too conservative.

33:07

-

But those were all Ozarks towns?

33:09

-

Yes, north of us, on a line going up 71,

33:10

those are the towns north of us.

33:14

-

Much more conservative.

33:19

-

(coughs) Much more.

33:21

Fayetteville is the liberal town.

33:24

Big women's community there.

33:27

Though, when we tried to get the city council to say

33:32

they would not discriminate against gays in

33:38

hiring practices in the city, not private, city,

33:43

we got voted down, 60 to 40.

33:49

If it had been central Fayetteville,

33:55

we would have won hands down.

33:57

But there's all of these little satellite areas, you know,

33:59

track housing is going up all around, new people coming in.

34:03

Isn't that a shocker?

34:07

And see, the city council voted for it.

34:08

It's a no-brainer!

34:12

-

This was a referendum, then?

34:13

-

Yes, the right wing pushed it into a vote.

34:15

Like, I can vote on your rights.

34:19

-

I know, that's Rachel Maddow keeps pointing out is,

34:22

as soon as you start trying to get

34:24

a majority to vote on minority rights,

34:26

-

Yeah!

34:29

-

it's never going to get it.

-

I mean, we would have the rights if it came to,

34:31

you know, we wouldn't have to be

34:34

-

If it was a popular vote!

34:36

-

having a vote!

-

It could be won by a popular vote.

34:39

-

It's like can we get all the slave owners

34:40

to vote for freedom for the slaves?

34:41

-

Exactly.

34:44

-

Probably not.

Yes, what right do you have to vote on my rights?

34:48

Anyway, so, what more can I tell you?

34:53

Right now, and see, again, this is what's happening locally.

34:59

We have had, and this will be in all our stuff,

35:06

we have had a woman's potluck once a month, potluck,

35:08

we had a woman's library that's been dismantled

35:17

because of lack of interest.

35:19

You know it was very exciting when we first put it together.

35:22

-

When was that, how long was that?

35:24

No, you'll get all that stuff from her.

35:26

-

Oh this is all in her stuff, okay.

35:29

-

Yeah.

35:30

I'm trying to think of other things that were happening.

35:31

Right now, the one thing that happens once a month is HOWL.

35:36

And Mindy Knott has been here, you know her.

35:43

-

Yes.

35:47

-

Okay.

Mindy came here, she did HOWL other places,

35:49

she came here and she started HOWL here.

35:52

And it's been wonderful, and it's once a month.

35:55

The third Sunday of the month.

36:00

I just went to a HOWL before I came here. (laughs)

36:02

And that's happening at OMNI,

36:07

which is the peace and justice center.

36:09

Was happening at the bookstore, it just kept getting

36:12

crowded out and crowded out.

36:14

So, it's great at OMNI we have the space,

36:17

and its lovely and peaceful.

36:19

So, but you're looking for what was happening back then.

36:23

Al was really a source.

36:27

There was a newspaper called Hard Labor,

36:29

which was a feminist paper.

36:32

You'll pick all of this up from her.

36:36

That was definitely very political.

36:39

The next thing that came out was Up and Coming,

36:42

which was political and also telling you

36:45

what was happening with that.

36:48

-

It's another newspaper?

36:49

-

Yeah.

36:50

Not a newspaper, you know.

36:51

-

Underground ...

36:53

-

Yeah.

36:54

-

Bulletin?

-

Yeah.

36:56

So, I will definitely send you Al's thing,

36:58

and you can see where all these things fit in.

37:02

So, all I'm telling you is other things

37:06

that you'll slot into this.

37:08

There was a women's center,

37:11

at the University that they dismantled.

37:18

I mean literally dismantled, put in different closets.

37:21

Rape crisis, and, because

37:24

there were too many lesbians involved.

37:26

It was Town and Gown and the University wanted us out.

37:29

So they took away the women's center.

37:35

-

That's an understatement.

37:40

-

Yeah.

37:42

-

Does the University of Arkansas have an LGBT group?

37:44

-

It probably does.

37:49

I'm probably not the right person to ...

37:50

For a while there was something called the Razor Dykes,

37:54

and I know that sounds really bizarre, people have a,

37:57

"Razor Dykes, ah!"

38:00

That's because the razorback pig.

38:02

The razorback is the school mascot,

38:05

so everything is razor this, razor that.

38:08

So, you tell somebody up North,

38:11

"Oh we have this great organization called the Razor Dykes."

38:12

(exclaims) "What, they're going to cut you?"

38:15

No, it's not about that.

38:17

So that also will be announced.

38:22

I'm just trying to give you little keys to what

38:24

history you'll get from there.

38:28

-

Well go ahead and tell me about

38:35

what you did before you came to Arkansas.

38:36

You said you were involved in

38:39

civil rights and peace activism.

38:41

-

I was a little bit involved in civil rights in CORE,

38:43

and then CORE decided they didn't want any

38:47

white folks in it, which I understand.

38:49

(coughs) And at that point I was sort of backed out.

38:53

But I did a lot of peace activism of different, you know,

38:58

demonstrating, going to Washington.

39:03

I was involved for a little while,

39:08

it was sort of an underground group.

39:11

I mean we didn't do anything violent.

39:12

-

This is the anti-war groups?

39:14

-

Anti-war.

39:16

-

Yeah, no more.

39:19

-

Yeah, no more.

39:20

It looked like it was going to fucking

39:22

go on, and on, and on, forever.

39:23

So we did some real civil disobedience actions.

39:28

In New York City we chained off 34th street

39:31

and dropped leaflets out the window.

39:34

We chained off the Westside Drive,

39:36

we let banners go in Grand Central Station.

39:40

That was a lot of fun.

39:45

That was an incredibly coordinated action, because

39:47

we had these big boxes with four big helium balloons.

39:52

And we attached tissue paper banners to them.

39:57

It's just not anything that's relative to what you're doing.

40:02

And we didn't paint on them because paint was too heavy.

40:05

We used bleach.

40:08

We used something that would take the color out.

40:09

And we all came into Grand Central Station--

40:12

Now you'll be arrested instantly.

40:14

They'd think you were doing some kind of terrorist act.

40:16

But we all came into Grand Central Station with our boxes

40:20

and we didn't speak to each other.

40:23

And I was with my son Kevin and his friend Mark.

40:26

And the police came over, and they were hassling.

40:29

It looked like they were going to have to open the box.

40:34

In fact, our agreement had been that we were

40:38

going to wait until a certain time,

40:41

I think it was 5:30, like maximum commuter afternoon time.

40:43

Or, when the first balloon went up,

40:47

like if we were forced to.

40:49

And, I think, I'm not sure whether

40:52

it was Kevin and Mark's box,

40:55

but somebody's box got opened and the balloons went up.

40:56

And our friend Jack, who had been organizing a lot of this

41:00

came running in at the last minute.

41:03

The balloons were already going up.

41:05

We can't get them down.

41:07

-

Oh, no.

-

They go up to the ceiling, this is Grand Central Station.

41:10

And we had a radio that was playing war stuff,

41:14

and war sounds and casualty talk,

41:19

and it was some kind of news thing about Vietnam.

41:22

And I've forgotten what else we did.

41:26

And then another time,

41:31

and this was the last action that we did,

41:32

we let pigeons loose in Grand Central Station.

41:34

And we said it ahead of time that we were going to do that.

41:36

And we got arrested for cruelty to animals.

41:40

And they wanted us, they didn't want to arrest us,

41:43

they wanted us to pay the fine

41:46

and get the hell out of there.

41:48

And Vera and I kept saying, "No, I'm not paying a fine."

41:51

"They're going to put you in jail with those women."

41:55

And they thought of us as really nice middle class woman.

41:57

"You don't want to be in jail with those women."

42:02

And we kept saying, "I know, c'est la vie."

42:05

I mean we did this, and you arrested us, and you know.

42:08

So they gave us all these warnings, and it doesn't work,

42:14

and they cart us off to jail.

42:17

And they did a whole body search,

42:19

and the woman who was the doctor,

42:22

she was so funny, she's Hungarian,

42:24

she said, "Vell, vhat did you do?"

42:26

and I told her, you know it was a peace demonstration,

42:29

"Don't use pigeons next time, pigeons carry diseases.

42:31

"Pigeons are dirty."

42:35

She didn't tell me not to do this, she said,

42:36

Don't use pigeons.

42:38

-

Don't use pigeons!

(laughs)

42:40

-

And she also told me that I had a tumor,

42:40

which 10 years later I had taken out.

42:43

She said, "You know of course, you have this tumor, yes?"

42:46

(exclaims) No, I didn't know that.

42:50

Then we got in with those women.

42:52

They were hysterical.

42:55

"You did what?

42:57

"Come over here, come on, come over here, honey.

42:58

"You want to hear what she did?

43:00

"You let pigeons, what is the matter with you?

43:01

"You did what?

43:03

"Oh my god!"

43:04

You know, they thought we were the funniest thing going.

43:06

And they just loved up on us.

43:09

They did not be mean, and of course we were not in there,

43:10

we were in there literally overnight.

43:14

They wanted us out.

43:15

The system wanted us out.

43:17

They came to tell us the next morning, we were out.

43:18

I said, "We had a two day sentence."

43:21

"Yes, this is the second day, out!"

43:23

But the women were so funny.

43:26

They all came round and wanted to hear our stories.

43:29

What had we done, how did we get there?

43:32

Is that our car that I heard?

43:35

-

I think I heard Kathy.

43:37

Kathy?

43:38

I want to go back.

43:40

-

It sounded like Kathy

-

Because I would like to be at open mike.

43:41

-

Yeah, okay.

43:44

Rivers, Diana - interviewed by Rose Norman

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Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture

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