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

Woman

Answer.

0:00

Interviewer

Okay, this is on feminism.

0:01

Woman

On feminism, all right.

0:03

So you want me to start there,

0:05

number three I'd prefer not to answer

0:07

Interviewer

Okay.

0:09

Woman

All right, I told you the reason why.

0:10

Interviewer

Sure, all right.

0:12

Woman

Number four, I wouldn't wanna answer so much

0:14

for Avery Institute for Social Change

0:20

because that was something I just did in transition

0:23

until I could go back to doing my work

0:28

with the black women's health imperative.

0:32

Interviewer

Okay, okay.

0:34

Woman

I can talk about it, I don't mind.

0:37

Interviewer

No it's not necessary.

0:39

Woman

I don't know that it needs to take up

0:42

a whole lotta air space.

0:44

-

No, lets--

0:46

-

It was just

a transitional period for me.

0:48

Interviewer

Okay.

0:50

Woman

And then the fifth question is fine, okay?

0:52

Interviewer

Okay, so we'll do one, two, and five.

0:54

Woman

I don't mind doing four.

1:00

-

Oh, okay.

1:01

-

It's just that I don't know

that it's that...I don't want to do three.

1:03

-

Okay.

1:08

-

But four, I don't mind

doing it, I'm just wondering if,

1:09

it was just a transition for me.

1:12

Interviewer

Maybe you could talk about

1:14

why the Black Women's Health Initiative

1:15

and now in period of, feed your soul when you get

1:18

to that question.

1:20

Woman

Oh, now that's a better question.

1:21

Interviewer

Yep.

1:23

Woman

Because I didn't see where you were

1:24

asking much in there about it.

1:25

Interviewer

Yeah, and I'd really like

1:29

to hear you talk about that, 'cause that's what came after.

1:31

Woman

That's a topic

1:33

Interviewer

Right, okay.

1:34

So we'll talk about...

1:35

Woman

Okay, so you want me to start

1:38

or you wanna just ask me questions, or what,

1:40

how do you want to start?

1:42

Interviewer

Well, let me go ahead and ask a question

1:45

since you're looking at the question,

1:48

but it won't be on the tape.

1:51

The first question says: it's unusual among

1:52

feminist memoirs that you were radicalized

1:56

by your husband's death, and not by some sexist event,

1:58

so how did your interest in women's health issues

2:02

apropos of your husband's sudden death

2:05

get translated into a feminist approach

2:08

to women's health issues?

2:10

I'll let you--

2:12

-

That's a good question,

nobody ever asked me that question before.

2:14

When my husband died, I became very aware

2:18

of how vulnerable we all are, even at a young age,

2:21

he was 33 years old, and I became really aware

2:26

of how important it is to have information about your health

2:32

and the fact that we did not have any health information

2:37

at that time, in any way that Wesley's death

2:41

could have been prevented.

2:46

This was before the campaign about how blood pressure

2:50

being the silent killer, that he had had a physical

2:54

in which his blood pressure was high

3:00

and they laid him down for 20 minutes

3:03

and took it and it was normal, and that had happened to him

3:05

at least a couple of times, but it wasn't put into the way

3:08

that high blood pressure, untreated over time,

3:12

could harm a person.

3:17

So these things happened 10 years earlier for him

3:19

when he was 23 years old, then I became important

3:22

of how important it was for health information.

3:28

Now, that all happened to me while I was working

3:31

at Shands teaching hospital on the unit that dealt

3:36

with child psychiatry, but we really were looking at

3:43

new ways of thinking about health and health messages

3:48

and educating the public, and people were only then

3:51

even thinking about asking about

3:56

information about their bodies.

3:58

And so, along comes the women's health movement

4:01

in which we were questioning everything.

4:04

The women's movement, which questioned everything,

4:07

and then the women's health movement,

4:10

which kept that going based on the same premise

4:12

that we had a right to know and own our bodies

4:17

and know about our lives.

4:21

So, as I started with the women's health movement,

4:23

where we were learning everything from looking at doing

4:26

vaginal self exams, to breast exams,

4:31

to understanding our bodies, to reading our bodies ourselves

4:34

and that's the piece that really worked for me.

4:41

It was the lack of information, as it related to our health,

4:45

and then putting the feminist analogy around it.

4:50

Interviewer

Okay, that's good.

4:56

And I wondered if people at the

4:59

children's mental health center pushed you in that direction

5:03

of feminism, or what pushed you

5:09

in the direction of feminism?

5:12

Woman

Well, the whole women's movement was happening

5:15

right around me, and as you might recall,

5:16

one of the last books that Wesley read

5:23

was "The Feminine Mystique", and he kept telling me

5:26

he thought I should read that book,

5:29

that I would really like it, and so when I finally read it

5:31

I thought, "Oh my God, here it is.

5:35

"This is what he was trying to tell me,"

5:37

and I wish that I'd had a chance

5:40

to have the conversations with him.

5:42

So, the women's movement was happening all around us,

5:45

and you had to be a stone somewhere or anti

5:50

not to hear it and participate in it.

5:55

So, I wouldn't say they pushed me or anything,

5:58

I would say I ran willingly.

6:01

-

Okay (laughing)

6:02

-

I really enjoyed it.

6:03

It was new, it was fresh, it was exciting,

6:06

it was exhilarating, it was empowering,

6:10

it was a philosophy that I felt

6:12

I could live my life by, my entire life.

6:15

So, I went willingly.

6:17

Interviewer

Okay, okay.

6:21

I love all that, that was great.

6:23

In the Smith interview, there's a place

6:30

where you say you think black women are

6:32

more feminist than white women

6:34

and you mention a survey or poll,

6:36

and I would love to hear you say more about that,

6:38

especially in light of what Pam Smith

6:41

had to say about Deborah David,

6:43

the staff member at the clinic, who felt like white women

6:46

didn't really need the women's movement.

6:51

That's what Pam thought.

6:53

Woman

You have to think about perspective

6:56

and people's position.

6:59

What the women movement was espousing was

7:01

it was white women who were at home, bored,

7:04

and wanting to go to work and wanting to get out

7:06

in the work force, and a lot of them

7:09

were well-off financially and had what black women thought

7:11

was independence because they were certainly

7:15

tied down further than that.

7:18

So, of course black women wouldn't think

7:21

white women needed it.

7:23

They thought they had everything that they needed.

7:25

So, it was just a matter of perspective

7:29

and point of view, it really has to do with point of view.

7:31

Where people sit in society, and how they view

7:35

what's happening.

7:39

Whether it's true or not has not has nothing to do with it.

7:41

What black women couldn't see was over into the homes

7:45

of white women who, to them, with them working

7:50

in their homes as maids, they saw them going off

7:53

and having tea and doing all these things

7:56

and acting like they were having fun,

7:59

and little did they know that they were miserable.

8:01

They wanted more out of life and they wanted

8:04

different things, and people didn't talk with each other

8:07

about what their inner feelings were

8:10

unless some of them are around obvious things

8:13

that people could see that was going on.

8:16

But remember this was all a new awareness,

8:18

it was a new awareness time and people hadn't shared things

8:22

in ways that we're sharing now.

8:27

So people go on what they think,

8:29

and on that perspective, their point of view.

8:32

And what I meant by black women being feminist

8:37

is that, in terms of having a womanist approach to life,

8:39

I always grew up before I ever learned the word feminism

8:43

to be able to depend on myself, to count on myself,

8:48

and that women needed to be educated

8:53

and women needed to know how to do everything.

8:57

And it didn't so much come from a feminist base,

9:00

but it came from more of a base around racism.

9:03

Because the culture treated black men so poorly,

9:07

until black women knew that we had to be

9:12

the ones responsible for taking care of our families

9:17

because the black men, as in the past, had been hauled away,

9:19

or now they're part of the prison-industrial complex.

9:24

That's what I meant, it really was more an approach

9:29

around women taking the lead, women being strong,

9:32

women be independent, et cetera.

9:36

'Course, feminism is much more than that,

9:39

but people relate to the slice of it

9:41

that works for them at the moment.

9:43

Interviewer

I see.

9:46

So what you're talking about,

9:48

let me see if I'm understanding that,

9:49

is that the self-reliance, and independence

9:52

and personal responsibility that the women's movement

9:54

brought to white women, let's say,

9:58

was already there in black women,

10:02

-

Right.

10:05

-

and didn't have

to be nurtured so much.

10:06

Woman

Yeah, because as you think,

10:09

if you look at the black women,

10:11

there were very limited jobs for black men,

10:17

a lot didn't finish school, so you had black women

10:21

like my mother who had a master's degree,

10:25

was never married to a man who,

10:28

I don't think either of the men she was married to

10:30

had even finished high school,

10:33

so it wasn't kinda like you were marrying someone

10:36

who was your quote-unquote equal, education-wise,

10:39

even though they might have been able

10:44

to make a good income, it just didn't happen that way.

10:46

Very seldom did you find teachers marrying doctors

10:50

and that kinda thing, you see what I'm saying?

10:54

-

Sure

10:57

-

Cause most of the doctors

were men and it didn't matter what the education

10:58

a woman has, but most of the women had the education

11:01

'cause the black community really stressed

11:05

on the girls getting the education more than the boys.

11:07

That meant that the girls ended up marrying, basically,

11:12

the boys who had less education, do you see what I'm saying?

11:16

Interviewer

It's just the opposite from...

11:20

Woman

Yeah, our lives were structured so differently.

11:21

Interviewer

So that cultural divide,

11:25

I'm wondering, did I lose you?

11:30

I did.

11:35

-

Hello?

Interviewer

Oh, I thought I'd lost you, sorry.

11:36

Woman

No I'm here.

11:38

Interviewer

Okay, this phone isn't always reliable.

11:39

That cultural divide (whistle) (sigh).

11:45

I'm still trying to figure out what happened

11:51

with that Deborah David that caused

11:53

Woman

She thought white women had everything:

11:57

you're free, white, and you're 21,

11:59

so what do you need to have to be liberated?

12:01

You got money, you got a house,

12:03

you got a man taking care of you,

12:05

whatever, that's liberation.

12:07

That's what she took away from feminism.

12:13

Interviewer

I see.

12:15

Woman

That's what I'm saying,

12:18

it's all the people's point of view.

12:19

White women were wanting to go out and work,

12:21

black women were working all the time,

12:23

they'd love to be at home, you see what I'm saying?

12:25

Just from that basic statement alone.

12:29

Interviewer

So you could see her point of view, but--

12:31

Woman

Absolutely, absolutely.

12:34

But she didn't know the other side of it.

12:36

She didn't know that white women were unhappy,

12:40

hadn't made advances, most of them had college degrees

12:42

and they had to act like they were buffoons

12:46

and it was just not having exposure.

12:48

It's a really interesting thing when I go back to DeLand,

12:53

and this is not for the interview, but

12:56

-

Okay

12:57

-

It's interesting,

when I go back to DeLand and I try to show folks,

12:58

I was trying to show my partner and my kids

13:03

where I used to live and all, what I don't know

13:06

anything about is the white side of town.

13:09

I have no idea of what streets were,

13:13

how you enter, anything.

13:16

You didn't go over into that part of town.

13:18

We had no reason to go over there, and so you don't know it.

13:22

It's the same thing with Deborah David back in the '70s,

13:27

she had no idea what white women's lives were.

13:32

We were only just coming out from

13:35

just being integrated at all, less than 10 years.

13:37

Even now, a lot of people still do parallel living,

13:46

but you can't think about integration today

13:49

and place that on what it was like

13:53

just coming out of segregation.

13:56

Interviewer

Yeah, I see what you're saying.

13:58

Woman

The timing of that, that was the early '70s

14:00

and we hadn't been sitting down eating with white people

14:05

a long time before that.

14:10

-

What was the date--

14:14

-

Deborah was also

a cultural nationalist, which is another whole slice

14:16

of racism on top of the feminism.

14:21

Racist ideology on top of feminist ideology.

14:25

Interviewer

Yeah, so that's sort of

14:29

analogous to lesbian separatism.

14:32

Woman

Absolutely, yeah.

14:34

Interviewer

Was the Gainesville Women's Health Center

14:41

serving many black women?

14:42

Woman

For abortions, yes.

14:45

About 50% of our clients who came in

14:48

for abortions were black.

14:50

But not very many for the well women's GYN clinic

14:52

which is why I wanted to find out more

14:55

about black women's health and what were we doing

14:58

and how were our lives being shaped.

15:01

Interviewer

I see, well that's good.

15:03

I'm taking some notes here just to help me

15:13

find these things on the tape.

15:15

Let's go ahead and talk about that question about

15:22

what was it about the Gainesville Women's Health Center

15:24

that fed your soul, and I suppose that

15:27

the Black Women's Health Initiative

15:30

continued to do that?

15:31

Woman

Well, it was both Gainesville Women's

15:33

Health Center and BirthPlace, I think.

15:37

At Gainesville Women's Health Center, we did a lot

15:40

of education of women about their bodies

15:43

and a lot of work shops and a lot of things

15:45

that help us understand who we are

15:49

along with consciousness raising and all of that

15:51

and I noticed that black women were not

15:54

participating in that, and I couldn't understand why

15:57

because I was there, we tried to make black women

16:00

feel comfortable, but they were just

16:04

very, very uncomfortable.

16:06

At BirthPlace, the power of birth,

16:10

that's that one of the best experiences I've had in my life.

16:13

It was totally awesome, just incredible learning

16:16

and excitement, and understanding the intuitive

16:21

and the spirituality around birth, and the importance

16:26

of educating entire families around healthcare,

16:32

around the whole experience of birth was just

16:37

very enlightening and exhilarating.

16:42

It was a incredible experience there at BirthPlace.

16:45

I don't know if you read in, I wrote about it

16:49

in "Bearing Witness to Birth" in Women's Quarterly.

16:52

Interviewer

Oh, I'll look that up.

16:57

I haven't seen that.

16:58

Woman

Let me see, maybe I can give you

17:01

a better reference for it, I thought I saw it here

17:02

the other day on my shelf.

17:06

I keep forgetting exactly what it looks like,

17:08

but I think it was about three years ago,

17:10

and that issue is on bearing witness

17:15

and I wrote about bearing witness to birth at BirthPlace.

17:18

It was just really pretty incredible.

17:25

Here it is, "Witness", it's called "Witness"

17:30

and it's volume 34, numbers one and two

17:33

and it came out in summer-spring 2008.

17:41

Interviewer

Okay, I'll get that

17:46

and I'll be sure to cite it.

17:49

Woman

Yeah, that'll give you

17:52

my whole birthing thing there.

17:53

So, there I learned the importance of education

17:57

around health care procedures and all that kinda thing.

18:02

My whole transition from the birthing center

18:12

to Black Women's Health was interesting.

18:16

It took a different route.

18:19

I started working as a director for a CETA program

18:21

at Santa Fe Community College there in Gainesville

18:27

and I started looking at the lives

18:35

of these young black women who were

18:37

registered in the program.

18:40

Because I was the director, I knew most about

18:43

when they were out and the absenteeism

18:47

I was concerned about, and I would bring these women in

18:50

to talk about, "why couldn't you come to class?"

18:54

They were paying them minimum wage to come to class,

18:57

and when they didn't come they didn't get paid,

19:02

so I knew there had to be something

19:05

that was keeping them from coming,

19:09

and I found out so many of them were ill,

19:11

a lot of them were ill.

19:14

A lot of them had children who were sick,

19:16

who needed to be taken care of, who just had

19:20

all kinds of responsibilities and I realized that

19:27

working women who have children need 10 sick days

19:30

for each of the children, and 10 days for themselves.

19:34

You only get 10 sick days and you got kids who are sick

19:37

and they just had so many circumstances

19:41

that I had never thought about,

19:43

including poor health, and it was there that I really knew

19:45

that I had to do something about

19:50

bringing black women together to look at health issues.

19:52

I tried to do it in Gainesville,

19:56

and I couldn't get the local black women there,

19:57

they were kind of suspicious of me.

20:00

It wasn't that they didn't like me,

20:03

they didn't understand me.

20:04

'Cause here I was with abortion,

20:06

and then we did the birthing center

20:08

and I was with these white women and blah-de-blah-de-blah.

20:11

They were not ever disrespectful to me or anything,

20:16

it's just that we were very uncomfortable with each other

20:19

because they couldn't understand what I was into.

20:22

And that happens sometimes, so that's why I moved

20:26

from Gainesville to Atlanta.

20:30

When I moved to Atlanta, it was magical.

20:33

Every door I touched opened, every person sent me

20:35

to see three or four more people who were helpful,

20:39

and it was all just really

20:43

quite an extraordinary experience.

20:44

That really propelled me to really do work

20:54

on black women's health more than anything else,

20:57

was that experience combined with what had happened before,

21:00

so it was kinda like my life had little building blocks

21:06

to get me from one place to the next,

21:09

or really a path that got me from one place to the next.

21:11

Interviewer

So your work with the birthing center,

21:17

I think it changed its name somewhere in there.

21:21

Woman

Yeah it was called BirthPlace when we were there,

21:23

it was called BirthPlace.

21:26

-

BirthPlace

21:27

-

And then it changed its name

to the Birthing Center, I think,

21:29

and I think they closed down.

21:31

Interviewer

No, I think it still exists,

21:33

or at least Barbara thought it did.

21:35

Woman

Oh good, I hope it does because they were doing

21:37

some really creative things there.

21:39

They should put them in place for a lot

21:40

with the affordable care act, but anyway,

21:44

that's another subject.

21:45

Interviewer

Yeah, yeah.

21:46

I wanna make sure I got clear on this:

21:48

your consciousness was raised around black women's

21:50

health issues because of seeing how few of them

21:55

were taking advantage of the well women's services

21:58

at the Gainesville Women's Health Center.

22:02

Woman

Yeah, and used the crisis services.

22:03

Interviewer

And how many of them used crisis services?

22:07

Interviewer

Most of them used the crisis services,

22:09

which was the abortion--

22:11

-

Oh, I see.

22:12

-

Which was in a crisis.

Interviewer

They were ham for the abortion clinic

22:14

Woman

And I think still applies to a lot of crisis.

22:16

Interviewer

And then when you started talking with them

22:19

as director of the CETA program,

22:22

those things were consciousness-raising,

22:29

but it's when you moved to Atlanta that the miracle occurred

22:30

and you really were able to...

22:34

Woman

Yeah, we were able to bring black women together

22:36

who we first we organized the first national conference

22:38

on black women's health issues.

22:42

We met for two years at Spelman College and organized.

22:44

It was just really quite wonderful.

22:54

Everything just fell into place. Can you hold on just a--

22:56

Interviewer

Sure.

23:02

Woman

One second, I'm gonna walk downstairs.

23:03

Someone is delivering something here to the house, okay?

23:07

Interviewer

Okay, sure.

23:10

Woman

Okay?

23:13

Interviewer

Yeah, sure.

23:14

Woman

Okay.

23:15

Interviewer

Okay, I'm starting the recorder again.

23:16

Woman

Okay.

23:18

Interviewer

We were talking about Atlanta,

23:22

and how different that was.

23:24

Woman

Yeah, it was a thing that was

23:26

supposed to happen there and the response

23:30

from all the women was incredible.

23:33

It was magical, and Atlanta was a chocolate town,

23:39

so this person would send me to talk to another person,

23:42

who would send me to another person, I can just remember,

23:48

and I was just amazed that all

23:51

of the people I was talking to

23:53

who were in these positions of power were black,

23:56

and all willing to help, and all on board

24:00

with what I was talking about, and it was just magical.

24:04

Interviewer

Wow.

24:09

Woman

We planned for two years on a conference

24:11

and in June of,

24:16

goodness, 30 years ago.

24:22

Interviewer

Yeah, I can get that date, don't worry.

24:24

Woman

Had our first conference.

24:26

We had our first conference.

24:30

Interviewer

So that would be 1970-something,

24:31

I'll figure that out.

24:32

Woman

In '82, '83, and it was just wonderful,

24:34

We thought we'd have 200-to-300 women come

24:39

and we had close to 2000.

24:41

Interviewer

Woo!

24:43

Woman

Oh yeah, and they were from all over, everywhere,

24:45

including Canada and the Bahamas, and it was great,

24:49

it was a great start.

24:57

Interviewer

Did you say 2000 people?

25:00

Woman

Pardon?

25:03

Interviewer

Did you day 2000 people?

25:04

Woman

Yeah, we had buses rolling in there from all over.

25:06

Women would pay $25 in New York City and ride a bus

25:12

all the way to Atlanta.

25:16

It was good, it was really something, and after that,

25:20

we started organizing black women all over the country

25:23

and they would have these black women's health conferences,

25:26

and we did a film called "On Becoming a Woman:

25:30

"Mothers and Daughters Talking Together",

25:34

about menstruation, about our feelings,

25:36

and that's in circulation.

25:41

I think they're still using it in several places.

25:43

For the last thirty years, we've been pounding away.

25:51

Interviewer

Is the mission the same now as it was then?

25:59

Woman

Absolutely, yeah, but our strategy

26:02

for working is different.

26:04

I'm still involved, and we relocated our offices to D.C.,

26:07

mostly 'cause we really learning now that public policy

26:12

is the place that we can make a lot of changes

26:16

and the first part of our work was really about

26:19

individual empowerment, learning about black women's lives.

26:21

It was just like CR, only we were

26:31

doing it all with black women.

26:34

In that way, we could look at what were our main issues,

26:36

like, one of the first things we talked about was,

26:41

balance was our number-one health issue,

26:49

and we identified that back in 1984-1985,

26:52

and later on we had places like CDC

26:56

and all of 'em talking about violence as a health issue,

27:00

but we were the first to identify

27:03

violence as a health issue.

27:05

Interviewer

That's good.

27:08

Woman

Because that's what was happening

27:09

with most of the women.

27:12

Those were the things that were killing them.

27:16

Interviewer

And what feeds your soul about it?

27:20

What is it that feeds your soul?

27:26

This project I'm doing feeds my soul

27:30

because I like talking to people,

27:32

I got an excuse to talk to people like you!

27:33

Woman

What fed my soul was watching women grow,

27:37

watching people feel good about themselves,

27:40

watching people fall in love with themselves,

27:45

watching people develop strategies

27:48

that would help them survive, and give them a philosophy

27:52

and a way of thinking and being about a life

27:58

that can be shared with our families.

28:01

The fact that the women took the courage to break

28:03

the conspiracy of silence about physical abuse,

28:05

about sexual abuse, which we found was rampant,

28:09

about all of these things that we kept inside of us

28:15

and felt bad about, that we learned how to turn that around,

28:18

how to look at our fears and gain strength from our fears

28:22

rather than letting our fears continue to disempower us.

28:27

Watching people grow and change and take charge

28:32

of their lives was just totally awesome

28:35

and then just being with the women,

28:38

being in the company of the women,

28:40

all talking and being loving and caring,

28:44

and all to each other, I find very wonderful.

28:49

Interviewer

That's gonna be good for the interview,

28:56

or for the essay.

29:01

What I'm gonna do...

29:05

Woman

Award from Planned Parenthood,

29:08

and she got up and said, "Well, I'm not gonna

29:12

have y'all sit there any longer

29:14

"and listen to anymore speeches, so I'll say

29:16

"thank you very much, and I'll sit down"

29:18

Interviewer

Oh, wow! (laughing)

29:20

Woman

She doesn't like to do that kinda thing

29:24

Interviewer

Well, what she did when she looked at that

29:26

and decided to write some more,

29:30

I thought it was really good.

29:32

It felt--

29:34

-

Yeah, she's better

in that format.

29:35

Interviewer

Okay, let's see...

29:39

Now, have you skipped something?

29:44

I think we might have skipped, no...

29:45

Oh, no, I think we're down to on working with white women

29:51

and being a lesbian.

29:55

In the interview, you mention that going to

29:57

the University of Florida, was that in 1968

30:00

that you went to Florida?

30:03

Woman

Uh-huh.

30:04

Interviewer

Was the first time that you'd worked

30:06

mostly with white women, and that that campus had only about

30:09

30 black people at all, and then later on you say that

30:12

those white women were more accepting of you as a lesbian,

30:16

but that your sexual orientation didn't matter with the

30:20

Black Women's Health Project, and I was not quite sure

30:23

what to make of that.

30:26

I know Barbara Esrig said in her interview that

30:27

when she was working at the

30:30

Gainesville Women's Health Center,

30:31

it was her whole world and she felt like

30:32

everybody in the world was a lesbian.

30:34

Woman

Well, that's what you kinda feel

30:36

when you surround yourself with that.

30:38

I was saying that I found a lot of

30:40

acceptance among white women,

30:47

and I had to really do class...

30:49

but my exposure to working and being around white people

30:55

was at the University of Florida.

31:01

All of my classmates were young white women,

31:02

and we all hung together, three or four of us,

31:06

and it was really nice, but it was a sort of gentle way

31:09

for me to learn about white culture,

31:13

and how people do things, and there were things I needed

31:15

to understand when I went there that my husband told me,

31:19

"Please go down there and find out how white people

31:23

"can go to school and be married," because we were both

31:25

working and having a hard time paying our bills

31:28

and everything and we didn't know you could get money

31:32

to go to school and you could live in housing

31:34

that cost $70 a month that came fully furnished.

31:36

We didn't know about all those perks and all in the world.

31:41

So that was my job, was to learn about that,

31:44

so it really was a whole cultural education

31:47

being at the University of Florida, and I stayed there.

31:53

And through the women at the

31:59

Gainesville Women's Health Center,

32:01

me, Margaret and Judy, we became real close.

32:02

Coming out as lesbian was an interesting process,

32:10

to say the least.

32:14

I felt a lot of acceptance, and I never felt like

32:18

the black women rejected me, they just didn't know

32:22

what to do with me, I think, was more than anything else.

32:24

And then when I got to the Black Women's Health Project

32:30

there were several people who were lesbians,

32:34

so it became less of an issue at that time.

32:35

Much, much less.

32:39

There were several women who were involved

32:40

in our planning committee, and one of the things

32:43

we worked on real hard was homophobia,

32:45

and dealing with homophobia, 'cause we had to be together

32:48

and we had to work on it with black women

32:51

because we took them up into the North Georgia mountains

32:54

at Forrest Hills, and the way we went there was

32:58

two people sleeping in the double bed together for $75,

33:03

and you'd get two nights and five meals for $75 dollars,

33:08

which was pretty good, so people had to immediately

33:14

get comfortable with sleeping in a bed

33:17

with someone of the same sex.

33:19

So we would all deal with that the night before,

33:21

"Okay, this is what's happening, do you know who you are?"

33:26

And who you are, not being afraid,

33:29

and some women were totally freaked out and couldn't do it,

33:31

but most of them did and it was no big deal.

33:35

It was really a growth experience.

33:40

Interviewer

And it's the 1980s by now, and...

33:44

Woman

Yeah, it's the mid-'80s, yeah.

33:46

Interviewer

So it's more acceptable,

33:49

to be a lesbian was more acceptable.

33:53

Although backlash is going on.

33:55

Woman

Oh yeah, and it always will be.

33:58

Interviewer

When you say that about,

34:03

in the Black Women's Health Project,

34:04

there were black lesbians, was it through the

34:05

Black Women's Health Project that you began to meet

34:09

black lesbians, or what?

34:11

Woman

I knew a few, but it was through

34:14

the Black Women's Health Project

34:15

that I began to meet black women, general.

34:16

I didn't know but so many.

34:20

I didn't know women all over the country

34:22

or anything like that until I got involved with

34:24

the National Women's Health Network

34:26

and I started traveling around the country

34:28

and meeting people and knowing people

34:30

and through the project I got to know women from everywhere,

34:33

literally all over the world.

34:39

Literally, all over the world.

34:41

Brazil, Africa, the Caribbean, you name it.

34:43

We went everywhere.

34:53

Interviewer

How were you funded

34:58

for all that kinda travel?

34:59

Woman

We raised the money through foundations.

35:00

They would fund us to work with groups.

35:04

We worked with groups in Nigeria,

35:05

we worked with groups in Africa, that's what we were doing.

35:07

They would fund us to go and work with

35:09

these groups around the world.

35:11

Interviewer

So your organization, is it a 501c3?

35:15

Woman

Oh, absolutely, yes.

35:21

We had a whole international division and everything.

35:24

We did a lot of stuff.

35:28

Interviewer

It was a really big deal,

35:35

and what kinda budget were you working with,

35:37

just to give a sense of--

35:40

Woman

Back then, if I can remember, probably...

35:40

I think we got our first million dollars about 25 years ago,

35:48

so we were 5 years into it,

35:53

we got our first million dollars.

35:54

(mumbles) Depends, a million, million-and-a-half,

35:56

something like that.

36:00

Interviewer

And that's how much you'd bring in

36:02

in foundation money.

36:03

Woman

Uh-huh, at that time.

36:06

Kellogg gave us our first million dollar grant,

36:07

and I think it was a million dollars

36:10

over like two or three years.

36:12

I bet we have a million dollar budget,

36:14

it wasn't much of a budget.

36:16

Interviewer

And you would use this to go out

36:20

and do these educational projects.

36:22

Woman

Yeah, we'd get money to go out,

36:23

maybe we'd get x amount, a hundred thousand dollars

36:25

from the MacArthur Foundation to work with people

36:28

in Nigeria, to work with people in Brazil,

36:30

to work with folks in the Caribbean,

36:34

and we all participated in the women's conferences,

36:39

the one in China, and the one in Africa.

36:45

We took a delegation of 25 women

36:50

to Africa for the conference there,

36:52

but there were close to 2000 black women

36:55

at the women's conference in Africa.

36:58

Interviewer

So that was close to 2000 women from Africa?

37:02

Woman

That was a very awesome one, it was in Kenya.

37:04

It was really something.

37:08

Interviewer

When was that?

37:11

Is that still in the '80s, or?

37:14

Woman

The first conference was in '80,

37:18

I don't remember.

37:23

It was in the '80s, it was in the '80s.

37:25

Interviewer

Okay, that's okay, I'm just trying to see

37:29

if it's still within our study.

37:31

We're trying to cut it off at '94.

37:33

Woman

Oh yeah, that's enough,

37:34

oh, I'm taking you over into the '80s.

37:35

Interviewer

Well, we go up to '94.

37:38

Woman

So I'm sorry, you're doing the '70s

37:39

Interviewer

No, I'm interested

37:41

all the way into '94.

37:42

We're trying to cut up at '94 just to contain this.

37:44

Woman

That was in the '80's,

37:52

I think we can Google it and find out.

37:53

Interviewer

Okay, I will.

37:55

Woman

Trying to remember, it was a part

37:59

of the UN conferences for women.

38:00

The UN prepared and there would be conferences for women

38:03

and the first one was in Mexico City,

38:06

and the second one was in Nairobi, Kenya,

38:09

and I think five years later

38:13

the next one was in Beijing.

38:17

Interviewer

Okay, so this was not

38:22

a stand-alone conference, it was a conference

38:25

in association with that national conference, I wonder?

38:29

Woman

Yeah, it was the UN's conferences,

38:31

the end decade for women.

38:33

The UN conferences on the end decade for women.

38:36

E-N-D decade for women.

38:40

-

E-N-D

38:42

-

So you can find it that way.

Interviewer

Okay.

38:45

Woman

The only one I missed was Mexico,

38:48

I went to all the rest of them.

38:50

Interviewer

Wow, I wish I had gone to Beijing,

38:52

I had an opportunity and I didn't do it.

38:53

Woman

Oh, really?

38:56

Interviewer

Kick myself

38:57

Woman

Yeah, that was really incredible.

38:57

Those women worked really hard and they had to organize

38:59

under extraneous conditions because the officials,

39:03

the government didn't let them have meetings,

39:10

so they would have to slip and have meetings in the park

39:14

and pass notes to each other, and there the Chinese men

39:17

sat in on all the lesbian workshops and everything,

39:21

they were all sitting in everything.

39:25

You couldn't do nothing without them being

39:27

right in your face.

39:31

So people kinda showed out for them (laughs)

39:33

-

Yeah, I guess so.

39:36

-

It was outrageous. (laughs)

Kinda serves them well, kinda funny.

39:40

Interviewer

Were you ever involved with

39:46

Southerners on New Ground?

39:48

Was that going on when you were there?

39:49

Woman

No, I never heard of them.

39:51

Interviewer

That's an interracial lesbian organization

39:54

that does activism around homophobia and racism.

39:56

Woman

Oh really, that's good.

40:02

Interviewer

I know six people who're involved with it,

40:06

but I'm having trouble getting those interviews.

40:08

Woman

Oh, really?

40:10

I don't know them, when did they come about?

40:11

Interviewer

Almost outside our study period.

40:14

I think it's '93, but I really wanted to get it

40:16

because it's so relevant to our whole topic

40:18

about southern lesbian feminists, activism,

40:21

and that's kind of neat because that's around racism

40:24

and homophobia, and the women's movement kinda gets

40:29

a kick-start with the civil rights movement.

40:32

Woman

Right, right.

40:35

Do you know about "Makers"?

40:38

Interviewer

No.

40:39

Woman

"Makers" is a documentary that has been produced

40:41

by PBS, AOL, and Unilever (mumbles) Simple corporation.

40:45

It's gonna be aired on PBS on February 26th.

40:52

Interviewer

Wow, okay.

40:59

Woman

February 26th, and it's all about

41:00

the history of the women's movement

41:08

and it's three hours long, and we just went last week,

41:10

I think it was the sixth of February,

41:14

they had the red carpet premier

41:16

at the Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center.

41:18

So we went down to New York for that,

41:23

but everybody is in it, it's just wonderful.

41:25

Interviewer

Oh, great!

41:28

Woman

You're going to love it, just gonna love it.

41:30

You see all of the old stuff, and they showed us

41:32

the part one, which is the history of the movement,

41:37

and then I think all the women's health stuff

41:41

probably comes in part two, and then they gave

41:43

a little preview of part three.

41:46

They didn't show any of part two.

41:48

I talk about part two, but part three starts off with

41:50

interviewing people like the president at Google

41:55

and all these women CEOs and asking them

41:58

do they think they're feminists and what does feminism

42:02

mean to them today.

42:05

It's real interesting stuff, with Alicia Keys singing

42:06

"This Girl is on Fire".

42:10

So it really is extraordinary, you will love it.

42:13

You need to tell people about it.

42:17

Interviewer

I will, I'm gonna go Facebook that

42:19

as soon as I get off the phone.

42:20

Woman

Yeah, and they have Makers.com,

42:22

which they have in-depth interviews with all,

42:27

there were 60-something makers, and not all makers

42:31

got in the film, but they do have all of their interviews

42:36

on Makers.com.

42:41

Interviewer

Okay, okay.

42:45

Woman

So some of the folks you might not be able

42:46

to get ahold of, you might be able to get their interviews

42:48

from there, but they show the whole interviews on there.

42:52

So it's really very well done, and it's real interesting,

42:56

there's a woman CEO at the head

43:01

of the corporation for public broadcasting,

43:03

there's a woman who's in a vice-presidential position

43:06

at AOL who pushed for it, and there was another woman

43:09

who was with this company, Simple.

43:12

It was really nice, seeing all those women,

43:16

and two of them were part of the women's movement.

43:19

What happened is, they originally wanted

43:24

to do a film on Gloria Steinem's life,

43:26

and Gloria said, "No, that's not what's needed,

43:30

"what we need is something to document the history

43:32

"of the women's movement."

43:35

So they started these interviews, and they've been working

43:38

on it for almost two years, but we were in lockdown on it.

43:40

Can't say anything about it dun-duh-duh-duh-duh,

43:44

so most, I've kinda forgot it until they called

43:46

and asked us to come and do the interviews,

43:49

but it was really quite extraordinary.

43:50

Interviewer

Gosh, well that's exciting.

43:54

I'm eager to go look that up.

43:55

Woman

I was just speaking at

44:00

Rice University last weekend.

44:01

They're gonna organize big viewing parties

44:02

and have pizza and all and have

44:05

the women's studies department and all,

44:07

people are getting into it.

44:09

So there are folks who know about it.

44:12

Interviewer

"Miss Representation", our women studies

44:14

program is doing a showing of that next week,

44:18

or maybe it's this week, it's the 22nd.

44:22

Woman

Oh really?

44:25

Interviewer

Yeah, but that's last year's show,

44:27

this sounds like this year's show.

44:30

Woman

Yeah, This is gonna be something,

44:34

so I think you oughta tune into it.

44:39

Interviewer

Sure enough.

44:41

Let me take you back to one of the points,

44:42

I'm almost done with this, I think our hour is about up.

44:44

You said that the mission of the

44:49

Black Women's Health Imperative is the same

44:52

as you started with, but the strategy is different.

44:55

Can you say more about that?

44:58

Woman

I said the mission is the same,

45:02

but we just work in a different way.

45:04

When we started out we did a lot of work

45:06

around personal empowerment and all,

45:09

but now we're doing more about working on

45:12

community empowerment and working with communities

45:17

to be able to help make health changes.

45:21

In the personal empowerment work, we organized

45:28

self-help groups among women and a lot of those groups ran

45:30

for as much as 10 or 15 years years, some of them,

45:34

and then somehow we were unable to continue to raise money

45:37

to support the whole self-help part of the program.

45:44

The funders felt like, "They should be self-supporting,

45:49

somehow," and we weren't quite smart enough to make them be

45:53

self-supporting right from the beginning.

45:57

That was something that I wish I could've done differently,

46:01

but you're only who you are when you're doing it.

46:03

The 20/20 vision, hindsight thing doesn't work very well,

46:08

so we moved to D.C. and switched over to working on

46:14

public policy and working with communities

46:19

to make changes like, we have several programs now

46:24

we just got funding to do work around diabetes

46:27

and diabetes education.

46:30

We just got a four-year $4 million grant from the CDC

46:34

to do that kinda work.

46:39

We're working also on reproductive justice,

46:41

and we're still working on abortion,

46:43

and now we're looking at how can we

46:46

change the conversation around Rowe.

46:51

Instead of just always saying black women

46:54

have more abortions than others,

46:56

but look at what are those circumstances

46:59

and what are those things.

47:01

Women have to choose abortion, and also dealing with us

47:03

and our silence around it.

47:07

The conspiracy of silence, and how

47:10

we just don't think to talk about it.

47:13

It's not that people have anything against it,

47:14

it's just not something that we talk about.

47:17

So we're looking at ways of dealing with issues that way.

47:19

What we're currently embarking on,

47:25

and I know I'm taking you way into the--

47:27

Interviewer

That's Okay.

47:29

Woman

But at least you'll have information,

47:30

you don't need to include it, you'll have it anyway.

47:32

We're starting to look at black maternal health,

47:35

that black women are dying disproportionately

47:38

within the first year of life after having a baby.

47:43

We want to bring that to everyone's attention.

47:47

And we've done a lot of work on health care reform.

47:52

That was the work that I started with the Avery Institute.

47:55

We're part of a collaboration called Raising Women's Voices

47:59

for the Healthcare we Need.

48:02

You should check out our website, it's dot net.

48:04

In that, we have 22 regional coordinators

48:09

who are working on health with the

48:13

Affordable Care Act implementation through the

48:16

health exchanges et cetera, on advisory boards,

48:20

meeting with the health commissioners and all of that

48:25

in their local states, so that's where we are now.

48:29

Interviewer

You know what strikes me about this,

48:36

what you're doing now, in the early days,

48:39

the ones we're writing mostly about,

48:44

the '70s and so on, the women's movement made

48:45

powerful social change that helped everybody,

48:48

not just women, and it kinda looks to me like this

48:51

Black Women's Health Initiative is doing something

48:55

like that.

48:58

Those are powerful social changes you're talking about

48:59

that help all families.

49:02

Woman

Yes, absolutely, and it has to be something

49:04

that helps the family, the total family.

49:07

I learned that lesson at BirthPlace,

49:09

that it really is that whole unit and that we learn

49:12

our practices and all from our families.

49:15

So many people, either your family didn't do anything

49:21

and it affected you or your family did everything.

49:24

You learned about how important it was to go to the doctor,

49:28

to get your annual or when you needed it,

49:30

or you actually didn't wait until something

49:33

reach a crisis situation and it was important

49:34

to have healthcare and have access.

49:37

That's sorta how we still feel.

49:41

Interviewer

Well, I think I have enough.

49:47

I think I have enough.

49:49

I would really enjoy talking with you.

49:50

Woman

I'm glad we were able to make it happen.

49:52

And I'm glad and I know you'll be sending me stuff

49:56

Interviewer

I will and my intention is

50:00

to do it very promptly, and if I'm not able to do that,

50:02

I'll email you to say I'm having to re-figure,

50:06

and you'll be welcome to make any changes,

50:10

whatever you want to.

50:12

I'll start with notes, and if it works out right

50:13

I'll excerpt those note, well, I'll send you all the notes

50:17

so that you can correct any mistakes.

50:20

Woman

Now, did you talk to Betsy Randall-David?

50:21

Interviewer

No, who's that?

50:25

Woman

Oh my God, it would be such a oversight

50:27

to leave Betsy outta this.

50:29

Betsy is right there in Durham.

50:31

Interviewer

Okay.

50:33

Woman

And she was one of the people who was

50:34

an early-on founder of Gainesville Women's Health Center.

50:39

I'm surprised you don't know Betsy.

50:46

Interviewer

Well, her name has not come up.

50:49

We do not have many North Carolina connections.

50:51

Woman

Oh my goodness, yeah.

50:54

She was living in Gainesville at that time,

50:57

but you need to talk to Betsy.

51:00

Let me see if I have her email address.

51:02

Let me see...

51:12

Interviewer

You mentioned her in that other interview.

51:14

I remember the name from that interview.

51:16

Woman

Yeah, try this email address.

51:18

Her full name Betsy Randall-David.

51:24

Betsy R-A-N-D-A-L-L David at gmail dot com.

51:28

Interviewer

Okay.

51:33

Woman

And tell her I referred you to you.

51:34

Yeah, tell her I referred you to her.

51:38

But she was one of the co-founders, along with me

51:40

and all of us at the Gainesville Women's Health Center.

51:44

She was a nursing student over at the University of Florida

51:46

when we were doing the Gainesville Women's Health Center

51:50

and she came and she worked there.

51:52

She was the head of nursing and she's just had

51:54

a wonderful, wonderful, but,

51:57

she branched off and did a lot of work at HIV,

52:00

but she was down there with us all

52:02

through all that struggle and she's a lesbian

52:05

and got two sons.

52:07

Her sons, you might know who they are,

52:09

they're the David twins, they're both, what are they called?

52:12

District Attorneys.

52:18

And they're twins and they've been

52:21

written up a lot in the paper.

52:24

She lives right there on Markham, right down from Duke.

52:26

Markham Avenue, isn't it Markham?

52:30

Yeah.

52:32

Interviewer

Okay Betsy, now there's a Betsy that's

52:33

been mentioned in Pam Smith's and I don't--

52:35

Woman

Yeah that's her.

52:38

Well, there were two Betsy's.

52:39

Interviewer

I don't know which was which.

52:40

Woman

She probably was talking about

52:43

Betsy Randall-David, and then there was Betsy McGrady,

52:44

but she wouldn't be the person you would be talking about,

52:47

so it was Betsy she was talking about,

52:51

Betsy Randall-David.

52:53

Interviewer

Yeah, here it is, Betsy David, here it is.

52:55

Woman

Be sure and get in tough with Betsy

52:58

Interviewer

I will.

53:00

Woman

'Cause she was pretty incredible.

53:01

Interviewer

I'm gonna email her right this minute.

53:03

Woman

Okay

53:05

Interviewer

Wow, well this was just--

53:07

Woman

Be sure to tell her I told you

53:10

to get in touch with her.

53:12

Avery, Byllye - interviewed by Rose Norman

Transcript

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Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture

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