Party appeared in the journal of womens history radical teachers and many collections of essays on the 1960s. She is completing a book on gender and organizational evolution of the black Panther Party in oakland, rebuking the risk the press and starting a second book product on the intersection of the movement for black liberation and the anti vietnam war movement. Next to her is barbara winslow, professor in the womens and gender studies program, the department of secondary education at Brooklyn College and one of my oldest and best friends. Theres a little message involved in my selection, not because they are my friends but because i know them well enough that i know they write well they want to communicate with College Students and the general public and they are interested in womens history. Barbara is founder and director of the Shirley Chisholm project 1945present and she is the author of Shirley Chisholm catalyst for change. Next to her is lara vapnek the author of Elizabeth Gurley flynn modern revolutionary. She teaches history at st. Johns university. She specializes in the history of gender, labor and politics in the nineteenth and 20th century United States. Previous publications include bread winners working women and economic independence 18651920 as well as several articles on womens labor history, she is a distinguished lecturer for the organization of american historians. Cindy lobel, a former student of mine, i want to get the message straight, is an assistant professor of history asked lehman college, at the City University of new york also on the faculty of Honors College and the graduate center. Cindy and a be a from Tufts University and a ph. D. Where she wrote a brilliant dissertation on u. S. History from the graduate center. Her first book urban appetites food and culture in Nineteenth Century new york was released in april of 2014 by the university of chicago press. The manuscript for urban apatite, not surprisingly won the dixon ryan prize for the best manuscript that year on new york history. She has published in the winchester portfolio in commonplace and in history now. Her Current Research includes this biography of Catherine Beecher to be published soon by westview press in the lives of american women series. And her next book will be a biography of Nineteenth Century new york africanamerican oystersman thomas downing. I have questions for all of them to start things off and i will make sure they keep their answers brief enough that you will have time to ask questions too. I want to ask all of them very briefly to tell me to your subject is and what were her most important accomplishments. Cindy you want to start . Thank you all for coming. I hope nobody had too much difficulty with the subways. My subject is Catherine Beecher a Nineteenth Century woman reformer and educator. Catherine beecher is different from some of the other biographies in that she really does reflect more Nineteenth Century developments than 20th century developments. She was a little bit like a Martha Stewart of her age in that she really was a proponent of kind of wife style land rhetoric about the sort of emphasis on domesticity and motherhood and she herself was neither. But she also made a name for herself as an education reformer particularly in womens education. Thank you all for coming. I want to thank my fellow panelists for coming together to discuss this Interesting Group of women and im excited to put them together because they are not often put together. Elizabeth gurley flynn live from 89 because in 1964 and she was a tireless advocate for socialism, feminism and freespeech. She started her career as an agitator for the Industrial Workers of the world which was a group that was also called the wobblys and later became a leader of the communist party. She defended the right to free speech very strongly through two red scares, the one that followed world war i and world war ii. She spent the majority of her life trying in her own words to persuade the majority of the American People that socialism would be happier, more secure and peaceful more just and equitable system of society than capitalism is or can be. Needless to say this was a very controversial message and that is one of the reasons she was such a strong advocate for free speech because she was a dissenter all of her life. Shirley chisholm in one of her last interviews she said she did not want to be known as the first africanamerican woman elected to congress in 1968 from the twelfth district in brooklyn. And she did not want to be known as the first africanamerican and the first woman to mount a Serious Campaign for the presidency of the United States. I assume looking at most of view that probably 90 of view know that about Shirley Chisholm but when i speak at high schools, no one has heard of the woman who paid the way for the election of barack obama. She wanted to be known as a woman who lives in the 20th century and tried to be a catalyst for change which i believe she was. I think i want to address one very specific achievement that resonates for all of us in new york city. When she was a legislator in albany she was responsible for the seek legislation, seek enlightenment education and knowledge and this was legislation that enabled High School Students from underserved high schools to come to the university of new york and get the kind of support services they needed to stay in school, thrive in school and graduate and today come as the least three of us will attest because we are all attuning students at the City University of new york lookalike the city of new york, population of the city of new york can talk to any professor and the reason we say is for the incredibly high wages and easy working conditions, the wonderful students we get to teach. Thank you all for coming out. I get the pleasure of writing about angela davis who like many of the women on this panel, many of the subjects of the biographys is a very wellknown and legendary activists but is still with us today. Angela davis is still making history. She is a contemporary figure as well as a historic figure so that makes my task as a biographer really interesting. Angela davis, you may have seen her, she comes to new york quite often, she gives presentations and speeches and seminars at universities and for the general public but she is well known for her activism in the 1960s as part of the communist party, as part of the black Power Movement and as part of the movement for black feminism. She is also well known for her physical damage. Angela davis, her afro in 1960s is iconic, it was a symbol of resistance, the liberation the free angela davis, from her incarceration was the Global Movement so angela davis is known all over the world and the image of her is also very familiar. So for me as her biographer the task is on tap for contemporary activities back to her historic activities and think about the ways in which her incarceration in the 1960s, involvement in the movement for radical social change and her empowerment of women black women in particular, working class women can all be brought together to understand the conflicts, it is exciting to be working on her. Thank you. I want to throw out some other questions now and whoever feels moved to answer can do so. What elements of your subjects childhood being most important in shaping her into a strong woman as she became a strong woman . What will did her family and Community Play . That is a good question. Because Catherine Beecher was a member of the most Famous Family in the Nineteenth Century. She was extremely influenced by her father. You may recognize the name Catherine Beecher because her brother was Henry Ward Beecher his church of the pilgrims and her sister was even more famous than her brother was carried beechers though, the author of Uncle Toms Cabin which book Abraham Lincoln said basically he said of her that i am paraphrasing, though lady who started the big war. Catherine beecher came from a Famous Family of reformers, a family of evangelicals, her father was a pretty famous evangelical minister in connecticut and without question that influenced her development, placed expectations on his children that they would work to Reform Society which is necessary to the evangelical project in the Nineteenth Century. The great awakening, second great awakening in particular was a perfectionist music to perfect societies to make it ready for the second coming. He really sent his children out to the world to make change and Catherine Beecher very much rose to that challenge. She was not a radical like some of the women represented here, but she was a reformer and some of that will come up. I know you want to talk to this. I could talk about surely day in and day out. But i wont. I should have begun with the Brooklyn Historical society to lara vapnek initiated this and all of you. Shirley chisholms childhood was extremely important to what she became she was a workingclass daughter of caribbean immigrants, as a young girl who parents who were very poor living in brooklyn send her to live in barbados and she was raised by very strong but stern grandmother and she worked in barbados at the moment when the movement for independence from britain began and it was the beginning of the working class the socialist movement and when i went to barbados to do research what i found from reading black newspapers was the socialists, labor and workingclass organizations were far more advanced than the public of womens suffragette Birth Control and reproductive rights for women than the United States, i can only assume being raised by strong black women in a majority black island at a moments in great struggle that is important to her consciousness as a woman, a woman who had tremendous pride in being of african descent. Let me throw out another question. And the 1970s professor laura all right coined the phrase will be gained women seldom make history. Tell me if you agree. What rules to your women break and what rules did they follow and why . Angela davis despite the fact that her upbringing was one of the ways in which she was influenced and became amenable to ideals of communism and the left her mother being an activist, she was also politicize in college as well angela davis coming into her own, she was born in 1944, she was growing up at the time of the civil rights, black Power Movement and in a lot of ways, she stepped aside from the ideals of nationalism, strong black identity politics and confused that by deep analysis, the connection between oppression and class. Also on speaking to the question of women in particular. In a lot of ways even though she was part of a movement of people who were trying to make the social change she was also a little bit on the outside of that because of her radical ideas, and people who embraced her in a symbolic way, there were many times the actual angela davis, her politics were rejected by people who may have aligned with her. She is somebody who has her own path and she was not a pioneer walking on the path many leftist organizations and leftist women opened the doors to. She is very influential in that way and in a lot of ways she continues to do that to blaze her own path and break rules. Elizabeth gurley flynn was known as the rebel girl so she was certainly famous for that image and in a way it reminds me of angela davis because her image was so significant to the movement, this image of this young woman with flowing hair, on a soapbox proclaiming in nearly 20th century, this striking image that the i w w used and Elizabeth Gurley flynn embrace that it as the rebel girl but one thing the interested me in the research was she was very far left of the left, rebellious in terms of her politics, and her personal life in some ways she was more conventional she never got married but when she got pregnant when she was 17, she did get married briefly when she got pregnant. The guy was incidental to the baby, but she didnt feel she could be an unwed mother, even though she wasnt really that interested in this man she felt like she had to marry him. I think part of that was also her family was very radical, her mother was a feminist, her father was a socialist, in certain ways they had victorian values and expected their daughter to behave respectably and she was very aware she wanted to be a significant feature in the Labor Movement, they didnt share her kind of radical ideas about sexual allenby and she didnt want to alienate them. That was another reason she felt she had to get married when she got pregnant. How about Catherine Beecher . She was very bad. Having described her as the smartest to word of the Nineteenth Century, martha went to jail. Catherine beecher was not a radical. She definitely advocated a very prescribed roll for women and she was really addressing middleclass white women primarily although Catherine Beecher also did have ratings for workingclass women, she had some manuals for servants for example but those were house servants at act, she did not believe that women should go outside of their domestic world. She did not believe men and women were equal. She emphasized as many people did of time the differences between men and women and the ways in which women should capitalize on those differences or emphasize those differences in order to create at space for themselves in the policy. Catherine beecher believed women had a role in as they call that the publics fear, but she didnt think that role should be a role of employment or a wall of political protests she argued against suffrage for within which put her, another one of her sisters was a suffragist she definitely had a kind of prescribed sense of where women should be but even with that she did believe women should play this role that women should empathize domesticity and have a role in the polity because they were mothers and they were responsible for the home and raising families. How could they do that if they if they were not aware or if they were not involved in some way in reform. That is the link between her work with domesticity and her work with education, she really believe womens education should not be in finishing school but should be educated in order to raise wellrounded children who take a role in the policy. What do you think was the most surprising thing you discovered when you were working on a biography . I am biographer as well but always something that i didnt expect this or i never realized. You have a thought on that . One of the most interesting things is learning about the history of barbados and the connections between barbados and the United States you mentioned the domino sugar building brooklyns wealth was based on sugar and most of the sugar came from barbados so the connection between Shirley Chisholms 20th century life and sugar and wealth are connected but the one thing i will say that i knew about but didnt realize the depth of it was the misogyny against Shirley Chisholm. Misogyny is sort of like so unreal and so deep and so hateful, someone i interviewed for the book told me when Shirley Chisholm was in congress and would sit at meetings when she would get up from her chair to leave the meeting, a white southern males congressman would washdown her seat. Disgusting behavior some of you who remember nixon and his dirty trick, the letter that made muskie cry in public and all sorts of dirty tricks but if you read it you will see what the Nixon Administration did was absolutely execrable, i mean that word and despicable and it was very gendered and very racial bias. Congressional black caucus, the men in the Congressional Black Caucus, their dislike of her and the misogyny toward her was really mindboggling, theyve jealous and debris that she ran for president and the things she said about her bothered me very deeply. In the end we should not be surprised. It Catherine Beecher heres my favorite question, if they sat down together for dinner not what would they meet, are there commonalities and experiences, in race, chronology and political orientation. And all of the historical women sitting down and said what they would talk about, and four suspects off the wall and after a couple glasses of wine they might get to is the question of who does your hair. Each one of these women has a really distinctive hair style that communicates a lot about her. If you think about Catherine Beecher with those girls that is very laborintensive. Angela davis, her afro is so iconic and i know from talking to barbara you talk about