Collection

Women's Movement in Baltimore Collection

Span Dates: 1965-2021
Bulk Dates:
Volume: 1.75 linear feet (1 oversized flat box, 2 document boxes)

Description

Collection consists of photographs, correspondence, pamphlets, posters, publications, and ephemera related to the Baltimore Women's movement, LGBTQ, feminist community activism starting in the late 1960s. Prominent feminist figures in the Baltimore, Md area are captured in this collection which document changing the narrative associated with women's rights such as abortion, sexual orientation, a women's role in society, rape culture, religion, and prostitution, among many other issues.

Hist/Bio Note

Shirley Parry is the founding donor of this collection. Parry is a professor emerita of Anne Arundel Community College. She founded and served as director of the gender and women's studies program at AACC, under its original name "Women's Studies," and was also a professor of English. She also taught classes in women in literature at UMBC. She was active in the women's liberation movement in Baltimore in the 1970s, including being involved with the Women's Union of Baltimore, and serving on the staff of Women: A Journal of Liberation beginning in 1972. Her academic research focuses on the fiction of Paule Marshall. Several of the creators and compilers of this collection were major figures in the Baltimore women's liberation movement that grew out of second-wave feminism in the 1970s. They include: Margaret Blanchard: a feminist activist working in Baltimore and a professor at UMBC during the 1970s. She was on the staff of the journal Women: A Journal of Liberation from 1971 through the end of its publication in 1983. Jo-Ann Pilardi (1941-): a professor emerita of Towson University, who helped found and served as chair of the women's studies department in addition to being a professor of philosophy. She earned an M.A. in Philosophy from Penn State and a Ph.D. in Humanities from Johns Hopkins University. Her academic research interests include "feminist philosophy; existentialism; postmodernism and deconstruction; social and political philosophy; race, class, and gender studies; and the life and work of French feminist Simone de Beauvoir" ("Pilardi, Jo-Ann 1941- ," Encyclopedia.com). She was active in the Baltimore Women's Liberation activist group. Jennie Boyd Bull (1945-): a feminist and LGBTQ+ activist who worked for the women's liberation movement in DC and Baltimore throughout the second half of the 20th century. She was born in Tennessee and attended Swarthmore College in the 1960s before moving to Baltimore in 1969, where she came out as lesbian in 1971 and served on the staff of Women: A Journal of Liberation. She was involved in the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) in both Baltimore and DC throughout the 1970s, and attended Wesley Theological Seminary from 1978 to 1980 in order to become a clergy member for the church. She moved to Baltimore in the early 1980s, where she became Pastor of MCC Baltimore. In 1989 she became the manager of the 31st St. Bookstore, and remained in the position until the bookstore dissolved in 1994. She worked as a library associate at the Baltimore County Public Library from 1994 until 2001. She retired in 2015 and moved to North Carolina. The collection also prominently features several organizations and institutions in Baltimore and elsewhere that contributed to the women's liberation movement. They include: Baltimore Women's Liberation: an activist group headquartered in the Waverly neighborhood. According to one of its members, Jo-Ann Pilardi, the group "formed coalitions (e.g., with Welfare Rights); engaged in projects (e.g., Red Wagon Day Care Center; Women's Growth Center); published a newsletter (Cold Day in August); and created the Speaker's Bureau, for the numerous requests we received, e.g., from the Kiwanis Club, high schools, community groups" (Pilardi, "Feminism Surges with a Third Wave."). The group is also notable for being involved in the creation of the Feminist Press, which was founded in 1970 by Florence Howe and published books and other resources on women in literature. The 31st St. Bookstore: a feminist bookstore in Baltimore founded in the early 1970s. In 1986 the store was put up for sale by its owner, and a group of women banded together to raise the money to purchase it and turn it into a co-op store. In 1989 Jennie Boyd Bull became the bookstore's manager, and worked there until the bookstore closed in 1994. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS): a radical student activist group that was active in the US in the mid to late 1960s. Its relationship to feminism and the women's liberation movement was complex, as women were both active in the movement yet felt that they had second-class status within it. Women's Union of Baltimore: a feminist organization with strong ties to both socialism and lesbianism, founded in 1972 and active throughout the 1970s in Baltimore. "Primarily a reading, discussion, and study group," the group "was also involved with tenants' rights, hospital protests, picketing of the Exxon fuel company, and advocacy efforts for diversity at the 1977 International Women's Year Conference" ("Historical Note," Women's Union of Baltimore Collection). Metropolitan Community Church of Baltimore (MCCB): founded in 1972 by Rev. James Huff, the church is "Baltimore's oldest LGBT religious organization," and part of a wider MCC movement that was originally founded in Los Angeles in 1968. The church came into greater public awareness in the early 1980s when Jennie Boyd Bull became its first openly lesbian pastor. The Women's Growth Center (now known as The Growth Center): a feminist counseling center founded in Baltimore in 1972. In 1976, with increased funds obtained through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), the center expanded its services to include educational programs in feminist therapy and conferences on women's issues. These programs lasted until 1981. The center changed its name in 2019 "to better reflect the collective's mission to work with people of all genders" ("Our Story," growthcenterbaltimore.com).

Finding Aid

An online finding aid is available.
https://library.umbc.edu/speccoll/findingaids/coll334.php

Location

This collection is housed at the University of Maryland Baltimore County Library Speical Collections
https://library.umbc.edu/specialcollections/

Tags

Baltimore | Feminism | Maryland | MCC