Why Gainesville Became A National Leader

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WHY GAINESVILLE BECAME A NATIONAL LEADER... ...in the Modern Women’s Liberation Movement. by Denise Matthews

Why was Gainesville, Florida, along with the major cities of Boston, New York, Chicago, and Seattle, one of the first 5 cities in the United States where the Modern Women’s Liberation Movement began? This seems remarkable considering that in the 1960s Gainesville was described as “a small town in rural north Florida with a conservative southern university.”

Looking back into Gainesville’s social history, we discover that Gainesville was a place where women recognized that severe discrimination based on being Black and systemic discrimination based on being a woman overlapped. This overlap led to white women and black women joining to fight for civil rights, for example by creating Gainesville Women for Equal Rights (GWER) in 1963-64, a 200-member, all female, biracial, civil rights organization.

But Gainesville/Alachua County women’s resistance to oppression began much earlier with Black women’s resistance to sexism and racism during enslavement on area plantations. When the Civil War ended in 1865, over fifty percent of Gainesville’s residents were Black, most were recently freed from the many plantations in the area. Almost immediately, in 1866, resilient, ambitious Black women and men built a school, Union Academy, funded in part by the federal Freedman’s Bureau. Black students studied at Union Academy for more than 60 years. Union Academy and other Black-run educational institutions in Gainesville as well as Black civic, business, religious, and political institutions were all linked in the creation of this strong, educated Black community.

At the same time, this strong community was battling the destructive effects of segregation

and “Jim Crow” laws that limited all aspects of Black residents’ lives. Segregation meant inferior health care, lack of school funding, extreme job discrimination, being barred from public spaces, such as stores, and restaurants. And worse, Black citizens were terrorized by lynching and other lawless, violent acts perpetrated by white racists.

Even with the passage of the 19th Amendment giving all female US citizens the vote, racial intimidation persisted at the polls. This systemic oppression motivated active resistance. Black residents initiated voter registration drives that continued for decades. In 1963, Black votes supported the election of a white, pro-integration Gainesville city council member Byron Winn, the owner of the Primrose Inn, one of the few integrated restaurants in the city. Winn pressured the City Commission to create the Human Relations Council, which included 3 whites and 3 blacks, including two women. The Human Relations Council focused on integrating public places by organizing lunch counter sit-ins at Woolworth’s downtown and public parks.

This same year, Beverly Jones and other white University of Florida wives, decided that an allwomen civil rights organization “was desperately needed” to both research and take action on racial discrimination. The women formed Gainesville Women for Equal Rights, Inc. (GWER). Seventy-five white women attended the first official GWER meeting and invited a panel of local Black women to discuss what segregation meant in their daily lives. The Black women on the panel identified their areas of urgent concern including education, job opportunities, health and welfare, recreational facilities, community affairs, and housing. Black women joined GWER and each of these areas of concern became standing committees of GWER with integrated groups of women working together to improve conditions. Ultimately, GWER’s biracial membership totaled more than 200 women and became one of the largest civil rights organizations in Florida, collaborating on integration initiatives begun by

the NAACP Youth Council and Student Group for Equal Rights.

In 1963, Judith Brown, a white, University of Florida graduate student who grew up in Gainesville, lost her university status for being arrested during voter registration demonstrations in north Florida. Also arrested were leaders of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) including Patricia Due Stephens, a young and highly effective female, black civil rights activist who mentored Brown in civil disobedience, for which they were both jailed. Ultimately, the northern Florida voter registration drive was one of the most successful in all the southern states.

Women working within the civil rights movement, like Patricia Due, Judith Brown and Beverly Jones, recognized that despite the movement’s goals of equality for all, systemic discrimination against women’s rights was not being addressed. Their recognition of this blatant gender inequality catalyzed Brown and Jones to write Toward a Female Liberation Movement. Incubated during their civil rights activism for racial equality, and informed by the writing of French feminist, Simone de Beauvoir, their paper articulated that the struggle to fight oppression must confront sexist oppression of all women. Brown and Jones brought their paper to the first National Women’s Liberation meeting in Sandy Springs, Maryland in 1968. Their words ignited the women in attendance from all over the US and became a rallying cry for the feminists’ cause. It was immediately dubbed “The Florida Paper,” and became a famous manifesto of the Modern Women’s Movement.

While on the surface Gainesville’s fame may seem to emanate solely from “The Florida Paper” the full story has roots in a long heritage of Black resistance and of Black women and men who took hold of their destiny, and built a community based on education, industry, and activism against oppression in Gainesville, Florida. This early foundation of Black education and struggle for civil rights links through the generations to the formation of effective, biracial collaborations of Gainesville women activists for civil rights a century later. The Florida Paper by Judith Brown and Beverly Jones whose activism was honed in the Black civil rights struggle, became an urgent call to end gender discrimination and ignited the Modern Women’s Liberation movement for women nationwide and put Gainesville on the Women’s Liberation Movement map.

Women Helping Women Reach for the Stars...

...by CELEBRATING the advancement of women, EDUCATING women through scholarships, grants, awards, loans and stewardship of Cottey College, and MOTIVATINGwomen to achieve their highest aspirations.

Chapter I, Gainesville, organized in 1927, is proud to be a part of P.E.O., which has celebrated women for over 150 years.

P.E.O. has almost 6,000 chapters with more than 225,000 members in North America. Five are in Gainesville. Visit us at www.peointernational.org