Florynce "Flo" Kennedy

Photo: Radcliffe Institute For Advanced Study Harvard University/Schlesinger Library

Photo: Radcliffe Institute For Advanced Study Harvard University/Schlesinger Library

 

Country: United States

Location: Kansas City, Missouri; Manhattan, New York, New York City

About

Florynce "Flo" Kennedy (February 11, 1916-December 21, 2000) was an African-American lawyer, feminist, civil rights advocate, lecturer and activist.

Biography by Jaedyn Griddine

Collage of Florynce “Flo” Kennedy by Doriana Diaz.

Florynce Kennedy was born in 1916 and was introduced to American racial dynamics at a young age, when her father fought off a torch-bearing white mob after moving his family into a white neighborhood. Her mother, Zella, had three other daughters, Joy Kennedy Banks, Faye Kennedy Daly, and Grayce Kennedy, and was immensely supportive of all of her girls. Her first experience organizing was in her youth, when she helped organize a boycott of a Coca-Cola bottler plant that refused to hire Black people. She also joined the NAACP in the 1930s, and furthered her experience with organizing. She remained close to family; after high school, she ran a hat shop in Kansas City with her sisters, and her sister Grayce participated in boycotts with her. The pair of siblings moved to New York together to study at Columbia University in 1943. At first, Florynce’s application was denied on the basis of gender, not race; after threatening legal recourse, she was eventually admitted. In 1950, She joined the Columbia Women’s Law Society (CWLS), which was founded to help women alumni get jobs in the field during a period where the Columbia University Law Career Center refused to help women. This was Florynce’s first major step toward a lifetime of using her legal background to organize around Black women’s causes.

After working as a bookkeeper in a law firm for a few years – thanks to CWLS - Florynce opened her own law office in Manhattan, New York, making her one of 19 Black women lawyers in the entire city. At this time, she had already threatened a lawsuit against her alma mater, and her activism had brought her to argue in Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz (1972), which eventually led to New York being first in the nation to legalize abortion. Some of her other more notable legal actions include: a 1968 lawsuit against the Catholic Church for interference with abortion rights, and a defense of 21 Black Panthers against bombing conspiracy allegations the following year. She also represented clients such as Billie Holiday, Black Power leader H. Rap Brown, and Valerie Solanas, attempted murderer of Andy Warhol. In 1960, she founded the Media Workshop to combat misogynoir in the music industry, and in 1972 she founded the Feminist Party to support Shirley Chisholm’s presidential run. 

She was also a founding member of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the National Women’s Political Caucus and the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO). She led several demonstrations, such as a bra-burning protest of the 1968 Miss America Pageant and she also helped orchestrate a mass-urination at Harvard University to protest the institution’s lack of women’s restrooms in testing facilities. She became friends and comrades with the likes of Gloria Steinem, whom she toured the country and lectured with, and Margo St. James, with whom she argued for the decriminalization of prostitution in front of the UN International Women’s Year conferences in 1975. Later in her career, she hosted the Flo Kennedy Show, which was broadcasted in New York from the mid-70’s to the early 90’s. She passed in 2000 from a long illness, and is remembered as a charismatic leader and fervent fighter for change.

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GRAPHICS TO SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Florynce “FLO” KEnnEDY

North America, African-American, African-American Women's, Civil Rights, FeminismKeshia White