- Collection:
- Archives for Research on Women and Gender
- Title:
- Marlene Johnson oral history interview, 2016-07-11
- Creator:
- Johnson, Marlene
- Contributor to Resource:
- Smith, Eleanor, 1943-
- Date of Original:
- 2016-07-11
- Subject:
- African American lesbians
Womanism
Feminist therapy
Psychotherapists
Families of military personnel
Racism - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Fulton County, 33.79025, -84.46702
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Atlanta, 33.749, -84.38798 - Medium:
- oral histories (literary works)
interviews - Type:
- Moving Image
- Format:
- video/mp4
- Description:
- Marlene Johnson was born into a military family in Cherry Point, N.C. Her family moved frequently during her childhood in the 1950s and 1960s. Johnson had an extremely close relationship with her mother and grandmother. She attended Morris Brown College, from which she was expelled for missing church after a protest march, and eventually finished college at Georgia State University. At Morris Brown, Johnson met and married a member of the Marine Corps. She later came out as a lesbian and divorced her husband, to which her father objected so stringently that he crossed her name out of the family's Bible. Johnson studied sociology and eventually got a job at Karuna Counseling, where she worked for nearly ten years. She later went into private practice. Established in 1974, the original mission of Karuna Counseling was to provide high quality, compassionate care for women. Over the years the practice has grown, developed and expanded its focus, and it now provides holistic psychotherapy services to men, women, adolescents, families, couples, businesses, and organizations in the Atlanta, Ga. area. The Karuna Counseling Oral History Project aims to document the history of the counseling practice through peer interviews with its therapists.
In this interview, Marlene Johnson talks about growing up in a peripatetic military family, and her experiences growing up African-American in various locales during the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout the interview, she describes experiences of being alienated or ostracized, whether for her race, her sexuality, or her manner of conducting herself. She talks about coming out as a lesbian and working at Karuna Counseling, where she encountered systemic racism despite the ostensibly progressive bent of the organization. Johnson discusses the various skills and lessons she learned at Karuna, and talks about the trajectory of her career after she left Karuna and went into private practice. She speaks briefly about her physical disability and disability activism in which she has participated. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/arwg/id/20490
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Copyright to this item is owned by Georgia State University Library. Georgia State University Library has made this item available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
- Bibliographic Citation (Cite As):
- Cite as: Johnson, Marlene, interviewed by Eleanor Smith, July 11, 2016, Karuna Counseling Oral History Project, Archives for Research on Women and Gender. Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University.
- Extent:
- 01:03:49
- Original Collection:
- Archives for Research on Women and Gender
http://research.library.gsu.edu/karuna
NA
Karuna Counseling Oral History Project - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
