- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Paulk talks about conflicts between women's groups in Georgia (2:18)
- Creator:
- Paulk, Janet, 1932-
- Contributor to Resource:
- Durand, Joyce Jenkins, 1939-
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 2003-02-19
- Subject:
- Feminism
Social movements
Women's studies - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Fulton County, 33.79025, -84.46702
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Atlanta, 33.749, -84.38798 - Medium:
- audiocassettes
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- A grassroots activist at heart, Janet Paulk is passionate about a variety of social, political and gender issues. Born in Grafton, West Virginia in 1932, Paulk was the daughter and granddaughter of Presbyterian ministers. Educated in music theory and piano at Maryville College in Tennessee, and business at Georgia State University, DeKalb Technical School and Emory University's School of Business Administration, Paulk began working for the Emory University Library Administration in 1975. She continued to serve the libraries at Emory for 23 years, most recently as human resources manager. During her tenure there, she became an outspoken advocate for the preservation of women's history. She was also active in national and local library associations. She retired from Emory in 1994.
A minister's daughter, Paulk describes her childhood in Grafton, West Virginia as very happy. She states that she was able to pursue all of her interests, including chemistry, education and music. Paulk describes her early unsuccessful marriage to the son of the Chilean Secretary of Transportation, which resulted in her living and traveling to South America. She states that it was during this period in her life that she developed a growing awareness that she was not willing to accept the traditional roles ascribed to women. By the late 1960s, married for the second time, Paulk became increasingly interested in civil rights, community organizing and the need to emancipate women. She says she belonged to a number of discussion groups, comprised of "ardent feminists", and began to learn from them. Paulk describes working at Emory University, and becoming aware of blatant discrimination in the workplace, in terms of salary inequity and retirement benefits. She says she became involved in a number of local women's groups such as the Democratic Women of DeKalb, the Feminist Action Alliance, the Unitarian Universalist Women's Federation, and ERA Georgia, Inc., and discusses the difficulty in trying to get these different groups to work together. Paulk ends her oral history by reciting a poem she wrote about feminist Maria Getzinger Jones.
Transcript of this excerpt: JP: And we were learning to work together. And certainly with the ERA, women's groups were having to learn to work together for the first time. There had always been more -- not just separation, but I can't think of the word I want. But they didn't work together that well. So, I started out with ERA Georgia, being liaison for the southeastern part of the state. And then I became treasurer and on the Executive Board. So I was very involved in tactics and workshops and conferences and programs, and meeting women, and in resolving conflicts and conflicts between organizations, because this was an opportunity for organizations to begin to branch out, and political organizations like Georgia Women's Political Caucus and NOW, to branch out into the state. So there was competition, that's the word I wanted before -- competition. JD: There was most definitely competition. And a lot of disagreement about issues and how to -- not so much on the issues but how to act on them. JP: That's right, and who was going to get the publicity for them. So groups wanting to be part of ERA Georgia, the umbrella organization, but they also wanted to get credit for -- JD: Just like men? JP: Yeah, not for just what they did but for everything. [laughter] This wasn't all by any means, but it was there. We were having to learn. And if you listened to some of the other interviews which have been done, you will hear some of the braver and more honest people like Sherry Shulman [Sutton] and Cathey Steinberg talk about those things. And I think those are important. We were not just stick figures; we were women with all our foibles and difficulties, and we were learning. We were learning. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2049
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2049/manifest.json
- 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-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
- Original Collection:
- Georgia Women's Movement Project Collection
Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
