- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Davis talks about the Coalition of Labor Union Women (3:34)
- Creator:
- Davis, Jean
- Contributor to Resource:
- Millen, Susan A. (Susan Ann), 1951-
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 2005-01-22
- Subject:
- Feminism
Social movements
Women's studies - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Coweta County, 33.35346, -84.76337
United States, Georgia, Coweta County, Newnan, 33.38067, -84.79966 - Medium:
- audiocassettes
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- Born in the segregated South to politically active parents, Jean Davis became politically aware as a young girl in Newnan, Georgia. Her early aspiration was to work as a missionary in Africa but instead, she attended Morris Brown College and taught public school in Atlanta. As a student at Morris Brown, Davis was involved in the Civil Rights Movement and participated in boycotts of Rich's Department Store and sit-ins at Woolworth's. Davis also worked with the A. Philip Randolph Institute as well as the Georgia AFL-CIO and the National AFL-CIO. Through her work with different union organizations and her activism in civil rights, Davis became interested in the Equal Rights Amendment. She felt strongly that the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) was necessary in order to bring union women on board with the ERA and also to establish an organization that would place women in leadership positions. In addition to her work with the ERA, Davis worked on a number of campaigns from local school boards to notable politicians and continues the struggle for human rights.
Aware of racial discrimination at an early age, Davis begins by recounting her childhood in segregated Newnan, Georgia. Her emerging activism, she believes, was influenced by her community-oriented parents and by her cousin, a railroad worker, and union member. Davis discusses her internship at the A. Philip Randolph Institute, and how that led to her work with several different social justice organizations, including the AFL-CIO. Davis articulates her struggle to find a way to support both the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Movement -- which was largely considered to be a white, middle-class effort. She recalls, "I couldn't see how I wanted to be a person who advocated for white women; when white women weren't advocating human rights for everybody." Davis also explains that one of the reasons more women of color were not involved in the ERA was because there was economic disparity between white women and women of color. She says that her opinion of the women's movement changed when Sarah Butler couched the issue not in terms of race or class but in terms of human rights. Davis ends the interview by talking about the importance of community activism for all generations, and discusses the various causes and organizations she continues to support.
Transcript of this excerpt: SM: Now I know when I was at the AFL-CIO we helped organize a chapter of the Coalition of Labor Union Women and you were involved in that. Maybe you can talk about your involvement with CLUW. JD: That was something that I thought was really very fine. [The] Coalition of Labor Union Women. Here we go again, Susan. It’s called control in my own life and in other people’s lives they call it politics. There were women in the labor movement who didn’t want us to have a Coalition of Labor Union Women (laughs) organization. And it goes back to that same old myth. Why do you have to have something separate? You know, with the A. Philip Randolph Institute -- Why do blacks want the A. Philip Randolph Institute? Now here we come for CLUW -- why do women want CLUW? That was really another time that I had another growing experience. The people that I thought needed to be in leadership positions, were not. That was not going to happen. Because we didn’t -- there were leaders who didn’t want CLUW to happen; they thought if we allow these people to be in charge it won’t do anything anyway. (Laughs) So that was a struggle. A struggle to get just plain old human rights. But in spite of all of that, we were able to do a lot of things. Remember Janet Kaufman was here during that time. We did a lot of progressive things that people didn’t want to see happen. We had a rally downtown that we sponsored during women’s history -- you remember? SM: Was that International Women’s Day? JD: International Women’s Day? We got kind of spanked on our hands for some of the things that we did. We also had this people’s TV that we were doing, developing shows around women’s issues. [Laughs] [We] got slapped on our hands for talking about how we had unions that were majority women [but] were headed by men. [Laughs] But in spite of all of those myths, you know, we were able to do some positive things, and I was real proud to be a part of that. You were a great part of that too. Your papers, the articles that you did in the Journal of Labor helped us out a lot. I’ll tell you, it was just a good -- a good organization, which died eventually because people thought it -- saw it as a threat, or -- Ha!; saw it as a way to empower women and didn’t want us empowered. They wanted us still to pretend that we couldn’t do this for ourselves. [Laughs] This is where I’m looking at it. We just still want to be barefoot and pregnant and not make any waves. I think eventually people saw that we were not a threat, and that it was ok for us to have our organization, the Coalition of Labor Union Women. But it was the same struggle that we had in any human rights issue -- Coalition of Labor Union Women. It was a struggle to get it started. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2057
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2057/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/
- Extent:
- 51 pages (two cassette tapes)
- Original Collection:
- Georgia Women's Movement Project Collection
Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
