- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Olson talks about women-centered activities at the Unitarian Universalist Church (3:15)
- Creator:
- Olson, Anne, 1934-
- Contributor to Resource:
- Brown, Amanda, 1982-
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 2005-04-22
- 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:
- Anne Olson was born in Madison Wisconsin in 1934. She received a BS in nutrition from the University of Oklahoma (1956), completed a dietetic internship at the University of Michigan (1956-1957) and earned her MS in dietary administration from the University of Kansas (1962). From 1962 to 1967, Olson was an instructor in nutrition at Emory University's School of Nursing, as well as, in 1965, serving as nutritionist for Quaker House's Project Headstart. In 1974, she became a marketing consultant for the Florida Department of Citrus and from 1974 until her retirement in 1999, she was an administrator in School/Community Nutrition for Georgia's Department of Education. Olson has had a long-standing interest in feminist and human rights issues: She has been an active participant in a number of community organizations, including the Dekalb League of Women Voters (1966-1968) and The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia (1969-1972). She belonged to the International Association of Religious Freedom and the International Association of Liberal Religious Women (1987); was a founding member of Atlanta’s Charis Circle (1996-1998); and served as the co-chair of Human Rights Atlanta (1998-1999). Currently Olson is involved with the Georgia Living Wage Campaign, as well as the Atlanta Living Wage Campaign. Olson has enjoyed a long relationship with the Unitarian Universalist Association, beginning in 1971, when she served on the Board of Directors of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta. She was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Unitarian Universalist Women's Federation (1983-1989), and has served in various positions for the Thurman Hamer Ellington Unitarian Universalist Church, Atlanta (1994-1999).
Olson cites one of her earliest influential events as being the time she got a bicycle. "I must have been 10 or so. I then had access to the public library. That's when I started reading and becoming a really avid reader." One of only three women of her University of Oklahoma pledge class who graduated instead of leaving to marry, she describes being frustrated with her work in dietetics, and so went on to get a graduate degree in Dietary Administration. Soon after graduating in 1962, she was married with two children and living in Atlanta. It was at this time, she says, that Virginia Wolfe's books became important to her, and, in an effort to get out of the house she joined the League of Women Voters, and got onto the Board of Directors in DeKalb County. Through the League of Women Voters, Voter Registration Drive, Olson says she became involved with the Voter Education Project and the Civil Rights Movement. Olson recounts that her interest in the Equal Rights Amendment was piqued while she was chair of the Public Issues Committee at the Unitarian Universalist Church. She discusses the democratization of her church and her push for removing sexism within the church, and encouraging women-centered curriculum. Olson states that at about the same time as her 1974 divorce, she became involved in Charis Circle, and began reading and discussing the feminist texts which led to a deeper understanding of her place in the world. This, combined with her earlier civil rights work, and work with the Unitarian Church led to her growing interest in human rights issues. She talks about her involvement with various human rights groups, including the Georgia Citizens' Coalition on Hunger, the Atlanta Living Wage Campaign, Amnesty International and the Gustav Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. She believes feminism is alive and well, and that we now need to also consider racism and classism.
Transcript of this excerpt: AO: We decided -- one of the things that the women’s groups did was a sexism audit of the Unitarian churches. And I can remember going to the minister of our church and he’d started laughing me out of the room. He wasn’t going to even fool with something like that. But there was a lot of interest in changing language; we got a new hymnal, we changed how the mission statement of UUA, and it was all because of women in religion groups and Unitarian Universalist’s women’s groups that pushed the issue, and said, you know, “If we’re going to be a Democratic Organization, we have to include women.” So I was very much a part of all that process. And it was an exciting time, and I can remember in the parliamentary procedure, standing up at the crow mic[rophone] and getting bumped by a really big man because he wanted to say something ahead of me. So there was always this tension around being a man or being a woman. Everywhere. You know, that was very much an ongoing thing. One of the interesting pieces in the Unitarian Universalist work for me was [that] the women’s groups did three curriculum. The first one was “Rise Up and Call Her Name,” and it was based on various women religious figures all over the world. I co-taught it, I can’t remember how many years ago, and people in that group still talk about how much they learned about being women. It had goddesses in it. It was really -- it was a fun curriculum. Next, then after that -- no, the first one was “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” and the second one was “Rise Up and Call Her Name.” The reason they did “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” first -- AB: That’s a great name. AO: Yeah, it is. Well it’s a biblical name. Everybody in it was pretty much from European tradition. So then “Rise Up and Call Her Name” came, bringing in the African goddesses and the Chinese and Japanese goddesses. And then the third curriculum that I was involved with actually -- was a reader on it, and then I co-lead it in 1997 -- was the “Gender Justice” curriculum, which turned out to be wonderful because with forty people in the group -- and it actually was a mixed group -- there were men and women in it, deciding to stay after the class was over. It was a ten week class, and we started having potlucks, and eating international foods because there were people from other countries in the group. And then out of that potluck group came Human Rights Atlanta, which is the major human rights work group that I have been involved with. And that started in 1996. And so, as I’ve been going through all this stuff about learning about racism and sexism, always sexism, and beginning to understand classism -- it occurred to me that human rights was a really wonderful framework for all of these issues. It really addressed the intersectionality of all those issues. And that’s how I became a human rights educator. All these things came together for me. It’s like peeling an onion I guess; you keep peeling back and deep down -- the core for me is human rights. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2070
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2070/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:
- 31 pages (two audio cassettes)
- Original Collection:
- Georgia Women's Movement Project Collection
Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
