- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Fowlkes talks about the Women's Movement and the Civil Rights Movement (6:52)
- Creator:
- Fowlkes, Diane L., 1939-
- Contributor to Resource:
- Van Tilborg, Dana
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 1995-09-27
- 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:
- Diane L. Fowlkes has been a leader in women's advocacy and helped to develop the Women's Studies Institute at Georgia State University. Fowlkes received her B.A. in French language and literature from Southwestern at Memphis, her M.A. in political science from Georgia State University and her Ph.D. in political science from Emory University. The recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, Fowlkes attended the Open University in the United Kingdom, 1985-1986. She worked at Georgia State University for over 25 years, and was instrumental in establishing the women's studies program. During the 1990s, when dedicated women's rights activists approached GSU with a detailed plan to create a women's archives (which became the Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives), Fowlkes represented the Women's Studies Institute in supporting their endeavors. Fowlkes's book, White Political Women: Paths from Privilege to Empowerment, was nominated for the Victoria Schuck Award for the best book on women and politics of the American Political Science Association, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Award, the Elliott Rudwick Prize of the Organization of American Historians, and the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women's History of the American Historical Association (1992). In addition to producing many papers, publications, and presentations, Fowlkes also has participated in various professional associations: She was active with the American Political Science Association, the Southern Political Science Association, the Women's Caucus for Political Science (nationally and regionally), as well as the acting as co-chair of the Program Committee and coordinator of the NWSA '87 Quilt Project for the National Women's Studies Association. Fowlkes has served as consultant for various groups, including the Cave Springs Georgia Housing Authority (1994) and the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women (1982-1985), as well as acting as reviewer of books and board member for a variety of journals, and magazines. She is a member of the American Political Science Association, the Women's Caucus for Political Science, the National Women's Studies Association, and the Southeastern Women's Studies Association. At Georgia State University, Fowlkes served on a variety of panels including the University Senate (1995-1998) and the Committee on Faculty Women's Concerns (1989-1992). Her research and teaching interests include feminist theory, women and politics, and the scope of women's studies. In 1998, the year she retired from Georgia State, Fowlkes was appointed Professor Emerita, and during the spring commencement of that year, she was honored with the University's Exceptional Service Award.
Fowlkes recounts her childhood, her education, and the events that triggered her interest in the Women's Movement. She describes the Civil Rights Movement as the model for the Women's Rights Movement and discusses how it influenced women to work toward changing laws in order to further integrate society. Fowlkes was involved in the Strike for Women's Equality, the Feminist Action Alliance, the socialist-feminist movement, as well as the schism within the campaign for ERA Georgia. She discusses some of the major influential figures in the Women's Movement in Georgia including Margaret Curtis, Joyce Parker, and Sherry Sutton. Fowlkes also discusses her work to establish the Women's Studies Institute at Georgia State University which, she thinks, reflects not only the personal interests of different women, but also the accomplishments of the Women's Movement.
Transcript of this excerpt: DVT: What do the words "The Women's Movement" mean to you? DF: Hmmm -- I guess to me, the Women's Movement has been women getting together, talking about different kinds of problems, and organizing, or getting the organizations in which they've already been involved to start talking about what can we do to fix these problems? Back in the '70s, the part of the Women's Movement that I was involved with was working on changing laws -- so that's the main part of the Women's Movement that I was involved with -- and which ended up trying to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed. That became a big project for a lot of women's organizations, but I know that there were also a lot of other women's groups -- kind of informal, you know, ad hoc groups, consciousness raising groups that were also working on -- and I did some of this myself as well -- kind of working on what will the society look like when men and women relate to each other in truly egalitarian ways, and you know, how is that going to change the way we do things at home and in the workplace and in the community? Just all of the myriad ways in which society had been set up so that what women did didn't count, or wasn't seen as important. What men did was seen as the most important thing. What men said and what men did was what it was all about, and to kind of change that from the inside out was what a lot of women were working on. And I remember that because I had been somewhat involved in the Civil Rights Movement; that the Civil Rights Movement had been a kind of inspiration and framing device, really. You know, black people were trying to get their rights under the law recognized and they had been doing all of this organizational work. And white people had been working in the organizations, as well, trying to get those laws changed, but also making it possible for black people to be out and about in the whole society, you know, that integration was one of the big goals of the Civil Rights Movement. And so, you could analogously say "Now women also need to change the laws and get themselves integrated into the whole society." So, I think that the Civil Rights Movement was making a kind of -- was a model for the Women's Rights Movement, and I think, now, looking back, I know that a lot of black women felt that they (because the Women's Movement kind of broke out of the Civil Rights Movement, or what became the Black Liberation Movement) -- that a lot of white women then left their work in civil rights to work on women's rights and that ended up looking like, and actually being for many -- that they [white women] were going to work on rights for white women -- because black women were still thinking that the most important thing for them was to work on racial justice. That was the thing that was keeping them down the most. So that that caused a kind of split in organizational work -- you know, that black women remained more with civil rights organizations, and white women formed new organizations working on women's rights. And back in that time there was also a lot of argument then that was breaking out in the Women's Movement about what was the real "cause" of women's oppression. Was it sex discrimination? And there was also the New Left Movement that was going on at the same time -- kind of student left and New Left Movement, and the people in that movement [with] whom I was also associated to some degree were arguing [that] the biggest oppression is class oppression. You know, they were giving the Marxist line. And then, Of course, black people, were saying "No, the greatest source of injustice and oppression is racial oppression." And so there would be these big arguments about "which is it?" You know, and all of these movements were going on, and it was as if you had to choose one of them. If you worked in that one, then you couldn't work in the others, because that would be taking energy away from the prime source of oppression. And now, looking back, I think we know that that was a very bad thing to have happened, that we would have these arguments about what was the root oppression, and it broke us all apart from each other, and weakened all of us in the process. So that now the Women's Movement has -- I think there's much more awareness now among many women, black and white, and now we even talk about women of color, that many more women now recognize that women are not just one race, or one class, or one sexual orientation, that women are a very diverse group. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2113
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2113/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:
- 33 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:
-
