Suzanne Pharr

Last updated

Suzanne Pharr is an American organizer, political strategist, and author who has worked to build a broad-based social justice movement in the United States. Pharr is the founder of the Women's Project (based in Arkansas), co-founded Southerners on New Ground, a regional progressive LGBT organization, and was the director of the Highlander Center. [1] She organized the "No on Nine" campaign against the passage of Oregon Ballot Measure 9. [2]

Pharr was born in 1939 in Hog Mountain, Georgia, just northeast of Atlanta. [3] She attended colleges in Milledgeville, GA, Buffalo, NY, and New Orleans, LA. She accomplished a MA in English at SUNY/Buffalo, and most of the requirements for the Ph.D. in American literature from Tulane University. From 1977 to 1978, she was director of the Washington County Head Start Program in Fayetteville, AR. In 1988, she co-chaired Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign in Arkansas. From 1999 to 2004, she served as director for the Highlander Research and Education Center, a historic, civil rights organization based in New Market, TN. [4]

Pharr is the author of the book Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism (published in 1988 by Chardon Press). [5] [6] [7] Pharr's In the Time of the Right: Reflections on Liberation was published in 2008. [8]

Pharr is active currently with Project South, the Southern Movement Assembly, the Rural Organizing Project, and Grassroots Arkansas. [9]

Related Research Articles

Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades, ending with the feminist sex wars in the early 1980s and being replaced by third-wave feminism in the early 1990s. It occurred throughout the Western world and aimed to increase women's equality by building on the feminist gains of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lesbian feminism</span> Feminist movement

Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and critical perspective that encourages women to focus their efforts, attentions, relationships, and activities towards their fellow women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism. Lesbian feminism was most influential in the 1970s and early 1980s, primarily in North America and Western Europe, but began in the late 1960s and arose out of dissatisfaction with the New Left, the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, sexism within the gay liberation movement, and homophobia within popular women's movements at the time. Many of the supporters of Lesbianism were actually women involved in gay liberation who were tired of the sexism and centering of gay men within the community and lesbian women in the mainstream women's movement who were tired of the homophobia involved in it.

Radical Women (RW) is an American socialist feminist grassroots activist organization affiliated with the Freedom Socialist Party. It has branches in Seattle, Washington, and Melbourne, Australia.

The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism. It emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s, primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which effected great change throughout the world. The WLM branch of radical feminism, based in contemporary philosophy, comprised women of racially and culturally diverse backgrounds who proposed that economic, psychological, and social freedom were necessary for women to progress from being second-class citizens in their societies.

Lavender Menace was an informal group of lesbian radical feminists formed to protest the exclusion of lesbians and their issues from the feminist movement at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City on May 1, 1970. Members included Karla Jay, Martha Shelley, Rita Mae Brown, Lois Hart, Barbara Love, Ellen Shumsky, Artemis March, Cynthia Funk, Linda Rhodes, Arlene Kushner, Ellen Broidy, and Michela Griffo, and were mostly members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the National Organization for Women (NOW). They later became the Radicalesbians.

Black feminism is a branch of feminism that focuses on the African-American woman's experiences and recognizes the intersectionality of racism and sexism. Black feminism philosophy centers on the idea that "Black women are inherently valuable, that liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else's but because of our need as human persons for autonomy."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Smith</span> American activist and academic (born 1946)

Barbara Smith is an American lesbian feminist and socialist who has played a significant role in Black feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s, she has been active as a scholar, activist, critic, lecturer, author, and publisher of Black feminist thought. She has also taught at numerous colleges and universities for 25 years. Smith's essays, reviews, articles, short stories and literary criticism have appeared in a range of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The Black Scholar, Ms., Gay Community News, The Guardian, The Village Voice, Conditions and The Nation. She has a twin sister, Beverly Smith, who is also a lesbian feminist activist and writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chicana feminism</span> Sociopolitical movement

Chicana feminism is a sociopolitical movement, theory, and praxis that scrutinizes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersections impacting Chicanas and the Chicana/o community in the United States. Chicana feminism empowers women to challenge institutionalized social norms and regards anyone a feminist who fights for the end of women's oppression in the community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Woman-Identified Woman</span>

"The Woman-Identified Woman" was a ten-paragraph manifesto, written by the Radicalesbians in 1970. It was first distributed during the Lavender Menace protest at the Second Congress to Unite Women, hosted by the National Organization for Women (NOW) on May 1, 1970, in New York City in response to the lack of lesbian representation at the congress. It is now considered a turning point in the history of radical feminism and one of the founding documents of lesbian feminism redefining the term "lesbian" as a political identity as well as a sexual one.

The Woman's Building was a non-profit arts and education center located in Los Angeles, California. The Woman's Building focused on feminist art and served as a venue for the women's movement and was spearheaded by artist Judy Chicago, graphic designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and art historian Arlene Raven. The center was open from 1973 until 1991. During its existence, the Los Angeles Times called the Woman's Building a "feminist mecca."

Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press was an activist feminist press, closely related to the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO), that was started in 1980 by Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, and poet Audre Lorde. Beverly Smith and Barbara Smith, and their associate Demita Frazier, had together cofounded the Combahee River Collective (CRC). The Kitchen Table became inactive soon after Audre Lorde's death in 1992. The motivation for starting a press run by and for women of color was that "as feminist and lesbian of color writers, we knew that we had no options for getting published, except at the mercy or whim of others, whether in the context of alternative or commercial publishing, since both are white-dominated."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Furies Collective</span> Lesbian commune in Washington, D.C.

The Furies Collective was a short-lived commune of twelve young lesbian separatists in Washington, D.C., in 1971 and 1972. They viewed lesbianism as more political than sexual, and declared heterosexual women to be an obstacle to the world revolution they sought. Their theories are still acknowledged among feminist groups.

Cheryl L. Clarke is an American lesbian poet, essayist, educator and a Black feminist community activist who continues to dedicate her life to the recognition and advancement of Black and Queer people. Her scholarship focuses on African-American women's literature, black lesbian feminism, and the Black Arts Movement in the United States. For over 40 years,

The Combahee River Collective (CRC) was a Black feminist lesbian socialist organization active in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1974 to 1980. The Collective argued that both the white feminist movement and the Civil Rights Movement were not addressing their particular needs as Black women and more specifically as Black lesbians. Racism was present in the mainstream feminist movement, while Delaney and Manditch-Prottas argue that much of the Civil Rights Movement had a sexist and homophobic reputation.

"Radicalesbians" were several lesbian-feminist organizations founded in the post-Stonewall period of gay activism. The first, most well-known of these groups was founded in New York City, and was short-lived, though their impact was not: the manifesto the group distributed during their protest, titled "The Woman-Identified Woman," came to be known as one of the foundational documents of lesbian-feminism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martha Shelley</span> American lesbian feminist activist

Martha Shelley is an American activist, writer, and poet best known for her involvement in lesbian feminist activism.

Irene Peslikis was an American feminist artist, activist, and educator. She was one of the early founders and organizers in the women's art movement, especially on the east coast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southerners On New Ground</span>

Southerners on New Ground is a social justice, advocacy and capacity building organization serving and supporting queer and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, uniquely focusing its work in the southern United States through community organizing for economic and racial justice. The organization is unique, as most of the places it does work in do not have an LGBTQ organization like it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women's liberation movement in North America</span>

The women's liberation movement in North America was part of the feminist movement in the late 1960s and through the 1980s. Derived from the civil rights movement, student movement and anti-war movements, the Women's Liberation Movement took rhetoric from the civil rights idea of liberating victims of discrimination from oppression. They were not interested in reforming existing social structures, but instead were focused on changing the perceptions of women's place in society and the family and women's autonomy. Rejecting hierarchical structure, most groups which formed operated as collectives where all women could participate equally. Typically, groups associated with the Women's Liberation Movement held consciousness-raising meetings where women could voice their concerns and experiences, learning to politicize their issues. To members of the WLM rejecting sexism was the most important objective in eliminating women's status as second-class citizens.

Lorraine Fontana is an American lesbian activist and founder of the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance.

References

  1. "Suzanne Pharr". NCOE. 2016-10-15. Retrieved 2019-03-12.
  2. Myers, JoAnne (2009). "Pharr, Suzanne". The A to Z of the Lesbian Liberation Movement: Still the Rage. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press. p. 200. ISBN   978-0-8108-6327-9.
  3. "Voices of Feminism Oral History Project" (PDF). Smith College Libraries. 2005-06-28. Retrieved 2019-03-28.
  4. "Suzanne Pharr". The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. 2018-12-31. Retrieved 2019-03-28.
  5. Smothers, Ronald (April 28, 1991). "3,000 Lesbians Meet in Atlanta to Set Own Agenda". The New York Times . Retrieved 2009-08-29.
  6. Card, Claudia (1995). Lesbian Choices . New York: Columbia University Press. p.  157. ISBN   978-0-231-08009-5. suzanne pharr.
  7. Plott, Michèle, ed. (2000). "Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism". Making Sense of Women's Lives: An Introduction to Women's Studies. San Diego, CA: Collegiate Press. pp. 424–437. ISBN   978-0-939693-53-5.
  8. "Suzanne Pharr". suzannepharr.org. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  9. "Suzanne Pharr". NCOE. 2016-10-15. Retrieved 2019-03-12.

http://nationalcouncilofelders.com/Bios/suzanne-pharr/ http://www.sinisterwisdom.org/SW93Supplement/Pharr

Further reading