[WW] Flo Kennedy: An irreverent, outspoken activist

[WW]

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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 1, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
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FLO KENNEDY: AN IRREVERENT, OUTSPOKEN ACTIVIST

By Sue Davis
New York

When Florynce "Flo" Kennedy died on Dec. 22 after a long 
debilitating illness, the progressive movement lost a 
generous, dedicated, irreverent, outspoken activist. Flo so 
hated racism, sexism and capitalism that her name became 
synonymous, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, with the 
struggle for social justice.

She was born in 1916. One of five daughters of a Pullman 
porter, Flo was raised with Black pride and resistance. Her 
father was legendary in Kansas City, Mo., for standing off 
the Ku Klux Klan with a shotgun when they tried to drive him 
from the home he bought in a mainly white neighborhood.

After graduating from Columbia University with honors, Flo 
was the first African American woman to attend Columbia Law 
School. Though initially denied admission, she threatened a 
lawsuit and went on to graduate in 1951. One of her most 
famous cases was representing the estates of jazz greats 
Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker to recover money owed them 
by record companies.

Though she became totally disillusioned with the courts and 
eventually stopped practicing law, Flo handled a number of 
high-profile cases during the 1960s and 1970s. These 
included the Panther 21, H. Rap Brown (now known as Jamil 
Abdullah Al-Amin) and a female member of the Black 
Liberation Front who was acquitted of bank robbery charges.

Flo lent her name and her resources to many progressive 
causes. For instance, she endorsed countless anti-war and 
pro-liberation initiatives organized by Youth Against War 
and Fascism. YAWF was the youth group of Workers World Party 
that led many important struggles during the 1960s and 
1970s.

Flo spoke at the first major demonstration of the women's 
liberation movement in New York in 1970--the revival of 
International Women's Day organized by YAWF Women.

When JoAnn Little was on trial in 1975 for killing the white 
jailer who tried to rape her, Flo turned her Rolodex over to 
those in Workers World Party who were organizing support for 
the young Black woman.

Wherever Flo saw injustice, she pounced on it. She founded 
the Media Workshop in 1966 to combat racism in advertising 
and the media.

At a memorial held Jan. 11 at New York's Riverside Church, 
Black TV journalist Gil Noble said he had Flo to thank for 
his job.

To combat sexism, Flo founded the Feminist Party, which 
nominated Shirley Chisholm for president in 1972. Also in 
1972, Flo filed suit against the Roman Catholic Church of 
New York, alleging that its reactionary political 
activities, especially in opposition to abortion, violated 
the church's tax-exempt status.

Dubbed "radicalism's rudest mouth" by People magazine in 
1974, Flo knew how to formulate a concept as neatly as the 
meat in a nutshell. "If you want to kill poverty, go to Wall 
Street and disrupt," she wrote in her autobiography, "Color 
Me Flo: My Hard Life and Good Times."

A friend remembers her telling a judge who reprimanded her 
in the early 1970s for wearing pants, "I'll ignore your 
dress if you ignore my pants."

When asked by a man who heckled her during a public lecture 
if she was a lesbian, she responded, "Are you my 
alternative?"

Known as much for her flamboyant outfits, cowboy hat and 
long lacquered nails as for her outrageous quips, Flo 
continued her activism long after she was forced to quit the 
lecture circuit because of a bad back.

She kept up a progressive drumbeat by producing a weekly 
interview show on public-access cable TV for two decades.

Known and respected by a wide range of people in public 
life, Flo was lovingly celebrated at the memorial by such 
people as former New York Mayor David Dinkins, the Rev. Al 
Sharpton, Father Lawrence Lucas, Judge Emily Goodman, Ti-
Grace Atkinson, and her sister, Faye Kennedy Daly.

Flo Kennedy would not want us to mourn her loss but to 
organize a broad social movement to fight racism, poverty 
and war, all of which the thoroughly reactionary Bush 
administration embodies. Flo Kennedy, live like her!

- END -

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