WOMEN AND HOLLYWOOD 

Submitted by Roxann Ploss

YVONNE BRAITHWAITE BURKE

Submitted by Bernice Zubrinsky

Born on October 5, 1932, in Los Angeles, CA; married William A Burke; children: Autumn and step-daughter Christine Burke.

Education: Attended University of California at Berkeley, c. 1949-51; member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.  In her junior year she transferred back down to Los Angeles to attend the University of California at Los Angeles, where she earned her bachelor’s degree; she was the first African-American woman to be admitted to the University of Southern California Law School, graduating in 1956, in the top third of her class, and earning her juris doctorate.  While attending USC, she and two Jewish students were refused membership in the women’s law society and so launched their own rival group.

 As a lawyer in private practice, she was active in the civil rights movement and appointed to the McCone Commission to investigate the causes of the 1965 Watts Riots.  A year later, she was elected to the state assembly and joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to speak at gatherings around the country. 

A pioneer in any field is deserving of recognition.  But when the pioneering spirit belongs to an African-American woman forging ahead in the realm of American politics, it is especially deserving of attention.  Yvonne Braithwaite Burke has achieved a number of firsts during her career. 

When she was named Vice-Chair of the 1972 Democratic National Convention, she became the first African-American to hold the post.  That year she was also the first African-American woman elected to the House of Representatives from California, when she won the state’s 37^th Congressional District seat.

She was the first African-American woman appointed to the Appropriations Committee during the 94^th Congress, where she served for the rest of her congressional career.  She was also the first woman elected to chair the Congressional Black Caucus in 1976, and was one of the first members of the Congressional Women’s Caucus when it was founded in 1977.

She was the first African-American elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, 4^th District, 1979-1980, and 2^nd District, 1992-2008.  During this time she served as chair for four non-consecutive terms.

On July 27, 2007, the Los Angeles Times published a front-page story concerning its investigation into Burke, which revealed that she was not living at a listed residence in the mostly low-income district she represents, but at another residence that she owns in wealthy Brentwood, California instead, an apparent violation of state law.  Burke responded that she was only living at her Brentwood mansion while the townhouse she listed in official political filings was being remodeled.  Subsequently, Burke announced that she would not seek reelection, when her term expired in 2008.

On December 1, 2008, Burke retired from the Board of Supervisors and was replaced by Mark Ridley-Thomas.

When Yvonne Braithwaite Burke goes to the Jonathan Club these days, she enters through the front door.  That was not always so. In her early years on the Board of Supervisors, when Burke would visit the prestigious Jonathan Club, she was asked to enter through the back door.  “I thought it was because people were dressing or something,” she recalled.  That does not happen anymore.

In an interview published December 9, 2002 Burke said her dream was to “Be remembered for changes I made in people’s lives.”

References: 

Wikipedia

Burke: Biography from Answers.com

National Association of County News

Los Angeles Times interview 3/01/2006

Los Angeles Times interview 7/27/2007

HATTIE WYATT CARAWAY

Submitted by Keithe Bisnett

In 1932 Hattie Wyatt Caraway became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate. 

Born in Bakersville, Tennessee in 1878 the daughter of William Carroll Wyatt, a farmer and shopkeeper, and Lucy Mildred Burch.  At the age of four she moved with her family to Hustburg, Tennessee.  After briefly attending Ebenezer College in Hustburg, she transferred to Dickson Normal College, where she received her B.A. degree in 1896.  She taught school for a time before marrying in 1902 Thaddeus Horatius Caraway, whom she had met in college; they had three children, Paul, Forrest and Robert.  The couple moved to Jonesboro, Arkansas where she cared for their children and home and her husband practiced law and started a political career.

Thaddeus Caraway was elected to congress in 1912, and he served in that office until 1921 when he was elected to the United States Senate.  Like many in the South at that time, the Caraways were Democrats.

When her husband died unexpectedly in November 1931, she won a special election for his Senate seat on January 12, 1932. This made her the first woman elected to the US Senate, but everyone expected that she would serve as a caretaker until the regularly scheduled elections later that year. Caraway surprised them, though: while setting another precedent by presiding over the Senate on May 9th, 1932, she announced that she would be running for re-election.  She told reporters, “The time has passed when a woman should be placed in a position and kept there only while someone else is being groomed for the job.”

American was in the depths of the Great Depression in 1932, and that year’s election probably was the most important of the century.  Along with other New Deal Democrats, Caraway won; her chief support came from women, labor union members, and veterans.  World War 1 veterans admired Senator Caraway because she stood up for them early that year, when they demonstrated for bonuses and President Herbert Hoover sent the military to force them out of Washington. 

Caraway’s Senate committee assignments included Agriculture and Forestry, Commerce, and Enrolled Bills and Library, which she chaired.  She sustained a special interest in relief for farmers, flood control, and veterans’ benefits, all of direct concern to her constituents, and cast her votes for nearly every New Deal measure.  Her loyalty to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, however, did not extend to racial issues, and in 1938 she joined fellow southerners in a filibuster against the administration’s anti-lynching bill.  Although she carefully prepared herself for Senate work, Caraway spoke infrequently and rarely made speeches on the floor of the Senate but built a reputation as an honest and sincere Senator.  She was sometimes portrayed by patronizing reporters as “Silent Hattie” or “the quiet grandmother who never said anything or did anything.”  She explained her reticence as unwillingness “to take a minute away from the men.  The poor dears love it so.”

In 1938 Caraway entered a tough fight for reelection, challenged by Representative John L. McClellan, who argued that a man could more effectively promote the state’s interests.  With backing from government employees, women’s groups, and unions, Caraway won a narrow victory. 

In 1943 Caraway became the first woman legislator to cosponsor the Equal Rights Amendment.

In her bid for reelection in 1944, Caraway placed a poor fourth in the Democratic primary, losing her Senate seat to freshman congressman J. William Fulbright, the young, dynamic former president of the University of Arkansas who had already gained a national reputation.  Roosevelt then appointed her to the Employees’ Compensation Commission, and in 1946 President Harry Truman gave her a post on the Employees’ Compensation Appeals Board, where she served until suffering a stroke in January 1950.  She died in Falls Church, Virginia, and was buried in West Lawn Cemetery in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

References:  Wikipedia, Women Wielding Power: Pioneer Female State Legislators.   

ANGELA DAVIS

Submitted by Barbara Chandler

Author’s Note: It is a shame that an African American woman, who in later life would make a significant difference in the lives of other women, had to resort to the support of the Black Panthers. In the 1960s, this seemed to be one of the few ways such individuals were able to demand their Civil Rights.

Angela Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944 during the reign of Jim Crow Laws. Both parents were college educated and lived in a mixed neighborhood which contributed to a childhood marked by the effects of racial segregation.

Showing an interest in reading at a very young age, she entered school early. In her junior year, she applied to the American Friends Service Committee program, a program whose aim was to place black southern students into integrated schools in the North. As a result, she entered the Elizabeth Irwin High School in Greenwich Village, a small private school favored by radicals. It was here that she began a life influenced by socialism and communism.

After finishing high school, she was admitted to Brandeis University in Massachusetts where she was one of three black students. Feeling alienated, she eventually befriended the foreign student and worked part-time jobs to earn money for the purpose of spending the summer in Europe. While there, she attended the World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki. After her return, she experienced her first encounter with the FBI. as they interviewed her regarding her attendance at a communist sponsored festival.

In her second year at Brandeis, she elected to major in French which led to her being accepted in her junior year by the Hamilton College Junior Year in France Program. While there, the 1963 KKK Birmingham church bombing occurred which affected her deeply since she personally knew the four young victims. In her senior year back at Brandeis, she developed an interest in Philosophy which led her to planning attendance at the University of Frankfurt.

Upon graduating magna cum laude, she moved to Germany. After a visit to East Berlin, she concluded that the East German government was dealing better with the residual effects of fascism than the West Germans. At the same time, she roomed and participated with several radical students but decided to return to the U. S. given the formation of the Black Panther Party.

Once she returned to the U. S. she earned a master’s degree from UCSD. At the same time she became disappointed in the Black nationalist sentiments because of their rejection of Communism as a “white man’s thing”. Consequently, she returned to Germany where she earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy. In 1969, she became assistant professor at UCLA but because of her activism with the Communist Party and the Black Panther Party and at the urging of Ronald Reagan, she was fired in the same year. After a community uproar, she was rehired.

Her nationwide notoriety was the result of a gun registered in her name being linked to the murder of Judge Harold Haley during an effort to free a black convict who was being tried for the attempted retaliatory murder of a white prison guard who killed three unarmed black inmates. She became the third woman to appear on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List. After being captured, she was tried and acquitted when it was found that her ownership of the gun was not sufficient to establish her responsibility for the plot.

In the 1980s she ran twice for Vice President on the Communist ticket. Currently, she is a graduate studies Professor of History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz. Her current activism is focused on racial and gender equality, and for gay rights and prison abolition. She considers herself an abolitionist, not a “prison reformed and refers to the United States prison system as the “prison-industrial complex”.

Article sourced by Wikipedia.

JOAN BAEZ

Submitted by Rita Salner

Joan Baez is the daughter of Albert Baez and Joan Bridge Baez. Her father, who died in 2007, was a physicist who co-invented the x-ray microscope and is the author of one of the most widely used physics textbooks in the U.S. His refusal to work on the “Manhattan Project”, as well as to work on defense industry jobs had a profound effect on Joan.

Albert Baez’s work took him and his family to many parts of the world, including Baghdad, Iraq. The poverty and the abuse of humans and animals moved ten year old Joan, and the memories stayed with her. Later, the family lived in Palo Alto, Ca. where her father was a professor at Stanford, University. With her Mexican last name, and her dark coloring, Joan was subjected to racial slurs and discrimination. One of her teachers, pacifist Ira Sandperl, became a friend and long-time mentor.

In 1956 Joan heard young Martin Luther King, Jr. speak about non-violence, civil right and social change. She later linked arms with him to protect African American schoolchildren in Grenada, Mississippi, joined him on his march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama and at his March on Washington, where she sang, “We Shall Overcome”. She was also active in the Free Speech Movement, and in California’s migrant farm workers fight for fair wages and safe working conditions.

Joan Baez became highly vocal about her disagreement with the Vietnam War. She and Ira Sandperl founded the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence in 1965 and she encouraged draft resistance at her concerts. In Dec. of 1972, she joined a peace delegation in a trip to North Vietnam to address human rights and to deliver mail
to American POW’s. While she was there she experienced the ‘Christmas bombing’ of Hanoi, which lasted for eleven days. Her album, “Where Are You Now, My Son” included recordings she made from an underground bomb shelter. She was extremely disturbed by the human rights violations that she observed and later paid for a full page advertisement, published in four major U.S. newspapers, criticizing the communist regime.

Baez has also been prominent in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. She has performed in benefit concerts since 1978 to help defeat discriminatory laws and to support gay, lesbian and transgender causes.

A strong supporter of President Obama, Baez continues to oppose the war in Iraq, the death penalty, and to support community farms and other methods of overcoming poverty.