1. Florynce Rae Kennedy was an American lawyer, radical feminist, civil rights advocate, lecturer, and activist.
36 Facts About Florynce Kennedy
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Florynce Kennedy's father Wiley Kennedy was a Pullman porter, and later had a taxi business.
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Florynce Kennedy remembered a time when her father had to be armed with a shotgun in order to ward off the strong neighborhood Ku Klux Klan presence that was trying to drive her family out.
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Florynce Kennedy graduated at the top of her class at Lincoln High School, after which she worked many jobs including owning a hat shop and operating elevators.
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Florynce Kennedy met with the dean and threatened to sue the school.
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Florynce Kennedy was the only black person among eight women in her class.
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Florynce Kennedy aimed to make white people nervous by wearing her typical cowboy hat and pink sunglasses.
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Florynce Kennedy then came to represent Holiday's estate, and that of Charlie Parker.
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Florynce Kennedy acted in the films The Landlord, adapted from Kristin Hunter's 1966 novel, in which she played "Enid", and the independent political drama Born In Flames, directed by Lizzie Borden, in which she played "Zella".
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Florynce Kennedy was one of many narrators in the second volume of a film entitled Come Back, Africa: The Films of Lionel Rogosin, which discussed African-American history as well as apartheid in South Africa.
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In 1997, Florynce Kennedy received a Lifetime Courageous Activist Award, and the following year was honored by Columbia University with their Owl Award for outstanding graduates.
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Florynce Kennedy spoke of day to day acts of resistance that we can all take and hold her own arrests and political actions.
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Florynce Kennedy often dressed in a cowboy hat and pink sunglasses.
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Florynce Kennedy had a summer home on Fire Island, and was a popular fixture on the social scene there, entertaining many activists whom she invited to visit her.
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Florynce Kennedy held regular salons in her apartment on East 48th Street, off Fifth Avenue, in New York City.
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Florynce Kennedy would preside over networking and facilitate people meeting each other, sharing ideas, and was always coming up with projects.
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Florynce Kennedy would give tours of her apartment, directing guests to the "filthy room" and the "dirty room".
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Florynce Kennedy worked as an activist for feminism and civil rights, and the cases she took on increasingly tended to be related to these causes.
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Florynce Kennedy was close friends with fellow Columbia law graduate Morton Birnbaum MD, whose concept of sanism she influenced during the 1960s.
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Florynce Kennedy stated that she would lead boycotts of major advertisers if they did not feature black people in their ads.
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Florynce Kennedy attended all three Black Power conferences and represented H Rap Brown, Assata Shakur and the Black Panthers.
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Florynce Kennedy represented prominent radical feminist Valerie Solanas, who was on trial for the 1968 attempted murder of Andy Warhol.
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Florynce Kennedy played a significant role in formulating the Miss America protest of 1968.
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Florynce Kennedy supported abortion rights and co-authored the book Abortion Rap with Diane Schulder.
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In 1972, Florynce Kennedy filed tax evasion charges with the Internal Revenue Service against the Catholic Church, saying that their campaign against abortion rights violated the separation of church and state.
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Sherie Randolph outlines in her article "Not to Rely Completely on the Courts" that Kennedy was one of the lawyers in the Abramowicz v Lefkowitz case, the class action suit that wanted to repeal New York's strict abortion laws.
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In 1973, to protest the lack of female bathrooms at Harvard University, women poured jars of fake urine on the steps of the university's Lowell Hall, a protest Florynce Kennedy thought of and participated in.
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In 1977, Florynce Kennedy became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press.
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In 1946, Florynce Kennedy wrote a monograph called "The Case Against Marriage", which she later summarized in her autobiography:.
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In 1957 Florynce Kennedy married science fiction author Charles Dye, who was previously married to fellow science fiction author Katherine MacLean.
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Florynce Kennedy contributed the piece "Institutionalized oppression vs the female" to the 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From The Women's Liberation Movement, edited by Robin Morgan.
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In 1976, Florynce Kennedy wrote an autobiography, Color Me Flo: My Hard Life and Good Times, in which she wrote about her life and career.
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Florynce Kennedy died on December 21,2000, at her home in New York, aged 84.
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Florynce Kennedy was an atheist who was once noted as saying: "It's interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses".
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Florynce Kennedy was featured twice in 2020 biopics of other women.
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In Mel Brooks' 2023 sketch comedy limited series History of the World, Part II, Florynce Kennedy is portrayed by Kym Whitley.