28 Facts About Marge Frantz

Marge Frantz was an American activist and among the first generation of academics who taught women's study courses in United States.

Marge Frantz worked as a labor organizer, agitated for civil rights, and participated in the women's poll tax repeal movement.

Marge Frantz completed a bachelor's degree in political theory in 1972 and the following year, moved to the University of California, Santa Cruz to work on her PhD.

Marge Frantz taught there from 1973 to 1999 and received two teaching awards.

Marge Frantz's father taught physics at the University of Alabama and became involved in the Communist Party, labor organizing and the struggle for racial justice in the South.

Marge Frantz took part in protests by organizations including the American Peace Mobilization, the American Youth Congress, the League of Young Southerners, the Southern Negro Youth Congress, as well as the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a federation of labor unions, and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, an organization committed to social and political reform of the South.

Marge Frantz left Radcliffe that year when she lost her scholarship, which she believed was because of her radical activities.

In 1941, Gelders married Laurent Brown Marge Frantz, a native of Knoxville, Tennessee, who was a member of the Communist Party and an activist in the League of Young Southerners and anti-poll tax efforts.

Marge Frantz's husband joined the United States Navy and in May 1942, Frantz took a post at the Soviet Purchasing Commission, an organization designed to deliver American equipment to the USSR for the war effort.

From 1944 to 1946, Marge Frantz served as secretary to James Dombrowski, the executive secretary of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, and as editor of the Southern Patriot, the official journal of the organization.

Marge Frantz was a supporter of the Highlander Training and Education Center and became a member of the Northern California Committee against Nuclear Testing.

Marge Frantz supported clemency for convicted spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and was in favor of repealing the Smith Act, which allowed for registration and deportation of any member of an organization deemed a threat to the United States, and stopping the prosecutions of those who opposed the Act.

In 1955, Marge Frantz met her life partner Eleanor Engstrand and the two women connected based on common interest in politics, social issues, backpacking, and bird watching.

In 1956, Marge Frantz quit the Communist Party, because of Stalin's repression of dissidents.

Engstrand's husband died in 1967 and Marge Frantz quit her job in 1969 after university police used violence against student protesters in People's Park.

Marge Frantz completed her bachelor's degree with distinction in 1972 and began working on her PhD.

Marge Frantz's husband began a relationship in Palo Alto with Miriam Patchen, widow of poet Kenneth Patchen, who had died in 1972.

Marge Frantz decided to follow them there to complete her graduate studies in the History of Consciousness Department.

Marge Frantz began working as teaching assistant at UC Santa Cruz in 1973 and became an ardent feminist.

Marge Frantz was one of the founders of the Women's Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz and was promoted to a lecturer in American and Women's Studies in 1976.

For many years, Marge Frantz served on the UC Santa Cruz's Women's Studies Executive Committee and was a member of the board of directors for the Women's Center.

Marge Frantz served as a mentor to LGBT students and her relationship with Engstrand made the couple role models for the community.

In 1984, Marge Frantz completed her PhD under Schaar with the dissertation Radical Visions: Alexander Meiklejohn on Education, Culture, Democracy and the First Amendment.

Marge Frantz officially retired in 1989, and that year won the Teacher of the Year Award.

Discontented to not teach, Marge Frantz continued lecturing for another decade.

Marge Frantz was honored in 1997 with a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Alumni Association.

Marge Frantz's story was among those presented in the Oscar-nominated documentary Seeing Red in 1983.

An oral history interview with Marge Frantz taken by Kelly Anderson in 2005, forms part of the Voices of Feminism Oral History Project in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.