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!
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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