EP 9 Florynce "Flo" Kennedy - Lawyer and Liberator | Women And Resistance

She sued her way into law school; let’s start there. Who, why, and where are the questions this week on Women and Resistance.

This week, Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq., embodies Florynce "Flo" Kennedy while Adesoji Iginla interviews her across a life built on one refusal. We trace her Kansas City girlhood to Womanhood.

In this captivating episode, we discover the fearless activism and powerful stories of Florence Kennedy, a trailblazing lawyer, feminist, and societal reformer. Kennedy’s unapologetic approach challenged norms and inspired generations to fight for justice.

Main Topics:
Kennedy’s early life and family influence, including her upbringing during the Great Depression
Her activism against racial and gender injustice, including key protests and legal battles
Fighting systemic oppression: from property law to the civil rights movement
Her views on reproductive rights, body autonomy, and societal control
The importance of fearless activism and media strategies to effect change
Kennedy’s personal life, marriage, and her legacy in black feminism and civil rights

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction to Florence Kennedy's life and activism highlights
00:15 - Kennedy’s childhood, family values, and early acts of defiance
00:45 - Overcoming racial prejudices and joining the legal profession
01:20 - Challenging institutional religion and political systems
02:00 - Bold statements on sexuality, gender, and societal control
03:10 - Kennedy’s activism against racial inequality, including boycotts and protests
04:05 - Defending iconic figures like Billie Holiday and embodying resistance
05:00 - Her pioneering legal career as a black woman in law
06:15 - Her fight for reproductive rights and critique of societal expectations
07:00 - The role of media activism and “media terrorism”
08:00 - Formation of feminist and black organisations, like the Feminist Party
09:30 - Personal anecdotes on marriage, health, and independence
10:45 - Critical views on the legal and social systems controlling women’s bodies
12:00 - Reflections on systemic oppression, community, and activism strategies
13:30 - Kennedy’s call for higher aspirations and collective action
14:50 - Closing remarks on legacy, influence, and what it takes to continue fighting

Welcome  to Women and Resistance, a powerful podcast where we honour the courage, resilience, and revolutionary spirit of women across the globe. Hosted by Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla...

You're listening to Women and Resistance with Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla—where we honour the voices of women who have shaped history through courage and defiance...Now, back to the conversation.

That’s it for this episode of Women and Resistance. Thank you for joining us in amplifying the voices of women who challenge injustice and change the course of history. Be sure to subscribe, share, and continue the conversation. Together We Honour the past, act in the present, and shape the future. Until next time, stay inspired and stay in resistance!

Transcript

Adesoji Iginla (00:05.469)
Yes, greetings, greetings, greetings, and welcome to another episode of Women and Resistance. I am your host, Addis Oji Ginla. With me as usual is my co-host, Aya Fobera and Ellie Esquire. Before she goes into character. Today, on Women and Resistance, as we've done before, we're showcasing the life and times of a freedom fighter, a legal mind.

But in this case, I mean, we've spoken about lots of women on here, but again, this woman brings her own special knack to what makes her unique.

We'll start this way. The establishment tried very hard to make this woman disappear, even from the point of starting what would eventually become her career. How that happened, what transpired thereafter, we're going to find out. Today, we are sitting with Florence Kennedy. Welcome.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:20.386)
Good evening. Thank you for having me this evening. I hope your audience is ready because you know

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:29.486)
I already worked really hard when I was living here on earth and for you all to disturb my time and ask me to come and speak with you today, I guess you must be ready for whatever it is I have to say.

Adesoji Iginla (01:42.237)
Yes, we certainly are. And no doubt you're going to give us a window into your life, your experiences, and what sort of lessons we should take from your life work. So to begin, I mean, for those who've never heard of you before, and I think maybe a lot of our audience might not have, who is Florence Kennedy?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (02:12.875)
Well, sweetie, I'll start off by saying this. If you are not living on the edge, then you are taking up space. That's me. That's how I lived. I once stood on the steps of a Catholic arch diocese building and announced I was filing a legal complaint to strip the Catholic Church.

Of its tax exempt status. Because, and I said this to the reporters with a straight face, a church that spends its money lobbying against abortion is running a political operation, not a house of God. Now, how many of your churches today are political operations?

So I don't know what god they claim to be worshipping there.

called the legal profession a nice high class way of getting people to leave you alone when you while while they rob you blind.

Told men who asked if I was a lesbian. You want to know? You you wanna listen. I was talking to an audience, and this man jumped up, white man, of course, but it could have been any man, any any color, any race, and he said, Are you a lesbian? You know, like that was some kind of got me moment. You know what my response was?

Adesoji Iginla (03:49.502)
Yeah.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (03:55.722)
I calmly looked at him, looked him up and down. I said, Are you my alternative?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (04:09.229)
Enough said, because if you're the alternative, then maybe I should be a lesbian. Ever thought about that? You know he sat down really quickly. His face turned all different shades of red and pink and everything in between. And once, which happened so many times in my life, when someone asked me, why don't you just calm down and walk and work within the system? How many of you have heard that?

Just play nice. I told them the truth. I am too erratic.

Too much of a leader and too undisciplined to follow. That's not a flaw. That's a strategy. They called me the biggest, loudest, and indisputably the rudest mouth on the battleground where feminist activists and radical politics meet. So today I don't know what the rules are of this contraption you have set up. Hope I don't get you kicked off the air.

Now that was something that People magazine had written about me in 1974. I suppose they thought that was an insult.

I framed it. Yeah, that's just a little bit about who I am. But let me start at the beginning because you know we all have beginnings, and while I could go back further, let me start with my family. One of the most precious gifts my mother Zella gave me and all my siblings, I was one of five daughters, is she made us feel precious.

Adesoji Iginla (05:59.495)
Mm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (06:00.169)
She made us, and my father did too. One time I got into trouble at school. At least they said I did. And the principal

Adesoji Iginla (06:29.906)
A second.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (06:34.679)
Tell you what, that principal and those teachers, nobody ever messed with me after that. My mother, especially after the depression when things got so hard for us.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (06:49.223)
She would around Christmas time get on the telephone and she would call up her creditors and she would tell them directly, I'm not going to be able to pay you at this time because whatever money I have, I'm going to use it for Christmas, Christmas for my girls. They made us feel just that special.

Now I was born February 11th, 1916 in Kansas City, Missouri. And I was the second of five daughters. And my father, Wiley, well, initially he owned a taxi. He drove a cab. At one point, he actually had two cabs. But he also had a period where he worked the railroads as a pullman porter.

Adesoji Iginla (07:38.653)
Okay.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (07:46.741)
And you know at that point the Pullman porters, I mean they were

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (07:54.719)
Like the elites in the black community.

Adesoji Iginla (07:56.904)
Yep.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (07:59.884)
It was one of a few respectable jobs that a black man could hold in that era. And boy my father wore it like an armor. Now my father was dark skinned. My mother Zella, she was sharp, smart as a tack, light skinned, well schooled, and she never once let poverty make her bitter.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (08:30.048)
In fact, we didn't know we were poor growing up. Today I will call us the poristocrats. But we didn't know, but we were desperately poor some years, especially in the middle of the depression. But we laughed and had a good time anyway. Now I recall when I was younger, still a child, really, the Ku Klux Klan came to our house.

Well, when I say our house, the yard, because they didn't dare step foot on the stairs leading up to our front door. Now, ours was a neighborhood that was mostly white. For about two blocks, there were just a handful of black families. And the Ku Klux Klan came assembled, and my father came out with his shotgun. And he said,

Whoever steps foot on that first seat, on that first stair, will be separated from their foot. That the bullet in his gun, that first bullet in his gun was for that person. He said, now after that, y'all can talk amongst yourselves and figure out who's gonna kill me. But he was definitely going to take one of them out. Well, the Ku Klux Klan went away and they never returned. This is the kind of stock that I came from.

My parents refuse to allow anyone to make us feel small.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (10:09.9)
And you do you understand what that teaches a little girl?

It teaches her that authority is not always sacred.

That respect has to be earned, not assumed. And just because you happen to have a title or position or wear something that I can't afford or whatever, doesn't mean I have to kow tow to you. So haha. Anyone who has any issues with who I am today, you gotta take that off with Zella and Wiley.

My mother used to say we never had to respect a teacher who threatened to hit us.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (10:54.018)
She said, you could act just like there weren't anybody worth listening to. One time my sister, she was so timid. And there was this kid who hit her. And she came home. My mother sent her back out and said, you find her and hit her back.

There were some kids who would follow us from school and taunt us and chase us, and initially we would run. But one day, so we're done running. We turned around, glared at them, and started chasing them. And boy, don't you know they took off. It never bothered us again.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (11:39.307)
Now, Jesse Jackson, who just joined us over here, we're having a good time over here, by the way. He would always say, I am somebody. Well, long before Jesse made that a slogan, in my family, we already knew we were somebody. That's the whole architecture, the whole foundation of my childhood. I was a smart kid now.

And I graduated top of my class from Lincoln High School in nineteen thirty-four. But back then you didn't often think about, my next step is college, because you know so many doors were shut to us.

So I didn't rush off to college. I went into business with my sisters. Yep. We opened a hat shop.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (12:39.266)
Are you still there?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (12:44.118)
I can't hear you anymore.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (12:51.382)
Well, you know, I've often said I can talk to an empty room if I need to. But I wonder where you are because you invited me here.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (13:04.664)
Well let me pause and see if you return.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (14:35.992)
Well I'm not sure where our host went but

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (14:56.018)
And it looks like we should give him a few minutes. So tell you what, because you know I'm always ready to tell my story. We're gonna give him about two minutes. And if he doesn't come back on, then I will just continue with the story. If you can hear me, can you let me know? Now that's important to make sure that you can hear me.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (15:26.082)
Let me tell you, I've been arrested so many times and dealt with so many situations. I have so many stories to tell you. But like I said, we'll give that young man ninety more seconds, and then we will continue, with or without him.

Alright, so you can still hear me. Alright, so we're gonna just do the countdown. But I'll tell you what, while we're waiting for him to come back, because we don't know, with all these wars all over the place, hopefully they didn't catch a stray bullet wherever he is or a bomb, and I'm not speaking lightly of that. But I want to read to you something that I wrote that I stated a long time ago. And

I want to hear back from you what you think about it. All right, y'all ready? All right.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (16:27.136)
Now, you know, we're always talking about in this country how to police women's bodies. And then this issue with what's a polite way to say it? I won't say whoring. I guess I did say it, prostitution. But let me put it this way, and I'm gonna read exactly what I wrote. Talking about sexual recreation reminds me that a very average prostitute.

In almost any part of this country. Now remember, I was writing this. I died 26 years ago in 2000. And I was writing this over 50 years ago. So you got to put it in that context. And then I want you in your comments to tell me how relevant and true it is still today, right? So an average prostitute in just about any part of this country.

can earn about a hundred dollars a night, minimum, right?

If she's fairly well known and is good at her craft, she might even be at about five hundred dollars a night. Now, on the other hand, a run-of-the-meal file clerk.

Net's about a hundred dollars a week working five days a week.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (17:59.255)
And the run-of-the-mill housewife. Well, how much do you think she makes? She will get zero dollars a week. And what does she do for this wonderful amount of money that she earns? Well, she's gonna file. She's gonna F. You know what that means. Y'all need me to spell it out. Rhymes with fork. Ha.

She's gonna iron, she's gonna wash clothes, she's gonna clean, she's gonna cook, she's gonna have a baby and her body will never be the same. Then she's gonna take care of that baby, and the whole time she's getting paid zero.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (18:51.734)
In my opinion, a government that cannot guarantee a woman who even has a degree, a livable wage, has no business telling us what we can't do with our bodies to make money.

Now, I know some of you went to church, grew up in the church, maybe you're Muslim, who knows what your religion is. But you've bought into all this piety. See, the young man is back. We are we are back in we we are we we continued, sir.

Now, but you're gonna like this part that I have to say. We wanna talk about prostitutes, right? We accuse them.

Feminists in particular, of selling their bodies. But I want to correct the record. Prostitutes don't sell their bodies.

They rent their bodies. Housewives sell their bodies when they get married. They cannot take their bodies back. What do y'all call it? Wifely duties. And most courts, up until recently, did not even acknowledge that a husband could ever rape his wife. She had to give it up on demand. Now, really, who's in charge of their body?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (20:25.902)
I'm just saying. Let's think through this together. So I wanna see what y'all have to say. Does this resonate with you?

Because my talking is not just to entertain you, it's to get you to think. And a lot of what I did was I would use words and mannerisms and actions to shock people so that you could think and examine those things that you always thought were just right, because that's what you had been taught.

Who really has autonomy over her body with your piety? All right, young man, you feeling good? You okay? All right, good to see you. You know, but I as I told you.

Adesoji Iginla (21:14.939)
Yes,

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (21:22.07)
Listen, the people who say I I I used to say this to audiences.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (21:30.669)
Here for your respect. I don't care if you walk out on me. As a matter of fact, if I'm doing my job, some of you should get offended enough to walk out. Now, whether you have a legitimate or illegitimate reason for walking out, don't feel bad about it. But I'm going to speak my truth. Because, see, when you're silent, you are a collaborator.

Adesoji Iginla (22:01.895)
Mm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (22:02.38)
Yeah. So many of the people who want to argue about apathy, I'm like, well what what are you doing?

You're sitting around making justifications for your own apathy because too few of us want to take risks. But let me tell you, this society that we live in will never change if we are too timid and cowardly to take the risks to change the system. So you complain about other people's apathy. Forget what they're doing. Have you done what you can do?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (22:45.623)
Yeah.

I wanna hear from you. I need you to talk back to me. Tell me what you're thinking and you know you can use some choice words if you want to. I don't really care.

Adesoji Iginla (22:52.124)
Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (23:00.965)
We try, we try to do what we need to do. Effort, yeah, effort counts.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (23:04.3)
You do. We're not trying hard enough. Cause the same issues that existed back in the 60s and 70s.

The same issues you're dealing with today. You know, one time I was on a stage and asked some people to come and join me on stage to sing a song, and very few of them came up. Why? Because they're scared. This is on a college campus. They don't want to be failed, kicked out of school. The professors, faculty members don't want to get fired.

Now, if you don't want to risk your little amount of security, who do you think wants to risk theirs? Sometimes we look at the people who have money and we say, well, they have money, they can take a risk, they can get an attorney. No. They want a quiet life like you do too. They want to just buy their fancy things and send their children to school. They don't want to fight in jail, either fight, go to jail or fight. So don't ask of other people.

Adesoji Iginla (23:56.455)
Hmm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (24:08.876)
What you're not willing to do. But let me go back to the story here. Hope y'all are following me and I'm gonna check to see what y'all are thinking. Hmm. Alright. For those of you who thought you were so much better because you're married. Mm-mm-mm. Well, like I was saying.

I graduated top of my class. We opened a hat store, me and my sisters. Imagine that. Straight out of high school.

And then we ran elevators, we sang on the radio for a while even. But when a Coca-Cola bottling plant in town refused to hire black truck drivers, well, they res they went ahead and stirred up something in me, and I organized my first boycott. Nobody ever handed me an activist manual.

I just noticed unfairness, I noticed injustice, and I made up in my mind to do what I could do about it. And that became the pattern of my whole life.

Now in nineteen forty two, my mother died of cancer.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (25:38.275)
But before I go into my mother's passing, and I loved, we all loved our mother dearly. My mother wasn't too much into housekeeping and things of that nature, and she was a horrible cook. But she was determined that her daughters would grow up with a sense of knowing who they were. Now I want to tell you something that, again, some of you should be able to relate to. If you have siblings, you gotta get some oomph about yourself.

Adesoji Iginla (25:56.071)
you

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (26:08.066)
You need to be able to stand up and speak for yourself. If you are in a family and you are the child who always goes along to get along, it might be unfair, but you're going to have more of the family responsibilities hoisted on your shoulders. And that was the case for one of my sisters, Lynn. As a matter of fact, she was the quietest of all of us. And she was the one.

Who primarily took care of our mother when she got sick, while the rest of us went away and chased after our dreams.

And she was the one who also took care of my father.

Adesoji Iginla (26:53.712)
I shouldn't speak up.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (26:54.732)
Very appreciative of her sacrifice. But how that responsibility fell on her was because she had in a sense hoisted it on herself. So if you're one feeling bad about my siblings don't do as much as I do, might want to look in the mirror and see what role you had played. Now I'm not saying anybody abandoned their parents because if my sister didn't do it, the rest of us would have stepped up.

But we didn't have to because my sister did it, you see.

Well, nineteen forty two when my mother passed away, that was the hinge point for us. My sister Gracie and I, we packed up and we moved to New York City.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (27:41.4)
People ask, well, why did you go to New York?

Adesoji Iginla (27:46.724)
places.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (27:49.099)
necessarily go to New York City to go to school. But once I got to New York City, I saw the schools and I said, well, I'm going. Now what I'm about to say might piss some of you off. And what's new?

There was City College, part of what they call the CUNY system for those of you who know, and if you don't know, then you go figure it out. And there was Columbia University. And I decided I'm going to Columbia. I don't have to go to City College where all the niggers go.

Didn't feel like I was less than or better than, but I just knew I was somebody and I was gonna go to Columbia. I started at Columbia University in 1944. Pre-law.

And I graduated with honors in nineteen forty eight. I was over thirty years old.

And you know what? I wasn't a little bit sorry for it. Didn't feel no kind of way I went to college when I had the opportunity to go to college.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (29:10.518)
Then people said, You should just go into nursing. You should go into teaching. Why? Why why are the why are those the only only careers open to us? And I said, No. I'm going to Columbia Law School. I'm gonna become a lawyer.

Adesoji Iginla (29:28.593)
Hmm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (29:29.804)
So I applied to Columbia Law School and I got rejected.

I think you talked to Paulie Murray and she talked to you about her fight as well? Well, the associate dean had the nerve to tell me to my face that I hadn't been turned down for being black.

Adesoji Iginla (29:44.123)
Yeah.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (29:58.879)
Only for being a woman.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (30:04.62)
I guess that was supposed to comfort me.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (30:09.966)
I told him whatever the reason it feels the same to me.

And then I looked him in the eye and I said this.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (30:27.03)
I'll sue this university for discrimination.

Remember I told you I graduated with honors from their university.

Adesoji Iginla (30:36.856)
Yeah.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (30:41.068)
Well, Columbia found a seat for me rather quickly after that, and I was one of eight women in my class and the only black one. The only black woman.

Adesoji Iginla (30:52.871)
Mmm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (30:54.496)
I was thinking about what parts of my story I wanted to share with you today, because you couldn't possibly cover 84 years of my life in a paltry one hour.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (31:08.76)
Thought about what's going on in this United States of America today. I understand that they are attacking one of the ways that many middle class and poor students are able to pay for college.

Adesoji Iginla (31:28.986)
system.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (31:30.7)
Yes, the student loan system. And then I looked around and I said, Well damn, where are the protests?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (31:48.546)
The students haven't said anything, the parents haven't said anything.

Adesoji Iginla (31:54.023)
Community hasn't said anything.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (32:02.336)
Listen, this was part of my philosophy. I find that the higher you aim, the better you shoot.

What are you aiming for? And then who are you waiting? Waiting on.

So start fighting back with your apathetic selves.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (32:36.394)
In nineteen fifty one, I became only the second, as we call ourselves now, African American woman ever to graduate from Columbia Law School.

And in nineteen fifty two, I took and I passed the bar.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (32:58.89)
And in nineteen fifty four, after I had had so many doors shut in my face from these law firms, because I was neither the right color nor the right gender.

I opened my own private law practice in Midtown Manhattan.

One of the first owned by a black woman in that city.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (33:25.832)
Now, I've seen enough from you all to know you are nosy and you always want to know about a person's personal life. So I'll throw you a bone.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (33:42.156)
You know that concept that s was drilled into so many of our heads? Like a woman isn't whole unless there's a husband in the story.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (34:00.367)
Truth be told, my sisters and I, I suppose could have been considered somewhat fast.

Told you my father had a cab. And by the time we were teenagers, we would get into that cab, drive off in that cab, and we would pick up boys. Now I didn't say we did anything with them. I'm just saying, but in that time, for girls to have access to a car, Negro girls at that, and then just bold faced picking up men.

I remember I went to this party. There was so much alcohol.

And I just drank. I drank until I passed out. Now, fortunately for me, the neighbor had a son. Our neighbor had a son. I think he went on to play college, football in college or something like that. He happened to be at the same event. And when he saw me passed out.

He picked me up and he carried me home. My mother said he walked in looking like he was carrying a rag doll.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (35:24.642)
My mother didn't yell at me.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (35:29.996)
We had a conversation about it, and I tell you what I don't drink and I don't smoke.

But it wasn't all this yelling and carrying on.

Anyway, back to this personal thing y'all want to know about. I did get married. I was a full-fledged lawyer and all, at 42 years old.

nineteen fifty seven I married a man named Charles Dudley Dye.

And no, he wasn't black. He wasn't African American, he wasn't Negro, it wasn't colored, none of those terms. This was a Welsh science fiction writer. Picked up odd jobs here and there. He was nine years younger than me.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (36:33.43)
Rumour has it.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (36:37.868)
That he got around. He felt very insecure about who he was and so he would see these women who were really out of his league and he would make a pass of them and when they turned him down he would get just very belligerent about the whole deal.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (36:54.84)
Can't really say why I married that man. My sister said

She thinks I'd have married whoever asked me first. I guess just to see, because I really don't believe in the institution of marriage. Listen, marriage is a contract, you know.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (37:16.386)
But how often do we sit a woman in particular down to read the terms of the contract to make sure that this is really what she wants to sign up for the rest of her life?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (37:35.68)
I married Charles. He was alcoholic.

In hindsight, there was it wasn't love, but I was fond of him, especially when he was sober, which wasn't often, by the way. He handled the house. I brought in the income, which tells you about how conventional our marriage was, I suppose.

But his drinking got it. It's a little just more than I could bear. And we separated by nineteen fifty nine. And I was actually preparing divorce papers when he up and died of cirrhosis of the liver before I even filed them.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (38:27.168)
Now his mother started to reach out asking for his social security benefits and all of that. I was still lawfully his wife, and I could have kept every dime. But I didn't. I turned over the money, turned over whatever royalties were his, and I kept working. I was responsible for me.

And I never remarried.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (38:59.116)
So marriage for me turned out to just be a chapter. Not my whole book. I don't have any children either. But this book that I was writing, I had a lot more to say.

Now I understand that you had the opportunity to hear from one of my clients.

Billy Holiday

Adesoji Iginla (39:27.459)
yes, yes, yes, early in the series, yes, yes.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (39:31.202)
That time.

She was listed as in my books and my ledgers as Eleanor McKay because she was married to mister McKay. And as you know, her real first name is Eleanor.

Adesoji Iginla (39:44.689)
Yeah.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (39:48.792)
Well

With my partner in the law firm.

We

Defended Miss Holliday after she went on a tour to Europe, and her handlers and the record companies and all of them did not tell her that because she was a felon, she had a register with the government before she left the country. So when she came back, they wanted to throw the book at her. And we successfully defended her through that. But I tell you what I saw.

Adesoji Iginla (40:16.113)
before she left.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (40:30.304)
I saw a woman who was failed by everybody around her. And her agents and record companies and all of them, all they wanted to do was just suck her dry. And the fact that she was an addict and was also dependent on these same people to find opportunities to make a living made it so much easier to manipulate her.

And so you know how the story went.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (41:04.979)
Shackle to a bed and they plant drugs on her.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (41:16.002)
But I continued to defend her estate after she died. And I fought those record companies and I fought to get some of the money that they owed her. And that really showed me the underbelly of so many of the institutions in this country.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (41:43.705)
Could sum it up with this. Maybe not completely sum it up, but I was on a stage one time. I love to make impudent songs about this United States of America. And I took off singing. My country is of the sweet land of big a tree.

They hated it, but they covered it as well. And the goal was to shock people into doing what's right.

Liberty? This is not the sweet land of liberty. Liberty for who?

I also represented the estate of Charlie Parker. Another one huge talent.

Battling addiction and all the ways that these people would just hide your money and not pay you. So I represented his estate to make sure that his wife, his family, got something from the work he had put in.

Adesoji Iginla (42:57.115)
Money.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (43:13.11)
I represented the Black Panther Party members in 1969. At one point, I said, Come on, y'all, all 21 of you, we're taking I'm taking you out to lunch. And we went to a particular establishment that did not allow blacks or Jews. And I said, Come on, we're gonna go in here and sit down. Yep, let the media report this. This is what this country is.

Adesoji Iginla (43:38.503)
Mm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (43:44.48)
Now we're not gonna go into great detail on this, but my partner in my law firm absconded with so much of the firm's money.

I didn't let that break me either. But I will tell you, all of these fights were

You guys have heard of Andy Warhol, right? I represented the woman who shot him.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (44:13.186)
But I got disgusted with the courts.

Because I watched how compromised, how utterly unwilling the legal system was to deliver real justice. I mean, we come up with all these rules and procedures and all of that, and it's all to obfuscate and to frustrate. And if you have money and staying power, maybe you fight and win. But it usually just wears down.

Adesoji Iginla (44:44.487)
Mm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (44:47.596)
quote unquote the little people.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (44:53.25)
So I turned to something a little bit more my speed. Publicity, protest, and a mouth nobody could shut up. And I coined the term media terrorism for what I did using cameras and headlines the way other people used lawsuits. By the way, the current president that you have now.

Adesoji Iginla (44:59.335)
choice.

Adesoji Iginla (45:24.312)
excellence.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (45:24.578)
Despicable human being, but he is a master at manipulating the media and terrorizing people into fetal positions.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (45:42.541)
You don't know how to respond. Cause you're not paying attention and you are playing it safe and you won't take risks. You want change, but you don't want to take the risk. I helped organize the 1968 Miss America protest in Atlantic City. And at our protest, we crowned a sheep.

We threw girdles and false eyelashes and copies of Cosmopolitan into a freedom trash can. All the ways that they restrict women. And when some women were arrested there, I represented them as well. I was an early, one of the earliest members of the National Organization for Women now. But I left it in 1970.

Those women were

Hm too polite and certainly too slow for my taste and quite frankly, most of them had no problems quote unquote fighting for women's rights but keeping anyone who didn't look like them out of the room.

Adesoji Iginla (46:58.151)
Mm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (46:59.766)
And in 1971, I founded the Feminist Party. And one of our very first in fact, it's our very first act was nominating Shirley Chisholm for President of the United States. I understand you spoke with her too.

Adesoji Iginla (47:17.264)
as well. Yes, we did.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (47:20.194)
And then I founded the National Black Feminist Organization because white feminists kept forgetting that racism and sexism were never two separate fights. They were the same fight.

Wearing different hats. And what am I supposed to do?

Like I could walk into a room and leave my blackness and just walk in with my gender, or I could walk into a black room and leave my gender at the door. What are you talking about?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (48:01.132)
So I use this other term that again might offend you, but by now you should realize that's the least of my concerns. I called it niggerizing.

Negarizing is the technique used to keep black people, women, gay people prisoners, the elderly, the disabled, the poor, and Native Americans all boxed in the same basement of American power. If you learn to see the patterns, then you understand how oppression really works.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (48:42.83)
I toured college campuses for years with Gloria Stinum. She called it Topsy and Little Eva. Stinum would always speak before me 'cause she said if I went before her she couldn't follow.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (49:01.762)
But she also always said, come to one of our speeches and five minutes with me could change your life.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (49:14.518)
Now you tell me if she was right, 'cause you've now spent more than five minutes with me. Have I made you think a little?

Adesoji Iginla (49:19.143)
Yes,

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (49:23.926)
This is my motto. Don't agonize. Organize.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (49:34.275)
There's so much that I want to say to you. I do highly recommend that you get a copy of my book, Color Me Flow: My Hard Life and Good Times. And of course, I gotta give you the finger because that's what I do on the book cover. And there is a picture of me in a wheelchair. And I was giving the finger. Because you see, health caught up with me, the way it catches up with everybody who works too hard and doesn't sleep enough.

Adesoji Iginla (49:41.959)
Follow me flow.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (50:07.2)
I had a fuse spine talking about the way racism works and all the ways that it impacts different aspects of your life. That fuse spine now I did fall from a swing on our porch as a kid. And on the account that we didn't really have money for doctors and things of that nature, we just did the best that we could.

Adesoji Iginla (50:29.573)
as a mid-tailed.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (50:34.166)
Eventually got so bad where I couldn't really walk, and we got to the hospital, and they wanted to admit me and do all of these things, and we couldn't afford it. So they put me in a cast from under my chin all the way down to my tailbone. That was a miserable time, but I stayed at home with that cast, not under the supervision of the medical personnel.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (51:03.414)
I recovered and I continued with my life. But in nineteen forty two.

As we were making our way to New York City, as a matter of fact, we went to sit as the train stopped to get something to drink, and it was a segregated Missouri launch counter. And we wouldn't move. And so a white mob dragged me and my sister out by force, slammed me on the ground.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (51:38.24)
I called up Adam Clayton Powell when I got to New York, and we sued. And we won. It wasn't much. A few thousand dollars. And they paid to fuse my spine.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (51:55.157)
Later in life, I had some more issues. It was actually a congenital issue with my intestines and intestines and I had a blockage. And they ended up cutting three feet of intestines. They thought I wouldn't survive. But I don't know who they're talking to.

So I used to tell people I'm just a loud mouthed middle aged colored lady with a few spine and a lot of people think I'm crazy. The mystery to me is why more people aren't like me as oppressed as we are.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (52:33.322)
Long before you all had podcasts and things of that nature, I was on the radio. We were on the radio on WBAI, which still exists today. I hope y'all still listen. Because even back then, that was the media, one of them, that we used to get the word out. Where's the black media today? Because it just seems like all the media now is is just propaganda.

Telling people what keeps them quiet and docile, the same way the church does.

And by the way, the same way the courts do. Listen, I remember going into court wearing slacks, you know, pants.

And the judge saying, you know, I wasn't dressed appropriately.

I didn't do it, but I thought of just putting my head back and laughing out loud. Have you ever considered that the two most anti-feminist organizations are the ones where the men wear dresses, the church and the courts?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (53:56.025)
Did you ever notice that? What is your problem with me wearing pants? And you wearing a whole dress? You call it a robe, it's a dress.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (54:11.488)
Now the thing about how a woman dresses is for the establishment.

It gives them an idea of whether you're gonna allow yourself to be easily controlled or not. And what the establishment wants is to control you. Same thing with black people. Same people, same thing with anybody who is not white male Protestant. You come in and your hair's a little different. that's a troublemaker. We gotta get them to straighten that hair out and conform.

How they dress, what they have on. I went to the Phil Donahue show and I was wearing a t-shirt that some of my gay friends gave me, and it said dike right across it. I said, now don't get upset and feel like you know this is a negative term or anything. This was given to me by my gay friends. And I'm wearing it, not because I'm a lesbian, but because I can.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (55:24.0)
Mayor Dinkins said this, David Dinkins, he said this at my

Funeral, he said, if you found a cause for the downtrodden or somebody being abused someplace by God, Flo Kennedy would be there. It's really important that you all examine this psychology of the oppressed so that you can better understand.

Adesoji Iginla (55:50.727)
Mm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (55:53.867)
Now, I'm gonna just gloss over this, but you read my book, you go do some research, my papers at Harvard University.

Adesoji Iginla (56:01.403)
That's it. Yeah.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (56:04.404)
attended all four black power conferences.

Including the planning stage of the first national conference on black power, which was the beginning of the downfall of Adam Clayton Powell, by the way. Because the minute the establishment saw him attending a conference on black power, they decided they had to get rid of him no matter what. And they came after him. And guess what?

Some of you black people went right along with it. Well, he was absent too many times from the floor. But what was he doing? well, he was a womanizer. But what do they do? This whole divide and conquer, we gotta stop letting people divide us in these ways.

Adesoji Iginla (56:52.551)
Mm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (56:58.614)
All right, one last thing I'm gonna put in your mind. And I suppose some of you may find this a little scandalous.

But I want you to think that

Think a little clearly than you sometimes do. They knew me as well for my pink sunglasses. I wore whatever the heck I wanted to wear. One time I went to meet with it wasn't planned, it was a last-minute invitation, and I was already going to another event and I had a a mink coat on. And I went straight from that event.

To the event where that was a protest, and they said, You can't wear that and come around people who are poor and all of that. And I said, Really? So unless I look and dress exactly like who I'm fighting with, then that means I don't count? You have to be a little bit more discerning than that. So let me share this with you.

Adesoji Iginla (57:48.394)
You

Adesoji Iginla (57:56.327)
Hmm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (58:03.744)
If you will bear with me for a second here.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (58:11.894)
You know, back on this issue of sex recreation.

Adesoji Iginla (58:18.823)
you

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (58:20.902)
Because women are still being attacked in this way. I want to bring this up. In Boston, during the World Series, there was a kind of a sweep of the combat zone. You guys are about to conclude FIFA right now. And I'm sure they've done the same thing. They've gone to all the areas where they think the prostitutes are, and they've gone to sweep them up, attacks, all kinds of things.

And in New York, before a major convention like the 1976 Democratic Convention, you always have our brilliant municipal officials running around talking about cleaning up this and that and this erogenous zone. And the mayor, the corrupt police, and the good people, because y'all are complicit with them, form an almost solid phalanx.

Between those you consider whores and those of us who think the city has better things to do than to attack quote unquote whores.

Instead of worrying about massage parlors where a woman might make more money than she could after getting a degree, how about you think about cleaning up Times Square by getting rid of alcohol and tobacco?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (59:52.675)
Back then there was a billboard and you all still see them, which dominates at that point it dominated the whole area, and it was of a man blowing smoke out over the entire Times Square to encourage people to smoke. Today it's your smoke and vape shops. They're all over the United States.

Adesoji Iginla (01:00:17.147)
especially in New York, yes.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:00:20.012)
But tobacco back then killed 52,000 people a year from lung cancer. And we can't even put a number on the number of lives that have been ruined through alcohol use.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:00:40.45)
But here's my question for you How many people do you know who

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:00:49.538)
I want to look at you carefully when I ask this question, and I want an answer from those of you listening. Don't put it all on this young man.

How many people do you know who have died from a blowjob?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:01:12.374)
And if they did, they probably died happy.

So what is it that we're fighting exactly? Why is it that you give people so much grief?

You gotta fight back. See, because like I said earlier, silence is collaboration. And rape without struggle is just a bad screw.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:01:45.016)
How are you struggling? You understand me?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:01:51.266)
So here's what I want you to take from this little time that I've had with you.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:01:58.435)
I was never interested in being liked. I don't I don't frankly care what you think about me, what you're saying about me right now. You'll never forget me though. I was interested in being useful.

I made white people and the establishment nervous on purpose.

I made polite feminists nervous too. I made the Catholic Church nervous. I made record labels and the executives nervous. I made Columbia University's administration nervous. I made the New York legal establishment nervous. Making people nervous was never rudeness.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:02:49.601)
It was strategy.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:02:53.772)
Now I don't know if you've spoken with her yet, but Zora Neil Hurston used to say

If you're silent, they will kill you and claim that you liked it.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:03:12.172)
Don't organize. So d sorry, don't agonize.

Organise.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:03:23.126)
That's back to you, sir.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:25.489)
Thank you, thank you. Thank you.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:03:30.69)
Did I say something funny?

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:32.665)
No, no, not. Yes.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:03:35.104)
Or something you disagree with?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:03:46.423)
Yeah, I'm seeing your people. They don't know anybody who died from a blowjob, not giving or getting it. Just saying. The facts are the facts. But you're gonna fight and imprison people for that. But the things that are really killing folk, you say nothing about.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:51.079)
You

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:01.808)
Equals.

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:07.151)
It could also be unreported, so because I mean, if you're gone, you're gone.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:04:15.286)
I see you have a sense of humor. Which is good. I told you we laughed a lot in my family. Laughing will keep you young and healthier. We're all gonna die at some point though.

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:18.599)
You

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:27.495)
True. Sometimes it's got to kill a man. Yes, Miss Florence Kennedy, thank you for coming through again. This is what we do here. I don't know about the question and answer session, but it's part and parcel.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:04:49.224)
I well take questions. They have questions? What questions do they have?

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:55.559)
I mean, there are no questions in the chat other than agreeing with what the question you posed, but...

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:05:07.02)
You gotta aim high. You know, even with the civil rights movement, we weren't even asking for equal rights. We were asking for civil rights. And then we couldn't even get that. You gotta aim high. You gotta teach the young people to know who they are, and they've gotta aim high. And don't let anybody shut you down. Listen.

This idea of going along to get along, it never changes the system. And people just get conscripted into it.

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:36.071)
Hmm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:05:45.026)
Time to fight back in a different way. Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:47.215)
Yes, it is. it is. We do thank you for coming through. Next week, unfortunately, as people can see in the course of the couple of technical issues with the chat, so we're unable to see the chat. So as a result, next week, we're to be recording the episode for next week. It will come on as live during the time we should be here.

will be recorded. And so in the course of the following week, we hope everything returns back to normal. So next week, it will be the turn of Agatha Onwiliyama. Yeah, Agatha Onwiliyama, who she is, what she's about. We'll find out in the course of

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:06:35.65)
That's what that's what I like about what you're doing.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:06:41.108)
Anybody watching you and the work that you're doing has no excuse.

Because you are covering women from everywhere. Educated, formerly educated, not educated, poor, middle class, maybe a little bit more money. Tall, short, black, brown, red bones, long hair, short, you're nobody has an excuse. So this sister Agatha you're going to cover.

Come and learn about her. Cause you learn, then you can teach. Because how many of you didn't know about Flo Kennedy before you came on tonight? And what

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:07:30.476)
When we celebrate all of these women, why is my name not listed?

Why is this the only full-length book on me with everything that I did? Why you suppose that?

Adesoji Iginla (01:07:52.017)
the establishment. There's no one to people following such examples.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:07:58.563)
Well you get to choose what you're going to do with the information you got today, and whether I continue to be a secret. Not just me, the work I did, the work that still needs to be done, and all the other women you're learning about.

Adesoji Iginla (01:08:04.455)
Mm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:08:18.676)
of them asked for permission.

Adesoji Iginla (01:08:23.025)
Hmm, true.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:08:25.474)
They did what needed to be done. If you're looking for someone to come and anoint you or give you permission or protection, that's why we stay oppressed.

Adesoji Iginla (01:08:42.951)
Yes, we need no permission. Those are the words of Miss Florence Kennedy. So next week, will be the turn of Agatha on Williama. What she is about, we shall find out. But before then, do have a lovely week. Like, share, and do subscribe. I mean, bring lots of more people. The numbers are increasing in the course of the week.

But we need more numbers so that at least there we can get the message out because all these women have done something to further our existence here on this planet. And like the good madam just said, they did not seek permission or sought permission and none was given, but it was taken. So all the same.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:09:36.908)
Y you know why I was so outrageous, cause that draws people. You go ahead and tell people when you're telling them about this episode.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:09:49.378)
Just ask them the prostitute and the wife.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:09:58.04)
Who's got the better financial situation?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:10:06.67)
Hour for hour, task for task.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:10:14.592)
Yeah, that's what I thought.

Adesoji Iginla (01:10:22.087)
Does that include VAT, value added tax?

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:10:24.91)
I told you you had a sense of humor.

Adesoji Iginla (01:10:30.407)
That's it. We've come to the end of this week's episode of Women and Resistance. Next week, like I said earlier, it will be the turn of Agata Omuliyama. What she's about, we'll find out next week. Any final thoughts? No more questions, though.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:10:51.893)
No.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:10:56.364)
Get some style about you. That's something I could always say. He never forgot Flo.

Adesoji Iginla (01:11:03.985)
Hmm.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:11:06.038)
And thank you for having me.

Adesoji Iginla (01:11:08.571)
No, thank you for coming through and enriching our lives with your experience and hopefully we take something from it. That said, again, we've come to the end of this week's episode. Until next time, it's good night and God bless.

Aya  as Flo Kennedy (01:11:22.35)
Power to the people.