Kennedy, Florynce, 1916-2000

Lawyer and feminist, Florynce Kennedy is a founding member of the National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus and the author of Abortion Rap.

Florynce Rae ("Flo") Kennedy, an African American lawyer, feminist, activist, and civil rights advocate, was born on February 11, 1916, in Kansas City, Missouri, the second of five daughters of Wiley Kennedy and Zella Kennedy. In adolescence, she changed the spelling of her name from Florence to Florynce, a practice she retained throughout her life. After graduating from Lincoln High School in Kansas City (1932), she held various jobs, including singing on a radio show, running K's (for Kennedy's) Hat Shoppe with her sisters, and operating an elevator at a department store. After her mother died of cancer, she moved to New York City to live with her sister Grayce Bayles and her husband Vincent Bayles (1942). She began undergraduate work in pre-law at Columbia University in 1944. During her senior year she applied to and was rejected from Columbia Law School. She confronted the institution, challenging that her rejection occurred because of racial and gender discrimination. Once Kennedy hinted that she would pursue legal action, Columbia Law School reversed its decision and she was admitted in 1948, the same year she earned her B.A. According to her recollection, she was one of eight women and the only black woman in her graduating class. After graduating from Columbia Law in 1951, she worked as a clerk for a small New York City firm, Hartman, Sheridan, and Tekulsky. The following year, she passed the New York state bar examination and two years later established her own practice at 295 Madison Avenue, New York City (1954).

Kennedy suffered from back and digestive health problems most of her adult life. After injuring her back in adolescence and again in early adulthood, she underwent spinal fusion surgery to decrease her chronic pain (ca.1940?). After struggling with diverticulitis, she became seriously infected with gangrene, which necessitated the surgical removal of three feet of her intestines (1955). Roughly two years later, Kennedy and colleague Don Wilkes established a joint law firm, Kennedy and Wilkes. Shortly thereafter, Kennedy, then forty-one, married Charles Dye, a science-fiction writer ten years her junior. In their practice, Kennedy and Wilkes handled primarily small divorce and estate cases; Kennedy speculated that the mundane aspect of such quotidian cases depressed Wilkes and he soon left the partnership, absconding with most of the firm's assets, leaving her over $50,000 in debt. Undaunted, Kennedy and Dye lived an impoverished but temporarily happy existence, with Dye answering phone calls and providing administrative and emotional support. According to Kennedy's memoir, their tumultuous marriage was filled with colorful and dramatic encounters, which she attributed to his alcoholism. After a couple of years, the marriage began to disintegrate, then ended completely when Dye passed away from cirrhosis of the liver (1960).

As Kennedy watched Dye suffer from alcoholism, she met blues singer Billie Holiday (Eleanora McKay) and agreed to represent her estate in the legal battles it faced. At this stage in her career, Kennedy specialized in entertainment law. She was especially interested in cases involving intellectual rights and potential infringement of copyright whereby large corporations profited while artists received little or no monetary compensation for their work. For years she focused intently on a compilation of cases which she dubbed the "Piracy of Ideas," or the theft of intellectual property. She represented the estate of jazz legend Charlie Parker in a case which incorporated both of these issues (1962). She later became involved in a number of other high-profile cases. She defended, counseled, and helped publicize the causes of Black Panthers H. Rap Brown and Assata Shakur as well as Valerie Solanas (the woman who shot Andy Warhol).

Kennedy recalled being arrested for the first time in 1965 when she attempted to reach her home on East 48th Street and police refused to believe she lived in the neighborhood. From that point on, she focused her attention on combating racism and discrimination. After attending the four Black Power conferences and black political caucuses (1966), she was invited to speak at an antiwar convention in Montreal, which launched her career as a lecturer. By the late 1970s, she practiced law much less frequently and concentrated most of her energy on speaking engagements and writing.

Kennedy developed a reputation for her distinct personal style and outspokenness as a feminist, civil rights activist, and social critic. Reporters often commented on her long, colorfully polished fingernails, her fur coat, and large collection of cowboy hats. The press dubbed her "radicalism's rudest mouth." Her more outspoken actions include protesting the Miss America Pageant, organizing a "pee-in" in Harvard Yard, and being arrested for refusing to pay public transit fare after a prolonged delay in service. In 1971, she co-authored the controversial Abortion Rap with Diane Schulder (later Abrams), which included testimonies by women who suffered the consequences of restrictive abortion laws by being forced to have illegal and unsafe abortions. As a founder of The Feminist Party, which nominated Shirley Chisholm for president, she initiated a law suit against the Catholic Church, protesting that its strong anti-abortion stance violated the principles governing tax-exempt organizations. She led campaigns against several politicians, including Richard Nixon, George Wallace, and New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch.

From the 1970s through the mid-1980s Kennedy became a popular lecturer among college groups and women's organizations. She also devoted a great deal of time to combating unfair practices in the media. She founded the Media Workshop in order to fight racism in media and advertising and also became a leader of the Coalition Against Racism and Sexism (CARS), and helped coordinate their first March Against Media Arrogance in 1975.

For a short time, Kennedy lived in San Francisco, California (1972), and the following year she co-founded the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) with Margaret Sloan. Kennedy wrote a number of reminiscences and published one autobiography, Color me Flo (1976). In the early 1980s, she collaborated on another book, Sex Discrimination in Employment: An Analysis and Guide for Practitioner and Student, with William F. Pepper. Although she worked laboriously on another manuscript, The Pathology of Oppression, the book was never published. Kennedy's career as a public lecturer slowed in the 1980s; she spent the bulk of that decade and the early 1990s in New York City where she hosted the Flo Kennedy Show, a thirty-minute talk show that aired regularly on Manhattan Cable Television. Although her chronic health complications increased, she used the show to highlight the causes of individuals facing discrimination, including Algerians discussing the Islamic Federation Front and Sylvia Kordower Zetlin (described in more detail below), and occasionally provided legal advice.

In 1997 Kennedy received a Lifetime Courageous Activist Award; the following year Columbia University honored her by conferring their Owl Award for outstanding graduates. The City University of New York awarded her the Century Award in 1999. She died in New York City at the age of eighty-four, on December 21, 2000, due to long-standing health problems.