THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Dori Jacobson-Wenzel

“How Wonderful to See Women in Charge and Governing Their Own Destiny.”

Interviewed by Kathy Rand, VFA Executive VP

Transcript edited by Dori Jacobson-Wenzel

KR: Hi Dori. Thank you for agreeing to an interview as part of the Pioneer Histories Project. Excited to hear your story. Do you want to start by telling us your name?

DJ: Thank you Kathy. My name is Dori Jacobson aka Dorothea Jacobson-Wenzel.

KR: When and where were you born Dori?

DJ:  I was born in 1942 in Oak Park, Illinois, in West Suburban Hospital.

KR: OK. And what is your family background like in terms of ethnicity? 

DJ: My background – I think I had mentioned – my father was born in Sweden. He was a Swedish citizen until 1942 and then my grandmother was a first generation German. Her father, my great-grandfather, was a Mason and he and his family had a hay and feed store on South Halsted Street with the name Wunnicke on the building. It has been torn down..

KR: And what was your life like growing up and before you got involved in the women’s movement?

DJ: As a young girl we all lived in a two-flat. My grandmother had to sell the property in Lawndale because of the depression – everybody lost their money. They lived right by Garfield Park Conservatory and they talked about the pleasures of rowing on the lagoons and  visiting the conservatory. They had a big Victorian house and then they moved to a two-flat in Austin on the border of Oak Park. We lived upstairs and my grandmother, my grandfather, my aunt and my two uncles lived downstairs. My mother and father and brother and I lived upstairs, so it was a very close knit family environment.

KR: And was it basically a middle class kind of family?

DJ: I think so. We had neighbors who were Greek, German,Italian, Jewish, and Irish – many nationalities. As teenagers we went to Austin High School. My mother went to Marshall High School and so it was a very sort of immigrant ethnic kind of neighborhood. So I’d say middle class – but some lower middle class.

KR: And where did you go to High School and then did you go to college?

DJ: I went to Austin High School. I started working when I was 12, because there really was no money to go to college in the family. And my dad – I think he never made more than $9,000 a year. I graduated from high school at 16.

I Wanted To Go To College But There Was Not Enough Money. 

My mother then was a secretary. She went back to work to help me afford college. During High School I worked as a secretary for the National Association of Refrigerating Engineers and for Stivers Office Service part time. In 1959 at the age of 16 I started college at the University of Illinois, Urbana. I was totally unprepared for such a big university. But I always wanted to be a teacher.

KR: And did you graduate from University of Illinois?

DJ:  I graduated then in 1963.

KR: And what degree?

DJ:  My degree was a B.A. in English – the teaching of English. I minored in physical education. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) did not  want to let me graduate because they said I needed to take another minor that was Spanish or history instead of physical education. I looked up in the catalog which said that a student could have a minor of his or her own choosing. I fought to finally graduate. I hated school at the University of Illinois. It was such a sexist – racist place in those days. African-American friends of mine – we’d go to stay at the Chief Illiniwek Motel and the clerks  didn’t want to give us a room. You know we were two women of different races. What are they doing in a hotel alone?

I Ended Up Getting Involved in Civil Rights and Fighting for Issues Through Education.

After graduation I couldn’t afford not to work so I started teaching at the age of 20. I was a Demonstration teacher for talented youth and then the “Peter Principle” [took effect] – I became a consultant with the State Department of Education of Illinois. I traveled all around the State of Illinois going into classrooms and showing teachers “how to teach” using curricula developed at the University of Illinois Lab School. I developed training manuals for the state on administrative self-assessment andteacher self-assessment.

We did videos like you’re doing now of people teaching classes to demonstrate how teachers and students interact with one another – a lot of group psychology. I taught at the same time and then the University of Illinois ironically paid for my Master’s degree because I became a Teaching Assistant there.

KR: What did you master in?

DJ:  It was in the teaching of English. And the state Department of Education had a program where they sought students who had talent but not just IQ talent, (Gardener’s Multiple Intelligences)The consultants would go into different schools to demonstrate. There were State Demonstration Centers in Zeigler-Royalton, Illinois: East St. Louis, Illinois; Cairo, Illinois; Freeport, Illinois; up to Chicago to Carver H.S. We covered the whole state and trained teachers. But then as [I was] traveling with black friends who were also Consultants we were subjected to so much racism that it turned my life around.

I Decided to Go into the Inner Cities and Teach. 

At the time, the City Colleges were hiring Instructors. Not many women were able to be teachers or associate professors then. I was hired in 1967 by Crane College, one of the colleges of the City Colleges of Chicago, which then subsequently became Malcolm X College.

KR: And where you’ve been for a long time.

DJ:  I was there until 1992 and then I transferred to Truman College where  students in my classes were from all over the world in all different ethnicities.

KR: In thinking about the women’s movement – tell me a little bit about how you got involved in the women’s movement. When it was and how you got involved.

DJ: My role models were people like Addie Wyatt who was a minister and head of The Amalgamated Meat Cutters union – I joined a union, Cook County College teacher’s Union – and Willie Mae Barrow, who was with Operation PUSH. Most of my identity – I photographed Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’s wife. And I did a photo exhibit at Malcolm X on black women who had fought in the women’s movement because I was always very sensitive to the fact that people were saying African-American women were not involved in the women’s movement when black women were key figures and leaders from the start.

Any Time I Photographed – I Would Always Try to Get Images of the Common People. 

Candid shots and people of different ethnicities – colors, ages, men, women, children. So a lot of the photographs that I’ve taken in the women’s movement reflect that. It’s not just all the heroes or heroines. It’s the common person who has taken to the streets to protest for equal rights, equal pay, for reproductive rights, for equal partnership in marriage, for child care, for many of the issues that we fought for in the late 60s and 70s and even now today.

KR: Clearly one of your most major contributions to the movement is going to be the photography that you’ve done over the years. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how you got involved with photography to begin with and how you became a photographer to the movement?

DJ: Before I was at Malcolm X, because I was with the State Department of Education, I gave the creativity test all over the state and I got the highest grade out of 180 people. So then I read about creativity and though – no wonder I get in trouble all the time. I mean all of the things that attributed to creative people such as they are a law unto themselves – “dance to a different tune”, etc. I thought maybe I could draw. So I taught and at night went to the Art Institute and sure enough – I could draw.

Then I applied to the Institute of Design at IIT. I already had had one Master’s degree but decided to study in another field. I was accepted into the printmaking photography program at IIT. In order to graduate I had to do research on photographic etching and prints. So I did drawings, photographs and silkscreens.

And during that time I took a class with Garry Winogrand who was a New York street photographer. He saw some of my photographs and he said that I had a “good eye” and I should continue photography. Arthur Siegel was another professor I had for Photographic History.  He said anyone can photograph and do great pictures but not everyone can stay with a historical moment for 30 to 40 years. And just by the nature of taking images they’re going to have a body of work that is significant.

He Stressed the Importance of Knowing the History of Photography and Using Photography for Social Change.

At the time I was teaching and training students in the City Colleges of Chicago. I then set up a photo lab at Malcolm X. I taught  English and photography and I trained many of my students to take pictures of the West Side of Chicago and their families and school events. We photographed such figures as Betty Shabazz and Jesse Jackson. But I didn’t want to take pictures myself of the black community myself. It was the “Black Power” movement and African-American people were to cover African-American subjects. A friend of mine said – The women’s movement is just starting – Why don’t you use your skills and start photographing the women’s movement?

KR: This was about what year?

DJ:  By this time it was 1971, because I was really doing training and civil rights through education. A friend of mine took me to one of the NOW rallies or meetings. I think I have an early NOW pamphlet from 1971. I didn’t start taking 35 millimeter pictures – because I used a view camera first – until 1972.  After visiting Panama and Latin America, South America, I bought a 35 millimeter camera.  One of my first actions as Mary-Ann [Lupa] had said earlier wasAT&T – when NOW picketed AT&T. I was at that demonstration. So then the latter part of 1972 and 1973 is when I started to systematically document the Chicago NOW activities and to go to the National NOW meetings and take pictures also.

KR: What were the most memorable to you from some of those early experiences?

DJ: I think it was seeing women governing women and women holding their fists and demanding equal rights.

I Came From this Ethnic Background Where Women Were Supposed to Cook and Clean and Get Married. 

You were not supposed to be a doctor or a lawyer or a photographer – that was really out of the question. And, in fact, many of the people photographing the women’s marches and demonstrations at that time were men. And oftentimes they were laughing at the women. So that made me even more determined to cover the movement from a female perspective.

KR: How many photographs have you taken – any idea?

DJ: 15,000 to 20,000. I don’t know – probably from the end of 72 until 2006 and then in 2002 I joined Veteran Feminists of America. Jacqui [Ceballos] was president at the time – gave [me] a medal at a NOW conferences. And then in 2004 the University of Illinois with the advent of Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America, many of the feminists at the conference were interviewed on videotape and I was the photographer. I started photographing more with Veteran Feminists and with the National Organization for Women. I also covered other events like the Free South Africa Movement Rally in Chicago and Operation PUSH demonstrations and the labor union and the Coalition of Labor Union Women events and the Nuclear Freeze March in Chicago. So it wasn’t just NOW activities.

KR:  Tell us about your books.

DJ:  I am attempting to put some of the photographs together into a book and disseminate the images. In the early days I had photographs that I gave to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard and I was in a show in 1989 – 150 years of women in photography and they had an image that I did of Geraldine Ferraro when she was elected to be vice president. And I photographed that at the Democratic Convention in San Francisco, California. So I’ve been photographing in Iowa, PA, NY, DC, CO, MA, OH, IL, IN, TN, LA, MN, MO, NC, Texas, Michigan, California, Florida –at different meetings and demonstrations [that] occurred. But now that I’m older and I have more mobility issues so it’s difficult to fight the crowds.

The Male Photographers Used to Try to Push Me Off a Chair When I Was Trying to Photograph People.

KR: How has your involvement in the women’s movement affected your later life professionally as well as personally?

DJ: I think that personally it gave me more confidence – seeing Wilma Scott Heide and Molly Yard and Mary Jean Collins, Barbara Love, Muriel Fox, Mary-Ann Lupa, Kathy Rand, Willie Stevens – all the role models that I had – organizing – Heather Booth. How wonderful it was to see women in charge of things and governing one’s own destiny. That, through osmosis, I think, carried over to myself.

On the other hand – because I was a teacher and then I also was a photographer and then a psychologist. I finished a doctorate in clinical psychology and I did an internship at Cook County Jail as a psychologist. Many of my experiences on the West Side of Chicago molded my life so that I remained involved in photography, teaching  and selling real estate. I had a real estate license from 1980 till now so I could work during the summers to support myself and my daughter.

I Was a Single Parent and I Worked Double Jobs. 

Women in 1974 couldn’t get credit cards in their own name and so the demonstration at Sears I photographed where Jerry Dahlin was holding the Sears Discredit card. I realized I couldn’t get credit in my own name. I went to apply for a mortgage. I got married in 1974 and the bank told me I couldn’t get approved because my husband’s signature wasn’t on the mortgage. I said well he is unable to work. He’s a Vietnam veteran and at the time they didn’t have the term PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder. But he couldn’t work.

I was the sole support of the household and the bank said it didn’t matter – I had to have my husband’s signature. So little issues like that in my personal life by fighting to change inequities made me even stronger. Friends of mine who got pregnant in high school had to go to homes for unwed mothers and give their babies up because there was so much shame. Just to see the movement give individuals the choice to keep a child or to have a child was an important element in my own life. All of those issues affected me personally.

KR: One of the things that you mentioned was that you saw photography as a way that you could contribute to the women’s movement – that was sort of something unique that you could do that other people couldn’t do or weren’t able to do.

DJ: Yes. Most of the pictures that were available – protesters’ backs were to the front of the image and they would say, “Oh I photographed this,” but their photographs were inadequate for documentation. Because I had had training in photography,I had a good eye – the images that I took were complimentary and yet not complimentary because I photographed both sides of the movement in a sense. Everyone thinks photography is so simple. But it isn’t that simple to be a photojournalist or a street photographer.

KR: And some of your photographs are in collections. Where are your photos?

DJ: University of Illinois, the Richard Daley Center; Harvard, The Schlesinger Library; Sophia Smith Collection. There are VFA pictures at Duke University.  Northwestern University has a copy of the first book that I started to do called The American Women’s Movement Faces of Protest. I added “Part 1” because once I did that book, I realized I needed to do about three books or 4 or 5 or 10 to cover what I see as important. And that is the everyday common person who took to the streets to demonstrate for equal pay for equal work and other issues mentioned.

So the title of my first book has a cover saying “59 cents” because at the time that I started to photograph – women were making 59 cents for every dollar that men made. And then in 2017 when women took to the streets and men – I was then able to go to the demonstration in Chicago – and because I had broken my back 4  months prior to that, my friend Jim wheeled me to the demonstration in a wheelchair. And I got up in the middle of the crowd with my iPhone and took all these pictures and then I’d go back into the wheelchair again.

And to see the crowds and all the people I just started crying. I thought of the early days when there were maybe 20 or 30 people at an action and then all of a sudden 20,000 people – 30,000 people, 40 to 250,000 – half a million. When I’d go to Washington D.C. it was just so amazing to see the scope and the breadth that the women’s movement has affected as far as social change in America. That change is now spreading internationally to countries and women all over the world.

KR: So you are currently on the board of the VFA, correct?

DJ: Yes. I was privileged to be asked by Jacqui to be on the board because I took photographs. We were at Seneca Falls in New York and I photographed one of the many VFA meetings that we had. I was asked subsequently to take pictures for different VFA activities. For example, at Rollins College, Gloria Steinem gave a speech and then members of the VFA board and students were asking questions of the VFA board members (most of whom are older):

“What was it like to not be able to have a credit card?” “What was it like to have to quit your job if you became pregnant and reapply for a job?” “What was it like not to wear pants to work?” My first job I had to wear a black dress with a little string of pearls and little black pumps. The State Department did not let you wear pants to work.

KR: Those were the days.

DJ: VFA has been a real inspiration because the nonprofit organization is trying to meet with different younger university women and have dialogue between younger and older women about the Second Wave of Feminists have accomplished and the relevance to today’s struggle. We’ve been in Los Angeles, Florida, Rollins College, University of Illinois, NC, St. Louis, MO, Milwaukee, Alverno College; Washington D.C. and Seneca Falls. I can’t remember offhand all of the places.

KR: Anything else that you want to share that we haven’t covered?

My Inspiration 

DJ:  I think that it’s important for the “old timers” – quote – unquote – to “keep on keeping on” – to help fight and encourage younger people. My daughter is now 43 and her daughter went to a Women’s march and she at the age of six had on a sweatshirt – “Girl Power”. And to see my daughter who I used to drag to demonstrations when she was 12 months old with a female fist sign on a sweatshirt to my granddaughter with a sweatshirt saying “Girl Power” is an inspiration to me.

KR: Thank you so much Dori. This was terrific. Thank you for your time and look forward to sharing this with the world.

DJ: Thank you.

Additional Information Contributed by Dori Jacobson

As a child, I had an older brother who was always favored in my family in regard to housework, or privileges; therefore, I rebelled against the principle of women doing all the housework and shopping and sewing, and cooking and serving the men.

At a family get together, my 99-year-old Grandmother was in her bedroom off the kitchen and my 4-year-old nephew passed her door and [she] asked, “Where are you going?”  He replied, “To get some milk.” My grandmother answered, “Send one of the women in to get the milk.”

Coming from a first generation Swedish, second generation German-Prussian immigrant family system, I rebelled against the traditional roles that women were supposed to accept in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s and 70s. As a result, at twelve years of age, I started to work 20 hours a week, plus attend school, and also was active in sports – volleyball, basketball, swimming – and church choir. Our grammar school had separate entrances for “Boys”, and “Girls”.

Then in high school, I continued my sports and music activities, plus I wrote for the school newspaper. When I volunteered to write a “news” report, I was told by the woman teacher-supervisor, “Those stories are for the boys, not the girls.” So, I asked what I could write about. She answered, “girls’ sports. Girl reporters were limited in what they could write or cover as “news”.

I graduated from high school at the age of 16 and I wanted to go to college to become a teacher. The women in my family did not attend college except the men who fought in World War II and used the GI bill. Therefore, I was told by my father, “there is no money for you to go to college.” Then I asked, “Why does my brother get to go to college?”  The answer was “because he is a man.”

So, my mother went back to work to help me and I worked and borrowed money to start at the University of Illinois, Urbana, at the age of sixteen.

Some examples of sexism and inequality I encountered were, for example, in my English classes, when most of the assigned books to read were by male authors. Also, the male students could play sports and be cheered, while women were only allowed to be cheer leaders. If Title IX had been available then, perhaps I would have been eligible for a volleyball scholarship. But, women were not eligible for sports scholarships then. We were told we could be secretaries, nurses, teachers, aides or assistants.

In addition, racism and nationalism existed at the U of I at that time because when students were grouped in dorms we were assigned roommates who were of the same nationality and religion.  My African-American friends who attended the University of Illinois were segregated in the dorms or sororities by race. My roommate freshman year was of Norwegian descent and I was of Swedish descent.

Upon graduating from the University of Illinois at the age of 20, I immediately started teaching as a “Demonstration teacher for Talented Youth.” In 1965, I was asked to become a consultant with the Illinois State Department of Education. Some of the colleagues I traveled with to different Demonstration Centers in the state were African American women.

When we had to stay overnight together and share a room at the Chief Illiniwek motel in Urbana, we were told there were no rooms available. I walked around the motel and saw few cars and went back inside and said, “You have rooms available; we are going to stay here.” So, the desk clerk then found us a room. That was my first introduction to overt racism that then changed my life.

I moved from the all-white Gold Coast in Chicago to semi-integrated Hyde Park in Chicago. I quit my job as a Consultant to the State Department of Education and applied to teach in the inner city with the City Colleges of Chicago (there were few women professors at that time). I was hired at Crane College on the West Side of Chicago. That college became Malcolm X Junior College in the 70s. The faculty marched when the Black Panther Fred Hampton was killed because it was claimed that the police had shot him with no defense or warning or due process. Then, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and the West Side of Chicago burned. Plus, President Kennedy and his brother Bobby were killed.

Because of these events, I became more involved in Civil Rights issues. Besides my Master’s Degree in the teaching of English, I took graduate courses in Black Studies. My students in the ‘60s read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, Black Voices, Before the Mayflower. I spent weekends and extra hours out of class each week to help tutor and counsel students. We went to the Art Institute, the South Side Community Art Center, plus other museums in the City. I also took extra time to sponsor and encourage students to transfer to a four-year University. I was considered a “dedicated teacher.”

However, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, when women helped the movement, there were many divisions between “militants” and “Uncle Toms”. And, sexism and racism were rampant in the society. However, women got tired of being “second class citizens” in organizations, so women started their own organizations to facilitate change.

For example, sexism was evident when Stokely Carmichael said, “There’s no place for women in SNCC but prone.” And Eldridge Cleaver said, “There is no power for women, but pussy power.”

Those attitudes offended many women, including myself, so I fell away from making “black” issues my main interest to including both race and women’s issues as my interests.

In 1969, while teaching at Malcolm X, I also started a second Masters’ Degree in Printmaking and Photography by attending the Institute of Design, at Illinois Institute of Technology from 1969 to 1974. I did my printmaking through drawing and etching copper plates and then using photographs and doing a series of prints on Erotic Art.

When, at the Institute of Design, I opened the lab door where negatives and photographs dried, most of the male students’ images where negatives of nude women. So, in reaction to the sexist photographs men produced, I photographed nude males and entered pornography shops to photograph the overt sexism and inequities in sexual images and in those stores.

I was teaching at Malcolm X through this turmoil. And, when I finished my Masters Degree in 1974, I set up a photograph lab at Malcolm X and trained students in how to take and develop b/w photographs and prints. At the Institute of Design, IIT, I was encouraged to photograph by Garry Winograd, one of my instructors who was known as a “Street Photographer.”

My first action against sexism besides my photographic prints and etchings was at NOW’s 1972 demonstration against AT&T. Because I saw only men photographing at NOW’s demonstrations, I decided I would start to photograph during these demonstrations and meetings as a way to contribute to the “Women’s Movement.”  I did not like groups telling me what to do or organizing, so I used photography as a way to contribute to the movement by documenting and taking pictures for women’s causes for approximately 45 years.

Then, in 1974, I met my ex-husband, Rupert Wenzel, Jr., and we were married. He was a Vietnam Veteran who suffered from PTSD. In 1975, we had a daughter, Elsa Wenzel.  During that time, there was no Maternity Leave or Maternity pay. Women had to quit their jobs and reapply. So, I taught to the night before I gave birth to Elsa and had to go back to work in three weeks, in order not to lose my job.

Rupert and I divorced in 1980. I became the sole “breadwinner” of the family and raised my daughter as a single parent. And, I combined my concerns with teaching and education, fighting for Civil Rights in education and real estate; studying and teaching English, Black Studies, English as a Second Language, Psychology and Child Psychology, plus Art and Photography.

In order to support my daughter, I also received my Real Estate license in 1981. I worked part time in the school year and summers to help female friends buy and sell real estate. Women could not own property in their own name in 1975. When I applied for a mortgage to buy and rehab a building in the city for us to live in, I was told, “women have to have their husband’s signature and job record.” My husband didn’t and couldn’t work, at that time, because of “flashbacks of horror” from being a Medic in Vietnam.  But, his credit record became mine never the less.

In 1974, women couldn’t get credit cards in their own name without their husband’s signature. NOW fought against this inequity by picketing Sears and protesting inequities that employers used against women. At that time, in Chicago, women protested “men only” bars, separate “women” and “men” want ads for jobs and separate entrances for employment. I contributed by photographing these and many events that materialized between 1972 to 2006.

What Issues Were of Great Concern to You?

Photographing and documenting women’s fight for equal rights, economic parity, right to control our own bodies, right to have credit in our own names, mortgages in our own names, plus equal partnership in marriage, civil rights, environmental rights to “save the planet Earth”; right to wear pants to work, rights to become a female rabbi or minister; right to grow old gracefully. I studied the archetypes of the great Goddesses, Gnosticism, religious spirituality, and intersectionality. I facilitated creativity and independence and confidence among my students in the City Colleges.

What were Your Major Accomplishments: Personally, and That You Were Involved In? 

Giving birth to my daughter and educating her to be a feminist; helping to “nurture” and encourage my three grandchildren; utilizing my photographs to facilitate social change; inspiring my students to persevere, to critically and creatively think, to encourage their talents and have confidence to cope with society’s challenges and changes; helping my foreign students to assimilate and cope with American culture; helping my female friends and clients to buy and sell real estate to build equity for their old age; earning four degrees (when I was not supposed to go to college); finishing my Doctorate in Clinical Psychology; serving on the educational board of the Jung Center in Evanston; finishing a postdoc in Jungian psychotherapy; self-publishing three photographic books on the Women’s Movement; continuing to photograph for Veteran Feminists of America and to disseminate information about “Second Wave” feminism; having my photographs in various historical collections: Schlesinger Library at Harvard; Sophia Smith Archives at Smith College; University of Illinois-Circle campus and Richard J. Daley Center Archives; Northwestern Archives; Duke University VFA records;continuing to study and learn more about Gender Studies and Digital Photography; PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY SURVIVING AND FLOURISHING IN A SEXIST-RACIST SOCIETY BUT APPRECIATING, AS A WOMAN, LIVING IN AMERICA WITH ALL ITS PRIVILEGES.

What were Your Most Memorable and Important Experiences?

Giving birth to my daughter; photographing and teaching and studying for 45 years; selling and buying real estate; achieving financial security with NO HELP financially from men; working as an intern Psychologist at Cook County Jail; documenting demonstrations and rallies in many states and using my photographs to effect social change.

How has Your Involvement in the Movement Affected Your Later Life (Personally or Professionally)?

Seeing women demonstrate and take power in their own hands to effect social change has given me the confidence to continue to photograph and fight for women’s rights; serving on the board of Veteran Feminists of America to communicate Second Wave Feminism influence on positive changes in American society spreading to other countries and internationally; dedicating time and money to distribute my photographs to historians, archivists to further documentation of Second Wave Feminism; to encourage my granddaughters and daughter and her colleagues and acquaintances to continue the fight for women’s rights. 

What were the Earliest Issues/Actions/Organizations You were Involved with? 

NAACP (NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE); SPLC (SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER); NOW (NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN); ACLU (AMERICAN CILVIL LIBERTIES UNION); SPE (SOCIETY OF PHOTOGRAPHIC EDUCATORS); CCCTU (COOK COUNTY COLLEGES TEACHERS’ UNION); JUNG INSTITUTE; IMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH. 

What Organizations/Issues Have You Been Active In (Along with Your Role and Dates Involved)?

CCCTU (1967-present); NOW (1972-present); SPE (1969-present); APA (American Psychological Association) (1987-present); CAR (Chicago Association of Realtors 1981 – present); (CAWHC) Chicago Area Women’s History Coalition) (1990-present); Immanuel Lutheran Church (1996-present); Mather Foundation (1996-2014) Volunteered to play the piano for the Adult Sing-Alongs); AARP (Aid Association for Retired Persons) ( 1992-present); VFA (Veteran Feminists of America) (2002-2018).

Are Your Currently Involved as an Activist?

YES. Photographing events, being on the Board of Veteran Feminists of America. Distributing photographs to various Archives.