“From Margin to Center: New Voices of Feminism”
by Loretta Ross
Loretta Ross with students
Sherrill Redmon, Amy Hague, Jinny Mason
April 6, 2006. (2006 Annual Meeting)
Activist Loretta Ross spoke about her involvement with the Sophia Smith Collection's Voices of Feminism project established in 2002 to preserve the stories of women typically overlooked in traditional accounts of women's history. This is an ambitious attempt to broaden and deepen the sources available for research into the U S women's movement that began in the 1960's. Funded by the Ford Foundation, the project documents the personal experiences and political ideas of working class activists, women of color organizers, lesbian rights leaders, and others who represent the diversity and complexity of women's lives. By describing her experience collecting oral histories among grassroots women of color organizers as well as the experience of having her own life probed and examined when she was interviewed, Ross reflected on the relevance of oral history as source material. She also spoke about her work today and the need for continued concern about women's reproductive rights and the rights of economically deprived women to self-determination. Her talk provoked many questions from students.
Ross has spent over thirty years fighting for human rights and against racism and sexism in the United States and abroad. She currently directs SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, an Atlanta-based organization dedicated to improving the lives of women of color in the United States. Ross's voluminous personal papers, now preserved in the Sophia Smith Collection, document her participation in an array of feminist organizations she has founded, directed, or worked with.
