In this interview recorded amidst the Supreme Court’s functional overturn of Roe v. Wade, eight Brown University alums and members of the women’s liberation student group, Women of Brown United (WBU), detail their day-to-day lives and group activism in the wake of the sexual revolution, ongoing Vietnam War, and wider political upheaval across the American late sixties, early seventies. Eileen Rudeen opens the interview by painting a general picture of Pembroke College, the women’s college in Brown University, in the late seventies: everything from the norms surrounding men in the dorms to the yearbook to the clothing. Alison Conant and Mimi Pichey echo Eileen’s commentary and further contextualize the late-sixties zeitgeist as rife with political interest and rapid social metamorphosis. Interviewer Amanda Knox leads the interviewees down a more concrete line of questioning. Toby Alary and Rachel Wyon discuss their feminist consciousness-raising at Brown as well as Road-to-Damascus moments: Kent State, the continued assault on Vietnam. Toby continues to detail the state of abortion rights and well as access to birth control in the late sixites, early seventies. Mimi prominently nods to the Rhode Island Coaliation for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. Susan Rogers talks about a story in which a friend secretly traveled to Washington D.C. to pursue an abortion. Toby also shares stories of sexual violence on campus and how her and peers reacted to this threat. Everyone in addition to Mimi Pichey and Jenny Smith in particular discuss the absence of women role models at Brown. Jenny and Jessica Murray then dive into guerilla feminist activism, the feminist studies committee of WBU and the Rhode Island Feminist Theatre (RIFT). Amanda concludes the interview with a circular go-around about how the WBU affected participants’ later lives: their activism, approach to raising children, and career.
Notes:
Biographical/historical note: Women of Brown United (WBU), a women’s liberation student group of Brown University, incorporated in September 1970 and began to organize around the Women’s Strike for Equality. Soon after, the group formed numerous subcommittees to discuss and address women’s issues on the Brown campus: education, the Pembroke-Brown merger, childcare, abortion, and consciousness-raising. As the organization grew, the WBU began to host a speaker series featuring such names as Gerda Lerner and Bill Baird. They hosted women’s film nights and also spread their activism out into the Fox Point community of Providence, Rhode Island. In particular, the WBU worked to facilitate the opening of the Fox Point Day Care Center in 1973. Other associations include arts work such as with the Rhode Island Feminist Theatre (RIFT). While the WBU only lasted until 1991, overtaken by the prevalence-prominence of the Sarah Doyle Center, its members have gone on to take feminist approaches to their various careers: law, performance, anthropology, and more.
Class year: 1972
Women of Brown United, Brown University Library
Digital object made available by: Brown University Library, John Hay Library, University Archives and Manuscripts, Box A, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912, U.S.A., (http://library.brown.edu/)
This collection contains oral history interviews with alumnae of Brown University, which admitted its first women students in 1891. The Women's College at Brown was renamed Pembroke College in 1928, and in 1971, Pembroke College merged with the Men's College …
