Black leaders were critical to the formation of the modern reproductive rights movement. Black History Month provides an opportunity to pause and remember some oft-forgotten leaders who shaped the movement in the years before Roe v. Wade.
Feb 6, 2024
by FELICIA KORNBLUH
Florynce “Flo” Kennedy remains one of the most unfairly forgotten contributors to reproductive politics since the 1960s. Kennedy was an early member of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the women’s civil rights organization founded in part to pursue the agenda Black and white feminist lawyers Pauli Murray and Mary Eastwood outlined in their essay, “Jane Crow and the Law” (1965).
Kennedy graduated from Columbia Law School in 1951, disillusioned with a legal mainstream that in her view demanded “an almost mathematical mind, the kind of person who can walk past a pool of blood and think, ‘What a beautiful shade of red.’”