Administrative/Biographical Note
Shirley Parry is the founding donor of this collection. Several of the creators and
compilers of this collection were major figures in the Baltimore women's liberation
movement that grew out of second-wave feminism in the 1970s. They include:
- Margaret
Blanchard: a feminist activist working in Baltimore and a professor at UMBC during
the 1970s. She was on the staff of the journal Women: A Journal of Liberation from
1971 through the end of its publication in 1983.
- Shirley C. Parry: a professor emerita
of Anne Arundel Community College. She founded and served as director of the gender
and women's studies program at AACC, under its original name "Women's Studies," and
was also a professor of English. She also taught classes in women in literature at
UMBC. She was active in the women's liberation movement in Baltimore in the 1970s,
including being involved with the Women's Union of Baltimore, and serving on the staff
of Women: A Journal of Liberation beginning in 1972. Her academic research focuses
on the fiction of Paule Marshall.
- Jo-Ann Pilardi (1941-): a professor emerita of Towson
University, who helped found and served as chair of the women's studies department
in addition to being a professor of philosophy. She earned an M.A. in Philosophy from
Penn State and a Ph.D. in Humanities from Johns Hopkins University. Her academic research
interests include "feminist philosophy; existentialism; postmodernism and deconstruction;
social and political philosophy; race, class, and gender studies; and the life and
work of French feminist Simone de Beauvoir" ("Pilardi, Jo-Ann 1941- ," Encyclopedia.com).
She was active in the Baltimore Women's Liberation activist group.
- Jennie Boyd Bull
(1945-): a feminist and LGBTQ+ activist who worked for the women's liberation movement
in DC and Baltimore throughout the second half of the 20th century. She was born in
Tennessee and attended Swarthmore College in the 1960s before moving to Baltimore
in 1969, where she came out as lesbian in 1971 and served on the staff of Women: A
Journal of Liberation. She was involved in the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC)
in both Baltimore and DC throughout the 1970s, and attended Wesley Theological Seminary
from 1978 to 1980 in order to become a clergy member for the church. She moved to
Baltimore in the early 1980s, where she became Pastor of MCC Baltimore. In 1989 she
became the manager of the 31st St. Bookstore, and remained in the position until the
bookstore dissolved in 1994. She worked as a library associate at the Baltimore County
Public Library from 1994 until 2001. She retired in 2015 and moved to North Carolina.
The collection also prominently features several organizations and institutions in
Baltimore and elsewhere that contributed to the women's liberation movement. They
include:
- Baltimore Women's Liberation: an activist group headquartered in the Waverly
neighborhood. According to one of its members, Jo-Ann Pilardi, the group "formed coalitions
(e.g., with Welfare Rights); engaged in projects (e.g., Red Wagon Day Care Center;
Women's Growth Center); published a newsletter (Cold Day in August); and created the
Speaker's Bureau, for the numerous requests we received, e.g., from the Kiwanis Club,
high schools, community groups" (Pilardi, "Feminism Surges with a Third Wave."). The
group is also notable for being involved in the creation of the Feminist Press, which
was founded in 1970 by Florence Howe and published books and other resources on women
in literature.
- The 31st St. Bookstore: a feminist bookstore in Baltimore founded in
the early 1970s. In 1986 the store was put up for sale by its owner, and a group of
women banded together to raise the money to purchase it and turn it into a co-op store.
In 1989 Jennie Boyd Bull became the bookstore's manager, and worked there until the
bookstore closed in 1994.
- The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS): a radical student
activist group that was active in the US in the mid to late 1960s. Its relationship
to feminism and the women's liberation movement was complex, as women were both active
in the movement yet felt that they had second-class status within it.
- Women's Union of Baltimore: a feminist organization with strong ties to both socialism and lesbianism,
founded in 1972 and active throughout the 1970s in Baltimore. "Primarily a reading,
discussion, and study group," the group "was also involved with tenants' rights, hospital
protests, picketing of the Exxon fuel company, and advocacy efforts for diversity
at the 1977 International Women's Year Conference" ("Historical Note," Women's Union
of Baltimore Collection).
- Metropolitan Community Church of Baltimore (MCCB): founded in 1972 by Rev. James Huff, the church is "Baltimore's oldest LGBT religious organization,"
and part of a wider MCC movement that was originally founded in Los Angeles in 1968.
The church came into greater public awareness in the early 1980s when Jennie Boyd
Bull became its first openly lesbian pastor.
- The Women's Growth Center (now known
as The Growth Center): a feminist counseling center founded in Baltimore in 1972.
In 1976, with increased funds obtained through the Comprehensive Employment and Training
Act (CETA), the center expanded its services to include educational programs in feminist
therapy and conferences on women's issues. These programs lasted until 1981. The center
changed its name in 2019 "to better reflect the collective's mission to work with
people of all genders" ("Our Story," growthcenterbaltimore.com).
Provenance Information
Provenance and Acquisition Information
MSS2022-10 and MSS2023-03.
Related Collections
Processing Note
This collection was initially donated to Special Collection in 2022 by Shirley Parry.
Subsequent accessions were added by other contributors who were associates of Ms.
Parry in late 2022, early 2023.
When donated in 2022, the materials were rehoused into archival standard housing. This collection was initially inventoried and accessioned by a professional archivist, Laurainne Ojo-Ohikuare. Folders were given original titles corresponding to the materials in the folder. In fall 2023, physical processing was completed as a class processing project for HIST 495/721: Archival Studies for Historians, which was supervised by a professional archivist, Lindsey Loeper. Complete volumes of the journals Women: A Journal of Liberation and Women's Express: A Monthly Feminist Forum were separated and transferred to the Alternative Press Collection (APC) in UMBC Special Collections December 2022. Administrative note was authored by Hannah Jones.
Descriptive Rules Used
Describing Archives: a Content Standard (DACS)
Archives Processing Manual: Description (2015): The processing manual used in Special Collections for all descriptive platforms, including
PastPerfect.
Access & Use
Finding Aids
Finding Aids available.
Access Conditions
The collection is open for research. There are no restricted materials.
Conditions Governing Reproductions and Use
Permission is required for all reproduction requests. Copyright is maintained by the
creators.
Subject Headings
Creators
Parry, Shirley
Atkinson, Joan
Blanchard, Margaret.
Boyd Bull, Jennie, 1945
Brown, Francine
Parry, Shirley C.
Pilardi, Jo-Ann, 1941-
Rich, Adrienne, 1929-2012
Subjects
31st Street Bookstore
Baltimore Women's Liberation
Feminism– Maryland
LGBTQ
Metropolitan Community Church. Baltimore Mission.
Second-wave Feminism
Students for a Democratic Society (U.S.)
The Growth Center: A Feminist Counseling Collective
The Women's Growth Center
Women: A Journal of Liberation
Women's Express: A Monthly Feminist Forum
Women's rights
Women's Union of Baltimore
