"Known to everyone as Flo, recognizable everywhere in cowboy hat and pink sunglasses" (New York Times para 2). Florynce Kennedy was born in Kansas City, Missouri on February 11, 1916, to Willey and Zella Kennedy. Her father was a Pullman porter and waiter, but later in life owned a taxi business. Flo grew up with five siblings, all of them girls. (Encyclopedia of World Biography). Flo's childhood was relatively uneventful with one incident that she recounts in her autobiography, Color me Flo. Florynce got her determined attitude from her father. When Wiley bought a house in a mainly white neighborhood, he had the strength to fend off the Ku Klux Klan. In her autobiography, Color Me Flo, Kennedy describes the altercation.
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When she confronted him, believing the denial was based on her race and threatening to sue, the dean assured her that race was not the issue, but instead it was her gender. To Kennedy, neither discrimination would stand, and eventually Columbia changed its decision and admitted her. Flo Kennedy was one of eight women in her class, and in 1951 became only the second African- American woman to graduate from Columbia Law School…. opened her own private practice in 1954. (Encyclopedia of World Biography, para …show more content…
Those rare references to Kennedy usually highlight her as one of the few Black women in the women’s movement. Kennedy is a significant exemplar of the exclusion of key Black feminist organizers from most feminist scholarship on the movement: the erasure of her critical role speaks to the ways in which feminist literature has failed to see Black women as progenitors of contemporary feminism. (The Lasting Legacy of Florynce Kennedy, Black Feminist Fighter, para 2) Flo Kennedy deserves recognition as one who had fought against discrimination not solely because she was black, but also as a woman. White women in the movement still had an advantage of being white, and therefore their faces got more attention and recognition, but Flo did not have that as an advantage. She had to fight discrimination from both sides, and truly a more significant and honorable role in the Civil Rights Movement. Flo passed away in 2000.
"As someone who was adamant about not wasting her life, Kennedy had said, "Sweetie, if you're not living on the edge, then you're taking up
When she confronted him, believing the denial was based on her race and threatening to sue, the dean assured her that race was not the issue, but instead it was her gender. To Kennedy, neither discrimination would stand, and eventually Columbia changed its decision and admitted her. Flo Kennedy was one of eight women in her class, and in 1951 became only the second African- American woman to graduate from Columbia Law School…. opened her own private practice in 1954. (Encyclopedia of World Biography, para …show more content…
Those rare references to Kennedy usually highlight her as one of the few Black women in the women’s movement. Kennedy is a significant exemplar of the exclusion of key Black feminist organizers from most feminist scholarship on the movement: the erasure of her critical role speaks to the ways in which feminist literature has failed to see Black women as progenitors of contemporary feminism. (The Lasting Legacy of Florynce Kennedy, Black Feminist Fighter, para 2) Flo Kennedy deserves recognition as one who had fought against discrimination not solely because she was black, but also as a woman. White women in the movement still had an advantage of being white, and therefore their faces got more attention and recognition, but Flo did not have that as an advantage. She had to fight discrimination from both sides, and truly a more significant and honorable role in the Civil Rights Movement. Flo passed away in 2000.
"As someone who was adamant about not wasting her life, Kennedy had said, "Sweetie, if you're not living on the edge, then you're taking up