Zelda Kingoff Nordlinger interview 1 (2007-07-07)

              Edited transcription of oral history interview with
Zelda K. Nordlinger conducted by Betsy Brinson, July 7, 2007.
This transcript includes some transcriptions by VCU graduate students in Dr. John Kneebone‘s graduate level history class on Oral History, Fall 2007. Ray Bonis, archivist in VCU Libraries‘ Special Collections and Archives department and a member of that class, compiled the various transcripts into one document in March of 2008.
Betsy Brinson, Ph.D., the interviewer, is a public historian with a specialty in oral history. At Virginia Commonwealth University she has been a student, a teacher and a faculty administrator.
Her oral history awards include the Award of Merit from the American Association of State and Local History in 2002 and the Elizabeth B. Mason Project Award in 2004 from the Oral History Association.
Zelda Kingoff Nordlinger (1932-2008), the narrator, was active in the women‘s rights movement in Virginia from about 1969 through the 1990s. She was a founding member of the Richmond chapter of the National Organization for Woman (NOW).
Nordlinger was born in Greenville, South Carolina on January 29, 1932 to Joseph and Alice Heiner Kingoff. Her family moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1947. After graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School, Nordlinger attended Margjorie Webster Jr. College in Washington, D.C., graduated from the Sally Thompkins School of Practical Nursing and earned a Bachelor's of Arts degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1984.
Nordlinger is well-known for her activism on behalf of women. She and a small group of women, including Mary Holt Woolfolk Carlton, co-founded the Richmond Chapter of the National Organization for Women (N.O.W.) in 1969, which was granted a charter in 1973. She was a member of several organizations including the Women's Lobby of Virginia, American Civil Liberties Union, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Virginia League for Planned Parenthood, National Museum for Women in the Arts, Emily's List and the Virginia Foundation for Women. In addition to her work with these organizations, she served on the State Board for N.O.W. (1972-1979), as the Assistant State Coordinator for N.O.W. (1982-83) as well as N.O.W.'s Task Forces on Sex-Role Stereotyping and Rape.
As part of the national "Women's Strike for Equality" day, August 26, 1970, Ms. Nordlinger along with Ms. Carlton and two other women participated in the integration of Thalhimer's Men's Soup Bar in Richmond and Miller and Rhoades. 2
She also lobbied the Virginia General Assembly in behalf of the women's movement for N.O.W. She helped rewrite the state statutes on judiciary evidence for rape trials, which lead Delegate Ralph L. "Bill" Axselle to introduce the first rape reform law. Nordlinger made speeches throughout Richmond and Virginia and was awarded a Founding Foremother certificate by the Richmond N.O.W. chapter in 1983.
Zelda Nordlinger died eight months after the interview was conducted on March 18, 2008 after a long illness.
Her obit from the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
OBIT - NORDLINGER, Zelda Kingoff, died on March 18, 2008 after a long illness. Born to Alice Heiner Kingoff and Joseph Kingoff in Greenville, South Carolina, she moved to Richmond in 1947, where she graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1950. She was preceded in death by her husband, Martin Stanford Nordlinger. Survivors include her four children, Debra Margaret Markel and her husband, Tom Jones, of Powhatan, Samuel Andrew Markel II and his wife, Susan Markel, of Richmond, Joanne Nordlinger and her husband, Daryl Hallock, of Newfield, N.Y., and Sharon Nordlinger and her husband, Adam Burns, of New York, N.Y. She is also survived by seven grandchildren. Ms. Nordlinger co-founded the local chapter of the National Organization of Women in 1971 and served as state coordinator in the early to mid-'70s. She was also active in the National Women's Political Caucus where she worked toward electing women to political offices. Ms. Nordlinger will be remembered for her early and ardent advocacy of women's rights, making innumerable speeches and participating in debates and marches. She graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1995.
The interview was conducted on July 7, 2007 at Nordlinger‘s house in Richmond. A second, shorter, interview was conducted by Brinson on July 20, 2007. 3
Betsy Brinson [BB], Interviewer: Today is July 7th, year 2007 and this is an interview with Zelda Nordlinger. The interview takes place at her home in Richmond, Virginia, and the interviewer is Betsy Brinson. Zelda, give me your full name, date, and place of birth please.
Zelda Nordlinger [ZN], Narrator: I was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1932. My name is Zelda Kingoff Nordlinger.
BB: Thank you for agreeing to talk with me today. This is really kind of fun. I have to be careful I don‘t have too much of a conversation with you about old times and let you do the talking here. What do you know about your family ancestors?
ZN: Oh, I know that my father came from Russia about 1928 and he was brought over by his older brother, who was starting a jewelry business in Danville, Virginia. And his older brother was brought over by his older brother so it was a sequential kind of immigration of the entire family as it went. The younger sister was the last one to come over. All of the brothers decided they would join their brother in the jewelry business, but they all opened a store in a different town along the east coast. So my father had a jewelry store in Greenville, South Carolina.
My mother‘s father and mother came from Germany and they met each other on the boat coming over to this country. They married after they came to New York. My mother had seven sisters and two brothers and they settled in Martinsville, Virginia. And my grandfather on my mother‘s side had a dry goods store and some of the antics of the children in that family have come down to me 4
and they are very, very entertaining, some of them, because the children were more or less free to roam in a small town. Martinsville was a very small town in those days -- everybody knew each other -- so they decided that my grandmother and grandfather were busy at the store all day, so the children had a chance to play with all of the neighbors and all over town at all times.
BB: Were there political events, movements going on that caused both sides of your family to move here?
ZN: I‘m sure there were, there were the pogroms1 in Europe going on in Europe at that time but my father and mother, my grandmother on my mother‘s side and my father, they never talked about it, they never mentioned it, and I never thought to ask them.
BB: So you have Jewish ancestry here in all of this as well?
ZN: Yes, yes.
BB: I wonder why Danville in 1928? Of course, Danville used to be a much bigger place then.
ZN: After coming to New York and getting into the dry goods business, or the rag business, on the streets, you know, peddling, the older brother of the family thought it would be best if he settled in a small town along the east coast and it was always they would pick a town that had a factory in it, usually a fabric factory in it, you know, Danville with the Dan mills and Greenville had the Arrow
1 Pogrom is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.” Historically, the term refers to violent attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in the Russian Empire and in other countries. From United States Holocaust Memorial Museum http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/ 5
shirt factory. So I think there was a plan that they all had that they would take a small town along the east coast.
BB: And I assume that they did not speak English when they arrived here?
ZN: No, they learned, they learned, very quickly. They assimilated very quickly.
BB: Tell me some about your education growing up.
ZN: Well, I grew up in Greenville, of course, and like most children I went to kindergarten and grammar school. My grammar school was a wooden building that had been converted to a school from a factory so it was more or less a building that was built on a large tract of land in the middle of the city but it was only four or five blocks from where I lived, so I used to walk to and from school and it was a very typical grammar school in those days. Teachers were very typical teachers in those days. I remember I was getting into trouble all the time. I was not like the average child that was afraid of authority. I sort of defied authority even in those days and, um -
BB: Why do you think that was?
ZN: I think that was, because, for some reason, I wanted to establish my independence at an early age and I don‘t know why or what motivated it, but that‘s what I did.
BB: Was that a problem for your family or your neighbors or teachers?
ZN: Yes, yes, family, neighbors, and everyone -- I was known as the troublemaker in the neighborhood. I remember one Halloween all the children 6
would go trick or treating, well there was no real ―tricking‖ as it is today, but I did. I would take a cake of soap with me and if somebody didn‘t give me enough candy or if I thought they weren‘t going to give me anything, I would go and write something on their window with my soap. And one place, I remember, a neighbor down the street never gave us anything, so I went to his house and his car was parked in front, so I wrote ―Just married‖ on the front window and the back window, and just as I finished, he was standing behind me. He grabbed me by my pigtails and he said, ―I‘m going to make you wash this car and then I‘m going to take you home to your mother.‖ So, he stood by me while I had to wash. He brought me a pail and a sponge and I had to clean his car, and then I got a little spanking when I went home, too.
BB: At what point though do you think in your growing up, did you start speaking out for principles, for political, social issues that were important to you?
ZN: Oh, pretty much earlier than most children would even begin to think of things. In the fourth grade, I think it was, during the beginning of the second world war, I think that‘s what it was, the teacher had to leave the room for a little while, and she told us all to be quiet and she gave us some paperwork to do. I wasn‘t content to just sit at my desk and do nothing so I got in front of the classroom and I had painted or with a crayon a moustache and a little bang in front of my forehead, and I pretended I was Hitler like I had seen in the newsreels, and I stood in front of the class and I made a garbled kind of ―Achtung‖ speech, you know ―Achtung‖, and I had everybody saluting me in the Hitler salute. When the teacher came in and caught me, she took me straight to 7
the principal‘s office. [The] principal, of course, being a small town everybody knew everybody‘s family and the principal knew my mother, and she called my mother and she said, ―I‘m sending Zelda home.‖ Well, I didn‘t know that she had called my mother, so when she gave me a pink slip and sent me out of the school building she expected me to go home. I didn‘t know that my mother was expecting me, so I went to the city park, and I thought I would just play there until it was time for school to be out and then go home. In the meanwhile, my mother was expecting me and I didn‘t show up, so she got frantic. She called the police and she had the police looking for me. Finally, the police caught me in the city park and took me home where I got a nice big spanking that time.
BB: You were about how old then?
ZN: Fourth grade, about 10.
BB: Who else was in your family while you were growing up?
ZN: I had a brother, a younger brother, and I have a feeling that my feminism, although it wasn‘t recognized, came from the fact that boys in those days were favored in many ways over girls. And one incident I particularly recall was - I had for Christmas been given a beautiful red bicycle. I thought that was the greatest bicycle in the whole world. I had always seen the older children riding their bikes up and down the street and I wanted to have one so much. So finally I had the bicycle and I always looked forward to coming home from school and riding my bicycle. Until one day, I came home from school and I saw my bicycle in the gutter in front of my house, bent, just completely out of shape. It was impossible to ride. I was just horror-stricken. So I ran in the house and I was 8
crying, and there sat my mother on the sofa reading a story to my brother. I said what happened, why was my bicycle… And she looked up very calmly from her book and she said ―Well Zelda,‖ she said ―Sonny, your brother, wanted to try to ride the bicycle, and when I called him in for lunch, he left it in the street and a car ran over it.‖ And I just looked at the two of them and I looked at my brother and he was close to my mother, looking a little frightened, and my mother just patted him on the head and she said, ―Well Zelda, you know boys will be boys.‖ And then she asked me to come sit by her and she continued to read the book as though it were a simple thing, nothing had happened, and here I was thinking the worst thing in the world had happened when that bicycle was destroyed, and my mother had just attributed it to the fact that boys will be boys.
BB: You were the oldest [child] in the family too. Any grandparents who lived with you?
ZN: No, grandmother lived in Danville, Virginia. My father‘s mother had died and that was the only grandparent I had. My grandfather had died on both sides of the family so I only had one grandmother.
BB: And what about your high school years?
ZN: High school years. This was the time that after the first year of high school in Greenville we moved to Richmond, Virginia. By that time, my mother and father were divorced and my mother wanted to move to Richmond because she figured it was close to Danville, Virginia, close enough where the rest of the family lived and Martinsville, Virginia, where some of the family lived, but it was a 9
larger city and she wanted to live here, so we settled in Richmond, Virginia at that time.
BB: And did you have family here or why did you choose Richmond?
ZN: As far as I know, my mother chose Richmond because it was a large city and it would offer opportunities for her children, but it was close enough to the rest of the family.
BB: And as a single mom, at that point, did she go to work or was she able to -
ZN: She did, she worked at Thalhimer‘s Department Store as a saleswoman because she knew about the merchandising business from her own family. She worked there.
BB: And where did you go to school?
ZN: I went to Thomas Jefferson High School in Richmond. And I was overwhelmed by the size of Richmond, and the size of the school, and how many people lived here. I was just a small town girl, so I just seemed to stay pretty much out of trouble. I seemed to have escaped into myself, you know, I was afraid of the enormous place that I was living in, so I more or less retreated.
BB: You graduated what year?
ZN: 1950, I think it was 1950.
BB: 1950. You say you retreated. What did that mean that you…..
ZN: I was no longer the outgoing mischief-seeking little girl that I had been in Greenville.
BB: But, what did you do in your retreat? Did you read or……. 10
ZN: Very much, I read all the time, I loved books, always have loved books, yes.
BB: Are there any from that period that you remember had an influence on you in any way?
ZN: Well, I don‘t remember any particular book that‘s outstanding. I read so many books, a lot of novels, a lot of history books, because I loved history, but I don‘t remember any that were outstanding.
BB: And how did you get to and from school from where you lived?
ZN: I lived on Malvern Avenue in the Malvern Apartments and Thomas Jefferson High School was about eight blocks from there, so I walked.
BB: That was convenient.
ZN: Yeah.
BB: Any activities or special friends or teachers from that period that stay with you?
ZN: I had one teacher that‘s outstanding. She was a very good teacher, but she was the kind of teacher that people were afraid of. Her name was Mrs. Davis I believe, Katie Mae Davis and everybody had warned me about how strict she was. So I was prepared to be afraid of her when I got in her class. And she had a pile of gray hair that she wore in sort of a bun on top of her head, and she was very stern-looking, but I remember standing in line at her desk waiting to ask her a question about something on a paper and the students were waiting behind me and in front of me. By the time I got to her chair, I was standing behind her chair while she was talking to someone else, and I don‘t know why I did this, but I 11
stuck a pencil in the bun of her hair and pulled it up, and it turned out to be a wig, and everyone in the class noticed it and started laughing, but she didn‘t notice, and she kept saying ―What‘s going on here? Why are you all laughing so hard?‖ And nobody gave it away.
BB: What did she teach?
ZN: She taught English, I believe.
BB: What happened? Did she ever discover…..
ZN: Never found out, never found out
BB: Weren‘t you lucky?
ZN: Yeah, I sure was.
BB: You just told me the story about your brother and the bicycle. I wonder, though, if there are any other stories of early awareness on your part about sexism?
ZN: Yes, yes. Sometimes when relatives would get together, the uncles would always ask my brother what he wanted to be when he grew up, but they never asked me, and I would volunteer. Sometimes I would say I wanted to be a doctor, sometimes I said I wanted to be an astronomer. They never seemed to be impressed. They always just passed it off like it was something that was amusing but that was not important to them.
BB: When do you think you first became interested in feminism?
ZN: Well, that was during my first marriage and it was the kind of marriage that shouldn‘t have happened to begin with, and I‘d had two children by that marriage and I stayed in that marriage for 10 years even though by the 12
second year I had realized it was the wrong place to be for me. My husband and I were incompatible, but in those days women were very, very, how do you say, proper, they didn‘t complain.
BB: And this would have been during the fifties?
ZN: Yes, during the fifties. So, after ten years of that marriage, I just really felt as though if I didn‘t get out of it, I would lose my mind. I had to do something. My father by that time had died, and left me some money, besides the fact that I had two female cousins who lived in New York City who were modeling at the time, and I was a very, very short, small person. They were photographic models and at that time the pixie style was in swing. Everybody wanted that small little pixie look, so the agent asked my cousins if they knew anybody that would‘ve fit that description of a small pixie like. ―Yes‖, they said they had a cousin in, in Richmond, Virginia. So here I was stuck in a bad marriage, wanting to get out. I had a little money socked away, but not quite enough to leave the marriage, so I asked my cousins if they wanted me to come up there and they said yes. The agent wanted to see me, and I did, and an agent signed me on as a photographic model. I did Sears Roebuck catalog modeling. I did Lanz dresses, Lanz was the name of the dress. The way that we did it was that I told my husband that I was going to visit my cousins. My agent had lined up work for me, usually, for two days in a row. I would go up to New York about once every month for two days, work from seven in the morning until about six at night, modeling, and then I‘d come back,
BB: On the train or drive or….. ? 13
ZN: On the train and that way in a year‘s time I had enough money, modeling paid well, so I had enough money really to leave that marriage. And I did. I did without any warning beforehand. I had arranged to rent an apartment and I had arranged with my children, of course, I told them and the children were not happy without their father either. He was not the kind of father that paid attention to them. He rather ignored them.
BB: And did you take your children with you?
ZN: Of course. So in a matter of one day while my husband was at work, I moved out and that was the end of that marriage.
BB: And then, tell me how you met Martin [Nordlinger‘s husband, Martin Stanford Nordlinger], your second husband?
ZN: Well, it was not more than about six months after I had left my first husband and my daughter needed a bed. She was sleeping on a cot and there was a large sale going on at Sydnor and Hundley Furniture Company here in Richmond, and it had moved to the Jefferson Hotel in the ballroom. They had just taken the furniture to the Jefferson and it was on sale. It was a hot summer day and I remember going to the Jefferson to buy a bed for my daughter and the salesman was Martin, the guy that waited on me. So I always go around saying ―Well, I went to buy a bed and I got Martin with it.‖ (They both laugh.)
BB: That‘s great so and by Martin you have, two….?
ZN: I have two daughters by Martin.
BB: So you have four children?
ZN: Right. 14
BB: Well what do you think influenced you personally to become active with the women‘s movement?
ZN: Well I remember very clearly the snap that went on in the head the day that it had happened. I was happy in my marriage the second time. I had just had two children. They were only like seventeen months apart. And then I had two, the two older children at the same time who were getting ready to be in their teens. So you can imagine I had two toddlers and two pre-teens and I was practically going out of my mind trying to balance the needs of those four children. And we went to the library about once a week, the children and I. We would all get books and bring them home, and I picked up a book that I had though it looked a little interesting. It was by Betty Friedan.
BB: This must‘ve been about 1963? (Note: This is date of publication but not necessarily date that she read it.)
ZN: Yes. I came home, sat down, and I started reading, and the children were bothering me, and I read, and the children would interrupt the reading and you know how that goes. So finally I had spent most of the day trying to get through the book, and I was just about finished when my husband came home from work. And as usual he came home, he kissed me and he said ―Hi hon‘, what‘s for dinner?‖ Well, after reading Betty Friedan and my husband walking in the door and saying ―Hi hon, what‘s for dinner?‖, I just exploded, and he could never understand why this was going on. It was the most unusual event he had ever experienced in his whole life, but I had read Betty Friedan‘s book and that what was what did it. 15
BB: This was The Feminine Mystique, which of course was a real eye opener… (cross talk)
ZN: The Feminine Mystique. And that turned me completely into, but [Brinson is also speaking], after what with my brother and my background, and the way that I was treated as a child being female, being inferior, all of it came together, at that moment
BB: How did you act on this new awareness?
ZN: Oh, the new awareness. Well, after about a week of simmering, I
called the YWCA and asked them if they knew of anybody that was interested in
the women‘s movement or the feminist movement. No, they said,
no. I said, well, I wonder if you all down there would agree to let me have a
meeting room and let me host a meeting of the people who might be interested
in forming a feminist group, and they said it would be alright. So, I posted the
notice, and a week later five of us got together at the YWCA. And that was the
beginning of the feminist group here in Richmond.
BB: Did you call that a consciousness-raising group?
ZN: Yes
BB: And was that the intent of it at that point to ….. ?
ZN: More or less. We really didn‘t have any specific plans or direction. We wanted to meet each other, explore possibilities, to see. Most of the women were working women, and they had definitely experienced all kinds of discrimination in those days. And then, of course, some of us had 16
joined N.O.W. Some of us hadn‘t, so, you know, that was the very beginning of what we considered the feminist movement in Richmond.
BB: Did this group have another name?
ZN: We called ourselves Women‘s Rights of Richmond, Women‘s
Rights of Richmond, yes.
BB: And, out of that came the organization of the NOW chapter, is that….?
ZN: Yes. According to the bylaws of NOW, you have to have ten dues
paying members to form a chapter. Here we had about five, maybe six members of Women‘s Rights, so we didn‘t have the ten dues-paying members [chuckles], and we called ourselves Women‘s Rights of Richmond.
BB: And how large of a group did that actually become?
ZN: Oh, well, at one time I think we were up to something like eighty or ninety --
BB: My goodness.
ZN: -- paying, dues-paying members, some of ‗em not active, of course, but -
BB: This was Women‘s Rights of Richmond?
ZN: No, this was NOW.
BB: This was NOW.
ZN: NOW, after we had a chapter.
BB: Okay, I‘m moving you forward too quickly here, I‘m still focused on
Women‘s Rights of Richmond. 17
ZN: Oh, I‘ll tell you how the chapter came about. Member number six of
Women‘s Rights came in with us, and she was a go-getter. Her name was
Sandra Grubbs. She was a working woman. She had experienced a recent divorce. And she was an organizer, I‘m talking very efficient. So, she got it together, she sought out the required ten dues-paying members, and she filled in the application to form a chapter here in Richmond. And that‘s how we first began. It was thanks to her, who put it together.
BB: The Women‘s Rights of Richmond, though, was primarily, [a] consciousness-raising and awareness group …?
ZN: Well, so much was happening.
BB: … an advocacy group?
ZN: So much was going on in those years, this was the years when Betty Friedan was calling the marches all the time, when we were integrating soup bars and regular bars, all-male clubs. The whole country was in a turmoil with women‘s rights, with the women‘s movement, everywhere, so there was a great deal going on, and then while we were still Women‘s Rights and hadn‘t quite become N-O-W, Betty Friedan called for some action in every city in the country by feminists on August the 26th of the year. That was the anniversary of the beginning of the suffrage movement, when the suffragettes got their vote. So, here in Richmond we had to plan something to do. We all wanted to do something. And we got together and we decided one likely place to try to integrate would be the all-male soup bar at Thalhimers, and they all looked to me to be the leader of it, and I didn‘t know how to do any of that kind of thing, but I 18
was taking my cues from what I had been reading that was going on all over the country. So I called the American Civil Liberties Union, and I spoke to a man called Larry Selden, whom I‘ve never met, and I told him that we would like to integrate the all-male soup bar at Thalhimers. How should we go about it? And he said, ―Well, I‘ll be standing beside you, all the way.‖ And he, we and he, planned it together. He said let‘s not let the press know what we‘re doing until it happens. So the press started calling about a week beforehand wanting to know what we were going to do, and we kept saying we don‘t know yet but we‘re all going to be on Franklin Street across from Thalhimers if you would like to be there to see what happens. Well, practically every media in the city and the surrounding towns wanted to cover it. So it became a big event, and we had our five members, that‘s all. And the day of August the 26th, at twelve noon, we gathered across the street from Thalhimers, and the press was there, waiting to see what was going to happen. And, bless his soul, Larry Selden was there, standing in the background, not being noticed, but he gave me courage. And, just at twelve noon, when I said we would start, we walked across the street. Five of us! That‘s all. We walked in the door, the stairway up to the all-male soup bar was right near the door. Walked into the all-male soup bar, which at the time seemed to be pretty busy. We looked for seats, stools at the bar, and they were sparse and separated, so we all couldn‘t sit together, but we all found a place to sit, and at that point everybody stopped eating and started watching. The press was there, and they were waiting to see what was going to happen. And, the manager said, in front of the entire group, ―I‘m sorry, ladies are not served here.‖ 19
At which point the press, and the flashbulbs started, questioning him. We were finding places to sit, and before you know it, he said, ―Okay, ladies, we‘ll serve you.‖ Because one of our members, who had never been seen before, came from Atlanta, Georgia, she was visiting friends, she knew the Civil Rights Act by heart, and the part about serving public she had memorized, and she repeated it to the manager. At that point, after she told him what the law was, we were served. And the press went crazy. They were interviewing the men that were sitting there, and some of the men were getting up and rushing out, some of them with napkins still in their belts. They were angry. And, it was a big pandemonium. It was a big scene at the time.
[Audio ends of first section of interview, 35 minutes and 12 seconds ]
[Audio begins of the second section of the interview, 41 minutes and 35 seconds.]
]
ZN: It was a big pandemonium. It was a big scene at the time.
BB: Now, as I recall Thalhimers had a tea room, I think, that was
ZN: Yes
BB: - for women.
ZN: Yes.
BB: I don‘t know if it was just women .. 20
ZN: Oh, it was men and women, yes. … And, Miller and Rhoads also had a tea room, in which the custom was that the tea room was for women, but the front part of the tea room, which was a small little area, was reserved just for men. So, they hadn‘t integrated either.
BB: But I would guess that the idea of the soup counter was to -
ZN: All male.
BB: All male, but it was supposedly working men who needed a quick bite to…
ZN: That‘s right.
BB: … get back to work.
ZN: That‘s right. That was their excuse.
BB: Women …
ZN: Working women didn‘t count.
BB: - had more leisure and
ZN: (laughs) Yes.
BB: And so even after that single action it [Thalhimers] remained open to women?
ZN: Yes, from that point on. And then any other place in town that was reserved just for males, except the Commonwealth Club, I think. That was still all male.
BB: That actually is an unusual role for the ACLU to have had, because as you know, more often than not, the ACLU doesn‘t initiate actions or participate in them - 21
ZN: Right.
BB: - but waits to be contacted about them. But, so Larry was going the extra step for you all - (laughs)
ZN: He was ahead of himself. But he certainly saved my feelings. I was so nervous about that. I was so happy to see him there.
BB: How did your family react?
ZN: React? Well, it‘s been a long time, and most of my family still doesn‘t speak to me.
BB: Not your immediate family?
ZN: Not my immediate family. No, my relatives, they consider me some kind of freak.
BB: Because it wasn‘t just that action but continuing action?
ZN: Oh, the notoriety. They didn‘t like that at all. And, the Danville papers carried what went on in Richmond, you know. And my name was popping up in the papers regularly, so they were very embarrassed.
BB: But, how about your immediate family, children and spouse and …
ZN: Oh, well, my children liked it. I mean, they cheered me on. They thought it was really great, you know. And, my husband, bless his soul, was very liberal and very happy about what was happening, too. He supported every bit of it.
BB: Let‘s move now, and talk about NOW here. And, if you can, just very briefly share some of the origins nationally and in the state. How did NOW come about? National Organization … 22
ZN: for Women. Well, you know, after Betty Friedan had written her book, there seemed to be, a natural result would be for women to organize. And she was in a position where she was more or less looked up to, to be the one to lead the organizing. And she met with some women in Washington, D.C. I think that the Equal Rights Amendment had just been introduced into Congress, and she and handful of early feminists felt very frustrated with what was happening with the Equal Rights Amendment, and they decided to form this chapter of the National Organization for Women, which means men were not excluded. It was just for women but men were part of it, too. These few women knew how to get the organization started in a national sense. They were very capable people, very, very good leaders. And that‘s how we got the National Organization for Women.
BB: Now, you were active both at the state …
ZN: Yes.
BB: - as well as helping to organize the local chapter?
ZN: Right.
BB: Talk first, Zelda, about some of the local activities. Where did the group meet, who were among the early members, what were the issues?
ZN: Well, the early members - it's hard to remember some of the names - I remember Joanna Youngblood was one of the early members, a very capable young business woman. I think she was an artist of some kind, because when we were being called upon to make presentations and speeches in front of all kinds of groups, it was going on constantly, Joanna put together a presentation 23
on film using a small screen, but, for audiences, to show the stereotyping of women.
BB: Now, was this a film, or was this a slide show?
ZN: Slide show. And a speaker was put together so it became a very effective presentation.
BB: And it was a way of using the slides and public speaking to help people understand the issues?
ZN: Yes, yes. I remember the Richmond First club, which was sort of a city fathers group, asked us to speak. And without them knowing what they were doing, they asked us to speak on August the twenty-sixth, which they were going to be surprised. We went to the John Marshall Hotel, where they were meeting that particular day. I was the speaker. Joanna Youngblood was going to show the slide show. After they introduced me, I stood before the audience and I said, "I want you gentlemen to know what day we are celebrating today," and I told them what it was, the August 26 celebration of the women's right to vote. And I said, "If you will please stand by your chairs reverently while I read a list of names of those feminists who went before us." And I had about forty names on a list. With great respect, I read each name, and the men stood there with more or less interest - some looking bored, some looking disgusted, one of them walking out in the middle of it. But it was an effective way of letting them know that we were serious.
BB: And that there were others who had come before you.
ZN: Of course! That this was an ongoing movement. 24
BB: And to them, at this time, I would guess that the right to vote seemed pretty harmless?
ZN: Right.
BB: Did you have special platform issues that you were asking support for in those presentations?
ZN: Oh, the Equal Rights Amendment comes to mind as being the first thing. We had to get it out of Congress. And David Satterfield, and Harry Byrd, Jr., were our representatives here in Richmond, and we lobbied them by mail a great deal. But they were unmovable. I mean, you know, being Virginia gentlemen, they were not going to support the Equal Rights Amendment. Flora Crater was a feminist who really felt so strongly about the Equal Rights Amendment. Well, she lived in Fairfax, so she could have easy access to Congress and she lobbied the Equal Rights Amendment out of Congress. She actually did it.
BB: I didn't come here until 1974, but ERA was here in the legislature, for ratification then.
ZN: It came up year, after year, after year - Virginia was a hold-out, one of the holdout states, yes.
BB: And we never did ratify it. [crosstalk]
ZN: No, never did ratify it.
BB: I remember in some of the ERA discussions, though, that one of the legislators had a young daughter who had studied women's suffrage, and 25
came back and called to her father's attention that Virginia had never ratified the Amendment for women to vote. Do your remember that?
ZN: No, I don't.
BB: That might have been a Congressional member, rather than Virginia, but - the point of all that is, Virginia was very late in actually ratifying women's right to vote, too.
ZN: (laughs) Yes, they were. I think it was 1951 when they rewrote the Virginia constitution.
BB: Talk about some of the tactics and strategies that NOW would use to work on some its issues.
ZN: Most of our tactics were lobbying the General Assembly. And occasionally actually going to Washington to lobby Congress. But it was done in an organized way. I mean when we went to Washington it was a bus load joining other groups from around the country so that we would spend an entire day lobbying all of the Senators and all of the Congressmen, you know. But here in Richmond lobbying was more or less making a concerted effort on the part of a few women.
BB: And was it for other issues besides ERA?
ZN: Oh, yes, oh yes. It was for other issues. I remember the first time any feminist lobbied the General Assembly - and it was me - (laughs) The issue before the committee was the funding of Virginia colleges, universities. And at that time some of our state universities were reserved for all males. The University of Virginia being one of them, and I think William & Mary but I'm not 26
sure. I went to the Virginia General Assembly with a speech for the committee - I think it was Privileges - no, it was the Finance Committee, I think, I'm not sure. [Note: It was Privileges and Elections Committee]. And I wanted them to know that feminists all over America expected there to be no discrimination when state funds were being allotted to universities and women were being discriminated against in these universities. They were not allowed. That this was actually against the law. And at that time, one young freshman, at VCU - very enthusiastic about the women's movement, called me up and asked me if she could go with me to the General Assembly to address this issue. She was very very smart - very clever and very smart. But, obviously, she wasn't up on the women's movement enough. So that after I'd finished addressing the committee, as she and I were walking out of the building, the press followed us. When we got out on the lawn, they started asking us questions. And before I know it, before I knew it, I overheard this young college freshman answer, when they asked her, ―How many women did she represent?‖ and she answered, without hesitation, "Oh, about ten thousand." (chuckles)
BB: (chuckles)
ZN: I said, Okay, I wasn't going to argue with that, but.. The press was pretty impressed with it.
BB: Did they report the "ten thousand"?
ZN: They certainly did. (laughs)
BB: (laughs). I suspect you taught her a few things about… 27
ZN: Well, I was learning myself. I had never lobbied. It was all a learning experience.
BB: How were you received by that committee when you spoke to this issue of higher education funding?
ZN: Suspicion. Some of them thought the women's movement in general, was a joke. And I was considered some part of that joke.
BB: Do you remember the names of any particular legislators from that period that you could share?
ZN: Yes, yes. Philpott. [A.L. Philpott, (1919-1991) served in the Virginia House of Delegates, 1958-1991; served as majority leader and speaker in the house.] Cranwell [C. Richard Cranwell, (1942-member of the house of Delegates, 1972-2001, became chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia ].
And, I'm not sure, but Doug Wilder might have been on it - he and I became good friends. But those are the two outstanding names, Philpott [and] Cranwell, as being very anti-feminist.
BB: . There were some women that were in the legislature at that point too.
ZN: Oh yes.
BB: Dorothy McDiarmid.
Both: Mary Marshall [Marshall, Democrat, House of Delegates, from Northern Virginia, 1966-1969; 1972-1991].
ZN: Dorothy McDiarmid [McDiarmid, Democrat, House of Delegates, from Northern Virginia, 1960-1961; 1964-1969; 1972-1989], yes. Thank heavens 28
for them. If it hadn‘t been for them I think we would have been completely ignored.
BB: We had a woman from Richmond for a while, Eleanor Sheppard?
Where was she on these issues?
ZN: Well, Eleanor Sheppard [Sheppard (1907-1991), Democrat, House of Delegates, 1968-1977, her district included parts of Richmond; she also served as the first woman mayor of Richmond, 1962-1964.] was sympathetic to us. But she didn‘t present a positive image to the general public. She was in a position where she would have been voted out if she had a made a positive stand for the women‘s movement. She was in a very, very delicate position. Although we knew that she would vote on our issues, she couldn‘t really speak out on them.
BB: I remember you in terms of the Richmond Times-Dispatch help wanted ads…
ZN: (laughs)
BB …which at that point were separate female and male ads.
ZN: Male. Male and female, yes, help wanted ads. We as a group, as I think at that time, we still were not a NOW chapter, all agreed that something should be done. And since there were only five, or maybe six of us, who should be doing it but Zelda. I mean the rest of them were working. They were afraid to become too noticed. Their jobs were at risk. They could have lost their jobs. So I was the one that was chosen to stand in front of the Times-Dispatch and News Leader, at that time, building, and hand out brochures about how they were 29
discriminating against females in their help wanted ads. And, on a cold rainy Saturday I did just that. Alone, standing there, handing out these papers. (Laughs).
[At this point in the recording the audio is jumpy, fading in and out, and some of the words are hard to make out or hear. This lasts for about 45 seconds.]
ZN: And the rest of them were in the car driving around the corner to watch me.
BB: (laughs). [audio difficulty]
BB: What kind of reaction did you get from people…? [audio difficulty]
ZN: People looked at it and some of them threw it in the waste basket and some of them kept it and some of them huffed and puffed and told me a few choice words and that was it. But the [Richmond] Times-Dispatch responded by telling us - they sent us a letter and the letter said that they were aware that there was a case being tried in the Philadelphia papers on that particular issue and whatever the outcome of that case was would be they would follow. So that‘s …[unintelligible].
BB: And the Philadelphia case was in favor of eliminating that.
ZN: Right.
BB: So, you were successful. [laughs]
ZN: More or less, more or less.
BB: Well, you talk about how the other women were fearful of their own jobs. 30
ZN: Exactly.
BB: And that makes me ask was Martin [Nordlinger‘s husband, Martin Stanford Nordlinger] ever in danger of your actions?
ZN: No, not really. He was in real estate, rather independent, you know. And, no, it didn‘t seem to interfere with any of his business. Sometimes he would take kidding from people you know. He stood by, he stood by me and he supported me all the way.
BB: Now I know that the national NOW at one point filed employment discrimination, charges against like 300 corporations I think it was. What sort of work around employment issues was there with the local and the state NOW? Because I think I heard you say earlier that you weren‘t that involved with litigation per se.
ZN: No we weren‘t. Individual cases were... I had phone calls from women who felt as though they were being discriminated against and mostly they were. And I would refer them to the National Legal Defense and Education Fund or I would refer them directly to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission in Washington. And in those days it was fairly easy to join a class action case that was already in the works or to initiate a new case.
BB: So you basically functioned as a counseling, referral service.
ZN: That‘s right. One phone call I had that was interesting was from a young man who claimed he was being discriminated against in that he was a young father and both he and his wife worked and while she was working he would take care of the baby, their child, and he said that the discrimination came 31
when he applied to Kelly Girls, which was an employment agency at the time, to be a stenographer which he could do on his free time. And they wouldn‘t hire him as a stenographer. They wouldn‘t send him out on jobs because he was a male.
BB: Wasn‘t Kelly Girls owned by Bob Conklin?
ZN: Yes.
BB: Bob and Phyllis Conklin?
ZN: Yes, yes, friends of mine.
BB: Were both activists...
ZN: Very, very much.
BB: … on many issues. Did you ever have an opportunity to talk about that with them?
ZN: They didn‘t want to talk about it. They side stepped it every time. But we remained friends.
BB: Well, they probably felt they couldn‘t place him.
ZN: Right. Well, they were in an organization too. I mean their company was part of a larger group. So I imagine they had to pretty well follow the company precedents.
BB: I remember you as a big letter writer to the editor of the paper.
ZN: Yes.
BB: On all kinds of feminist issues …
ZN: Yes. 32
BB: I wonder if you would talk about that a little. How easy or how hard was it for you to be published with your letters? What sort of feed back did you get?
ZN: Well, I became irritated with the editorials. Ed Grimsley2 was the editorial editor at the time [Richmond Times-Dispatch] and he would make so many alarming and outrageous accusations about feminists. Oh he hinted at several very obviously ugly terms to describe the feminist movement. So I picked him as my target. Whenever he wrote something in an editorial that looked like something slanted against feminists and I knew it was his influence, if he didn‘t write it, someone that he influenced wrote it. So I would try to counter that in my letters to the editor. Whatever it was that he was saying.
BB: And were you always published?
ZN: No. no.
BB: With what sort of frequency do you think they…
ZN: Well, they sort of had a policy that they never published a letter except every six weeks or so and but I sometimes didn‘t get published even if it was two months. So, I don‘t know what their reasoning was behind it.
BB: Do you think overall Zelda that you had more of your letters published or was it exactly the opposite?
ZN: Maybe 50 percent.
BB: 50 percent. I hope you saved all those in the collection at VCU.
ZN: I think so, yes. Not all of them but I‘m sure some of them are there.
2 James Edward Grimsley, 1927-, was editor of the editorial page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch at this time. 33
BB: That would be a fun sort of monograph just to put together separately.
ZN: Yea, uh huh.
BB: Are you still active with NOW?
ZN: Not now. No. No I‘m not active…I‘m supportive. I‘m still a member of the National Organization for Women.
ZN: Well, I use to go to the national conventions pretty regularly until about 1990. I think about then I slowed down. There were so many capable women by then that were doing the same thing I could do. Really I felt it was time for me to bow out and let the other ones do it.
BB: Well, it is a nice feeling I know just for myself to see younger people coming along…
ZN: Oh yes.
BB: ...working on social justice issues.
ZN: Oh yes.
BB: It means we always don‘t have to be out front.
ZN: Oh it‘s such a relief to know that there are so many thousands of women out there. Oh it makes me so happy.
BB: What about the NOW chapter today? Is it still active locally?
ZN: We have a local chapter and …do believe they meet regularly. But I haven‘t been to a meeting in maybe about eight or nine years.
BB So you don‘t really know what they are working on?
ZN: No. 34
BB: We‘ll keep going a little longer. (Coughs). There is a young graduate student at VCU, who asked me to ask you if you remember the 1977 Women‘s Year Meeting that preceded the Houston International Women‘s Year meeting that was held here out at the A.H. Robbins Center? This would have been to select the delegates. I think the program said there were a number of workshops on feminist issues that were offered. Did you attend? Present a workshop?
ZN: I didn‘t attend that meeting and I don‘t know why because I would have normally attended it. It must have been an unusual event in my private life or my children. I just don‘t know why I couldn‘t be there.
BB: Well she was hoping very much that you had and that you would be willing to come and talk with her (laughs) so…
ZN: Oh, I‘m sorry.
BB: But if it‘s alright she may call you anyway just about issues of the period …?
ZN: Okay.
BB: What was the ―Gospel of Women‘s Liberation‖ ? Is that what you called the speech that NOW put together for the slide show?
ZN: That‘s right.
BB: You took it to the Richmond First Club and then I believe I saw you took it to the Jaycees.
ZN: And the Jaycees and oh my goodness just about every club in Richmond had us speak.
BB: Both women‘s clubs and … 35
Both: Men‘s clubs.
ZN: Yes. The Advertising Club. A lot of business clubs, business organizations. I remember we were invited not to speak to but to investigate the Bell Telephone Company. (Laughs). AT&T Telephone Company. Those were the days when we still had operators who sat at switchboards and they were mostly all females. And I don‘t remember the name of the gentleman, the vice president here in Richmond who invited us. But two of us, Mary Holt Carlton [born 1915, was, along with Nordlinger, a co-founder of the Richmond, Virginia chapter of NOW] who was always at my side and I went to meet with the people at AT&T and tour the building and have the entire operation explained to us. They were bragging and showing off and telling us that, oh, they had a special little pink powder room for their girls with cute little skirts around the tables with little mirrors and they treated their girls in such a beautiful way. And they just wanted to put a good face for—this was during the time when AT&T was being sued on a national level because their hiring practices wouldn‘t allow women to do but certain jobs. And we were finally... he took us in a hallway and opened the door and put his fingers to his lips to be quiet and we saw these girls so-called, being trained at the switchboards except there was one black male being trained and after he closed the door again I think it was Mary Holt Carlton who said ―Is he one of your girls?‖
BB: (laughs). So did you go with an agenda or was it just to make them aware that there were locals activists?
ZN: They invited us. 36
BB: They invited you.
ZN: I think it was their instructions from up high because of this case that was pending so all the local feminists in all the local cities and towns were treated the same way. You know, come and see how good we are.
BB: I wonder with the ERA ratification effort here. there were multiple groups that were involved of course.
ZN: Mm hmm.
BB: There was the Virginia Equal Rights Amendment, ERA Ratification …
ZN: Council.
BB: Council. Were you part of the Council effort?
ZN: I was just part of just about all of them. And you know it was like… at that point I was lobbying at the General Assembly on many issues, feminist issues, and that was one was just part and parcel of it. So I was just part of it.
BB: Do you remember when Jean Marshall Clark and Mary Ann Fowler …
ZN: Yes.
BB: … were arrested.
ZN: Yes. Yes.
BB: They were NOW. They were representing NOW.
ZN: I was supposed to be there that day and couldn‘t. I don‘t remember why. I remember that yes.
BB: What can you remember? 37
ZN: They were not --- they were supposed to be there to speak for an issue [ERA] in front of a committee I believe and they were not given their turn to speak as far as I remember. I don‘t know why. But then they began to speak out of turn. And when that happened that‘s when the guards came in and physically threw them out. Physically took them out of the General Assembly building. And it was in the papers. But I was not there. [ZN story is not entirely correct.]
BB: And there was singing as I recall too by mostly the women who were in the committee room.
ZN: Yes. Right.
BB: So there was total disruption.
ZN: Right. Right.
BB: Have you spoken or stayed in touch with either of them? I‘ve lost touch.
ZN: No, I lost touch. Oh, we‘ve all lost touch. I stay in touch with Flora Crater, who‘s moved to Orange, Virginia. And still publishes the Women Activist, her newsletter, and she is still lobbying the Equal Rights Amendment out of the state. (laughs)
BB: And she has to be how old now about?
ZN: Flora, I think she was only five or ten years older than me so she has to be about 86 or 87. Somewhere in that area.
ZN: Yes. She ran for Lt. Governor, you remember?
BB: Right. 38
ZN: And we had to stand on street corners to get enough petitions to sign to get her on the ballot because she ran as an independent. Yes.
BB: That‘s right I remember that.
ZN: There‘s a great woman
BB: Yes, she is.
ZN: Now there is a great woman. Yes.
BB: How did music play a role in the early women‘s movement?
You know examples like Helen Reddy‘s ―I Am Woman.‖ Or Holly Near.
ZN: Oh yes, that was very important
BB: Some of the other feminist folk singers.
ZN: Oh yes, that was all very important. As an inspiration and as a conscious raiser. I think it was very important. I don‘t know what else to say.
BB: Did you have any favorite performers of your own?
ZN: Not really. I‘m not really a popular music aficionado. I like classical music more or less.
BB: And I wanted to ask you to think [talk] about some of the early feminist newsletters and magazines. You mentioned the Betty Friedan‘s The Feminine Mystique.
ZN; I have a collection of books I‘ve given to the Virginia State Library and I still have another collection of books waiting to be given when I die.
ZN: So I‘ve read just about every feminist book that‘s been written. Susan Brown Miller‘s books, and Gloria Steinem‘s books, Betty Friedan‘s books, and, all the other writers, all the other feminist writers. Yes. 39
BB: And what about magazines and …
ZN: Yes.
BB: Feminist newsletters.
ZN: Yes. I subscribed to the Women’s Review of Books. That came out of Wellesley and The Spokeswoman which I don‘t think is being sent anymore but I also sent a free subscription, a gift subscription of The Spokeswoman to Ed Grimsley. (Laughs).
BB: Oh did you really?
ZN: I thought maybe it would help him. But I think it only angered him.
BB: Did you ever hear from him at all…
ZN: No, no.
BB: … that he was receiving it?
Both: (laughing).
BB: That‘s great.. What about Ms. Magazine?.
ZN: Yes, I subscribed to that. Yes. I don‘t now. But I did.
BB: And then it seems there were so many little –
ZN: Off Our Backs. That was another one.
BB: And that one had a more lesbian …
ZN: Yes.
BB: ...perspective on the women‘s movement.
ZN: That‘s right it did. 40
BB: Talk with me about that. You know the woman‘s movement went through so many cycles of trying to appreciate every kind of woman. What do you remember in Richmond specifically about the lesbian feminists?
ZN: The lesbian feminists in Richmond were accepted, guardedly, in NOW. I was one of them that wanted to bring more of them in, you know, but I think they didn‘t feel comfortable because there were some members who didn‘t feel comfortable with them. But there was not much we can do about that.
BB: But certainly Beth Marschak…
ZN: Beth Marschak was a wonderful spark plug, She had access to a mimeograph machine that helped us so much when we first started you know. She would get circulars out all the time, bless her soul.
BB: And she stayed very activist and --
ZN: Yes. She was one of the few women in Richmond who actually stayed with the National Women‘s Political Caucus and the Virginia Women‘s Political Caucus. Yes.
BB: I remember there was a feminist book store here in Richmond at one point.
ZN: Yes, I do. Yes. I think Beth Marschak was part of that. She was probably the one that formed it.
BB: And I have this vague recollection of it being on Main Street
ZN: Yes.
BB: … headed out toward Carytown but I‘m not sure that was the …
ZN: I‘m not sure where it was either. 41
BB: … first place. I think it moved around a couple of times.
ZN: But she took her collection of books to all the meetings. Around the state, whenever there were feminist meetings you could bet she would be there with a table and a display of books and they weren‘t all lesbian books. I mean they were feminist books. Yes.
BB: That‘s true. Anything else that you want to add to this interview?
ZN: Well, right now, I‘m not active any more but I read a great deal and I do a lot of introspecting and thinking about what‘s happening in the world today. I just finished reading Francis Fukuyama‘s book about philosophy and history combined and where we‘re headed and part of the title is The Last Man [The End of History and The Last Man, 1992]. I just finished that last night in fact and I thought to myself, Fukuyama is exceptional intellectual and very bright except he lost sight of the place of where women are playing in society today. His conclusion is that men are the only actors in this whole history of the world and I‘m very upset that you know. When I finished the book, he had not made any allowance for the last 20, 30, or 40 years when the women‘s movement had such an impact on what‘s going on in the world. It‘s as though in his mind the women‘s movement never happened. So I‘m very frustrated now about that.
BB: And actually when we talk again I hope, I hope to be able to go back and ask you to reflect on where we‘ve come today and how you see things for women generally in the world today.
ZN: Fine.
BB: Thank you very much. 42
ZN: And thank you, Betsy.
[End of audio of the July 7, 2007 interview with Nordlinger]
Note: There is a second interview that follows this one.