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Aired on Tues., July 20, 2021
1970s Lesbian Grand Jury Resister Jill Raymond, the Lexington 6 & their support network
On July 20, Out-FM co-producers Naomi Brussel and Bob Lederer brought you another installment of our Queerly Defiant series, commemorating key moments of LGBTQ courage in the face of U.S. government repression. We will present Part 2 of a two-part series about two related legal cases in 1975-76 that set the standard for lesbian and gay resistance to U.S. government abuse of the grand jury system. It was part of the FBI’s effort to track down and punish two lesbian fighters who militantly opposed the U.S. war on the people of Vietnam and Indochina. Those cases became known as the Lexington Six - five lesbians and a gay man in Lexington, Kentucky - and the New Haven Two - two lesbians in New Haven, Connecticut, who were subpoenaed – in other words, ordered to testify before – federal grand juries in those cities. All 8 were young white progressives who refused to testify and served various amounts of jail time. In Part 1 of our series, aired on July 6, we interviewed Josephine Donovan, professor emerita of English at the University of Maine at Orono and author of the definitive history of these cases, a book titled The Lexington Six.
In 1975, the two grand juries were investigating the whereabouts of lesbian activists Susan Saxe and Kathy Power, both federal fugitives on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. Both were being hunted for their involvement in an underground group militantly opposing the war against Vietnam. including with bank robberies to provide funds to the anti-war movement and thefts from armories to sabotage military trains. In 1975-76, the cases of the Lexington 6 and the New Haven 2 became a cause celebre in the lesbian-feminist community nationwide, with support committees and projects forming in various locations. Two progressive national legal groups, the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights, took up the call to denounce grand jury abuse, and women activists organized the Grand Jury Project to provide support.
Jill Raymond of the Lexington 6
Our guests included one of the Lexington 6, lesbian anti-war activist Jill Raymond. After her release from 15 months of incarceration in 1976, Jill worked for the National Prison Project of the ACLU and the National Moratorium on Prison Construction and was active in the DC Area Feminist Alliance. Our second guest was Julie Schwartzberg, a white lesbian who has been active in the fight for LGBTQ rights and social justice for over 40 years. She was a cofounder in 1975 of the Grand Jury Project and the Lesbian and Gay Issues Committee of a municipal workers union.To hear Part 1, in which Bob Lederer interviewed Professor Josephine Donovan, author of the book The Lexington Six, visit https://outfm.org/liberation/
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LaVelle Ridley on Academia and Black Trans Women
“We don’t live in a world that’s hospitable to Black Trans Women. We know this because we are one of the largest groups that get murdered every year because of the specificities of our existence” – LaVelle Ridley
Takoda Patterson of Black Trans Media interviewed guest LaVelle Ridley, a queer black trans woman and PhD candidate in English and Women’s studies at the University of Michigan. In this interview we hear LaVelle’s views on abolition, the role that Black Trans Women play in achieving it, the experience of being a Black Trans Woman in the world of academia and more. Her article "Imagining Otherly: Performing Possible Black Trans Futures in Tangerine" is in 2019, 1 november - Vol. 6, Issue 4. Follow her on instagram at academicfish.