1970s Lesbian Grand Jury Resister Jill Raymond; & LaVelle Ridley on Academia and Black Trans Women

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Published: 19 July 2021

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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.

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.

Ohio Black Pride 4 (Pt 2) & 1970s Lesbian/Gay Political Prisoners (Pt 1)

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Published: 05 July 2021

Listen to Part 2 of our interview about the Ohio Black Pride 4 produced by Black Trans Media for OUTFM with Wriply Bennet, a Black Trans Woman artist, organizer, and one of the Ohio Black Pride 4; a group of 4 Black Queer and Trans people who were arrested at Columbus (Ohio) Pride in 2017 for blocking the march to address racism and transphobia. In Part 1 Wriply spoke with producer Sasha Alexander about the tension within the community that led up to Pride, including the violence against Black people like Philando Castile. a young cis Black man killed by the police, which in part sparked the action she and others took at Pride that year. Here in Part 2, Wriply talks more about her arrest, the case, and what it was like that day at Pride being criminalized and arrested as a Black Trans Woman. We discuss what she learned and her vision for the future of Pride and beyond. 

                                                 Author Josephine Donovan

1970s Lesbian/Gay Political Prisoners (Pt 1)​

In another episode of our Queerly Defiant series, Out-FM producers Naomi Brussel and Bob Lederer interviewed Professor Josephine Donovan, author of the book The Lexington Six, about two major legal cases in the 1970s that set the standard for lesbian and gay resistance to U.S. government abuse of the grand jury system as part of the FBI’s attempt to find and imprison lesbian fighters who militantly opposed the U.S. war on the people of Indochina. Those cases targeted two hubs of progressive lesbian-feminism at that time. 7 lesbians and a gay man in Lexington, KY and New Haven, CT refused to testify and served jail time ranging from one month to 15 months. Their cases became a cause celebre in the lesbian-feminist community nationwide, with support committees and projects forming in various locations. In this segment we will draw out lessons for queers – and all progressive people – in opposing repression today.

This is Part 1 of a two-part series on lesbian/gay political prisoners in the 1970s. For Part 2, click here.