Florynce kennedy biography 1965

American lawyer, feminist, and activist (1916–2000)

Florynce Rae Kennedy (February 11, 1916 – December 21, 2000) was an American lawyer, radical feminist, civil rights advocate, lecturer, and activist.

Early life

Kennedy was born in Kansas City, Missouri, to Wiley Kennedy and Zella Rae Jackman Kennedy,^[1] an African-American family. Her father Wiley Kennedy was a Pullman porter, and later had a taxi business. The second of her parents' five daughters, she had a happy childhood, full of support from her parents, despite experiencing poverty in the Great Depression and racism in her mostly white neighborhood.^[2] Kennedy remembered a time when her father had to be armed with a shotgun in order to ward off the strong neighborhood Ku Klux Klan presence that was trying to drive her family out.^[3] She later commented: "My parents gave us a fantastic sense of security and worth. By the time the bigots got around to telling us t