THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Byllye Avery
“I refuse to give up on people. We have a lot of work to do in learning how to listen to each other and learn how to be there for each other, put our things to the side and really just listen so somehow, we can become united.”
Educator, mentor, reproductive rights activist. National Black Women’s Health Project, the first national organization to specialize in Black women’s reproductive health issues.
Interviewed by Judy Waxman, Oral Historian, April 2025
Photo. Byllye Avery
More About Byllye:
- The Byllye Avery Sexual and Reproductive Justice Endowed Professorship
- The Byllye Avery Society
- Ms. Foundation in conversation with activist Byllye Avery
- Byllye Avery Interview From “Makers: Women Who Make America”
- Life Story: Byllye Avery, Women & the American Story
- Three Days That Changed the Thinking About Black Women’s Health, The New York Times, November 2023
- Byllye Avery papers. at the Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History, Smith College
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Wikipedia page
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975, pages 23-24