THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Chude Pam Allen

“A movement is not a bunch of individuals doing individual work. A movement is people working together and not only supporting each other, but building together.”

Author, Activist, Educator. An early organizer of the Women’s Liberation Movement, first in New York City and then in San Francisco, where she taught anti-racism workshops for women’s liberation groups and the YWCA. Author of Free Space, A Perspective on the Small Group in Women’s Liberation; Co-authored the book Reluctant Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in the United States and wrote the chapter on  “Woman Suffrage: Feminism and White Supremacy.” In 1977 she became editor of Union WAGE, the newspaper of Union Women’s Alliance to Gain Equality. She wrote Jean Maddox: Labor Heroine and co-edited ORGANIZE! A Working Woman’s Handbook and Woman Controlled Conception. A member of the Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement.  

Interviewed by Judy Waxman, December 2021

Photo. From the movie, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, directed by Mary Dore and co-produced by Nancy Kennedy.