THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Coletta Reid
“I became an autonomous, independent individual who supported herself and made her own decisions and created a life that was radically different from the life that my mother lived.”
Publisher, editor and writer. D.C. Women’s Liberation Movement. Co-founded the feminist newspaper Off Our Backs, in Washington, D.C. Co-founded The Furies, in Washington, D.C., 1971. Co-founded Diana Press, a lesbian-feminist publishing house and printing press in Baltimore, MD, 1972. Co-founded the Feminist Economic Network and the Women’s Building, in Detroit, MI, 1975.
Interviewed by Judy Waxman, July 2022

Photo. Members of the Furies Collective. L to R: Ginny Berson, Susan Baker (not a Fury), Coletta Reid, Rita Mae Brown, Lee Schwing. 1972 [Photo “JEB (Joan E. Biren)”].
More About Coletta:
- Archives
- Coletta Reid, interviewed by Suzanne Snider, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, 2010-2011
- motive Magazine, the official magazine for the Methodist Student Movement
- Off Our Backs, A Women’s Newsjournal
- The Furies Collective
- Diana Press records (Collection 2135). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library.
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975, pages 378-379