THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Dana Densmore
“We Were Female Liberation.”
Scholar, teacher, theorist and publisher. Worked at MIT as a computer scientist designing the onboard computer for Apollo in the 1960’s. Co-founded with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, the journal No More Fun and Games, 1971. Co-founder of Ja Shin Do, a school of feminist martial arts, 1974. Organized the first continental conference for teachers of women’s martial arts and self-defense, 1975. Editor and publisher of the magazine Black Belt Woman: The Magazine for Women in the Martial Arts and Self Defense, 1975 – 1976. Officer of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press in 1972. Founded the Green Lion Press.
Interviewed by Judy Waxman, May 2022
More About Dana:
- The Green Lion official website
- Archives
- Anne M Valk, “Firebrand Feminism: The Radical Lives of Ti-Grace Atkinson, Kathie Sarachild, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, and Dana Densmore,” Journal of American History, Volume 107, Issue 2, September 2020, Pages 545–546
- “A Year of Living Dangerously,” by Dana Densmore: 1968
- Independence from the Sexual Revolution, by Dana Densmore, 1973
- No More Fun and Games
- History of Ja Shin Do
- Cell 16 on wikipedia
- Cited in Paul D. Buchanan’s, Radical Feminists, A Guide to an American Subculture pages 114 – 116
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975, page 116