THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Laura X, born Laura Rand Orthwein, Jr.; changed her name in 1962 to Laura Shaw Murra
“I taught women never to take no for an answer, and I taught men to always take no for an answer.”
Laura took her politically symbolic name Laura X, on September 17, 1969, to symbolize her rejection of men’s legal ownership of women and the anonymity of women’s history, which she said was stolen from women and girls. Veteran of the anti-nuke, peace, civil rights, Free Speech, educational reform, anti-war, women’s, anti-anti-Semitism and anti-homophobia movements. Advocate for farm workers, Native Americans, ecology, disability rights, environmental health, and healthy home movements. Founder/director of the Women’s History Research Center, in Berkeley, California, 1968 and Founder/director of the National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape, 1978.
Interviewed by Kathy Rand, VFA Executive VP, March 2021
Photo 1. Photo Credit, Noah Berger. Photo 2. Laura X receives the Missouri Women’s Network’s annual Award on Women’s Equality Day in St. Louis, August 22, 2015.
More About Laura X:
- We need a team of TOOTH FAIRIES for Laura X!
- In 1969, Laura X reintroduced International Women’s Day into the U.S. streets and created and led the early movement to create National Women’s History Month, in March. She began collecting materials in 1964 in the Free Speech Movement. She has been a committed activist since 1960.
- In 1978, Laura X founded and directed the research and campaigns of the National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape after leading the successful campaign to criminalize marital rape in California in 1979, and she served as a consultant coordinator to campaigns that in 1993 successfully eradicated exemptions from prosecution for marital, date and cohabitation rape in the remaining 44 other states.
- Laura X World Institute website dedicated to the Legacy and Learning of Social Justice Movements
- Laura’s Social Movements Archives
- Select articles and clippings
- The Legendary Women’s Rights Activist Who Mailed Obama a Coat Hanger, by Sirin Kale, May 2016
- Opening the Information Vault: Preserving, Digitizing, and Funding the International Women’s History Periodical Archive, Ken Wachsberger, June 16, 2015
- Workers World Party & Women’s Liberation, by Minnie Bruce Pratt, February 24, 2005
- International Collection on Femicidefrom the Leadership of Chris Domingo in Women Against Femicide and Berkeley Clearinghouse on Femicide, with Dr. Diana E.H. Russell, and Laura X, of the National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape 1972-2009
- Activist says law needed to protect wives from rape. The Ithaca Journal, August 5, 1981
- Giving women back their own history. The San Francisco Examiner, May 23, 1979
- Select Veteran Feminists of America events
- Select Television interviews on Marital and Date Rape
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America, pages 501-502
