THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Maryann Mahaffey
January 18, 1925 – July 27, 2006
“If you stand for something, then do it. If there is a penalty, then pay it. Otherwise, how will people know you’re really serious?”
Social worker, author, educator, civil rights activist, volunteer and political leader. Served as President of the Detroit City Council (1990-98). Chair of the Coalition for Better Health Care. Chair and one of the founders of the Michigan Statewide Nutrition Commission, helped achieve a Michigan law mandating School Breakfast programs. Filed the precedent-setting lawsuit which established a woman’s right to run for office using her birth name. While in public office, led the fight to open the doors of the Detroit Athletic Club to women and enacted an ordinance explaining and prohibiting sexual harassment of city employees. Co-chair of the Detroit Women in AIDS Project. Instrumental in the founding of the Detroit Sexual Assault Center. Chaired the Michigan delegation to the Non-governmental Organizations section of the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference for Women held in Beijing, 1994-95.
Photo. Maryann Mahaffey in front of the seal of the city in the council chambers at the City County Building, October 10, 1987 (Photo, Patricia Beck, Detroit Free Press).
Photo credit: Grace Hedemann
More About Maryann:
- Obituary, by Dawn Wolfe Gutterman
- The Maryann Mahaffey Movement: Memorializing a Detroit Social Justice Pioneer, Wayne State University, School of Social Work, August 8, 2019.
- Maryann Mahaffey, Michigan Women Forward
- “Passing the Torch,” a documentary produced by Michael Rose Productions, is a behind the scenes look at the role Michigan women played in the Second Wave feminist movement, 2006
- Maryann Mahaffey Papers, Walter P. Reuther Library
- On C-SPAN
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975, pages 293 – 294