THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Sallie Bingham

January 22, 1937 – August 6, 2025

“After reading Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and experiencing an unexpurgated version of life in the South, I knew that the source of my unease was common to many women. After a hard family fight over selling newspapers bought by my grandfather, I used a quarter of my proceeds to start the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which makes small grants to women artists in that state who are feminists working for social change. It was, and is, a source of continual delight and satisfaction, professionally administered, with a board that reflects the diversity that may yet save the South.”

Author, playwright, poet, teacher and philanthropist. Founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, dedicated to fostering feminist expression in the arts and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University.