Marge NelsonMarge Nelson, born in 1928, has been a community activist since the beginning of the second wave of feminism in the 1960’s. She has been involved in the civil rights movement and anti-war movements. (She was arrested in 1973 and went to jail.) In the 1970’s, she worked as an organizer on two big trials of women who had killed in self defense: Joann Little and Yvonne Wanrow. Both had successful outcomes. A writer, Marge’s work has appeared in many feminist publications of the Second Wave. Marge was one of the first women in this country to create women’s studies (in 1970 at SUNY Buffalo, and 1971 at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH). In 1970-71 she lived and worked with Alice Paul at the National Woman’s Party headquarters in Washington, D.C., lobbying for the Equal Rights Amendment. Paul, who created the era in 1923, was leader of the militant suffragists who had picketed the White House and gone to jail to win the vote. It was one of their purple, gold and white Suffrage flags which Marge donated to The Women's Building. Marge wrote her doctoral dissertation about their movement and continues to speak to college and school classes about them and other issues of women’s history. As one of the founders in 1978 of Options for Women Over Forty, Marge was also one of the founders of The Women’s Building where Options rented a large office for many years. In the early days, Marge was very involved in The Women's Building’s community meetings. Around 1990, she sent out a questionnaire to The Women's Building’s membership requesting suggestions for the muralists. She joined The Women's Building’s History Committee, helped gather the archives (about 36 boxes) and move them to the GLBT Historical Society. With Laura Bock she organized those papers which are now available on-line. Marge continued meeting with the History Committee until 2008. A leader in the older women’s movement, Marge is a founder of OLOC - ¬Old Lesbians Organizing for Change--and continues to be very involved in it. In 2005 the Lesbian community honored Marge with the Pat Bond Award for service. Marge is mother of Carol, Barbara, and Peter Hoekje, and grandmother of Eleanor Brehme and Alexander List. She came out at age 46 with Polly Taylor. Since 2003 she has lived in senior housing on Coleridge Street in SF with Polly and five other Lesbians including her currant sweetie, Tita. An avid gardener, she calls herself an Old Radical Lesbian Feminist. She offers 8-week consciousness raising groups on aging, memory, health, death, and dying for OLOC.
Honored by the children of Marge Nelson |
