ALMS Conference 2011, "Lesbian Activists and Feminists Talk about their T-Shirt Quilt", Mina Meyer and Sharon Raphael, 2011/05/12
Meyer: Hi, I’m Mina, and this is Sharon.
Raphael: Hi.
[Laughter]
Meyer: We actually have our 40th anniversary this August, and it’s one of activism. And these blocks that make up this quilt represent a good part of that 40 years of activism. But I’d like to tell you a little bit about how this came into being. The–you know, everybody collects something. Some people collect owls, some people collect all sorts of different kinds of trivia. And one of the things that we did is, we saved our T-shirts. We like to save things, and T-shirts is one of the things we saved. And a few years ago, my friend Shoshanna Weston, who’s a–the photographer who took the pictures of our wedding when we got married here a few years ago, when we Californians could get married. She’s the daughter and granddaughter of lesbians. She came over to help me go through stuff, because we just had accumulated too much stuff, as so many of us do at this age. And we came upon the T-shirts, and there were just too many of them. My drawers were filled with T-shirts, as were Sharon’s, and I just hated to let go of them, and didn’t know what to do with all of them, and an awful lot of them either were worn out or didn’t fit–didn’t fit anymore, had gotten too small. And she said, “Well why don’t you make a quilt out of them?”, and I had never heard of a T-shirt quilt at that point. And she said, “Yeah, there’s a–you can have a T-shirt quilt.” And I said, “Well who does these things?” And she said, “Well there’s people around that do them.” And I said, “Well, I’ll have to find one.” Because, you know, I certainly couldn’t do it. And she said, “Okay, well why don’t we go through them, and find out the ones you’d like to see in one.” So we got a big plastic garbage bag, and we started putting the ones that we liked saved and felt worthy of being in a quilt. And that grew into, I think two huge garbage bags full of T-shirts that we wanted to wash and save. And that went into the garage and it sat there. And I have a neighbor named Edie Harbor, who’s here with us today, and she happens to be a quiltmaker. And at the time she was still working at a job. And every so often I’d go across the street and I’d say, “Edie, are you interested in making me a quilt?” And she’d say, “Well, yea, but I don’t have time.” So that kind of went on for a few years. And finally one day, Edie, who I have to tell you is straight, said, “Okay, I’ve retired, I’ve got time.” And so that became–that ended up making this quilt. And it was quite an adventure, because every so often Edie would say, “Well what does this mean, and what does that mean? And I don’t understand that.” So there was an education.
Raphael: She wasn’t sure about the dykes from Hell. Dykes from–
Meyer: What does dykes from hell mean? Why, why–
Raphael: Should I be involved with this?
Meyer: And so there was quite an education going on. Although we’d been neighbors now for 30 years, and you know, we’re friends, but she didn’t know about a lot of this stuff. And so that was nice. So Edie made us this beautiful quilt. And, we decided which blocks would go into it, and kind of where they would go, in the–on this. But she picked out all of the borders, and also, you didn’t get to see the back [Meyer lifts quilt] which is all pink triangles.
[applause]
Meyer: Which is pretty fabulous, and so that’s a very nice, a very nice thing. And that’s pretty much about the quilt as a whole. And if you’re interested in getting your own quilt made, I have some of Edie’s cards here and some brochures. And she is here with us today, if you have any questions for her after. And we did want to tell you about some of the specific things of blocks in the quilt. And I wanted to talk about historically, because this is, this is a quilt that we lived. We started not exactly in the exact order, but pretty much.
Meyer: The top, the powder blue up there, that’s Sisterhood Bookstore on the top. And I worked there. I worked at Sisterhood Bookstore for 16 years, part-time, from 1979 to 1995. And those were just the heydey of feminist bookstore working, and, and it was just a most glorious time to be working at a feminist women’s bookstore. I cannot tell you the fabulous time I had as a bookstore worker, and it was just, it was wonderful. I had the honor of being able to give the appropriate books to teenagers who were needing to come out and getting them the right books to read. And young women coming out, and women of all ages who wanted to read about feminism and all of the other things that we were doing through those years. And as well as being able to let people know where things were happening, and what was going on in the community. And it was really as much a community center as it was a place to buy a book. So it was a really wonderful place to be. So that represented that part of my life. And the next block that I wanted to talk about, also on the top, was two over from that. Very light. It’s actually a lavender color. The second one, the second one from the end is the West Coast Old Lesbian Conference and Celebration that took place in April of ‘87, and I was the conference coordinator for that, and that was–
Raphael: We were in our 40s.
Meyer: We were in our 40s. We were too young to attend.
[laughter]
Meyer: You had to be over 60. And it was, it was fabulous. Tank remembers, yes. It was wonderful. It was the first. It was the forerunner of OLOC. It was two conferences before OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change) was invented. But the women, all the women who became OLOC were there, and that was the very beginnings. And it was an extraordinary conference. And every old lesbian was there, and it was wonderful. Then there was the March on Washington in 1993, and there on the 2nd tier right there. And Sharon and I went to Washington, and we marched. And of course, with kudos to Cleve Jones, who you’ll be hearing from next. We saw the AIDS quilt in its fullest. It was laid out there on the mall. The entire AIDS quilt was there. And we marched. And it was–I don’t know how many of you were also there, in ‘93, but it was an extraordinary experience to be there, to see the AIDS quilt in its entirety, and to experience everyone and to walk through the streets of Washington, and run into people you knew, and to hear the wonderful speeches that were on stage. And it was quite amazing. And let me let Sharon talk for a while.
Raphael: Okay, well the next block that I’m supposed to talk about is the one right up here that says GLBSU. Because I was involved in–that’s the Cal State University Dominguez Hills where I taught for 40 years. That was the student union that I organized in the early 70s, and we finally–we were very small for many years. Now we’re much bigger, and now we’re online, and we’re on Facebook, and we’re all over the globe. But I remember we took this to the Long Beach Pride Parade, back in the–probably the late 70s. So that was a high for me, to see my students marching with their signs. I don’t know why it doesn’t say Dominguez Hills, but I do know that–
Meyer: I think it said it on the back.
Raphael: Oh, on the back of the T-shirt. Okay. So, and Mina wanted me to talk about the Jewish Feminists Conference, that’s over there on the one, two, three, four down, on the first line in black and pink. I remember nothing about that conference, but what I do remember–
[laughter]
Meyer: We attended.
Raphael: Mina says it’s the only one they ever had in Los Angeles, but I do remember the women, who were Jewish feminists, in Los Angeles, and how I loved working with them, and especially when we worked on the–in the organization called Jews Against Briggs, when we were fighting the Briggs initiative, where they were trying to get rid of schoolteachers. And of course, being a teacher, that affected me on a personal level. And then if you look right over to the next block over where it says Clause 28, we picked that T-shirt up when we went to England, and they were doing the same thing over there, fighting the Briggs Initiative. And not the Briggs initiative. They had their own–
Meyer: Clause 28.
Raphael: Clause 28, which was to get rid of gay schoolteachers. And that passed. However, it was never implemented. So they passed it by vote and then it was overturned, and never implemented politically. I don’t remember all the details, but I know it wasn’t implemented. And that’s because, they were doing the same–we had friends over there in the movement, and we were connecting with them, so that was, you know a highlight. And then up on the very top left, it says AIDS-THON–it’s actually was a bike-a-thon. And that represents this organization we were involved in, in the very early years, in the 80s. In the early ‘80s–’83, ‘84. It was the AIDS Hospice--well, the original name was the AIDS Hospice Committee, which became the AIDS Healthcare Foundation later on. And it was a fundraiser. I remember that T-shirt was a, was a fundraiser. I think it says fundraiser on it, that’s how I know. And for, for our AIDS Hospice program, which was–we had about five hospices in LA in the early days, when we were so frightened that, you know, persons with AIDS, particularly the gay men who were getting it in the early days, would be taken care of and have, you know quality care. And, so that, you know, represents kind of the earlier days of the AIDS movement, that so many lesbians became involved in, rightly or wrongly. There’d been some criticism that it, you know, took away from our own movement. But we were there for the men. Did you talk about OLOC? No you didn’t.
Meyer: I did.
Raphael: Oh, okay. The second one down from the bike-a-thon is an organization both of us are very involved in, Old Lesbians Organizing for Change. And, it’s a group that fights ageism and lesbophobia, inter and if you put the two together, we try to make old lesbians more visible in the movement, and also just in the world at large. And it’s just a wonderful organization, because we network with other women over the age of 60. Who are lesbian-identified. And we’re not afraid of owning the world old. We’ve turned it around. Other movements have turned words around. Like the queer movement turned the word queer around in a–it used to be considered, you know, negative, and now it’s a positive. Although I have problems with the word queer, but I’m just using it as an analogy. And we’ve turned the word old around. And we’ve tried to put the lesbian in the forefront of both words together. And some people, you know, we have this problem with people who–with women who don’t–they don’t like either word.
[laughter]
Raphael: But at–especially at–you know, old ones, in their 70s and 80s. Well, we’re both 70, but–
Meyer: 71
Raphael: 71, yeah. But at this point, what we’d like to do is involve you, because you know, a lot of these, we don’t know what they signify exactly. I do know the “Worn Out” one, I could tell you that one is, I think, it’s sort of a guess, a hunch–at Sisterhood Bookstore, they used to have this picture of–that I think became a T-shirt, that we don’t have–of these older black women, on a bus. Riding on a bus, coming home from working as maids, you know, for white households. And then somehow, I don’t know how it got turned. I mean they were worn out, and that’s what–but I could be wrong, but that’s my interpretation of what I think it means. So I think that represents kind of–well, it’s really more feminism than lesbianism, but since both are so important to us, we just put on here what we felt represented us. So now I’d like to know what represents you on there, and what you remember, or what you think, or what you just know. Some of you are young, a lot younger–
Meyer: Or if you have questions.
Raphael: Or questions, yeah
Meyer: And also, Edie is over there. The quiltmaker. She can answer questions too.
[applause]
Meyer: Give her a hand. It’s a beautiful quilt, isn’t it.
[caption: Archives, Libraries, Museums, and Special Collections 2011 International LGBT Conference May 12-1, PluMeyerer Park, West Hollywood Hosted By: June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives In Association With City of West Hollywood UCLA Center for the Study of Women, UCLA Library, One Archives INFO: MazerLesbianArchives.org]
[END OF VIDEO]
Quilt talk by Mina Kay Meyer and Sharon Raphael from the ALMS conference that the Mazer Lesbian Archives hosted in 2011.
Mina Meyer and Sharon Raphael take us on a special tour from the seventies to the turn of this past century with a quilt they had made using the T-shirts from their lives. In their talk and represented by the quilt, these two Lesbian activists touch on the Women's Movement, Gay and Lesbian Rights, and the emergence of HIV and AIDS.
Mina and Sharon are long time lesbian and feminist activists who marched in the first pride parades in Los Angeles!
The June L Mazer Archives in West Hollywood is dedicated to preserving the lives of Lesbians everywhere!
Click here to open a PDF transcript.
Interviewee: Mina Meyer
Interviewee: Sharon Raphael
Interviewer: None
Transcriber: Davita S.
Transcriber: Dave P.
Formatter: Serena R.
Recording Date: 2011
Release Date: January 20, 2014
Location: West Hollywood, California
Interview Length: 00:17:34