Bettina Aptheker

North Carolina · born or raisedBorn 1944

American political activist, feminist, professor and author

Born in Fort Bragg

author

In the libraries

Open Library "The most dangerous communist in the United States" · 2015 View library record ↗ Open Library Citizen of the World · 2019 View library record ↗ Open Library Communists in Closets · 2022 View library record ↗ Open Library Intimate Politics · 2006 View library record ↗ Open Library Red diapers · 1998 View library record ↗ Open Library The morning breaks · 1975 View library record ↗

Read Bettina Aptheker

Communists in Closets 2022 Find a copy The morning breaks 1975 Find a copy Red diapers 1998 Find a copy "The most dangerous communist in the United States" 2015 Find a copy Intimate Politics 2006 Find a copy Citizen of the World 2019 Find a copy

Recorded without a firm citation

Kept here, labelled, rather than mixed in above.

It was my experience in the Angela Davis trial that propelled me into a study of Afro-American women's history and, ultimately, into women's studies.

History does not repeat itself, but our reading of history shapes our perception of the world and our vision of how to change it. With the collective rendering of woman's legacy still to come, we will reckon a course that transforms our reading of the human experience and allows us to navigate through hitherto unknown waters. (p 151)

The formation of a lesbian (and gay) identity, divested of Freudian origin, is in process. (p 119)

We have to stop thinking in oppositional categories. We have to stop thinking that one line is "correct" and that others must be "won over" to it, while those who disagree are "defeated." (p 252)

The desert is a metaphor. For how long women have endured. Like creosote. Waiting for the rains. We are the rains. (p 254)

I was very young, just 20, in 1964. A lot of people were speaking on top of the car, [including] Mario Savio and Art Goldberg, who later became an attorney. They were almost all men, and I thought I might have something to say and that a woman ought to get up there and say something. Later on, the other person who spoke on top of the car was Jackie Goldberg, who is wonderful and later became one of the most important state legislators. Later, when we were surrounded by the police and it looked like they were going to break us up, a woman lawyer spoke on the top of the car. I didn’t have any feminist consciousness, it was just a feeling. I had a great time speaking on top of the car. The crowd was marvelous, it was at night, the lights of the cameras were blinding me, so I couldn’t see, but I could hear them and feel them. I quoted Frederick Douglass, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” The crowd roared back.

(What are your thoughts on American Jewish engagement in politics now?) BA: We are a very small minority in the population. We have had over decades of very significant influence and [engagement] in progressive politics. A very disproportionate number of white students that went south are Jewish. Michael Schwerner [a Congress of Racial Equality social worker], and Andrew Goodman [a civil rights activist killed by the Ku Klux Klan] were Jewish, from New York. That was not unusual. [These numbers] are very disproportionate in relation to our numbers in the population. The Reform Rabbis that I have encountered were very much involved in the Civil Rights Movement. There is this historic connection between black and Jewish activists in the 30s and 40s. What I see happening today, [Jews] are still very progressive on domestic issues. [Jews] still generally vote Democratic. [There was an] overwhelming vote for Obama and for Hillary from the Jews. Some of the students that come to me who are pro-Palestine – I say… don’t demonize Israelis and don’t demonize the Jewish people.

I think many girls and women experience this split of appearing totally together and on top of things but are internally a total mess. I’m an incest survivor, I’m dealing with sexual harassment, I have huge issues with low self-esteem, worthlessness, [and] suicidal tendencies.

(What do you wish you could tell yourself at the time? Girls your age now?) BA: I wish that I could have taken a class like what I teach. I wish feminist studies and women’s studies classes were offered [when I was in college]. [At my age,] You knew how you felt but you didn’t know what to do about it. I knew I was a lesbian [but] I didn’t have the language for it. There were lesbians in the Communist party, [but] the party was very homophobic. Some of [the lesbians] were living together openly but never talking about it. It was don’t ask, don’t tell.