I was delighted to learn that my novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage from Thorned Heart Press won a Book of the Month award in the Historic Romance category from I heart Sapphic Books. As I was telling an old friend, I am not used to winning awards, so I was particularly happy about this. It’s true, that I’ve long thought that history is important. In Loving Artemis, I address two important periods of history. The first is the nationwide legalization of same sex marriage in 2015 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The second is the events of the late seventies that led up to this long overdue decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 (which is directly tied to The Respect for Marriage Act). In honor of winning this award, I’m posting a chapter that includes the history from my youth, including the information on the Honorable Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman to run for president of the United States.
Chapter Eighteen
“Write about at least two historical social movements that have changed society, how the changes have influenced your life, and what your hopes are for the future.” Grace sat in the school library reading the assignment that she wrote from Miss Aldrich, her English teacher. She scribbled some words in her notebook. She wrote the word “hippie,” then she started doodling. She wasn’t really thinking about what she was drawing. She came out of her daydream and discovered she had sketched a long-haired hippie. She drew a placard coming from his hand with a peace sign. She filled in some details and gave the hippie a narrow face and a long nose. She drew hair down past his shoulders as she thought about the guy at the shore who ripped her off. He hadn’t really looked like a hippie; he was too strung out. The drawing looked more like a guy she knew, Steve, from homeroom. Grace’s sister was always asking about Steve. She suspected she was interested in dating him and that she would break up with her boyfriend. The last time her sister had asked Grace if Steve was still together with his girlfriend, Grace lied and said “yes.” Just last week, Grace saw Steve in the hallway making out with someone new against the lockers. Even though she could only see part of her face, Grace recognized the girl. She was a sophomore. She had dark roots and long blond hair that flattened behind her into the orange lockers as he ground his pelvis into hers. Grace didn’t have to 179 wonder what they were doing in private if they were making out in the hallway like that. Seeing Steve with a new flavor of the week made Grace feel protective of her little sister, Rosemary, who was the baby. With her big blue eyes, she was the pretty one. Grace had long suspected Rosemary was their mother’s favorite, especially now their mother wanted Grace to become a nun — just because Rosemary already had a boyfriend. Just last night, her mother mentioned it again. Grace wasn’t paying attention, but she did hear her mother say, when you become a nun… Grace tried not to go ballistic, but she ended up raising her voice and saying: “I am not, under any circumstances, ever going to become a nun! Not ever!” Her mother had simply shrugged. When Grace looked at Steve, she saw an operator. Her sister probably saw a guy who was sexy and cool. Absentmindedly, Grace took her pen and drew a circle over the top of the hippie’s head. A halo. This made him look like Jesus: that was probably what her younger sister saw. Grace narrowed her eyes. Her little sister would have to make her own mistakes. Moving her pen back to the right side of her notebook paper, she wrote the words, nuns — religion. Her mother didn’t bother to ask if Grace was dating anyone. It was probably just as well. Grace was definitely not interested in boys, and her crush on Beth was history. She was becoming friendly with Art. The two of them finally bumped into each other after English Lit and now walked together in the hallway regularly. It turned out that they had something in common: Art was on the Honor Roll, too. Before long, they began to share their notes in study hall. Grace told Art that her mother wanted her to become a nun and Art had snickered. Grace returned the snicker. Grace had said that her mother wanted her to be a nun because she didn’t have a boyfriend. Did Art get the hint that Grace wasn’t interested in boys?
There was nothing wrong with nuns — aside from the fact that her mother suggested that she become one. They were just women with high standards. They wanted to be married to Christ. Other men just weren’t good enough. Grace didn’t understand why the church was run by men. Women did most of the work. Women cared for the sick and elderly and raised the children. When she used to go to church more often with her family, she observed it was the women who sewed the altar cloths and baked the Christmas cookies. But men were in charge: the priests, the bishops, the pope. And God. Was God really a He, not a She? Maybe God, if there was a God, was neither. Grace drew a little picture of a nun in the margin of her paper. Then she drew a picture of another nun next to her. In her line drawings of women with wimples and traditional black and white habits, the women looked like penguins standing next to each other. From under their habits, tiny hands protruded from stick wrists. They joined hands. They were marching down the aisle together, these brides. So many of the martyred saints that Grace had learned about were murdered with their special friends, their companions. Grace wondered if they were targeted for being Christians or if they were persecuted for loving each other. Grace wrote down women’s liberation on the next line in the center of her notebook page. There were a lot of jokes about women burning their bras, but Grace never saw any actual images on the television, but she saw news shows with women speaking up about the fact that they earned fifty-nine cents to the dollar that men earned. They didn’t want to be called “girls” and be told to get the coffee. Grace saw the news reports about abortion, which was legal since 1973 and the Supreme Court of the United States came to its landmark Roe v. Wade decision. Grace was fourteen at the time, in eighth grade. In junior high, two of her friends got abortions after Roe v. Wade. She remembered being in church a month before the ruling and hearing the priest talk about how the parishioners were children of God and had a duty to protect the rights of the unborn. In the end, Grace didn’t think that the issue had anything to do with her. She didn’t want to have sex with boys. Her weekend at the shore with Beth confirmed this. After they made it home safely, her mother bought the story that she spent the weekend at Beth’s. Afterwards, Grace tried her best to avoid Beth. Beth sat behind her in English class and sometimes she waited for her after class. Beth said George hadn’t suspected a thing. Then she rolled her eyes and said that he probably just wasn’t paying attention. Grace just shrugged when Beth said this. She really didn’t care. She was relieved they got home safely, but the weekend just made her more adamant that she was never going to have children. What if she had children, and they acted like she did? She shuddered at the thought. Even though she decided she was never having children, she thought women should have control over their own bodies. If the girls she knew who had abortions hadn’t been able to get them legally, they could have been killed going to back-alley abortionists. Five years ago, she was watching the nightly news when Walter Cronkite announced that Shirley Chisholm, an African American congresswoman from New York, was running for President on the Democratic ticket against the incumbent Richard Milhous Nixon. Grace was just thirteen in 1972, but she remembered thinking things would be different. She didn’t think she’d ever run for president, but if Shirley Chisholm could, maybe girls could do anything. Then she heard her mother say, “women weren’t strong enough to be president.” She remembered asking why — “did presidents have to lift heavy things?” Her mother told her to stop being smart. Grace remembered Chisholm opposed to the Vietnam War, was in favor of Civil Rights for Black people and also supported women’s rights. Grace dropped to the next line in the middle of the page and wrote the words racial justice — civil rights. She looked at her list in the middle of the page. On the top line next to the word hippie, she wrote the phrase, anti-war. Then she looked down the rest of the list which read, nuns, religion, women’s liberation, racial justice, civil rights. She started to cross out the lines that read, nuns, religion, but then she reconsidered. Religion was part of everything, even if it was used to keep women in their place. Right before her fifteenth birthday, she heard a woman talking after church about nuns who were in favor of a woman being able to have a legal abortion if she wanted one. Grace heard her talking after the church service in the side room during coffee hour. The other women moved away from the woman who was speaking — as if she were a heretic and as if they could be burned at the stake by association. Grace bit into a deviled egg garnished with paprika and listened to the woman’s every word. She did not back away. But then her mother said it was time to go. Grace looked at her list again. She tried to number the items from top to bottom in order of importance but found that everything was equally important. She didn’t think she could have women’s liberation without racial justice and civil rights. Just last fall in her civics class, she wrote a paper about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. He gave the speech in 1963 when she was five. She must have heard his voice on the television. Maybe that was why it sounded so familiar when the teacher played a recording of him delivering his speech. She could hear freedom in the long cadence of his words. Dr. King talked about men, but she could tell he was talking about women too. She wanted to be free, and she would be. She was determined to have a life different than her mother’s. The promises of democracy were for her also. Grace got up from the table and walked over to the librarian’s desk to ask for The New York Times microfilm index. The librarian was not at her desk which was piled with books amid a few magazines. A copy of The New Yorker had a cartoon character on the cover with a man wearing a long top hat and looking past his long pointy nose through a monocle. Grace gazed across the messy desk down to the wooden drawers behind it. The bottom right drawer was ajar. Grace craned her neck to try to see into it. She wondered if the rumors were true. Was there really a flask? “Can I help you?” asked the librarian. She sidled behind the desk. The chair squeaked as she sat down. Her pale skin looked like parchment and her short white hair was in disarray. A gold and black metal nameplate near the front of the desk read “Ms. Turpin.” “I was looking for The New York Times microfilm for 1972,” Grace said. “It’s not behind my desk,” Ms. Turpin snapped. Grace took a step back. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to invade your space.” “Don’t worry about it. It’s not the first time,” grumbled Ms. Turpin as she peered over the rims of her rectangular silver rimmed bifocals. “The New York Times microfilm reels are over there in the carousel that is standing in the corner — not that it gets used that much. I keep telling the teachers that they need to have a session in the library to teach students how to use the microfilm.” Ms. Turpin shook her head. Grace was one of one of the few students who came into the library to study — rather than hiding from the hallway monitor or killing time until study hall. “I’m looking for information on Shirley Chisholm. Do you remember what month she announced her candidacy?” “It was January 25th, 1972. I still remember her acceptance speech when she said, ‘I am not the political candidate of any political bosses, fat cats, or special interests…I am the candidate of the people of America.’ She talked about leadership that was fresh and open and receptive to the problems of all Americans and the fact that ‘the institutions of this country belong to all who inhabit it.'” “It sounds like you saw the entire speech. Was it on television?” asked Grace. “Maybe. I was in New York when she declared her candidacy. I worked on her campaign. I was part of the Chisholm Trail.” Ms. Turpin’s eyes gleamed. “But I thought you were a school librarian for a long time…?” Grace hadn’t considered the adults who worked at the school had other lives and interests. “I was on sabbatical that year. I picked the perfect year to be off.” Ms. Turpin suddenly came back to the present. She looked from side to side warily, as if checking to see if anyone was close enough to have overheard on this Friday afternoon. Except for the two of them, the library was empty. “That sounds like a very interesting paper you are working on,” said Ms. Turpin. She stood up and started walking toward the corner. She reached the microfilm carousel before Grace did. When she turned around, she held two cartridges. “Here’s The New York Times reels for January 1972.” The librarian handed Grace two small flat boxes about three inches high. On the sides of the boxes were dates in black lettering on a white background. Grace turned the box over. On the other side, the words “The New York Times” were written in bold, black Old English type on an orange background. “Let me know if you need any help,” the librarian said. “We also have the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Christian Science Monitor. A thought occurred to Grace. “Wait a minute. Since you campaigned for her, maybe I could interview you?” The creases on Ms. Turpin’s face folded in on themselves. She looked at Grace from narrowed eyes. Grace looked back at her. Could it be that she was a smoker? Was she an alcoholic? Were the rumors true? Or had she spent too much time in the sun? Maybe it was a combination of all three, thought Grace. “That conversation we had was confidential. Please don’t repeat it to anyone. I keep my personal interests separate from my work. I’m happy to help you find whatever you need.” Grace nodded. She headed over to the microfilm reader. After an hour, she found the article in the Metro section about Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm from New York’s 12th Congressional District announcing her bid for the presidency. She read the article, copying notes on her index cards, putting the citation on the top. Then she saw a sidebar on the highlights of the civil rights movement. She remembered learning about the Emancipation Proclamation when she was in junior high. It was passed in 1862 when President Lincoln was in office. There was a mention of the 1915 Supreme Court ruling (Guinn v. United States) against the grandfather clauses used against black people to deny them the right to vote. She learned about this last year in social studies. She remembered the teacher talking about Rosa Parks starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott by refusing to give up her seat in 1955, but she hadn’t learned that the U.S. Armed Forces weren’t desegregated until 1954. She remembered seeing a film about the integration of Little Rock Central High School after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 1954 ruling that segregated schools were unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. At the time she knew this was important, but she didn’t have the strong feeling that she had now that the rights of all people would open doors for her too. Grace looked down the column and skimmed the paragraph about the Voting Rights Act of 1965, then she read an item about interracial marriage. She didn’t know that it had ever been illegal, and she didn’t know why it had never occurred to her. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia against states prohibiting interracial marriage. Grace read that Mildred Loving, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, residents of Virginia, brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court after they each had been sentenced to a year in prison because they had violated state law by marrying. Grace sat back in her wooden library chair and stopped making notes. She was astounded that this had just happened ten years ago. It was true that most of the families who lived in her neighborhood were white. In her section, there were three black families and one East Indian family. The parents were all married to someone of the same race. But when Grace had gone on an overnight class trip to a ski resort several hours away, she had seen the captain of the football team, who was white, and the head cheerleader, who was black, horsing around in the indoor swimming pool. They were practically making out. Everyone knew they were a couple, but no one said anything about it. As captain of the football team and head cheerleader, they were both royalty in the pecking order of high school. Grace leaned forward and went back to taking notes. Then she sat up and scanned the bottom of the column. In 1968, the same year that Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to congress. By the time Grace left the library and took the late bus home, she had everything she needed. She barely glanced at the boxy yellow school buses going down the drive. Shirley Chisholm was against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. In fact, she voted against any funding for the Defense Department. With Ms. Turpin’s help, Grace had even found information on radical nuns; some had kneel-ins to end the war, and Some of the nuns were pro-choice. The woman in her church, the one the others had turned away from, had been like them. Grace couldn’t wait to write the paper and show it to Art. On the bus home, Grace looked through her articles and read that many of the nuns were encouraged by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which called for them to become more up-to date. Instead of living semi-cloistered traditional convent lives, the nuns were encouraged to live in the world so they could help people. In the process, they formed their own opinions. Many were in a group called Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and they worked for peace and justice. Grace was writing the information on her index card when it occurred to her that these women were like the female Patron Saints. But instead of being persecuted for being Christians by members of other religions, these women ran the risk of being persecuted by their own religion for their feminist principles. Since it was a Friday afternoon, the late bus was almost empty. Grace sat by herself in the middle section. Her head was filled with the connections between Civil Rights and peace and justice and feminism. Words rushed through her mind. Ever since her acid trip, she swore her creativity had gone up a notch, so secretly she wanted to go on another trip. Who wouldn’t after talking to Saint Anne? It was too bad Beth had said that George wouldn’t give her any more tabs of acid because Beth had a bad trip that night. She had told Grace that she spent the evening of the party anxious and sweating and curled into a fetal position in her bedroom with George “calming her down.” After their trip to the beach, Grace realized that Beth only cared about herself and that she had to stay away from Grace to protect herself. Finally, Grace tracked down Art so she could show her the paper. She trembled in the pit of her stomach when she saw Art sitting by herself. “It’s brilliant,” said Art. She sat across from Grace in study hall. Art handed the essay back to Grace as she said, “You know that Miss Aldrich is going to love it. She’s always going on about how war is barbaric and how girls are just as smart as boys.” Grace stared into Art’s brown eyes several seconds too long. Art looked away. Grace blushed and looked down at the table. Art almost always looked sad. Her eyes turned down at the edges and they were always red as if she had been smoking pot or crying. But now Art’s eyes were shining. “There’s just one thing.” said Art. “Oh, never mind…” Her voice trailed off as she looked down at the table. “What is it?” Grace prodded. “Tell me.” They were speaking in hushed tones, so they didn’t disturb the others. Study hall was held in the cafeteria. Light filtered in from a bank of tall windows on the far side. They sat across from each other at a long table near the back of the room. The nearest students were out of earshot. Art lowered her voice. “There’s something that you left out.” “What?” Grace really did want to know. She wanted to make her essay as good as it could be. “Gay rights,” said Art. “You mention women’s liberation, civil rights, and anti-war stuff, but you don’t mention anything about gay rights. And there is stuff going on out there — in California, Florida, and New York, too. I heard it on the news.” Grace looked at Art for a minute and nodded. Had she really kissed Art the night she first met her at Beth’s party? She couldn’t bring herself to ask Art. If it had happened, Art was entirely unselfconscious about it. “I hear what you’re saying,” Grace replied. And she did.
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Janet Mason, author 