040174 Black feminist gets it all together

By CARMEL MACHIONNI
Women's Editor

Joanne Brad, a black woman in her forties, is one of the feminists getting it all together these days in the Women's Studies Program at Sarah Lawrence College.

She holds a fellowship for Women in Community Activities, part of the Women's Studies Program funded by a three-year grant by the Rockefeller Foundation at the Yonkers college.

One of four fellowship holders - women who have been active in organizing or pursuing activities for women -. Ms., Bradley is taking this year for reflection and study in the field of women's studies and participating in a special seminar, "Women Organizing college.

IN THIS seminar,. she and other fellowship holders of diverse age, races, ethnic and economic backgrounds work with undergraduates, graduate students and mature re-entry students from the college's Center for Continuing Education exploring new ways of. combining theoretical study-. with practical experience in the organizing of women.

"Studying the history of. women activists of the past -particularly Sojourner Truth and Susan B. Anthony - and how they tackled their problems, has helped me organize
my thoughts and give future' direction -to what I've learned from my past experience," says Joanne. "It's been a. source of inspiration and tremendous support to know that there really has been a history of women organizing their sisters to handle the problems they faced."

JOANNE has come to her current situation via a circuitous route. Born in the ghetto in Kansas City, Mo., she spent two years at Pittsburgh State Teachers College in Kansas and then, influenced by the. fact that her mother was undergoing cobalt treatments, she convinced the authorities: at Menorah Medical Center's School of X-ray Technology to admit her - the first black woman they ever took. She graduated tops in her class.

Joanne then worked as a technical supervisor- at the Medical Center for two years and then was an instructor of Dental Radiography at the University of Missouri's Dental College in Kansas City.

One day she decided to drive north and ended up in White Plains where she got a job as an x-ray technologist at Saint. Agnes Hospital, and then another teaching radiology technology at Westchester Community College.

REALIZING that she needed more training to get promoted, she then went to Downstate Medical College in Brooklyn, getting her Bachelor of Science in education from their College for Health Related Professions in 1973. With her degree, she started teaching education courses to paramedical students at Downstate. One day a student of hers suggested that she look into the Fellowships being off6red at Sarah Lawrence in Women's Studies.

While not active in women's organizations, Joanne had been involved in an informal way in helping her women students with the problems they were facing and encouraging them to go on with their education and careers. So she was accepted in the program.

AS PART of her field work in the "Women Organizing Women" seminar, Joanne has been working to organize black women in the White Plains area. In October she approached the YWCA in White Plains with the idea of conducting workshops and seminars for these women and the "Y" opened its doors to her.

"At first I had to go door to door to get these women to come out and try to help themselves. We started in their homes and in basements in the areas in which they lived. Giving them confidence and the ability to pinpoint and face their situation was the hardest job.

"My objectives were also to help these women to educate themselves in the not-so-simple problems of their rights as welfare mothers, how to budget their incomes, nutrition. and how to go back to school or to work. They also have to learn how to deal with abortion, rape, daycare and consumer problems."

If a woman wants to prepare for a high school equivalency exam, and if she is too frightened to go to BOCES, Joanne helps her to study for the exam herself. If a woman wants further training to prepare her for a job, Joanne knocks on doors to find the appropriate places to go.

THESE WOMEN have no aggressive Instincts. They feel so beaten by the system that I have to help them get started, to give them the support they need to go on themselves. Making contact with some of the women who were already in this area in a personal, informal way was a help.

"There was one woman, for instance, who had been on welfare for 54 years. She knew the welfare system backwards and forwards-and had become known in the community as a fighter. People came to her with their welfare problems and she would go with them to the welfare office to help them work out t h e i r situation there." With encouragement and new insights. this woman now has a job at the welfare office itself.

"NOW I think these women have enough confidence to come out into the YWCA to join in working together and giving each other support," says Joanne. So she is working with a group of young women to organize a formal series of Workshops for Black Women at the White Plains YWCA.

The first one, called "Getting It Together," will be held on April 6. After a session in which Joanne will speak to them about what she hopes they will accomplish, the women will break up into workshops about how black women can look ahead and plan their live,;, how to understand their bodies and its functions, how to go back to school or get a job, how to provide better nutrition on very little money, and how to define the image of the black woman in a white world.'

THE preparation of this workshop required a knowledge of the techniques for organizing women. Joanne and her committee had to reach these women by going door to door to invite them, call all the churches to have them announce the workshop,. prepare buses to get the participants to the Y, organize daycare and lunch for their children.

"I wouldn't have undertaken this project without the background I am getting from the 'Women Organizing Women' seminar and the support of the faculty and students involved in the program," claims Joanne. "But we could never have done it without the young black women from various organizations in White Plains,"

"I hope to hold these kind of workshops every three months," plans Joanne, with characteristic energy, "and to go into other communities in Westchester to do the same thing, There is so much to do.''

Four part-time fellowships for Women in Community Activities, such as the one Joanne has, are available again for the academic year 1974-75 at S a r a h Lawrence College.