When Post realized she was a feminist
Post discovered her commitment to justice during a meeting when the men in the room all ignored her. She describes what happened, how it changed her, and how her husband responded to her growing feminist consciousness.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Suzanne Post, June 23, 2006. Interview U-0178. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
You said you
were really ready to take on this challenge, because you had enormous
rage on these issues. Where did that rage come from?
- SUZANNE POST:
-
Well, I think all rage comes from a realization that something is unjust.
One day many years ago, I don't know, ten years ago, eleven
years ago, one of the really good writers for the newspaper here before
it was sold to Gannett called and asked me if she could interview me,
because she said that she'd really always been interested in
my work. I said, "I would love for you to interview me. I would
love anything that would encourage—exposure that would
encourage other women to choose the path I've
chosen." So she came out and she wrote a really long, long
article, which you could probably get from the archives. I have a copy
of it here, but it's probably yellowed. Ask me to look later.
Her name is Diane Aprile.
[Phone ringing]
[Recorder is turned off and then back on.]
- SUZANNE POST:
-
So anyway, in the course of interviewing me for this very long interview,
Diane and I, we were sitting downstairs and she said, "What
makes you do the things you do?" I said immediately,
"Hmm. Nobody's ever asked me that before."
Then I said without skipping a beat, "Injustice. It just pisses
me off." And that whole quote was in the paper and all my women
friends thought, "Oh, yes."
[Laughter] "We love it that you used that
word." But it does. It really, really makes me—. Now
where did that come from? I have no idea, but it just changes my whole
body and changes what's happening. When I witness something
that I think is unjust, it just makes me furious. All you have to do is
get injustice embedded in a big system and pretty soon, fury turns to
rage.
- SARAH THUESEN:
-
Were there particular injustices that you had experienced as a woman that
really had made an impact on you?
- SUZANNE POST:
-
Absolutely.
- SARAH THUESEN:
-
Can you give me an example of something?
- SUZANNE POST:
-
When I was thirty years old, my husband received an award that was to be
given in Florida and I'd never been to Florida and he told me
he would take me. So we went to Florida for this conference. It was a
Jewish conference. At that time, it was a conference of all the Jewish
intellectuals and the Jewish community nationally has always had a
disproportionate number of intellectuals who are spinning this and that
and the other. The thing lasted three days and on the last night, they
had a discussion. I'm so sorry, Sarah.
[Phone ringing]
[Recorder is turned off and then back on.]
- SUZANNE POST:
-
On the last day of the conference, which was a very big deal conference
for the national Jewish community, they had a discussion on open
housing. So this would have been 1963 when I was maybe thirty.
[interruption]
- SUZANNE POST:
-
I was thirty years old. They had this discussion on open housing and
I'm sitting at a table with eight of us all from Louisville,
three women, I think, and five men. After the discussion was over from
the stage, we're sitting around the table having coffee and
the men started talking about what they heard and what their thoughts
were. What I'm about to tell you, Sarah, is a really
important experience in my life. It really ended up being the formative
experience in my life. So the men are talking about open housing and
whether or not they thought the time was right to really proceed in
Louisville and what the difficulties might be and blah blah blah. I
think the men were all lawyers. I said, "Well, you
know—." And there's psst.
That was it. Nobody recognized me or heard me and they kept
on talking. A few minutes later, I said, "Well I
think," and they just talked over me. I did that three times. I
tried to become part of the conversation three times. Three times I was
ignored.
When the group disbanded and everyone went back to their hotel room, I
walked in and I threw myself across the bed and started sobbing in
frustration and anger. And my husband, who was a nice man, but he
wasn't where he really should have been at the time, said,
"Suzy, honey, what's the matter?" I said,
"What's the matter?" I said, "I
tried to get into the discussion you were having at the table three
times and three times I was ignored and I'm as smart as those
men who were talking about what the strategy ought to be in Louisville.
And nobody let me in." He said, "Oh Suzy, honey,
darling." That was his way, very patronizing. "Oh
Suzy, honey, darling, of course you're as smart as any of
us." He said, "But you have to understand that they
see you as a Jewish wife and mother. That's how they see
you." I thought to myself that I was never going to be not
heard again.
So from 1930 [Post probably meant to say here from age thirty on] on, I
started building a presence for myself outside of the home and I started
first in a political campaign and I moved from that political campaign
to the McCarth—. Started learning, I had to learn a lot. I
got more involved in the ACLU than I had been. I mean, I just started
doing whatever I could do to accumulate experience so that I could climb
whatever stairs I had to climb to own my own voice and to make it heard.
That was one of the most painful experiences I ever had in my life. And
to this day, it brings tears to my eyes to think that, "Oh,
honey dearest, you're just a wife and mother." I
don't think without that, that I would have
probably—I know without that experience, I
wouldn't be who I ended up being, because I
wouldn't have had to, I wouldn't have had to.
It's really interesting, but I started learning more and more
and I started doing more and more and I started developing more and more
power and eventually became one of the most powerful women in the social
justice movement in this part of the country. And it was very conscious.
So when I say injustice pisses me off, that was probably the mother
injustice of it all.