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idential line item veto, and Meals on Wheels. Active in environmental is-

sues, she helped pass legislation to protect the Sterling Forest on the bor-

der between New York and New Jersey.

Before entering Congress, Kelly had several careers, among them

biomedical researcher, rape crisis counselor, emergency room patient ad-

vocate, and ombudsman for nursing homes. She has owned a florist busi-

ness, taught junior high school science and math, and was adjunct profes-

sor of health advocacy at Sarah Lawrence College from 1987 to 1992. Kelly

was a cofounder of the Bedford League of Women Voters and a founding

member of the Town of Bedford Recreation Committee.

Born in Lima, Ohio, Sue Kelly earned a bachelor’s degree in botany

and bacteriology in 1958 from Denison University. She later attended Pace

Law School and earned a master’s degree in health advocacy from Sarah

Lawrence College in 1988.

See also Congress, Women in; Reproductive Rights

References Congressional Quarterly, Politics in America 1996 (1995); www.

house.gov/suekelly/bio.htm.

Kennedy, Florynce Rae (b. 1916)

A founder of the National Organization for Women, African American

Florynce Kennedy has been an outspoken feminist and civil rights leader

since the 1960s. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Kennedy earned her bach-

elor’s degree in 1948 and her law degree in 1951, both from Columbia

University. Initially denied admission to Columbia Law School, Kennedy

believed it was because of her race. She threatened to sue the school, but

the university relented and admitted her. In 1954, Kennedy opened a pri-

vate law practice that initially struggled financially. At one point she

worked in a department store to pay the rent.

As lawyer for the estates of deceased African American performers

Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, Kennedy successfully fought record

companies to recover money from royalties and sales due to the estates.

The experience, however, prompted her to question the legal system. She

wrote in her memoir: “Handling the Holiday and Parker estates taught me

more than I was really ready for about government and business delin-

quency and the hostility and helplessness of the courts. Not only was I not

earning a living, there began to be a serious question in my mind whether

practicing law could ever be an effective means of changing society or even

of simple resistance to oppression.” Kennedy believes that the “the courts

are so racist and bigoted. As a lawyer, you’re looking for justice for people,

but if you know there’s no justice, what are you going to go looking there

for? There’s absolutely no justice for anybody I’d want to defend.”

Kennedy, Florynce Rae 375

Kennedy founded the Media Workshop in 1966 to combat racism in

the media and advertising. When a large advertising agency refused to

provide her with information about its hiring and programming prac-

tices, Kennedy led a group of pickets. Eventually, she met with the agency.

After her success with it, she said: “When you want to get to the suites,

start in the streets.” It was a tactic she also used successfully with television

networks and other media corporations.

A founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW),

Kennedy left the organization in 1970, saying that it “got to be so boring

and scared.” Out of frustration, she founded the Feminist Party in 1971,

which supported Shirley Chisholm’s unsuccessful 1972 candidacy for

president of the United States.

See also Chisholm, Shirley Anita St. Hill; Civil Rights Movement, Women in

the; National Organization for Women; Steinem, Gloria Marie

References Kennedy, Color Me Flo (1976).

Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier

See Onassis, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy

Kennelly, Barbara Bailey (b. 1936)

Democrat Barbara Kennelly of Connecticut served in the U.S. House of

Representatives from 12 January 1982 to 3 January 1999. Kennelly held a

number of firsts in Congress: she was the first woman to serve on the

House Committee on Intelligence, the first woman to serve as a chief

deputy majority whip, and the first woman vice chair of the House Demo-

cratic Caucus in the 104th Congress (1995–1997), a position she also held

376 Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier

Attorney and civil

rights activist

Florynce Kennedy

joined cocounsel

William Kunstler at

a press conference

regarding the

imprisonment of

SNCC chairman

H. Rap Brown, who

called on African

Americans to arm

themselves, 1967

(Corbis/Bettmann)

in the 105th Congress (1997–1999). She also held the leadership position

of House democratic chief deputy whip in the 102nd and 103rd Con-

gresses (1991–1995).

Kennelly began her political career on the Hartford Court of Com-

mon Council, where she served from 1975 to 1979. She was Connecticut

secretary of state from 1979 to 1982. When the incumbent member of

Congress died in office, she won the special election to fill the vacancy.

Once in Congress, Kennelly passed a measure in 1984 that provided assis-

tance in collecting court-ordered child support, worked on energy and

mass transportation policies, and sponsored a balanced budget measure.

She supported child protection programs, foster care, and health care for

children. She championed the earned income tax credit, which increases

take-home pay for low-income families. An increase in the standard de-

ductions for the elderly and the blind and the Hate Crimes Statistics Act

are based upon legislation Kennelly introduced.

Instead of seeking another congressional term, Kennelly ran for gov-

ernor of Connecticut in 1998 and lost.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Kennelly grew up in a political fam-

ily. Her father was John Bailey, a Connecticut party boss and chairman of

the Democratic National Committee in the 1960s. She earned her bache-

lor’s degree in economics from Trinity College in Washington, D.C., in

1958; a certificate in business administration from Harvard Business

School in 1959; and her master’s degree in government from Trinity Col-

lege in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1973.

See also Child Support Enforcement; Congress, Women in

References Congressional Quarterly, Politics in America 1996 (1995); www.

house.gov/kennelly/bio.htm.

Keys, Martha Elizabeth Ludwig (b. 1930)

Democrat Martha Keys of Kansas served in the U.S. House of Representa-

tives from 3 January 1975 to 3 January 1979. Keys entered politics as

Kansas coordinator for George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign.

McGovern lost the election, but Keys had proven her effectiveness and be-

came her party’s nominee for Congress in 1974. As a member of Congress,

her priorities included election reform, energy policy, and improvement

of national health care programs. While in Congress, Keys divorced her

husband and married Indiana congressman Andrew Jacobs, making them

the first wife and husband to serve together in Congress. Keys lost her at-

tempt for a third term. A special adviser to the secretary of health, educa-

tion, and welfare from 1979 to 1980, she was also assistant secretary of ed-

ucation from 1980 to 1981 and a consultant from 1981 to 1984. She

directed the Center for a New Democracy from 1985 to 1986.

Keys, Martha Elizabeth Ludwig 377

Born in Hutchinson, Kansas, Martha Keys attended Olivet College

from 1946 to 1947 and received her bachelor of arts degree from the Uni-

versity of Missouri at Kansas City in 1951.

See also Congress, Women in

References Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives, Women in

Congress, 1917–1990 (1991).

Kilpatrick, Carolyn Cheeks (b. 1945)

Democrat Carolyn Kilpatrick of Michigan entered the U.S. House of Rep-

resentatives on 3 January 1997. After serving in the Michigan House of

Representatives from 1979 to 1997, Kilpatrick challenged incumbent con-

gresswoman Barbara-Rose Collins, who was the subject of investigations

into ethical and financial misconduct. Kilpatrick won the primary with 51

percent of the vote compared to Collins’s 31 percent. Kilpatrick won the

general election with 81 percent. Congresswoman Kilpatrick’s legislative

priorities include promoting economic development, creating new jobs,

increasing the wages of working families, and improving the access and af-

fordability of health care.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, African American Carolyn Kilpatrick re-

ceived her associate of arts degree from Ferris State College in 1965, her

bachelor of science degree from Western Michigan University in 1972, and

her master of science degree in education from the University of Michi-

gan in 1977. Kilpatrick taught high school from 1972 to 1978.

See also Congress, Women in; State Legislatures, Women in

References Congressional Quarterly, Politics in America 1998 (1997).

King, Coretta Scott (b. 1927)

African American Coretta Scott King’s civil rights activism began in the

early 1950s, after she married Martin Luther King, Jr., and helped him or-

ganize the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. Violence and threats of

violence surrounded them, a bomb exploded on the family’s front porch

in 1956 but injured no one, and the next year a bomb was found on their

front porch. They continued their work, and Coretta Scott King helped

her husband organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

(SCLC) in 1957. In 1959, Coretta Scott King, a vocalist, performed in In-

dia and studied Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent strategies with her hus-

band. In the 1960s, she performed freedom concerts of song, recitation,

and poetry to raise money and to develop support for the SCLC.

On 4 April 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Mem-

phis, Tennessee. Over the next months, Coretta Scott King fulfilled her

husband’s speaking commitments, calling on U.S. women to “unite and

378 Kilpatrick, Carolyn Cheeks

form a solid block of woman power” to

fight racism, poverty, and war. In 1974,

Coretta Scott King became the founding

president of the Martin Luther King, Jr.,

Center for Nonviolent Social Change in

Atlanta, Georgia, serving until 1989.

Through her work, the twenty-three-acre

neighborhood around her husband’s

birthplace was declared a National His-

toric Site by the National Park Service. She

chaired the Martin Luther King, Jr., Fed-

eral Holiday Commission. The annual cel-

ebrations began in 1986 and are held on

the anniversary of her husband’s birthday.

In 1969, Coretta Scott King published My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Born in Marion, Alabama, Coretta Scott King earned her bachelor’s

degree in education and music from Antioch College in 1951 and her doc-

torate in music from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1971.

She held her concert debut in 1948, performing as a soloist with the Sec-

ond Baptist Church in Springfield, Ohio.

See also Civil Rights Movement, Women in the

References Hardy, American Women Civil Rights Activists (1993); Hine, ed.,

Black Women in America (1993); Smith, ed., Epic Lives (1993).

King, Mary (b. 1940)

Civil rights activist and feminist pioneer Mary King joined the civil rights

movement after graduating from college in 1962. Assistant director of

communications for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

(SNCC) from 1963 to 1965, she participated in sit-ins in Atlanta, Georgia,

and was arrested and jailed for four days. Male dominance in the organi-

zation led King and Casey Hayden to write a letter outlining their observa-

tions and to circulate it at a SNCC meeting. Their anonymous letter on the

position of women in SNCC prompted Stokely Carmichael to comment:

“The position of women in SNCC is prone.” King and Hayden later wrote

“Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo from Casey Hayden and Mary King to a

Number of Other Women in the Peace and Freedom Movements,” explor-

ing parallels “between the treatment of Negroes and treatment of women

in our society as a whole.” Unaware that women in the North were launch-

ing the feminist movement, they wrote: “Objectively, the chances seem nil

that we could start a movement based on anything as distant to general

American thought as a sex-caste system.” The memo became one of the

King, Mary 379

Coretta Scott King,

widow of Martin

Luther King, Jr.,

spoke to women

at the Southern

Christian Leadership

Conference, 1963

(Corbis/Bettmann)

founding documents of the radical women’s liberation movement of the

mid-1960s.

In late 1964 and early 1965, African American leaders in SNCC con-

cluded that the participation of white people no longer served its purposes,

and King, one of the few white leaders in the organization, left. She became

a program officer for the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity from 1968

to 1972, when she established a consulting firm. Impressed by Jimmy

Carter in 1971, she began helping to develop his campaign strategy the

next year and worked with him through his election to the presidency in

1976. Carter appointed her deputy director of ACTION, a federal agency

that oversaw the Peace Corps, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA),

and other volunteer programs. A Middle East specialist, she later con-

ducted research on conflict resolution, ethnic diversity, and related issues.

Born in New York, King earned her bachelor of arts degree at Ohio

Wesleyan University in 1962 and her doctoral degree from the University

of Wales at Aberystwyth in 1998. King wrote Freedom Song: A Personal

Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (1987).

See also Civil Rights Movement, Women in the; Women’s Liberation Movement

References Hayden and King, “Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo from Casey

Hayden and Mary King to a Number of Other Women in the Peace and Free-

dom Movements” (1966); New York Times, 8 July 1976.

Kirchberg v. Feenstra (1981)

In Kirchberg v. Feenstra, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1981 that sex

discrimination is unconstitutional unless the discrimination furthers an

important governmental interest. In this case, Joan Feenstra filed a crim-

inal complaint against her husband Harold Feenstra, charging him with

molesting their daughter. Her husband hired attorney Karl Kirchberg and

signed a promissory note to prepay him. Then Harold Feenstra took out

a mortgage on the home that he owned with Joan Feenstra, who was not

told about the mortgage and whose consent was not required. At the time,

Louisiana law gave her husband exclusive control over community prop-

erty under its head and master provisions. She dropped the charges

against her husband, they separated, and he left the state. She learned

about the mortgage on her home when Kirchberg demanded the balance

due on the promissory note and threatened to foreclose on the mortgage

on her home unless she paid the note.

Kirchberg argued that his case differed from Craig v. Boren (1976)

and Orr v. Orr (1979), cases that the Court had earlier decided, because

the Louisiana Civil Code provided a way for wives to protect their prop-

erty. By making a “declaration by authentic act,” Joan Feenstra could have

prevented her husband from leasing, selling, or mortgaging their home.

380 Kirchberg v. Feenstra

Because she did not take advantage of the procedure, Kirchberg con-

tended that she had become the “architect of her own predicament.” The

Court disagreed, saying that the first question was the constitutionality of

Louisiana’s head and master law. The Court found that the law’s gender-

based discrimination violated the equal protection clause of the Four-

teenth Amendment.

During the time that this case was making its way through the ap-

peals process, Louisiana revised its code provisions relating to community

property, eliminated the head and master concept, and implemented a

policy giving both spouses equal control over community property.

See also Craig v. Boren, Fourteenth Amendment; Orr v. Orr

References Kirchberg v. Feenstra, 450 U.S. 455 (1981).

Kirkpatrick, Jeane Duane Jordan (b. 1926)

Political scientist Jeane Kirkpatrick served as U.S. representative to the

United Nations from 1981 to 1985, the first woman to hold the position.

When President Ronald Reagan appointed Kirkpatrick to the ambas-

sadorship, she became the highest-ranking woman in the history of U.S.

foreign policy. Reflecting on her experience, Kirkpatrick said: “I never re-

ally thought about it until I found myself participating in the arenas in

which the big decisions were being made in foreign policy and security

policy. It occurred to me all of a heap that I might very well be the first

woman in American history who had ever been what is called ‘at the table’

at such decisions by serving on the National Security Planning Group.”

Part of her responsibilities included serving on the National Security

Planning Group and the National Security Council.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane Duane Jordan 381

U.S. Ambassador to

the United Nations

Jeane Kirkpatrick

at her final press

conference as

ambassador, 1985

(Corbis/Bettmann)

Born in Duncan, Oklahoma, Jeane Kirkpatrick earned her associate’s

degree from Stephens College in 1946, her bachelor of arts degree from

Barnard College in 1948, and her master of arts degree in 1950 and her

doctoral degree in 1968 from Columbia University. She did postgraduate

work at the Institut de Science Politique of the University of Paris on a

French government fellowship from 1952 to 1953.

A professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the

American Enterprise Institute, Kirkpatrick’s published work includes

dozens of scholarly articles and books, including Political Woman (1974),

The New Presidential Elite (1976), Dismantling the Parties: Reflections on

Party Reform and Party Decomposition (1978), Dictatorships and Double

Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics (1982), The Reagan Phe-

nomenon (1983), and The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State and

Other Surprises (1990).

See also Cabinets, Women in Presidential

References H. W. Wilson, Current Biography Yearbook, 1981 (1981); New York

Times, 23 December 1980, 17 August 1994.

Kissling, Frances (b. 1943)

Frances Kissling became president of Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC) in

1982. She believes that controversies in the Catholic Church that surround

reproductive rights, family planning, and women’s ordination are not spir-

itual matters but are political issues and are efforts to control women.

Born in New York, New York, Frances Kissling attended St. John’s

University in New York from 1961 to 1964 and received her bachelor of

arts degree from the New School for Social Research in 1966. A Roman

Catholic, Kissling entered a convent and prepared to join the Sisters of

Saint Joseph but left after several months because she disagreed with

many of the church’s teachings, including those on birth control and hu-

man sexuality. At the same time, she left the Catholic Church. She began

running an abortion clinic in New York in 1970.

In the late 1970s, Kissling combined her early religious training with

the knowledge that she had gained in her work to create a new vision of a

church more sensitive to all powerless people. Her vision of a transformed

church includes access to safe, legal reproductive health care for all

women. To further her vision, she became president of CFFC in 1982.

That year, CFFC became the first prochoice group to hold congressional

briefings on abortion and family planning, a strategy now used by many

prochoice organizations.

Kissling coauthored Rosie: The Investigation of a Wrongful Death

(1979).

382 Kissling, Frances

See also Abortion; Doe v. Bolton; Harris v. McRae

References Stan, “Frances Kissling: Making the Vatican Sweat” (1995); www.

cath4choice.org.

Knutson, Coya Gjesdal (1912–1996)

Democrat Coya Knutson of Minnesota served in the U.S. House of Repre-

sentatives from 3 January 1955 to 3 January 1959. The first woman to serve

on the House Agriculture Committee, she promoted agricultural exports

and worked to preserve family farms. She advocated increasing price sup-

ports for agricultural products, expanding the food stamp program, and es-

tablishing a federally supported school lunch program. She passed the sec-

tions of the National Defense Education Act that created a federal college

student loan fund. During her campaign for a third term, her husband pub-

licly protested her candidacy and asked her to return home. After his letter

was published in a newspaper, the publicity that surrounded it led to her de-

feat. She divorced her husband in 1962. She ran again in 1960 but lost. Knut-

son was a liaison officer for the Office of Civil Defense from 1961 to 1970.

Born in Edmore, North Dakota, Coya Knutson received her bachelor

of science degree from Concordia College in 1934 and did postgraduate

work in library science at State Teachers College in Moorhead and at Juil-

liard School of Music. She taught in North Dakota and Minnesota high

schools and then worked for the Red Lake County Welfare Board from

1948 to 1950. She served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from

1951 to 1954.

See also Congress, Women in; State Legislatures, Women in

References New York Times, 12 October 1996; Office of the Historian, U.S.

House of Representatives, Women in Congress, 1917–1990 (1991); Tolchin,

Women in Congress: 1917–1976 (1976).

Koontz, Elizabeth Duncan (1919–1989)

Director of the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Labor Department from 1969

to 1973, the first African American to hold the post, Elizabeth Koontz was

named deputy assistant secretary of labor and special counselor to the

secretary of labor for women’s affairs in 1972. In those positions, Koontz

worked for the Equal Rights Amendment, equal opportunities for women,

equal pay, and enforcement of protective labor laws. She also worked to

improve household workers’ skills and to have them included in mini-

mum wage laws. Koontz brought together a group of union women to dis-

cuss their common interests and responsibilities, which later evolved into

the Coalition of Labor Union Women.

Born in Salisbury, North Carolina, Elizabeth Koontz earned her

Koontz, Elizabeth Duncan 383

bachelor’s degree in English and elementary education from Livingstone

College in 1938 and her master’s degree in education from Atlanta Uni-

versity in 1941. Koontz later did further graduate work at Columbia Uni-

versity and Indiana University and earned a certificate in special educa-

tion for the mentally retarded at North Carolina State College.

Koontz held offices in local and state affiliates of the National Edu-

cation Association (NEA) beginning in the 1950s. President of the De-

partment of Classroom Teachers from 1965 to 1966, she also served on

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s National Advisory Council on Education

of Disadvantaged Children from 1965 to 1968 and was NEA national vice

president in 1967 and 1968. President of NEA in 1968, Koontz advocated

job and retirement security, contracts to protect teachers, and larger roles

in decisionmaking and policy development for teachers. Koontz resigned

the presidency after six months to accept the appointment at the Women’s

Bureau.

See also Coalition of Labor Union Women; Equal Rights Amendment;

Women’s Bureau

References H. W. Wilson, Current Biography 1969 (1969); Hardy, American

Women Civil Rights Activists (1993); New York Times, 8 January 1989.

Kreps, Juanita Morris (b. 1921)

U.S. secretary of commerce from 1977 to 1979, Juanita Kreps advocated

redefining the balance between work and leisure throughout a person’s

life, including more leisure during one’s working life and extending one’s

working years beyond age sixty-five. She helped assemble the Carter ad-

ministration’s urban package, including a Commerce Department pro-

gram to maintain and restore the economic viability of cities. Her depart-

ment was the first to propose setting aside 10 percent of its contracts for

minority businesses.

Born in Lynch, Kentucky, Juanita Kreps earned her bachelor’s degree

from Berea College in 1942 and both her master’s (1944) and doctoral de-

grees (1948) from Duke University. A college teacher and administrator,

Kreps became a nationally recognized economist specializing in the area

of aging. She wrote Sex in the Marketplace: American Women at Work

(1971), dealing with problems women confront in the workforce.

The first woman to serve on the board of J. C. Penney Company, she

also became the first woman to serve on the New York Stock Exchange

board in 1972.

See also Cabinets, Women in Presidential

References Lamson, In the Vanguard: Six American Women in Public Life (1979);

New York Times, 8 May 1977.

384 Kreps, Juanita Morris