Kipp M. Dawson Papers, 1951-2021

Arrangement

Repository
ULS Archives & Special Collections
Title
Kipp M. Dawson Papers
Creator
Dawson, Kipp
Collection Number
AIS.2022.10
Extent
9 Linear Feet (9 record center boxes)
Date
1951-2021
Abstract
Kipp Dawson (1945-) has been a social justice leader for over 60 years, building coalitions in the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam anti-war movement, the women's movement, the gay liberation movement, the labor movement, and the education justice movement. Dawson's papers document her life and career as an activist and educator through her writings, speeches, correspondence, photographs, audio recordings, and memorabilia.
Language
The material in this collection is in English.
Publisher
ULS Archives & Special Collections
Address
University of Pittsburgh Library System
Archives & Special Collections
Website: library.pitt.edu/archives-special-collections
Business Number: 412-648-3232 (Thomas) | 412-648-8190 (Hillman)
Contact Us: www.library.pitt.edu/ask-archivist
URL: http://library.pitt.edu/archives-special-collections

Processing Information

This collection was processed by Catherine Evans, Cynthia Maz, and Miriam Meislik throughout 2022. Jessie B. Ramey (Director, Women's Institute and Associate Professor, Women's & Gender Studies and History, Chatham University) advised on the project and composed the biography.

Acquisition Information

Gift of Kipp Dawson on July 2022.

Biography

Kipp Dawson (1945-) has been a social justice leader for over 60 years, building coalitions in the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam anti-war movement, the women's movement, the gay liberation movement, the labor movement, and the education justice movement. Dawson's own identities as a lesbian, Jewish, working-class woman from a multi-racial family shaped her approach to movement organizing, with an emphasis on engaging people in collective action. Dawson's many notable activities include co-founder of the first Civil Rights club at Berkeley High School in 1960, in solidarity with the Southern student sit-in movement (which formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)). She was a co-organizer the Free Speech Movement at San Francisco State College and co-organizer, and was arrested in, six large-scale sit-ins bringing an end to all-white employment practices in San Francisco, led by the Ad Hoc Committee to End Discrimination, for which she eventually served 29 days in jail in 1966. Dawson served as co-founder of the Vietnam Day Committee in Berkeley with Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. She started the Vietnam Day Committee at San Francisco State College and co-organized many of the largest anti-war activities of the 1960s. Dawson organized and served as Executive Director, West Coast Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and shared the fundraising stage with Janis Joplin. She opened for the 1967 rally of 65,000 people with Coretta Scott King, Judy Collins, and others. While in NYC (1967-1977), Dawson participated in the first and second Congresses to Unite Women; was a steering committee member for the Women's Strike for Equality; met in Betty Friedan's living room with Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisolm and others; served on the organizing committee of Christopher Street Liberation Day in NYC, which created the first annual PRIDE parades on the anniversaries of the Stonewall Uprising. Dawson ran for Senate from New York on the Socialist Workers Party ticket in 1970. Dawson came out as a lesbian in 1970 and moved to Pittsburgh in 1977 with then partner Ginny Hildebrand where she became an organizer for the Pittsburgh Socialist Workers Party. She was hired in 1979 as a coal miner, a position she held for 13 years. She was part of the first Coal Employment Project Women Miners Support Team which inspired her to become an activist and organizer for United Mine Workers of America Local 1197. In 1984 Dawson traveled to England to support the British miners' strikes. She traveled to San Salvador in 1985 representing UMWA Local 1197 at the conference of FENESTRAS Salvadoran trade union federation.

Dawson's grandparents, Brocha Landau Morthilus and Herschel Morthilus (re-named Beatrice and Herman Martius), emigrated in the 1910s from a major center of nineteenth-century socialism in Lodz (then part of Russia, and later Poland, where Hitler created the infamous Lodz Ghetto) to Erie, Pennsylvania. In 1922, her grandmother was forced to flee her new home when her husband was murdered in Erie, Pennsylvania by white nationalist terrorists, empowered by the Ku Klux Klan and the U.S. government's Palmer Raids. Dawson's mother, Ann Martius, joined the Communist Party during its heyday among leftists and unionists, and worked as a WWII jeep driver and "Rosie the Riveter" in California factories. Dawson's birth in 1945 was a deliberate act of resistance, viewed by her parents as their contribution to the Jewish population lost during the Holocaust. Her mother's activism with the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) and her second marriage to Robert Dawson, a Black man, meant that, during the McCarthy era, the FBI regularly harassed Dawson's bi-racial family at the working-class housing project in Berkeley, CA they called home. Dawson's stepsister, Cheryl, was later among the founders of the Black Panther Party. Dawson was inspired by a strong revolutionary feminist role models in her family which shaped her life-long outlook on social justice issues.

When their housing project, Cordonices Village, closed in 1955, Dawson attended Franklin Elementary School, and then Burbank Jr. High School. After being outed for having a romantic relationship with another woman, Dawson graduated from Berkeley High School early at age 16, and enrolled in San Francisco State College. She dropped out of college in 1967 to work full time in the anti-war movement. Eventually she returned to college after her final lay-off from the coal mine, entering Chatham College (now Chatham University) through its Gateway program for women. Dawson graduated with her degree in teaching in 1994 at the age of 49, and went on to earn a Masters of Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2003. Dawson taught in Pittsburgh Public Schools for 23 years. Dawson lives in Pittsburgh with her wife of over 30 years, Eileen Yacknin. They are the parents of two daughters.

Arrangement

The collection is organized into nine series:

Series I. General Correspondence (1973– 1995)

Series II. Correspondence with Mom, Ginny Hildebrand, & Libby Lindsay, c.1950s -1993

Series III. Writings and Manuscripts (1953- 2021)

Series IV. United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)/Coal Employment Project (CEP)/Mines Materials

Series V. International Travels (1984-1988)

Series VI. Photographs (1980- 1995)

Series VII.Journals, Notebooks, Datebooks, and Poetry, November, 1980 - 1996

Series VIII.Audio (ca. 1960s- 1991)

Series IX. Memorabilia (ca. 1960s- c. 2000s)

Scope and Contents

The collection documents the life and activism career of Kipp Dawson beginning with childhood memoribilia and including her current work. Correspondence with her mother, Dawson's early writings which inlcude her poetry, her published writings, and her speeches provide insight into her political evolution. The inlcuded journals, correspondence, datebooks, and other manuscript materials help to document Dawson's organizational work, activitism, and connections to mentors, friends, and other activists. Items such as posters, flyers, and lapel buttons help to document the causes in which she participated.

Photographs and audio content support many of the activities pursued by Dawson. Of particular note is the album Give Your Hands to Struggle: The Evolution of a Freedom Fighter by Bernice Reagan which features a young Dawson on the cover.

Preferred Citation

Kipp Dawson Papers, 1951-2021, AIS.2022.10, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System

Copyright

The University of Pittsburgh holds the property rights to the material in this collection, but the copyright may still be held by the original creator/author. Researchers are therefore advised to follow the regulations set forth in the U.S. Copyright Code when publishing, quoting, or reproducing material from this collection without the consent of the creator/author or that go beyond what is allowed by fair use.

Access Restrictions

No restrictions.

Accruals

Additional material forthcoming.

Subjects

    Corporate Names

    • United Mine Workers of America -- History
    • Socialist Workers Party -- History

    Personal Names

    • Dawson, Kipp
    • Gray, Ann Martius Adams Dawson, 1923-1992

    Genres

    • Correspondence
    • Manuscripts (Documents)
    • Diaries
    • Photographs
    • Audiocassettes

    Other Subjects

    • Women political activists
    • Coal miners -- Labor unions -- United States
    • Civil rights movements -- United States -- History -- 20th century
    • Gay liberation movement -- United States -- History -- 20th century
    • Feminism -- United States -- History -- 20th century
    • Peace movements -- United States -- History -- 20th century
    • Student movements -- United States -- History -- 20th century

Container List