ECDS is excited to announce the launch of Kipp Dawson: The Struggle is the Victory, an interactive digital repository of the life work of activist Kipp Dawson.
ECDS specialist Bailey Betik worked with history scholars Jessie Ramey of Chatham University and Amelia Golcheski of Emory University to create an interactive digital repository about the work of Kipp Dawson, a nationally significant yet little-recognized trailblazer who built coalitions for over 60 years on the frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam anti-war movement, women’s movement, gay liberation movement, labor movement, and education justice movement.
Photo: Kipp Dawson Papers, Box 7, Folder 11
As an ECDS partner, Betik supported the design, build, and content migration of Ramey and Golcheski’s research into a sleek, accessible, responsive WordPress site. The site uses images and materials from Kipp Dawson’s personal archive as well as external scholarship about Dawson and video interviews with Dawson herself. The site also embeds six interactive StoryMaps that illustrate Dawson’s impact throughout social movements in the United States and abroad.
Dawson participated in major sit-ins that desegregated employment practices in San Francisco; co-led the Free Speech Movement; organized some of the largest anti-Vietnam war demonstrations of the era; helped plan the enormous Women’s Strike for Equality in New York City and the Christopher Street Liberation Day parades following Stonewall; worked as a fundraiser for abortion rights leading to Roe v. Wade; and ran as the Socialist Workers Party candidate for Senate from New York. She was arrested six times for protesting and spent a month in prison; was harassed by the FBI from childhood and eventually helped expose their COINTELPRO operations; organized workers underground as a coal miner for 13 years; and worked as a public school teacher for 22 years.