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Oral history interview with Chude Pamela Allen, 2002

Creator: Allen, Chude Pamela, 1943-
Project: Sheila Michaels civil rights organization oral history collection
(see all project interviews)
Phys. Desc. :transcript: 119 pages sound file : digital preservation master, WAV files (96 kHz, 24 bit)
Location: Columbia Center for Oral History
Full CLIO record >>

Biographical Note

Chude Pamela Parker Allen was born in 1943 in a small town in Pennsylvania. As the granddaughter of an Episcopalian priest, Allen was raised a devout Christian. She attended Carleton College and was one of thirteen white students to participate in an exchange program with Spelman College in the spring of 1964. Allen became active in the student civil rights movement and, in the summer of 1964, taught at the Freedom School in Holly Springs, Mississippi. In 1965, Allen married African American activist Robert L. Allen. She was active in the second-wave of the feminist movement and founded the New York Radical Women group. Allen moved to San Francisco Bay Area where she wrote the pamphlet "Free Space: A Perspective on the Small Group in Women's Liberation" and became a member of the Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement

Scope and Contents

Allen discusses her familial background and childhood in eastern Pennsylvania. She elaborates on her parents' professions and politics and her involvement with the Episcopal Church. She describes the formation of her political consciousness and radicalization, including her formative work at an Episcopal day camp in a low-income black neighborhood in Philadelphia in the summer of 1963. Allen describes the differences between her conservative church community and her radical community at Carleton College; how she came to find unity between the spiritual and the political; and her semester at Spelman College in the spring of 1964. She describes her activism and coursework at Spelman, including a seminar on nonviolence with Staughton Lynd. Allen discusses and reads her poetry. She explores themes of male leadership, female subservience, sexuality, the inequality of marriage, idealism, and sexism within the civil rights movement. She discusses interracial relationships, including her own interracial marriage, and how her identity as a white woman affected her activist work throughout the years. Allen recounts her experience during the summer of 1964 teaching at the Freedom School in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She provides names of those involved and describes attitudes toward the project. Allen describes classes she taught on Black History and religion. She discusses her relationship with Ralph Featherstone, the Mississippi Freedom Summer reunion, and how to share personal memories and have meaningful conversations between activists

Subjects

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