Florynce “Flo” Kennedy, a civil- and women’s-rights activist and lawyer, earned a reputation for being outspoken, outrageous and very effective. Known for her militancy and signature cowboy hat and pink sunglasses, Kennedy was also distinguished as the first African American woman to graduate from Columbia Law School, which initially denied her admission because she was a woman.

Kennedy was incensed by Columbia’s rejection and wrote a letter to the dean, threatening to sue the school for denying her admission based on race. She was promptly admitted and received her law degree in 1951.

As a young attorney in the 1950s, she fought for royalty rights for the estates of musical legends Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, but she wrote in her memoir that she was disillusioned “by law as an effective means of changing society.”

Instead, in 1966 she turned to political activism and founded the Media Workshop to fight racism in journalism and advertising. When the group picketed major ad agency Benton and Bowles and threatened a product boycott, management invited them into the board room to state their case. Kennedy noted, “When you want to get to the suites, start in the streets.”

A consumer activist, who also picketed CBS and WNEW-TV in New York City, Kennedy often said, “Only when it hurts their pocketbook do they act.”

Kennedy was also one of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 and formed the Feminist Party in 1971, whose first order of business was to support Shirley Chisholm for president. In 1975, she founded the National Black Feminist Organization.

The second daughter of five, Kennedy was born Feb. 11, 1916, in Kansas City, Mo. In her autobiography, “Color Me Flo: My Hard Life and Good Times,” Kennedy noted that her mother, a homemaker, and father, a Pullman porter and later a taxi business owner, gave their daughters “a sense of security because we were never criticized.” Kennedy also recalled how her father stood up to the Ku Klux Klan with a shotgun in hand, and her mother epitomized hope: “Determined to have rose bushes although our yard was full of shade…she never gave up.”


At her 70th birthday celebration in 1986, attended by activist Dick Gregory and civil rights attorney William Kunstler, Kennedy expressed a philosophy that fueled her 40 years of activism: “Freedom is like taking a bath: you have to keep doing it every day.”

She remained active even while bedridden late in life due to several health conditions. She died in New York at age 84 in 2000.