Allyn Ravitz – Interview Summary
Interview conducted on 6 April 2008

• Grew up in New Jersey
• Came to Michigan in 1964 – husband offered a full-time job in Detroit after graduation
• Scholarship rejection from U of M Law School because she was seeking a degree at the same time as beginning a marriage – “We’re not going to support that dual effort.” “So I put off going to law school.”
• Teaching in Flat Rock – first job, husband commuted to Ann Arbor
• Undergraduate degree in government/political science
• Yeshiva education, exposure – reading Hebrew as a child
• Orthodox grandfather, attended Orthodox temple – “inspiring, sincere congregation”
• Attended big conservative temple as a family, “I was somewhat put off by the attention to finery and dress… but I did love the music.”
• Attended Hebrew school, never got Bat Mitzvah
• Mother very active in Hadassah (Jewish women’s organization)
• Caddie Woodlawn – “the despair of her mother and the pride of her father”—”that was like my family”
• Family – cultural Jews, passionate about Israel
• First husband – socialist, didn’t want to join a temple – would take children to High Holiday services – exposed them to Passover, Hanukkah – they didn’t get a Hebrew education
• Second husband – not Jewish but attended temple – Shalom Aleichem – socialist Jews
• Recently remarried – not Jewish, but attends temple
• Daughter’s trip to Israel – from that point on, I light the candles every week, which I had never done as an adult
• Three children, older sister Marilyn
• I give a lot to Jewish organizations – Israeli Red Cross, Federation, NCJW, Jewish Women International
• Attended an all-girls’ high school and women’s college (Smith – also Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan went to school there).
• Civil Rights Act and protection against sex discrimination – supposed to kill off the bill by adding it – “U of M would not have been able to do that to me, at least overtly”
• “I do remember my profound relief in understanding that this discomfort I was feeling in the role I was doing wasn’t individual, it was societal.”
• Began law school in 1968 – attended day class with only two other women at University of Detroit Mercy, where she was known as the feminist at the school (there were more women in the night class).
• Able to be useful to women’s movement because of legal knowledge
• Involved with National Lawyer’s Guild – left-wing lawyer’s group – but they were not interested in the women’s movement
• “I’m in the paramilitary arm of the women’s movement.”
• Lectured using article from MS.: “I Want a Wife”
• Meeting of law school wives – “look, law school isn’t that hard, don’t subject your whole life to facilitating your husband’s law school education, do things for yourself.”
• “I bet some of you are typing up your husband’s law school notes – you could do law school yourself.”
• Board member of Feminist Federal Credit Union in Detroit, 1973 – first loans were for a motorcycle, a kiln, college tuition, and divorce attorney fees – extremely low default rate.
• Stop Rape booklet – Women Against Rape
• Lectured at NOW conference in Detroit – lack of prosecution of domestic violence
• High incidence of domestic violence – sensitize police
• Divorce action – woman brutally beaten – also sued man for assault and battery in civil court after divorce claim
• Credit discrimination – applications
• Fair Housing Act – amendment to address women, and women with children – couldn’t discriminate against women or “anyone with whom they reside.”
• Helped establish day care services on Wayne State University campus and infant care center on Woodward Avenue.
• Mostly active in my legal career in employment discrimination
• First Michigan sex harassment case – against Ford, “people were laughing at us in the courtroom.”
• Employment and pregnancy
• “Unfortunately the current Michigan Supreme Court is so horribly skewed against employee rights and rights of people against business that they’re gutting the law every chance they get, reversing the things we struggled for.”
• Civil Rights movement in college
• I think that going to a women’s college was fabulous experience.
• Eleanor Roosevelt, Gloria Steinem, and role models in youth literature – Nancy Drew, Jo of Little Women, Caddie Woodlawn
• “Judaism in general was inspiring to be involved in human rights.” “The doing good for others is so much a part of Jewish tradition.” “I don’t know if I would be the same person without that.”
• “Predominantly Jewish women were involved with this… There was a lot of Jewish women’s organizations, so women gained organizational skills in that way… and people involved in the temple.”
• “I was thinking about it, and the employment discrimination and the credit thing have to do with economic power, and in our capitalistic society that was an important thing… to get some economic equality for women to give them some power.”
• Recommend appointments to the court of appeals—it was a question, something I ran into, ‘a woman regardless of qualifications’ – I was never in that camp, because I always thought we could find a woman with qualifications, plus on our side, in terms of what we’re trying to accomplish.”
• “We had so much success because who was governor at that time, Milliken, was wonderful… and the legislature… we could get things passed. We were just rolling, and it was very empowering. It’s sad to see what happens when your political power erodes.”
• Gloria Steinem – “she gave so generously of her time.”
• The Women’s Room, In a Different Voice
• “I loved Wonder Woman—she has a lasso, to bring the truth out.”
• “My read on that whole thing was that the opposition to the slate that had the agenda of addressing sex preference rights, was that it would be divisive, membership would be lost, and sex preference is not sex discrimination. It was a political decision, is the women’s movement going to have this additional issue that we have to educate and change people’s minds about, that is even more difficult… what’s the focus of the movement and is this going to divert attention.”
• Feminist movement was a struggle for women to have equal opportunities without regard for sex.

Audio 1 (mp3)
Audio 2 (mp3)
Audio 3 (mp3)