Oral history interview with Chude Pamela Allen, 2002

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Name: Allen, Chude Pamela, 1943- (Interviewee); Michaels, Sheila, 1939-2017 (Interviewer)
Title: Oral history interview with Chude Pamela Allen, 2002
Other Titles: Reminiscences of Chude Pamela Allen, 2002; Oral history of Chude Pamela Parker Allen, 2002
Abstract: 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 descri bes 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
Collection Name: Sheila Michaels civil rights organization oral history collection
Subjects: Civil rights--Religious aspects--20th century; Civil rights movements--History--20th century.--United States; Civil rights movements--History--20th century--United States; Second-wave feminism; Marriage--Social aspects; United States Race relations 20th century; Allen, Chude Pamela, 1943-; Spelman College; Carleton College (Northfield, Minn.); Episcopal Church
Format: oral histories
Genre: Interviews
Date: 2002

Physical Description: 119 pages
Note (Biographical): 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
Note: Interviewed by Sheila Michaels on February 6, 2002
Note (Provenance): Sheila Michaels, Gift circa 1998-2005
Language: English
Library Location: Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia University
Catalog Record: 11603302
Persistent URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.7916/d8-82v1-bv75
Related URLs: Available digital content for this interview.