Kathleen Thompson

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Kathleen Thompson
Chicago, Illinois, US
OccupationWriter, playwright, activist
SubjectWomen's issues, multi-cultural American history, young adult books
Notable worksAgainst Rape (1974), A Shining Thread of Hope (1998), The Face of Our Past (2000)
Website
www.kathleenthompsonwriter.com

Kathleen Thompson (born September 12, 1946) is an American

MacMillanUSA, 1994), written with psychologist Diane Pinkert Epstein. She was co-author, with pre-eminent historian Darlene Clark Hine, of A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America. (Broadway Books, 1998), the first narrative history of black women in America. She then collaborated with Hilary Mac Austin on three print documentaries of groups underrepresented in American history: The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present (Indiana University Press, 1999), Children of the Depression (Indiana University Press, 2000), and America's Children: Repicturing Childhood from Exploration to the Present (W. W. Norton, 2001). Thompson also served on the board of senior editors with Hine, Deborah Grey White, Brenda Stephenson, and other major scholars in the field on the second edition of the landmark encyclopedia Black Women in America (Oxford University Press, 2005). In addition to these adult trade books, she has written more than one hundred books for children and young adults[2] and has had eleven plays[3]
produced in Chicago, New York City, and other cities.

Thompson's activism began in

Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA),[6] then under the leadership of feminist activist Diann Deweese Smith. She was also a founding member of Chicago Women Against Rape. With Austin, she co-founded OneHistory, an organization dedicated to making heard all the voices of American history.[7] More recently, she has been involved in anti-gang activism in the Logan Square
neighborhood of Chicago.

Against Rape

In April 1972, Andra Medea organized the Midwest's first conference on the subject of rape, held at the downtown YWCA. Inspired by that conference, Medea and Kathleen Thompson wrote the book Against Rape, which went through seven printings before its official publication date, was serialized in hundreds of newspapers around the country, and remained in print for eighteen years. It was widely used in rape crisis centers and women's studies courses and was the primary text for the self-defense courses for women of Chimera, Inc. for more than a decade. The focus of the book was to analyze the causes and patterns of rape in order to a) reduce its power in the minds and lives of women; b) enable women and men to begin to change a society that engendered it; and c) help women avoid and/or survive the trauma of rape. It was where Medea's innovative self-defense methods were first developed and published. According to Thompson, the writers kept in mind two criteria for their work. First, the book must be readable by the women they went to high school with. Second, it must avoid the sensationalism and fear-mongering that keep women from being able even to think about rape. They succeeded in both those aims while presenting a powerfully feminist analysis that pulled no punches about the sources of rape within the culture.

Two other important books on the subject were published in 1974—Rape: How to Avoid It and What to do About It If You Can't, by June Bundy Csida and Joseph Csida (Books for Better Living); and Rape: A First Sourcebook for Women by the New York Radical Feminists (New American Library).[1] It was a time when women across the country were coming to terms with what Medea and Thompson call "all the hatred, contempt and oppression of women in this society concentrated in one act." Organizations similar to Chicago Women Against Rape were formed in other large cities and small towns. Women created and staffed rape crisis hotlines and worked to reform treatment of women in hospitals, by police and by courts. In 1975, Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will added a profound historical and philosophical element to the discussion.

A Shining Thread of Hope

The history of black women in America was long untold. In the last decades of the twentieth century, that began to change with books such as But Some of Us Are Brave (Feminist Press, 1982), edited by

Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith; Paula Giddings' When and Where I Enter (Harper Collins, 1984) and Deborah Gray White's Ar'nt I a Woman (W. W. Norton, 1985), as well as many others. In the 1990s, historian Darlene Clark Hine published widely in the field and encouraged the work of other scholars with publications such as the series Black Women in United States History. (Carlson Publishing, 1990) and Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (Carlson Publishing, 1992), which she edited with Elsa Barkley Brown and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn. After working with Hine on a young adult version of Black Women in America, Kathleen Thompson co-authored with her A Shining Thread of Hope. This was the first narrative history of black women in America and was hailed by Cornel West as "a canonical text for American historians."[8] Historian Nell Irvin Painter said, ""From time to time, a work of history itself makes history. A Shining Thread of Hope is such a book, marking a giant step in the creation of a more encompassing portrait of our nation's past."[9]

The Commons Theatre

In 1980, Thompson co-founded The Commons Theatre with actors Michael (Mike) Nowak and Judith Easton. The Commons was one of the early entries in Chicago's dynamic theater scene of the 1980s. Although it did not advertise the fact, its mission statement included a commitment to feminism, as well as to new plays. As artistic director, Thompson was one of the first women and one of the first playwrights to hold that position in a Chicago theater. In the six years she remained with The Commons, she had eight plays produced by the theatre, including the very successful Dashiell Hamlet, which she co-wrote with Mike Nussbaum, Mike Nowak, and Paul H. Thompson. Her plays have also been produced in a number of other theatres in Chicago and New York. She also taught playwriting with Nowak at Chicago Dramatists Workshop for ten years.

Personal life

Thompson was born in Chicago in 1946 and lived from the age of five in Oklahoma City. Her father, Les Thompson, Jr., was a

Chicago, Illinois, with partner Mike Nowak, host of "The Mike Nowak Show" on WCPT
Radio.

Adult trade books

  • Against Rape, with Andra Medea. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974.
  • Feeding on Dreams, with Diane Epstein. New York: MacMillanUSA, 1994.
  • Encyclopedia of Black Women, editor-in-chief, with editor
    Facts on File
    , 1997
  • A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America, with Darlene Clark Hine. New York: Broadway Books, 1998.
  • The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present, with Hilary Mac Austin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
  • Children of the Depression, with Hilary Mac Austin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
  • America's Children: Repicturing Childhood from Exploration to the Present, with Hilary Mac Austin. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001.
  • Black Women in America, second edition, edited by Darlene Clark Hine. Board of Senior Editors. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

References

  1. ^ a b Bevacqua, Maria. Rape on the Public Agenda. Northeastern University press, 2000, p. 47
  2. ^ Library of Congress
  3. ^ Commons Theatre Collection, Chicago Public Library, Harold Washington Library Center, Special Collections, Chicago Theater Collection.
  4. ^ Tracy Baim, ed. (2008). Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City's Gay Community. Agate Surrey.
  5. ^ Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism, Anne Enke (Duke University Press, 2007)
  6. ^ Kottke, Lee (April 19, 1972). "Rape: Common American Experience". Chicago Daily News.
  7. ^ "OneHistory's Founders," http://www.onehistory.org
  8. ^ A Shining Thread of Hope dustjacket.
  9. ^ Painter, Nell Irvin. Book Review. Raleigh News & Observer, February 22, 1988.

External links