REFLECTIONS ON OUR JOURNEY TOGETHER

I remember my first encounter with Roxcy Bolton.  It was in 1969 when I was a reporter for WPLG-TV, Channel 10 in Miami and it was then that I discovered I was a feminist, too.  Any encounter with Roxcy was memorable but this one struck home with me because she went to Jordan Marsh Department store to “equalize” the dining room.  As was the custom then, there was a special dining area for men.  They were quickly seated and quickly served while women… many of them working women such as I with short lunch hours…had to wait in line, looking at empty seats in the men’s section.  Roxcy got what she came for.  Her clinching argument:  “Men and women sleep together; why can’t they eat together?”

Roxcy was not a working woman in the business sense.  She stayed home and cared for her husband and three children but she fought for working women.  In 1970 my photographer and I went with her when she tackled the EEOC.  Here was the federal agency with a mandate to promote equal opportunity in employment and eliminate discrimination in the workplace yet not only was it headed by a man but all the investigators were men.  After Roxcy’s visit, that changed. 

It was not only working women whom Roxcy championed.  She was very aware of the plight of abused women and the domestic violence that was, in effect, generally ignored by the police and government.  Roxcy took the problem to heart and founded Women in Distress and secured a downtown shelter for abused women.  I did a TV story on it when Roxcy was scrounging for food for her “tenants”…at that time several women and three or four children who had no place else to go.  Roxcy was a one-woman organization, running that home in addition to her own.  It was a dramatic move to make the community wake up and take notice of the problem.  Women in distress was the first such shelter in the state. 

Another abuse that hardly anyone even talked about, much less did anything about, was rape.  Victims brave enough to report to police were often treated callously and few in authority recognized or tried to deal with the trauma suffered by rape victims.  But Roxcy wasn’t afraid to talk about it.  And she did it publicly with a march against rape down Flagler Street.  She buttonholed local officials at every opportunity and finally persuaded them that something had to be done.  The result was a special Rape Treatment Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital with its own doctor and staff.  I remember being there with my camera when it was opened and was honored to be the emcee for the ceremony in 1993 when it was named for Roxcy Bolton.

When I think of how determined and inventive and dramatic Roxcy was when she was out to right a wrong, I remember her visit to the president of the University of Miami, Dr. Henry King Stanford in 1975.  He had been avoiding her for some time.  She alerted me that she was going over without an appointment and I knew it would be a lively visit, so I want with my photographer.  When we arrived, there was Roxcy in the waiting room, with a bedroll and a picnic hamper, prepared to spend the night or however long it took to see him!  Needless to say, she did see him and laid out her argument for more women as department heads and equal salaries for men and women doing the same jobs.

Roxcy was not a woman of her time…she created her time.  She blazed a trail…put the spotlight on women…showcased their problems…and encouraged other women to take action and expand the fight for equal rights.

She is a remarkable woman…a formidable adversary, a persistent advocate, a woman of courage and conviction who is not afraid to go it alone if need be…and she is a loyal and staunch friend.

Florida is a much better place for women…and men…because Roxcy Bolton widened the gate to equality.

        Molly Turner
        Coral Gables, Florida 
        January 25, 1994