Calla Felicity

Interviewed May 26, 2011

Calla Felicity (b. 1953) was born in Louisiana and attended colleges there and in Tennessee. In 1970, at age seventeen, they came out as a feminist and influenced their mother to become a feminist, too. While still in college, they worked with their mother and the American Association of University Women to rewrite the Louisiana state constitution to remove the sexist laws associated with the Napoleonic Code.

In 1979, they went to work at a petrochemical plant in Baton Rouge, one of ten women hired through newly enacted affirmative action legislation intended to provide higher paying jobs for women. They worked their way up from laborer to first class operator, enduring significant abuse from male co-workers who tried to get the women to quit, sometimes deliberately endangering their lives. Calla had come out as a lesbian in 1976, and was closeted at work, but was militantly reactive to the harassment.

In the 1980s, they moved to Louisville, KY, where they were hired by the legal aid office to interview three hundred victims of domestic violence, create a database. and produce statistical analysis that resulted in successful legal action to enforce domestic violence statutes.

Their later queer activism was in San Francisco, where they moved their family in 1996. They served on the San Francisco Pride board and created a weekly lesbian breakfast that still meets. In 2016, they moved to Brookings, OR, where they hosted the first LGBTQ128A pride event in that county. In 2019, they ran for Oregon state representative, totally out as a queer feminist. They established lesbian breakfasts in Brookings that still meet weekly. In 2022, they moved to New Orleans, where they now host weekly Queer Brekker in NOLA. Activism and community remain their focus.

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