Susan Robinson writes about her then partner Betty Bird, and tells the story of how she and others began a system for recording feminist journals like *Sinister Wisdom* and distributing those recordings through services for the blind.
Interview by telephone by Rose Norman on April 12, 2013 Rose Norman:Â What made you a social justice activist? Mandy Carter talked about getting turned on by an American Friends Service Committee speaker in high school. What was your âahaâ moment? Joan Garner: I grew up in Washington, D.C., during the 1950s and 1960s, the height of the civil rights movement. I was in the eleventh grade when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. That event was the aha for me. That very weekend, I was attending the annual conference of my high school sorority. Girls from several surrounding states were meeting in Washington, D.C., the weekend of April 4, at the Washington Hilton Hotel. Dr. King was assassinated, and a curfew was put on the city. We couldnât leave the hotel. We were about 150 African American girls, and the rest of the hotel was completely white, except for some of the maids and other service staff. We were petrified about the assassination and the curfew; and we didnât know what was happening. We could look out of our hotel window and see U Street starting to burn. Our sponsors decided …