Phyllis M. Ryan

Phyllis Milgroom Ryan (July 2, 1927 - May 5, 1998) was a civil rights activist from Brookline, Massachusetts. Most of her activism was focused on fair housing, welfare reform, and prison reform during the 1960s and 1970s.

Personal life

Phyllis Milgroom Ryan was born on July 2, 1927, in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to Arthur and Elizabeth Milgroom, who were both Russian immigrants.[1] She grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts and attended Brookline High School.[1] She enrolled in Northeastern University, where she found her start in political activism with the organization, Students for Henry Wallace. She graduated in 1950 with a degree in English.[1] In 1951, she married William Ryan (psychologist), with whom she often collaborated to organize protests. The couple had their only child, daughter Elizabeth Ryan Yuengert, in 1954.[1] Phyllis was successful in the media relations positions she held with various political organizations, and helped those organizations with the planning and coordination of their public demonstrations. She remained politically active throughout her life, including her last campaign, which made a lake in Newton, Massachusetts accessible to disabled people, after she herself developed multiple sclerosis.[2] She died on May 5, 1998, as a result of her medical condition.

Social activism

Boston Public School stayout

A series of boycotts against the Boston Public Schools, called Stayout for Freedom, were organized starting in 1963 to protest segregation of the Boston Public School System. The Stayouts began as a way to demonstrate how empty certain public schools in Boston would be if all of the non-white students did not show up. Instead of going to school, the students went to Freedom Schools, where they learned about history of blacks in America, civics, and civil disobedience as protest. Phyllis Ryan, her husband William, and other fair housing activists in the suburbs of Boston organized their own Stayout, because housing practices played a major role in the segregation of schools. Instead of non-white students in Boston boycotting their schools, students from Boston's predominantly white suburban schools followed the example of earlier Stayouts and were bussed into Roxbury to participate in Freedom Schools. Phyllis oversaw the public relations of the event and managed to get the event on the front page of major Boston newspapers.[3]

"Dump the Duke" campaign

Ryan, her husband William, and Hubie Jones, another social activist in Boston, created the 'Should Dukakis Be Governor?' Committee in 1976 to organize the "Dump the Duke" movement. The committee's goal was to raise awareness of and opposition to Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis's cuts to welfare funding in 1975. Their campaign sought to expose what they saw as contradictions between Dukakis's campaign promises and his actions in office in an effort to undermine his political authority and re-election.[4]

Fair housing

The mission of the Fair Housing Federation of Greater Boston was to eliminate housing discrimination in Boston's predominantly white suburbs. Ryan led the campaign in Brookline, Massachusetts, where she urged other Brookline residents to sign a "Good Neighbor" statement as a declaration that race would not factor into the decision to sell one's house. 80% of the residents who signed the statement also added stickers to the doors of their homes.[5]

Prison reform

Ryan, as part of the Ad Hoc Committee on Prison Reform, worked to improve conditions of prisons, with efforts particularly focused on Walpole State Prison in Walpole, Massachusetts. Ryan and the Committee started a civilian observation program that brought civilians into the prisons to witness conditions first-hand. She also worked closely with inmates to advocate and help them advocate for their rights, especially when it came to prison-guard brutality.[6][7]

Welfare reform

In 1972, after a welfare reform bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate Finance Committee amended the bill, adding a clause that would require welfare recipients to work on Federal projects in order to continue receiving Federal aid. Ryan, a member of the Committee Against Bogus Welfare Reform, spoke out against the amended bill for requiring work, with no guaranteed minimum wage, from those already in need. She also argued that single mothers on this welfare plan would have to find affordable daycare for their children. The amendment ended up being rescinded from the bill.[8]

Affiliations to organizations

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Roberts, Paige (October 2003). "Finding Aid for Phyllis M. Ryan Papers". Northeastern University Archives and Special Collection. Archived from the original on 24 October 2014. Retrieved 19 September 2014.
  2. ^ According to Anne A. Jackson (Jackson 2000, p. 24), Phyllis' aunt, at one stage she had been in bed with multiple sclerosis for twenty years.
  3. ^ Geismer 2010, pp. 162–183.
  4. ^ Geismer 2010, pp. 625–631.
  5. ^ Rollins 1962, p. 8.
  6. ^ "Issue now: length of Walpole work agreement", Boston Globe, 11 March 1973, p. 4.
  7. ^ Curwood 1972, p. 1.
  8. ^ Dearing 1972.
  9. ^ Powledge 2000, p. 185.

References

Further reading

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