by Gene TeSelle, Witherspoon Issues Analyst
[4-22-09]

Roger Sanjek, the author of a new book entitled Gray Panthers (University of Pennsylvania Press, xix + 298 pp., $59.95 hardcover), is an anthropologist who has also written about neighborhood life in New York (The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City, Cornell University Press, 465 pp., $36, previously reviewed on this web site).

He and his wife participated in the Gray Panthers in Berkeley in the 1970s and in New York in the 1980s, then resumed active membership when he got into his sixties. (Another "younger" Gray Panther was Ron Wyden in Oregon, who has since become a U.S. Representative and then Senator.) So the book is not only a history of the movement but includes eyewitness accounts by a "local informant" or "participant observer" who is increasingly aware of his own ageing.

Maggie Kuhn, of course, worked with the United Presbyterian office of Social Education and Action, first in Philadelphia and then in New York at the Interchurch Center. (That was before the denominations caught the fever of moving into the "heartland," away from some saw as wicked, cosmopolitan, minority-controlled New York.) When she was faced with mandatory retirement in 1970 she teamed up with others — Margaret Hummel in Curriculum, Shubert Frye, Al Wilson, and Cameron Hall, all of whom were to remain active. She burst onto the public scene with a press conference at the 1972 General Assembly in Denver. (Later she would appear on a number of talk shows — Studs Terkel, Phil Donahue, David Susskind.) Witherspooners were among those who responded, and in 1974 she was the first recipient of the Witherspoon Award (now the Andrew Murray Award).

The movement was reinforced by volunteer activists who were already participants in Ralph Nader's Retired Professionals Action Group. The health care industry was an early target, starting with nursing homes and hearing aids, and abuses were brought to light in unorthodox ways. Housing and homelessness, too, emerged as major issues. Maggie's approach, Sanjek points out (p. 241-42), was to be where older people were not expected to be, and to do what older people were not expected to do. And we are reminded of the "Gray Panther growl":

            raise both arms, reaching for a peaceful world;
            open the eyes wide to see suffering and need;
            open the mouth to cry out against injustice;
            stick out the tongue;
            growl three times from the depth of the belly (p. 150).

Panthers headquarters remained in Philadelphia, first in the Tabernacle Presbyterian Church, but local chapters formed in many places. Berkeley and New York are dealt with in some depth, since Sanjek has been personally involved with them. Increasingly there was a need for a presence in Washington. The movement supported Ron Dellums' plan for a National Health Service, then compromised on a single-payer national health plan. It had to deal with attacks on Social Security as early as the Reagan and Carter administrations. It also shared in two major victories — federal legislation amending the Age Discrimination in Employment Act in 1986 and the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, both signed by Republican presidents.

While Sanjek offers a thorough history of the Gray Panthers and celebrates their accomplishments, he also fulfills his responsibilities as an anthropologist and participant observer, telling frankly about the difficulties experienced through the years — the consequences of death and disability, changes in board and staff, tensions between national and local, changes in the political environment.

Two major points stand out.

One is that the Gray Panthers were never a single-issue movement, focused only on ageing; its founders had already concerned themselves with the whole range of social issues, and advancing age only heightened their awareness of the many linkages.

If you like what you find here,
we hope you'll help us keep Voices for Justice going ... and growing!

Please consider making a special contribution -- large or small -- to help us continue and improve this service.

Click here to send a gift online, using your credit card, through PayPal.

Or send your check, made out to "Presbyterian Voices for Justice" and marked "web site," to our PVJ Treasurer:

PVJ's Facebook page

Mitch Trigger, PVJ's Secretary/Communicator, has created a Facebook page where Witherspoon members and others can gather to exchange news and views. Mitch and a few others have posted bits of news, both personal and organizational. But there’s room for more!

Voices of Sophia blog

Heather Reichgott, who has created this new blog for Voices of Sophia, introduces it:

John Harris’ Summit to Shore blogspot

John Shuck’s Shuck and Jive

Got more blogs to recommend?