Barbara Deming
Born	July 23, 1917 New York City, U.S.
Died	August 2, 1984 (1984-08-02) (aged 67) Sugarloaf Key , Florida , U.S.
Education	Bennington College , Western Reserve University [1]
Partner	Mary Meigs

Barbara Deming (July 23, 1917 – August 2, 1984) was an American feminist and advocate of nonviolent social change.

Personal life [ edit ]

Barbara Deming was born in New York City. She attended a Friends ( Quaker ) school up through her high school years.

Deming directed plays, taught dramatic literature and wrote and published fiction and non-fiction works. On a trip to India, she began reading Gandhi , and became committed to a non-violent struggle, with her main cause being Women's Rights. She later became a journalist, and was active in many demonstrations and marches over issues of peace and civil rights . She was a member of a group that went to Hanoi during the Vietnam War , and was jailed many times for non-violent protest. ^[2]

Deming died on August 2, 1984.

Relationships [ edit ]

At sixteen, she had fallen in love with a woman her mother's age, and thereafter she was openly lesbian . She was the romantic partner of writer and artist Mary Meigs from 1954 to 1972. Their relationship eventually floundered, partially due to Meigs's timid attitude, ^{[ citation needed ]} and Deming's unrelenting political activism.

During the time that they were together, Meigs and Deming moved to Wellfleet, Massachusetts , where she befriended the writer and critic Edmund Wilson and his circle of friends. Among them was the Quebecois author Marie-Claire Blais , with whom Meigs became romantically involved. Meigs, Blais, and Deming lived together for six years. ^[3]

In 1976, Deming moved to Florida with her partner, artist Jane Verlaine. Verlaine painted, did figure drawings and illustrated several books written by Deming. Verlaine was a tireless advocate for abused women.

Life's work [ edit ]

Deming openly believed that it was often those whom we loved that oppressed us, and that it was necessary to re-invent non-violent struggle every day.

It is often said that she created a body of non-violent theory, based on action and personal experience, that centered on the potential of non-violent struggle in its application to the women's movement. ^[2]

• Deming, Barbara: Prison Notes . New York: Grossman Publishers, 1966.
• Deming, Barbara: On Revolution and Equilibrium . Liberation, February 1968. From the collection: ed. Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd. Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History. Revised Edition . Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1995.
• Deming, Barbara: Running Away from Myself: A Dream Portrait of America Drawn from the Movies of the Forties . New York: Grossman Publishers, 1969.
• Deming, Barbara; Berrigan, Daniel; Forest, James; Kunstler, William; Lynd, Staughton; Shaull, Richard; Statements of the Catonsville 9 and Milwaukee 14 Delivered Into Resistance The Advocate Press: 1969.
• Deming, Barbara: Revolution and Equilibrium . New York: Grossman Publishers, 1971.
• Deming, Barbara: Wash Us and Comb Us . New York: Grossman Publishers, 1972.
• Deming, Barbara: We Cannot Live Without Our Lives . New York: Grossman Publishers, 1974.
• Deming, Barbara: A Humming Under My Feet . London: Women's Press , 1974.
• Deming, Barbara: Remembering Who We Are . Tallahassee, FL: The Naiad Press, 1981.
• Deming, Barbara; Meyerding, Jane (Editor): We Are All Part of One Another a Barbara Deming Reader . Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1984.
• Deming, Barbara; McDaniel, Judith; Biren, Joan E.; Vanderlinde, Sky (Editor): Prisons That Could Not Hold . University of Georgia Press, 1995.
• Deming, Barbara; McDaniel, Judith (Editor) I Change, I Change: Poems . New Victoria Publishers, 1996.

In 1968, Deming signed the “ Writers and Editors War Tax Protest ” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. ^[4]

In 1978, she became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press . ^[5]

Money for Women / The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund [ edit ]

In 1975, Deming founded The Money for Women Fund to support the work of feminist artists. Deming helped administer the Fund, with support from artist Mary Meigs . After Deming's death in 1984, the organization was renamed as The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. ^[6] Today, the foundation is the "oldest ongoing feminist granting agency" which "gives encouragement and grants to individual feminists in the arts (writers, and visual artists)". ^{[7] [8]}

References [ edit ]

External links [ edit ]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Barbara Deming .

• Barbara Deming: An Activist Life
• Ira Chernus, American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea
• Barbara Deming Papers. Schlesinger Library Archived 2012-05-09 at the Wayback Machine , Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
• A Random Chapter in the History of Nonviolence , by Michael L. Westmoreland-White
• On Revolution and Equilibrium
• On Anger
• Robson, R. (1984). "An Interview with Barbara Deming." Kalliope: A journal of Women's Art and Literature . 6(1).
• FBI file on Barbara Deming