Laura X

Laura X
Laura X at home, February 28, 2022
Born
Laura Rand Orthwein Jr.

1940 (age 85–86)
St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Other nameLaura Shaw Murra (legal name)
EducationUniversity of California, Berkeley
Organization(s)Women's History Research Center
National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape
Known forActivism against date and marital rape
MovementFeminist
Websitelauraxinstitute.org
ncmdr.org

Laura X (born Laura Rand Orthwein Jr., 1940) is an American women's rights advocate. Laura X changed her name in 1962 to Laura Shaw Murra, which remains her legal name. She took the name Laura X on September 17, 1969, to symbolize her rejection of men's legal ownership of women and the anonymity of women's history, which she said was stolen from women and girls. She declared that, like Malcolm X, "I don't want to have my owner's name, either."

Education and background

Laura X was born into the prominent St. Louis Orthwein family and attended the Mary Institute. In 1959, she was crowned Queen of Love and Beauty at the Veiled Prophet Ball. At the time, the role required her to take a year of absence from Vassar College to attend charity functions. At Vassar, Laura co-founded the school's chapter of Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and developed a relationship with her mentor John Victor Murra. After Murra's contract ended at Vassar, Orthwein moved with him to New York City.

Laura X taught in the Head Start Program pilot program, having trained at the University of Puerto Rico. She also rose to Picket Captain in CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), attended New York University (NYU), and took graduate courses at Bank Street College of Education. Following her interests and research developed at Vassar College, she worked with the American Committee on Africa to welcome delegates from 17 newly independent states, 16 from Africa, join the UN and to picket Chase Manhattan Bank about their investments in South Africa.

In 1963, she moved to Berkeley, California, and she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley (UC-Berkeley), in 1971, having participated in the Free Speech Movement as well as other social justice movements. She was one of the founders of the newspaper It Ain't Me, Babe, a newspaper published in 1970 by Berkeley Women's Liberation, a feminist organization. The paper has been called "the first feminist newspaper," although that distinction may only be accurate within second-wave feminism in the United States.

In 1977, Laura X became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media. She participated in, and documented, 22 social movements until 2020.

Women's History Research Center

In 1968, Laura X founded the Women's History Research Center in Berkeley, California, the first historical archive connected to the women's liberation movement. She organized a march in Berkeley, California, on International Women’s Day in 1969; International Women's Day had been largely forgotten in the United States before then. Laura X also thought it unfair for half the human race to have only one day a year and called for National Women's History Month to be built around International Women’s Day. The Women’s History Research Center collected nearly one million documents on microfilm, and provided resources and records of the women’s liberation movement that are now available through the National Women’s History Alliance, which carried on their ideas, including successfully petitioning Congress to declare March as Women’s History Month.

By 1970 the Women's History Research Center was widely listed in early feminist publications. The Center put many of the early feminist writings on microfilm, making them available in libraries across the country. In 1978 the Women's History Research Center established the National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape in Berkeley, California, with Laura X as director.

The Women's History Research Center eventually closed, and its collections are now held in the women's history archive at the Schlesinger Library, which is part of Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and at other institutions. The microfilm copies have been distributed through Primary Source Media/Cengage Learning to some 450 libraries in fourteen countries.

Marital and date rape legislation

In 1979 Laura X led a successful campaign to make marital rape a crime in California. She also acted as a consultant to 45 other state campaigns on marital and date rape, as well as collecting and maintaining documents about the status of exemptions from prosecution in rape laws. Repeal of date and marital rape exemptions occurred in 45 states, in Federal and military law, in the laws of Guam and Puerto Rico, and the laws of twenty other countries.

As the leader of NCMDR’s campaign against marital rape, Laura X appeared on dozens of local and national TV and radio shows, including 60 Minutes, The Phil Donahue Show, Seattle Today, Sally Jessie Raphael, Geraldo, the Today Show, CBS News, and the Gary Collins show.

In September 1999 Laura X published her memoir "Accomplishing the Impossible: an Advocate's Notes from the Successful Campaign to Make Marital and Date Rape a Crime in All 50 U.S. States and Other Countries" in Violence Against Women: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal.

Awards and recognitions

References

  1. ↑ admin. "VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT: LAURA RAND ORTHWEIN, JR". Veteran Feminists of America. Archived from the original on August 9, 2022. Retrieved August 9, 2022.
  2. 1 2 "lauraxinstitute". lauraxinstitute. Archived from the original on August 11, 2016. Retrieved April 15, 2018.
  3. 1 2 Dinkelspiel, Frances (February 9, 2026). "Laura X got spousal rape banned in California. At 85, she scrapes by in a Berkeley hotel room". Berkeleyside. Retrieved August 17, 2026.
  4. ↑ Lucy Ferris, "Unveiling the Prophet," Chapter 14, University of Missouri Press, 2005 ISBN 978-0-8262-1601-4
  5. ↑ Carol Jones Vernon, Staff Writer for St. Louis Globe-Democrat - January 4, 1961. Archives of the defunct Globe-Democrat are presently housed at Mercantile Library at University of Missouri St. Louis Archived September 5, 2015, at the Wayback Machine (UMSL)
  6. 1 2 Neumann, Caryn (December 14, 2009). Sexual Crime: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO. pp. 145–. ISBN 978-1-59884-178-7.
  7. ↑ "October 3, 1979". A Documentary Chronicle of Vassar College. Archived from the original on October 29, 2018. Retrieved October 29, 2018.
  8. ↑ Mather, Anne D. (1973). History and analysis of feminist periodicals. University of Georgia. p. 78.
  9. 1 2 Armstrong, David (1981). A Trumpet to Arms: Alternative Media in America. South End Press. p. 229. ISBN 978-0-89608-193-2.
  10. ↑ "Associates | The Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press". www.wifp.org. Archived from the original on March 27, 2019. Retrieved June 21, 2017.
  11. ↑ "About | The Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press". Archived from the original on March 8, 2022. Retrieved April 7, 2022.
  12. 1 2 stephanie. "About the Archives". www.redstockings.org. Archived from the original on May 26, 2011. Retrieved April 15, 2018.
  13. ↑ Bernikow, Louise (March 2, 2005). "The Birth of Women's History Month". Women's eNews. Retrieved March 1, 2023.
  14. ↑ "Anniversary of Women's History Library/NCMDR". ncmdr.org. Archived from the original on March 30, 2023. Retrieved March 1, 2023.
  15. ↑ "Women's History in the Digital World 2015 – Ken Wachsberger's Blog". Ken Wachsberger's Blog. Archived from the original on March 1, 2023. Retrieved March 1, 2023.
  16. 1 2 "Women's History Research Center - Social Networks and Archival Context". snaccooperative.org. Archived from the original on August 17, 2021. Retrieved March 8, 2022.
  17. 1 2 3 ABOUT LAURA X Archived March 24, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, on the National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape website
  18. ↑ "International Assembly of Women. Records of the International Assembly of Women, 1946: A Finding Aid". oasis.lib.harvard.edu. Archived from the original on May 9, 2012. Retrieved April 15, 2018.
  19. ↑ "Women's History Research Center resource files". Rocky Mountain Online Archive. 1845. Archived from the original on April 26, 2014. Retrieved April 26, 2014.
  20. ↑ X, Laura. "Opening the Info Vault: Preserving, Digitizing, and Funding the International Women's History Periodical Archive". Women's History in the Digital World. 3. Archived from the original on August 8, 2022. Retrieved August 8, 2022.
  21. 1 2 Renzetti, Claire M.; Edleson, Jeffrey L. (June 19, 2008). Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Violence. SAGE. ISBN 9781412918008. Retrieved April 15, 2018 – via Google Books.
  22. ↑ "Who We Are and What We Do". ncmdr.org. Archived from the original on August 9, 2022. Retrieved August 9, 2022.
  23. ↑ Abstract of "Accomplishing the Impossible: an Advocate's Notes from the Successful Campaign to Make Marital and Date Rape a Crime in All 50 U.S. States and Other Countries," Archived July 17, 2011, at the Wayback Machine by Laura X, National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape website
  24. ↑ X, Laura (September 1999). "Accomplishing the Impossible: an Advocate's Notes from the Successful Campaign to Make Marital and Date Rape a Crime in All 50 U.S. States and Other Countries". Violence Against Women: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal. 5 (9).
  25. ↑ "A Library Shows There"s a. Lot About History's Women..." The New York Times. May 19, 1973. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on April 7, 2022. Retrieved April 7, 2022.
  26. ↑ "12 Women Who Did Something". Mademoiselle Magazine: 103. January–June 1974 – via Internet Archive.
  27. ↑ World Congress of Victimology (1981). "Proceedings of the World Congress of Victimology". OCLC 649057809. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  28. ↑ "About Laura X". ncmdr.org. Archived from the original on July 6, 2022. Retrieved April 12, 2022.
  29. ↑ "UMSL Women Trailblazers Award". Archived from the original on September 6, 2015. Retrieved September 11, 2015.