Efforts are underway at CUNY SPH to raise funds for an endowed professorship in sexual and reproductive justice (SRJ). Named for an extraordinary Black feminist leader, Byllye Yvonne Avery, the professorship will be crucial to the development of an SRJ curriculum and expanded opportunities for research, training, and advocacy among students and faculty alike.
“I’m honored to the moon,” Avery says. “What CUNY SPH has in mind is to create a model for other universities to follow. At the heart of it is the perfect marriage of human rights and reproductive justice—the brainchild of Terry McGovern,” who joined the school as senior associate dean for academic and student affairs in July of 2023. At the same time, it’s a model based on Avery’s achievements and leadership style, honed over five decades of organizing and grassroots advocacy.
The founding mother of the reproductive justice movement
Avery studied psychology at Talladega College in Alabama and went on to earn a master’s degree in special education from the University of Florida in 1969. Less than a year later, her husband died of a heart attack at age 33. That tragic event led her to a new sense of purpose centered on improving health in the Black community. She hadn’t yet found her way to public health, but she was all too familiar with the social determinants of health—especially racism—that eroded, and continue to erode, the health status of Black Americans.
She soon gravitated toward feminism and reproductive justice—a term that combines reproductive rights and social justice. In 1971 she gave her first public lecture on reproductive health. In 1974, a year after Roe v. Wade, she and a colleague opened an abortion clinic in Gainesville, Florida.
She convened the first national conference on the theme of Black women’s health at Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta in 1983. More than 2,000 women participated, and a new movement was born.
The event featured panels and workshops on high blood pressure, diabetes, lupus, childbirth, and mental health. But beyond addressing diseases, the conference encouraged Black women to share information and consider how racism and oppression affected their interactions with the health system.
Avery proceeded to found the Black Women’s Health Imperative (BWHI). More than 40 years later, BWHI is still serving the needs and aspirations of Black women, other women of color, and members of marginalized communities in the United States and around the world.
A unique leadership style
Avery describes her leadership style in paradoxical terms. “It’s about leading from behind,” she says. “It’s not about expertise. People already have the answers, so the most important quality a leader needs is the ability to listen.”
“A good leader is a good follower,” she continues. “We talked about our lives. By telling our stories many times, we found out what was really going on, from sexual abuse to miscarriages, maternal and infant mortality, diabetes, and numerous other health problems that disproportionately affect Black women.”
She shared two crucial lessons from her long career as a scholar-activist-organizer: be prepared to excel at fundraising and don’t give up!
A life of stunning achievement
Naming the new SRJ professorship for Avery makes perfect sense in light of her achievements as a teacher, mentor, and holistic thinker. Consider a few of her career highlights:
- She is the recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award for Social Contribution, the Essence Award for Community Service, and the Audre Lorde Spirit of Fire Award from Fenway Health.
- She was a visiting fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health from 1991 to 1993.
- She served on the Charter Advisory Committee of the NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health.
- She co-led classes on reproductive health and advocacy at the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia University.
- She holds honorary degrees from seven institutions of higher education.
Yet she wears her achievements lightly, with no trace of ego. Avery’s spirit of “leading from behind” will surely inform the professorship named for her.
Back to the future
As far as Avery is concerned, Roe v. Wade never went far enough in securing the right to have an abortion. But she stresses that the Dobbs decision has been a major setback for girls, women, and others who may become pregnant, and the struggle has become that much more urgent. Moreover, there are other aspects of the period we’re living through that are simultaneously terrible and, potentially, fruitful.
For example, she calls attention to the rise of white supremacy in our time. “In the struggle for SRJ, we need to get our white sisters to deal with that,” she says. “We can’t live in a just society if we don’t.” If it makes some people uncomfortable, she added, so be it.
“It’s okay to be uncomfortable,” she says. “Because the solutions we need will emerge from that discomfort.”
