Last night more than 90 people gathered in one of San Francisco’s legacy businesses to celebrate the launch of the new biography of Marie Equi. Author Michael Helquist shared his account of how Marie Equi finally “got her story told” in a full-length biography after decades of being “hidden from history.”  

Special Guest Terence Kissack, author of Free Comrades: Anarchism and Homosexuality in the United States, 1895-1917, placed Equi’s personal and political life in the context of sex radicals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The event was presented by Patrick Marks, proprietor of the highly regarded Green Arcade Books and was hosted by The McRoskey Mattress Company. McRoskey’s was founded in San Francisco in 1899, two years after Marie Equi first settled in the city.

To be among so many friends, supporters, and people interested in Marie Equi was a tremendous honor for me last night. I was excited to share Equi’s remarkable, important story and to talk about my experience researching her life. Two facets of Equi’s life first got me interested. First, I was drawn to her outsider status as a working-class woman and a lesbian who overcame considerable obstacles to achieve an independent, professional life that was true to her sexual identity and her political beliefs. And second, I was impressed and inspired by her passionate embrace of life – no personal or professional risk stopped her from expressing her opinion or from engaging in direct action in the streets for a cause. Yet she was no stern ideologue. Equi loved to entertain her guests, tell a good story, mingle with kitchen workers in her favorite Italian restaurant, and, in Margaret Sanger’s words, capture every celebrated woman who came through town. 

Women, especially working class women, were not expected, certainly not encouraged, to become doctors in the late 1890s and early 1900s. In defiance of gender and social norms, Marie Equi self-studied her way into medical school. She graduated after four years of coursework in April 1903 from the University of Oregon Medical Department, now the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), in Portland. She was one of the first sixty women in Oregon to do so.

One-hundred-twelve years later, I was honored to tell Marie Equi’s story before a packed room of OHSU professors, students, and staff. It was the fourth day of the MARIE EQUI book tour in Portland, and a high point of the week in Oregon. During the early years of my book research, I spent dozens of hours during several visits reviewing documents at the Historical Collection & Archives on campus. The information and the assistance from staff were crucial to my understanding Equi’s medical education as well as the politics of medicine just after the turn of the 20th century. It was a time of conflict and progress in medical education with a push to make the profession more professional and more respected by the public. 

I recounted how another doctor tried to block Equi’s graduation and how Equi stood her ground – and then some – when a strapping male student called her a fool. One story followed another until we had to stop.

Many thanks to Maija Anderson, Head of Historical Collections & Archives; Max Johnson, University Archivist; Meg Langford, Public Services Coordinator, and the School of Medicine for making this event possible.

The evening glowed Wednesday night with a magical gathering at Marie Equi’s former home in Portland’s Goose Hollow neighborhood. Equi purchased this single-family house in 1924 a few years after she was released from San Quentin Prison. She lived there the rest of her life. It was in this house that Equi recovered from her imprisonment and pieced together a life for herself during the Roaring Twenties. She raised her teenage daughter in the house and undertook an emotionally complicated long-term relationship with prominent labor activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.  

Bette Sinclair, current owner of the house, shared her experiences with the two-dozen guests about living in Equi’s home for the last thirty years. She said she had known from the start that her new home had been the residence of Portland’s early woman doctor and fierce advocate for social justice. She recalled the sense of calm, peace, and appreciation for beauty that pervaded the house when she first settled there. 

Michael Helquist, author of the new biography “MARIE EQUI: Radical Politics & Outlaw Passions,” talked about the experience of “living with” Marie Equi for ten years while researching and writing the book. He described the complications of Equi’s life – her experience as an outsider much of her life even as she attained a privileged status as a doctor. He detailed a number of her relationships with other women and how she confronted injustice with great risk to her livelihood and personal freedom.   

The evening’s celebration of the release of MARIE EQUI proved the highlight of the third day of the Portland book tour.

On a perfect Portland evening with all living things refreshed by an afternoon rain, nearly 60 celebrants welcomed the release of MARIE EQUI.  Dale Danley and I greeted old friends from Portland, Eugene, and even a surprise few from San Francisco. And we were pleased to meet many fans of Equi and her story. I commented in my talk that Marie Equi would be pleased to know she can still pack a hall.

The spacious pavilion featured an enormous screen with the image of Marie Equi contemplating all who gathered below. If I had any butterflies when I started speaking, I knew I could look over at Winston Churchill (a full size wax figure) and faintly hear him saying "Courage."

Eliza Canty-Jones of OHS welcomed all and was generous in her comments about working with me on articles I wrote for the Oregon Historical Quarterly. Special guest Kimberly Jensen is a very bright star. She's a dedicated and prolific author and historian who has become a good friend through several years of this project, and I was honored to have her introduce me. And then she awarded me with a large size reproduction of Marie Equi's graduation diploma from medical school in 1903. I had never seen it in my years of research. An OHS stafff member recently discovered it in a box labeled simply "Documents." THIS is the thrill of research. I am moved by the generosity of Kim Jensen and the OHS staff. 

The theme of my talk was "Whose Story Gets Told?" as a kind of riff on the three questions from the last song of the new Broadway musical Hamilton: "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?" Marie Equi -- with her working class background, immigrant parents, and lesbian identity -- had been someone whose story did not get told to the full public for thirty years after her death in 1952.  She was one of the marginalized people -- women, working class and poor, immigrants, racial minorities, political radicals and LGBTQ people -- whose life stories never appeared. 
 
Then I described how Equi's story reached this point so that now, Her Story Got Told. 

I was happy that my mother was able to be with us last night and that I could give her the book just two months short of her 98th birthday.  She was a hit of the party with many people coming up to say hello. Also my sister Jo and my brother-in-law Jim continued their ongoing support by being there. 

A huge thanks to the Oregon Historical Society, especially to Eliza Canty-Jones, editor of the Oregon Historical Quarterly and to Geoff Wexler of the OHS Research Library. Also to the Oregon State University Press for patience and encouragement while I completed the manuscript. Special shout outs to Mary Elizabeth Braun, acquisitions editor, Marty Brown, marketing manager, and Micki Reaman, production manager. 

My husband Dale Danley helped keep me focused and assumed all the technical details and book sales. He's a gem. We were both glowing from the evening. 

An excellent launch. We could not be happier.

Earlier today, I was interviewed by Kathleen Stephenson at KBOO radio in Portland - "Independently Grown Since 1968." You can listen to playback of the program here.