Book description
In 1970, a sixty-five-year-old Philadelphian named Maggie Kuhn began
vocally opposing the notion of mandatory retirement. Taking
inspiration from the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, Kuhn
and her cohorts created an activist organization that quickly gained
momentum as the Gray Panthers. After receiving national publicity for
her efforts-she even appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny
Carson-she gained thousands of supporters, young and old. Their
cause expanded to include universal health care, nursing home reform,
affordable and accessible housing, defense of Social Security, and
elimination of nuclear weapons.
Gray Panthers traces the roots of Maggie Kuhn's social justice
agenda to her years as a YWCA and Presbyterian Church staff member. It
tells the nearly forty-year story of the intergenerational grassroots
movement that Kuhn founded and its scores of local groups. During the
1980s, more than one hundred chapters were tackling local and national
issues. By the 1990s the ranks of older members were thinning and most
young members had departed, many to pursue careers in public service.
But despite its challenges, including Kuhn's death in 1995, the
movement continues today.
Roger Sanjek examines Gray Panther activism over four decades.
Here the inner workings and dynamics of the movement emerge: the
development of network leadership, local projects and tactics,
conflict with the national office, and the intergenerational political
ties that made the group unique among contemporary activist groups.
Part ethnography, part history, part memoir, Gray Panthers
draws on archives and interviews as well as the author's thirty years
of personal involvement. With the impending retirement of the baby
boomers, Sanjek's book will surely inform the debates and discussions
to follow: on retirement, health care, and many other aspects of aging
in a society that has long valued youth above all.
"Gray Panthers makes a substantial contribution to the
literature of aging, social movements, and U. S. history."-Renée
Rose Shield, Director, Resource Center for Geriatrics Education, Brown University
Roger Sanjek is Professor of Anthropology at Queens College, City
University of New York. He is a J. I. Staley Prize winner, a John Simon
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, and the author of The Future of
Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City.
