Frances (Francesca) Patai, 1930-1998

Off Our Backs, Apr 1998

Frances (Francesca) Patai, 1930-1998

Frances Sheldon Patai, a teacher, writer, historian, and feminist activist, died on Sunday, January 18, at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx. She was 67 and had lived in Manhattan. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer.

Frances Elizabeth Saxon Pollack was born in New York City, on the Lower East Side, in 1930. Orphaned at a young age, she left school at 13 and became a professional model, actress and dancer. She performed in local productions and "Borscht Belt" theater in the Catskills.

Eventually she returned to school, graduating in 1955 from City College, all the while working full-time. She obtained her Master's Degree from City College in 1959, and for many years she taught English at the Borough of Manhattan College in the CUNY system.

In the early 1980's, Ms. Patai parlayed her knowledge of the theater and her academic training in cultural criticism into the organizing and production of the annual "WAP Zaps, "a feminist awards ceremony in which the group Women Against Pornography honored advertising that promoted the equality and dignity of women, while giving "Zaps," in the shape of plastic pigs, to companies whose advertising was deemed demeaning. "We want to tell advertisers to stop producing ads that degrade and promote violence against women," The Wall Street Journal quoted Frances as saying just before the 1985 awards ceremony. During that year the group received over 500 nominations for the awards, and by that time the event was garnering much attention in the general and trade press, and had resulted in some positive changes in advertising campaigns. In February 1982, for example, WAP presented a "Ms. Liberty" ("Libby") award to Joe Famolare, the shoe designer, "in recognition of his turn-about from sexist to fun-oriented advertising," according to a WAP statement at the time. Frances had been instrumental in persuading Mr. Famolare to rehire feminist advertising expert Jane Trahey to develop a new campaign.

In recent years Frances turned her attention to history and journalism. She wrote widely on the contributions of American women to the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War; her research project, "Heroines of the Good Fight: U.S. Women Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939," for which she received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, produced numerous articles and lectures, including most recently a talk at the World History Association's Sixth Annual Conference in Pamplona, Spain, in June 1997. In the Early 1990's she founded Urban News International, a news agency specializing in women's and labor issues. She was also a member of the National Writer's Union and the New York City Labor Chorus.

Frances's life and work were informed by her early life of poverty; by the existence of the Holocaust; and by her witnessing of the Peekskill riot of 1947, during which people attending a Paul Robenson concert were attacked by police on horseback who shouted slurs at what they called the "New York nigger-loving Jews" there. Knowing that stereotypes about groups of people could hurt and kill, she endowed a course called "The Nazi Holocaust: Its History, Consequences, and Contemporary Significance," to be taught at the City College of New York Center for Worker Education. She also donated her books on violence against women to Camp Sister Spirit in Ovett, Mississippi and, via the Global Fund for Women, to MONA, the Budapest-based Women's Resource Center for women in Eastern Europe.

Not long before she died, a friend asked Frances what she wanted most to be remembered for. She replied, "For my work for peace and justice for everyone."

Frances is survived by many friends in New York, Philadelphia, California, and Spain. We will Sorely miss her.