Course Description

Instructor: Jill Parks

*Coffee and Danish will be served at the start of class.

On May 14th, 1900, the Olympic Games opened in Paris, the first Olympics in the 20th century. The Games were part of the World’s Fair, a fair celebrating modernism that began on the same day. Women competed for the first time. This class will look at some of the women who competed in the modern Olympics and highlight the discrimination they faced as women, and as African Americans. We will look at, Hélène de Pourtalès, first woman to win a gold medal; Margaret Abbott, won a gold medal in golf and was never told; Charlotte Cooper, who became an Olympic champion in tennis in 1900 and was deaf. We’ve heard of Jesse Owens, but not about the two Black women who changed the course of history, Tidye Pickett and Louise Stokes, who in 1932, became the first Black women to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team. And Alice Coachman, who in 1948 became the first Black woman to win a gold medal. Enjoy Coffee and Danishes.

Bio: Jill Fein Parks was born and raised in San Francisco, California. She holds a BA degree in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley and did graduate work in education at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University. She taught in the public schools for several years in Rhode Island, Arizona, and Florida. She left teaching to become the first female switchman for the Southern Pacific Railroad in Salt Lake City in the early 1990's.

Ms. Parks became politically active while at the University of California, Berkeley, protesting the war in Vietnam. After moving to Rhode Island in the early 1970's, she became a leader of the Pro Choice Movement giving speeches around the state, debating, and publishing articles. Due to her involvement in Pro Choice activities, she was followed by the FBI for months. She received her FBI file of over 100 pages from the Freedom of Information Act. She helped organize marches in Washington DC and around the country for the Equal Rights Amendment and for the Right to Choose.

In 1986 Ms. Parks ran as a socialist candidate for US Senate in Washington.

In 2015, Ms. Parks participated on a visual arts tour of Cuba with The University of New Mexico Latin American & Iberian Institute and Tamarind Institute. She shared her experiences at a Lunch and Learn at OLLI.

She has taught several classes at OLLI since her retirement in 2012 from Kaiser Permanente as HR Manager. She is also a co-leader of the OLLI Book Club.