qPARA iPAR@ ` 1TEXT ` #Kuhn, Maggie1905╨ social activistBorn on August 3, 1905, in Buffalo, New York, Margaret E. Kuhn was raised in the North because her parents, who had lived in the South, found racial segregation intolerable. After the family moved to Cleveland, Maggie attended high school and enrolled in the Flora Stone Mather College of Case Western Reserve University in 1922. She majored in English and sociology while also organizing a college chapter of the League of Women Voters. After graduation, Kuhn began training as a high school teacher, yet chose to take a job with Cleveland╒s Young Women╒s Christian Association where she worked for the next eleven years organizing young YWCA women. Kuhn explained how these years had confirmed her radicalism: ╥So many of our members at the YWCA were women working for rotten-paying clerical or commercial jobs ╔ My work with these women as they started to organize and unionize cemented my radicalism.╙ After resigning from the YWCA in the late 1930s, she began twenty-five years of work with the United Presbyterian Church in New York City, serving as its associate secretary in the office of church and society, as coordinator of programming in the division of church and race, and as an editor of and writer for Social Progress, the church magazine. An activist for such social causes as women╒s rights, medical care, housing, and the elderly, she used her own experience in the church ministry to write Get Out There and Do Something About Injustice, 1972, and Maggie Kuhn on Aging, 1977, which argued that the church should ╥launch a massive attack on ageism in all its oppressive and constraining forms.╙ She resented the church╒s mandatory retirement policy, and, after she was forced to retire in 1970 at the age of 65, she began meeting with other retirees about social issues that concerned them. Opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War became their first issue, and they became militant activists against the war.This organization, committed to bridging the gap between young and old people, was at first called the Consultation of Older and Younger Adults for Social Change. ╥We realized that the young and the old in this society are equally discriminated against.╙ The organization was dubbed the ╥Gray Panthers╙ by a television newsman who likened them to the militant Black Panthers, and the name held. The Gray Panthers set up an office in 1971 in a church basement in Philadelphia, from where they launched a crusade to end age discrimination and other social injustices. In 1973 Kuhn╒s organization merged with Ralph Nader╒s Retired Professional Action Group and began a study of nursing homes that resulted in Nursing Homes: A Citizens╒ Action Guide, 1977. Speaking on the problems of medical care for the aged, Kuhn charged that ╥doctors prey on the infirmities of the old.╙ During the Carter Administration, she criticized the welfare reform bill, asserting that ╥public welfare in this country does not need re-forming; it needs radicalization.╙ Through the group╒s Media Watch, Kuhn also challenged the generally negative portrayal of the elderly on television. The Gray Panthers went on to call for the elimination of the profit motive from the U.S. health care system. At meeting s of the American Medical Association the group would present position papers as well as stage protests.The first, general convention of the Gray Panthers in 1975, was attended by delegates from over 30 states; by 1977 when Kuhn convened the second biennial convention, there were about 350 delegates representing about 70 affiliate Gray Panther groups. While recommending legislation that made health care free and available to all people, the groups also adopted a resolution calling for ╥the right to sexuality at all ages and the right to celebrate and express it.╙Kuhn was honored with the Award for Justice and Human Development of the Witherspoon Society, 1974; the Distinguished Service Award in Consumer Advocacy of the American Speech and Hearing Association, 1975; the Freedom Award of the Women╒s Scholarship Association of Roosevelt University, 1976; the Annual Award of the Philadelphia Society of Clinical Psychologists, 1976; the Peaceseeker Award of the United Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, 1977; the Humanist of the Year Award of the American Humanist Association, 1978; and an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore College, 1978.Kuhn and the Gray Panthers focused on maintaining Social Security benefits during the 1980s as they fell under attack by the Reagan Administration. In the early 1990s, a campaign for a national health care system was the top priority of the Gray Panthers. Other priorities for the 1990s included federal support for housing, reduced military spending, and a clean and safe environment. Kuhn remained the national convener of the organization that she founded. styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ ( !I Γ 5¬ π !I ╗ 5¬ ╝ !I ⌠ !I !I ╡ !I π !I ∩ !I !I ╟ 5¬ ╚ !I
