Editing Barbara Deming

{{Short description|American feminist and advocate of nonviolent social change}}
{{Infobox person
| name        = Barbara Deming
| image       = Barbara Deming.jpg
| alt         = 
| caption     = 
| birth_name  = 
| birth_date  = July 23, 1917
| birth_place = New York City, U.S.
| death_date  = {{death date and age|1984|8|2|1917|7|23}}
| death_place = [[Sugarloaf Key]], [[Florida]], U.S.
| nationality = 
| other_names = 
| partner     = [[Mary Meigs]]
| known_for   = 
| occupation  = 
| education     = [[Bennington College]], [[Case Western Reserve University|Western Reserve University]]<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00057 |title=Deming, Barbara, 1917-1984. Papers, 1886-1995: A Finding Aid |access-date=2017-04-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402095541/http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00057 |archive-date=2015-04-02 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
}}

'''Barbara Deming''' (July 23, 1917 &ndash; August 2, 1984) was an American [[feminist]] and advocate of [[nonviolence|nonviolent]] social change.

== Personal life ==

Barbara Deming was born in New York City. She attended a ''Friends'' ([[Quaker]]) school up through her high school years.

Deming directed plays, taught dramatic literature and wrote and published fiction and non-fiction works. On a trip to India, she began reading [[Gandhi]], and became committed to a non-violent struggle, with her main cause being Women's Rights. She later became a journalist, and was active in many demonstrations and marches over issues of peace and [[civil rights]]. She was a member of a group that went to [[Hanoi]] during the [[Vietnam War]], and was jailed many times for non-violent protest.<ref name="andrejkoymaskyliv">[http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biod1/demi2.html Andrejkoymasky.com] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060422062849/http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biod1/demi2.html |date=April 22, 2006 }}</ref>

Deming died on August 2, 1984.

=== Relationships ===

At sixteen, she had fallen in love with a woman her mother's age, and thereafter she was openly [[lesbian]]. She was the romantic partner of writer and artist [[Mary Meigs]] from 1954 to 1972. Their relationship eventually floundered, partially due to Meigs's timid attitude,{{citation needed|date=June 2016}} and Deming's unrelenting political activism.

During the time that they were together, Meigs and Deming moved to [[Wellfleet, Massachusetts]], where she befriended the writer and critic [[Edmund Wilson]] and his circle of friends. Among them was the Québécois author [[Marie-Claire Blais]], with whom Meigs became romantically involved. Meigs, Blais, and Deming lived together for six years.<ref>[http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biom3/meig1.html Andrejkoymasky.com]</ref>

In 1976, Deming moved to Florida with her partner, artist Jane Verlaine. Verlaine painted, did figure drawings and illustrated several books written by Deming.  Verlaine was a tireless advocate for abused women.

== Life's work ==
Deming openly believed that it was often those whom we loved that oppressed us, and that it was necessary to re-invent non-violent struggle every day.

It is often said that she created a body of non-violent theory, based on action and personal experience, that centered on the potential of non-violent struggle in its application to the women's movement.<ref name="andrejkoymaskyliv"/>

* Deming, Barbara: ''Prison Notes''. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1966.
* Deming, Barbara: ''On Revolution and Equilibrium''. Liberation, February 1968. From the collection: ed. Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd. ''Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History. Revised Edition''. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1995.
* Deming, Barbara: ''Running Away from Myself: A Dream Portrait of America Drawn from the Movies of the Forties''. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1969.
* Deming, Barbara; Berrigan, Daniel; Forest, James; Kunstler, William; Lynd, Staughton; Shaull, Richard; Statements of the Catonsville 9 and Milwaukee 14 ''Delivered Into Resistance'' The Advocate Press: 1969. 
* Deming, Barbara: ''Revolution and Equilibrium''. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1971.
* Deming, Barbara: ''Wash Us and Comb Us''. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1972.
* Deming, Barbara: ''We Cannot Live Without Our Lives''. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1974.
* Deming, Barbara: ''A Humming Under My Feet''. London: [[Women's Press]], 1974.
* Deming, Barbara: ''Remembering Who We Are''. Tallahassee, FL: The Naiad Press, 1981.
* Deming, Barbara; Meyerding, Jane (Editor): ''We Are All Part of One Another a Barbara Deming Reader ''. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1984. 
* Deming, Barbara; McDaniel, Judith; Biren, Joan E.; Vanderlinde, Sky (Editor): ''Prisons That Could Not Hold ''. University of Georgia Press, 1995.
* Deming, Barbara; McDaniel, Judith (Editor) ''I Change, I Change: Poems''. New Victoria Publishers, 1996.

In 1968, Deming signed the “[[Writers and Editors War Tax Protest]]” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.<ref>“Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” January 30, 1968 ''New York Post''</ref>

In 1978, she became an associate of the [[Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.wifp.org/who-we-are/associates/|title=Associates {{!}} The Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press|website=www.wifp.org|language=en-US|access-date=2017-06-21}}</ref>

==Money for Women / The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund==
In 1975, Deming founded The Money for Women Fund to support the work of feminist artists.  Deming helped administer the Fund, with support from artist [[Mary Meigs]].  After Deming's death in 1984, the organization was renamed as The  Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.<ref>[http://demingfund.org/our-founders] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121206011812/http://demingfund.org/our-founders|date=December 6, 2012}}</ref> Today, the foundation is the "oldest ongoing feminist granting agency" which "gives encouragement and grants to individual feminists in the arts (writers, and visual artists)".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://demingfund.org/ |title=Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Inc. : Home |publisher=Demingfund.org |date= |accessdate=2015-09-25}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Dusenbery |first=Maya |url=http://feministing.com/2010/12/06/quickhit-calling-all-feminist-fiction-writers/ |title=Quickhit: Calling all Feminist Fiction Writers |publisher=Feministing.com |date= 6 December 2010|accessdate=2015-09-25}}</ref>

==References==
<references />

==External links==
{{Wikiquote}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20061220034653/http://homepage.mac.com/deyestone/deming.html ''Barbara Deming: An Activist Life'']
* [http://spot.colorado.edu/~chernus/NonviolenceBook/Deming.htm ''Ira Chernus, American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea'']
* [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:sch00057 Barbara Deming Papers.] [http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles Schlesinger Library] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120509153246/http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles |date=2012-05-09 }}, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
* [http://www.ecapc.org/articles/WestmoW_2002.09.08.asp A Random Chapter in the History of Nonviolence], by Michael L. Westmoreland-White
* [http://peacenews.info/node/3611/revolution-and-equilibrium ''On Revolution and Equilibrium'']
* ''[https://peacenews.info/node/7610/anger On Anger]''
* Robson, R. (1984). [https://fscj.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fscj%3A874#page/38/mode/2up "An Interview with Barbara Deming."] [https://fscj.digital.flvc.org/islandora/search/?type=edismax&collection=fscj%3AKalliope Kalliope: A journal of Women's Art and Literature]. 6(1).
* [[iarchive:barbara-deming|FBI file on Barbara Deming]]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Deming, Barbara}}
[[Category:1917 births]]
[[Category:1984 deaths]]
[[Category:American feminist writers]]
[[Category:American pacifists]]
[[Category:American political writers]]
[[Category:American tax resisters]]
[[Category:LGBTQ people from New York (state)]]
[[Category:American lesbian writers]]
[[Category:American nonviolence advocates]]
[[Category:War Resisters League activists]]
[[Category:20th-century American women writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:American Quakers]]
[[Category:Quaker feminists]]
[[Category:20th-century Quakers]]
[[Category:20th-century American LGBTQ people]]