Kathleen Thompson

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Kathleen Thompson (born September 12, 1946) is an American feminist, writer, and activist. She was first known for co-authoring with Andra Medea the feminist classic ''Against Rape'' (Farrar, Straus, 1974), the book that broke the silence about rape not only in the United States, but around the world. She exposed the American diet industry's exploitation of women in ''Feeding on Dreams'' (MacMillanUSA, 1994), written with psychologist Diane Pinkert Epstein. She was co-author, with pre-eminent historian Darlene Clark Hine, of ''A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America''. (Broadway Books, 1998), the first narrative history of black women in America. She then collaborated with Hilary Mac Austin on three print documentaries of groups underrepresented in ''American history: The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present'' (Indiana University Press, 1999), ''Children of the Depression'' (Indiana University Press, 2000), and America's Children: Repicturing Childhood from Exploration to the Present (W. W. Norton, 2001). Thompson also served on the board of senior editors with Hine, Deborah Grey White, Brenda Stephenson, and other major scholars in the field on the second edition of the landmark encyclopedia ''Black Women in America'' (Oxford University Press, 2005). In addition to these adult trade books, she has written more than one hundred books for children and young adults and has had eleven plays produced in Chicago, New York City, and other cities.

Thompson's activism began in Oklahoma City during the Civil Rights Movement in 1963. She participated in anti-war activities that included the March on Washington for Peace in Vietnam in 1965. In 1969, she opened Chicago's first feminist bookstore, Pride and Prejudice, which later became the Women's Center of Chicago, of which she was a founding member. The Women's Center offered consciousness-group organizing, pregnancy testing, abortion counselling, an artists collective, and a number of other services for women. The Women's Center co-sponsored, with Chicago Lesbian Liberation, the first public all-woman dance event in Chicago, the Family of Women. Thompson worked with Medea to present one of the first rape conferences in the country, which took place in 1972 at the Chicago Loop Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), then under the leadership of feminist activist Diann Deweese Smith. She was also a founding member of Chicago Women Against Rape. With Austin, she co-founded OneHistory, an organization dedicated to making heard all the voices of American history. More recently, she has been involved in anti-gang activism in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago.