Muriel Arceneaux, VFA's Feminist of the Month February 2010

 

Muriel Dees Arceneaux died April 22, 2011 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Born February 18, 1926 in Finchburg, Alabama, Muriel was a graduate of Alabama College for Women and got her Master's degree at Nicholls State U in 1978. In 1958, she moved to Houma, Louisiana where she worked as a social worker and teacher and shook up the parish and the state with her incredible feminist actitivies until 2007.

 

Muriel told VFA last January - "In the late 1960's women were meeting to discuss the new women's movement, and I had to get involved. It seemed best to go through respected organizations rather than the radical NOW, so I joined the Business and Professional Women. The BPW had very little information about the laws that governed their second-class citizenship, so I published a newsletter to make members aware of what was going on in Louisiana and in the movement countrywide. I invited Baton Rouge activists Karlene Tierney and the late Marcella Matthews to talk to about ERA United, and Roberta Madden of the Women's Political Caucus to conduct a political action workshop. I organized a branch of ERA United, serving as a board member for the state ERA and as president of Terrebonne Parrish ERA Coalition.

 

On the Louisiana conference-planning committee and the Houston Conference for International Women's Year as a Louisiana representative from 1973 to 1985, she published a bulletin to inform women of political and other issues, pressured Congress for federal laws to remedy injustices toward women and assisted in drawing up a proposed legislative platform to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

 

A board member of the YWCA for eight years, Muriel helped the Y develop a counseling program for battered women and train the police in handling domestic disputes and establish a women's shelter.

 

Elected to the Louisiana Democratic State Central Committee, for four years she assisted in the election of Louisiana women.

 

She founded Friends of the Library, was a docent of the Terrebonne Historical and Cultural Society, served on the Arts and Humanities Board and on the Parish Literacy Council. In 1990, after the last vote in the Louisiana legislature on an Equal Rights bill she retired and moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi to be near her daughter, Denise.

 

Muriel is survived by her children, Windell Richard Owens, Denise Owens-Mounger and Dorothy Arceneaux Stahr; four grandchildren and three great-grand children. She leaves this message to young people -- "People comment that the South has changed since the Civil Rights Movement, but it hasn't changed enough! This goes for every state in the union. There is still much to do. My message to young feminists: It is now up to you."

 

Condolences to Denise: billanddenise@gmail.com

 

Comments Jacqui Ceballos: jcvfa@aol.com