Daniela Gioseffi - On Risk

Integrating Selma Alabama’s First TV Station, 1961

Integrating Selma television three years before Dr. King and John Lewis marched, during the era of segregated media programs and bus rides –and ‘Whites Only” bathrooms and water fountains separate from designated “Colored Only” ones— was a daunting risk, indeed! I was idealistic, virginal, and naïve at age 20. My Greek-Albanian-Italian father, Donato Gioseffi, was protective about dating, before women’s rights and Roe v. Wade. Because he’d saved William Brennan, media mogul of the Deep South, from WWII inscription into the army by giving him a job, Mr. Brennan repaid him by giving me an intern journalist position on his new TV station in 1961. I wanted to be the next Faye Emerson, the Oprah Winfrey of that era.

To announce one of the earliest Freedom Rides, on my own volition, I dared to appear on an all-Black gospel show! All hell broke loose with a burning cross on the lawn of the TV station, and watermelons thrown at its windows by the KKK! A Klansman, deputy sheriff of Montgomery County, handcuffed and arrested me at midnight. Protesting Blacks were beaten in daylight, but I was taken to jail at night to be abused. It was a trauma I never confessed to anyone until after age 50. Women didn’t admit to sexual abuse then for fear of shame, blame, or being unloved. 

That trauma turned me into a justice activist for the rest of my life, inspiring me to compose books like ON PREJUDICE: A Global Perspective, on issues of xenophobia, sexism, racism, homophobia, and monoculturalism. I’ve recently published a #MeToo anthology of women’s writings, and my WOMEN ON WAR: International Writings…has been in print for over 30 years as a women’s studies classic. I’ve won awards for my books on social conscience and wrote extensively of how self-hatred and envy are at the roots of prejudice. I was the first woman with an Italian name to be widely published in American poetry and literature.  

My father risked immigrating to America in 1913 and was an example of struggling immigrants of today—often the most law abiding, hardworking, compassionate people among us. He taught me compassion and tenacity. 

Since my youth, I never understood the hateful “racist” insanity that reigns over the colors of skin, and always found it acceptable for any human to love any other. I found Unitarian Universalism in my fifties having been raised by an agnostic scientist with Humanist ideals. At 80 years old, surviving four near-death experiences since that one in 1961, I’m grateful for the lessons adversity has taught me.  

Daniela Gioseffi, 2021