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[ ♪♪♪ ] WOMAN: Marie Equi lived life on her own terms.

And sometimes that brought really powerful negative consequences.

She provided abortions because women were often desperate.

WOMAN: She was volatile when she was angry.

She had-- I think most people would call it a short fuse.

WOMAN: She loved other women.

And at the time, that was something that was increasingly being labeled as deviant, sick, as ethically, morally wrong.

MAN: She was very passionate in what she believed, causes she believed in, how the world should be.

WOMAN: If Marie Equi wasn't around, the birth control movement in Portland would have looked different, the antiwar movement in Portland would have looked different, and the labor movement in Portland would have looked different, particularly for women.

MAN: The U.S. attorney for Oregon at one point said, "She's the most dangerous radical on the West Coast."

[ crowd cheering ] NARRATOR: In November 1918, World War I was ending.

That same month, 46-year-old Dr. Marie Equi entered the federal courthouse in Portland to stand trial for publicly speaking out against America's involvement.

If convicted, Equi faced up to 100 years in prison.

WOMAN: This trial was huge news.

Even people who didn't advocate for her same beliefs still knew, like, it was going to be dramatic.

WOMAN: I think the trial was about punishing Marie Equi for being willing to be such a fierce defender of justice.

She was challenging not only gender roles but challenging the capitalist system.

The federal government had Marie on trial for sedition, but stepping back, you could say it's really her whole life that was on trial.

Born Marie Diana Equi in 1872, she grew up in the whaling town of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Her father was a stone mason from Italy.

Her mother, immigrant Irish.

Marie had 10 siblings, and before she was 10 years old, three of her siblings had died.

And that had to affect her.

Plus, seeing the effect that so many births had on her mother.

The family lived close to the waterfront for a few years.

So Marie would mingle with the wage workers and the guys on the docks.

Some of her teachers were very impressed with her and saw an eagerness to study.

She got recognized that she was very bright very early back in New Bedford.

But like many young girls at the time, Marie dropped out of high school and went to work in the textile mills to help support the family.

Her future dimmed until a well-to-do school friend named Bessie Holcomb intervened.

Bessie submitted an application for Marie to a seminary known for taking disadvantaged young ladies.

"Marie's desire," Bessie wrote, "is to be a noble, helpful, well-educated woman."

The school accepted Marie in 1889, and Bessie paid for one year's tuition.

Then she saw her own future far from Massachusetts.

The 1862 Homestead Act was drawing settlers west by offering free land.

HELQUIST: And that could be a man or a woman, a married person or single.

This was giving women land ownership.

Alone at first, Bessie staked her claim just outside the eastern Oregon town of The Dalles on the Columbia River.

Marie didn't have any other options in New Bedford.

And I imagine Bessie wrote letters to Marie that said, "Well, come join me."

And in 1892, that's exactly what Miss Equi did.

They were known for their "pluck," as the word was in the newspapers, because the land was hard to work.

It was very rocky.

They had a small garden.

It seemed to not be too controversial that the two of them were living together.

But one summer day in 1893, Marie's explosive temper debuted.

Bessie taught school at the Wasco Independent Academy in town.

Her boss, O.D.

Taylor, was a prominent but unpopular Baptist minister.

He'd offered Bessie an extra $100 in her salary.

Then he refused to pay her, and that outraged Marie.

Marie went out and had a horse whip, and she started pacing in front of O.D.

Taylor's office.

He only had one way out, which was the front door, and she knew that.

So here's this 20-year-old woman stalking back and forth and yelling out to him and causing a commotion.

Finally he came out, and she whacked him with the horse whip and she chased him up the street.

She was cheered on by the local people because he was a bit of a scoundrel.

Even so, Marie was arrested and taken to the courthouse, where charges of assault and disturbing the peace were dropped.

Newspapers near and far had a good story, The Dalles Chronicle declaring Equi "a queen today."

Together the couple worked the homestead for the required five years.

By then, Marie had set sights on a lofty goal.

She would become a doctor.

Marie Equi was a person who wanted to be financially secure.

Her childhood taught her that women needed that.

She knew she was not going to have a man in her life that was paying her way with anything.

She had to be independent.

She just knows, "I work best in an environment where I'm in charge."

In 1897, the couple chose San Francisco as their next destination.

Marie found work in a restaurant, studied on her own, and eventually entered medical school.

At that time, all you had to do was to pass an exam if you weren't coming with a high school certificate or a degree.

But over the next couple of years, Bessie and Marie would grow apart, both starting new relationships.

Marie's new companion and fellow student would graduate from the University of Oregon Medical Department, now OHSU, in 1903.

After interning in Pendleton, Dr. Equi began building her general practice back in Portland with an emphasis on women and children.

The year was 1905.

MAYER: This is a time where there's rapidly changing social norms.

Immigration, labor unrest, there's a lot of things going on that is changing the way the middle and upper class viewed the world and their role in it, of wanting to really replicate white, middle-class Christian values.

And so a lot of Progressive Era activism was really about morality as much as it was about improving conditions for working people.

[ ♪♪♪ ] During her early years in Portland, Equi joined the Progressive Party and actively involved herself in issues of the day.

Called one of the brainiest women in Oregon, she worked for women's suffrage, aligning with voting rights pioneer Abigail Scott Duniway.

And she was among the first to sign up for jury duty when Oregon women won the vote in 1912.

But it was the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that would catapult Marie to celebrity status.

When the San Francisco earthquake happened, she was one of the first volunteers to go down there and help.

It was just her big heart.

HELQUIST: She got the attention of reporters.

Here is this only woman doctor leaves her practice in Portland for the welfare of San Franciscans.

And evidently there really was a medal that she received from the U.S. Army, which is ironic considering her relationship with the government in later years.

But returning home, Equi's golden-girl image quickly tarnished.

In 1905, she'd met and fallen in love with 23-year-old Harriet Speckart, an heiress to the Olympia Brewing Company fortune.

The Speckart family, they accused Equi of being after the family wealth, but it was all about money and, of course, it was all about what clearly was a lesbian relationship and the scandal of that.

So for a couple years, they were living in the Nortonia Hotel, which became the Mark Spencer, and there was a rooftop garden restaurant.

And Marie and Harriet would throw parties, dinner parties and drinking parties.

And they had a big crowd.

One more way she got to be well known.

We know she loved other women.

She was very much involved in supporting women, but she was romantically involved with them.

The word "lesbian" was not used commonly at that time.

Marie lived her life, and that was her declaration.

I think we have to be careful not to always look for, "Where did she put it in writing?

Where is it in an interview, 'I am a lesbian'?"

Marie Equi was a doctor.

She really identified as a doctor.

She was nicknamed Doc.

So therefore, when a medical need arose, she responded.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Those needs included abortions performed as part of her holistic approach to women's health.

We know that she wanted very much to help working women, to help women in immigrant communities.

She wanted to make sure that people had access to contraception, to abortion regardless of what their job was or how much they made or who their family was.

This was a really important part of her philosophy about all healthcare, all reproductive rights.

At the time, Oregon and most states had laws restricting abortions.

But in general, in the 1910s, prosecution didn't happen unless there was a death involved.

I think she just said, "I know it's against the law."

But considering her clients, I think she figured she could get away with it because she provided abortions to the wives and the girlfriends of many prominent men in town.

[ ♪♪♪ ] She had a great reputation for being safe.

POLISHUK: She was an excellent doctor, and she doctored to the poor sometimes for nothing and she doctored to the rich for a lot.

If we think about her, she was able to be comfortable with and knew how to be a part of many different communities.

She knew how to work within the system, and she was very successful with that.

But during the summer of 1913, a strike at a Portland fruit cannery would radically alter Dr. Equi's view of the system.

POLISHUK: The women sorted cherries, and a lot of the cherries were rotten, and so they had to sort those out.

And they got paid for the cherries that got to stay in.

The women testified to working for only five to eight cents an hour in filthy conditions.

MAYER: They went to the shop foreman to make a complaint, and he basically said, "If you don't like it, get out," and so they did.

Their picket signs conveyed a bold message.

"Forty cents a day is what makes prostitutes.

Women demand a living wage."

And so they very much connected this idea of, "If we don't make enough money here, we are going to have to find a way to make enough money elsewhere."

It was a strategic move.

In 1913, Portland's progressive activists were vigorously investigating prostitution and vice.

I think the women knew that it tied directly into the issues going on in the city.

And they said, "This is what's causing it.

It's the fact that we can't make enough to live is what's causing women to go into prostitution.

The radical Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies, and the Socialist Party agreed with the picketing women, connecting prostitution to economics, not loose morals.

The Wobblies joined the strike, bringing their strong belief in free speech.

So did Dr. Equi.

HELQUIST: Marie was making a house call, and she saw one of her patients there.

She got on top of the soapbox and she urged women to stop working, to join the strike, and that was the beginning of her radical period.

The cannery strike did evolve into a free speech fight.

That would lead to language that city officials didn't approve of, and so that's when arrests would start to happen.

People would be pulled down, another person would take their place.

HELQUIST: So when Agnes O'Connor, the Native American woman who was pregnant, got pulled off, Marie just lost it.

She was so righteously angry, she went after the cops.

She started hitting them and pounding them.

WOMAN AS EQUI: I'm going to speak when and where I wish.

No man will stop me.

The first man who touches me, I'll stick him with a pin that contains a certain virus I can make.

POLISHUK: So the next time they were rough with her, that's exactly what she did-- well, not the virus part-- but she pulled her hat pin out and she poked a policeman.

But that was... That was Marie.

JENSEN: It was absolutely a sign that she was not following the rules.

She was willing to engage in behavior that was absolutely not sanctioned for women, and especially for elite women or women who were supposed to behave.

Her choices to meet force with force made her very controversial.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Governor Oswald West stepped in to stop the strike but struck out at a packed meeting in City Hall.

Violence escalated when mounted police charged the picket line, injuring several women.

Equi was eventually arrested along with other strikers.

WOMAN AS EQUI: I was taken to the county jail, stripped, beaten and spit upon.

But as the cherry season ended, so did the strike.

Members of the new Welfare Commission negotiated a settlement with the packing company far from what the women were demanding.

MAYER: The commission said, "We know what's best for you.

We'll figure this out.

You just go back to work, and we'll take care of it."

POLISHUK: What Marie saw there was a lot of abuse of working people and women not being listened to, women not getting their due.

And it did radicalize her.

Equi, never an official member of the IWW because of her professional status, was now on the government's radar as a dangerous and deranged radical.

WOMAN AS EQUI: It is beyond the imagination of these people who repeatedly attacked me that a professional woman of established practice and reputation could put these aside and get out and work for her unfortunate sisters and brothers.

Therefore, I must be insane.

The cannery strike caused her to think that she had to work outside the system to make any real lasting change.

And so she starts to associate more and more with the IWW.

Particularly in Portland and in Oregon, she was one of the most recognizable faces in support of the union.

As Equi's politics changed, so did her relationship with Harriet Speckart.

HELQUIST: Harriet Speckart did not get involved with any of the protests.

I think she just wanted something else in her life, because Marie wasn't giving her much.

We just imagine her saying, "I want a child."

I think Harriet knew that Marie could get her a baby because there were often women who came to her too late.

It was something that the abortionists did, was help women place their babies.

Marie adopted a baby girl named Mary in 1915.

HELQUIST: The people at the adoption agency knew she was a lesbian, knew she was living with another woman and still allowed her to legally adopt.

So she was probably the first and only for a very long time to... to do that.

Their agreement was that Harriet would raise the child and Marie would support them.

Marie in the meantime was aligning with other women radical activists, meeting them at Union Station as they came to town on speaking tours.

In the spring of 1916, Margaret Sanger, a nurse and outspoken advocate for birth control, arrived in Portland.

MAYER: The early stages of the birth control movement in the United States were dominated by radicals.

They really saw that in order for the working class to be emancipated, to be in control of their own destiny, they had to have smaller families.

HELQUIST: Sanger had developed a brochure about family limitation.

It was like a small size that would fit in your purse or pocket.

And it gave some basic information on how to avoid pregnancy.

It also described sex as something that could maybe be pleasurable for young women.

And to even the progressives in the city of Portland who said they agreed that birth control information should be out there, but this pamphlet took it too far because it also talked about things that could arise impure thoughts in young people.

Despite the controversy, Sanger spoke on schedule.

HELQUIST: Margaret Sanger and Marie got arrested in Portland for distributing the booklet because it was considered obscene material.

As a compromise, Sanger asked Equi to revise the booklet and delete suggestive phrases.

And Marie did, and then she added a few of her own specialties.

She named labor leaders in Portland who supported birth control.

And she was advising women about not being too eager to have children.

Basically she was saying, "Don't raise your sons to be cannon fodder."

By 1916, the war in Europe was endangering U.S. neutrality.

JENSEN: Marie Equi shared with many labor activists, with many political radicals the idea that the United States was becoming involved in World War I for corporate profit and not to make the world safe for democracy, as Woodrow Wilson would later claim.

President Wilson began advocating "preparedness" as a first step towards mobilization.

Preparedness parades across the country attracted thousands of participants, including Portland.

HELQUIST: Marie edged her car into the parade itself.

MAYER: She drove in with her car with a banner that says "Prepare to Die, Working Men."

HELQUIST: She was between two especially vigilant supporters of the war, and they blocked her car and started threatening her and pushing her around, and she fought back.

There were agents of the Department of Justice and what became the FBI out here, and they sent reports back to Washington.

So it did put her name out there: "This is a troublemaker.

She needs to be taken care of."

This anti-war activism really kind of changed the trajectory and put her at risk of much more serious legal trouble than she had ever been in with her previous actions.

In 1917, the U.S. entered the war.

President Wilson signed the federal Espionage Act.

And the Sedition Act followed soon after.

With these acts, basically you could not say anything bad about the government or the flag or the military or the war.

Any type of speech or writing that would go against any of that put you at risk.

It was a very wide net.

JENSEN: Newspapers covered who bought Liberty Loans again and again and again, and printing people's names and addresses who did not.

So this is a very public performance of what it meant to be loyal and patriotic.

The term at the time was "100% Americanism."

The patriotic fervor failed to silence Equi.

MAYER: When she gave these speeches at the IWW hall, there were Wobblies in the audience, but there were also spies.

They went and reported what she had said, that she had called members of the military scum at this event.

She never denied her anti-war views or that she did give these speeches, but she did deny that particular statement.

HELQUIST: Of course, it wasn't recorded, but there were two agents there who wrote down some of what she said or they said she said, and it's not clear.

I mean, their job was to be there and to get the goods on Marie.

They got her.

Dr. Marie Equi was arrested and indicted for sedition in June 1918.

She was released on $10,000 bail.

Over the next five months, the prosecution built its case against Equi with federal agents and spies surveilling her private life with lover Kathleen O'Brennan.

They also had a special agent, Agent 53.

Her job was to befriend Marie and then report on her every day, and she did.

They were damning statements.

Agent 53 was working for Bureau of Investigation agent William Bryon.

JENSEN: Infamous for his, I think we can fairly say, loathing of Marie Equi.

I believe that he was disgusted that she was a woman who loved other women, and he talked about her and "her kind."

She symbolized everything that he thought was, uh, evil.

On November 8th, 1918, Marie Equi's trial began.

Her lead defense council was national IWW attorney George Vanderveer.

MAYER: They were trying to prove that she did not say what she was accused of saying and that being a supporter of the IWW was not illegal and being anti-war was not necessarily illegal as long as you didn't say it the wrong way.

HELQUIST: But the prosecution was relentless and effective.

What's most telling is in the closing argument, the prosecution made a comment about, "We can't let this unsexed woman stay free."

Just those words would have been shocking.

There was no such thing as a fair trial for anyone associated with the IWW in this period.

They were already suspect just by being a supporter of the organization.

Equi was found guilty on five counts of sedition and sentenced to three years in San Quentin Prison.

As she and Harriet and Mary left the courtroom, so did Federal Agent Bryon.

HELQUIST: I mean, the sparks that were between them just exploded.

I think he initiated it and shoved Marie, kind of threw her to the ground.

MAYER: Claiming of course later that she had threatened to kill him in the past.

But also knocked over Harriet Speckart.

And then he quickly left.

Prominent attorney C.E.S.

Wood led Equi's two-year appeal process all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But her conviction was upheld.

In October 1920, President Wilson commuted her sentence to one year.

She would serve ten months and a day.

WOMAN AS EQUI: I do not feel sad.

Nor am I bitter.

But I feel humbled by the wealth of friendship displayed toward me.

The struggle for human freedom will go on.

Although thousands of people across the country were arrested and tried under the Espionage Act, Equi is the only Oregon woman ever convicted.

While in prison, Marie kept in touch with family and friends with letters.

To one friend, she expressed concerns about being, in her own words, "queer."

HELQUIST: I find it unlikely that she's using the word the way we would today.

Of course she knew she was an outcast.

And we know that when we're in that position, we know what a lot of people think of us.

I think that's what she was referring to, and she was having some serious doubts, and I think it was... had to be hard on her.

JENSEN: There's also a sorrow and a loneliness that can come with that.

She may not have been glad that she showed that to us, but I'm grateful for it because it's hard to be... to always be fierce.

Marie's friend wrote back: [ Helquist reading on-screen text ] He assured her, "You are perfectly sane, though perhaps unusually out of the ordinary.'

In 1921, Dr. Equi returned home.

Harriet Speckart died a few years later, and Mary came to live with Marie.

A heart attack would slow Equi down in 1930.

From then on, she lived a quiet life, as her nurse in later years remembered.

NURSE [ on recording ]: She lived many, many years in her home with only appointments with friends.

She always sat in this tapestry rocker.

She sat there like a queen with her white hair.

She was interested in young people and interested in helping them.

She really isn't a large public figure at that point.

You know, even though she does end up living with one of the other most famous IWW women, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, it's during a period in both of their lives where they're not the center of agitation or the center of radicalism anymore.

In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt pardoned Marie Equi and hundreds of others convicted of wartime sedition.

A year later, local newspapers recognized her lifelong support of labor during the 1934 maritime strike, one of her last public appearances.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Marie died in 1952 and is entombed beside Harriet in Portland.

JENSEN: She had a lot of stature, and perhaps precisely because of that stature, she was willing to take risks that others could not.

WOMAN AS EQUI: You must either have no money at all so that nothing matters or you must have enough money to get you out of trouble when you are in it.

And you are continually if you fight for the underdog.

Although not a well-known personality today, she's not forgotten.

In the Castro District of San Francisco, the Rainbow Honor Walk pays tribute with a bronze plaque.

HELQUIST: Here's an activist lesbian radical who's being honored.

It makes me really, really pleased and excited.

At Portland State University, she's in good company on the Walk of the Heroines.

And you can toast her legacy at a local pub.

POLISHUK: Marie's story, it's relevant for a lot of things: Labor rights, women's rights, abortion rights, gay rights, people speaking up for what they believe in, people standing up for what they believe in.

MAYER: She fought for so many things that she didn't have to fight for.

She knew that what she was advocating for was important to improve people's lives.

She didn't need to put a label on herself because she was living her life the way she wanted to and the way, in her mind, she should.

She was one of a kind.

There's more about Marie Equi on Oregon Experience online.

To learn more, visit opb.org.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Leading support for Oregon Experience is provided by... Major support provided by... Additional support provided by... the contributing members of OPB, and viewers like you.