Celebrating Women's History Month: Tribute to Journalist, Activist Doris Kulman

Doris Kulman Raffolovich spoke softly, but had a big voice. As a journalist, she was fearless, precise and always seemed to know which question would get to the core of the issue. She was a strong voice for women’s rights, civil rights, and social justice.

My friend and mentor, Doris Kulman (her byline) died last July at the age of 85, still speaking softy; and, still preparing to raise her pen in defense of those who do not have a platform from which to focus attention on an injustice. 

As one of her friends said during a luncheon in her honor last month, Doris lived every day of her life with integrity and the joy of living.

Doris’ work as a journalist committed to women’s rights and social justice has been recognized a number of times over the past years. But now, upon her death, two college women’s studies departments, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and Brookdale, the Community College of Monmouth County, plan to include her in their women’s studies curriculum.

In addition, the Brookdale Community College Foundation is raising money to fund a scholarship in her honor to be given to a student who is planning to get a degree in women’s studies. And the Rutgers University Foundation plans to raise funds to offset the cost of preserving a collection of materials that Doris amassed over the span of more than 40 years actively pursuing social justice. The materials, found in her home in Little Silver, have been donated to Rutgers University.

An exhibition of Doris’ work and career story will be on display in honor of Women’s History Month at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library, 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, through March 31. The collection includes an incredible archive of civil rights memorabilia that spans over 30 years.

Kayo Denda, Women’s Studies librarian and head of the Margery Somers Foster Center, explained that the collection includes many issues of the newspaper that Doris published between 1984-1992 called the Woman's Reporter. It also includes clippings of articles that she wrote for the Daily Register from 1963-1978, among them her Israel series that was published in 1977 as well as clippings of her articles published in the Asbury Park Press between 1994-1997.

Denda said the hope is that young women will read Doris’ articles, learn from and become inspired by them. She added that technology can bring students very close to the original material and provides access to researchers too. “Rutgers is very interested in documenting the history of New Jersey, especially the last 50 years of the twentieth century,” she noted.

The announcement of the joint effort to honor Doris was made on Feb. 5, when about 50 friends gathered together to celebrate Doris and tell stories about her work as a journalist and advocate for human rights, especially women’s rights.

For us, it was a love fest, full of laughter and tears. But there is so much more to the story of Doris Kulman the writer/reporter/newspaper editor/social justice advocate/wife/mother/grandmother/friend and … drummer.

Yes, drummer. I mention drummer because I have a Doris story to tell that includes drumming. Doris was part of a small group of Shore Area Now members who had decided to take up drumming and form a women’s drumming group. I was one of them. We all went out and bought inexpensive African djumbe hand drums and took lessons.

It was around the time of Doris’ big 75th birthday bash, so we all chipped in and bought her a beautiful, expensive djumbe. Someone asked Doris why she wanted to become a drummer. Her response was that she wanted to “astonish her grandchildren.”

I don’t know what the effect was on her grandchildren, but I do know that she astonished me. Unfortunately, after about a year of getting together and drumming we stopped. By then, Doris was suffering from the side effects of diabetes and aging. Don’t get me wrong, that didn’t slow her down, she just had to prioritize and focus on the issues that she felt passionate about. In fact, during her last hospital stay, she was still talking about the stories on which she wanted to beam her ironic lucidity.

Doris loved to tell stories and would have loved to hear the stories told about her by the many accomplished journalists and friends that spoke at the memorial luncheon. Although I don’t remember most of her stories because I didn’t write them down, I can still see her, a twinkle in her eye, almost licking her lips, as she got ready to relate something that she found funny, or interesting or enlightening.  

Many of her friends have known and worked with Doris much longer than I did, so they had different stories to tell. They talked about sitting in Doris’ kitchen drinking coffee, telling stories and petting the dogs that came into her life and left. I have two memories of drinking coffee in her kitchen and talking about life.  Doris had many friends; and I think I can speak for most of them. We all felt privileged to be included amongst her journalist, kitchen table or activist friends.

Her co-workers at the Red Bank Register, and later the Asbury Park Press and Two River Times, talked about how hard she worked to get the story right and just about as perfect as was possible. She often worked through the night, perfecting her story until the wee hours of the morning before she would finally let it go to editing.

One of her Red Bank Register co-workers told about how Doris was a perfectionist when it came to her writing and about the time that an editor changed one verb in her story and she was not pleased, to say the least.

She told him that the verb was “pluperfect” and asked if he even knew what that meant. (A pluperfect verb, also called past perfect, refers to an event that takes place before another event, and was still relevant at the time of the later event.) As far as Doris was concerned, it was the perfect verb to carry the action of what she was communicating. And she vehemently stood up for her verb choice, as she did for many other causes, especially those involving women’s rights.

Doris was careful in her research, intellectually curious and highly professional in her work. She mentored and even housed a number of women. In fact, I remember a time when she generously offered to share her house with me. I’m sorry now that I didn’t take her up on it. I know now that it would have turned out to be one of the most interesting, enlightening and fun times of my life.

Doris wrote a column for the Red Bank Register called The Sexes. The first column on July 27, 1972, had the headline, “Blatant Sexism Doesn’t Bring a Blush” and explored the issue of women’s work, especially in education.

“Walk into any public school in these United States and you're in Woman's World — until you get to the principal's office and beyond. Everyone knows that the care and training of children is woman's work. That's nature's obvious intent. That's what makes sense. When it starts making dollars and cents, it becomes man's work,” the story, from the Register’s archives says.

She then goes on to provide statistics on the high numbers of women teaching and the low number of women in positions of power in school districts. In fact, in the 1971-72 school year, there was only one female school superintendent in the state. In addition, she found that male teachers earned more than female teachers. That may not be surprising to us now, but then it was eye opening.

She wrote, “In our public schools it's obviously, perspire sister. But don't aspire."

At the end of her column she let a spokesman for the NJEA hang himself.

"We don't see it as overt discrimination," he said, "but as part of the 'managerial mindset' exemplified by many school boards: the school has to be run by a business manager and a business manager has to be a man. The 'mindset' says a business manager is needed to keep the teachers and kids in line, and women are considered to be too humane for the job."

Doris’ final salvo was, “And, as any kid knows, humanity is the last thing we want in our public schools.”

As another one of her sage friends said at last month’s celebration of Doris Kulman’s life, “Democracy depends on people like Doris.”