Byllye Avery papers

Byllye Yvonne Avery is a health care activist whose efforts center on bettering the welfare of low-income African American women through self-help groups and advocacy networks. She was born in Waynesville, Georgia, the daughter of L. Alyce M. Ingram, a schoolteacher. Her family eventually settled in Deland, Florida, where her mother was a schoolteacher in nearby Perry, Florida. When Byllye was a teenager, her mother enrolled in a graduate program at New York University to earn a master's degree in education. Consequently, Avery's mother spent her summers in New York, away from her daughter, which was the only time in which she could take courses. Avery's father died during the last year of her mother's graduate studies.

Avery studied psychology at Talledega College, and earned an M.A. degree from the University of Florida in 1969. In the mid-1970s, she co-founded the Gainesville Women's Health Center and Birthplace, a midwifery service birthing center in Florida. While the primary focus of the Center was basic birthing services, they also offered programs to educate women about their bodies including Betty Dodson's Bodysex workshops, which encouraged women to engage in the self-exploration of their vulvas.

During her work at the Center, Avery noticed the absence of black women at women’s health conferences and in reproductive health spaces. She began to research the statistics of black and white women’s comparative health, especially around black sexual health and the high incidences of sexual abuse.

In 1981, Avery founded the National Black Women's Health Project in 1981 (the name was later changed to the Black Women's Health Imperative or BWHI). This organization focused on peer-to-peer health education in the black community. As executive director, Avery encouraged programs and events which allowed black women to openly discuss sexual assault. She believed that the only way to combating the unhealthy and often violent introductions to sexuality that many women had experienced, was to have conversations about sexuality among black women, and especially between mothers and daughters. BWHI also formed relationships with reproductive health organizations worldwide, to share knowledge and try to improve the lives of women of color everywhere.

Avery produced the documentary film On Becoming a Woman: Mothers and Daughters Talking to Each Other (1987). It features African-American women and their daughters talking about sex, love, menstruation and other personal issues.

In 1995 Avery received a L.H.D. from Bates College. She is a clinical professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and advisor to the National Institutes of Public Health, and has served as visiting fellow at Harvard School of Public Health.

Avery has also been on the board directors of many women’s health organizations, including the National Women's Health Network (1976-81), the New World Foundation (1986-91), the W.K. Kellogg International Friendship Program (1989-94), the Boston Women's Health Book Collective (1990-92), the Global Fund for Women (1989-), and the International Women's Health Coalition (1989-).

Bibliography

Price, K. (2013, May 31). Avery, Byllye. Oxford African American Studies Center. Retrieved 1 Sep. 2020, from https://oxfordaasc.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.001.0001/acref-9780195301731-e-35448.

Auteri, S. (2015). Essential Figures in the Field of Sexuality: Byllye Avery. Contemporary Sexuality, 16–19.