Sight #9 Marie Equi House

Marie Equi House

1423 SW Hall St., Portland, OR 97201 (link is external)

Voter Registration Card, 1939.

Medical doctor, lesbian, activist, general practitioner, abortionist, birth control advocate, suffragist, progressive, radical, socialist, seditionist, anarchist, communist - depending on who was discussing Marie Equi during what period of time, all these labels were applied.

As one of the first few female physicians in the West, Equi focused on health care for women and children including providing abortions and birth control information, both of which were illegal. She was arrested in 1916 with Margaret Sanger for the latter.

Equi later opposed World War I so strongly and publicly that she was arrested again and charged with violating the Sedition Act of 1918. She served 10 months in San Quentin, beginning in October 1920. During her appeals to the Supreme Court, her defense team argued that the prosecution had attacked her private moral character. Equi maintained that homophobia was the basis for her conviction.

Post prison, Equi returned to medical work and took up residence at this address (seen here on a County voter registration card) in the late 1920s with her adopted daughter, Mary Jr., and labor leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

For more information about Marie Equi, check out the 2016 Stonewall Honor Book, Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions by Michael Helquist and/or PBS’s Oregon Experience Season 17, Episode 1.