Mary Katherine McKinney Miller, 69, a longtime activist in the women’s liberation movement, died April 17 of pancreatic cancer at her home in Chestnut Hill.
Ms. Miller was a former president of both the Philadelphia and state chapters of the National Organization for Women (NOW). She had also served the organization at the national level and was part of a delegation sent to China for the first UN Women’s Conference.
Her activism in women’s liberation in the 1970s and 1980s was combined with the work of Re-Evaluation Counseling (RC), a peer-based process that helps people exchange listening for the purpose of healing past hurts. She was the founding leader of RC in Philadelphia, extending her support in community building to many parts of the city as well as to nearby communities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, and to West Virginia.
She authored the first women’s liberation policy for the RC communities, which included the idea – controversial within the women’s movement at the time – that “men are not the enemy,” and was the first editor of Sisters magazine, an RC journal.
In her four-decade career in RC Family Work, Ms. Miller became skilled in listening to infants and young people and in teaching their parents, allowing many families to have a richer and closer life as their children grew into adulthood.
She was one of the founders of the Philadelphia Community School in West Philadelphia.
She worked with Victoria Greene, head of Every Murder is Real (E.M.I.R) an organization that supports families whose children have been killed by gun violence in Philadelphia. She led workshops on “Healing the Hurts of Racism,” both at Friends General Conference annual gatherings and at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting annual sessions.
During the past decade, she became more active in the Quaker community, serving the Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting as clerk of Peace and Social Concerns, on the Nominating Committee, and for many years was active with Worship and Ministry. She also clerked the local support committee for the Quaker Voluntary Service project in Philadelphia.
Born in Central City, Neb., to Midwestern Quakers who were descendants of John Woolman, an 18th century Quaker leader and antislavery activist, Ms. Miller graduated from Scattergood Friends School and Marshall University, and earned a master’s degree in social work from George Washington University.
She came to Philadelphia with her then husband Keith Miller to become founding members of the Philadelphia Life Center, an anchor community for the Movement for a New Society (MNS), a training and organizing base for nonviolent social change.
She is survived by a son, Patrick Miller; sisters Judith Gibson and Barbara Haagenstad; a brother, Ken Moree McKinney, and her former husband.
A memorial will be held at 3 p.m. Saturday, May 7, at Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting, 20 East Mermaid Lane. – WF
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