Biography
Jill Raymond was a member of a Lexington, Kentucky lesbian-feminist collective who became the longest-jailed of the grand jury resisters known as the Lexington Six. In 1975 a federal grand jury in Lexington, ostensibly hunting the antiwar fugitives Susan Saxe and Katherine Power — wanted in connection with a 1970 Boston bank robbery in which a police officer was killed — subpoenaed six young gay and lesbian activists, seeking to map the local radical and lesbian community. All six refused to cooperate and were jailed for civil contempt in March 1975. One by one the others were released, several after agreeing to testify, but Raymond refused to the end. She was held for roughly fourteen months — far longer than any of her co-resisters — and was finally released on May 3, 1976. Her sustained refusal made her a landmark figure in the history of grand jury resistance and of lesbian and gay political defense.