Rollins Sheryl Workplace Discrimination 1

Sheryl Rollins is a retired attorney in Knoxville, Tennessee. She was active in the civil rights movement and as a lawyer she has taken on many racial and sexual discrimination cases. Rollins is president of the Knoxville NAACP, a member of the Association of Doctoral Women, and a member of the board of directors of Carpetbag Theater, among many professional, civic, and political affiliations. In this interview she discusses: her childhood and her mother’s and grandmother’s influence on her; desegregation in her secondary and higher education; attending the University of Tennessee School of Law in the late 1980s; representing Vietnam veterans, members of the gay and lesbian community, and victims of racial and sexual discrimination; sexual harassment of women across classes, races, and occupations; gender discrimination and wages; the civil rights movement as a catalyst for other equal rights movements; and, improvements in Women’s lives because of feminism.