Kip Tiernan

Mary Jane "Kip" Tiernan (June 17, 1926 – July 2, 2011) was an American social activist.

Early life Tiernan was born in West Haven, Connecticut. Her father, a World War I veteran, died when she was 6-months old and her mother died when she was 11. She was raised by her maternal grandmother. As a teenager, Tiernan learned how to fly a plane. She was a babysitter for a child named, "Kip", and liked the nickname so much she chose it as her own.

According to the Harvard Library catalog, in the 1950's Tiernan, "worked in a variety of public relations and advertising jobs, including copywriting at Breck's of Boston (a mail order house), editorial researcher for Houghton Mifflin in Paris, advertising manager for T.W. Rogers department store, fashion writer for Gilchrist's and Popular Merchandising, and editor of PIONEER insurance trade magazine."

Warwick House On August 8, 1968, Tiernan organized a press conference at St. Philip's Parish in Boston's South End, to commemorate the building's closing. At the event, she connected with anti-war and civil rights activists, including Daniel Berrigan, Marcos Munos, and members of the Black Panther Party and the United Farm Workers. These relationships inspired her to commit her time fully to civil rights causes.

Tiernan utilized her PR training at Warwick House to fundraise for anti-Vietnam war efforts such as the Milwaukee 14 Defense Fund and the Camden 28 Defense Community. She and the ministry fought for mental health reform during de-institutionalization. Tiernan worked at Warwick House for 14 years. During this period, she visited a shelter run by Dorothy Day in New York City and learned from Day's Catholic activism.

Rosie's Place

Inspirations In July 1973, Tiernan read the article “Women Derelicts: To Be Old, Homeless, and Drunk,” in The Real Paper, and learned homeless women in Boston were disguising themselves as men in the hopes of getting into male-only shelters. The article solidified for Tiernan that there was inequality among poor men and women, which stuck with her. At this time, there was around a thousand homeless women in Boston. The city had only two shelters, the Salvation Army and the Pine Street Inn, and both only allowed men. Tiernan toured soup kitchens and shelters in New York, Baltimore, and Chicago and found homeless women were underserved in each place.

Relocation In 1977, Rosie's Place moved to a five-story brownstone on Washington Street in Boston’s South End, despite opposition from the Worcester Square Area Neighborhood Association (WSANA). Tiernan bought the building with an $18,000 down payment donated by a woman doctor. That year, Rosie's bought a separate building in Dorchester which became their first permanent housing initiative for nine formerly homeless women.

What caused the fire is unknown. The fire occurred shortly after an arson spree burned much of Boston, and during a time where real estate developers would burn down properties for insurance payouts and easy evictions. The Boston Globe wrote, "Rosie’s had enemies, and many in the neighborhood suspected foul play. There was easy access to its upper floors by the fire escapes. One neighbor learned that an adjacent property owner had increased their home insurance just before the blaze." The WSANA used the fire as a potential opportunity to push the shelter and its guests out of the neighborhood, testifying at city hearings against the shelter rebuilding. Tiernan didn't publicly blame anyone but in a personal letter that’s part of her archival material, stated, “We were, in the lexicon of the ‘hood, torched.”

The Greater Boston Food Bank

In 1974, Tiernan began to distribute food to people experiencing food insecurity. In that first year, she distributed 100,000 pounds of food out of the back of her station wagon. In 1979, Tiernan started the Boston Food Pantry, which she modeled after the Greater Chicago Food Depository. In 1981, the organization was legally incorporated as the Boston Food Bank, later renamed the Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB). Juan Encarnacion, GBFB’s longest-serving employee, knew Tiernan. About her he said, “Kip was a force. Once, we were at an event and I asked her, ‘Kip, what keeps you going? What motivates you to keep doing what you do?’ She got rosy cheeks, and said ‘Anger. Anger about the waste of food – when so many other people could use it.’" The food bank now distributes six million pounds of food a month to organizations in Eastern Massachusetts serving food insecure populations.

Advocacy Tiernan and her advocacy partner, Fran Froehlich, founded, helped found, or were founding members of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, Community Works, Aid to Incarcerated Mothers, Finex House, Food for Free, John Leary House, My Sister’s Place, Transition House, the Greater Boston Union of the Homeless, and Boston’s Emergency Shelter Commission. Tiernan was also one of the founders of Victory House in the South End of Boston, a residential alcoholism treatment program for homeless, alcoholic men. In 1980, Tiernan and Froehlich co-founded the Poor People's United Fund.

In 1991, Tiernan marched with RUAH, on behalf of women living with HIV/AIDS.

In 1996, Tiernan was the recipient of Eastern Bank's Social Justice Award. In 1997, She was honored at Fenway Health's annual gala. In 2005, she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Personal life Tiernan was friends with Lily Tomlin. In 1999, Tomlin started an annual comedy fundraiser for Rosie's Place.

Tiernan was a lesbian, "who liked to dress in men’s khakis and a cap, and wore a large cross and skate key on her leather necklace." She was in a longterm partnership with Edith Nicholson, whose children she helped raise. Tiernan owned a tiny cottage in Provincetown.

Death and posthumous honors St. Pat's for All celebrates the diversity of the Irish and Irish American communities of New York, as a response to the exclusion of Irish LGBTQ communities from the 5th Avenue parade. Kiernan, who was an Irish Catholic lesbian, was honored by a parade banner in 2013. Tiernan died on July 2, 2011, from cancer.

In 2018, a memorial was created in her honor. The memorial is a sculpture engraved with Tiernan's words, "Cui Bono? Who sets the terms of the debate around poverty and homelessness? Who decides who gets the condo and who gets the cardboard box?” The sculpture is the fourth memorial in Boston to honor a woman. It was designed by a committee at Rosie's Place and constructed by Carla Ceruzzi and Ryan Murphy.

In 2020, Tiernan was named by USA Today as a Woman of the Century for her contributions to Massachusetts and the United States. Gail Phaneuf created a film about Tiernan, Kippy, Pray for the Dead and Fight Like Hell for the Living!, which won awards from Doctors Without Borders and LGBTQ Unbordered International Film Festival. In 2022, she debuted the production as a play in her home state of Maine.

On March 1, 2022, Candlewick Press published Sanctuary: Kip Tiernan and Rosie's Place, the Nation's First Shelter for Women, a children's book about Tiernan written by Christine McDonnell and illustrated by Victoria Tentler-Krylov. In 2023, the book won a Jane Addams Children’s Book Award.

In 2023, Mayor Wu honored Tiernan for her contributions to starting the Annual Boston Area International Women’s Day Breakfast, a 25-year tradition. Wu referred to Tiernan and the other founders as founding mothers.