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.
Contact’s May 7, 1975 report individually names Jill Raymon, aged 23, among the six Lexington grand jury witnesses jailed without bond for contempt after refusing to answer questions in the FBI investigation of Susan Saxe and Katherine Power. Attorneys Robert Sedler and Judith Peterson accused the Justice Department of using the grand jury to compel answers that witnesses could legally decline to give FBI agents. That criticism is attributed to the lawyers. The report supplies no exact jail-entry or physical-release day and does not establish an additional custody episode. The printed spelling differs from the established profile name and is retained as source wording rather than a name correction. Source: https://www.houstonlgbthistory.org/Houston80s/Voice/Contact/contact_19750507.pdf#page=11