Oral History Interview with Michelle Zavos, 1951-

Michele Zavos is a highly successful LGBTQ+ and family law attorney based in D.C., who was originally from Pittsburgh. She worked at several different political groups before developing her law practice for working with individuals and talks about her experience being politically involved and what steps got her where she is today. She also discusses her experience being a lesbian in D.C., adopting a child, and navigating the legal field with a queer identity.

Michele Zavros was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but lived all over the world growing up. She attended University of Wisconsin for college during the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement - a very politically active time. The events during this time shaped her life path enormously, and she was more interested in political activism than school. She graduated with a degree in history and moved to D.C. in 1974, where she was surrounded by like-minded political groups and was even part of a Marxist study group. She also was taking karate and started a women’s karate magazine called Black Belt Women - but it was not only about karate, but also political. It was around this time that she came out and was just starting to get involved in the lesbian community in Washington D.C. Michele then decided her next step would be to go to law school and she attended to Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law. It was during her time at law school that she became interested in prison work - she worked for the ACLU Prison Project during a summer, which sued prisons nationally for bad conditions and other issues. It was this experience that made her truly understand the deeper-rooted problems in this country. From there, she worked in Georgia in 1979 doing prison work and then moved to Maryland for the Maryland Prison Project. She stayed there for two and a half years, visiting almost every single prison and jail in the entire state of Maryland - but this work was rigorous and took a toll mentally, so she quit. Michele realized that unlike other lawyers she knew, she didn’t care about becoming a millionaire or getting to argue cases before the Supreme Court. She just wanted to help people and liked working for individuals. She got a job at a small, very progressive law firm in D.C. and started doing pro-bono work during the AIDS epidemic. It was also this time, when her and her partner were around 30, that they decided they wanted kids, which was extremely uncommon at the time as a lesbian couple. So, they started a group called the Maybe Baby Group, which later became the Mothers Group. All of those who stayed in the group ended up having kids. They met every Tuesday for 10 years, discussing their experiences being lesbian partnerships with children, but also becoming a close-knit group. Eventually, Michele started her own law firm with one of her previous professors, which she worked at for around 5 years. Their firm represented huge LGBTQ+ organizations in Washington D.C. and engaged in lots of community work. She took a sabbatical from the firm, and during the time she was on a federal judicial nominating commission, and also spent time as the Director of the AIDS coordination project which involved lots of policy work. But this showed her that she wanted to work with individuals again. She went back to developing her practice, handling LGBTQ+ cases and adoption cases, representing people in both D.C. and Maryland. She took several test cases for gay marriage, even arguing one case before the Maryland Court of Appeals that she won - this case meant that Maryland had to recognize gay marriages that were formed outside the state, an important step. She discusses her experiences with several specific cases she worked as an LGBTQ+ and family law attorney, as well as the difficulties she faced being a lesbian lawyer in the 1980s.

The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project.
The RHP release form was used and all rights belong to RHP.

1951 - Present

No, not yet transcribed

Yes, recording available, 01:30:36
(audio .m4a, 124 MB)