Margaret Jean "Margo" St. James (September 12, 1937January 11, 2021) was an American prostitute and sex-positive feminist. In San Francisco, she founded COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), an organization advocating decriminalization of prostitution, and co-founded the St. James Infirmary Clinic, a medical and social service organization serving sex workers in the Tenderloin. Early life and education St. James was born on 12 September 1937 in Bellingham, Washington, to George, a dairy farmer and Dorothy, a secretary. She was the oldest of three children; her sister is a gospel singer and her brother is a sailor. Growing up, Peggy, as she was called then, attended Bellingham High School and established herself as a realist painter. After she entered and won a New York contest, one of her works was chosen to be displayed at the Carnegie Hall. She married Don Sobjack one month after her graduation and they had a son soon after. Reflecting on her catapult into early parenthood, St. James told The Guardian that she knew it was “a mistake” and believed she would be a “bad mother”. In 1958, she divorced her husband and left for art school in San Francisco. Career After her marriage ended, she moved to the heart of beatnik San Francisco to pursue an art career, living first in North Beach and then Haight-Ashbury. She lost all her canvasses to theft and a fire at her studio. In the 1960s, while working as a cocktail waitress, her apartment in Haight served as an informal salon; she lived with guitarist Steve Mann and hosted visitors including Ken Kesey, Dr. John, Frank Zappa, members of comedic improvisational ensemble The Committee, and comedian and publisher Paul Krassner. In a 2011 interview with Chicago’s The Windy City Times, St. James recalled that “a lot of friends came over to her house after work, and there was a lot of pot-smoking and sex and, you know, whatever”. The police became suspicious about the volume of people coming from and going to her house, and in 1962, she was arrested and falsely accused of prostitution. In court, St. James argued that she had “never turned a trick in her life” but was shot down by the judge who believed that “anyone who knows the language is obviously a professional”. She was convicted and jailed briefly. Infuriated by the outcome, St. James appeared for the college equivalency examination and