Description
In the summer of 1966, crammed into a DC hotel suite and passing paper cups of liquor, twenty-eight women hatched a revolutionary plan. Betty Friedan, the well-known author of The Feminine Mystique, and Pauli Murray, a lawyer at the front lines of the civil rights movement, had quietly pulled away attendees from the State Womens' Commissions annual conference. Frustrated with government inertia, they laid out a vision for an organisation to unite and advocate for all women. Inspired, challenged, skeptical, they debated the idea late into the night and the next day. By the end of the conference, the National Organisation for Women was born. In The Women of NOW, the historian Katherine Turk chronicles the growth and influence of this foundational group through three relatively unknown core members: Aileen Hernandez, a federal official of Jamaican-American heritage; Mary Jean Collins, a working-class union organiser and Chicago Catholic; and Patricia Hill Burnett, a Michigan Republican and former beauty queen. From its inception in 1966 through the tumultuous training ground of the 1970s, NOW's feminism flooded the nation, shifted American culture and politics, and clashed with conservative forces, presaging our fractured national landscape. These women built an organisation that was radical in its time, and built it to last. This is the first time anyone has told their story.
The history of NOW-its organization, trials, and revolutionary mission-told through the work of three members.
About the Author
Katherine Turk is the author of Equality on Trial: Gender and Rights in the Modern American Workplace, which was awarded the Mary Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women's and/or Gender History from the Organization of American Historians. She is an associate professor of history and an adjunct associate professor of gender studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Book Information
ISBN 9780374601539
Author Katherine Turk
Format Hardback
Page Count 448
Imprint Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
Publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
Weight(grams) 756g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 161mm * 37mm
The history of NOW-its organization, trials, and revolutionary mission-told through the work of three members.
About the Author
Katherine Turk is the author of Equality on Trial: Gender and Rights in the Modern American Workplace, which was awarded the Mary Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women's and/or Gender History from the Organization of American Historians. She is an associate professor of history and an adjunct associate professor of gender studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Book Information
ISBN 9780374601539
Author Katherine Turk
Format Hardback
Page Count 448
Imprint Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
Publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
Weight(grams) 756g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 161mm * 37mm
