GENED 1036: Global Feminisms

Correspondence collected by Lutz of leading abolitionists and 19th and early 20th century feminists concerns antislavery and women's rights. Also included is Mary Grew's diary about the World's Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in 1840, and correspondence on the Equal Rights Amendment.

Feminist, activist, and author Betty Goldstein Friedan (1921-2006) helped found the National Organization for Women, and served as its first president (1966-1970). Her first book, The Feminine Mystique, was published in 1963. Afterward, Friedan quickly became a leading advocate for change in the status of women in the United States. Her subsequent books include It Changed My Life (1976), The Second Stage (1981), and The Fountain of Age (1993). Friedan was active in many feminist and political organizations, taught at several universities, lectured widely, and published numerous articles on gender and aging related issues until her death.

Bunch helped to organize both the local women's liberation movement and the first national women's liberation conference, held in Chicago in November 1968. She worked on the staff of the campus ministry at Case Western Reserve University before returning to Washington in 1969 as a visiting fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS). Continuing her active involvement in the women's liberation movement, she helped to develop a women's studies curriculum that was taught at the Washington Area Free University. Her work on the Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam led to a trip to North Vietnam and Laos in 1970 and to participation in the International Conference of North American and Indochinese Women held in Canada in 1971.
Since 1971, Bunch has worked primarily to develop a lesbian/feminist ideology nationally and a lesbian/feminist community in Washington. She continued as a fellow at IPS until 1977, and has taught a variety of courses on feminism at a number of colleges and universities. She served from 1979 to 1980 as consultant to the secretariat for the World Conference for the United Nations Decade on Women.

Coyote (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) is an organization founded by Margo St. James, based in California, and concerned with the rights of prostitutes and others. Calling for the decriminalization of prostitution, Coyote sought to provide legal and medical services for prostitutes, offered employment, health, and financial counseling, and worked to educate the public about prostitution through publications, speeches, and seminars.

Harriet Burton Laidlaw, suffragist, social and civic reformer, and internationalist, was born on December 16, 1873, in Albany, New York, the daughter of Alice Davenport (Wright) and George Davidson Burton. Laidlaw attended public school in Albany, and earned both Bachelor (1895) and Master (1896) of Pedagogy degrees from Albany Normal College. After graduation she moved to New York City, taught in the public schools, and in 1902 earned degrees from Barnard College (A.B.) and Illinois Wesleyan University (Ph.B.). During this time she also took summer courses at Harvard (1900), the University of Chicago (1901), and Oxford University (1903). She continued to teach and started graduate school at Columbia University, but stopped both when she married James Lees Laidlaw in 1905. A concern with women's rights now blossomed into a remarkably active involvement in a variety of causes and organizations. Series IV, "white slavery," and series V, "suffrage," may be of particular interest for researchers in this course.

Ada (Thayer) Finley graduated from Russell Sage College and in 1942 married Lester Finley who later became a Methodist minister. In 1948 they traveled to India where they served as missionaries first in Baroda and later at the Kodai School in Kodaikanal. They had five children, four girls and one boy. Ada Finley served as chair of the Christian Home Committee, worked with young mothers, and in 1955 published a pamphlet entitled Care of Your Baby. It appeared in Gujarati, Hindi, and Tamil.

The National Organization for Women was formed on June 30, 1966, during the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in Washington, D.C. The Statement of Purpose declares that "the time has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions that now prevent women from enjoying the equality of opportunity and freedom of choice which is their right, as individual Americans, and as human beings." At their organizing conference (October 29, 1966), participants established task forces on education, employment, the role of women in the family, women's political rights, and images of women in the media.

Throughout the 1960s Morgan published poetry and contributed articles to such literary journals as The Sewanee Review and to such leftist publications as Rat, Win, and Liberation. By the late 1960s, after involvement in civil rights and peace activism, she committed herself to feminism, first becoming involved with the New York Radical Women, and later identifying as a radical feminist. During her time in New York Radical Women, she organized public actions with the group WITCH (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell). These actions included placing a "hex" on Wall Street, demonstrating before the Miss America Pageant in 1968, and protesting the New York Bridal Fair in 1969. During this time Morgan continued to write poetry and feminist works, publishing both Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement (named one of the 100 Most Influential Books of the 20th Century by the American Librarians' Association) in 1970, and her germinal first collection of poems, Monster in 1972.
By 1974 Morgan had become involved with Ms. magazine, serving as a columnist, and eventually contributing editor, editor-in-chief, and international contributing editor.

The Women's International Committee for Permanent Peace was organized in April 1915 at the International Congress of Women at The Hague, with Jane Addams as its first International Chairman. In 1919, the name was changed to Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. It has organized protest marches, obtained funds for the relief of the poor in many parts of the world, and organized community action for the repeal of unjust laws and for the passage of disarmament and anti-war bills.

This collection primarily contains correspondence, newsletters, financial records, membership lists, minutes of board meetings, and flyers of the Massachusetts branch of WILPF, with some papers of local branches throughout the state. Also included are correspondence, newsletters, and minutes of the WILPF national branch in Washington (and later in Philadelphia), and flyers and newsletters of other Massachusetts organizations with which the Massachusetts branch has cooperated, including the Greater Boston Peace Action Coalition, the Coalition to Fight Political Repression, and People's Coalition for Peace and Justice.