We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants
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Elizabeth Cady Staton

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Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(1815 - 1902)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in Johnstown, New York on November 12, 1815. She was a social activist and a leading figure of the early women's rights movement in the United States. She was also active in the anti-slavery Abolitionist movement. Stanton took her husband's surname as part of her own, but refused to be addressed as Mrs. Henry B. Stanton. She was a primary organizer of the 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls , New York. For this, Stanton drafted a Declaration of Sentiments, declaring that men and women are created equal.

She proposed a resolution that was voted on and carried, demanding voting rights for women. In 1869, with the help of Susan B. Anthony, founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association, an organization dedicated to gaining the right to vote for women. Stanton was also active abroad, spending a great deal of time in Europe in her later years. In 1888, she helped prepare for the founding of the International Council of Women. She was married for 47 years to Henry B. Stanton and had seven children. The USS Elizabeth C. Stanton, a World War II troop transporter, was named in her honor. Stanton died on October 26, 1902.

 

 

 

 

 

Susan B. Anthony

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Susan B. Anthony
(1820 - 1906)

Susan Brownell Anthony was born in Adams, Massachusetts on February 15, 1820. She was a prominent American civil rights leader who, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, led the effort in securing Women's suffrage in the United States. Anthony was independent and educated and held a position that had traditionally been held by men. Ms. Anthony taught at a female academy, called Eunice Kenyon's Quaker boarding school, in upstate New York from 1846-1849. She had a prominent role in the anti-slavery and temperance movements in New York. In 1852, she organized the first woman's state temperance society in America. Additionally, she attended her first women's rights convention in Syracuse in 1852.

In 1856, she became the agent for New York State of the American Anti-Slavery Society. After 1854, Anthony devoted herself almost exclusively to the fight for women's rights and became recognized as one of the most zealous advocates of complete legal equality. Anthony was vice-president-at-large of the National Woman's Suffrage Association (NWSA) from the date of its inception in 1869 until 1892, when she became president. Anthony was served a warrant and fined $100 for casting a vote in the November 5, 1872 presidential election. Her representative, Matilda Joslyn Gage, asserted it was the United States on trial, not Anthony. Ms. Anthony did not pay the fine. Susan B. Anthony was honored as the first American woman on circulating U.S. coinage with her appearance on the Anthony dollar. Ms. Anthony died in Rochester, New York on March 13, 1906.

 

 

 

 

 

Mother Jones

Mother Jones
(1830 - 1930)

Mary Harris (Mother) Jones was Born in Cork, Ireland on May 1, 1830 and was later raised in Toronto, Canada. She moved to Chicago in 1867 after losing her husband and four small children to a yellow fever epidemic. In 1871, tragedy again struck Jones and she lost everything she owned in the great Chicago fire. Shortly after this Jones began her career in labor organizing with the Knights of Labor. Among many other accomplishments, she helped found the Social Democratic Party in 1898 and was present at the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905. After 1890 she became an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America and was known as the "Miner's Angel." Jones travelled tirelessly to support strikers throughout the country. She left the UMWA in 1904 to lecture for the Socialist Party of America until 1911 when she returned to organize for the UMWA.

Present for many of the historic labor stuggles and known as a true friend to all workers, Jones died on November 30, 1930, seven months after her 100th birthday. Jones was buried in the Union Miners Cemetery at Mount Olive, Illinois, in the coa lfields of southern Illinois. Her grave is near those of the victims of the Virden, Illinois, mine riot of 1898.

 

 

 

 

 

Jane Addams

 

Jane Addams
(1860 - 1935)

Jane Addams was born in Cedarville , Illinois on September 6, 1860. Educated in the United States and Europe, she graduated from the Rockford Female Seminary, now known as Rockford College, in Rockford, Illinois. She was a social worker, sociologist, philosopher and reformer, known in America as the “mother of social work.” In 1889, she co-founded Hull House in Chicago, Illinois. It was one of the first settlement houses in the U.S. that provided welfare for the neighborhood's poor and was a center for social reform. The facility offered a night school for adults, kindergarten, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, gym, swimming pool, music and drama school, a library and labor-related divisions. Hull House also served as a women's sociological institution.

Addams was a friend and colleague to the early school of the Chicago School of Sociology. In 1893, she co-authored the Hull-House Maps and Papers that defined the interests and methodologies of the School. She worked on social reform issues including women's rights and the 1910 Garment Workers' Strike. In addition to her involvement in the American Anti-Imperialist League and the American Sociology Association, she was also a formative member of both the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1911, she co-founded the National Foundation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers and became its first president. She was a leader in women's suffrage movements and took part in the creation of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1931, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with American educator Nicholas Murray Butler. Jane Addams died on May 21, 1935

 

 

 

 

 

Florence Kelley

 

Florence Kelley
(1859 - 1932)

Florence Kelley was born in Philadelphia on September 12, 1859. She was the daughter of a U.S. congressman and worked for several political and social reforms. She studied at Cornell University and the University of Zurich. Writers such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels inspired her to work with the poor. In 1892, as a single mother of three, Ms. Kelley left New York City and went to help out at Hull House where she met Jane Addams. John Peter Altgeld was a frequent visitor to Hull House and was elected governor of Illinois in 1892. The following year, he appointed Ms. Kelley to serve as the state's first chief factory inspector.

In 1894, Altgeld and Kelley persuaded the legislature to pass legislation controlling child labour. It included a law that limited women and children to a maximum eight-hour day. Unfortunately, in 1895, the Illinois Association of Manufacturers repealed the law. In 1899, she created the National Consumers League (NCL). The objective was to encourage consumers to buy products from companies that met the NCL's standards of minimum wage and working conditions. Companies that met these criteria were granted the right to display the NCL's white label. Consumers were urged to boycott goods that failed to earn the label. Other accomplishments include the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and establishing minimum wages. She was a co-founder of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, an activist for woman suffrage and African-American civil rights and in 1909, helped create the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Florence Kelley died in Germantown on February 17, 1932.

 

 

 

 

 

Alice Paul

 

Alice Paul
(1885 - 1977)

Alice Paul was born in Moorestown , New Jersey on January 11, 1885. She led a successful campaign for women's suffrage that resulted in granting the right to vote to women in the U.S. federal election in 1920. Among her many academic accomplishments, she completed a PhD in political science in 1912 while attending the University of Pennsylvania . In 1927, she received an LLM followed by a Doctor of Civil Law degree in 1928, both from American University 's Washington College of Law.

Ms. Paul joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1908. Her activities with the WSPU led to her arrest and imprisonment three times. Along with other suffragists, she went on hunger strikes and was force-fed. In 1912, Ms. Paul joined the National Woman's Suffrage Association (NWSA) and was appointed Chairman of their Congressional Committee in Washington , D.C. In 1913, she helped form the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage whose focus was lobbying for a constitutional amendment to secure the right to vote for women. When their efforts proved fruitless, Paul and her colleagues formed the National Woman's Party (NWP) in 1916 and introduced methods used by the suffrage movement in Britain , such as parades, mass meetings, vigils and demonstrations.

In 1917, the NWP staged the first political protest ever to picket the White House. Many, including Paul, were convicted and incarcerated at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia . Ms. Paul commenced a hunger strike in protest of the conditions at the facility. This led her to be moved to the prison's psychiatric ward and once again force-fed. These demonstrations and continuing press coverage kept pressure on the Wilson administration and in 1918, the president announced women's suffrage was urgently needed as a “war measure”. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution secured the vote for women. Alice Paul is depicted on a 78-cent United States Stamp. Alice Paul died July 9, 1977.

 

 

 

 

 

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

 

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
(1890 - 1964)

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was born in Concord, New Hampshire on August 7, 1890. Her family moved to New York when she was 10. Her parents introduced her to socialism and at the age of 16. She gave her first speech, What Socialism Will Do for Women, at the Harlem Socialist Club. Ms. Flynn was expelled from high school as a result of her political activities. At the age of 17, Ms. Flynn became a full-time organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). During the next few years, she organized campaigns among garment workers in Pennsylvania; silk weavers in New Jersey; restaurant workers in New York; miners in Minnesota, Missoula, Montana and Spokane and textile workers in Massachusetts. Ms. Flynn became known as The Rebel Girl and was arrested ten times during this period but never convicted of criminal activity.

She was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and was mainly concerned with women's rights. She supported birth control and women's suffrage. In 1936 Flynn joined the Communist Party and wrote a column for the Daily Worker. She was elected to the national committee in 1938, however, her membership in the Party led to her ouster from the board of the ACLU in 1940. She played an important role in the campaign for equal pay for women and the establishment of day care centers for mothers working in industry. Ms. Flynn would serve more prison time during 1952 – 1955 but soon after her release, became national chairman of the Communist Party. Ms. Flynn died on September 5, 1964 while on a visit to the Soviet Union. She was given a state funeral in Red Square, however, her remains are buried in Chicago 's Waldheim Cemetery near the graves of the Haymarket Riot Martyrs. The song “Rebel Girl” was written by Joe Hill in honor of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

 

 

 

 

 

Lucy Parsons

 

Lucy Parsons
(1853 - 1942)

Lucy Parsons was born in Texas in 1853 (most likely as a slave) to parents of Native, African and Mexican American ancestry. She was an anarchist labor activist and powerful orator who fought against poverty, capitalism, social injustice and racism her whole life.

She married Albert Parsons, a former confederate soldier, in 1871. During that time, the South was instituting repressive Jim Crow laws and Lucy and Albert fled north to Chicago . The Chicago Police Department described her as “more dangerous than a thousand rioters” in the 1920s. Lucy and Albert were highly effective anarchist organizers involved in the labor movement in the late 19 th Century. They also participated in revolutionary activism on behalf of political prisoners, people of color, the homeless and women. Albert was fired from his job at the Times because of his involvement in organizing workers and blacklisted in the Chicago printing trade. Lucy opened a dress shop to support her family and hosted meetings for the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). She began to write for the radical papers The Socialist and The Alarm , weekly publications of the International Working People's Association (IWPA) which she and Albert were among the founders of in 1883.

By 1886, tension among workers across America was high due to horrid working conditions and the squelching of union activities by authorities. A peaceful strike at McCormick Harvest Works in Chicago became violent when police fired into the crowd of unarmed strikers. Many were wounded and four were killed. Radicals called a meeting in Haymarket Square and once again, this peaceful gathering turned violent when someone threw a bomb that killed a police officer. Although Albert was not present at Haymarket, he was arrested and executed on charges that he had conspired in the Riot.

In the years following the execution, Lucy lived in poverty but remained committed to the cause. In 1892, she began editing Freedom: A Revolutionary Anarchist-Communist Monthly and was frequently arrested for public speaking and distributing anarchist literature. Then, in 1905, she helped found the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and began editing The Liberator , a paper published by the IWW and based in Chicago . Here she was able to voice her opinions on women's issues, supporting a woman's right to divorce, remarry and have access to birth control. She organized the Chicago Hunger Demonstrations in 1915, which pushed the American Federation of Labor, the Socialist Party and Jane Addam's Hull House to participate in a huge demonstration on February 12.

In 1925, she began working with the National Committee of the International Labor Defense, a Communist Party group that aided with the Scottsboro Eight and Angelo Hearndon cases. These were cases where the establishment charged African-American organizers with crimes they did not commit.

With eyesight failing, she spoke at the International Harvester in February, 1941. She fought against oppression until her death in 1942 at the age of 89 when she died in an accidental house fire. Her boyfriend died the next day from injuries he sustained while trying to save her. Adding to this tragedy, the FBI stole her library of 1,500 books and all of her personal papers. The state still viewed Lucy Parsons as a threat, even in her death.

 

 

 

 

 

Emma Goldman

 

Emma Goldman
(1869 - 1940)

Emma Goldman was born on June 27, 1869 in Kaunas, Lithuania where her family ran a small inn. She stands as a major figure in the history of American feminism and radicalism. She was an advocate of free speech, birth control, women's equality and union organization. In the period of political repression after the assassination of Alexander II, she moved with her family to St. Petersburg at the age of thirteen. After a revolutionary sentiment had spread across the area, she decided to work in a factory as a corset maker. It was in the workplace that Ms. Goldman was introduced to revolutionary ideas. She obtained a copy of Chernyshevsky's What Is To Be Done , which sowed the seeds for her anarchist ideas and her independent attitude.

She immigrated to Rochester , New York at the age of seventeen to live with her sister Lena . Goldman worked for several years in a textile factory and married co-worker Jacob Kersner in 1887. Following the uproar of the hanging of four anarchists after the Haymarket Riot, Goldman was drawn to the anarchist movement and became a revolutionary at the age of twenty. She and her husband divorced soon after. In 1893, she served a one year sentence at Blackwell's Island penitentiary for publicly urging unemployed workers to “ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, take bread.” She was convicted of inciting a riot, despite the testimonies of twelve defense witnesses.

On September 10, 1901, she and nine others were arrested in Chicago on charges of conspiracy to assassinate President McKinley. Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, had shot the President several days before. Consequently, causes with which Anarchists had championed (such as the labor movement) sought afterward to disassociate themselves from self-identifying anarchists. Goldman was released on September 24 for lack of evidence and Czolgosz was found guilty of murder and executed.

In 1906, acting from her growing conviction that "the most violent element in society is ignorance," Goldman founded her own political and literary magazine. Running until 1917, Mother Earth served as a forum for anarchist ideas and news of international movements, as well as a venue in which radical artists and writers could express themselves. On February 11, 1916, she was arrested and imprisoned again for distributing birth control literature. She, along with other contemporary feminists, saw abortion as a tragic consequence of social conditions.

No stranger to the prison cell, 1917 found her there once again. This time, for conspiring to obstruct the draft. She served two years, after which she was deported to Russia. At her deportation hearing, J. Edgar Hoover called her “one of the most dangerous anarchists in America.” With the exception of a brief ninety-day lecture tour in 1934, Goldman spent the remaining years of her life in exile from the United States, wandering through Sweden, Germany, France, England, Spain and Canada in a futile search for a new political "home." In order to obtain the security of British citizenship, she married an elderly Welsh coal miner in 1925, but the marriage was only a formality. Her experiences in Russia helped change her ideas on the use of violence. After the Red Army was used against strikers, Goldman began rejecting violence except in self-defense.

Emma Goldman died of a stroke on May 14, 1940. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service allowed her body to be brought back to the United States and she is buried in German Waldheim Cemetery close to where the executed Haymarket Riot defendants are interred. Her tombstone reads “ Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to Liberty.”

 

 

 

 

 

Julia O'Connor

Julia O'Connor
(1890 - 1972)

Julia O'Connor was born September 9, 1890 in Woburn , Massachusetts . She worked on a telephone switchboard for a short time until she became dissatisfied with working conditions. She described the work as an “intensely nervous pace” during the normal nine and a half hour workday.

O'Connor left her position and from 1912 until her retirement in 1957 she worked as a trade union organizer intent on improving the life of telephone operators. One of her first confrontations was with the Bell Telephone Company of Boston . After demands for better working conditions by individuals proved fruitless, she and other dissatisfied employees began organizing a union. Along with a group of senior operators and long-distance “toll” operators, she consulted with the Boston Women's Trade Union League. This group in turn helped her make connections with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. She was able to organize an IBEW telephone operator department for the largely female operator constituency and within five months had recruited over 200 workers to join this new organization.

O'Connor was named head of the IBEW Telephone Operators' Department in 1919. In April of 1919, the operators' patience ran out. A strike by telephone operators against New England Telephone Company was one of the most massive strikes in history involving mostly women. It resulted when the Post Office Department didn't provide a wage-adjustment procedure for the demands of the operators, instead using a system omitting union bargaining with management. After attempting to follow this system, but receiving no reply from Postmaster General Burleson and after working for several months without a contract, the operators went on strike.

The strike shut down telephone service in Massachusetts , Rhode Island , Maine , New Hampshire and Vermont . But the women didn't at first have the support of the male telephone workers in the five states; and AFL President Samuel Gompers, supporting the IBEW leadership, sent a telegram opposing the strike. Nevertheless, the women set up 24-hour picket lines; very likely a first for any women strikers. Workers, such as taxi drivers, belonging to unions coming in contact with strike-breakers refused their service to the strikebreakers. The police in Boston and other New England cities were exceptionally sympathetic to the strikers.

The strike lasted five days with the IBEW male telephone workers joining the women the third day. The strike was considered a potent victory for the telephone operators, who also returned to their positions with full seniority. In addition, they demonstrated their ability and determination, while challenging established male trade union authority, to secure better wages and conditions for telephone operators.

O'Connor was also president of the Boston Women's Trade Union League from 1915-1918, and worked with the large National Women's Trade Union League at same time, gaining recognition for women electrical workers. She died in 1972.
 

 

 

 

Frances Perkins

 

Frances Perkins
(1880 - 1965)

Born in Massachusetts in 1880, Frances Perkins was among the 20 th century's the most influential advocates for workers. After hearing Florence Kelley speak against child labor in 1902, she came to share Kelley's interest in protective labor legislation. She became a determined activist in the wake of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire.

In 1933, Perkins became the first woman to hold a Cabinet position as President Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor. She served 12 years and 3 months (longer than any other Secretary). She agreed to accept the job only upon Roosevelt 's assurances that he supported wage and hour standards and restrictions on child labor. Perkins asked, ‘Have you considered that to launch such a program…might be considered unconstitutional?' Roosevelt retorted, “Well, we can work out something when the time comes.” During the New Deal, the time had arrived for this new legislation. Perkins helped lead the struggle to create the National Labor Relations Act, the Social Security Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Perkins went on to serve as a Member of the Civil Service Commission. The Department of Labor Headquarters was named after her in 1980 and she was inducted into the Labor Hall of Fame in 1988. Perkins died in 1965.

 

 

 

 

 

Rosa Parks

 

Rosa Parks
(1913 - 2005)

Rosa Louise McCauley was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. She was home schooled by her mother until the age of eleven, when she enrolled in the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery. The school was founded and staffed by white northerners for black children. The facility was torched twice by arsonists, and its faculty was ostracized by the white community. She then went on to a laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes but had to drop out to care for her grandmother and later her mother.

In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, a barber from Montgomery and a member of the NAACP. At his urging, Rosa completed her high school studies in 1933 when less than 7% of African Americans earned a high school diploma. Despite Jim Crow laws that made political participation among black people very difficult, she succeeded in registering to vote on her third try. In 1943, Parks became active in the Civil Rights Movement, joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and was elected volunteer secretary. She held this position until 1957.

Known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” she is famous for her refusal to obey the demands of a bus driver to give up her seat to a white passenger in 1955. The bus driver had her arrested and she was convicted of violating a local ordinance. This act of civil disobedience triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was one of the most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history. It also catapulted an unknown pastor by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the organizers, to the forefront of the civil rights movement. The boycott lasted 382 days. A Supreme Court decision struck down the Montgomery ordinance under which Mrs. Parks was fined and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation.

After her arrest, Rosa Parks became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement but more hardships followed. In 1957, Rosa and Raymond left Montgomery and headed to Hampton, Virginia. They stayed there less than a year before moving to Detroit. She worked as a seamstress until 1965 when John Conyers (D-Michigan) hired her as his secretary. She held this position until her retirement in 1988. She also served as a member of the Board of Advocates of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

After the death of her husband 1977, Rosa and Elaine Eason Steele co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. The institute runs the “Pathways to Freedom” bus tours, which introduce people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country.

Mrs. Parks received many awards throughout her lifetime. In 1979, the NAACP award Parks its highest award, the Springarn Medal. She received the Martin Luther King Sr. Award the next year. In 1983, she was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. She received the Rosa Parks Peace Prize in Stockholm, Sweden in 1994, followed by the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the executive branch along with Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the legislative branch. In 1990, Time magazine named Mrs. Parks on of the 20 most influential and iconic figures of the twentieth century. In 1992, Parks published Rosa Parks: My Story and her memoirs, Quiet Strength in 1995.

Mrs. Parks lived quietly in Detroit until her death on October 24, 2005 at the age of 92. Her casket was placed in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol for two days while several memorial services were taking place across the country. She is the first woman in history to lie in state at the Capitol.

 

 

Coretta Scott King

 

Coretta Scott King
(1927 - 2006)

Coretta Scott King, known as the First Lady of Civil Rights, was born in Heilberger, Alabama on April 27, 1927. As a young girl, Coretta excelled in school, especially in music. She graduated from Lincoln Normal High School as valedictorian in 1945 and received a scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs , Ohio . She graduated from Antioch with a B.A. in music and education and won a scholarship to study concert singing at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston , Massachusetts . Coretta Scott King received honorary degrees from many institutions including Princeton University , Duke University and Bates College . She also was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

While in Boston, she met a young theology student and her life would forever be changed. The Kings were married on June 18, 1953 at the home of her parents. Upon completing her degree in voice and Violin at the New England Conservatory, she moved with her husband to Montgomery, Alabama in September 1954 where Martin Luther King, Jr. had been appointed Pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

Two weeks after the birth of King's first child, Rosa Parks was arrested when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. The Kings soon became caught up in the dramatic events that triggered the modern civil rights movement. The Kings drew fierce opposition from the supporters of institutionalized racism. Mrs. King and her daughter narrowly escaped death in 1956 when white supremacists bombed their home. Mr. King was not home at the time.

The demands of raising a family (the Kings had four children) caused Mrs. King to retire from singing but she found another way to put her talents to use by putting together a series of critically acclaimed Freedom Concerts. These combined poetry, narration and music to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement and to raise funds for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization her husband had founded.

The 1960s found Mrs. King in increasing demand as a public speaker. She was the first woman to deliver the Class Day address at Harvard and the first woman to preach at a statutory service at St. Paul 's Cathedral in London . In 1962, she served as a Women's Strike for Peace delegate to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1965, she addressed an anti-war rally at Madison Square Garden while serving as a liaison to international peace and justice organizations.

On April 4, 1968, her husband was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. She remained active in preserving her husband's memory by building The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. In 1969, Mrs. King published My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., the first volume of her autobiography. In 1974, she formed and served as Co-Chair of the Full Employment Action Council, a coalition of religious, business, labor, civil and women's rights organizations dedicated to a national policy of full employment and equal opportunity. Mrs. King's continued service to human rights took her throughout Europe, Africa and Latin America . She led a successful campaign to establish Mr. King's birthday, January 15, as a national holiday. By an Act of Congress, the first observance took place in 1986.

On August 16, 2005, Mrs. King was hospitalized after suffering a stroke and mild heart attack. On January 14, 2006, she made her last public appearance in Atlanta at a dinner to honor her husband. Mrs. King passed away on January 30, 2006 at a rehabilitation center in Mexico. She was undergoing holistic therapy for her stroke and advanced ovarian cancer. Mrs. King was the first woman and black person to lie in state at the Georgia State Capitol. On January 31, 2006, the United States House of Representatives presented House Resolution 655 in honor of Mrs. King's legacy.

 

 

Betty Friedan

 

Betty Friedan
(1921- 2006)

Betty Friedan was born Bettye Naomi Goldstein on February 4, 1921 in Peoria, Illinois. She was an American feminist, social activist and writer. She graduated summa cum laude in 1942 from Smith College. After graduation, she did graduate work in psychology at the University of California, Berkley but left to work as a journalist for leftist and union publications.

She was married to theatre-producer Carl Friedman from 1947 to 1969. (The “m” was dropped after they married) Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique which was published in 1963. It depicted the roles of women in industrial societies and especially the homemaker role, which Friedan saw as stifling. The book became a bestseller and consequently spurred the women's movement. Her other books include The Second Stage, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement, and The Fountain of Age . Her autobiography, Life so Far, was published in 2000.

Ms. Friedan co-founded the U.S. National Organization for Women with 27 other women and men. She was its first president from 1966 to 1970. She wrote its statement of purpose with Pauli Murray, the first African-American female Episcopal priest.

Her ex-husband has been quoted as saying “she changed the course of history almost single-handedly. It took a driven, super aggressive, egocentric, almost lunatic dynamo to rock the world the way she did. Unfortunately, she was that same person at home where that kind of conduct doesn't work.” She rocked the Women's Conference in 1977 when she seconded the motion supporting lesbian rights. When Betty took the microphone to pledge her support for the lesbian rights motion, 10,000 women cheered, screamed and cried. Despite opposition from the right, the motion was overwhelmingly passed. This was a defining moment for the US Women's Movement, for lesbian rights and for Betty Friedan. Betty died at her home in Washington, D.C. on February 4, 2006. It was her 85th birthday.

 

 

 

Gloria Steinem

 

Gloria Steinem
(1934 -

Gloria Steinem was born March 25, 1934 in Toledo, Ohio. She is a feminist, journalist, spokeswoman for women's rights and founder and original publisher of Ms. magazine. As a child in Toledo, Gloria cared for her mother who suffered from mental illness. From 1944 to 1951, the roles of mother/daughter were reversed and Gloria was home schooled and attended public school sporadically. In 1951, Gloria moved to Washington, D.C. to live with her older sister Susan and to complete her senior year of high school.

A year of stability paid off and Gloria graduated with honors and entered Smith College on a scholarship in 1952. She majored in government studies and became politically active, working for Adlai Stevenson's campaign. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa Society and upon graduation in 1956, left to study in India for two years. Back in the United States, finding work as a journalist was difficult because editors wanted male reporters. She finally landed a job as an assistant editor of Help! and freelanced for other magazines. She published her first major article “The Moral Disarmament of Betty Coed” in 1962. She became a full-time freelance writer in 1963 with “A Bunny's Tale”, her infamous personal story of working undercover as a Playboy Bunny.

In 1971, Ms. Steinem was one of the founders of the National Women's Political Caucus and founded the Women's Action Alliance. In 1972, she covered George McGovern's presidential campaign, founded the feminist magazine Ms. and was named Woman of the Year by McCall's. In 1974, Ms. Steinem founded the Coalition of Labor Union Women and participated in the National Conference of Women in Houston, Texas in 1977. She suffered a personal setback in 1994 when she contracted trigeminal neuralgia, a rare nerve disorder. After conquering the disease, at the age of 66, she married human rights activist David Bale on September 3, 2000. She wore jeans to the wedding with a flower in her hair. Tragedy would strike soon after when David died of brain lymphoma on December 30, 2003 at the age of 62.

Ms. Steinem remains an eloquent, revered icon of the modern feminist movement. Her other works include: Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983); Marilyn: Norma Jean (1986); Revolution from Within: A Book of Self Esteem (1992 and #1 Best Seller); and Moving Beyond Words (1993).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be a Giant


Union One - Resources and Tools for Unions
A Union One Project

A special thanks to Cyndi Cardenas. This project would not have been possible without her generous research, writing, and narration work.


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