Category: Timeline Stories

The inauguration of President Ronald Reagan launches a politically conservative era in the U.S. This includes the intensification of the “Stop ERA” movement in the prevention of the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first woman to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Black feminists Audre Lorde and Barbara Smith create the Kitchen Table Women of Color Press to independently publish works by feminists of color. These publications contribute to the growth of women’s studies, which expand during this decade.

The United Nations declares the “Year of the Woman” and hosts the first of its World Conference on Women in Mexico City in June.

The Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade legalizes abortion. The same year Dolores Huerta, labor organizer and feminist activist, emerges as a leader for United Farm Workers.

Gloria Steinem launches Ms. magazine and becomes the public face of feminism. Shirley Chisholm launches her Democratic primary presidential campaign, becoming the first Black woman to run for president in a major political party. In June, Angela Davis, a symbol of the Black Panther Party and Black feminism, is acquitted on all charges of conspiracy, murder and kidnapping, the culmination of a two-year “Free Angela” campaign after her arrest in 1970 over a courtroom shootout involving Black Party members in California, where it was discovered that the guns used were registered under her name. The same month, Title IX—authored by Rep. Patsy Mink—is established, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. Ruth Bader Ginsburg (appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993 under President Bill Clinton) helps to launch the ACLU Women’s Rights Project.

Following the intensification of anti-war protests against the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, New York Radical Women, led by Robin Morgan, stage a protest against the Miss America pageant, elevating the women’s liberation movement into the national spotlight. A different protest takes place with the first Miss Black America pageant under the banner of “Black is beautiful.” Shirley Chisholm becomes the first Black woman elected to Congress in the House of Representatives.

The National Organization of Women (NOW) is founded by Betty Friedan, Pauli Murray, Muriel Fox and Shirley Chisholm.

In February, Malcolm X is assassinated. In March, Martin Luther King, Jr leads civil rights activists in a march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. for voting rights. Violence instigated by state law enforcement is televised, thus galvanizing the movement on both a national and international stage. In August, the Voting Rights Act is passed, which removes barriers to voting in Southern states. In October, nationality quotas are removed with the overhaul of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

With applied pressure from the Civil Rights Movement—spearheaded by community organizer Ella Baker in the background and Martin Luther King, Jr. at the fore through organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)—the Civil Rights Act becomes law. Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer emerges as a leader during the Democratic National Convention where she gives testimony about her struggles to vote. Patsy Mink becomes the first Asian American woman and woman of color elected to Congress in the House of Representatives.

Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique. The March on Washington for Civil Rights takes place on Aug. 28. A month later, white supremacists bomb the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., killing four girls: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair. The tragedy inspires protest art and music, including Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam.” President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on Nov. 22.

Claudette Colvin is arrested on March 2 for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala. That summer, Mamie Till-Mobley insists on an open casket funeral in Chicago after her son Emmett Till is brutally lynched when visiting relatives in Mississippi, which shocks the nation. Rosa Parks is arrested on Dec. 1 for also refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus. Her arrest prompts an organized boycott by the Women’s Political Council in Montgomery, which catapults Martin Luther King, Jr. into leadership of the Civil Rights Movement. The bus boycott lasts 381 days.