American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Kopkind on countercultural sea]: Kopkind, “Woodstock Nation,” p. 318. [“Founded on privilege”]: Gitlin, Sixties, p. 212.

  [Smucker at Woodstock]: Smucker, quoted at pp. 85, 87, 88, 89, 90; see also Kopkind; Jon Wiener, “Woodstock Revisited,” in Eisen, vol. 2, pp. 170-72. [“Sing ‘Solidarity Forever’”]: quoted in Denisoff, Great Day Coming, p. 193.

  10. Liberty, Equality, Sisterhood

  433 [Eleanor Roosevelt’s last years]: Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor: The Years Alone (Norton, 1972), ch. 15; Tamara K. Hareven, Eleanor Roosevelt: An American Conscience (1968; reprinted by Da Capo Press, 1975), ch. 13; Maurine H. Beasley, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media: A Public Quest for Self-Fulfillment (University of Illinois Press, 1987), pp. 182-85.

  [“Save 6,000 lives”]: quoted in Lash, p. 304.

  [Roosevelt and women’s issues]: see Elisabeth Israels Perry, “Training for Public Life: ER and Women’s Political Networks in the 1920s,” in Joan Hoff-Wilson and Marjorie Lightman, eds., Without Precedent: The Life and Career of Eleanor Roosevelt (Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 28-45; Susan Ware, “ER and Democratic Politics: Women in the Postsuffrage Era,” in ibid., pp. 46-60; Lois Scharf, “ER and Feminism,” in ibid., pp. 226-53; Hareven, pp. 24-32, 63-68, 135-36, 233-34, 27, and passim.

  434 [“Most Admired Woman”]: Lash, p. 302.

  [President’s commission report]: U.S. President’s Commission on the Status of Women, Report: American Women (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963); see also Margaret Mead and Frances Bagley Kaplan, eds., American Women: The Report of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women and Other Publications of the Commission (Scribner, 1965); Scharf, pp. 247-49; Cynthia E. Harrison, “A ‘New Frontier’ for Women: The Public Policy of the Kennedy Administration,” Journal of American History, vol. 67, no. 3 (December 1980), pp. 630-46; Judith Hole and Ellen Levine, Rebirth of Feminism (Quadrangle, 1971), pp. 18-24.

  434 [“Problem that has no name”]: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (Norton, 1963), p. 543-46.

  434-6 [Marion Hudson’s diary]: “Diary of a Student-Mother-Housewife-Worker,” in Rosalyn Baxandall et al., eds., America’s Working Women (Vintage, 1976), pp. 336-40, quoted at pp. 336-38.

  Breaking Through the Silken Curtain.

  436 [Friedan’s writings for popular magazines]: see Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (Knopf, 1979), p. 3.

  [Maslow]: Maslow, “Dominance, Personality, and Social Behavior in Women,” Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 10, no. 1 (February 1939), pp. 3-39; Maslow, Motivation and Personality (Harper, 1954); Friedan, Feminine Mystique, pp. 316-26.

  [Kinsey]: Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (W. B. Saunders, 1953); Friedan, Feminine Mystique, esp. ch. 11 and pp. 327-29.

  [“Progress to equal participation”]: Friedan, Feminine Mystique, p. 329.

  [“Scientific religion”]: ibid., p. 125.

  [“Our culture does not permit”]: ibid., p. 77.

  437 [“Conceived out of wedlock”]: Donald A. Robinson, “Two Movements in Pursuit of Equal Opportunity,” Signs, vol. 4, no. 3 (Spring 1979), pp. 413-33, quoted at p. 423; see also Carl M. Brauer, “Women Activists, Southern Conservatives, and the Prohibition of Sex Discrimination in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 49, no. 1 (February 1983), pp. 37-56; Martha Griffiths, “Women and Legislation,” in Mary Lou Thompson, ed., Voices of the New Feminism (Beacon Press, 1970), pp. 112-14.

  [Weak enforcement of antidiscrimination law]: Robinson, pp. 420-26 passim; Jo Freeman, The Politics of Women’s Liberation: A Case Study of an Emerging Social Movement and Its Relation to the Policy Process (David McKay, 1975), pp. 178-83; Jane De Hart Mathews, “The New Feminism and the Dynamics of Social Change,” in Linda K. Kerber and Mathews, eds., Women’s America: Refocusing the Past (Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 408; Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement (Random House, 1976), pp. 78-80; Joan Abramson, Old Boys, New Women: The Politics of Sex Discrimination (Praeger, 1979), ch. 5; Pauli Murray and Mary Eastwood, “Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII,” in Anne Koedt et al., eds., Radical Feminism (Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1973), pp. 165-77.

  [June 1966 conference and formation of NOW]: Hole and Levine, pp. 81-86; Friedan, It Changed My Life, pp. 75-86.

  [“Seething underground”]: Betty Friedan, “Up From the Kitchen Floor,” New York Times Magazine, March 4, 1973, pp. 8-9, 28-35, 37 quoted at p. 28.

  [“Talked down to us”]: Friedan, It Changed My Life, p. 83.

  [Organization and structure of NOW]: Maren Lockwood Carden, The New Feminist Movement (Russell Sage, 1974), chs. 8-9 passim: Freeman, ch. 3; Friedan, It Changed My Life, pp. 95-96; Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Palley, Women and Public Policies (Princeton University Press, 1982), chs. 2-3 passim.

  [“We, men and women”]: “NOW Statement of Purpose,” in Friedan, It Changed My Life, pp. 87-91, quoted at pp. 87, 88, 90.

  438 [“To hand over”]: ibid., p. 95.

  [Conflict among women leaders during Kennedy Administration]: Cynthia E. Harrison, On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women’s Issues, 1945-1968 (page proofs: University of California Press, 1988), parts 2-3 passim; see also Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (Oxford University Press, 1987).

  438 [“Specific bills”]: Esther Peterson, quoted in Harrison, On Account of Sex, p. 116.

  [“Special emphasis”]: William H. Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Ec nomic, and Political Roles, 1920-1970 (Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 127.

  438-9 [Policy differences within NOW]: Freeman, pp. 80-83; Hole and Levine, pp. 87-92, 95; Friedan, It Changed My Life, pp. 104-6.

  439 [WEAL]: Freeman, pp. 81, 152-54; Gayle Graham Yates, What Women Want: The Ideas of the Movement (Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 46-48; Hole and Levine, pp. 95-98; Karen O’Connor, Women’s Organizations’ Use of the Courts (Lexington Books, 1980), pp. 96-98 (Table 5-1), 105-8; Gelb and Palley, chs. 2-3 passim.

  [Executive order on federal contracts]: Freeman, pp. 75-76, 191-96; Friedan, “The First Year: President’s Report to NOW,” in It Changed My Life, pp. 97-99; see also Abramson, ch. 4; Bernice Sandler, “A Little Help from Our Government: WEAL and Contract Compliance,” in Alice S. Rossi and Ann Calderwood, eds., Academic Women on the Move (Russell Sage, 1973), pp. 439-62. [NOW suit on want ads]: Hole and Levine, pp. 40-44, 86-87; Freeman, pp. 76-79; Friedan, It Changed My Life, pp. 94-95; see also O’Connor, pp. 96-98 (Table 5-1), 103-5.

  [NOW, AT&T and flight attendants]: Feeman, pp. 76-77, 188-90; Friedan, It Changed My Life, pp. 92-95.

  [Women’s Legislation, 92nd Congress]: Freeman, pp. 184, 202-5, 209-29; see also Gelb and Palley; Anne E. Costan, “Representing Women: From Social Movement to Interest Group,” Western Political Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 1 (March 1981), pp. 100-13; George P. Sape and Thomas J. Hart, “Title VII Reconsidered: The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972,” George Washington Law Review, vol. 40 (July 1972), pp. 824-89.

  [ECOA]: Gelb and Palley, ch. 4.

  [NWPC]: Freeman, pp. 160-62; Gelb and Palley, pp. 26-31 passim; Yates, pp. 48-50; Friedan, It Changed My Life, pp. 165-83.

  [Black women’s employment gains]: Allen L. Sorkin, “Education, Occupation, and Income of Nonwhite Women,” Journal of Negro Education, vol. 41 (1972), pp. 343-51; Lynn Y. Weiner, From Working Girl to Working Mother: The Female Labor Force in the United States, 1820-1980 (University of North Carolina Press, 1985), pp. 89, 96.

  440 [“Virginia Slims” poll]: Freeman, p. 38.

  [Black women and white women’s organizations]: see Carden, pp. 28-30; Freeman, pp. 37-42; Cellestine Ware, Woman Power: The Movement for Women’s Liberation (Tower Publications, 1970), ch. 2.

  [Women’s Strike for Equality]: New York Times, August 27, 1970, pp. 1, 30; Freeman, pp. 84-85; Hole and Levine, pp.
92-93; Friedan, It Changed My Life, pp. 137-54.

  [“How powerful”]: Friedan, It Changed My Life, p. 141.

  [“Your own thing”]: see Freeman, p. 84.

  441 [“Not a bedroom war”]: “Strike Day: August 26, 1970,” in Friedan, It Changed My Life, pp. 152-54, quoted at p. 153.

  [Women in the 1950s]: Friedan, Feminine Mystique; Evans, pp. 3-15 passim; Chafe, American Woman, ch. 9; Maxine L. Margolis, Mothers and Such: Views of American Women and Why They Changed (University of California Press, 1984), pp. 166-76, 218-25; Sheila M. Rothman, Woman’s Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870 to the Present (Basic Books, 1978), pp. 224-31; Wiener, pp. 89-96 passim; Helena Znaniecki Lopata, Occupation: Housewife (Oxford University Press, 1971); Susan M. Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (Twayne, 1982); Judy Syfers, “Why I Want a Wife,” in Koedt et al., pp. 60-62; Alan L. Sorkin, “On the Occupational Status of Women, 1870-1970,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 32, no. 3 (July 1973), pp. 235-43; Nancy Walker, “Humor and Gender Roles: The ‘Funny’ Feminism of the Post-World War II Suburbs,” American Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 1 (Spring 1985), pp. 98-113; Joann Vanek, “Time Spent in Housework,” in Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth H. Pleck, eds., A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of American Women (Simon and Schuster, 1979), pp. 499-506.

  [“Busy Wife’s Achievements”]: Life, vol. 41, no. 26 (December 24, 1956), p. 41.

  441 [“ Ready for a padded cell”]: quoted in Friedan, Feminine Mystique, p. 28. [“All hell would break”]: Jan Schakowsky, quoted in Evans, pp. 227-28.

  [Civil rights movement, New Left, and women’s movement]: Evans; Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (Harper, 1962), Appendix 5 (“A Parallel to the Negro Problem”); Mathews, “New Feminism,” pp. 410-12; Hole and Levine, pp. 109-14; Carden, pp. 26, 59-63; Mary King, Freedom Song (Morrow, 1987), esp. ch. 12; Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (Bantam, 1987), ch. 16; Shirley N. Weber, “Black Power in the 1960s: A Study of Its Impact on Women’s Liberation,” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 11, no. 4 (June 1981), pp. 483-97; Gail Paradise Kelly, “Women’s Liberation and the Cultural Revolution,” Radical America, vol. 4, no. 2 (February 1970), pp. 19-25; Marlene Dixon, “On Women’s Liberation,” ibid., pp. 26-34; Myra Marx Ferree and Beth B. Hess, Controversy and Coalition: The New Feminist Movement (Twayne, 1985), pp. 31-35, 45-48, 59-62; Barbara Burris et al., “The Fourth World Manifesto,” in Koedt et al., pp. 322-57; Marge Piercy, “The Grand Coolie Damn,” in Robin Morgan, ed., Sisterhood Is Powerful (Random House, 1970), pp. 421-38; Roxanne Dunbar, “Female Liberation as the Basis for Social Revolution,” in ibid., pp. 477-92; Robin Morgan, “Goodbye to All That,” in Betty Roszak and Theodore Roszak, eds., Masculine/Feminine: Readings in Sexual Mythology and the Liberation of Women (Harper Colophon, 1969), pp. 241-50; Mary Aickin Rothschild, “White Women Volunteers in the Freedom Summers: Their Life and Work in a Movement for Social Change,” Feminist Studies, vol. 5, no. 3 (Fall 1979), pp. 466-95.

  442 [“Widespread and deep rooted”]: “Women in the Movement,” November 1964, reprinted in Evans, pp. 233-35, quoted at p. 234; see also Mary King, pp. 443-55 passim.

  [“Only position for women”]: Evans, p. 87.

  [“Generated feminist echoes”]: ibid., p. 88; see also Mary King, pp. 451-52. [Women at SDS “rethinking conference”]: Evans, pp. 156-69 passim.

  [“Sex-taste system”]: Casey Hayden and Mary King, “Sex and Caste,” November 18, 1965, reprinted in ibid,, pp. 235-38, quoted at p. 237.

  [“Shit-workers” and “free movement ‘chicks’ ”]: Sue Munaker, Evelyn Goldfield, and Naomi Weisstein, quoted in Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS (Random House, 1973), p. 526. [“Liberation Workshop”]: Evans, pp. 187-92.

  [“Colonial relationship”): “Liberation of Women,” reprinted in ibid., pp. 240-42, quoted at pp. 240, 241.

  443 [“Constant hubbub”]: quoted in ibid., p. 192.

  The Liberation of Women

  [Women at NCNP]: Evans, pp. 195-99; Freeman, pp. 59-60; Hole and Levine, pp. 112-14.

  [Formation of first women’s liberation groups]: Evans, pp. 199-211; Freeman, pp. 56-62; Hole and Levine, pp. 114-22 passim: Carden, pp. 63-65.

  [Washington counter-demonstration]: Hole and Levine, pp. 117-19, Kathie Amatniek quoted at p. 118; Carden, p. 61; New York Times, January 16, 1968, p. 3.

  444 [Redstockings]: “Redstockings Manifesto,” in Morgan, Sisterhood, pp. 533-36; Yates, pp. 94-95, 100-1; Hole and Levine, pp. 136-42.

  [Atkinson’s break with NOW]: Atkinson, “Resignation from N.O.W.,” in Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey (Links Books, 1974), pp. 9-11, quoted at p. 10; Freeman, pp. 81-82; Hole and Levine, p. 90.

  [The Feminists]: “The Feminists: A Political Organization to Annihilate Sex Roles,” in Koedt et al., pp. 368-78; The Feminists, “Women: Do You Know the Facts About Marriage?,” in Morgan, Sisterhood, pp. 536-37; Hole and Levine, pp. 142-47; Atkinson.

  [Ease of starting women’s groups]: see Evans, p. 211.

  [Radical feminist ideology]: see Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, H. M. Parshley, trans. (Knopf, 1952); Koedt et al., part 3; Marlene Dixon, “The Rise of Women’s Liberation,” in Roszak and Roszak, pp. 186-201; Hole and Levine, chs. 3-4; Yates, ch. 3 passim: Carden, ch. 4; Mathews, pp. 413-15.

  [“Primary class system”]: Barbara Mehrhof, quoted in Yates, p. 93.

  444 [Redstockings Manifesto on male supremacy]: Morgan, Sisterhood, quoted at p. 534.

  444-5 [Millett]: Millett, Sexual Politics (Doubleday, 1970), quoted at p. 363; see also Yates, pp. 79-84.

  445 [Firestone]: Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (Morrow, 1970); see also Yates, pp. 84-87.

  [Consciousness-raising]: Pamela Allen, Tree Space: A Perspective on the Small Group in Women’s Liberation (Times Change Press, 1970); Claudia Dreitus, Women’s Fate: Raps from a Feminist Consciousness-Raising Group (Bantam, 1973); Vivian Gornick, “Consciousness,” in Gornick, Essays in Feminism (Harper, 1978), pp. 47-68; Carol Williams Payne, “Consciousness Raising: A Dead End?,” in Koedt et al., pp. 282-84; Ronnie Lichtman, “Consciousness Raising—1970,” in Gerda Lerner, ed., The Female Experience (Bobbs-Merrill, 1977), pp. 456-58; Freeman, pp. 116-19; Yates, pp. 103-6; Carden, pp. 33-37; Mathews, pp. 412-13.

  [“Overview of our potential”]: Allen, pp. 6-7.

  [Miss America protest]: Robin Morgan, “Women Disrupt the Miss America Pageant,” in Morgan, Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist (Vintage, 1978), pp. 62-67, quoted on “Mindless Sex Object Image,” “Murder mascot,” “commercial shill-game,” and “ ‘ideal’ symbol,” at p. 64; New York Times, September 8, 1968, p. 81; “No More Miss America!,” in Morgan, Sisterhood, pp. 521-24.

  446 [“Instruments of torture”]: quoted in Ann Popkin, “The Personal Is Political; The Women’s Liberation Movement,” in Dick Cluster, ed., They Should Have Served That Cup of Coffee: Seven Radicals Remember the 60s (South End Press, 1979), p. 190.

  [WITCH]: Morgan, Going Too Far, pp. 71-81; Hole and Levine, pp. 126-30; Morgan, Sisterhood, pp. 538-53, 556; “The WITCH Manifesto,” in Roszak and Roszak, pp. 259-61.

  [“Pit their ancient magic”]: Robin Morgan, “WITCH Hexes Wall Street,” in Morgan, Going Too Far, pp. 75-77, quoted at p. 175.

  [Feminists and the media]: Ferree and Hess, pp. 74-78; Hole and Levine, pp. 247-70; Freeman, pp. 111-14, 148-50; see also Matilda Butler and William Paisley, Women and the Mass Media: Sourcebook for Research and Action (Human Sciences Press, 1980).

  [“Grandpress blitz”]: Freeman, p. 148.

  [“A political statement”]: Morgan, “Miss America Pageant,” p. 63.

  [“Ghetto” of women’s page]: ibid., p. 63.

  [Newsweek accord]: New York Times, August 27, 1970, p. 30; Hole and Levine, pp. 258-60.

  447 [Ladies’ Home Journal sit-in]: Hole and Levine, pp. 255-58; Ladies’ Home Journal, August 1970; Newsweek, vol. 75, no. 13 (March 30,
1970), p. 61; ibid., vol. 76, no. 5 (August 3, 1970), p. 44.

  [Feminist publications]: see Hole and Levine, pp. 270-76; Carden, pp. 65, 69-70, 144-45, 211-17; Freeman, pp. 110-11; Ferree and Hess, pp. 72-74.

  [Women’s studies]: Florence Howe and Carol Ahlum, “Women’s Studies and Social Change,” in Rossi and Calderwood, pp. 393-423; Gloria Bowles and Renate Duelli Klein, eds., Theories of Women’s Studies (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983); Ellen Carol DuBois et al., Feminist Scholarship: Kindling in the Groves of Academe (University of Illinois Press, 1985); Freeman, pp. 166-69; Hole and Levine, pp. 326-28; Kathleen O’Connor Blumhagen and Walter D. Johnson, eds., Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Collection (Greenwood Press, 1978).

  [Women’s health movement]: Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, Our Bodies, Ourselves (Simon and Schuster, 1973); Ellen Frankfort, Vaginal Politics (Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1972); Gena Corea, The Hidden Malpractice: How American Medicine Treats Women as Patients and Professionals (Morrow, 1977); Margolis, pp. 247-51; Hole and Levine, pp. 358-62; Ferree and Hess, pp. 96-98; Dorothy Rosenthal Mandelbaum, “Women in Medicine,” Signs, vol. 4, no. 1 (Autumn 1978), pp. 136-45; see also Miriam Galper and Carolyn Kott Washburne, “A Woman’s Self-Help Program in Action,” Social Policy, vol. 6, no. 5 (March-April 1976), pp. 46-52.

  [Abortion]: Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Abortion and Woman’s Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom (Longman, 1984); Beverly Wildung Harrison, Our Right to Choose: Toward a New Ethic of Abortion (Beacon Press, 1983); Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (University of California Press, 1984), esp. chs. 3, 5, 7-9; Hole and Levine, ch. 7; Yates, pp. 110-12; Lucinda Cisler, “Abortion Law Repeal (sort of): A Warning to Women,” in Koedt et al., pp. 151-64; see also Linda Gordon, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America (Grossman, 1976).

  447-8 [“Talk about women’s rights”]: quoted in Luker, p. 97.

  448 [Roe v. Wade]: 410 U.S. 113 (1973); see also Luker, pp. 125-27; Janet Benshoof, “The Legacy of Roe v. Wade,” in Jay L. Garfield and Patricia Hennessey, eds., Abortion: Moral and Legal Perspectives (University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), pp. 35-44; Hyman Rodman et al., The Abortion Question (Columbia University Press, 1987), pp. 183-90; James C. Mohr, Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800-1900 (Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 250-57.