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The women of NOW : how feminists built an organization that transformed America / Katherine Turk.

by Turk, Katherine, author.

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New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

Hernandez, Aileen C.

Collins, Mary Jean, 1939-

Burnett, Patricia Hill, 1920-

National Organization for Women.

Feminism -- United States -- History.

Women -- Political activity -- United States -- History.

Women's rights -- United States -- History.

9780374601539 (hardcover) :

0374601534 (hardcover)

434 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Prologue: You can't stop NOW -- We recognized the honest fire -- Be what you are, a woman -- Women are going to have to organize -- We have different problems -- Getting paid -- The Chicago Machine vs. the Pennsylvania Railroad -- Put it on the line now for equality -- You better be in the throne -- Epilogue: It was personal, political, everything -- Afterword: What it takes to begin again.

"In the summer of 1966, crammed into a D.C. hotel suite, twenty-eight women devised 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 called this renegade meeting from attendees at the annual conference of state women's commissions. Fed up with waiting for government action and trying to work with a broken system, they laid out a vision for an organization to unite all women and fight for their rights. Alternately skeptical and energized, they debated the idea late into the night. In less than twenty-four hours, the National Organization for Women was born. In The Women of NOW, the historian Katherine Turk chronicles the growth and enduring influence of this foundational group through three lesser-known members who became leaders: Aileen Hernandez, a federal official of Jamaican American heritage; Mary Jean Collins, a working-class union organizer and Chicago Catholic; and Patricia Hill Burnett, a Michigan Republican, artist, and former beauty queen. From its bold inception through the tumultuous training ground of the 1970s, NOW's feminism flooded the nation, permanently shifted American culture and politics, and clashed with conservative forces, presaging our fractured national landscape. These women built an organization that was radical in its time but flexible and expansive enough to become a mainstream fixture. This is the story of how they built it--and built it to last"--Provided by publisher.

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