Aug. 26, 1970: Don't Iron While the Strike is Hot

 Fifty years ago today, I was standing in the (then-named) Civic Center Plaza in downtown Chicago, listening to a plethora of speakers talk about women and equality and the need to end the war in Vietnam. As is so often the case with my early adult life, I have no photos--only a button from the event and a memory of the slogan, "Don't iron while the strike is hot." I've had the button in my collection for the past 50 years.

I was working at my first real job after college--as a staff reporter for the Lerner Newspapers, a  chain of community papers in Chicago. I have no clip from the event, as not working was a key idea of the strike. My boss, Terry Gorman, a young man who considered himself progressive, did not object. So off I went--on my own, as I recall, to an event that did not...leave a strong impression. I don't remember any particular speech or speaker that day. The documentary She's Beautiful When She's Angry has a brief scene of the Chicago event showing hundreds filling the plaza.  I could blame my faulty memory for this limited recollection, but it's more a case of my feminism being in its nascent stage then. I had yet to join any group, and in 1970, my mind was more focused on Chicago politics and the continuing, tragic war in Vietnam. The shooting of student demonstrators at Kent State University by National Guard troops had occurred just a few months earlier, and with my colleagues I tried to find stories about the war protests with a "local angle". Meanwhile, another important strike was happening that August in California: Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers were striking for better wages and working conditions in the fields. My roommates and I were honoring that strike. An incredibly eventful year it was.

Although I had graduated from a women's college just two years earlier, I had not yet internalized just what discrimination and systemic sexism meant and would mean for me as a woman. But I had read Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, credited today with being one of the sparks of second wave feminism. I also knew about the stirrings of the Women's Liberation Movement all around me; I just had no personal entry point yet. The abortion I needed and almost didn't get in the pre-Roe v. Wade era--was still two years away. That experience later brought me to my first feminist collective, the Emma Goldman Women's Health Center, a free well-woman clinic on Chicago's North Side.

Thanks to digital archives, I can revisit the Women's Strike for Equality on Aug. 26, fifty years ago. An article in TIME, a couple of weeks later, called it the largest demonstration since suffrage was won in 1920.  The main event was in New York, where 20,000 women and men marched along Fifth Avenue, chanting and waving banners. TIME wrote: "In nearly half a dozen cities, women swept past headwaiters to 'liberate' all-male bars and restaurants. At the Detroit Free Press, women staffers, angered because male reporters had two washrooms while they had only one, stormed one of the men's rooms, ousted its inhabitants and occupied it for the rest of the day.

"In Manhattan leafleteers collared brokers at financial-district subway stops early in the morning; teams of women activists made the rounds of corporations whose advertising "degrades women" to present them with "Barefoot and Pregnant Awards....In the nation's capital, 1,000 women marched down Connecticut Avenue behind a "We Demand Equality" banner....Los Angeles liberationists were confined to the sidewalk during their march, which drew only 500. Seven women dressed in suffragette costumes stood a "silent vigil" for women's rights during the day at the Federal Building. Easygoing street theater and speeches marked demonstrations in other cities. More than a thousand women and men sympathizers attended a noon-hour rally in Indianapolis, where they watched guerrilla theater."

For some visual imagery of the event within the context of suffrage and other women's struggles, a 3-minute student presentation is worth a watch. And for a broader understanding of the feminist movement of the 60s and early 70s, I highly recommend the documentary, She's Beautiful When She's Angry. It's available free online. 

From these archives and my limited memory, it's clear that voting was not a demand in 1970; voting rights has been a centerpiece of the Civil Rights Movement, and I remember how satisfied I felt, just months after I went to Selma, that Pres. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

On Aug. 26, 1970, observance of the suffrage anniversary was an entry to a new, second-wave women's movement. In the following 20 years the concept of equality was taken to every field: business, health, politics, literature, the arts, many more. And since then, we've seen third and fourth wave feminism come into being. The latter, according to a Wiki, began around 2012, focusing on empowerment of women and intersectionality, the interconnections of categories such as race, class and gender.

And now on Women's Equality Day 2020, a century after the 19th Amendment was ratified, voting is once again center stage in the struggle for justice and equality. Voter suppression is evident as the current occupant of the White House tries to manipulate his way to a second term. Perhaps we could argue we're in a fifth wave of feminism, which will challenge us to help make all of the gains of the past century a living reality for all and protect the gains we once thought we had won for good--reproductive rights being at the top of the list.

A little more than two months away from the Nov. 3 election, in the middle of a pandemic, I have no plans to protest in person. But I'll be phone banking and writing letters for the Democratic ticket, making sure my ballot is in on time.  To quote suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, "To the wrongs that need resistance, To the right that needs assistance, To the future in the distance, Give yourselves."

Montgomery, Alabama, 1965: reflections on my first protest march

It's been more than a half century--a fact that still startles me--since I took an overnight bus trip with a group of Catholic nuns, lay teachers and students to join the last leg of the historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The late John Lewis, a very young man, was there with Dr. King and the march leadership, though I never saw or heard him. His death and funeral service this week brought back this time to me, so writing this is a way of reliving and reflecting on these experiences.

I was 18 years old, a freshman at Mundelein College in Chicago in the fall of 1964, a rather naive young woman who had never attended a Catholic school before. I was surprised to learn almost immediately that nuns and students were planning to join the march the following spring and plans were already underway. I knew immediately that I wanted to join it. Did I really understand much of what was at stake? I like to think so, though my understanding must have come from news reports of the growing Civil Rights movement in the early 60s: the fact that freedom fighters were working for basic human rights, that many Negroes (the word we used then) could not vote, that change was underway. And there was a book: John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me. Griffin, a Texas journalist and deeply religious man, had darkened his skin (with drugs and sun lamp treatments) so that he could tour the South and experience it as a Black man. The book was published in 1961 when I was in high school. I remember reading it, surprised and saddened by his account of racial injustices in the deep South.

For my trip to Alabama, all that was needed was $20 for the overnight Trailways bus trip to and from Alabama--and parental permission. The latter was surprisingly hard to get. Both of my parents were strongly opposed, being more aware than I was of the dangers involved. I persisted in my attempts to get them to sign--showing defiance for the first time in my teen life--and finally they relented. Perhaps they were mollified by the fact that the trip was sponsored by the Catholic Interracial Council, and a number of nuns would be on the bus with us. Mom and Dad would not pay, however, so I got a part-time job typing a textbook draft for a nun, and was ready to go when the time came the following March.

It may seem incredible today to say that I have no picture of myself from that event--no pictures at all. I didn't have a camera--they were large bulky things in those days. However, some photos existed from our group (taken by one of the nuns), including this one now in the Loyola University archives. I am not in it (Where was I?) But other classmates were. 

Actually, there is one photo of me which appeared in the college newspaper, The Skyscraper, a month later. You might not recognize me, however. I occasionally worked as a hair model, and had dyed my hair black the previous week.

I have no photos of the 6 religious faculty who joined us on the trip. They were members of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVMs), and they wore a habit identical to the one in the photo below.  This BVM, Sister Leoline of Kansas City, was photographed wearing an orange vest showing she was one of the original marchers who had walked the entire 50 miles from Selma to Montgomery.

Lacking photos,  I took notes--fortunately!-- as I was a reporter for The Skyscraper. The stories we published then are an invaluable memory aid these many years later. 

I can confidently tell you that we left one cold March afternoon from Chicago, arriving 20 hours and 800 miles later. "Welcome to Montgomery, "Cradle of the Confederacy" we saw on a Highway 80 billboard. We knew there would be tensions if not danger: angry locals and members of the Alabama National Guard who would line the route of the march the next day. But first, we'd gather for a briefing on safety and later a rally. As Brenda, my co-reporter, and I wrote, "Drive, warmth and easygoing humor" greeted us when we went to the St. Jude campground on the outskirts of Montgomery. Our bus driver left, to stay safely outside the town and to park the bus in a safer, less open spot.

It was humid and hot, as we ate picnic-style on the grounds and were later treated to a fried chicken dinner by a local resident. Other volunteers fed marchers and offered encouragement.  "Late in the afternoon", we wrote in our news story, "residents and visitors began pouring into the field and taking places in front of the makeshift stage....The dark field, lighted only by spotlights and the repeated flash of photographers' cameras, revealed a standing crowd of thousands. Dozens clung to the trees overshadowing the stage." By 9 pm., Harry Belafonte, the host of the rally, welcomed other entertainers: Nina Simone, Peter, Paul and Mary, The Chad Mitchell Trio, Dick Gregory, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennet and Shelley Winters. Would that I would have had 21st century technology to record the event!

Of course,  the rally included speeches: Dr. Ralph Bunch, UN undersecretary for political affairs, and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Dr. King's top aide. Dr. Abernathy urged us "to assemble at this same spot tomorrow and join the greatest march ever held...and when it takes place, Alabama will never be the same." Prophetic words, definitely.

The march began the next morning with ranks of marchers, six deep, and marshals yelling, ."Let's have a man on the outside", as they ran along the line. Those were pre-feminist times, and that didn't phase me then. No one near us, male or female, was forced to fend off an attack, as we moved forward singing and chanting. Songs are the lifeblood of any movement and several are still alive in memory: "This Little Light of Mine", "I'm on my Way to Freedom Land,""We Shall Overcome".Another popular marching song, "Can't turn me around" is in this 3-minute YouTube video, which also includes march scenes, words by Dr King, and commentary by Harry Belafonte.

In our campus newspaper story, we wrote, "During three-fourths of the trek, which cut through a Negro section of the city, onlookers cheered and joined in singing the freedom chants. Others watched expressionless. Several offered water to the marchers. An old Negro woman shouted that it was the greatest day she had ever seen." I felt a sense of exhilaration that I had not felt before, and a sense of gratitude that I could be there for this amazing event, like nothing I had ever experienced.

"Turning onto the downtown section a different mood confronted the marchers. Quiet heckling from a few white observers was emphasized by a large sign on one store showing Martin Luther King Jr. supposedly at a Communist training school. Confederate flags waved by bystanders, worn by some troopers and flown on top of the Capitol building itself seemed to indicate the real feeling behind the civil rights opposition."

As we reached the Capitol we were urged to sit down and rest, and the four-hour meeting opened with the movement classic, "We Shall Overcome".  The crowd raised American flags to the National Anthem led by Mrs. King. The optimistic tone of the previous night's speeches continued continued through the hours. One of the initial speakers declared, "This is a revolution that won't fire a shot....Our aim is to love the hell out of the State of Alabama with all the power of our bodies and souls." Other speakers spoke to how this march was only a beginning. Urging a continuation of the voting rights struggle in the South, Dr. King stressed that the "aim of the movement is to seek a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience." The struggle won't be smooth but it will succeed, he told us, "because no lie can live forever."

The event ended with another chorus of "We Shall Overcome" as my classmates and I made our way to 

our bus which had returned to pick us up. A day later we arrived home.

And then I went back to school for another three years, and the effects of the march continued to play out in my life then--and then in ways hidden or not, over the coming decades. Part 2 of this story to come.