When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present

by Gail Collins

  79 While all the black: Ingersoll, “Former Congresswomen Look Back,” 197.

  80 “We made it!”: Ibid., 197.

  80 Smith was another widow: The section on Margaret Chase Smith is based on Peggy Lamson’s Few Are Chosen, 3–29, and Janann Sherman’s biography No Place for a Woman.

  81 “You know, our amendment”: Davis, Moving the Mountain, 45.

  Representative Smith gave conflicting explanations for introducing the amendment. Alice Paul, who believed Smith was sincere, told historian Amelia Fry that Smith warned her his motives would be misconstrued and urged her to find someone else to lead the fight. The evidence seems to me to fall strongly on the side of ridicule and his desire to do mischief to the civil rights bill. Among those who disagree, Jo Freeman makes a thorough argument in her essay “How ‘Sex’ Got into Title VII.”

  82 The Wall Street Journal invited: Harrison, On Account of Sex, 189.

  82 “Bunny problems indeed!”: “De-Sexing the Job Market,” New York Times, August 21, 1965, 20.

  82 The New Republic, a bastion: Harrison, On Account of Sex, 188.

  82 Aileen Hernández, the only woman: Ibid., 187.

  82 “We walked in”: Roads, “Interview with Barbara ‘Dusty’ Roads.”

  83 Representative James Scheuer of New York: Davis, Moving the Mountain, 21.

  83 “What are you running”: Ingersoll, “Former Congresswomen Look Back,” 199.

  84 “underground network of women”: Friedan, It Changed My Life, 96.

  84 They “maneuvered me”: Friedan, Life So Far, 165.

  84 The meeting, in Friedan’s: Cohen, The Sisterhood, 133–35.

  85 Friedan remembered that “those five-dollar”: Friedan, Life So Far, 175.

  85 Members joked: Davis, Moving the Mountain, 56–58.

  85 “What do you call it”: Friedan, It Changed My Life, 119.

  86 As soon as Jo: Jo Freeman, “On the Origins of the Women’s Liberation Movement from a Strictly Personal Perspective,” in Gender and Family Issues in the Workplace, 178.

  86 Just finding NOW: Echols, Daring to Be Bad, 74.

  86 Martha Griffiths, who had naturally: Tinker, Women in Washington, 198.

  86 “With no money”: Friedan, It Changed My Life, 121.

  87 “You have not heard”: Paterson, Be Somebody, 152.

  87 “I must have relief”: Ibid., 176.

  88 In Orlando, Ida: Bird, Born Female, 165.

  88 Lorena Weeks was 9: Unless otherwise noted, the story of Lorena Weeks’s suit is based on interviews with Weeks and her attorney, Sylvia Roberts.

  89 The head of her union: Herr, Women, Power, and AT&T, 81.

  5. WHAT HAPPENED?

  Interview: Nora Ephron.

  97 And, as one nineteenth-century: Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 123.

  97 “Experience in business”: Davies, Woman’s Place Is at the Typewriter, 84.

  97 “She’s making”: “Rosie the Riveter,” song by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb.

  97 The Office of War Information: Colman, Rosie the Riveter, 51.

  98 two-thirds of those new: Chafe, The American Woman, 253.

  98 “A Good Man”: “A Good Man Is Hard to Find—So They Hire Women,” Time, November 4, 1966.

  98 That year, President Johnson: Bird, Born Female, 134–35.

  99 “Darling—you are”: Litoff and Smith, Since You Went Away, 147.

  100 “Second, we must”: Bird, Born Female, 135.

  100 During the war, the nation’s: Columbus Washboard Company in Logan, Ohio, company history.

  100 Half of American homes had: Cherlin, Marriage, 35.

  100 Even in the best times: Chafe, The Unfinished Journey.

  100 Family income, adjusted: Cherlin, Marriage, 35.

  101 Over the ’70s and ’80s: Coontz, The Way We Really Are, 126–27.

  101 In the 1970s wives who: Weiss, To Have and to Hold, 69.

  102 “There is, perhaps, one”: “The Liberator,” The Economist, December 23, 1999.

  102 Young unmarried women: Goldin and Katz, “The Power of the Pill,” 730–70.

  104 It was, as the sociologist: Alice Rossi, “Equality Between the Sexes,” in The Woman in America, 101.

  104 “We have given great offense”: Lerner, The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina, 139.

  6. CIVIL RIGHTS

  Interviews: Josie Bass, Valerie Bradley, Suzan Johnson Cook, Emma Jordan, Joyce Ladner, Lucy Murray, Lenora Taitt-Magubane, Mary Helen Washington, Betty Riley Williams, Virginia Williams.

  106 Anderson had been blessed: Unless otherwise noted, this section is based on Allan Keiler’s Marian Anderson: A Singer’s Journey, and Anderson’s autobiography, My Lord, What a Morning.

  107 “I don’t care if”: Freedman, The Voice That Challenged a Nation, 57.

  107 Sol Hurok, called: William Honan, “Fresh Perspectives on the DAR’s Rebuff of Marian Anderson,” New York Times, May 18, 1993.

  108 “I felt like a dog”: Olson, Freedom’s Daughters, 90.

  109 Parks, an old schoolmate: Mary Fair Burks, “Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” in Women in the Civil Rights Movement, 71.

  109 Later, when her husband: Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 265.

  109 “They’ve messed with the wrong”: Parks, Rosa Parks, 133.

  109 “My God, look”: Ibid., 125.

  110 The Women’s Political Council: Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It.

  110 “True, we succeeded”: Burks, “Trailblazers,” 82.

  110 The following morning, Rosa: Rosa Parks, “Tired of Giving In,” in Sisters in the Struggle, 65.

  110 While the ministers pressed: Olson, Freedom’s Daughters, 122–23.

  110 E. D. Nixon of the NAACP: Raines, My Soul Is Rested, 49.

  110 Later, when Parks’s lawyer: Olson, Freedom’s Daughters, 123, and Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, 136–37.

  111 “You have said enough”: Collier-Thomas and Franklin, Sisters in the Struggle, 70.

  111 When Marian Anderson was interviewed: Marian Anderson, interviewed by Emily Kimbrough, Ladies’ Home Journal, September 1960.

  111 Looking for their perfect: Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 11–19.

  112 Gwendolyn Robinson, a scholarship student: Lefever, Undaunted by the Fight, 183–86.

  113 A young Marian Wright: Edelman, Lanterns, 24.

  113 Students had a nine o’clock: Lefever, Undaunted by the Fight, 16–17.

  113 Alice Walker lasted two years: Ibid., 168.

  113 When Diane Nash was nominated: Halberstam, The Children, 144.

  114 The Richmond News Leader, an outspoken: Zinn, SNCC, 27.

  115 “If anyone gets whupped”: Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 72.

  115 When the Nashville students: Halberstam, The Children, 141.

  116 In February 1961 Lana Taylor: Zinn, SNCC, 39.

  116 Smith was another Spelman student: Unless otherwise noted, this section is based on Soon We Will Not Cry by Cynthia Griggs Fleming.

  116 Ella Baker was well into middle age: Unless otherwise noted, this section is based on Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement by Barbara Ransby.

  118 Septima Clark, a venerable: Brown, Ready from Within, 77–78.

  118 Septima Clark once referred: Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 76.

  119 Septima Clark felt the established: Olson, Freedom’s Daughters, 222.

  119 Andrew Young, who was one: Ibid., 142.

  119 “Remember, we are not”: Zinn, SNCC, 106.

  120 “People have to be made”: Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 93.

  120 “To our mind lunch-counter”: Ibid., 96.

  120 Baker wanted the students: Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement.

  120 “Where we lived”: Cantarow, Moving the Mountain, 60.

  120 “There was terror”: Penny Patch, “Sweet Tea at Shoney’s,” in Deep in Our Hearts, 140.

/>   120 Unita Blackwell, a former: Blackwell, Barefootin’, 84.

  121 “How did I make a living?”: Cantarow, Moving the Mountain, 73.

  121 One former SNCC member: Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 97.

  122 Elizabeth Jennings, a Manhattan: John Hewitt, “The Search for Elizabeth Jennings,” New York History 71, 387–415.

  122 Pauli Murray was once barred: Murray, Pauli Murray, 109.

  123 “Oh my God”: Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 144–45.

  123 Warned that any new Riders: Ibid., 181.

  123 Susan Wilbur, 18: Ibid., 213–14.

  124 Years later, she would tell: Halberstam, The Children, 329.

  125 When a local resident: Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 335.

  125 Seeing Lenora enter a church: Lefever, Undaunted by the Fight, 134.

  126 At the time the demonstrations: Olson, Freedom’s Daughters, 195.

  126 But in Washington, a dying: Ibid., 194.

  126 “Diane was a devoted”: Ibid., 160.

  126 “If the Negro woman”: Franklin, Ensuring Inequality, 167.

  127 Ella Baker was particularly: Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, 311.

  127 In Mississippi, one male: Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 271.

  127 Anna Arnold Hedgeman—the only woman: Hedgeman, The Trumpet Sounds, 178–180.

  128 “Nowadays, women wouldn’t”: Parks, Rosa Parks, 166.

  128 No woman was invited: Pauli Murray, as quoted in Dorothy Height’s “We Wanted the Voice of a Woman to Be Heard,” in Sisters in the Struggle, 90.

  128 “Nothing that women said”: Height, “We Wanted the Voice of a Woman to Be Heard,” 86–87.

  128 Hedgeman proposed that at least: Hedgeman, The Trumpet Sounds, 179.

  129 “That’s them!” This segment is based on information in Unita Blackwell’s autobiography, Barefootin’.

  130 “Violence is a fearful”: Olson, Freedom’s Daughters, 204.

  130 But Charles Payne, a Duke: Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 265–83.

  131 Laura McGhee, a widow: Ibid., 208–18.

  131 Fannie Lou Hamer, who was: Unless otherwise noted, this section is based on This Little Light of Mine, by Kay Mills.

  133 “At first Mrs. Hamer”: Blackwell, Barefootin’, 113.

  133 “The spotlight was on”: Ibid., 116.

  134 “I don’t think that anybody”: Raines, My Soul Is Rested, 107.

  134 Marian Wright Edelman said: Edelman, Lanterns, 79.

  134 Back in Atlanta, Ruby: Fleming, Soon We Will Not Cry, 114.

  135 Unita Blackwell was disturbed: Blackwell, Barefootin’, 80–81.

  135 At Spelman, Gwen: Fleming, Soon We Will Not Cry, 174–75.

  136 “The best of all”: Ibid., 119.

  136 “The first thing you have”: Lewis, Walking with the Wind, 83–84.

  137 “She absolutely did not”: Fleming, Soon We Will Not Cry, 95.

  137 What seemed clear was: Ibid., 104.

  137 Two weeks later, Ruby: Ibid., 106–7.

  137 “Well, I’ve found out”: Carson, Silent Voices, 253. (Carson, who changed the names of the women she interviewed, called Ruby Doris “Sarah.”)

  138 “He’s crazy but he’s”: Olson, Freedom’s Daughters, 211.

  138 “Since my child”: Zinn, SNCC, 106.

  138 Bevel’s compulsive infidelity: Halberstam, The Children, 682.

  139 By September, there had been eighty: Lewis, Walking with the Wind, 274.

  139 But the enormous influx: The demographics come from Doug McAdam’s Freedom Summer.

  139 When Penny Patch, a longtime: Penny Patch, “Sweet Tea at Shoney’s,” 155.

  140 “Our skills and abilities”: Olson, Freedom’s Daughters, 310.

  140 Things weren’t helped: Fleming, Soon We Will Not Cry, 137.

  140 Dr. Alvin Poussaint, who studied: Ibid., 128.

  140 Chuck McDew, a black: Ibid., 132–33.

  141 How could the veteran: McAdam, Freedom Summer, 103.

  141 The white volunteers themselves: Ibid., 150.

  141 Although most of the women: Ibid., 110.

  141 One of the few young white: Jo Freeman, “On the Origins of the Women’s Liberation Movement,” in The Feminist Memoir Project, 174.

  141 Many of the new arrivals: Curry, Deep in Our Hearts, 269.

  142 Susan Brownmiller, a white: Brownmiller, In Our Time, 12.

  142 “It had the appearances of a necking party”: Unless otherwise noted, this section is based on From Selma to Sorrow by Mary Stanton.

  143 Leroy Moton, a black volunteer: Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 174.

  144 Unita Blackwell was also: Blackwell, Barefootin’, 96.

  144 FBI chief J. Edgar: Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 177.

  146 A poll by Ladies’ Home Journal: Lyn Tornabene, “Murder in Alabama,” Ladies’ Home Journal, July 1965.

  146 Sandra “Casey” Hayden, a longtime: Olson, Freedom’s Daughters, 334.

  147 In an interview in 1995: Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, 310.

  147 “I am not fighting”: Mills, This Little Light of Mine, 248.

  148 Shortly before her death: Olson, Freedom’s Daughters, 369–70.

  7. THE DECLINE OF THE DOUBLE STANDARD

  Interviews: Pam Andrews, Barbara Arnold, Josie Bass, Nora Ephron, Alison Foster, Kathy Hinderhofer, Tawana Hinton, Maria K., June LaValleur, Grace (Linda) LeClair, Ellen Miller, Marie Monsky, Georgia Panter Nielsen, Cynthia Pearson, Judy Riff, Carol Rumsey, Laura Sessions Stepp, Louise Meyer Warpness, Wendy Woythaler.

  149 In 1968 the New York Times: Judy Klemesrud, “An Arrangement: Living Together for Convenience, Security, Sex,” New York Times, March 4, 1968.

  151 The Times, which had been: Deirdre Carmody, “Barnard President Delays Action on Defiant Girl,” New York Times, May 9, 1968; Kathleen Teltsch, “Grades Are Key in LeClair Case,” New York Times, May 17, 1968.

  151 On her arrival, LeClair: Deirdre Carmody, “Coed Disciplined by College Becomes a Dropout at Barnard,” New York Times, September 4, 1968.

  153 “Now don’t turn”: “J,” The Sensuous Woman, 116.

  153 “A man will go”: “Shaping the ’60s… Foreshadowing the ’70s,” 30.

  154 In 1961 Ladies’ Home Journal: Betsy Marvin McKinney, “Is the Double Standard Out of Date?” Ladies’ Home Journal, May 1961, 10, 12.

  155 “far from being a creature”: Brown, Sex and the Single Girl, 3.

  155 “Her world is a far more colorful”: Ibid., 4.

  155 “You do need a man”: Ibid., 2.

  156 “brainy, charming, and sexy”: Ibid., 1.

  156 “And when he finally walked”: Ibid.

  157 American Medical Association accused him: Allyn, Make Love, Not War, 17.

  157 a minister visiting: Treckel, To Comfort the Heart, 109.

  158 In 1972 a survey: Chafe, Women and Equality, 122.

  158 “I probably wouldn’t have”: Klemesrud, “An Arrangement.”

  159 “It is a ridiculous”: “Connecticut Retains Ban on Contraceptives,” New York Times, May 29, 1953.

  160 “Her martinis were always”: Roraback, “Women and the Connecticut Bar.”

  161 “If they do that”: Asbell, The Pill, 239.

  161 Griswold and Buxton were given: “Dr. C. L. Buxton, Who Won Fight on Birth Control Ban, Is Dead,” New York Times, July 8, 1969.

  162 But only 4 percent: Watkins, On the Pill, 41.

  165 “Remember, all of us”: Ibid., 109.

  165 a Gallup survey found that: Ibid., 115.

  165 Gradually, the amount of estrogen: Asbell, The Pill, 309.

  165 Surgeons removed reproductive organs: Barker-Benfield, The Horrors of the Half-Known Life, 120–32.

  166 Susan Ford, whose mother: Greene, Betty Ford, 50.

  166 When 23-year-old: Barbara Winslow, “Primary and Secondary Contradictions in Seattle,” in The Feminist Memoir Project, 166.

  166 N
ora Ephron wrote that: Ephron, Crazy Salad, 56.

  167 By 1975 nearly two thousand: Mann, “Women’s Health Research Blossoms.”

  167 The experts did not: Ehrenreich, Re-Making Love, 51.

  167 In a 1957 article: Cancian and Gordon, “Changing Emotion Norms in Marriage,” 321.

  168 Even Helen Gurley Brown, so eager: Brown, Sex and the Single Girl, 64.

  168 And less than half of married: George Gallup and Evan Hill, “The American Woman,” Saturday Evening Post, December 22, 1962, 17.

  168 Jane Alpert, a high school: Alpert, Growing Up Underground, 42.

  168 It was no wonder: Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men, 45.

  169 In 1970 “Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm”: Baxandall and Gordon, Dear Sisters, 158.

  169 Nora Ephron, reporting on: Ephron, Crazy Salad, 55.

  171 There was, recalled Anselma: Anselma Dell’Olio, “Home Before Sundown,” in The Feminist Memoir Project, 166.

  171 A letter writer to the Times: “TV Mailbag—Dear Jane: Shave,” New York Times, April 29, 1973.

  172 “The whole idea of homosexuality”: Friedan, Life So Far, 221.

  173 When Martha Peterson, the Barnard: Dennis Hevesi, “Martha Peterson, 90, Barnard President in Vietnam Era, Dies,” New York Times, July 20, 2006.

  173 When Ms. began: Farrell, Yours in Sisterhood, 34.

  173 Time, which had put: “Women’s Lib: A Second Look,” Time, December 14, 1970.

  174 By 1970 the editors: Gene Damon, “The Least of These: The Minority Whose Screams Haven’t Yet Been Heard,” in Sisterhood Is Powerful, 298.

  174 “Run, reader, run right”: Ibid., 297–98.

  176 “Every Sunday when my”: Rimmer, The Harrad Experiment, 303.

  176 “Certainly it was”: Priscilla Long, “We Called Ourselves Sisters,” in The Feminist Memoir Project.

  176 “I considered their”: Alpert, Growing Up Underground, 34–35.

  177 At the time, one: Allyn, Make Love, Not War, 103.

  177 “The invention of the Pill”: Morgan, Sisterhood Is Powerful, xxxi.

  177 Gloria Steinem wrote: Allyn, Make Love, Not War, 104.

  8. WOMEN’S LIBERATION

  Interviews: Nora Ephron, Muriel Fox, Jo Freeman, Maria K., Robin Morgan, Georgia Panter Nielsen, Sylvia Peterson, Vicki Cohn Pollard, Margaret Siegel, Gloria Steinem, Laura Sessions Stepp, Amy Swerdlow, Wendy Woythaler.

  179 who promised to refer it: Marjorie Hunter, “5,000 Women Rally in Capital Against War,” New York Times, January 16, 1968.