Excerpt from Woman and the New Race, Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger was an advocate of a woman’s right to avoid unwanted pregnancies. She practiced obstetrical nursing in the Lower East Side of New York City early in the twentieth century and saw the relationships between poverty and uncontrolled fertility, high rates of infant and maternal mortality, and death from botched abortion attempts. She opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States and is known for originating the term “birth control.” In 1921, she founded the American Birth Control League, which eventually became Planned Parenthood of America.
“Equal Rights for Women,” Shirley Chisholm
In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first African American woman elected to Congress. In 1969, she gave this speech to her colleagues in the House of Representatives and urged them to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
Photographs of The NAMES Project Foundation AIDS Memorial Quilt
Gay rights activist Cleve Jones conceived the idea of an AIDS memorial quilt at the end of a candlelight march in San Francisco; marchers wrote the names on placards of friends and loved ones who had died of AIDS and taped the placards to the Federal Building, creating what looked like a patchwork quilt. A little over a year later, the first quilt panels were created in cities across the country. The quilt was displayed for the first time in 1987 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., with 1,920 panels. National tours of the quilt raised much-needed dollars for AIDS service organizations. The latest display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt was in October of 1996, when it covered the entire National Mall.
“I’m Gonna Be an Engineer,” written and sung by Peggy Seeger
Written by Peggy Seeger in 1970, this song has been an anthem of the feminist movement. It tells the story of a smart woman who wants to be more than “a lady.”