The Women of NOW: How Feminists Built an Organization That Transformed America

This smart, clear-eyed history of the National Organization for Women’s most tumultuous years spotlights three women who were “loyal yet critical” members of the advocacy group. According to University of North Carolina historian Turk (Equality on Trial), these women were instrumental in stretching the organization’s “core belief—a centrally organized feminism for all women and their male supporters—in different directions as far as they could.” Aileen Hernandez, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, who worked as a union organizer before joining the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1965, saw feminism at the heart of every social justice movement. Serving as NOW’s second president, she pushed the organization to address all problems women faced—including racism, classism, and homophobia—and not just gender-specific ones. Former beauty queen Patricia Hill Burnett, a wealthy white Republican, was a Michigan housewife and mother of four who envisioned NOW in the vanguard of an international feminist movement. As a member of the national board through 1975, she was tasked with setting up NOW chapters around the world. Meanwhile, Mary Jean Collins, who was raised Catholic in a lower-class white Wisconsin community, focused on securing male allies for NOW and was appointed the organization’s Midwest regional director in 1970. Detailing how failed initiatives, such as the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment, led to internal divisions among NOW’s leadership and members, Turk expertly unpacks a complex institutional legacy. The result is a timely addition to the history of “second wave” feminism that illuminates today’s debates about women’s rights. (Aug.)