The Women Of Now: How Feminists Built An Organization That Transformed America,New

A clear blueprint for change . . . A mustread.' Clara Bingham, The GuardianThe history of NOWits organization, trials, and revolutionary missiontold through the work of three members.In the summer of 1966, crammed into a D.C. hotel suite, twentyeight women devised a revolutionary plan. Betty Friedan, the wellknown 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 womens 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 twentyfour 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 lesserknown members who became leaders: Aileen Hernandez, a federal official of Jamaican American heritage; Mary Jean Collins, a workingclass 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, NOWs 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 itand built it to last.Includes 16 pages of blackandwhite images