The Movement: How Women's Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973

Summary

This “indispensable new book that belongs on the shelf of every American woman” (Sally Jenkins, author of The Right Call) is a comprehensive oral history of the decade that defined the feminist movement, including interviews with living icons and unsung heroes—from the author of the “powerful and moving” (The New York Times) Witness to the Revolution.

Through the captivating individual voices of the people who lived it, The Movement tells the intimate inside story of what it felt like to be at the forefront of the modern feminist crusade, when women rejected thousands of years of custom and demanded the freedom to be who they wanted and needed to be.

“Rollicking good fun, deftly arranged, and downright exhilarating” (The New York Times), The Movement traces women’s awakening, organizing, and agitating between the years of 1963 and 1973, when a diverse collection of people and events coalesced to create a spontaneous combustion. From Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique to the underground abortion network the Janes, to Shirley Chisholm’s presidential campaign and Billie Jean King’s 1973 battle of the sexes, Bingham artfully weaves together the fragments of that explosion person by person, bringing to life the emotions of this personal, cultural, and political revolution. Artists and politicians, athletes and lawyers, Black and white, The Movement brings us into the rooms where these women insisted on being treated as first class citizens, and in the process, changed the fabric of American life.