History
It was founded in 1968 as a split from the New York City chapter of National Organization for Women (NOW) by members who felt NOW was not radical enough. It was originally called the October 17th Movement after the date that it was founded, but soon changed its name to The Feminists. Ti-Grace Atkinson was the group's central figure and informal leader until she left the group in 1971; other prominent members included Anne Koedt (who left in 1969 to co-found New York Radical Feminists), Sheila Michaels, Barbara Mehrhof, Pamela Kearon, and Sheila Cronan.
The Feminists' best-known action may have been in September 1969, when members picketed the New York City Marriage License Bureau, distributing pamphlets protesting the marriage contract:
"All the discriminatory practices against women are patterned and rationalized by this slavery-like practice. We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage."
Read more about this topic: The Feminists
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)