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It is most important to understand that the women's movement did not end with the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Women were actively involved in efforts during World War II and promoted support for the war. Throughout the war women replaced men in the factories and performed other such duties to defend democracy on the home front. Their presence was obvious, their contribution, exceptional. Once the war ended, women's more overt political action subsided and did not ignite again until the outbreak of social revolutions during the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1950s when families settled in suburban America many women found themselves confined to home. While a number of white middle-class wives suffocated and felt the constraints from suburbia, African American women had to endure an entirely different form of social oppression. The plight of blacks was finally recognized in the 1950s with the origins of the Civil Rights Movement and women quickly joined their cause.
Just as women jumped to abolish slavery and secure equal citizenship status for blacks in the 1850s, the Civil Rights Movement struck a chord with Second Wave Feminism. The fight for social equality in the 1960s was a traumatic moment in American history. Protests, riots, and disorder filled the streets of a discontented country as the black underclass rose in revolt under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. Despite King's fervent advocacy of peaceful protest, nonviolence was not always the approach. Unlike women's suffrage, equality under the law for blacks was totally incomprehensible and the most violent protests erupted. Women were persistent, but their movement lasted over seventy years. African Americans could not afford such time and violence was too often the answer. As blacks bitterly fought against oppression and deeply rooted prejudice, women took note. It is no wonder that rise of feminism in the late 1960s and early 1970s occurred when it did. The timing was just right for women who had witnessed the social upheaval, which encouraged their own brave new demands for sexual equality. |
Copyright Molly Egan, Jason Wood; Lehigh University 1999