RFKHR Book Club Relives the Decade That Changed Everything with ‘The Movement’: How Women’s Liberation Transformed America

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On November 14th, RFKHR hosted our most recent book club featuring Clara Bingham, author of The Movement: How Women’s Liberation Transformed America. Through the captivating individual voices of the people who lived it, The Movement takes the audience through a decade of public and private protest, organizing and agitating that expanded the potential for generations of women. From Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique to Shirley Chisholm’s presidential campaign and Billie Jean King’s 1973 battle of the sexes, Bingham artfully weaves together the fragments of individual explosions, bringing to life the emotions of this personal, cultural, and political revolution. Artists and politicians, athletes and lawyers, Black and White, Bingham brings readers into the rooms where these women insisted on being treated as first class citizens, and in the process, changed the fabric of American life.

Margaret Engel, investigative journalist, playwright, and chair of the RFK Journalism Awards moderated the conversation.

Author Clara Bingham began the discussion by detailing why she chose to use a unique narrative structure. Drawing from oral history and documentary conventions, The Movement connects together various interviews, newspaper clippings, and media reels to tell its story. Bingham emphasized the importance of telling dynamic stories that are more accessible for readers. For this project in particular, she wanted her sources to be in conversation with each other, so the reader gets a sense of some of the real debates happening at the time. She wanted to tell an authentic, personal story, echoing the movement’s motto ‘the personal is political’.

In choosing her sources, Bingham was intentional about speaking to people who were central to the movement but perhaps less well known. She especially wanted to highlight the important intersections with the Civil Rights movement, with many activists bringing their experiences fighting against segregation and racial discrimination to feminist organizing. Pioneers including Margo Jefferson, Patsy Mink, and Pauli Murray worked to make the movement more inclusive. Bingham hoped to show how feminism has always been a mass movement, but also to remember past exclusions with the hope of progressing to a more intersectional future.

Despite recent setbacks, Bingham emphasizes that social consciousness has truly changed compared to the 1960s, highlighting the dramatic increase of women holding positions of power in politics, business, and law. She urges optimism, but recognizes that challenges remain and acknowledges that cultural conservatism is still a potent force.

Bingham emphasized the importance of continued solidarity and activism in the current political moment to protect all women, especially the most vulnerable in the aftermath of the reversal of Roe v. Wade. She says that although misogyny is age old, women are just getting started and will form wave after wave to know it down. She hopes that her book can serve as a blueprint for future activists, inspiring them to fight back.

Watch the full talk here.