Cuyamaca College Civil Rights Movements Peer Response National Organization for Women, “Statement of Purpose” (1966)- Your response must be substantive, a

Cuyamaca College Civil Rights Movements Peer Response National Organization for Women, “Statement of Purpose” (1966)-

Your response must be substantive, and at least a paragraph long. You can amplify a point made, raise a related point, make connections to other documents in the American Yawp Primary Source Reader, agree or disagree (in a constructive way) with supporting evidence, and/or raise informed questions that we should all think about.

peer document :The Civil Rights Movement in the United States has widely been remembered as the fight for the rights of African Americans, however the movement was much larger than that. The Feminist Movement was one that gained momentum during the Civil Rights era in the United States. More and more women were demanding better pay, equal treatment in the workplace, and equality in marriage. On October 29, 1966, the National Organization for Women published the “Statement of Purpose” which laid out the goals of the organization and the targets of its feminist vision. They intended to take immediate action by getting women into “full participation in the mainstream of American society” and allowing them to have an equal partnership with men.

The National Organization for Women use the “Statement of Purpose” to directly respond to those who would deny women equality. The statement’s main goal is for women to simply be treated as human beings and that they wish to be able to take on the responsibilities they wish to share with other people in the United States and society. The “Statement of Purpose” echoes an older feminist statement, The Declaration of Sentiments by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1848), that asked for nearly identical action to be taken on behalf of women, though to a slightly lesser extent. The “Statement of Purpose” is obviously biased because it is laying out what rights women were, and to a certain extent still are, fighting for within the United States. Equal pay, higher education, and other rights that should be guaranteed to them by the U.S. Constitution but that were actually being denied to them. This is a very important document because it shows how far the feminist movement has come over the many decades of fighting that women have done and how far we still have to go, and that the Civil Rights Movement was much more encompassing than most people realize.

Original document: http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/27-the-sixties/national-organization-for-women-statement-of-purpose-1966/