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“From the Personal to the Political: Roots of Second Wave Feminist Activism in Chicago”

Sat, October 11, 1:15 to 2:45pm, Madison Concourse Hotel, Floor: 1, Assembly

Abstract

This paper will draw on oral histories conducted in connection with the Chicago Area Women’s History Council’s project “Documenting Women’s Activism and Leadership in the Chicago Area, 1945 – 2000.” The goal of this larger project is to identify, collect, preserve and make available resources for a fuller understanding of Chicago women’s activism during this period. The project employs the Life History approach in its interviews in an effort to document narrators’ early social, cultural, political and religious background and trace the development of their social activism over time. This paper will consider a group of women activists, each from a different background, who took action during Chicago’s second wave. It will examine issues of identity formation and the influence of group consciousness as the women moved from individual discontents to a social movement in their own behalf. What motivated them to reject the assumptions of their early years and embrace radically new ideas about women’s potential and position in society? How did their involvement in other social movements such as civil rights, anti-war, labor unions, community and neighborhood organizing, school and housing issues, and involvement in religious communities, affect their developing feminist consciousness? What makes Chicago unique as a setting for examining these questions? This paper will consider the potential of oral history as a means of exploring these issues of personal transformation.

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