Women's Strike for Equality

Jonathan Friedan, Betty Friedan’s middle child (and my third cousin), spent much of August 1970 fighting forest fires in Washington State. When his backpack was stolen, the 17-year-old hitchhiked back to New York City. His mother divorced the year before and moved to an apartment on West 93rd Street. Jonathan happened to come home while she was in the final stage of planning a march down Fifth Avenue. “I had no idea what was going on,” he told me recently.

The previous spring, Friedan decided she wanted to mark Aug. 26, 1970, the 50th anniversary of the constitutional ratification of women’s right to vote, with a major event to show that the promise of equality had not been achieved. She floated the idea at the fourth annual meeting of the National Organization for Women, which she had helped found. Her audience cringed, fearful of a flop.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/magazine/31fr...