What were the key historical events of feminism in 1961? What happened at the beginning of the 1960s, the decade in which the “second wave” of feminism spread across the United States?
Here are a few important events that related to feminism in 1961:
- President John F. Kennedy established the President’s Commission on the Status of Women. Eleanor Roosevelt was appointed to the Commission.
- President Kennedy appointed Esther Peterson to head the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor.
- President Kennedy created the Peace Corps.
- Thousands of women across the U.S. protested war and nuclear weapons with Women Strike for Peace, founded by Bella Abzug and Dagmar Wilson.
- Estelle Griswold and Dr. Charles Lee Buxton briefly sold contraceptives at a Connecticut clinic before being arrested under the state’s anti-birth control statute. The 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision held that the law violated the Constitutional right to privacy.
- Future vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro began practicing law.
- Feminist poet Carolyn Kizer’s The Ungrateful Garden was published.
- Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published.