Introduction: The Emergence and Development of Racial/Ethnic Feminisms in the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract

I refuse to choose. And by that I mean I refuse to choose between being black and being a woman. Men don't have to choose. I don't know why women have to choose. I am both equally, and I'm proud to be both. I wake up, and I don't like what they're doing to black people, and I'm mad; I wake up, and I don't like what they're doing to women, and I'm mad. Dorothy King Harrisburg, Pennsylvania February 2000 I was at a NOW meeting and being told by women in Denver, you have to choose between being a Chicana and being female … and what I'm saying is “I cannot separate the fact that I'm brown and I'm female, I cannot do it physically to this body, I cannot do it emotionally, I cannot do it spiritually. …” Irene Blea Albuquerque, New Mexico March 2000 Second-Wave Feminism(s) Feminist mobilizations in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s – commonly known as the “second wave” of U.S. feminist protest – challenged and changed the political and cultural landscape. Having read the first sentence of this work, the reader should be alerted to my use of a plural noun to describe feminist protest in the second wave, and this book is about feminist mobilizations, feminist movements, and feminisms .