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Michigan Representative Martha Griffiths had been involved in a frustrating struggle with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when the Third Annual Conference of the Commissions on the Status of Women gathered in 1966.
The problem between Representative Griffiths and the EEOC was this: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only prohibited racial discrimination, but also sex discrimination in employment. After its enactment, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was overwhelmed with complaints by women of unfair employment practices. The EEOC considered racial discrimination to be a more important priority, and developed a policy of ignoring women's complaints. The executive director of the EEOC knew that the women's provisions had been added to the Civil Rights Act only to try to destroy it, so he didn't take it seriously.
Because of this, Representative Martha Griffiths took to the floor of the senate just days before the Third Annual Conference of the Commissions on the Status Of Women with a scathing speech criticizing the EEOC of a willful refusal to enforce the law. Women working within the EEOC stood firmly behind Griffiths against the EEOC director's noncompliance. They believed that if women had an organization as powerful as the one African-American's had, they would not be ignored.
And so it was that The National Organization of Women was founded. This organization was intended to work toward procuring and securing rights for women in a way similar to the NAACP's work for Black Americans. When the conveners of the Conference determined that the proposition was inappropriate for their forum and refused to consider it, twenty eight women gathered together that same day, contributed five dollars each, and formed an organization that would focus on women's civil rights.
That October, three hundred women and men were in attendance for the first meeting of NOW, an organization with an acronym which aptly expressed the urgency they felt. The author of the feminist book, The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan, was in attendance, and elected as the first NOW President. She set about defining and focusing the goals of the organization toward a 'fully equal partnership of the sexes, as part of the worldwide revolution of women's rights.' They opposed not only limited opportunities for women and girls, but anything which made them more dependent.
The National Organization of Women prepared the Equal Rights Amendment which would pass both houses of Congress, but ultimately fail to be ratified by the states. Nonetheless, NOW and the ERA focuses enormous attention on the demands of women to be considered equal in all things with men. The organization grew in the first five years from a membership of twenty-eight women to one of 15,000 men and women who believed women deserved equal treatment under the law. The organization continues to champion women's causes even in the twenty first century.
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