The Women's Strike for Equality Takes Fifth Avenue

On August 26, 1970, women across the country walked out of offices, kitchens, and classrooms for the Women's Strike for Equality, timed to the fiftieth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment. Betty Friedan, the writer who had helped found the National Organization for Women, pushed the march into being after fellow organizer Betty Jameson Armistead proposed the idea, and Friedan wanted it loud enough to make national news. In New York City the crowd gathered on Fifth Avenue that evening, timed for 5 p.m. so working women could get there straight from their jobs. Police tried to keep marchers to a single lane of traffic, but the crowd was too big to hold and spread across the street from sidewalk to sidewalk. The strikers weren't marching for symbolism alone: they demanded free abortion on demand, equal opportunity in employment, and free childcare.