Letter: Forgotten struggles for rights
Photos of 19th century social reformers Esther Hobart McQuigg Slack Morris, Crystal Eastman, and Lucy Stone in a 1998 women's history display in Manhattan (Oct. 21, 1998) Credit: NEWSDAY/ARI MINTZ
I was so happy to read that "hundreds of people" marched through the streets of downtown Long Beach to teach children about Martin Luther King Jr. ["Marchers retrace steps of Rev. King," News, Jan. 19]. This is what learning history is, comprehending what has happened before and how it affects today.
We should all understand how people in the past helped pave new roads for us. But somehow, that hasn't happened.
Many of our youth have no idea what life was like before the civil rights movement. But even more so, we don't seem to have taught them about the women's rights movement.
Back in the 1950s, if you were female and weren't married within a few years after graduating from high school, you were considered a failure regardless of your other accomplishments. And, if you did get to go to college, you were limited in what you were allowed to study. After all, the theory was that women couldn't be accountants or doctors; their brains couldn't handle it.
Many of our young people have no idea about the limitations that were once faced by females, also referred to as the "weaker" sex. That, my friends, is dangerous.
I'm a woman born in the 1940s who entered college around the same time my children did. Even a young female professor I had knew very little of the women's movement and nothing about Betty Friedan or Gloria Steinem. This was outrageous. I devoted my next required presentation to the origin of the word "Ms." and the fight for women's rights.
In another class, I dredged up an event from the early 1970s. My husband and I were living in Brooklyn and looking to move to Long Island. I went with my mother to the real estate office, where we were told to come back when "the man" in our family was available.
I tried to explain to classmates that this was not just this one company's rule, and it wouldn't have been different anywhere else, but they didn't get it. I guess their history books left out the chapter on the place of women in society.
Candyce B. Goldstein, East Meadow
