This Month in History: March

March 7, 1969 – Members of Greater Pittsburgh Area NOW picketed outside the offices of the Pittsburgh Press to protest the newspaper’s policy of publishing want ads separately for women and men.

March 25, 1975 – In the case of theCommonwealth of PA, Guardians of Pittsburgh, NAACP, and the NOW – Southwest Pennsylvania Council of Chapters v. Mayor Peter Flaherty and the Pittsburgh Fraternal Order of Police, Judge Weber ruled the Pittsburgh Police Bureau denied equal opportunity in hiring and compensation to black males, black females, and white females.

March 9, 1986 – Jeanne Clark organized and Pittsburgh NOW members participated in the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC. to keep abortion and birth control legal. The march drew 125,000 making it the largest march for women’s rights in U.S. history.

MARCH BIRTHDAYS

March 2, 1926  (2009): Gerald H.F. Gardner was co-founder of K.N.O.W., Inc., the first feminist press in the U. S., an active member in the Greater Pittsburgh Area chapter of the NOW and the first man to serve on the national NOW board of directors. He was most well known for exposing discriminatory advertising practices at the Pittsburgh Press.

March 11, 1931 (1996): Barbara Evans Crawford was active in the Greater Pittsburgh Area NOW chapter and served as President 1970-1971. She was a warrior for the ERA making weekly bus trips to Washington, D.C. to lobby for the extension of the deadline for ratification in 1978 and to Springfield, Illinois to lobby for ratification in that state in 1982.

March 24, 1912 (2010): Dorothy L. Height was born in Rankin, PA and became a civil rights and women’s rights activist. She was President of the National Council of Negro Women for forty years and was awarded the President’s Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

March 24, 1915 (2001): Virginia Harrington was a founding member of the Greater Pittsburgh Area chapter of NOW.

March 5, 1926: Dorothy (AKA Cindy) Judd Hill was a founding member of the Greater Pittsburgh Area chapter of NOW and worked to support passage of the ERA.