This Month in History: November

November 6, 1972 – Members of the Greater Pittsburgh Area Chapter of NOW “sit in” at Rifle and Plow to protest a men’s only dining room.

November 14, 1980 – Nurses NOW, a task force founded in Pittsburgh, host a statewide conference on employment and licensure issues facing nurses in Pennsylvania.

November 18-20-1977 – The National Women’s Conference in Houston, TX, chaired by Bella Abzug, adopted a national plan for action that was submitted to President Jimmy Carter and Congress.  Delegates from Pittsburgh include Jeanne Clark, JoAnn Evansgardner, Alma Speed Fox, and Molly Rush.

NOVEMBER BIRTHDAYS

November 8, 2010: Alice Paul was a suffragist, feminist and women’s rights activist. She led a successful campaign for women’s suffrage that resulted in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. She was the original author of a proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution in 1923.

November 21, 1939 (2003): Susanna Downie was a philosopher at the University of Pittsburgh. She founded the Feminist Network, a network of feminist organization in Pittsburgh (1978-1983) and served on the editorial board for the publication, Allegheny Feminist, later known as Network News. She was instrumental in developing National Plan of Action enacted at the 1977 National Women’s Conference and evaluated the progress of the action ten years later. She was active in the International Women’s News Service (WINS) and helped organize the 1985 United Nations Women’s Conference in Nairobi, Kenya in 1985.

November 26, 1920 (2013): Barbara Shore, Ph.D. was a Professor of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh, and a community leader. She was active in the Civil Rights Movement and was a founding member of the boards of the Mon-Yough Rape Crisis Center and Persad.