Lucy Komisar (born 1942) is a New York City-based investigative journalist and drama critic.
Komisar was editor of the Mississippi Free Press in Jackson, Mississippi from 1962 to 1963. The weekly covered the civil rights movement and related political and labor issues and was read mainly by black people in Mississippi. The newspapers and her other civil rights papers are archived at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg. [1]
Komisar was a national vice-president of the National Organization for Women from 1970 to 1971 and was successful, with Legislative VP Ann London Scott, in getting the US government to extend federal contractor and cable TV affirmative action rules to women. [2]
On August 10, 1970, she braved hecklers and having a mug of beer thrown over her to be one of the first unaccompanied women ever to have a drink at McSorley's Old Ale House in New York city, an all-Male institution since 1854. [3]
Her NOW papers are in the Schlesinger archives at Harvard University. [4]
In 1977, Komisar became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). [5] WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.
Komisar exposed the practice of Sodexo, a major provider of food to schools, colleges, hospitals, companies and other institutions, of demanding and getting kickbacks from its suppliers. The article appeared in March 2009 in In These Times . [6]
In 2010, Komisar received the Gerald Loeb Award for Medium & Small Newspapers for "Keys to the Kingdom: How State Regulators Enabled a $7 Billion Ponzi Scheme". [7]
In March 2023, Komisar wrote an article criticizing the documentary film Navalny , winner of the 2023 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film. Eliot Higgins of the Bellingcat investigative journalism group accused Komisar of writing the article with the help of artificial intelligence and referencing "fictional sources." [8] The article was published in the fringe news website The Grayzone , then amended with corrected sources, and later removed at Komisar's request; she subsequently published a version on her own website. [9]
Susan Brownmiller is an American journalist, author and feminist activist best known for her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, which was selected by The New York Public Library as one of 100 most important books of the 20th century.
Alix Cecil Dobkin was an American folk singer-songwriter, memoirist, and lesbian feminist activist. In 1979, she was the first American lesbian feminist musician to do a European concert tour.
Charlotte Anne Bunch is an American feminist author and organizer in women's rights and human rights movements. Bunch is currently the founding director and senior scholar at the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is also a distinguished professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers.
McSorley's Old Ale House, generally known as McSorley's, is the oldest Irish saloon in New York City. Opened in the mid-19th century at 15 East 7th Street, in today's East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, it was one of the last of the "Men Only" pubs, admitting women only after legally being forced to do so in 1970. The aged artwork, newspaper articles covering the walls, sawdust floors, and the Irish waiters and bartenders give McSorley's an atmosphere reminiscent of "Olde New York". No piece of memorabilia has been removed from the walls since 1910, and there are many items of historical paraphernalia in the bar, such as a pair of Houdini's handcuffs, which are connected to the bar rail. There are also wishbones hanging above the bar; supposedly they were hung there by boys going off to World War I, to be removed when they returned, so the wishbones that are left are from those who never returned.
Karen DeCrow was an American attorney, author, activist and feminist. She served as the fourth national president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) from 1974 to 1977. She was also a strong supporter of equal rights for men in child custody decisions, arguing for a "rebuttable presumption" of shared custody after divorce. She also asserted that men as well as women should be allowed the decision not to become a parent.
Florynce Rae Kennedy was an American lawyer, radical feminist, civil rights advocate, lecturer, and activist.
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It is the largest feminist organization in the United States with around 500,000 members. NOW is regarded as one of the main liberal feminist organizations in the US, and primarily lobbies for gender equality within the existing political system. NOW campaigns for constitutional equality, economic justice, reproductive rights, LGBTQIA+ rights and racial justice, and against violence against women.
Anne Pride was a National Organization for Women (NOW) activist and publisher. Pride, an activist against rape, began using the term "Take Back the Night" in 1977. Pride helped found one of the first rape crisis centers in the United States and was involved in protecting the privacy of her clients.
Mildred McWilliams "Millie" Jeffrey was an American political and social activist during the labor reforms, women's rights, and civil rights movement.
Florence Rush was an American certified social worker, feminist theorist and organizer best known for introducing The Freudian Coverup in her presentation "The Sexual Abuse of Children: A Feminist Point of View", about childhood sexual abuse and incest, at the April 1971 New York Radical Feminists (NYRF) Rape Conference. Rush's paper at the time was the first challenge to Freudian theories of children as the seducers of adults rather than the victims of adults' sexual/power exploitation.
Jacqueline "Jacqui" Michot Ceballos is an American feminist and activist. Ceballos is the former president of New York Chapter of the National Organization for Women and founder of the Veteran Feminists of America organization which documents the history of Second wave feminism and pioneer feminists. Ceballos' 1971 debate on sexual politics with Norman Mailer and Germaine Greer is recorded in the 1979 film Town Bloody Hall. Ceballos is also featured in the feminist history film She's Beautiful When She's Angry.
Dolores Alexander was a journalist and lesbian feminist best known for her work as Executive Director in the National Organization for Women (NOW) from 1969-1970, as co-owner of the feminist restaurant Mother Courage from 1972-1977, and co-founder of Women Against Pornography (WAP) in 1979. Until her death, in 2008, she continued to believe in the need for the women's rights movement in contemporary times, stating that "It's bigotry, and I don't know if you can eliminate it".
Marjory Collins (1912–1985) was an American photojournalist. She is remembered for her coverage of the home front during World War II.
Ann Hunter Popkin is a long-time social justice and women's movement activist. As a northern college student she traveled to Mississippi to participate in Freedom Summer in 1964. She was a founding member of Bread and Roses, a women's liberation organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1969, and produced the first scholarly study of its appeal and impact. A photographer, film-maker, teacher, and counselor, Popkin has worked in a variety of university and community settings.
Faith Seidenberg was an attorney and civil rights activist who was best known for having entered the male-only establishment McSorley's Old Ale House in Manhattan with fellow attorney Karen DeCrow on August 10, 1969. When refused service, they sued and won a landmark ruling barring discrimination in public places on the basis of sex.
Mary O. Eastwood was a pioneering American lawyer and civil rights advocate.
Caroline Bird Mahoney (1915–2011) was an American feminist author.
Lourdes Quisumbing served as the Philippines' Secretary of Education, Culture, and Sports from 1986 to 1989, under the presidency of Corazon Aquino. Prior to serving as Secretary, she was the president of Maryknoll College.
Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP) is an American nonprofit publishing organization that was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1972. The organization works to increase media democracy and strengthen independent media.
Ann London Scott was an American feminist. She founded the Buffalo chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW). As legislative vice president of the national organization in the early 1970s, she led the effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. She was also a poet, translator, and English professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB).