Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of society and the state.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 6, 1984. Incumbent Republican President Ronald Reagan and his running mate, incumbent Vice President George H. W. Bush, were reelected to a second term in a landslide. They defeated the Democratic ticket of former Vice President Walter Mondale and Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro.
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would, if added, explicitly prohibit sex discrimination. It was written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and introduced in Congress in December 1923 as a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution. With the rise of the women's movement in the United States during the 1960s, the ERA garnered increasing support, and, after being reintroduced by Representative Martha Griffiths in 1971, it was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives that year, and by the U.S. Senate in 1972, thus submitting the ERA to the state legislatures for ratification, as provided by Article V of the U.S. Constitution. The amendment's ratification in the states remains disputed to today, and it remains legally unratified.
A pink triangle has been a symbol for the LGBT community, initially intended as a badge of shame, but later reappropriated as a positive symbol of self-identity. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, it began as one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, distinguishing those imprisoned because they had been identified by authorities as gay men or trans women. In the 1970s, it was revived as a symbol of protest against homophobia, and has since been adopted by the larger LGBT community as a popular symbol of LGBT pride and the LGBT movements and queer liberation movements.
Sonia Ann Johnson, is an American feminist activist and writer. She was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and in the late 1970s was publicly critical of the position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which she was a member, against the proposed amendment. She was eventually excommunicated from the church for her activities. She went on to publish several radical feminist books, ran for president in 1984, and become a popular feminist speaker.
Lavender Menace was an informal group of lesbian radical feminists formed to protest the exclusion of lesbians and their issues from the feminist movement at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City on May 1, 1970. Members included Karla Jay, Martha Shelley, Rita Mae Brown, Lois Hart, Barbara Love, Ellen Shumsky, Artemis March, Cynthia Funk, Linda Rhodes, Arlene Kushner, Ellen Broidy, and Michela Griffo, and were mostly members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the National Organization for Women (NOW). They later became the Radicalesbians.
Mary Louise Smith, a U.S. political organizer and women's rights activist, was the second woman to become chair of a major political party in the United States.
Eleanor Marie Smeal is an American women's rights activist. She is the president and a cofounder of the Feminist Majority Foundation and has served as president of the National Organization for Women for three terms, in addition to her work as an activist, grassroots organizer, lobbyist, and political analyst.
The Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) is an organization seeking the inclusion of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities in both the policy and practices of United Methodist Church. It is one of many Welcoming Congregation organizations to emerge in American Christianity in the 1980s. The ministry has over 1100 affiliated congregations and 42,000 affiliated individuals.
"The Woman-Identified Woman" was a ten-paragraph manifesto, written by the Radicalesbians in 1970. It was first distributed during the Lavender Menace protest at the Second Congress to Unite Women, hosted by the National Organization for Women (NOW) on May 1, 1970, in New York City in response to the lack of lesbian representation at the congress. It is now considered a turning point in the history of radical feminism and one of the founding documents of lesbian feminism redefining the term "lesbian" as a political identity as well as a sexual one.
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.
Ronald Reagan was the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Previously, he was the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and acted in Hollywood films from 1937 to 1964, the same year he energized the American conservative movement. Reagan's basic foreign policy was to equal and surpass the Soviet Union in military strength, and put it on the road to what he called "the ash heap of history". By 1985, he began to cooperate closely with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom he became friends and negotiated large-scale disarmament projects. The Cold War was fading away and suddenly ended as the Soviets lost control of Eastern Europe almost overnight in October 1989, nine months after Reagan was replaced in the White House by his vice president, George H. W. Bush, who was following Reagan's policies. The dissolution of the Soviet Union took place in December 1991. In terms of the Reagan Doctrine, he promoted military, financial, and diplomatic support for anti-communist insurgencies in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and numerous other countries. For the most part, local communist power collapsed when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Zoe Nicholson is a feminist activist, author, and a longtime member of the National Organization for Women. Openly lesbian, she is known for her work as an independent historian of Alice Paul as well as her role in the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment.
The Chicago Lesbian Liberation (CLL) was a gay liberation organization formed in Chicago for lesbians during the Women's liberation movement (WLM). The group was originally part of an organization for both men and women, but in 1971, the women broke off to form their own group. CLL was involved in publishing a newspaper, Lavender Woman, helping to set up the first Chicago Pride Parade and the first all-women's dance in Chicago.
Berenice Anita Carroll was an American political scientist and activist specialized in peace and conflict studies, feminist theory, and women's studies. Carroll led the creation of the women's studies program at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and served as director of the Purdue University women's studies program. She initiated the establishment of the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession in 1969.
Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens was a political organization of feminist women created in the early 1980s to undertake non-violent direct action tactics to raise awareness for the need of an Equal Rights Amendment. The group also advocated for reproductive rights and lasted throughout the 1980s.
A Group of Women was an American feminist organization in the 1980s who committed a series of actions in support of the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Sonia Johnson was a notable member of this organization that advocated for the use of civil disobedience to raise awareness about the need for the ERA.
Mary Lee Sargent is a professor and feminist activist notable for her direct action political protests on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment in the early 1980s.
Women Hunger for Justice was a direct action protest in support of the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in Illinois in 1982. The fast received significant attention in the press and included the participation of Sonia Johnson, Sister Maureen Fiedler and Zoe Nicholson.
The Day of Rebellion for the ERA was an event in 1982 organized by activists in support of the Equal Rights Amendment during the final struggle for ratification in Illinois.
