Bella Abzug

Abstract

In 1970, the black feminist lawyer Eleanor Holmes Norton, chair of the New York City Human Rights Commission, organized hearings on women’s rights. Bella Abzug, then running for Congress from Manhattan’s West Side, described the exclusion of women from political power and prophesied a radical change. Abzug flamboyantly symbolized the resurgence of the Lefts, Old and New. In the 1950s, she had worked as a lawyer for the Civil Rights Congress, branded a “communist front organization” by the Justice Department. In the 1960s, she had been a leader of the organization Women’s Strike for Peace. While in Congress, Abzug became feminism’s most articulate exponent on Capitol Hill. She was also one of the first national politicians to court gay votes, visiting the Gay Activists Alliance’s firehouse in lower Manhattan with great fanfare.