When Barbara Winslow drove into Seattle in 1967, she knew neither that she would help build a socialist feminist movement across the Puget Sound region nor that she would become its preeminent historian. But she has now done both.
The movement came together fast. Spurred by unusually close ties between Old Left and New Left women active in a range of social movements—especially “the labor, left, Black, welfare, and civil rights movements” (p. 27)—Seattle feminists imbued women’s liberation with a distinctive socialist twist. Clara Fraser (Old Left) and Jill Severn (New Left) stood out among a constellation of women developing new ideas about abortion, war, childcare, and, well, just about everything. Among Seattle’s Black feminists, Nina Harding especially influenced debates about abortion rights, labor organizing, and University of Washington campus politics. Winslow writes that her history covers the period from 1965 to 1975. But the bulk of Revolutionary Feminists covers...
University of California Press