Sonia Pressman Fuentes's Civil Rights History speech
Sonia Pressman Fuentes (click here) has posted her recent Cornell University speech on the history of civil rights. A lot of you have emailed me about how little we know of early history of women's rights, and here is another very readable way to learn more! Reread her earlier postings on our Forum here and here.
Just to whet your appetite, she recently sent me a long list of the ways that life for women has changed since 1963. They include:
Prohibition of sex-segregated classified advertising columns in newspapers.
By and large, all jobs must be open to men and women alike.
Men and women doing equal or substantially equal work are entitled to equality in pay and other benefits, including pension and retirement benefits.
A woman qualified to do a job cannot be refused employment because she is married or pregnant and a woman employee cannot be fired because she is married or pregnant.
Discrimination based on sex or marital status in the sale and rental of housing and the granting of credit is prohibited.
That's just a few! Sonia is an accomplished lawyer with a long history in these matters, and her talk at Cornell is well worth reading.
Cheers,
Laura
Dear Enlightened:
Thanks for your lovely comments.
Laura recently quoted a few of the items from my write-up about what rights women have secured since 1964. A complete version of that will be published within the next few days to coincide with Women's Equity Day, Aug. 26, 2010, the 90th anniversary of women securing suffrage, in a section called "Cafe" in an e-zine called "On the Issues." I'll send it to Laura, and perhaps she'll put it on this site for all of you.
In sisterhood,
Sonia
Dear Sonia,
I am so pleased to have found this information. I guess it's not so hard to find out about women who paved the way, but I must not have tried very hard. Anyway, it's a pleasure to be learning about them and I really appreciate your efforts and those of your early workers in the cause of women.
Apologies, Sonia, for mis-representing your speech. Thanks for the lead to the oral history project one, I'm sure it's also very good. So many of us are unaware of all the work done earlier by NOW and other groups, and it's great to get a good summary of that, readable and accessible.
cheers,
Laura
Dear Laura and Awesome:
I mistakenly wrote Aug. 25 for my interview for the oral history project of the JFK Museum in Dallas; it's scheduled for Aug. 23. The website for that museum is at:
http://www.jfk.org/
Best,
Sonia
Dear Laura and Awesome:
Thank you both for your lovely comments.
But, Laura, my talk at Cornell was not an overview of civil rights in general but was limited to women's rights.
Awesome: Thanks for referring to my recent interview at xzone--I've had a number of recent radio and Internet radio interviews, which aren't on my website yet at http://www.erraticimpact.com/fuentes because my webmaster hasn't yet had a chance to put them up.
Others are scheduled. An interesting one is scheduled for Aug. 25--part of an oral history project about life in the 1960s by a JFK Museum located in the building in Dallas from which JFK was shot.It should be available sometime after Aug. 25.
Best to you both--
Sonia
I agree. She is a gold mine of good information about what has worked in the past, as well as legal protections we don't even know we have.
cheers,
Laura
Sonia is an amazing person. I am learning a lot about the history of these issues I care about by reading her postings and this speech. I'm going to follow her web site. I found out you can hear a 40 minute long radio interview from her that was released this week, for any new Sonia-philes out there! It's at www.xzonepodcast.com. You click on "Fabulous and Fifty" and then "click on." to hear it.
