Catherine East
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Kay Clarenbach
This week I received the oral history CDs of Kathryn “Kay” Clarenbach, who was a founder of N.O.W. The oral history and her papers are at the UW-Madison Archives. Clarenbach was a good friend of feminist leader Catherine East who I am writing a paper about connecting women’s activism and journalism.
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Catherine East manuscript
This week I received the manuscript written by Catherine East called “Critical Comments on A Lesser Life, the Myth of Women’s Liberation in America.” It was located in Kay Clarenbach’s papers at the University of Wisconsin archives. I am currently working on an article about Catherine and her friendship with political journalist Vera Glaser. I went through Catherine’s papers at the Schlesinger Library this past summer and Vera’s papers at the University of Wyoming last fall.
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Catherine East
Betty Friedan described Catherine East as “the midwife to the contemporarywomen’s movement.” East spent many years working for the federal government, and it was from this position that much of East’s invaluable data and progressive thinking helped forward women’s positions in society. As a staff member on the President Kennedy Commission on the Status of Women, East saw the degree of discrimination women faced nationwide, and she became a feminist. She held senior posts with every presidential advisory commission on the status of women from 1962 to 1977. East was also one of the architects of the strategy to bring the Equal Rights Amendment out of committee and to passage…
