NOW Tactics
NOW learned from the successful tactics of the civil rights movement. NOW organized mass demonstrations and marches, lobbied politicians, wrote op-eds and letters to the editor, filed court cases, elected feminists to political office, and developed a national grassroots organization. Here are a few specific examples:
1977 Torch Relay
More than 2,000 relay runners carried the “Torch of Freedom” from Seneca Falls, NY, to Houston, TX, for the start of the 1977 National Women’s Conference, designed to call attention to the status of American women. Runners included a descendant of the youngest signer of the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments, President Carter’s daughter-in-law, and Kathy Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon.
Photo: ©1977 Pat Field.
1977 State Boycotts
To pressure states that had not yet ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, NOW organized a boycott of civic convention sites in those states. The boycott would deprive the cities and states of needed revenue and pressure the state legislatures to ratify the ERA.
1978 March on Washington for the ERA
Following in the footsteps of suffragists who, in March of 1913, staged a massive parade in the nation’s capital to support a federal suffrage amendment, NOW organized a march in support of the ERA that drew over 100,000 people, making it the largest march for women’s rights up to that date in U.S. history.
Identify NOW’s strategies and tactics by placing an “X” in each appropriate box in that column.
