Revolutionary Feminists tells the story of the radical women’s liberation movement in Seattle in the 1960s and 1970s from the perspective of a founding member, Barbara Winslow. Drawing on her collection of letters, pamphlets, and photographs as well as newspaper accounts, autobiographies, and interviews, Winslow emphasizes the vital role that Black women played in the women’s liberation movement to create meaningful intersectional coalitions in an overwhelmingly White city. Winslow brings the voices and visions of those she calls the movement’s “ecstatic utopians” to life. She charts their short-term successes and lasting achievements, from organizing women at work and campaigning for subsidized childcare to creating women-centered rape crisis centers, health clinics, and self-defense programs. The Seattle movement was essential to winning the first popular vote in the United States to liberalize abortion laws. Despite these achievements, Winslow critiques the failure of the movement's White members to listen to Black, Latina, Indigenous, and Asian American and Pacific Islander feminist activists. Reflecting on the Seattle movement’s accomplishments and shortcomings, Winslow offers a model for contemporary feminist activism.

Barbara Winslow is Professor Emerita of Women’s and Gender Studies at Brooklyn College and author of Sylvia Pankhurst: Sexual Politics and Political Activism and Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for Change, 1926–2005.

Acronyms  ix
Acknowledgments  xi
Introduction  1
1. It’s Reigning Men  13
2. From the Woman Question to Women’s Liberation  27
3. Let Him Her Live  48
4. Freed Up and Fired Up  72
5. The Rising of the Women  92
6. Antiwar, Antidraft, and Anti-imperialist Feminist Activism  110
7. The Multiplicity of Us  124
8. Flow and Ebb  144
Epilogue  157
Appendix. Seattle Activists: Where Are They Now? 175
Notes  183
Glossary  207
Bibliography  213
Index  223