Remembering the Lady Representations of Abigail Adams in the Women’s Rights Movement

Authors

Allison Haack

Keywords

Abigail Adams, feminism, equal rights amendment, Redbook, bicentennial

Abstract

In November 1975, Redbook, a women’s magazine, included a “call to action” issued to women of the United States. This call was set forth both in response to the bicentennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence as well the UN National Women’s Year. In it, over fifty organizations came together to lay out an eleven-step plan to achieve greater political equality between the sexes—namely, the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. To introduce this call to action, Bess Myers, the author, shared several anecdotes about Abigail Adams, including Adams’ charge that her husband “remember the ladies” when he went off to write the new code of laws for the nascent United States. Myers detailed how Adams’ activism spread among the elite ladies of the new country, propelling everyone from Martha Jefferson to Benjamin Franklin’s mistresses to demand equality. Myers presented Abigail Adams as a model for contemporary feminists; she’s described as a woman who before “There was [a] formal Women’s Movement… was knocking on doors before the house was even built.” If Adams could challenge women’s second-class status 200 years before, as America was just being formed, certainly feminists in the 1970s could finish what she started. Indeed, as Myers insisted: “If Abigail Adams were here today, she’d understand the purpose of the ER

Recommended Citation

Haack, Allison (2023) "Remembering the Lady Representations of Abigail Adams in the Women’s Rights Movement," The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing: Vol. 52: Iss. 1, Article 6.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thetean/vol52/iss1/6