Author and feminist activist Gloria Steinem, a symbol of the U.S. women’s movement, has died. She was 92.
The co-founder of Ms. Magazine brought her message to college campuses and community centers throughout the country, including several stops in the Lehigh Valley over several decades.
Here’s a look at some of her more notable Lehigh Valley appearances from The Morning Call archives:
Cedar Crest College, 2012
Steinem spoke at Cedar Crest College in 2012 for the Lehigh Valley Women’s Summit. Ahead of her appearance there, she spoke to The Morning Call, and noted that there’s still a lot of ground to cover with gender equality, and that it is far from over.
“Movements need to last a century to really be absorbed into society,” she said in May 2012.
During her speech at the college, she asked staff to take the spotlight off herself so she could speak to the hundreds of mostly women in attendance. She reiterated her belief there that the fight for gender equality is the “longest revolution.”
Gloria Steinem speaks at the Lehigh Valley Women’s Summit held at Cedar Crest College in Allentown on Thursday, June 7, 2012. (Donna Fisher/The Morning Call)
She said women should come together to find equality.
“In all the great social justice movements, all the changes come from people having the courage to say what’s happened to them … then, hearing six or 12 other people say, ‘You feel like that? I feel like that.’ Then the barriers are probably political in the deepest sense,” she said.
Lafayette University, 2008
Lafayette College President Dan Weiss talks with feminist activist Gloria Steinem prior to her speaking in Colton Chapel, on the campus of Lafayette College in Easton on Tuesday, March 4, 2008. Steinem was on the campus during the second half of the year, which marked the 250th birthday of Marquis de Lafayette. (Jane Therese/Special to The Morning Call)
Steinem spoke to a standing room-only crowd at Lafayette College in March 2008. She told the crowd it is crucial for women of all races and groups to control their own reproductive lives.
“That is the biggest determinant of whether we are healthy or not, educated or not, how long our lives are, whether we can control those lives,” she said.
She was speaking as part of the the university’s yearlong celebration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Marquis de Lafayette, who Steinem called the “rock star of his generation, who supported human rights, support the value of women,” according to reporting from the time.
She encouraged those in attendance to do “one outrageous thing” to assert the idea of independence.
Lehigh University, 2002
Gloria Steinem, co-founder, editor and owner of Ms. Magazine and one of the biggest voices of the modern feminist movement spoke to a standing room only crowd at Lehigh University’s Packard Lab auditorium on Tuesday March 26, 2002. (Arturo Fernandez/The Morning Call)
Steinem spoke at Lehigh University during a lecture series to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the university allowing women to enroll as undergraduates. Just a little more than six months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, she said she was not surprised the hijackers were middle-class, educated men.
Crimes such as terrorist attacks can be traced back to people not fulfilling the expectations a patriarchal society has placed on them, she said.
“When there is an expectation of control and it is flouted it can produce rage,” she said.
Steinem said men have as much to lose with their identity if they did not embrace their humane qualities, not just the ones deemed masculine by society, according to a Morning Call account of her speech.
Moravian University, 1987
Steinem spoke to a crowd of about 1,300 in September 1987 at Moravian University, and said there was still a “very long way to go,” for equality. She pushed four goals — reproductive freedom, possibility of democratic families, redefining and revaluing of work and the changing of culture — to help further the cause.
Steinem mentioned that programs on TV at the time showed 80% of violence victims as women, and offered very few shows based on racial minority families.
“What is the political message this culture is giving us?” she said.
Lehigh University, 1981
Steinem was a guest lecturer in September 1981 at Lehigh University. Speaking to a packed audience of about 1,000 people, she urged those in attendance to not abandon the feminist cause, including key issues like reproductive freedom and redefining family life.
She also said supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment should serve to lobby in states where it was still under consideration to dispel myths that it would “reduce the rights of women, force them out of their homes and create integrated (unisex) bathrooms,” according to Morning Call reporting from the time.
Steinem said the ERA battle was not failing from lack of support, but because of a handful of state legislators. The ERA would formally expire the following year in June 1982, after failing to reach the required 38 state ratifications.
“If a couple of dozen aging white males changed their minds we’d have it,” she said.
Lehigh University, 1970
Steinem spoke at Lehigh University in 1970 in what was likely one of her first appearances in the Lehigh Valley. She spoke of the liberation movement while joined by Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a Black woman who founded a community day care center in New York and went on to become a noted feminist activist, co-founding the Women’s Action Alliance with Steinem.
The two called for the abandonment of traditional race and sex roles to a group of more than 600 people.
“The sex role is the way society gets you to do what it wants you to do,” she told a mostly male audience.
“Maybe if we live the revolution in our everyday lives, maybe we would look at the human animal divided up at birth by race and sex and start looking at the human potential inside,” Steinem said.