Louisiana, the American South, and the Birth of Second-Wave Feminism

Abstract

This essay, delivered orally as a presidential address, locates one strand of second-wave feminism in the American South, in particular New Orleans. Bible Belt religious institutions, including the YWCA, provided an important nexus of social justice activism, and out of them came many feminists of the 1960s and 1970s. Pre-existing women's organizations, the civil rights movement, European existentialism, and the writings of Simone de Beauvoir and Doris Lessing inspired the feminist movement in the South. Women activists came together in integrated settings on the Gulf Coast in the mid-1960s and wrote some of the first political and ideological grassroots statements of women's grievances as well as the first consciousness-raising sessions in the nation.

Keywords: Louisiana, second-wave feminism, feminist history, YWCA, Casey Hayden, League of Women Voters, Ollie Osborne, Clay Latimer