THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Robin Morgan

“I don’t care if I’m remembered or not. If there’s some girl child, four generations hence, who has a memory of her great, great, great grandmother having freed herself because of something I said, that’s what I care about.”

A founder and leader of contemporary US feminism, Robin Morgan has also been a major presence in the international Women’s Movement for more than 35 years. A founding member of New York Radical Women and W.I.T.C.H. Organized the September 1968 protest at the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, the first major public action of contemporary feminism. Designed the universal logo of the women’s movement, the woman’s symbol centered with a raised fist. Coined the word “herstory” and has been credited with originating numerous famous feminist phrases, including “The personal is political,” and “Pornography is the theory; rape is the practice.” Founded the first feminist foundation in the U.S. – The Sisterhood Is Powerful Fund – which provided seed money grants to hundreds of early women’s groups throughout the 1970s and ’80s. Co-founder (with the late Simone de Beauvoir) and President of The Sisterhood Is Global Institute, the first international feminist think tank. Writer, producer and host of the weekly radio and online webcast and podcast program, Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan.

Interviewed by Eleanor Pam, VFA President, July 2023

(Photo on home page by Alice Teeple)

Photo 1. Police officer and Robin Morgan, Miss America protest, Atlantic City, 1968. Photo 2. The cards were created by sisters Lois Rich and Barbara Egerman after Lois’s 8-year old daughter, Melissa, asked why there weren’t any women on baseball trading cards. 1979.