​Jo Freeman Wants Freedom for Feminists

by Jillian McCrory
posted 10/31/18

Jo Freeman is a prominent feminist from Atlanta, Georgia. She has lived through the second, third, and fourth waves of feminism. From protesting the Miss America beauty pageant to being given credit for starting the feminist movements in Norway and the Netherlands, Freeman is a woman to look up to. Many people of her time did not support women’s rights, but Freeman would go to extreme lengths for her feminist ideas to come to life.

Freeman was born in Atlanta on August 26, 1945. Shortly after her birth, her family moved to Los Angeles, California. Freeman attended Granada Hills High School in 1961 and then went on the University of California at Berkeley and got her bachelor’s in Political Science in 1965. Jennifer Scanlon, who wrote Jo Freeman’s biography, says, “She felt her four years at the University of California at Berkeley was her ‘personal liberation’ from the narrow constraints imposed on girls during her childhood. At Berkeley she could live on her own and make her own decisions.” [1] Freeman did not just get all this feminism from nowhere. Her mother, Helen Mitchell Freeman, was also a strong woman “from Alabama [who] served in World War II as a first lieutenant in the Women’s Army Corps and was stationed in England. She was also an elected official in Marion, Co., Alabama, along with her husband.” [2]

During college, “Freeman immersed herself in the Bay Area Civil Rights Movement, organizing and participating in demonstrations demanding that local employers hire more African-Americans.” [3] Freeman was arrested and spent six weeks on trial. Because of this, she was not able to go to Mississippi for Freedom Summer, which was a campaign to get as many African-Americans in Mississippi to register to vote as they could. She ended up hitchhiking to the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey to meet up with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. After graduation, Freeman went to Atlanta to work with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The SCLC then sent her to Alabama to help with “voter registration, political education and community organizing.” [4] 

After leaving the SCLC, she moved to Chicago, where she applied for a job as a news reporter for a traditional newspaper; however, she was denied the job because, as she was told, “girls couldn't cover riots.” [5] Because of this encounter, she went on to “edit five editions of Women: A Feminist Perspective.” [6] After finally becoming a journalist, she met women who would later organize the first women’s liberation group in Chicago, Illinois. Freeman would later go on to become a reporter for Ms. magazine and would attend conventions for both the Democratic and Republican parties.

In the early 1970s, Freeman went backpacking through Europe where she distributed feminist pamphlets. Norway and the Netherlands later gave her credit for helping start their feminist movements. It was also around this time that Freeman entered graduate school. Freeman did not receive her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago until 1972 because “[she] thought it was more important to do social change than social science.” [7] Her dissertation, The Politics of Women's Liberation: A Case Study of an Emerging Social Movement and its Relation to the Policy Process, was published in 1975. Later that year, it won a cash prize of $1,000 from the American Political Science Association for the Best Scholarly Work on Women and Politics. Freeman went on to publish contributions to social movement theory, critiques of how law and public policy treated women, and analyses of women's experiences in higher education, which would be put into educational textbooks. 

After receiving her Ph.D., “Freeman taught for four years at the State University of New York and spent two years in Washington, D.C., first as a Brookings Fellow and then as an APSA Congressional Fellow.” [8] During this time, Freeman’s friend, Mary Eastwood (who she met in 1968 while on a trip in Washington, D.C.) encouraged her to join the National Organization for Women (NOW). Freeman created the Chicago chapter and went on to serve as a very active member of the Washington, D.C. chapter from 1977 to 1979.

Soon after, Freeman entered New York University Law School and received her J.D. in 1982. In 1999, she was in private practice in New York City and is counsel to pro-choice demonstrators and women. [9] Jo Freeman remains very much involved in today’s politics. She has attended a very different array of events, from the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995 to Iraq protests in 2007 to the 2009 and 2013 Inaugurations. In 2013, she was a journalist at the Inauguration protest. More recently, she stills attends political conventions as a journalist. On her website, jofreeman.com, she has posted her articles, links to buy her books, and a little insight on her extensive button collection. She as buttons from all of these events and movements: Feminist Buttons, Civil Rights Buttons, Buttons from Berkeley in the Sixties, Women's Campaign Buttons, Feminist Event Buttons, 1977 State and National Women's Conference Buttons, Anti-Vietnam War Buttons, Pins from 1995 Beijing Women's Conference, Buttons from the Equal Rights Amendment Campaign, and Buttons from Occupy! events.
Jillian McCrory is 19 years old and attends Kennesaw State University with a major in Political Science and a minor in Criminal Justice. Jillian loves to listen to Taylor Swift and travel, especially to Europe and the beach. She also enjoys keeping up with the British Royal Family, reading, and spending time with her roommates and her sorority sisters of Gamma Phi Beta. 
[1] Scanlon, Jennifer. "Jo Freeman (1945-)." JoFreeman.com, 1999, https://www.jofreeman.com/aboutjo/scanlon.htm.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
​[9] Ibid.

Image: "Jo Freeman at a peace protest at the Rayburn House office building," September 26, 2006. Photo by Carolmooredc. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
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