When Helen Thomas, a local wife, mother and educator, read "The Rage of Women" by Richard E. Farson in Look magazine's December 16, 1969 issue, it changed her life.  It had been six years since the publication of the ground-shattering work The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.  The book gave women their first comprehensive look at the inequalities they faced, but this article gave Thomas the impetus she needed to become active in the movement.  Within months, she and a handful of others founded the Delaware Chapter of the National Organization for Women (N.O.W.).

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For Ms. Thomas, the struggle for women's equality in the law and society continued the journey begun in the nineteenth century by the Suffragists.  Thomas was born in 1921, the year after women gained the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment.  Her participation in the journey for equality was something that she didn't plan, but, when the full realization of the possibilities for women became clear to her, there was no choice to make.  She owed it to herself, to her daughters, to women in general, and, as an unspoken promise to the Suffragists, to continue the fight.

Still active in the community today, Helen Thomas remains an eloquent spokesperson for equality - not only in law, but in deed.  In 1993 Helen donated her papers relating to the women's movement to library of the Historical Society of Delaware (see some samples below).  This exhibit features that collection as it chronicles the work of Ms. Thomas and many others who waged a powerful nonviolent revolution that has touched the lives of everyone who has followed them.

A Conversation with Helen Thomas - Saturday, March 12, 2005

To visit our Women's History Page - click here

For a Brief History of the Equal Rights Amendment - click here

(Click on the photos below for a larger view)