Challenge and Change

Right-Wing Women, Grassroots Activism, and the Baby Boom Generation

Choice Outstanding Academic Title Florida Book Awards, Bronze Medal for General Nonfiction ?The scope of the book is impressive. [Benowitz] covers every major rightist issue, including the Vietnam War and the Equal Rights Amendment. . . . Highly recommended.??Choice ?Each chapter deals with a separate set of issues, from progressive education and the teaching of sex education, to mental health issues, patriotism, the Vietnam War, the New Left, and conservative opposition to the equal rights amendment. . . . A synthesis of material found nowhere else in a single book.??Journal of American History ?Offers a cohesive picture of the issues and the people who pushed the Right?s agenda, and how both changed over time. . . . Enhances our understanding of how and why the new Right cultivated support in the late 1970s and early 1980s.??Journal of Southern History ?Maintains the wild complexity of right-wing activism. . . . Benowitz manages to incorporate this many-headed activism without simplifying it or compartmentalizing it.??History of Education Quarterly ?An important contribution to the study of this moment of political change, and shows just how significant a role women in the grassroots have played and continue to play.??Indiana Magazine of History In the mid-twentieth century, a grassroots movement of women sought to shape the ideologies of the baby boomer youth. Foremothers of twenty-first century activists such as Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter, these rightist women deeply influenced the path of U.S. politics after World War II. In Challenge and Change, June Benowitz draws on activists? letters to presidents, editors, and one another, allowing these women to speak for themselves. Benowitz examines the issues that stirred them to action?education, health, desegregation, moral corruption, war, patriotism, and the Equal Rights Amendment?and explores the growth of the right-wing women?s movement.