S027 Women Mobilized 4 Change

street theater

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Women march down State Street for the first women’s liberation march since 1916, May 15, 1971. ST-20003470-0019, Chicago Sun-Times collection, CHM © Sun-Times Media, LLC.

Women Mobilized for Change (WMC) was a Chicago based activist organization during the late 1960s and the early 1970s. WMC emerged out of a YWCA study group called Women and Metropolitan Problems and formerly organized in 1966 in reaction to that summer's housing riots on Chicago's west side. WMC maintained a decentralized, non-hierarchical organizational structure that allowed irregular members from non-white, non-middle-class backgrounds to nontheless participate whenever possible. The goal of the group was to both influence Chicago's political elites and spur "democratic activity at the community level."[1] The group appears to have disbanded in 1972.

WMC concentrated its activities around social issues such as equal housing, school desegregation, fair food pricing, and anti-Vietnam War efforts. The organization subscribed to Martin Luther King Jr.'s non-violent method of effecting change.

Joan P. "Abena" Brown was an instrumental figure in the organization. She was a founding member, one of the few black members, and while working in Human Relations at the YWCA, she also acted as the WMC's facilitator.

[1] See Amy Schneidhorst, Building a Just and Secure World: Popular Front Women's Struggle for Peace and Justice in Chicago During the 1960s (New York: Continuum), 2011, p. 102.