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Women

National Women’s History Month was born in Sonoma County

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It was the late 1970s. Molly Murphy MacGregor, a graduate student at Sonoma State University (SSU), taught a lively class on Women and Social Change at Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC) Petaluma campus.

Momentum to study, uplift and celebrate women grew throughout the decade nationally and in Northern California; students and faculty at SSU pushed to create a women’s studies major in 1972, the Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade in 1973 and Dr. Angela Davis rose to international renown as a professor, author and revolutionary fighting for women’s rights and Black liberation.

Continue Reading on the Bohemian

The origins of Women’s History Month

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SANTA ROSA, Calif — Since 1987, the United States has designated the month of March as Women’s History Month to commemorate and encourage the study, observance and celebration of the vital role women have played in American history.

The origins of the month-long celebration can be traced back to Sonoma County. It all started in 1972, a banner year in women’s history, when a student asked Molly Murphy MacGregor, a high school social studies teacher at the time, an important question: What is the women’s movement?

“I didn’t really know, but I didn’t admit that I didn’t know,” MacGregor, now the executive director of the National Women’s History Alliance, told ABC10 with a laugh.

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