When I Was a Teenage E.R.A. Activist

This political memoir describes the author's 1979 summer job, at age eighteen, going door-to-door for the Equal Rights Amendment (E.R.A.). Critical attention is paid to the difficulties experienced in "the field"—fundraising expectations, canvassing assignments in remote or right-wing suburbs, and the often hostile responses from householders unexpectedly presented with feminist petitions on their own doorsteps. How did false rumors about the E.R.A. create a backlash among Americans? Wry nostalgia aside, are historians and students of feminism in danger of forgetting this unique period of political activism?