Special Collections and Archives: Through the Decades with GSU Women: 1960-1969

1960

Women now earn only 60 cents for every dollar earned by men, a decline since 1955. Women of color earn only 42 cents.

1961

The school's name changes to Georgia State College. Dean Nell H. Trotter is made president of Georgia Association of Women Deans.

President Kennedy creates the President's Commission on the Status of Women, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt.

1962

Annette Lucille Hall, a social studies teacher from Lithonia, becomes the first black student admitted to Georgia State College when she enrolls in the summer session of the Institute on Americanism and Communism, a course of study required of all social studies teachers by the 1962 Georgia legislature.

Dean Nell H. Trotter is named Atlanta Woman of the Year in Education and Atlanta Woman of the Year for 1961.

1963

Dean Nell H. Trotter becomes president (1963-1964) of the Atlanta Branch of the Association of University Women, as well as co-chair of the Education Committee in the newly formed Georgia Commission on the Status of Women.

The Equal Pay Act, proposed twenty years earlier, establishes equal pay for men and women performing the same job duties. It does not cover domestics, agricultural workers, executives, administrators or professionals.

American Women, the report issued by the President's Commission on the Status of Women documents discrimination against women in virtually every area of American life. In less than a year 64,000 copies are sold and talk of women's rights is again respectable. Betty Friedan's best-seller, The Feminine Mystique is published and five million copies are sold by 1970, laying the groundwork for the modern feminist movement.

1964

Dean Nell H. Trotter travels around the world as a member of the University of the Seven Seas, lecturing in India and Japan and returning in 1965.

Georgia Governor Sanders' Governor's Commission on the Status of Women becomes a permanent body by act of the state legislature during the last session of the General Assembly.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act bars private employers, employment agencies, and unions from discrimination based on race or sex. It establishes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which receives 50,000 complaints of gender discrimination in its first five years.

Patsy Mink (D-HI) is the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress.

1965

Lyndon Johnson's Executive Order 11246 takes the 1964 Civil Rights Act further, requiring federal agencies and contractors to take "affirmative action" in overcoming employment discrimination. Executive Order 11375 (1967) expands 11246's non-discrimination measure to include women. Enforcement is not won until 1973.

Weeks v. Southern Bell marks a major triumph in the fight against restrictive labor laws and company regulations on the hours and conditions of women's work, opening many previously male-only jobs to women.

1966

Annie L. McPheeters becomes the first African American reference librarian at GSU, retiring in 1975. Dr. Kay Crouch is made president of the Georgia Association of School Counselors.

Georgia State College's local honorary society, Crimson Key, begins an annual series, "Social, Political, and Economic Seminars" for women.

Fifty state Commissions on the Status of Women convene in Washington, D.C., to report on their findings.

In response to EEOC inaction on employment discrimination complaints, twenty-eight women found the National Organization for Women (NOW) to function as a civil rights organization for women.

1967

Dean Nell H. Trotter sends a letter to the top five male administrators on the subject of "programs for women" asking that they strongly consider instituting educational programs for young women (high school and early college age) and for more mature women (those ready to work outside the home but needing new skills and education), thus involving the school more with the community.

Georgia State College's Crimson Key presents "The Educated Woman: Her Place as Leader." Atlanta N.O.W. is founded.

1968

The Department of Nursing begins in July within the newly established School of Allied Health Sciences. Classes in the program are under the direction of Evangeline Lane, the newly hired Director.

The ROTC program at GSU first admits women.

Women's Equity Action League (WEAL), focusing on women's economic issues through research, education, litigation, and legislative advocacy, is founded. New York Radical Women garner media attention to the women's movement when they protest the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City.

Dr. Kay Crouch is an assistant professor of Education at Georgia State College and is a presenter at that year's Crimson Key Seminar.

The first national women's liberation conference is held in Chicago.

EEOC rules that unless employers can show that a bona fide occupational qualification exists, sex-segregated help wanted newspaper ads are illegal. Federally Employed Women is founded to end gender-based discrimination in civil service jobs. Within two decades, FEW have 200 chapters.

Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) is the first black woman elected to Congress.

1969

Georgia State College becomes Georgia State University. Crimson Key presents "How Women Can Increase Their Participation in Politics."

Supreme Court rules in Bowe v. Colgate-Palmolive that women meeting the physical requirements can work in jobs that had been for men only.