She's Beautiful When She's Angry Page #3

Why weren't we in the leadership positions?

From that it just kind of sparked

in everybody a sense of recognition.

Aha! This is like a shared thing.

It's just not me feeling insecure.

So, at an antiwar demonstration

to protest the election of Nixon,

we decided we would come together

as women for the first time

and announce we had a movement.

WOMAN:
And Marilyn Webb

gets up on the stage

in front of this huge

audience of new left men

and she starts trying to talk.

Well, the moment I started, there

was... this crowd went crazy.

(shouting, jeering)

WILLIS:
And the men start

whistling and catcalling

and saying things like, "Take

her off the stage and f*** her."

And people were yelling,

"F*** her down a dark alley!"

It was just... It was insane.

We were like all looking

at each other, like, what?

WEBB:
I didn't expect movement

men to behave like that,

and I was shocked.

People were organizing blacks

and people were organizing welfare mothers,

and then we were organizing women,

and that everybody would see this

as another leg of the whole movement.

But we weren't respected.

WOMEN:
The revolution has come

Off the pigs!

Black is beautiful

Free Huey!

BEAL:
The black liberation

movement had come into its fore,

and we were talking about

liberation and freedom

half the night on the racial side.

And then all of the sudden

men are going to turn around

and start talking about

putting you in your place?

If you don't want any trouble...

BEAL:
That was the contradiction in terms

that we were no longer prepared to put up with.

So, 1968, we founded the SNCC

Black Women's Liberation Committee

to take up some of these issues.

A number of women felt that

we needed to go off on our own

and focus on what we needed to

do in our fight for liberation.

ROSEN:
I was a graduate

student at Berkeley.

And one day I saw a little

3-by-5 card in the student union,

and it said a women's group was forming.

And these consciousness-raising

groups spontaneously grew up

in many areas of the country.

When I first heard about the

women's liberation movement,

I had two little kids under five.

My connection with the

world was, I felt, finished.

During one of my crises of

feeling that my life was over,

I heard some young women talking

about meetings they were having,

and they were talking

about women's liberation,

and they gave the address of a meeting.

So I went to this meeting,

and there were these women

talking about their lives

as I had never imagined people could.

Well, you need to be specially

trained to be a housewife.

You get married, there are

a whole new set of rules.

We still have to look a certain

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