NCJW and Leadership of the Women’s Movement

Marked by Ida Friend’s founding of NCJW and Hadassah in New Orleans as independent women’s associations rather than as women’s divisions of men’s associations, Jewish women have been at the forefront of legislation and services that improve women’s lives. In the 1960s and 1970s, NCJW sent delegates to the legislature in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, lobbied to overturn “the Head and Master” law, and gave financial support to the Louisiana Clergy Counseling Committee for Problem Pregnancies. Hadassah and NCJW were members of the Louisiana Coalition for Personal Freedom, a statewide coalition of organizations working against abortion restrictions. The women in this exhibition were intentional about working with women of color, supporting reproductive and women’s health services for all women of New Orleans, and electing pro-choice women to public office. Many women who had trained in voluntary associations achieved success and influence by the latter part of the twentieth century as Title IX opened up professional schools to women.

Leaders include almost all the women mentioned in this exhibition active during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.