Noted attorney and advocate Judith Lichtman provides a bird’s-eye view of the decades-long struggle for women’s rights in her compelling oral history, which forms an important part of the ABA’s Women Trailblazers Project collection. Lichtman began her career as a civil rights attorney in the South, but soon came to realize that the principles underlying racial equality could also serve to inform the struggle for gender equality. Eventually she became Executive Director of the Women’s Legal Defense Fund, where she played crucial roles in obtaining passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, among other transformative federal statutes and policies.
Lichtman’s engrossing oral history (taken by Professor Jana Singer of the University of Maryland Law School) is summarized by Judith Feigin, who has herself conducted numerous oral histories for the Historical Society.