How a Seattle Women’s Study Group Became Radical Women

Radical Women began in Seattle in 1967, emerging from a community class that examined the place of women in society. The course was offered through Seattle’s Free University and led by Gloria Martin, a communist and civil rights activist whose organizing helped turn classroom discussion into a political project.

Martin joined with Clara Fraser and Melba Windoffer, who were also involved in initiating the Freedom Socialist Party, and Susan Stern, a prominent participant in Seattle’s Students for a Democratic Society. Together, they established Radical Women as a grassroots socialist-feminist organization.

The group’s early purpose extended beyond advocating for policy changes. Its founders wanted women to build the practical skills needed to lead a movement: organizing campaigns, studying political theory, teaching one another, running an institution and developing leadership from within their own communities. That approach placed political education and internal democracy at the center of the organization’s work.

Radical Women also became active in the broader protest movements of the era. Members took part in major mobilization against the Vietnam War and adopted an opposition to later military interventions launched by Western governments. The organization connected feminist concerns with questions of war, race, poverty and economic power rather than treating women’s rights as a separate issue.

In Seattle, that outlook included work alongside African American women connected to anti-poverty programs. Such cooperation reflected the group’s effort to link feminist organizing with struggles shaped by race and class. The organization’s history therefore sits at the intersection of several movements that influenced the city’s activist culture during the late 1960s and afterward.

Radical Women remains affiliated with the Freedom Socialist Party and has branches in Seattle and Melbourne, Australia. Its Seattle origins distinguish it from organizations that later arrived in the city from elsewhere: the group was built locally out of political study, coalition work and organizing among women who wanted an independent role in progressive movements.

For Seattle readers, Radical Women’s history offers a record of how feminist activism developed through both formal political commitments and community-based education. It also shows how local groups could use the city as a base for national political work while maintaining an explicitly international outlook.

Source and reuse information This backgrounder adapts factual material from “Radical Women” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Women The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.

Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://web.archive.org/web/19980524032655/http://www.socialism.com/Clarasmemorial.html - https://viaf.org/viaf/152542370 - https://www.seattlestar.net/2017/09/radical-women-celebrate-a-half-century-of-hell-raising/ - https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/freedom-socialist/v04n03-fall-1978-FS.pdf - https://socialism.com/fs-article/abortion-rights-imperilled/ - https://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w6m3861d Image rights Photograph description: Seattle City Light lineworker apprentice Megan Cornish, circa 1974. Cornish went on to be a prominent labor activist active in the Freedom Socialist Party and its affiliated group Radical Women, and a co-founder of found the Committee for Equal Rights at City Light (CERCL). See Archives West finding aid for her papers . Creator: Seattle Municipal Archives from Seattle, WA. License: CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASeattle_City_Light_lineworker_apprentice_Megan_Cornish%2C_circa_1974_(50271875773).jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.