June 21-27, 1971 - Road Trip and Feminist Conference
San Francisco to Detroit
San Francisco to Detroit
We squeezed six bodies into a VW van with seating for two and no air conditioning to get to Detroit. A feminist group there had published a manifesto that articulated our ideas, and shortly afterwards, announced a national meeting. Within days of reading the mimeographed invitation, we were ready to go.
We thought we were trekking 2400 miles and sleeping on open ground for three nights to share ideas and learn new strategies. Two women in our group had just launched a San Francisco feminist newspaper, "Motherlode." They’d brought a stack of newly printed copies and handed them out to everyone at the conference, including the marquee speaker Robin Morgan. The lead story was the first publication of Judy Brady Syfers’ satirical essay, "Why I Want A Wife."
The conference turned out to be more of a low-key local event than the world-changing symposium we'd imagined. Initially, it hadn’t seemed worth the long trip. But it turned out we were wrong. Six months after the conference, when Ms magazine published its premier issue, our friend's essay, "Why I Want A Wife," was in it. Fifty years later, it’s one of the most remembered, reprinted and beloved pieces from the time.
