Cottin Pogrebin: They sometimes ask me, as a person who had a family while being in the movement, “How do you balance it?” And one thing I say is just simply, “Don’t expect too much of yourself. Don’t drive yourself into the ground. Or get together with five other women and make sure you cover each other if you’re doing independent work and you need time off.”
Steinem: The companionship, right?
Cottin Pogrebin: The companionship in your struggle. It doesn’t occur to them somehow. Or the way it occurred to us that solidarity creates change. You know?
Dewart Bell: We have to really be very aware that there are people who are hungry for information, even though sometimes they’re tired. But we have to say it in a way, simplify it in a way that does not dumb down but it makes it accessible to people. People who don’t understand their history don’t understand that they have a future.
Cathie Black, a former chairwoman of Hearst Magazines and publisher of USA Today, began her career in advertising at Ms.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms., is a writer, lecturer and activist.
Janet Dewart Bell, an early Ms. contributor, is the author of “Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement.”
Jane O’Reilly wrote Ms.’s first cover story, “Click! The Housewife’s Moment of Truth.”
Gloria Steinem is an author and political activist who was a co-founder of Ms.
Alice Walker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, was an early Ms. editor and contributor.
Cover images courtesy Gloria Steinem.
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