Establishes ACLU Women’s Rights Project
Ginsburg establishes the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. This was the major, and sometimes the only, national legal arm of the growing movement for gender equality, recognized as the spokesperson for women’s interests in the Supreme Court, and the “premier” representative of women’s rights interests in that forum. The Project works to enforce women’s statutory rights, including the rights to equal employment opportunities guaranteed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act6 and the Equal Pay Act. Early cases challenge the constitutionality of sex discrimination, specifically measuring the constitutionality of sex-based classifications and striking down discriminatory Social Security regulations.
Escapes slavery
Truth escapes with her infant daughter, Sophia, leaving behind her other children because a New York emancipation order did not permit their freedom until they had served as bound servants into their twenties.
I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right.
A family lets Truth move in with them and settles her remaining one year service account with her master, Dumont, for $20.
Sold
Truth’s master, Hardenbergh, dies and her family are separated. Neely, whom Truth remembered as harsh and violent, buysTruth at an auction with a flock of sheep for $100.
By then my father, Bomefree, who had been tall and straight in his youth, had grown old and sickly. No one wanted to buy him. Although my mother could have been sold, they decided to free her so that she could care for my father. The people who bought the hotel allowed my parents to continue to live in the cellar…As the enslaved became old and infirm, they became less useful to their owners, and too expensive to be kept and cared for. They were often, therefore, set free and left to care for themselves. This was especially heartless when their children had also been sold away and were not around to help look after them.