Plan

From Pulitzer Prize finalist and historian Micki McElya, a sweeping work of history in the tradition of Rick Perlstein and Stacy Schiff that, for the first time, fully explores a critical but often-overlooked moment in our history--the September 1968 dual protests of the Miss America and Miss Black America pageants in Atlantic City--and its lasting impact on the trajectory of women's rights in America.

THE FIRST COMPLETE, IN-DEPTH LOOK AT A CRITICAL BUT OVERLOOKED MOMENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY: 1968 has been widely acknowledged as a major turning point in the country's social and political trajectory, but close examination of the state of the women's movement at the time--and a specific look at the September Miss America and Miss Black America protests (the latter is rarely addressed in major histories), which were an inflection point for the second wave of feminism, bringing all corners of the movement together and set the stage for the 1970s.

JAM-PACKED WITH FEARLESS WOMEN AND BIG NAMES: Betty Friedan. Phyllis Schlafly. Gloria Steinem. Flo Kennedy. Anita Bryant. These are only a handful of the women we see in Liberation Summer on the road to the Miss America Pageant, and we see them in all their complexities and varying stages of awakening. We also are introduced to lesser-known names who are finally given their due as major players--reporter Charlotte Curtis, radical feminist and event organizers Robin Morgan and Carol Hanisch, Miss America 1968 Debra Barnes, and Miss Black America Saundra Williams--and also catch glimpses of larger-than-life figures like Hillary Rodham, Ronald Reagan, Dan Rather, and more.

A KALEIDOSCOPIC VIEW OF AMERICA IN 1968: 1968 is perhaps one of the most consequential years in our history--in just twelve months, the United States saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the escalation of the Vietnam War through the Tet Offensive, widespread social justice protests at the Democratic National Convention and Summer Olympics, and the election of Richard Nixon. Liberation Summer unfolds against and amidst these key events as the plans for the protest respond to and interact with them.

AN AUTHOR WITH BONA FIDES: Micki McElya is more than qualified to be tackling this subject. She is a member of the history department faculty at the University of Connecticut, and a recipient of a 2022-23 NEH Public Scholars Award, and her last book, The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, a co-winner of the 2018 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize from the Foundation for Landscape Studies, winner of the inaugural Sharon Harris Book Prize from UConn's Humanities Institute, and finalist for the 2016 Jefferson Davis Book Award from the American Civil War Museum. This will be her first trade book, but her academic resume surely will help validate her credentials. (1/10/2025)