This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the National Women's Conference held in Houston on November 18-21, 1977. To commemorate the anniversary and take stock of this historic gathering, the University of Houston is hosting a two-day conference, The National Women's Conference: Taking 1977 into the 21st Century, on November 6-7 to bring together former participants and dynamic scholars. The Texas Archive of the Moving Image will join the University of Houston at this conference to collect film and videotape documenting the 1977 National Women's Conference and the lives of those who attended.

 

At the 1977 conference, 2,000 elected delegates and around 32,000 observers descended upon Houston, Texas, to participate in the first and only federally funded National Women's Conference in American history. The Houston conference reflected the tensions of a nation at a crossroad, with some seeing it as a promising expression of a more representative, rights-centered democracy and others viewing it as a liberal cooptation of taxpayers' dollars. UH expects to carry on the conversation in Houston once again this fall, looking forward to the challenges women face in the early twenty-first century as they reflect on past successes and failures.

 

TAMI will be onsite to collect films and videos related to the 1977 conference for its free digitization program. Its web exhibit, Women on the Move: Texas and the Fight for Women's Rights, will also be on display. UH conference attendees can drop off their films and videotapes for free digitization outside the Elizabeth D. Rockwell Pavilion in M.D. Anderson Library on Monday, November 6 through Tuesday, November 7 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Digital copies of contributed materials will be preserved at both the Texas Archive of the Moving Image and the University of Houston Libraries Special Collections.

 

Learn more about the UH conference at http://uh.edu/class/77womensconf. 

 

THIS CONFERENCE IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.