On May 4

On this day in ...

... 1969, as she related here, social worker Joan Ditzion was in Massachusetts, "standing in front of a packed room of women at Emmanuel College’s female liberation conference ... leading a workshop entitled 'Control of Our Bodies.'" Over the next year,

'We meet in each other’s homes; we research topics on women’s health and sexuality and gather women’s experiences; we mimeograph papers and deliver a course at an MIT lounge; women ask for a book; we raise money and print the book ourselves; in December, 1970 Women and Their Bodies (later named Our Bodies, Ourselves) is born.'

(credit for image of 1st cover) The book, known to insiders as OBOS, became and has remained for 4 decades a pathbreaking work, produced to this day by the nonprofit Boston Women's Health Book Collective.

(Prior May 4 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)