Caroline Davis (far left), Lillian Hatcher (standing), and William Oliver of the UAW Fair Practices Department welcome Dorothy Height of
the National Council of Negro Women to the 1955 UAW Convention. Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University.
The Partial Victories of the 1960s
In 1960, with the election of John F. Kennedy as president and Democratic majorities in both the House
and Senate, hope for New Deal–style reform at the federal level stirred once again. Like many other
progressive reformers who had weathered the postwar conservative backlash and the political lull of the
Eisenhower years, social justice feminists believed their agenda would finally get the hearing it deserved.
The civil rights movement was now inspiring millions to action on behalf of the right of African
Americans to education, jobs, and other basic needs. In addition, social justice feminists had played key
and highly visible roles in Kennedy’s presidential campaign, as had the labor movement as a whole. In
1960, the UAW’s Lillian Hatcher, along with other women labor leaders, for example, had helped
mobilize labor’s ranks—including women trade unionists, then a quarter of all union members, as well as
large numbers of working-class wives, mothers, and daughters in women’s auxiliaries—to elect Kennedy
and other Democrats to office.