Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens
US political organization
Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens was a political organization of feminist women created in the early 1980s to undertake non-violent direct action tactics to raise awareness for the need of an Equal Rights Amendment. The group also advocated for reproductive rights and lasted throughout the 1980s.
Actions at the Illinois State House
Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens were especially known for their direct actions at the Illinois State House in 1982. One of the grandmothers of a founder, Mary Lee Sargent, was a suffragist. Sargent co-founded this group while teaching at Parkland Community College in Illinois. The group included a wide range of activists from eighteen year old Sue Yarber to Berenice Carroll who was in her late 40s. In 1982, the ERA was set to expire and both pro and anti-ERA groups descended upon the Capitol in Illinois to lobby state legislators. Members of the Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens were often referred to as a chain gang because they had chained themselves together inside the capitol.
Day of Rebellion for ERA
One of the most notable actions undertaken by Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens was known as their Day of Rebellion for the ERA on June 3, 1982. That day, 17 women chained themselves inside the Illinois State Capitol.
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This entry incorporates text from “Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.