Betty Goldstein graduated from Smith College in 1942 and worked for five years before marrying Carl Friedan (divorced 1969) and settling uncomfortably into the life of a and housewife, mother, and occasional freelance writer.

Discovering in 1957 that several of her college classmates were as dissatisfied with their lives as she was with her own, she began a series of studies that eventually resulted in the landmark work The Feminine Mystique (1963).

The book's thesis was that women were victims of a pervasive system of delusions and false values that urged them to find their fulfillment and identity vicariously, through their husbands and children.An immediate and controversial best-seller, it is now regarded as one of the most influential American books of the 20th century.

In 1966 Friedan cofounded the National Organization for Women (NOW), which was dedicated to achieving equality of opportunity for women.

In 1933, with the repeal of Prohibition, cops on the take would have lost all their extra income had it not been for gay bars. They were aided by a State Liquor Authority ban on serving homosexuals, and this was the basis of a shift in graft from what was being served--to who.

An occasional police raid kept the system in good running order and provided the boys in blue with the fun of putting on a good show. No one could have imagined that this shakedown system could ever go out of fashion, but in 1969 it breathed its last.

Perhaps it was the full moon, perhaps it was news of the death of Judy Garland, perhaps it was about time, but what started as a police raid at The Stonewall Inn at 57 Christopher Street on June 28, 1969 ended in a full-scale riot.The riot ended in the early morning with only a few injuries. Only the assumption that homosexuals would ever again accept prejudice and discrimination without resistance had died.

Annual parades are held at the end of June in most American cities to commemorate the Stonewall riot and the movement for gay rights that began on that night.