What It Was Like to Know Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem in her New York City apartment on November 2, 1990. —Barbara Alper—Getty Images I was a 33-year-old organizer when I first met Gloria Steinem in 2007.

Despite being a women’s studies major in college, I had not fully grasped Gloria’s role in supporting grassroots women's organizations.

She had created the Ms.

Foundation for Women to do just that, to fund and amplify women’s organizing, like the work I was doing with domestic workers in New York.

Meeting her at their annual fundraising gala, I was moved by how kind, warm, and genuinely excited she was to learn about and support our efforts.

“Do you know about Carolyn Reed?” she asked me.

Reed founded the Household Technicians of America in 1971.

Her organizing, along with the work of Dorothy Bolden and the National Domestic Workers Union in the South, catalyzed the inclusion of domestic workers in federal minimum wage laws after 40 years of exclusion from Roosevelt’s New Deal.

I had never heard of Carolyn Reed or Dorothy Bolden.

None of my women’s history classes had taught me about these two Black women who helped pave the way before me.

But Gloria knew Ms.

Reed well; she frequently enlisted Gloria in domestic workers’ efforts to gain respect and recognition as professionals.

At the time, together with organizers from around the country, I was planning what would become the founding meeting of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.

Gloria’s prompt helped us find our roots in the legacy of Black domestic workers organizing and leadership throughout the country, whose bravery has made our economy better for women generation after generation, a legacy our organization was founded to carry forward.