PEORIA RIVERFRONT MUSEUM
Event: Free Lecture & Display on Peoria Native Betty Friedan
Date & Time: Lecture – Oct. 25, 2 p.m., display – Oct. 24 through Dec. 13
Location: Giant Screen Theater & Main Lobby · Peoria Riverfront Museum · 222 S.W. Washington St. ·
Peoria, Ill.
Cost: Friedan theater lecture & lobby display are FREE and open to the public
Midwest women were essential to defining contemporary arts and society throughout the 20th century.
As part of its fall-winter 2015 spotlight on Illinois women artists and influencers, Peoria Riverfront
Museum will feature a free lecture and display on Betty Friedan, beginning the weekend of Oct. 24.
The free lecture, “Betty Friedan’s Mark on History … and Peoria’s Mark on Her,” will be presented in the
museum’s Giant Screen Theater, Oct. 25, 2 p.m. by former Peoria Journal Star editor and journalist,
Barbara Mantz Drake, who interviewed Friedan at length in 1999 for the Journal Star and WTVP.
Friedan, who was born Bettye Naomi Goldstein, Feb. 4, 1921, in Peoria, Ill., was a journalist herself and
arguably the most influential feminist of the era as co-founder of the National Organization of Women
(NOW) and author of The Feminine Mystique (1963).
Drake will discuss the indelible mark left by Friedan on Peoria, as well as the influence that Friedan and
her “no-nonsense” Midwest upbringing had on the Women’s Movement worldwide. For instance, Friedan learned early on the power of group action. As a writer for the Peoria High School (PHS) newspaper, her request to write a column was turned down. She and her friends then started a literary magazine, Tide, where they could write about contemporary issues. Friedan told Drake, “If there was a problem, you could organize the community to deal with the problem.”
Drake, a member of the Betty Friedan Committee, also coordinated the display which will be located in
the museum’s main lobby from Oct. 24 through Dec. 13. The display contains an autographed copy of
“The Feminine Mystique,” the five other books Friedan wrote, original articles from national publications, photographs, and hometown memorabilia that includes a 1938 PHS yearbook, a photo of her Farmington Road family home and many other items gathered from local collections.
The display also contains Friedan’s PHS Tide essay, “I Am Paper,” in which, according to Drake, she argues that a seemingly insignificant object such as a piece of paper has extraordinary powers because of its potential to frame big ideas and carry important arguments.
