Liberation Summer

On a sunny Tuesday in early October, UConn History Professor Micki McElya paced between a podium and a projection screen, pointing to a rapid succession of images synched to her remarks. Her punchy, convivial delivery immediately captivated the audience of about 20 people in the Heritage Room at Babbidge Library, and her detailed, deeply researched narrative kept them enthralled.

Attendees - a mix of students, faculty, and staff - had come to hear McElya talk about her latest book, "Liberation Summer: The Moment That Changed the Women's Movement and The Future of American Politics." Published in July, it is rooted in the stories of three women on the Atlantic City boardwalk on Sept. 7, 1968, during the Miss America Pageant. As a gifted storyteller with a keen eye for historical detail, McElya deftly traces how the chance convergence that day sparked a debate about beauty, race, religion, and power that persists to the present day.

"This is how I begin to talk about the politics of the era, leading right up Donald Trump," McElya explains. "It's from here you can trace the through line to what is going on today."

McElya opens the book by introducing Sandra Williams, the soon-to-be-crowned and first-ever Miss Black America cruising toward the Atlantic City Convention Hall in an open convertible with four elegantly dressed fellow contestants. At the same time, the Miss America Pageant is winding down and two competing groups of protesters led by two other women - Carol Hanisch and Terry Meeuwsen – are on the boardwalk voicing their opposition to and support for the pageant.

Hanisch, a women's liberation activist, was among the organizers of protest against the pageant. Meeuwsen, a Wisconsin pageant contestant and supporter of President Richard Nixon, led a small group of counterprotesters defending traditional gender roles and ideals of feminine beauty. Williams, meanwhile, saw no connection to either spectacle as she rolled by in the car. Her pageant - a first for the country – was about showing that Black women are beautiful and talented too.

During a question-and-answer period following the talk, McElya described her writing process, calling it "a painful exercise" that took longer than she planned. The book began as a project for an academic press but gradually morphed into something else when she learned about the protests and the Miss Black America pageant while reading "Ain't I a Beauty Queen?: Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race", a 2002 book written by sociologist Maxine Leeds Craig.

McElya has written two other books, one of which - "The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery" – was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Liberation Summer is her first attempt at non-academic non-fiction, she said, a process that was "kind of like writing a comprehensive first take on American history."

"It was definitely a new kind of book that I hadn't really prepared for," she explained. "I wanted to try and reach popular audiences, but I also wanted to write a scholarly book. Trying to make these things work together was really difficult. How do you plot a story that people will actually want to read?"

If her presentation is any indication, McElya more than met that goal.

While the three women are the nutshell of the story, the book encompasses a span of history dating back to origins of the women's movement. Set against the backdrop of three political spectacles in 1968 - the Democratic and GOP national conventions, and the Miss America Pageant - it weaves a cast of feminist influencers and events into a sweeping exploration of a moment in American history that laid the groundwork for the cultural and political moment we are in.

Some of the characters - like Norma Smallwood, Miss America 1926; and Jesse Jim, an indigenous American beauty queen crowned by the National Indian Council in 1926 - may be new to readers. Others - like Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and conservative newsmakers Anita Bryant and Phyillis Schlafly - will be familiar, but are rendered by McElya in a new and fuller light. The journalists covering the event also get their due, including Charlotte Curtis, the editor of the women's section at the New York Times and a pioneering feminist in her own right.

McElya spent four years writing the book with the support of National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars award and a UConn Humanities Institute Faculty fellowship. In addition to books, her source material included letters, transcripts, interviews, and coverage of the events by journalists who were there at the time or who later interviewed the people who were.

The talk was laced with historical nuggets and pictures gleaned from McElya's research. One that stood out was the midnight start time of the Miss Black America pageant, and 3 a.m. crowning of the winner, an accommodation that allowed journalists covering the Miss America Pageant to cover the Miss Black America pageant too.

McElya had not previously heard of Curtis, the only woman among the 40 reporters the NYT sent to cover the 1968 Republican National Convention and who went on to become the editor of the Times' opinion section. Nor did she know the daughter-in-law of former Vice President Hubert Humphrey had participated in the Miss America Pageant system as a judge. Or that the blonde, pictured in a later group shot of pageant finalists with Donald Trump on his yacht in Atlantic City, is Gretchen Carlson, a future Miss America and the original blonde "Fox & Friends" news host whose sexual harassment suit against Fox News chairman Roger Ailes helped launch the #MeToo movement.

"I just kept being really surprised," McElya said of the facts she uncovered. "Politics is beauty standards and beauty standards are politics. If you want a history of Mar-A-Lago face, this is it."