Here are some reflections inspired by the Third Annual Gender Equality Festival from Richard Grayson. He is writing a book called Summer in Brooklyn: 1969-1975, which includes the day Richard took these pictures:  August 26, 1970. See more of this story and pictures at Grayson’s Dumbo Books blog.

By Richard Grayson
As we walked to the corner and caught the B43 bus back to Williamsburg,
we reflected on another summer day in a New York City park where a
19-year-old boy from Brooklyn witnessed an earlier generation’s
struggle for gender equality.
Here’s a photograph we took at City Hall Park on the morning
of August 26, 1970, the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the passage
of the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women’s suffrage. It was a
historic day and it opens Gail Collins’ recent magisterial history of
the American women’s movement.

Here’s fiery Manhattan Congresswoman Bella Abzug, well known for her
floppy hats and her fighting liberalism.
Abzug would never win her primaries for mayor or senator but remained
in Congress for a number of years. Next to Speaker Tip O’Neill, she was
probably the most well-known member of the House.

Here is  Betty Friedan,
whose book The Feminine Mystique, in which she discussed "the problem
with no name" that American women faced, really launched second-wave
feminism in this country.

Here’s a protester more in the spirit of the day:
We can remember that placard really well: Male Chauvinist, You Better
Start Shakin’, Today’s Pig is Tomorrow’s Bacon!
We’ve got our diary entry for that day in our forthcoming book, Summer
in Brooklyn: 1969-1975. Lots has changed, in Brooklyn and the world,
since those days.
Well, we feel privileged to have been even just a witness at 1970’s
Women’s Liberation Day, just as we feel privileged to see the daughters
and granddaughters of second-wave feminists at Von King Park today.