Three decades of women’s history in the United States

Gerda Lerner, who wrote initially about white working women; and Anne Scott, who wrote initially about southern white women. Initially, we were very much outside the disciplinary mainstream, drawing energy from the feminist revival in the larger society, picking our subjects because of the movement that we were part of, never expecting to reap great rewards in our careers for our choice of subject. When we were hired, it was usually because students insisted that someone start teaching them the history of women. I will call us the women’s liberation generation of women’s historians.