Today in Feminist History

Image from The New York Observer, taken by Harvey Wang.
On December 14, 1941 Ellen Willis was born. She went on to become a prominent feminist activist, journalist and music critic. She died in 2006 at the age of 64 of lung cancer.
Her death was widely eulogized and the articles written about her provide a beautiful portrait of her life.
From the New York Times:

As a writer, she was best known for her political essays, which appeared in The Nation, Dissent and elsewhere. She was also widely recognized for her rock criticism: she was the first pop-music critic of The New Yorker, and wrote regularly about music for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and other publications.
In addition, Ms. Willis was a vital figure in the women’s movement of the late 1960s and afterward. She was a founder of Redstockings, a short-lived but highly influential radical feminist group begun in 1969. In the 1980s, she helped found No More Nice Girls, a street theater and protest group that focused on abortion rights.
At its core, Ms. Willis’s work was rooted in the three R’s, which for her were radicalism, religion and rock.

Ellen Willis also happens to be the mother of Nona Willis-Aronowitz, a feminist writer in her own right. She’s the co-author of GIRLdrive, which just came out this year (read Courtney’s thoughts on the book).