A front-line warrior for women's rights

Sunday, June 8, 2014

A front-line warrior for women's rights

The Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Activist and civil-rights lawyer Karen DeCrow, who led the National Organization for Women in the 1970s, died Friday at her home near Syracuse, N.Y. She was 76.

Longtime friend Rowena Malamud confirmed DeCrow's death from melanoma.

She said DeCrow, who started as a journalist and was a prolific writer, was the "perfect model" for the women's-rights movement.

As president of NOW from 1974 to 1977, DeCrow pressured government agencies and big corporations to hire more women and called on the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate gender bias in hiring.

She pressed Ivy League schools to accept more female students, social groups to open up their male-dominated membership rolls and NASA to include more women in the space program.

DeCrow continued her advocacy in later years, representing women in gender-bias disputes and writing a newspaper column.

DeCrow was born Dec. 18, 1937. She grew up in Chicago, earned a degree in journalism from Northwestern University, and attended a graduate journalism program and law school at Syracuse University. While a law student, she ran for mayor of Syracuse, the first mayoral campaign by a woman in the state.

Malamud, the president of NOW's Greater Syracuse chapter, called DeCrow "a hero and a guide."

"Together, with a lot of other people, we helped to change history," Malamud said. "She was in the forefront of that."

Metro on 06/08/2014