Video: 'The Sensational 70s - 1970' (Aug. 26, 1970, at 6:27)

(Wednesday, August 26, 1970, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. EDT; during the feminist movement) — Celebrating the 50th anniversary of American women’s right to vote and the start of a new crusade for equality, a crowd of 10,000-25,000 people, mostly women of all ages, occupations and viewpoints, marched down Fifth Avenue to an enthusiastic rally in Bryant Park tonight in New York City.

The hour-long rally, which began at around 8:00 p.m. EDT, was the high point of a day of demonstrations in New York and around the country that Betty Friedan, originator of the notion of today’s Women’s Strike for Equality and founder of the National Organization for Women, called “beyond our wildest dreams.”

“This is not a bedroom war, this is a political movement,” Friedan said. “Man is not the enemy, man is a fellow victim.”

Eleanor Holmes Norton, chairman of the city’s Commission on Human Rights, called for Senate passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. “Give us the right to compete,” she said. “Give us the right to live, the right to a job regardless of sex.”