Liberation Summer

A sweeping, definitive work of history exploring the road to the September 1968 protests of the Miss American Pageant—one led by women’s liberationists and the other organized by the emergent Miss Black America Pageant—and the birth of a new politics of beauty. A revolution was brewing. In the dying days of the summer of 1968, during one unprecedented Pageant weekend, Atlantic City played host not only to the fifty young contestants and thousands of eager visitors who had arrived in town for the Miss America crowning, but also to the first Miss Black America Pageant, mounted to protest its “lily-white” sister competition, as well as raucous actions from women’s liberationists. For just a few hours, the boardwalk became a site of vigorously contested ideas—ideas that would redefine the women’s movement and reverberate across American culture. Now, Pulitzer Prize finalist Micki McElya unfolds the full scope of this history, detailing the shocking injustices and passionate debates that le