Her Name Was Bella Abzug

By Radiance Talley

Her Name was Bella Abzug

She always wore a big hat and spoke with a voice that “could boil the fat off a taxicab driver’s neck.” She was compared to a hurricane, characterized as a battle, and was considered the matriarch of courage.

She was a feminist, activist, lawyer, and the first Jewish congresswoman. Her name was Bella Abzug.

“I’ve been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prizefighter, a man hater you name it,” she said.

Abzug was the organizer and founder of Women’s Equality Day, co-sponsored the Equal Rights Amendment, co-authored the Water Pollution Act of 1972, extended the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to lesbians and gays, and pushed through the Equal Credit Act.

Bella Abzug was born as Bella Savitsky to Russian Jewish immigrants in the Bronx on July 24, 1920. An activist since age 12 when she became a Zionist, which is a movement for, originally, the re-establishment of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. She collected money and gave speeches for Zionist causes at subway stops.

She attended Columbia University Law School in 1942 where she specialized in labor law. In 1945, Bella Savitsky graduated from Columbia and married Martin Abzug. Over the next 23 years, Abzug dedicated her time to practicing civil rights and labor law, and defending individuals accused during the McCarthy Era.

Bella Abzug was a “Founding Mother” for a multitude of global organizations and alliances, such as the Women’s Strike for Peace in the 1960s. In 1970, she decided to run for Congress and challenged Democratic incumbent Leonard Farbstein for the house seat in the nineteenth district. She won the house seat in the general election against Barry Farber.

Abzug later co-founded WEDO (Women’s Environment and Development Organization), started a lobbying group called Women U.S.A., sat on the Committee on Government Operations and the Committee on Public Works, supported abortion rights and child-care legislation, and introduced a resolution calling for the withdrawal of United States troops from Southeast Asia.

Throughout her first term, she called for an end to the draft and congressional approval of the Equal Rights Amendment. She was even one of the first to call for the impeachment of President Nixon.

In 1975, Abzug introduced a bill to add sexual orientation to Federal Civil Rights Law, extended the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to lesbians and gays, and laid the groundwork for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

‘’She was first on almost everything, on everything that ever mattered,’’ said Esther Newberg, Abzug’s first administrative assistant.

Although she was suffering from breast cancer, she published her book, Gender Gap, a guide to political power for American women, in 1984.

She died on March 31, 1998 after complications following heart surgery at 77 in her hometown. She is survived by her daughters, Eve and Liz, and sister, Helene Alexander.

She may have been called “Battling Bella,” “Hurricane Bella,” and “a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy,” but her commitment to women’s issues was monumental.

As Abzug famously said, “Women have been trained to speak softly and carry a lipstick. Those days are over!”

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