Alice Williams: The 60s in Connecticut

In the CPTV original documentary, The 60s in Connecticut, producers spent over a hundred hours interviewing subjects for the film.  Since the documentary can only include small portions of each interview, we are making the full interviews available online.  The 60s in Connecticut will air May 9, at 9:30 PM on CPTV.  

Alice Williams, a social worker, wife, mother, discusses moving to Connecticut in the 60’s and awakening to feminist issues. This interview with Ms. Williams took place in late 2010.

 While struggling with a husband who expected her to fulfill the traditional duties of a housewife regardless of her work, she admits “I was not a feminist at that point, oblivious to what women were doing or not doing.” It is while she is the social work director at a local hospital that she comes to identify as a feminist.

“Mrs. Williams, come in here and talk to this woman.” Alice talks about how the unwillingness of the overwhelmingly male medical staff to council their female patients about family planning motivated her to establish a Planned Parenthood clinic in her town.  She believed strongly that that women had a right to reproductive education and the resources necessary to take control of their own bodies.   She recalls her shock at realizing contraception was illegal in Connecticut in the 60s.

At a time when the feminist movement was taking hold, Ms. Williams talks about meeting with other women and discussing their struggles with being a wife, mother and professional in a time when women had little power over their own lives.  She recalls the influence of MS Magazine on the women’s movement and discusses her pleasure in seeing the progress women have made since the 60s in CT.  

See Alice Williams and many others in the CPTV original documentary “The 60’s in Connecticut,” airing on May 9th at 9:30.