The seeds of Womankind Newspaper were planted in Detroit, Michigan around 1970 by Elizabeth Schafer Michael. She gathered together friends, colleagues and other interested people — both men and women — to organize a collective effort promoting awareness and knowledge about the then-newly-emerging women's liberation movement. The energy had begun to simmer and percolate in the mid-1960s and came to a full, rolling boil by the end of the '60s and continued into the '70s.

It all seems so basic and primitive now, but at the time not many people had the courage to write about this subject matter. And it did take courage, because oppression and persecution for even bringing these things up in public was commonplace in the USA.