(1889-1970)
Feminist, peace campaigner, and political activist. Dubbed Red Jessie, Jessie Street was a leading figure on the Australian home front during the cold war. Born in Ranchi, India, Street grew up in New South Wales and studied at the University of Sydney. Following her attendance at the 1911 International Council for Women in Rome, Street became progressively concerned with social justice and equality for women. She was deeply involved in the work of the Equal Pay Committee; her 1935 pamphlet entitled The Justice of Equal Pay and Equal Opportunity can be found in the Papers of Jessie Street, in the National Library of Australia, Canberra. After World War I she founded the Sydney branch of the Australian League of Nations Union (ALNU) and became increasingly involved in the campaign for equal pay for women. In 1929 she was elected the first president of the United Association of Women (UAW). During World War II she was a prominent campaigner for peace and friendship as chair of the Women’s Forum for Social and Economic Reconstruction (1941) and the Russian Medical Aid and Comforts Committee in New South Wales (1941). Street initiated a national conference that resulted in the Australian Women’s Charter (1943), and she led a delegation of thirteen women that introduced the charter resolution to parliament in 1944. As an Australian delegation member to the 1945 U.N. charter meeting in San Francisco, she promoted improvements in the status of women. In 1946 Street served as president of the Australian-Russian Society (later the Australian-Soviet Society). Her admiration for the USSR became obvious from the time of her first travel to that country in 1938 and again in March 1953, when Jessie was invited to attend Stalin’s funeral in Moscow. As an active member of the controversial World Peace Council, Street was nominated as a delegate to the second World Peace Conference in Warsaw in 1950; she played a key role within the Sydney section of the Australian Peace Council until 1959. A victim of censure after contesting the legitimacy of British nuclear tests in Central Australia from 1952 to 1957, in later years Street remained a tireless defender of the Aboriginal cause through a campaign to grant Aborigines the right to vote. She died in Sydney on July 2, 1970. In 1989 the Jessie Street National Women’s Library was founded to promote the fight for peace and social justice.
