Settling in
New York, Kronstein married Jensen. She worked in a variety of jobs as a waitress, salesperson, office clerk, and X-ray technician, while also writing fiction and poetry. She published two short stories featuring first-person accounts of the
Nazi annexation of Austria. and she contributed short stories to the
left-wing California
literary journal The Clipper. In 1946, Lerner helped found the Los Angeles chapter of the
Congress of American Women, a
Communist front organization. The Lerners engaged in CPUSA activities involving
trade unionism,
civil rights, and anti-
militarism. They suffered under the rise of
McCarthyism in the 1950s, especially the
Hollywood blacklist, and left the CPUSA. She enrolled at the
New School for Social Research, where she received a bachelor's degree in 1963. She wrote in her autobiography that her frequent status made her think about "people who did not have a voice in telling their own stories. Lerner's insights eventually influenced her decision to earn a Ph.D. in history and then to help establish women's history as a standard academic discipline." In the early 1960s, Lerner and her husband co-authored the screenplay of the film
Black Like Me (1964), based on
the book by white journalist
John Howard Griffin, who had reported on six weeks of travel in small towns and cities of the
Deep South passing as a black man. Carl Lerner directed the film, starring
James Whitmore. Lerner continued with graduate studies at
Columbia University, where she earned both an M.A. (1965) and a Ph.D. (1966). Her doctoral
dissertation was published as
The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels Against Slavery (1967), a study of
Sarah Moore Grimké and
Angelina Grimké, sisters from a slaveholding family who became
abolitionists in the North. Learning that their late brother had
mixed-race sons, they helped pay to educate the boys. In 1966, Lerner became a founding member of the
National Organization for Women (NOW), and she served as a local and national leader for a short period. In 1968, she received her first academic appointment at
Sarah Lawrence College. There Lerner developed a Master of Arts Program in Women's History, which Sarah Lawrence offered beginning in 1972; it was the first American graduate degree in the field. Lerner also taught at
Long Island University in
Brooklyn. She was among the first to bring a consciously feminist lens to the study of history. and
The Female Experience (1976), which she edited, along with her essay collection,
The Majority Finds Its Past (1979). This helped lead to the national establishment of
Women's History Month. where she established the nation's first Ph.D. program in women's history. At this institution, she wrote
The Creation of Patriarchy (1986),
The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (1993), parts one and two of
Women and History; Why History Matters (1997), and
Fireweed: A Political Autobiography (2002). As an educational director for the organization, she helped make women's history accessible to leaders of women's organizations and high school teachers. ==Selected works==