Womens History

Whitney Houston performs in Durban in 1994, marking the first major Western artist to visit post-apartheid South Africa after Mandela’s election.

Whitney Houston: The Concert for a New South Africa airs Friday, March 14 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the WXXI app.

Celebrate Houston’s transcendent 1994 performance, which brought joy to a newly liberated country. Houston was the first major Western recording artist to perform in the post-apartheid nation following President Nelson Mandela’s historic election.

A largely unknown women’s rights story, this film introduces you to the trailblazers who challenged the very essence of patriarchy within Christendom and successfully created a blueprint for lasting institutional change.

The Philadelphia Eleven airs Saturday, March 22 at 4 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the WXXI app.

The film explores the lives of these remarkable women who succeeded in transforming an age-old institution despite the threats to their personal safety and the risk of rejection by the church they loved.

One of the 11 priests featured in the film is Merrill Bittner, who served in the Diocese of Rochester (1973- 1976) where she was an associate at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Webster, New York, and a co-founder of the Rochester Women’s Jail Project.

Exclusion of women from ordination and other church leadership roles made headlines in 2023 when the Southern Baptist Convention banned women from the most senior leadership roles. Today, women in many parts of the Christian church continue to struggle for full inclusion in the sacraments and leadership of the church.

A group of brave women began the fight more than 50 years ago. In 1974, there was a dramatic breakthrough when the so-called ‘stained glass ceiling’ was shattered. At a church in Philadelphia, a group of eleven women were ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in what was seen as a violation of the canons of the Episcopal Church—traditionally, only men were eligible for ordination.

Photo credit: Nikki Bramley, courtesy of Time Travel Productions

In celebration of Women’s History Month, WXXI presents this new documentary on the legacy and life of one of American history’s unsung heroes, Liz Carpenter.

Shaking It Up: The Life and Times of Liz Carpenter airs Monday, March 17 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the WXXI app.

Shaking It Up: The Life & Times of Liz Carpenter offers an up-close look at the pioneering journalist, high-ranking White House aide, and women’s rights leader. The film is produced and directed by Peabody award-winning filmmaker Abby Ginzberg and Liz’s daughter, Christy Carpenter.

The film recounts Carpenter’s powerful story through new, candid interviews with LBJ’s daughters, Luci Baines Johnson and Lynda Johnson Robb; feminist leader Gloria Steinem, legendary journalists Dan Rather and Bill Moyers, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, and the late U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. The film features never-seen home movies, photos, interview clips of her on Meet the Press, The Today Show and The David Frost Show, and rarely-shown artifacts, including Carpenter’s initial handwritten draft of LBJ’s first remarks given as President in the immediate aftermath of JFK’s death, which she referred to as “probably the most important 58 words I ever wrote.”