The National Organization for Women (NOW) adopted its statement of purpose when gathering for its first national conference in Washington, DC. The statement, which was officially approved on October 29, 1966, was written by Betty Friedan (1921–2006), author of the foundational feminist book The Feminine Mystique (1963), and Pauli Murray (1910–1985), a civil rights activist and, later in life, Episcopal priest. Just four months earlier, on June 30, 1966, NOW had been founded by delegates to the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women. This commission was the successor to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, which President John F. Kennedy had created by executive order on December 14, 1961, and which was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1963 the commission had reported its findings that women were the victims of gender inequality. Among the twenty-eight founders of NOW were Friedan, Murray, and Shirley Chisholm, an American politician who in 1972 became the first Black woman to mount a serious presidential bid. The purpose of the organization, articulated in the Statement of Purpose, was to work for professional, political, and educational equality for women—to become a public voice for women and their aspirations.