5. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Schlafly's Gala Goodbye to ERA,” Washington Post, July 1, 1982, C-1. In her article “Victory is Bittersweet for Architect of Amendment's Downfall,” New York Times reporter Lynn Rosellini reported that Phyllis Schlafly was committing her 50,000-member Eagle Forum to campaigns against
sex education, against a nuclear freeze, and to rid school texts of feminist influence (July 1, 1982, p. A12).[back]
8. Cynthia Harrison, “Prelude to Feminism: Women's Organizations, the Federal Government and the Rise of the Women's Movement,
1942 to 1968.” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1982 MicRR), 131. Published as On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues, 1945-1968 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988; HQ1236.5.U6 H37 1988 GenColl).[back]
9. Edith Mayo and Jerry K. Frye, “The ERA: Postmortem of a Failure in Political Communication,” in Rights of Passage: The Past and Future of the ERA, Joan Hoff-Wilson, ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986; KF4758.R54 1986 LAW), 82.[back]
10. The President's Commission on the Status of Women was established under Executive Order 10980, 26 Fed. Reg. 12059, on
December 14, 1961. The commission's purpose was to assess the progress of women in the United States and to make recommendations
for “removing barriers to the full realization of women's basic rights.” An excellent collection of the
commission's reports is held by the Library in the General Collections. See United States, President's Commission on the
Status of Women, American Women: The Report of the President's Commission on the Status of Women and Other Publications of the Commission, edited by Margaret Mead and Frances Balgley Kaplan (New York: Scribner, 1965; HQ1420.A52 1965 GenColl). Five other presidential
commissions or
committees on women were created following the Kennedy administration: one each under Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford
and two under President Carter. For an account of the commissions, see Irene Tinker, ed., Women in Washington: Advocates for Public Policy (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1983; HQ1236.W638 1983 GenColl), 21-44. For commentaries on sex discrimination in education
and employment in this period, see U.S. Congress, House Committee on
Education and Labor, Special Subcommittee on Education, Discrimination against Women, Hearings, 91st Congress, 2nd sess. (Washington: GPO, 1970; KF27.E336 1970 LAW). This committee was headed by Rep. Edith Green, whose reminiscences of her long,
activist career can be found in the Association of Former Members of Congress Oral History Collection on tape (MBRS), in transcript
(MSS), and on microform (MicRR).[back]
12. Mary P. Ryan, Womanhood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present. (New York: F. Watts, 1983; HQ1410.R9 1983 GenColl), 308. During the economic and social upheavals of the 1930s, many women
were appointed to influential positions in the government, leading to impressive gains for women as policy-makers, but they
were divided over the Equal Rights Amendment. For discussions of feminists under the Roosevelt Administration, see Susan Ware,
Holding Their Own, and Joyce A. Hanson, Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women's Political Activism (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003; E185.97.B34 H36 2003 GenColl).[back]
17. U.S. Congressional Record, 91st Congress, vol. 116, part 21 (August 10-14, 1970) 27999 (LAW; MRR Alc). Replying to Martha Griffiths's opening statement,
Emanuel Celler opposed the motion to discharge the Judiciary Committee on HR 264: “What we are being asked to do is to vote
on a constitutional amendment, the consequences of which are unexamined, its meaning nondefined, and its risks uncalculated
. . . ever since Adam gave up his rib to make a woman, throughout the ages we have learned that physical, emotional, psychological
and social differences exist and dare not be disregarded . . . . The adoption of a blunderbuss amendment would erase existing
protective female legislation with the most disastrous consequences” (28000-28001).[back]
18. Senator Ervin delivered his speech against the ERA on the floor of the Senate on August 21, 1970. Note in particular his
section on “Functional Differences between Men and Women,” U.S. Congressional Record, 91st Congress, vol. 116, part 22 (August 17-31, 1970), 29670 (LAW; MRR Alc). Ervin subsequently offered a copy of his speech
in evidence at the Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, noting “On Friday, August 21, 1970, I made a speech in
the Senate on the House-passed equal rights amendment, which I called a potential destructive and self-defeating blunderbuss.
I borrowed that description from a Law Review article by Prof. Leo Kanowitz, professor of law at the University of New Mexico.”
Testimony of Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr., North Carolina, Equal Rights 1970: Hearings, 91st Cong., 2d sess., on S.J. Res. 61 and S.J. Res.
231 [before the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary], (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970; KF26.J8 1970d LAW; MRR Alc), 1-28.[back]
19. Mathews and De Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA, 36. The heavy use of speeches and writings by Sam Ervin in anti-ERA literature can be seen in the run of the Phyllis Schlafly Newsletter (Container 124, ERAmerica Records, MSS) and in Schlafly's book The Power of the Positive Woman (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House Publishers, 1977; HQ1426.S33 GenColl), reissued with an additional opening chapter as
The Power of the Christian Woman (Cincinnati, Ohio: Standard Publishing, 1981; HQ1426.S33 1981 GenColl).[back]
20. The AFL-CIO's chief lobbyist continued to speak of the “potentially destructive impact” of the ERA on women's protective
legislation in the Senate hearings. Steiner, Constitutional Inequality,
21. See the relevant portion of the testimony by Myra K. Wolfgang, vice president, Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders
International, AFL-CIO, in behalf of Michigan Women's Commission in Equal Rights 1970: Hearings ... on S.J. Res. 61 and S.J. Res. 231, 30-45.[back]
21. The first eight months in the ERA ratification process moved quickly, with twenty-two states ratifying by Thanksgiving
1972. Eight more states ratified between January and March 22, 1973, but no more that year; three in 1974; one in 1975; and
one in 1977, a total of thirty-five. Steiner, Constitutional Inequality, 55.[back]
23. Steiner, Constitutional Inequality, 57-58. Mathews and De Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA, 51. Sam Ervin's opinions and style, as well as the attitudes and arguments of proponents and opponents, can be seen in the
video Who Will Protect the Family?, a 1982 PBS feature on the unsuccessful struggle for ERA ratification in North Carolina (VBC 7099, MBRS).[back]
27. Rebecca Klatch,”Women against Feminism,” in A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America. Edited by William H. Chafe and Harvard Sitkoff (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999; E742.H57 1999 GenColl), 224-25,
and the Phyllis Schlafly Report, May and August 1977 (Container 124, ERAmerica Records, MSS).[back]
28. Asking the question “What's Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?”, Phyllis Schlafly first attacked the ERA and “women
libbers” in the Phyllis Schlafly Newsletter of February 1972 (Container 124, ERAmerica Records, folder labeled “STOP ERA and Phyllis Schlafly Report,” MSS). Following
a spirited defense of traditional family values and American women's privileged position in American society, she alleged
that the ERA would make women subject to the draft and that married women would lose their rights to support for themselves
and their children from their husbands, as well as alimony in the case of divorce. The following year (May 3, 1973), Martha
Griffiths attempted to answer some of Schlafly's arguments in a Vital History series point-counterpoint interview (RZA 760, no. 1, side A, MBRS). Schlafly's views were also discussed on the Larry King Show the day after the defeat of the ERA, July 1, 1982, when she declared that, despite laws requiring equitable treatment of
working women, “the career most women want is marriage, home, husband, and children.” (RYA 5277, MBRS).[back]
32. An example included in the ERAmerica records is Jill Newman, “The ERA—What It Would Really Do,” Women's Day, November 1979. See also Mary Schnack, “ERA: What It Will (Won't) Do for Working Women,” Working Woman's Magazine, November 1979. Many other articles both for and against passage of the ERA can be identified using periodical indexes (see
Periodical Indexes in General Collections section).[back]
34. These included: The Comprehensive Health Manpower Act of 1971, prohibiting use of federal funds for health programs which
discriminate on the basis of sex in admissions to professional schools; Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, prohibiting
sex discrimination in educational programs and activities; the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, extending coverage
of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (banning sex discrimination) to employees of federal, state, and local governments,
educational institutions, and any business or union with more than fifteen employees; the Housing and Community Development
Act of 1974, prohibiting sex discrimination in housing and credit and requiring lenders to consider the combined incomes of
husbands and wives in extending mortgage credit; the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, prohibiting discrimination based
on sex or marital status in any credit transaction; the Small Business Act Amendments of 1974, prohibiting discrimination
on the basis of sex or marital status in programs for loans and guarantees administered by the Small Business Administration;
the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, prohibiting discrimination in the federal civil service on the basis of sex; the Equal
Rights Amendment (Proposed); and the Extension of the Deadline for the Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Information
on many of these statutes may be found in the personal papers of Hawaii Representative Patsy T. Mink, described more fully
in the Manuscript Division section on Women Members of Congress.[back]
35. Mathews and De Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA, viii, describe the suspect category test's application to sex discrimination. To use the Ginsburg Papers, which are restricted,
it is necessary to apply for the donor's permission through the Manuscript Division.[back]
