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THERE
can be little doubt that the American Dream was born at
Plymouth Harbor
,
Massachusetts
, in December 1620 when the Pilgrims arrived aboard the Mayflower.
For the 101 sea-weary refugees seeking freedom from repression in England,
and the right to build a new life in a free society, the vast expanse of
the American continent promised unlimited opportunity.
Though in fact Jamestown,
Virginia, had been settled some 13 years earlier, Plymouth Rock became the
first truly American community. The adventurers who left England to
establish Jamestown had been strictly male. Historian Dr. Alf J. Mapp Jr.
believes that in 1607 "...it was thought that women had no place in
the grim and often grisly business of subduing a continent."
Despite the harsh living conditions in the New World, the men of Jamestown
soon recognized a need for what had become known as the "weaker
sex" in traditional English society. One year after the founding of
Jamestown, Thomas Forrest's wife arrived with her maid, Anne Burras. They
were probably the first non-native women to make their homes in the New
World.
Ten years later in 1619,
the Virginia Company came to believe that without further efforts to build
a co-ed community, Jamestown might not long continue to flourish. In
response, 90 volunteer "spinsters" were shipped to the New World
from England. All were free to marry the lonely adventurers at Jamestown,
but only after her would-be husband paid a requisite 120 pounds of tobacco
in order to defray the cost of his mail order bride.
In contrast, the 18 women
who numbered among the 102 Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth Rock in 1620,
came to the
New World
together with their husbands and children as contiguous families. Their
sojourn to a new life in the Land of Opportunity was much like the
journey their great-great granddaughters would make centuries later as
they crossed the vast plains of the American west in covered wagons.
As any study of the rights
and roles of women in world history will quickly reveal that out of sheer
necessity, when times are tough, tradition bows to need. During crisis,
women have been not only allowed but encouraged to step outside what would
normally be considered an appropriate
role.
Women arriving in the
American colonies did find freedoms and rights not accorded them in
Britain where, until 1851 a woman could not even be the legal guardian of
her own children and could not retain her own property after marriage.
While an unmarried woman (spinster) or widow could own property, enter
into a contract, sue or be sued, under the common law of England, when she
married both she and all she possessed came under her husband's control.
As early as 1619 with
regard to the Jamestown settlement, the Virginia Assembly petitioned that
in addition to the "male children…and of all others begotten in
Virginia," land grants be issued to women as well because "…in
a new plantation it is not known whether man or woman be more
necessary." Similar new rights were extended at Plymouth Rock where
women had the right to buy, own and sell property. A widow could not be
legally written out of her husband's will, and she was guaranteed a full
third of the family's property upon his death.
This, and many other rights
and privileges enjoyed by women in the New World should not be
misinterpreted to indicate that in the settlement of the United States,
the cause of women's rights had taken a leap forward. The Reverend John
Robinson, a leader among the original Pilgrims believed what while women
were equal under God, their roles were defined by nature and scripture as
subservient to men. He referred to women as "weaker vessels" and
taught women to "be subject to their husbands." Husbands were
admonished to discipline their wives like they did their children.
In June 1776 Thomas
Jefferson penned the words "We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal…." Quite obviously however, the 56
men who signed their names at the bottom of that Declaration interpreted
the word "men" literally and not figuratively. Equal rights
under God applied ONLY to WHITE men; men of color were seen as inferior
and women were deemed as "weaker vessels." Quite obviously John
Adams, one of the 5 men assigned by the Continental Congress to draft and
refine a Declaration of Independence, had failed to heed the admonition
from his own wife on March 31, 1776, that: "If particular care and
attention is not paid to the ladies (in the formation of a new
government), we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold
ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or
representation."
The "rebellion"
of which Abigail Adams spoke was in fact, forestalled by the much larger
rebellion that became the American Revolution. During that 4-year period
of crisis, as throughout history, a male-oriented society welcomed the
needed help of women, Blacks, Indians, mercenaries, and just about anyone
else who could contribute. During the war Mrs. Mary Ludwig Hays became one
of our country's first female combat heroes. While not expected to fight
in combat, women commonly served as water bearers to carry water to sate
the thirst of men who fired cannons and occasionally to cool the hot
cannons themselves. When Mrs. Hays husband was wounded she bravely stepped
into a man's combat role, continuing to fire the cannon.
While Mary Hays is perhaps
the best known of the women heroes of the American Revolution, her own
action was preceded more than a year by the actions of Margaret Cochran
Corbin. Mrs. Corbin was living with her husband John at Fort Washington,
New York, when the post was attacked by British and Hessian troops on
November 16, 1776. Margaret assisted her husband in operating a cannon
and, when he was killed, she continued to load and fire the gun alone
until she was herself severely wounded. Shrapnel wounds to her chest,
shoulder and jaw left her with permanent disabilities, including the loss
of the use of one arm. In 1779 the Continental Congress granted her
"half the pay and allowances of a soldier in service," making
her the first American woman to receive a pension from the U.S. Government
as a disabled solider.
Following the successful
American Revolution, the all-male leadership of the new United States
established a Constitution, enhanced it with the Bill of Rights to
specifically detail the liberties and rights afforded to Americans, while
ignoring any specific provisions for the rights of either ethnic
minorities or women. For the next two centuries the issue of Women's
rights and the rights of minority races would be inexorably entwined.
At the turn of the century
President John Adams and his wife Abigail became the first to inhabit the
Presidential home in the new capitol of Washington, D.C. For her
admonition 24 years earlier to "remember the ladies," First Lady
Adams is often considered to be America's first feminist, identified as
such by comments in her two letters of 1776. A more detailed study of her
life fails to uncover any overt activism for women's rights, and the title
"feminist" seems unrealistic. Abigail Adams was an Abolitionist
who also believed in equal educational opportunities for both boys and
girls. She capably tended to the Adams estate as "head of house"
with authority during her husband's long absences to tend the affairs of
state. Webster defines feminism as:
1: the theory of the
political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
2: organized activity
on behalf of women's rights and interests
In light of the first
precept Abigail Adams was certainly a feminist. When measured against the
second, she certainly was not. Historians
may long continue the debate as to the personality of our second First
Lady. What is not debatable is the prophetic nature of her May 7, 1776,
reply to her husband's negative response to her earlier "remember the
ladies" letter when she noted:
"We
(women) have it in our power, not only to free ourselves, but to subdue
our masters (men), and without violence, throw both your natural and legal
authority at our feet."
The revolution Abigail
Adams warned might come lasted well into the twentieth century. It ended
with a partial victory in 1920 with the words "The right of citizens
of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of sex." In the process of
achieving that partial victory, American women proved themselves to be as
determined, astute, and resourceful as any enemy the male-dominated
United States of America was ever to face.
At the mid-point of the
19th Century the activism of American women who were disaffected by the
glaring inequities between White men and both Blacks and women, morphed
from an inconvenient nuisance to an unavoidable confrontation. An
innocent-enough tea party among five
New York
women on the afternoon of
July 13, 1848
, might well be remembered as the "Boston Tea Party of Women's
Liberation." During the course of typical tea party conversation, at
the urging of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a small group of ladies planned a
convention for the following week at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls
and published a small announcement about it in the Seneca County
Courier.
Nearly 300 interested
persons, including 40 men, gathered to the following week to consider a Declaration
of Sentiments Stanton had written in much the same fashion as the U.S.
Declaration of Independence. Where the U.S. Declaration of Independence
listed 27 grievances against King George however, Stanton's Declaration
of Sentiments listed only 15 grievances against a male-dominated
American society and political system.
Following debate on these
grievances, all but the point of allowing women to vote were approved and
ratified by 68 women and 32 men. Among
the men who acknowledged the National injustice against women was the
noted Black orator Frederick Douglass whose "North Star"
newspaper published below its masthead the statement, "Right is of
no sex, truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all--and all are
brethren." When the more traditional preachers, press, and
politicians began to ridicule the Seneca Falls Convention, Douglass wrote
in his newspaper, "A discussion of the rights of animals would be
regarded with far more complacency by many of what are called the wise and
the good of our land, than would be a discussion of the rights of
woman."
Over the next decade the
issues of Slavery and Suffrage became the burning issues that stirred our
nation. Both were vividly illustrated on June 23, 1855, when a 19-year old
Black woman killed her owner, Robert Newsome, while resisting his sexual
advances. That young slave, pregnant with her second child, had endured
nearly 5 years of rape by her slave-master. Tried for murder in
Missouri
vs. Celia, the court ruled
that a Black slave was property without the right of self defense, even
against her master's acts of rape. Celia was executed by hanging on
December 18, 1855.
Although Slavery became the
burning issue of the day, from 1948 until the start of the Civil War,
women made subtle progress in their march towards equality in America.
In 1848 Elizabeth Blackwell
was enrolled at Geneva Medical College of New York, though her acceptance
was the result of a fluke. School administrators did not want to risk
rejecting a woman applicant so they asked the medical students if THEY
wanted to approve her application. The students thought that a rival
school had submitted the application as a joke and voted to admit
Blackwell. Graduating first in her class of 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell
became the first woman in the United States to earn a medical degree,
though she was subsequently barred from practicing in most hospitals.
Two years later a group of
Quaker physicians and clergy established the world's first medical school
for women at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. In 1855 the
University of Iowa became the first state institution of higher learning
to admit women. That same year a young woman named Mary Edwards Walker
also graduated from medical school, the only woman in her class from
Syracuse Medical College. Within a decade the medical skills of many of
these women were greatly needed as our nation's struggle with the issue of
slavery became a Civil War.
American women, both in the
Union
and the Confederacy, bore many of the burdens of the war between the
states. Ladies Aid Societies did everything from knitting socks for
soldiers to conducting drives to stockpile needed medical supplies. In
hospitals as well as near the battlefields, civilian nurses were in much
demand. Among the most famous was 30-year old Clarissa Harlowe Barton.
Better known in history as Clara Barton, following the First Battle of
Bull Run in April 1861, as a civilian nurse she put together an agency to
collect and distribute supplies to wounded soldiers. Under a special
dispensation from General William Hammond she was even authorized to ride
in army ambulances to treat soldiers en route from battlefield to the
hospital. By the summer of 1862 her admirable work resulted in her being
authorized to take supplies and her nursing skills not only onto the
battlefield, but even to travel behind the lines to minister to wounded
men. By 1864 she was appointed by General Benjamin Butler to the title of
"lady in charge" for all front-line hospitals for the Army of
the James.
In addition to civilian
nurses like Clara Barton, women on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line also
served in uniform in combat roles. As had done a few women during the
American Revolution, these women combatants served while disguised as men
and under assumed identities. Both the Union and the Confederate Armies
forbade the enlistment of women into military service, but it is estimated
that as many as 400 women donned male garb and assumed masculine names in
order to enlist as soldiers. Among these was Sarah Emma Edmonds who served
as a male nurse and also as a daring spy under the name Franklin Thompson.
She was later the only woman ever admitted to membership in the Civil War
Veterans' organization, the Grand Army of the Republic.
There can be little doubt
however, that the most colorful of the women veterans of the Civil War was
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, the 1855 graduate of Syracuse Medical College.
Serving first as a nurse and later as a civilian contract surgeon after
the Army refused to enlist her, Dr. Walker performed heeling deeds both in
hospitals early in the war, and later on the fields of battle during some
of the fiercest fighting.
After two years of
volunteer service as a nurse, in September 1863 Dr. Walker was appointed
assistant surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland, a position normally
filled by a (male) commissioned medical officer. Dr. Walker fashioned for
herself a modified officer's uniform with yellow trouser stripe and a
green surgeon's sash, thereafter appearing for all practical purposes as
an Army officer. Her one fashion concession to her gender was an unsightly
straw hat topped off with a colorful ostrich feather.
Dr. Walker was later
appointed as assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry and according to
credible accounts, occasionally performed services as a spy behind
Confederate lines. On April 10, 1964, while serving near the
Georgia-Tennessee border she was captured in full uniform by soldiers of
the Confederate Army. After more than five months as a Prisoner of War she
was liberated in an exchange of prisoners on August 12. Her repatriation
provided one of her proudest moments; for the rest of her life Dr. Walker
would frequently recall the day she was traded man-for-man for a
Confederate officer.
While historical accounts
often refer to Dr. Mary Walker as having been nominated
for the Medal of Honor, the subsequent award of that Medal was actually
more of a slight than a compliment. Following the war and her own
admirable and even valorous performance of duty, Dr. Walker requested to
be commissioned as a U.S. Army major. Not only would such an act have been
unprecedented however, it was illegal. By statute, no woman was allowed to
be enlisted in any branch of U.S. Military service, much less commissioned
as an officer. In hopes of pacifying the valiant woman veteran,
President Andrew Johnson opted to award Dr. Walker the Medal of Honor
under a citation that read:
"Whereas
it appears from official reports that Dr. Mary E. Walker, a graduate of
medicine, "has rendered valuable service to the Government and her
efforts have been earnest and untiring in a variety of ways," and
that she was assigned to duty and served as an assistant surgeon in charge
of female prisoners at Louisville, Ky., upon the recommendation of Major
Generals Sherman and Thomas, and faithfully served as contract surgeon in
the service of the United States, and has devoted herself with much
patriotic zeal to the sick and wounded soldiers, both in the field and
hospitals, to the detriment of her own health, and has also endured
hardships as a prisoner of war four months in a Southern prison while
acting as contract surgeon; and
"Whereas
by reason of her not being a commissioned officer in the military service,
a brevet or honorary rank cannot, under existing laws, be conferred upon
her; and
"Whereas
in the opinion of the President an honorable recognition of her services
and sufferings should be made:
"It
is ordered, That a testimonial thereof shall be hereby made and given to
the said Dr. Mary E. Walker, and that the usual medal of honor for
meritorious services be given her."
Before her Civil War
service Dr. Walker had always been something of an eccentric, and a woman
ahead of her time who refused to be "boxed into" a
male-dominated society. Beyond her precedent-setting graduation from
medical school, as an ardent advocate in the Suffrage movement she
objected to traditional women's garb and embraced Bloomers. When she
married in 1856 she retained her maiden name.
Following her Civil War
service Dr. Walker continued her advocacy for women's rights, dressed only
in men's suits (complete with top-hat and gloves and adorned with her
Medal of Honor.) The only concession she made to her gender was a red rose
tucked into her vest. She was arrested on more than one occasion for
"impersonating a man," and at one trial defended herself with
the reminder that she had the right to "dress as I please in a free
America whose tented fields I have served for four years in the cause of
human freedom."
In 1917 an Army Board of
Generals was tasked with reviewing all awards of the Medal of Honor, based
upon reports some had been frivolously awarded. More than 800 medals had
been granted to the members of one Civil War regiment as incentive to
remain on duty for three days after their enlistment expired during the
same period as the Gettysburg battle. (None of these volunteers saw
combat, but were held in reserve.) A total of 911 Medals of Honor were
revoked by the Board, including 905 deemed unwarranted. Among the
remaining six revoked medals was Dr. Mary Walker's award. She and five
civilian scouts including Buffalo Bill Cody were instructed to
return their medals. As a military award, it had been decided that the
Medal of Honor was not authorized to civilian volunteers.
Thereafter Dr. Walker
dressed only in black, proclaiming she had been widowed by the country she
had served. She refused to return her Medal of Honor and wore it daily
during two-years of unsuccessful visits to the Capitol to lobby to have
her award reinstated. During one of those visits she fell on the Capitol
steps, sustaining injuries from which she never recovered. She died at age
86 on February 21, 1919. Not until 1977, nearly half-a-century after her
death did Congress act to restore her Medal of Honor. In U.S. military
history she remains to this day, the only woman ever awarded our country's
highest military honor.
The Civil War DID at last
settle the issue of slavery in America. The 13th Amendment to
the Constitution specified that "Neither slavery or involuntary
servitude…shall exist within the United States." That Amendment did
NOT however, solve the problems of inequities in either rights or
opportunities for ethnic minorities or for women.
The 14th
Amendment, ratified in 1868, defined citizenship as "All persons born
or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof." This second of the Reconstruction Amendments
established the rights of every American citizen to due process of law and
to equal protection under the law. It was this "Equal
Protection" clause that became the basis of the 1954 Brown v. Board
of Education Supreme Court Case that integrated America's schools and
helped to launch the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
In 1870 the third Reconstruction
Amendment was ratified when the 15th Amendment addressed
the right of Blacks and other ethnic minorities to vote. That Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution states: "The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by
any State on account of race, color, or previous condition or
servitude." Conspicuous by its absence in the 15th Amendment is any
reference to the right of Americans to vote regardless of gender.
Throughout the
Reconstruction and into the Industrial Revolution, American women
encouraged by pre-Civil War successes, fought for equal rights in America
with only limited success. One primary change was the welcoming of women
into the industrial work force, the opportunity at last to work like a
man. Most of these jobs however were not the positions that offered a
meaningful career; they were low-paid, unskilled assembly-line or
sweat-shop positions. Any woman attempting to step beyond those boundaries
was promptly ushered back into a woman's "proper role in American
society."
In 1869 Myra Bradwell
applied for admission to the Illinois State Bar citing State Statute
authorizing admittance of any "any adult of good character and with
sufficient training to be admitted." Rejected on the basis of gender,
when she sued in Illinois for proper admittance she was again denied. The
court noted that:
·
Women
should not be allowed to practice the law.
·
Bradwell's admission would open the
flood gates and many more women would want to follow in her example.
·
Brutal cases would not be appropriate
for a woman to handle.
·
Admitting women would have a negative
impact on the administration office.
Undeterred, Bradwell
appealed the Illinois decision to the U.S. Supreme court. In an 8-1
decision in 1873, the Supreme Court upheld the Illinois ruling in Bradwell
v. Illinois, affirming the right of the state to exclude women from
law practice. In concurring with the majority opinion Justice Bradley
wrote: "The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill
the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the
Creator."
If in fact there existed
any measure of equality for American women in the latter half of the 19th
century it was on the frontier in the American West. There, due the sheer
demand of the terrain and associated dangers, it was impractical to
confine women to the traditional benign
offices of wife and mother. Only a strong woman could survive the
rugged wagon train odyssey into this untamed geographical area, where she
would be expected to work with the men, endure the associated hardships of
life on the frontier, and perhaps even take up a rifle to defend her home
and family.
While in general men of the
frontier West deferred to women with such Eastern courtesies as a
"tip of the hat," and while the cowboy code demanded every
effort to shelter and protect the "fairer sex", women were
generally not viewed as the "weaker sex." Quickly men learned
that the same lady who donned dress and bonnet on Sunday to take the
family to a rural church, could return home to dress in pants and work the
farm from sun-up to sun-down the rest of the week. As had the first
Pilgrim women, and as had the daring women who served in America's wars,
in the Wild West women again demonstrated that when they were needed and
allowed to do so, they could rise to any demand and be equal to their male
counterparts.
Perhaps this helps to
account for the fact that as early as 1869 women were allowed to vote in
Wyoming Territory, and the following year women were allowed to vote in
the Territory of Utah. It would take fifty years and passage of the 19th
Amendment to extend that right to most of the remaining women across
America. Given an opportunity in the West, women demonstrated they were
not only strong and capable to the challenge of settling the new land, but
that they were capable leaders. Four years before the 19th Amendment was
ratified in 1920, Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman ever
elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. On January 5, 1925, a
Wyoming woman became our first woman governor when Nellie T. Ross was
elected to finish the term of her deceased husband.
The 72-year period from the
Seneca Falls Convention until ratification of the 19th Amendment on August
18, 1920, is often referred to as the First Wave of Feminism in America.
The Amendment itself reads simply: "The
right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." But
for the word "sex" that replaced the words "race, color, or
previous condition or servitude," it was identical to the 15th
Amendment ratified fifty years earlier. It marked the first time the word
"sex" appeared in any of our Nation's official documents.
Evn as the abolition of
slavery and passage of the Reconstruction Amendments failed to guarantee
the civil rights of all Americans regardless of race for more than a
century, passage of the 19th Amendment while a step forward,
fell far short of the goals outlined at the Seneca Falls Convention. Both
issues would resurface in the turbulent 60s. As the two inequities in a
free society had been linked together historically, they would once again
be redefined nearly simultaneously by a new generation. Regarding the
rights of ethnic minorities, the Civil Rights movement would address the
shortcomings of the earlier Abolitionist movement. Regarding the rights of
women, there would arise a second rebellion, often called the Second
Wave of Feminism in
America
.
When the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 was introduced in the United States Congress, it was the most
sweeping effort in history to complete the work of the American Civil War.
Despite its noble ideals of American equality, it faced considerable
opposition, especially among Southern Democrats. After hearings in the
House Judiciary Committee, the bill was reported out of committee in
November 1963 and referred to the House Rules Committee. Virginia Democrat
Howard W. Smith, who served as Chairman, gave every indication of keeping
the sweeping Civil Rights Bill bottled up indefinitely. In 1957 Smith had
responded to similar legislation with the comment, "The Southern
people have never accepted the colored race as a race of people who had
equal intelligence…as the white people of the South."
Within the month President
John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas and President Lyndon Johnson, who
had long served in the U.S. House before becoming Vice President under
Kennedy, personally put pressure on Congress to move the bill forward.
Because of the House's "twenty-one day rule," Smith was forced
to send the Civil Rights Bill to the floor for a vote.
Two days before that
historic vote Congressman Smith rose to offer amendment to the wording of
Title VII granting equal opportunity in employment regardless "of
such individual's race, color, religion, or national origin." Smith
offered to include the word "sex" among the protected classes,
evoking immediate laughter in the chambers and an interesting and humorous
discussion thereafter. Later the media would refer to that day as
"Ladies Day in the House of Representatives."
History is divided on the
motivation behind Congressman Smith's actions, of which no clear answer
was ever forthcoming from the man himself. Some historians give Smith the
benefit of the doubt, suggesting that his well-documented support of
women's rights despite his opposition to integration and Civil Rights for
Blacks, motivated him to include the word "sex" out of a sincere
desire to include women among the classes of American citizens afforded
new protections under the bill. Other historians, including many of
Smith's political colleagues, saw the move as a shrewd, final attempt to
scuttle the Civil Rights Act. These argue that by including
"sex" in the language, Smith was offering an amendment that
would raise considerable ridicule--which it did--and thereby make the Bill
unattractive to the members of Congress. Whatever his motivation, when the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a
vote of 290 to 130, the "ladies were remembered" at last in the
U.S. Congress. Seven months later after passing the Senate by a vote of 73
to 27, President Johnson signed it into law on July 2, 1964.
Three years before the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 set forth that all Americans regardless of race
or gender were entitled to equal opportunity in employment, a 14-year old
Chicago girl who was enamored with American entry into the space race
wrote to NASA asking how she might become an astronaut. The curt reply she
received advised that "Girls are not being recruited by the nation's
space program."
"It had never crossed
my mind up until that point that there might be doors closed to me simply
because I was a girl," she later said of that experience. Though the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 was intended to open those and other doors, not
until 1977 was a woman admitted to the male-dominated NASA program other
than jobs behind the scenes. That first woman astronaut was NOT the
Chicago girl who had been rebuffed in a 1961 letter, for Hillary Rodham
left behind her dreams of flying into space to pursue other career goals.
The slowness of this
legislated change aside, young women graduating from high schools and
colleges in the 1960s found themselves empowered by new laws that granted
them increased opportunities. They in turn, refused to be limited by
traditional roles in American society. Among a generation that was
militantly vocal for Civil Rights and in opposition to the war in Vietnam,
young women took up an anthem subsequently echoed in Helen Reddy's 1972
hit song that began: "I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big
to ignore, and I know too much to go back an' pretend. 'Cause I've heard
it all before, and I've been down there on the floor, no one's ever gonna
keep me down again."
The rebellion of a new
generation of American women throughout the Defining Generation was more
than a battle against prejudice and inequity--it was the struggle against
tradition and roles established not only in culture, but perceived to be
reinforced by the Bible. Thus the so-called "feminist" young
women and their older leadership were often portrayed as godless
insurrectionists bent on destroying the fabric of the American family.
While many of these women were sincere, many even loyal church-going young
ladies, their cause was not always helped by the more militant and extreme
among them.
In 1968 some of the more
radical of the Women's Liberationists staged a demonstration during the
Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They smuggled in a
banner reading "WOMEN'S LIBERATION" and sat in the front row of
the balcony, unfurling it even as Miss America made her farewell speech.
They shouted "Freedom for Women," and "No More Miss
America" while releasing stink bombs before security could hustle
them out.
During that demonstration,
women outside the hall had been encouraged to bring bras and girdles to
discard into a large trash can. Such restrictive garments represented the
repression many women felt and the discarding of them was something of a
political expression. There is no evidence that women removed these
articles of clothing during the demonstration; they were encouraged to
bring them from home in a symbolic gesture. There is further no record of
a single bra or girdle being ceremoniously burned, but the incident gave
rise to a perception, believed to this day, that the feminists of the
1960s demonstrated against repression by removing and burning their bras.
The burning of draft cards
during demonstrations against the Vietnam War was a common form of protest
in the 1960s. The practice was looked upon with great concern and disdain
not only by an older generation who had answered the call of duty in World
War II, but by many patriotic young men and women still in school. By
tying the activist women's movement to the radical anti-war movement, and
by linking bra-burning and draft-card burning, it was easy to discredit a
woman's movement that had many valid points. Despite the fact that there
exists no credible evidence of ANY bra-burning crusades in the 1960s, the
fabrication of such acts became a means of making the women's movement
look radically un-American. One Illinois state legislator, Thomas Hanahan
of rural McHenry, once referred to women of the era as "braless,
brainless broads." In most cases, he was wrong on all counts.
In 1972 an Equal Rights
Amendment (E.R.A.) to the Constitution passed the U.S. Congress and was
remanded to the various states for the needed 3/4th plurality required for
ratification. By 1980 thirty-five states ratified, and Illinois remained
the only major industrial state not among the supporters. Pressure from
proponents and opponents of the E.R.A. concentrated on applying political
pressure in Chicago. At a large rally there, female E.R.A. opponents led
by Phyllis Schlafly passed out home-baked bread to Illinois legislators symbolizing
the wifely services they contended were threatened by the amendment. Meanwhile,
supporters applied their own brand of pressure.
Lois Anne Rosen of Chicago
confronted Robert Krska, who represented her Illinois District in the
State Legislature, in the corridor. She asked, "How can you be an
American and be against equality?"
In a weak attempt at humor
Krska mumbled, "Maybe we shouldn't have given you (women) the
vote," and then slipped away through the back hallways.
Fifty years after the
turbulent 60s there still is no Equal Rights Amendment to guarantee that:
"Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by
the United States or by any State on account of sex." The United
States remains one of the very few democracies in the world that has never
elected a woman to its highest office (president or prime minister). Even
so, centuries of tradition regarding the role of women in American society
were rejected and redefined in the brief decade from mid-1960 to mid-1970,
the period now called the Second Wave of American Feminism. When
unleashed, it became a Tidal Wave for long needed change.
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