Before Girls Could Play

March 16 - Today's post provided by Karen Blumenthal

 Before Girls Could Play

Forty years ago, a small band of women and men in Congress took part in a revolution. But they didn’t know it at the time.

Gymsuits in Texas circa 1970s

The political world and women activists were abuzz with efforts to pass a radical Constitutional amendment known as the Equal Rights Amendment that would end sex discrimination in America forever.  In 1972, Congress sent the amendment to the states, needing 38 to ratify it.

At practically the same time, a determined veteran Representative from Oregon, Edith Green, had a much smaller goal. She set out to end sex discrimination in schools and universities by sneaking a tiny amendment into a giant education bill that created new financial scholarships and addressed issues around racial inequality in schools. The little amendment became known by its section in the bill, Title IX, and won support from other women, like Patsy Mink of Hawaii and Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug of New York, and men like Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana.

Edith Green

After a long, bitter and hard-fought battle, the ERA fell three states short of approval by the early 1980s deadline Congress had set. By then, Edith Green’s little amendment was causing quite a ruckus.

Title IX had quickly put an end to quotas that were keeping women out of medical and law schools. But something completely unexpected also was taking place: From coast to coast, high schools and colleges that had long had well-funded sports teams for the guys now had to create sports teams for girls and women where they had been few or none. The gals were finally getting a chance to play.

It was a battle every step of the way. Female teams had to beg for space to practice and for uniforms and equipment. Coaches had to fight for fair pay.  Skirmishes regularly broke out in Congress and the courts over efforts to water down the rules.

Still, within a generation, the impact of Title IX was nothing less than spectacular. By the early 1990s, women’s participation in college sports had tripled; six times as many girls were playing high school sports as had played in 1972. At the 1996 Olympics, the “Title IX” babies—athletes born around the early 1970s—took center stage, winning gold in gymnastics, soccer, synchronized swimming, basketball and softball.

Edith Green’s little amendment had become the most significant civil rights law for girls and women since women won the right to vote in 1920.

About a decade ago, I set out to chronicle this revolution, wanting to share this little slice of women’s history with teens who had no idea how different the world had been in their mom’s lifetime. In interviews, memories were faulty—the Title IX battles ran together with so many others over women’s issues. Every detail had to be carefully double-checked.

I cared deeply about this story but I didn’t know if anyone else would. Yet every year since LET ME PLAY: The Story of Title IX was published in 2005, I get more calls and emails from young women who are fascinated and moved by the work of the women who went before them. The book remains the only real history of how this little law made such a big impact.

Yet, for all the success, Title IX’s gains still seem fragile, especially in a year when core women’s issues have faced steady political attacks.

On June 23, 2002, Title IX’s thirtieth anniversary, Rep. Patsy Mink, a long-time Title IX supporter and advocate, told Congress, “While it is wonderful that equity has become the expected norm, we must also teach each new generation that there was a time when Title IX did not exist. Further, we all need to be reminded that since Title IX was put in place by legislative body, it can always be taken away by a legislative body. We need to be vigilant. Title IX must be protected and defended to ensure that equal educational opportunities for girls and women are preserved for all generations to come.”

Three months later, she passed away. To recognize her dedication and commitment to the cause, Title IX was renamed the Patsy Takemoto Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act.

On June 23 of this year, Title IX will reach another major milestone, its fortieth anniversary of creating opportunities for women in academic fields and on athletic fields that once were closed to them. Though many of them are no longer with us, the bravery, commitment and perseverance of Edith Green and Patsy Mink and the men and women who fought with them still reverberate with every kick of the ball and swing of the bat.

Editor's Note:

Karen Blumenthal is a Dallas journalist and the author five nonfiction books for young people. Her latest books is Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different.



Margaret Chase Smith -- Independence of Thought

March 9 - Today's post provided by Marc Aronson

I have been thinking a lot about how we, all of us, are blinded by the beliefs and assumptions that shape our inner narratives -- how a story "just makes sense" not because it is true but because it feels true. I mention that because there is one slam dunk obvious candidate to be in any US or even world Women's History list and yet in many ways she has disappeared: Margaret Chase Smith. First, why she belongs, then I suggest we pause to think about why she is missing.

I stumbled on her because I was writing Master of Deceit --a life and times of J. Edgar Hoover, which, of course, took me into the McCarthy era. The striking fact about McCarthy is that he was so obviously a blowhard and a bully. Everyone could see that he would attack first, then worry about whether he had any evidence, any proof. But those tactics struck a nerve in a post-war America that had learned of Soviet spies (there actually were Soviet spies and they actually did real damage), which saw China turning Communist, and the Soviets seeming ever stronger in Europe. America, which had won the war and was ready to settle down to suburban life, had a creeping sense of fear -- fear perhaps of itself -- and a kind of rage: we beat Hitler, what is undermining our peace now? So even if McCarthy was half wrong, many felt, he might be half right -- and the egghead, fey, un-American, commies deserved what they got. We lived in bully land where to talk back to McCarthy was to court his rage against you. Who would stand up not merely to him but to the Texas oil barons who bankrolled his attacks on Senator Tydings of Maryland (who had dared to criticize him), to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, who were feeding him secrets and even writing his speeches? Just one person: Senator Margaret Chase Smith.

Senator Smith had first come to Washington as her husband's secretary when he was elected to the House representing their native state of Maine. When he died, she took his place -- but then, running in her own right, she was re-elected to the House, serving for eight years, before she ran for the Senate in 1948 and won -- becoming the first woman in US history to be elected as a senator (others had served as replacements on the deaths of their husbands) and the first woman to serve in both the House and Senate. Right there you have one reason we should know about her -- her success in politics. But then on June 1, 1950 -- just two years into her first term -- she rose on the Senate floor and challenged the bully: http://www.mcslibrary.org/program/library/declaration.htm This declaration of conscience belongs in our school curricula alongside the Gettysburg Address and the Letter from a Birmingham Jail. For, standing alone (only six of her fellow Republicans sided with her), the only woman in the Senate, at the risk of her political career (McCarthy did work to undermine and defeat her, he failed) she stated the most basic principles of Democracy. Here are a few key lines:

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism --

The right to criticize;

The right to hold unpopular beliefs;

The right to protest;

The right of independent thought.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know some one who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us doesn't? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in.

The right of independent thought -- that was her hallmark, just as she had worked to make sure women could serve in the military during World War II, and as she -- once again the first -- ran in Republican primaries in the Presidential election of 1964. Senator Smith lost that primary battle. She was not a perfect person -- the Red Scare of the 50s was also a Lavender Scare, in which people lost their jobs on the basis of the fantasy that homosexuals and lesbians were security risks, because the Soviets could blackmail them. Senator Smith participated in and supported hearings that approved of that policy (in fact there is not one single documented case of the Soviets gaining secrets by blackmailing people based on sexual orientation). She was a woman of her time -- as all of us are shaped by the beliefs of our times.

And that brings me back to where this post began: Senator Smith is such an obvious exemplar: a leader, a pioneer, a brave, eloquent speaker for the best principles of our democracy, the woman who stood up to the bully who intimidated the men. And yet she has, largely, disappeared from our memory. Why? I suggest that we honor her for the principle of independent thought -- a New England lady, a Republican, an individualist who insisted we all have the right to think and speak as individuals -- she is as much at  the heart of Women's History as any civil rights or labor leader. She stood for the best in American values -- you stand alone and speak your mind.

Marc Aronson, Ph.D.

Editor's Note:

Marc Aronson has a doctorate in American History and teaches in the MLIS program at Rutgers. His most recent book is Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies. You may find him blogging at Nonfiction Matters.

Me and Hillary

MARCH 2 Today's post is provided by Kathleen Krull



ME and HILLARY

By Kathleen Krull

          Night after night, as I sleep in San Diego, the women on my bookshelves consort.  Goddesses and warrior women, Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, 1970's feminist manifestos and classic novels by women, books on issues from periods to becoming a nun, biographies of women good, bad, ugly, and stunning…. books I just had to own, whether the money was there or not.  One could assume that my main interest in life is women’s history-- an assumption supported by Lives of Extraordinary Women, A Woman for President, Marie Curie, Wilma Unlimited, and others -- but it’s part of my broader focus on lives of the dead.

          One night, November 16, 2007, wide-awake and out to dinner with an editor in New York, I hatched what is possibly my oddest book, a picture book biography about someone alive, kicking, and in that day’s headlines.  After watching the presidential debate in Las Vegas the night before, I was so jazzed by how sure of herself she was: Hillary Clinton, surrounded on stage by men, articulating her positions with precision, plus poise to spare: "People are not attacking me because I'm a woman; they're attacking me because I'm ahead."

          To me she looked like a sure-fire winner, and that night I was thrilled to propose the first children’s book out there-- a book that would actually make money!-- about our possible first woman President.   Plenty of other countries have been helmed by women -- what is our problem?

          The next day, on the train to Baltimore, I remembered reading somewhere that she had originally dreamed of being an astronaut and that NASA had rebuffed her (no girls allowed, back in 1961).  Now I had a visual to work with, plus an opening line -- "Once there was a girl who wanted to fly" -- with a metaphor to convey the barriers she's overcome in her distinguished career.  Eureka-- Hillary Rodham Clinton: Dreams Taking Flight. 

          The question I am most often asked about this book is whether I’ve met Hillary.  I’d love to say we go way back - she did grow up in Park Ridge, Illinois, not far from where I grew up in Wilmette.  No, I haven’t met her, but in my research I blitzed through every book that’s been published about her (including Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary-- as if there were only 30).  I found more and more that girls AND boys could appreciate about her story, and the surge of excitement fueled me during the crash schedule to get the book out by 2008.

          By that time, of course, history had intervened with my dream of a woman president and a bestseller, not that I was complaining about President Obama, especially after he appointed her Secretary of State.  I got a letter from her praising the book and saying vaguely that she’d like to meet someday. 



This is how close we were



          Then, in 2009, by a fluke, I was literally a few feet away from her at a State Department function.  Perhaps we could have our special moment of connection at last.  She hosted the event-- witty and radiant--but her schedule that day was way harsher than mine, the weight of the world almost literally on her shoulders.  As she dashed out of the room for some world crisis and left the hosting to an underling, I nearly interrupted the formalities by blurting, “Goodbye, Hillary,” with a wave and a meaningful smile….



          But revising the book?  I’m in.  So how about it in 2012, HRC???