Struggle for equality in education. Without further ado, would you welcome Anne Gardiner perkins, the author. Can you get us started by telling us a little bit about your book, yale meets women. Absolutely. And the history of coeducation in this country. Coeducation in the ivy league in particular. Terrific. Thank you so much, mark. This is so exciting. Over the next hour we are all going to explore together that moment in americas history when yale and its peers, when americas most prestigious colleges, finally admitted women students. For those of you who havent read the book yet, that moment was just 50 years ago. Close enough that we can touch it, which is why we are so lucky tonight to be able to include elizabeth spawn and connie roster, two of yells first women undergraduates, in our program. But before i begin, two thanks are in order. First of all too mark schmidt and the museum whove been terrific sponsors. Its delightful to work with you, mark. I know that in my community how important independent bookstores are. Independent bookstores have also taken a hit economically over the last three months. I would really encourage you to support your local independent bookstores. All of their books are available online. Mark, i will give you a brief overview to give you a context of this history. And then connie, elizabeth and i will talk for about a half hour. Think about it as watching a live interview with two of yells first women undergraduates. We will then open it up to questions and look to close right on time at 8 00. We will see how that goes. Lets turn back to 1969 when those first women students arrived at yale. Yale needs women is the story of those first women undergraduates. They arrived to a campus that had been all male for the previous 268 years. They were outnumbered seven to one by their male classmates. Dont think coeducation is 50 50 or even close to it like it is now. Yale put in place a gender quoted that limited the number of women graduates. They wanted to be able to admit as many men as possible. Those young women students dont have women faculty to look after them either. Of yales 407 tenured faculty members in 1969, just three were women. But of the dozens of women i interviewed in writing this book, i was struck really again and again by their persistence and courage and buy their creativity. If we think of september 19th, 1969, in some ways its really been reminding me of our time right now when lots of individuals were speaking out against longstanding injustice. The vietnam war was raging as was the protest against it. The black Power Movement was changing how americans saw race. The stonewall riots had just happened right before those first women students arrived. It was sort of showing people the discrimination faced by gay and transgender people. Its at that moment that those first women under graduates at yale arrived like connie and elizabeth. They seem to give you some more context, just 7 of u. S. Doctors in 1960 set 1969 were women. Just 3 of u. S. Lawyers and just 2 of the members of congress. Discrimination against Women College students, faculty and administrators was perfectly legal. If you think yale was the only college that was turning women away at that time, you should think again. It really is the entire top tier of american colleges and universities with few exceptions. Seven of the eight ivy league schools. Even to public universities. It almost reads like a list of sort of whos who. When yale finally announces that is going coed, the news is so shocking that the New York Times plays in on the front page. Ten months later, those first women students arrive. Yet if yells president had had its way, yale would have never admitted women at all. So what were those first women students like . The New York Times called them super women, but most of them were just teenagers. Some were wealthy, but others had to patch together the tuition through summer jobs and Financial Aid to work on campus. Most of them were white, but 40 of those first women students at yale college were black. 13 were Asian American. Three were latina. They were smart and they were tough. That is how yale picked them. Yale looked at first year for women who played on sports teams. Women who had traveled abroad. Women who had endured some sort of hardship. Women who had lots of brothers. I interviewed one of the two administrators who selected that first class of women and yale. I will never forget what he told me. There was no point in taking a timid woman and putting her in this environment. That was because it could crush you. So they were smart and they were tough. Tonight, you get to hear from two of those women, connie royster, constants royster, and elizabeth spahn. Connie and elizabeth arrive at yale in the fall of 1969 as sophomore transfer students. Yelled took a group of freshman women that first year, a group of sophomore transfers and a group of junior transfers. Connie had transferred from Weekend College here in massachusetts and elizabeth from George Washington university in washington d. C. Both of them graduated right on time in 1972 and both went on to become lawyers. Elizabeth worked as the professor of american constitutional law at new England School of law in boston. She lectured broadly both nationally and internationally throughout her career. Connie had a distinguished legal career in new york city before returning to yell as the Development Director at yells divinity school. Connie, why dont i begin with you. Just an observation. From many of the first women students arriving at yale, it was like arriving on a foreign planet. Between it being all male and for many of the wealth of the place was really overwhelming. Many are coming from small towns or the west coast. New haven and yale seemed very foreign. But for you, it felt more like being at home. Wanted to tell us a little bit about that . Sure. It was very much like coming home. Indeed, i was born and raised in new haven. Although i had been away. So new haven was hometown to me. The church that i grew up in was just a couple of blocks up whaley avenue. I went to new haven Public Schools up through the ninth grade, more or less. I then went away to boarding school. I went to england and then a year and we can, so it was like coming home. Moreover, my family had worked in yale fraternities for, at that point, half a century at least. My maternal side had emigrated to new haven at the beginning of the 19 hundreds and immediately started working in the fraternities along fraternity row, if any of you have gone to yale, you will know what im talking about. Fraternity row on york street starting with wolfs head and fence club and data and data. They were all managed by my uncles and cousins and so there was a long history of my family being at yale between my grandfather who was the shift at skull and bones. I knew new haven and i knew yale very well. Coming back to new haven, my mother and father, my sister lived just outside new haven. He had moved out to the suburbs when, while i was away at boarding school. Soft and coming back, my cousins and uncles were still in management at the fraternities, so i would ride my bicycle through fraternity row, and they would come out and greet me and say how is your how are you doing . It was a very protective feeling and so i was literally coming home and feeling very good about it . Connie, youre grandfather was no longer living when you were accepted, but wasnt there a story about one of your aunts that said to you about the hat . That is true. First of all, as a woman coming to yale, no one ever thought that women were ever going to go to yale, and lets face it i, certainly not an African American. It was totally unheard of. When i was accepted, one of my aunts said to me that my grandfather, and i was a favorite granddaughter, my aunt said youre grandfather is rolling over in his grave thinking about his granddaughter going to yale. As a little girl i was going over with my parents to help them serve meals that big occasions. We would all go, because everybody had to go. Everybody had to help i, so i would crawl around on the floor in the kitchen and he was always so pleased and happy about the grandchildren. She just thought he is rolling over with joy that his granddaughter was at yale. Elizabeth, you and connie were roommates that first year. Here you come from illinois. Can you tell me a little bit about the story of how the two of you met . Dont you want to hear about my background as well . Absolutely we could not be more opposite. She was coming home and felt safe and protected, and i was an alien from a different planet. I came from the midwest. I come from a small town in the middle of illinois. I went to a public school. Not an elite boarding school. My family did not know i had applied to yield. I didnt know i had applied to yale. My roommate said she had applied for me. I thought yale was in boston. My family did not want me to go to yale, and when i arrived i was just dropped off in the courtyard and lugged my one suitcase up the stairs and sat in this empty room. There was no furniture. There was not a chair. There was no furniture. And connie comes in with her entourage, her parents, and they immediately begin furnishing the place. They take us to the Salvation Army and we find furniture. Connie knew what she was doing. I had no clue. Conte felt safe and protected. I felt unsafe. A lot we could not be more opposite, and yet when we stood in that living room, she walked in the door and it was one of those moments i think almost all of us have had, the french call it a krutika. Where you just know this is my best friend . This is going to be my best friend forever. I think she has always been my best friend. And i know she still is my best friend. We became bonded in a way that i dont really know how to explain except im sure most of you had that experience. Two more opposite people and yet we did bond and for that i will always be grateful. Wonderful. Connie, you come to yale interested in the arts, interested in drama. You get involved in the theater there, which was very unusual, because many of the Extracurricular Activities at yale, either women were not allowed at all or they were sort of given the position given some of the leftist groups, not given leadership roles. Can you tell us what it was like in the Theater Community . I came to yale. I did not know that that was going to me my place except that i came with that background. I had gone to a boarding school where the arts were very important. It was part of the education law that wed be educated in all of the arts. Then when i was that we can, i just jumped right into theater. I just had an amazing experience. In fact, when i applied to yale i did it because, why not . Yuck lets give it a shot. If i had not gotten in, i would have been perfectly happy at wheaten. I loved wheaten. So coming to yale, i came with this wealth of a year at wheaton immersed in the interactivitys. When i got to yale i thought theater was going to be an extracurricular, but i found a court that became part very much part of my life. So much so that i transferred that is where my theater and music friends were. Because there really was no undergraduate major and drama, we spent a lot of time in the drama school being taught by and mentored by professors and practitioners and the drama school, so we became a very close theatrical community. I think that if yale had had then what i would call a humanities major, a true liberal arts major, that is probably what i would have done. I think they do now have a humanities major, 50 years later, unfortunately, but i did a lot of theater and a lot of our history, and a lot of music. It was a wonderfully embracing community, which meant, i think raw, that i did not experience some of the Horror Stories that you, i am sure, heard as you wrote the book. About some of the women who were in some of the more traditional disciplines where women were not particularly welcomed or accept it. My experience was really wonderful, actually. Terrific. Now elizabeth, so connie is off practicing for this play and that play all the time. When you are not working at your campus job, or eventually working at the post office to earn money, when you are not studying, you are involved in politics, and you were one of the two women who founded the yale sisterhood, the yales first womens group. You were very involved in the Womens Center in that group. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how different the whole culture of that womens group was then a culture at yale . Coming from the midwest and coeducated Public Schools, it had never occurred to me that women should not be educated or should not be educated my mother was a teacher. My grandmother was a college graduate. Women were educated and i arrived at yale and discovered that this was a controversial topic. We were still struggling our way into the 18th century. There were a lot of people at yale says who of all ages, faculty students, who really did not think women should be getting a yale education, or who said its okay for them to get a yale education, it will help them raise their sons. So it was heavily masculine. At that time, in 1969, there was a lot going on with the feminist movement, it was just in its very early stages. There was another woman who maybe on a call here, i cant see, kate, and i went around and stapled some notice and said lets get together. Lets get the women together. There was no place for women, coeducation classes to meet each other. We were scattered around in one of the 12 Residential Colleges and we had no place. We did not know each other. Many of us to this day, still dont know each other, although some of the reunions have helped that. So we started putting up notices and we were just astonished with what an amazing reaction there were 60 women who would come and sit around, and we will talk. During this period of time we worked in a format called consciousness raising groups where people would take turns discussing things, and we would share our experiences. I can remember hearing for the first time from women who had been maybe beaten at home or who had been raped. We just did not talk in the midwest. We did not talk about those things. I really had no idea this was going on. We also just shared some of our experiences and found out that a lot of us were having the same experience in classrooms. We would make a statement and the discussion would continue on as if we had not spoken. Five minutes later a man would make a statement and everybody would say how smart he was. I thought it was not articulate enough, but then dalia radomski was making the same point. It turned out more of us were having this problem. It was not just me. It turned out some of the women were survivors of what we would call rape or incest, but at that time you could not talk about it. The last thing i want to say about the Womens Centers we worked closely together with the new haven womens liberation center. A lot of this was because of connections there, but we had a connection to the town, to the city of new haven that i did not find in other yale organizations frequently, although the may day demonstrations certainly put us together with the town closely. The Womens Center really focused on womens issues that were not limited to yale. It had a much broader context. For me it was the single, other than meeting connie, the single most important substantive event of my time at yale. It is so interesting what you say, elizabeth, about the connection with the community, because there really was a town gown divide between wealthy yale and the new haven neighborhoods that surrounded it. The women center, the sisterhood and the black Student Alliance at yale, both of those groups sort of violated those taboos against working with townspeople and helped build those bridges. Just one other thought on what you were saying about midwesterners. They didnt talk about it. When you think about it, you all started at yale before the term date rape had even been invented. Before the term Sexual Harassment, that term had not been invented, yet. It did not mean it was not going on but it was not even a language yet to talk about that. Sexual harassment was not illegal yet. Right. It took a case brought by yale women that made Sexual Harassment illegal on college campuses. You brought up may day. I have certainly been thinking about that a lot. For those of you who do not know the background. In may of 1970, there was a Major National trial at the new haven city courthouse, which is two blocks from the yale campus. It was a trial of a group of black panthers. A leader from new haven and a National Leader and protesters from across the nation came into yale to protest what was seen as a trumpedup trial. And indeed, both charges were eventually dismissed. It was a very tense time on the yale campus. The National Guard came in. People recount saying seeing army tanks driving down the streets right next to new haven dormitories. inaudible it was a tense time, but it was an extraordinary time. I think some of whats going on right now is really reminiscent of what those times were like, frankly. Right now it raises a whole host of emotions and anger and just visceral feelings about whats going on in this country right now, as it did back then, which had lots to do with racism and the war and people being killed mercilessly. And so there were lots of reasons to be demonstrating in support of the panther trial, which is what we called it. And to have the support, as it were, of the University Behind us. It was a moral statement that was made that made us actually feel good about where we were. Some people left. The university effectively closed down. Classes were canceled for the most part. We had pass fail. There were some nuances, i suppose. 50 years later, no one really remembers in full detail. Classes were canceled. People stayed, storms were still open, but every college essentially had a role to play. You were free to participate in whatever way you felt you could, which ranged from feeding the thousands of people who arrived in new haven to participating as peace marshals. I think that he was working on that. To participating in the day care of children who arrived with parents who were participating in demonstrations. You still have to have some forms of entertainment. Because i was in the theater part of things, we did a big theater production of in the main stage of the university theater. So there were a group of us, actually a large group of us, made up of undergraduates and drama school participants, mostly black, who did an original production relevant to the times. Everybody could participate in however, or whatever way they felt would be meaningful to them. It was learning civics on the ground. It was probably the most significant learning experience of the three years i was there. Its so happened that in year two of being there, there was another strike. It was the labor union. It was having a fight with yale for a change and so there was a strike the second year as well. We really had an extraordinary three years, two of which were civic lessons i would have to say. But i had friends who did not stay on campus, very Close Friends who chose to leave. Either because their parents said you get the heck off this campus and come home or because they felt that. They could not really relate to what was going on. Everybody had to make their own decisions. Great. Connie and elizabeth, im looking at the time now. I thought maybe what we could do is have elizabeth tell us a little bit about your group and the sisterhood in the peace marshals these marshals and then turn it over to mark to field some questions from the audience. That piece marshal role at yale really was quite remarkable and i love the story of how you all were trained. The challenge, and were seeing this again today with the black lives matter protests. The challenge is when you organize peaceful protests, that people come in who are intent in disrupting it in a variety of ways. Sometimes, im just going to call them outside agitators, are simply opportunistic and they want to loot a liquor store because they want some liquor. But more often, the outside agitators are deliberately trying to turn the peaceful demonstration violent in order to discredit it. This technique was well it had been used a lot in the anti war demonstrations were Peaceful Anti war demonstrations have been disrupted by violent right wing extremists posing as if they were these protesters. The panthers had an even much more serious set of problems. Erica hopkins is husband was murdered by the police. There was a group of black panthers who had been murdered by police in chicago while they were asleep in their apartment. They were sound asleep and just gunned down. It was quite a violent time and there were a lot of rightwing people who wanted to turn anti war, or in this case justice, fair trial peaceful protests into violent protests in order to discredit them. The piece marshals worked very hard. The Womens Center, the sisterhood, was very actively involved in this. We know intuitively. When young women approach armed men and offered them a flower or some kind words, it brings the level of tension and violence down. So the sisterhood was very active in training peace marshals. We also had a rotating slot on the Strike Committee where we tried to talk some of the men back from their rhetorical embrace of violence. I must say we were extremely successful with one major exception. That was that a small bomb was set up right before the may day events. The night before head had a very large rally and a large a small bomb was set off that night. No one was injured. In all those years, i carry this burden of had we not been successful in making sure that everybody on the protesters side understood how important it was to stay peaceful . It turned out that john dean, who was council to president nixon, head slip into new haven under an alias, checked into the taft hotel and after the rally he had planted the bomb. He did it in order to discredit the may day peaceful protests. Four days after the yale protests were no one was hurt is can the state. Four students were killed there. So it really is a tribute to what happened at yale. And jackson state where eight people were killed. Thank you. So mark, we have a little over 15 minutes left. Do you want to field or send any questions our way . We can open that up to the audience. How do you want to do that . Sure. First of all, to the audience, thanks very much for watching. If you have any questions, at the bottom of your screen you will have a chat button. Just type them in and i will read them out loud. Im not sure how i can top that john dean story. Did moreno about this . A question for elizabeth. First of all, were all three of you, how many was in that first class . How many women were in that first class of 1969 . And specifically for elizabeth. You mention on your first day there you said, quote, you were scared. What prompted that . Was it just being a kid away from home . What went into that . I think anne can answer the question about the data. I dont know that. Sure. Yale admitted 575 women who arrived that first fall. It sounds like a big number to us, but what you need to understand is that what yale decided to do was spread these women out across its 12 Residential Colleges. In a sense, for those of you who do not know yale, it was like 12 separate schools. In each of these Residential Colleges, there is only about 25 of the women from each of the class. Thats from each class. So connie and elizabeth were to have only 25 women in berkeley college. And berkeley is predominantly male. 575, but for many at them it felt that at times there was only a handful at time of them. So thats the numbers. Youve got the story about why they felt afraid or uncomfortable. One of the many jobs i had to pay for my education was in the dining hall. The dining hall i was working in, i was obviously very new, they were not used to having yale students who were women. The male students bused tables, but women who served in the dining hall, who were all from the town, from new haven, and mostly black, stood behind the table and dished out the food. So they put me with the women. I was standing there dishing out these or mashed potatoes or whatever. There is a new employee, a black woman, and the dining hall manager walked up to me and called me into his office. The senior older woman who ran the dining hall said, no, no, no. Shes a yale student. He then turned to the woman next to me, who is also new, and took her in the office. I was very young and very naive and i really didnt understand what was happening. But she came out a while later and she was disheveled and her hair was messed up and she was crying. The older black women just embraced her and took her off to the ladiesroom. When i asked the older black women said, you just shut your mouth. This doesnt concern you and youll just stir up trouble. I figured out that something that was going on and it made me afraid. But it also made me feel angry. Because when we took it to the people in the yale administration, they did not care. Its one of the reasons i was eager to found or participate in the founding of the yale sisterhood. Ive never forgotten one of the things you said to me the first time we met, elizabeth and i interviewed you. You come from a conservative republican religious midwestern family. What you said to me was yale made me a feminist. Of course. So your experiences there. I was a dwight d. Eisenhower Republican Party intern for the state of illinois until about two days i got the yale. Within about two weeks i became a feminist and i have been a feminist ever since. Yale made me a feminist. Radicalized me in two or three weeks. Can i just say that there are a lot of, because i can see there are a lot of people,. I just want to acknowledge all of you and thank you for showing up. Its really wonderful. I actually think i see some men, at least one man from that era. Yeah i see him. So thank you for coming. If you feel like you want to just put your name in the chat box so we know you were here, that would be wonderful. Thanks very much. And the University Chaplain is here to. I love you sharon. This is what its about. The support is so fabulous amongst us. We have a question for both elizabeth and constants. Who were the people you considered allies and how did you know they were allies . How did they express their support of you and your presence at yale . How did you know you could trust them . I will start. One of the things, you quickly find your cohort. In addition to algal ostermann, or the women felt was our main supporter. She went to bat for us on every issue that she could even though she was not herself as well treated as she should have been. But we really didnt know that at the time. We also were able to find cohorts elsewhere. This is the 50th anniversary of a lot of things. We actually made a mark, we women. 2019 and 2020 marks the 50th anniversary, not only of may they, but of the founding of the African American cultural center. The house. The Asian American cultural center, the group. The latino group. The sports groups. The music groups. This is how we survived. We found our people, as it were. You find your people and you support your people and vice versa. In the larger sense, in the group sense. You find your friends and thats how you survive. The sad part. I think what we found in the run up to and the events surrounding the reunion of the first women, which took place this past september, the 50th anniversary of our arrival at yale. It was that we really didnt know one another as well as we wish we had. Part of that was because we were separated out into the Residential Colleges. We havent had the chance in these past 50 years to get to know each other, 575 of us, and this reunion was really a remarkable event. Heart new relationships and new bonds were made. Old ones were renewed. Roommates who had not seen each other in 50 years. People who left yale, didnt stay, came back because the reunion was open to everyone who put their feet on yells campus on that first day. It did not matter if you did not graduate. What mattered was that you were part of changing history. Thats what we did. We changed history. We shared something that there are no other 575 women who did that. There are none. Justice. So i think that finding we survived that because we found the people who were are our lies throughout it. We are in the process still, you know 50 years later, of finding them a new or again. I guess that would be my answer to that question. I guess for me it was a little different. I had to make a space where i could build alliances with the women center, what is called the women center now, the sisterhood. Other Political Groups and their work teachings. Not all the Political Groups, most of the Political Group for mostly men because that is who was there. I found wonderful male friends and supporters and allies from the dean on down to a nice janitor whose name i forgotten. Many of my classmates. But i think the main characteristic was the willingness to listen to these stories that people are telling and to believe them. When they say they were raped or when they say they were dismissed from a job or when they say they were threatened by a police officer, the main thing i look for in an ally, then and now, was not necessarily you believe them in the sense of every single detail, but you believe their truth. You listen to their truth and share your truth with them. Then we can find real human connection. Our Facebook Page for the first women, there were a lot of first women that i saw among the participants. The Facebook Page has been wonderful for bringing us together as well. Anne, this is for you. I wonder how the author selected the women to highlight in her book. With the story have been the same had she selected different women . The woman that were not interested being interviewed and if so why . When i first started this research maybe eight or nine years ago, i thought of it as the experience, singular, of yales first women undergraduates. As soon as i got into it i realized that was wrong. Its the experiences plural of yales first women undergraduates. Because every one of those women, because of their background, because of the Residential College they landed in, because of their interests, they had a different experience there. So yes, it would have been different book if i had followed five different women. I really wanted to highlight the stories of five women rather than tell the story from above. I wanted people who read it to really be able to see and feel what it was like to be one of those women. I could not do that if i did it in generalities. I wanted my daughter and her friends to read this book and understand what it felt like to be a woman in what had been a very male world. In terms of how i picked the women. I started from the 50 women i had interviewed initially for those women. For those women i was looking both for a spread across the university in terms of where the people were from. The Residential Colleges they were in. Racial diversity. I had hoped to find, and i did, women who were gay to interview. I was trying to capture the sort of breadth of yale. Then, because my interest is changed and change in institutions, i was particularly interested in women were at the forefront of change. Elizabeth people like elizabeth who helped to found the sisterhood. There was kate mcclure who was in an all womens rock band. Or surely daniels who was involved in the black Student Alliance. It was those women on the edge of change that drew my interest. Then part of it was i like being able to have the connection between conte and elizabeth, to have the stories intersect somewhat. So it wasnt just five women who didnt know each other. And then some of it, i would say, is just that i felt that i connected with the five women who became the heart of the book in a way that they would push back at me as an author if i didnt get something. Particularly connie and elizabeth. They are tough. So if i said something that they dont think i got right, they will push back. As an author, that is an incredible gift, because even though i went to yale eight years after they did, my yale was very different then there is and it was important to me to not make false assumptions about what yield was like when they went. If i could just jump in here. And is not only a graduate of yale herself, and a ph. D. Historian, but she was elected as the first woman ever to be head of the very prestigious yale daily news. She then went on to be among the first six or seven years of women who were selected to become road scholars. Anne is as remarkable or more remarkable than any of the yale women that were left out of the book or in the book. inaudible it makes my heart glad to see the Younger Generation succeed. I would disagree than i am more remarkable, but i do think the story spoke to me in a way because i had that experience of being a very young woman and having the New York Times write stories about me. For me, that was a sort of disorienting experience and i was hopeful to learn from other women and listen to them from that. Mark, do we have time for any more questions . You need to wrap it up . Im good if you are good. We can extend this program a little while longer. The network will have no problem with that. There is a question here. I understand there were conscious decisions about how you distributed women around the college as opposed to housing them all together in one Residential College. What could yale have done differently to introduce women to the college to make it more seamless . Either three of you or all three of you. You guys want to go or do you want me to go . You go. So when yale first decided to have women students, yales president proposed putting all the women in one Residential College. There was a huge uproar among the men on the yale campus about that. Some of them thinking that was not good for the women because it would isolate them. It was like having a real womens college, like a ratcliffe at yale, and the idea was to put them on equal footing. Many of them protested because they wanted women in their Residential College. They did not want the women isolated there. The guys that tremble protested because they did not want to have to move to other colleges. Some people wanted to see the women in a larger groups in a smaller number of Residential Colleges and having the other colleges wait until there were more women on the yale campus. Instead, what yale did was go the entire different direction and spread those women out. Then there were never any events held to bring the women together. I think that could have helped as well. This reunion that comey talked about and that she was really fundamental in helping organize that reeling in, was the very first time for many of these women that they had ever met the other first women undergraduates at yale. Its remarkable that it took 50 years for that to happen. Let me just add, not only was connie instrumental in helping to organize the 50th reunion for us, but she was instrumental in having one session, one panel, during this weekend where, for the very first time ever, women in the first classes were allowed to speak, to stand up and to speak to each other. We had had reunions before, but we had always sat passively while members of the administration told us what it was like to call educate yale. This is literally true. With a little delicate encouragement from me, or support, connie insisted that we would have at least one session where the members of the first women class could stand up and tell each other our own stories in our own words on mediated by a historian or administrator. To talk and listen to each other. It was the best panel of the weekend and anne chaired it. There is a topical question for all three of you. What elements of your experience would apply to women at yale or colleges today and what advice would you give them . You know . I was fortunate enough before the world changed to spend a lot of time giving book talks across the country. The thing i tend to tell young women is that they are far more powerful than they know they are. And then particularly, if they join to gather for change, they can make remarkable things happen just as these first women at yale did. So that is what i would tell them. I would say the personal is political. Sisterhood is powerful. That sounds like something we were saying back in 69. Right on, baby. It just confirms that nothing has changed. Its the same. We called it the black panthers, they call it black lives matter. Youve got to speak your truth. Speak your truth to power. I am a huge believer in nonviolence. I was always a voice for forceful protest, but always peaceful, because i think the political, you know, those who oppose the change youre trying to bring about will use any violence to discredit the underlying protest cause. I think we are seeing this again. The protests are being undermined by people who are using the peaceful protests for their own opportunistic purposes. Its just very hard to keep control of a very large demonstration. It is. My heart goes out to the organizers of these peaceful protests trying to maintain the peace. It is not easy. Ive done it, its not easy. Is that a good note to end on . I think so. Thank you so much, mark. Thank you so much, elizabeth and connie and all of our zoom participants. It really is such an honor for me to have gotten to know some of these first women at yale. They really are a personal inspiration to me is i hope they are to you. My thanks to all three of you. To anne, to connie, to elizabeth. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for being such gracious hosts and interviewers and interviewees. I want to thank everyone for joining us tonight. Please get a copy of this book, yale needs women, and support your local bookstore. Good night everybody. Our next lecture is on thursday night. We hope you join us for that. Thanks very much everyone. Thanks so much, mark. Take care. Byebye. Cbs news our anchor Judy Woodruff interviewed, johanna neuman, i author of the book gilded suffragists, about the new york league who joined the suffragists movement in the early 20th century. That is next on American History tv. Im so delighted to be here. I know johanna is. She will have a chance