Page absolutely. Dr. Ciani but according to phyllis. [laughter] heres a quote. Out of all the people who lived, the american moment thats women is the most privileged. We have the most rights and rewards, and the fewest duties. [laughter] she Still Believes that. She is still on the radio, have you heard her lately . Page but when we spoke earlier today, we were talking about the fact that that comes from a distinct place of privilege. It is only because of her privileged place. One of the things we have intimated that have not been clear about dr. Ciani one of the things we have intimated, but have not been cleared out, is that the equal rights amendment in 1923, 1964, and 1972, and when it died in 1982, was primarily a movement of white and middleclass women, both on the pro and against sides. It was a movement that was really generated by women who had Resources Available to them, and resources of time, resources of money, resources also of being connected to other politicians, whether that be local, state, or federal. One of the arguments about losing the e. R. A. In the 1970s is that the proforces stayed centralized in washington dc, which now and e. R. A. America, are one of the most important of the time. But the antie. R. A. Forces went out into the local and state levels, and really gathered forces. Their ministers, their pastors, their state legislators, mayors, most of whom were men. They really made the argument to these individuals that their state and their locale would not benefit from an equal rights amendment, and that there had been a lot of scholars and historians who have made the argument about that local state level. As well as most of the states that did not go forward with the amendment were Southern States, and they were also democratically connected states. The state of illinois was one of the most infamous states. I live there, so i can still testify, we are still in fitness, we still dont have a state budget. We are the only state in the union that doesnt have a budget yet. Mayor daley at the time got his chicago machine going. He was very angry at women who were involved, who were playing his politics against him. He argued that this guy in the box, he was mad at the Democratic Convention leadership. He wanted it. Women in illinois back the other. He said, if you are going to do that, i will do this. So illinois did not go forward with it. There is a lot of different angles. It is not just the race component. There are a lot of different elements to it. I do think that, in what we were talking about earlier, you have to think about it. Im a historian, so this is how i think. Historical context is very important. What was written in the 1920s remains the same in the 1970s, and it didnt work. Some people would argue that that language still doesnt work. Page i think one of the things that it makes so clear, that the same word means something entirely different at different times, and context confers meeting. Dr. Muncy historians believe you can tell it anything means, because it is context that gives anything real meaning. One way to see then this case is that in the 1930s and 40s, and the 1920s, and through the 1950s, the e. R. A. Was seen as a probusiness measure. The people who supported it the first party to support the e. R. A. Was the Republican Party in 1940. They saw it as a probusiness measure, because it would undermine protective labor legislation, and lifted restrictions off of them employers allowing them to exploit their workers to their hearts content. It was seen as an antilabor, probusiness measure in the 1930s and 1940s and after. Of course, it would come to mean Something Different in the context of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the things that changed part of the context was absolutely the Civil Rights Movement and apostle passage of the civil rights act. Another thing that changed is that women workers had been used to and largely accepted such that regarded segregated labor markets. In the industries in which women dominated like in the Garment Industry, the labor unions and Garment Industry where the last ones to drop their opposition to e. R. A. Protective labor legislation really helped women who were not in competition with men for jobs. If you are in a position, but you are only going to compete with other women, any protective labor legislation that goes only to women will not hurt you. It will only help you. If you are in a position where you want to compete with a man for a job, then you dont want any restrictions on you, because you want to be able to say, i can do anything he can do. In that case, protective legislation is more likely to seem like a harm. One of the things that is changing, one of the places it is most obvious in the late 1940s, is in the Auto Industry. Michigan again. In michigan, there were not too many women in the Auto Industry, but maybe 10 of the uaw. They were in segregated jobs. They made less money, but they made a decent living compared to other women, thanks to unionization. But they began to think they would never get in their female dominated jobs in the industry, they would never get wages equal to the guys in the Auto Industry if they didnt just get out of those female dominated jobs and compete with guys. That began to percolate through the uaw, in the late 1940s and 1950s. The women in the uaw were among the first in the Labor Movement to come to support e. R. A. , and decide to protective labor legislation was not for them. Women in the Garment Industry held out. The amount emitted clothing workers did not drop their position to e. R. A. Until 1974. That is really late. The context is what let all the difference. As those diminished, especially in the 1950s and 1960s and after, the e. R. A. Looks better. Dr. Williams i think the average person would say, how things have teams change. A time when republicans were supporting the equal rights amendment. [laughter] compared to what we have to work with today. One of the advantages today is that there are so many enlightened men. I bet there is no man and his audience, are maybe one, who would say im opposed to the equal rights amendment. Im not talking about i would just like the men and audience did turn to somebody and say, shes not talking about me. [laughter] i think it is an advantage now, particularly with men who are married. It seems to me that men who are married would want their wives to work, and would want them to have equal pay. Think of how much that increases the family wealth, and the whole burden is not on you by the new card for the daughter who is graduating from high school or the son who is going to military, or whatever. I think it is something really special to have an opportunity to increase the family fund, and that is what the equal rights amendment would do. It would just allow us to get away from that, what is it, 78 to the dollar . Even less for black women, and latino women, it may only be in the 40s. I think it is great for increasing the wealth and the i grew up in the south. To me, all white people were rich. [laughter] that is an idea i still have today sometimes. I am finding out it is not really true. There are some families who are not black, not latino, who also need the extra help, need to have women and their families able to make as much as the men make. Men, if you are opposed to the equal rights amendment, raise your hand. You might want to leave at this point. [laughter] we have one. I wish you well. The young woman sitting beside him. We know whats going to happen tonight. [laughter] page dr. Ciani, what are you go ahead and jump into the opposition and how that was framed at a specific time, and that it really did take hold, and here we are today. Dr. Ciani i think that the opposition was really adamant about the positive nature of what they saw as a patriarchal umbrella, and that women and children were protected by this patriarchy. This is coming in a time in the 1960s and 1970s, when we dont have a lot of recognition and acknowledgment about Domestic Violence. We dont have a lot of acknowledgment and acceptance of criminal behaviors that are happening in the homes. We dont have an understanding of sexual assaults. Theres a lot of secrets, still, that are held within family homes. So, the opposition to the e. R. A. Is painting the house sold as a Perfect Place the household as a Perfect Place, as a place that is a positive haven. The opposition uses the word haven a lot to describe the homes. They saw and painted the proe. R. A. People as antipeople, so they said that people who were in favor of the equal rights amendment were antifamily, antichildren, antihome, antimarriage. They really used the rhetoric of this negativity that was perceived in the larger general public, and that general rhetoric that was negative was attached to a particular group of people. The stereotypes of the feminist in the 1960s was someone and im smiling because we continue to hear this on the daily news cycle someone who is shrill, someone who is bold, someone who doesnt take no for an answer. Someone who doesnt like men, someone who is this, someone who is that. People like Phyllis Schlafly, who really pushed that negative message. If i can go to her words again, this is another good quote from her. She says it like nobody else can. [laughter] she says early on in 1972, it is time to set it straight, the claim that american women are unfairly treated and downtrodden is the fraud of the century. The truth is that american women never had it so good. Why should we lower ourselves to equal rights when we already have the status of special privilege . She argues that based on the judeochristian heritage, based on that heterosexuality that i talked about at the beginning of the hour, and she uses christian tradition a lot. What is her phrase . It is such a good one. [laughter] pardon me. It is a christian age of chivalry. She is really masterful at rhetoric. She argues that this is a little bit interesting for me to wrap my head around but she says, our judeochristian civilization has developed a law and custom, that since women must bear the physical consequences of the sex act, men must be required to bear the other consequences, and pay in other ways. But shes arguing because women are the bearer of children and go through children and childbirth and the labor of that and the hardship of that, is that men have to work for their wives. But again, it is based on the judeochristian understanding of marriage, it is based on a world where Birth Control is still a very uncomfortable subject for people. She also was very adamant about feminism and the abortion movement, so she used the Antiabortion Movement to her advantage and talked about women involved with the e. R. A. As baby killers. She is very, very i would call bold and strident in her words, in her use of language, but she does it in a very calm tone. Right . And the way she writes is also very calm. People didnt see her as angry. They saw her as illustrating the perfect wife. And that won her the e. R. A. In 1977. Page kris, let me switch to you. Alice paul wrote the original amendment, worked on it for the rest of her life, passed away in 1977. Can you give us any thoughts on alice and what she was thinking as far as the opposition to the equal Rights Movement to the equal rights amendment, by the time the 1960s and even early 1970s came around . What were her thoughts . Kris we talked a moment ago about context, and that this amendment she had helped to write and authored in the early 1920s was very different from what she intended to happen, and very different from indeed happened in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the things that is very interesting i just got done reading a pamphlet produced by the National Womens party in the 1970s, you can tell alice paul is a heavy influence. She talks about all the social fears. She says the opposition will play on social fears. It is not that she never thought about it, but she said things that would never have come up in the 1920s, that we are now talking about, that is a very powerful way to campaign, and and play on social fears. Her opinion in the 1920s was that, and i think at the end of her life as well, if you got the federal amended for the equality, the social things would work themselves out. By the height of the e. R. A. And antie. R. A. Movements, we had all of these social fears become predominant above the e. R. A. She is afraid of that. She is also this is interesting because here he is proe. R. A. , but she is not sure how to deal with what she called the womens libbers. To the public and to the newspapers she says, yay, you young women are going to take the mantle. Behind closed doors she wants to separate her party from the womens liberation movement, because she felt maybe they are too radical, and they have so many initiatives that they want to pursue, and that would get tied into the equal rights amendment. The opposition is already doing that, so she wants to separate it. This is a woman who is in her 80s and early 90s, and we consider her radical, but maybe she is not so radical, coming up to a head with these new women who were radical, according to her, and really talking about these social issues. I think she wanted to disassociate her and her amendment from in a way. She was happy that they took up the amendment, but im not sure if she knew how quite a feel as all of these issues were coming up. She has arguments for each of the issues, but i dont know what is going through her had personally at some point. Page it is fascinating, because alice paul formed the National Womens party with other people, and at that point they were the young generation. These were the rabblerousers, people who were radical themselves. It was more the older suffrage parties that were really thinking of these people as picketing the white house, this is atrocious, they should not do this. It was alice and her contemporaries who were radical. I really like to take about alices time and everything she had done politically, and how that eventually flipped, and alice and the rest of the National Womens party were now the older generation, looking at the Younger Generation saying, wow, those tactics are a little too radical. It is a fascinating look, but i think one that you only get when you have Something Like the equal rights amendment that has the long lifespan. We can trace it from generation to generation. Dr. Williams and i think we face the same thing when we talk about civil rights. Many of the young people say, you old people. Of course, they are not talking about me. [laughter] im chronologically advanced, but im not old. But i think young people forget that when dr. Martin luther king, and when others were working in the Civil Rights Movement, they were young people, too. Its just that as you go along, sometimes you change what is most urgently important to you. Of people incase my age group, it is a matter of preserving of what someone else struggled to gain. Many young people are trying to get new rights we never thought would be possible. Page it is fascinating. Muncy, yound dr. Are both history professors. Maybe we could talk a little bit about what students today think about the Civil Rights Movement the equal rights amendment. One of the biggest misconceptions is that people are generally shocked, because they think the equal rights amendment is law, and we are living safely under the equal rights amendment, and that is indeed not the case. Sometimes it is shocking for them to hear about it, but we always tell of that. The second thing, they are shocked about the fact it was written in the 1920s, not the 1960s or 1970s. The 1960s to them is ancient times. [laughter] so this is amazing. Kyle, you were saying earlier about the age of the students. Dr. Ciani the new undergrad class is born in 1998. [laughter] it is 1998 this year. Dr. Muncy i started teaching in the 1980s. When i first went into the classroom, students knew that the e. R. A. Did not die until 1982ish. So you could talk about the e. R. A. But very shortly after that, by the early 1990s, you walked in the classroom and Say Something about e. R. A. , it was like you were talking about laundry detergent. [laughter] they are looking at you like, uh, what are you talking about . Gosh. Hought, oh my it was now a not in memory. It was something you had to teach as history, not current events, and not as a part of collective memory. I think they dont know much about it now. But i would like to say that in the last few years, students have much more readily or are coming into my classroom at least come into my classroom as feminists. That had ceased for a long, long time. They were shocked to learn anyone who would call themselves a feminist with someone they could relate to at all or was a halfway decent human being. But now, young women are coming into the classroom identifying themselves as feminist before they get there. It is a huge change. Theres a lot of Energy Around feminism and womens issues. Not in the e. R. A. Particularly, but i would not say e. R. A. Is the primary issue for women right now, there are plenty of other issues that are probably more important to more women immediately than passing the e. R. A. Things like raising the minimum wage, parental paid leave, and voter rights, those are more important than the e. R. A. Right now is. I would not disagree with their priorities in that way, but it was a remarkable moment. I remember in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it meant absolutely nothing, it was so in the longago past that kids had not heard of it. Dr. Williams i think what happens today is many of the womens organizations pay more attention to young women, and we do try to teach them about the thing that impacted their lives, and how they got to be where they are. I know that now the feminist majority, my organization, the National Congress of black women, all of us have young women who are interns who do real things, not just filing. [