the brave women and men who started the national organization for women and it was june of 1966 that they first got together. we don't have anyone living who is at that first meeting, at the , here is someton of the history. there was a very active women's bureau in the department of labor. in 1966, the democrats were in charge. president kennedy had been elected. were very active in the department of labor and women's bureau and was led by feminist. they persuaded the president to call a meeting of commissions on the status of women there. were i don't know if all states had them but the commissions on the status of women were kind of an organizing that was going on in the states, without a feminist movement to kind of pull everybody together. the commission often served as a place where women met and came together. dr. catherine was the head of the commission in wisconsin and she was also head of the organization of the committee. she was a big deal. she along with other women came to the meeting of the commission on the status of women and the eeoc had been created, title 7 had been passed, and the women were, around the country, were getting really kind of mad that the enforcement of the law wasn't what they thought it should be. so this meeting of the commission allowed these women to come together. and dr. pauley murray was one of the people who actually writes about the founding meeting, and katherine conroy, who was my mentor, and also from wisconsin, a book about her writes about that founding meeting. they were at the washington hilton and they were trying to figure out what to do. they met in betty's room and there was talk of founding an organization, something like the naacp was needed for women. at at that point, my two buddies, they weren't quite ready to go over the edge that night. they wanted to try one more time and went to the government and said they want to mover this -- move this resolution to mandate the eeoc to actually male and female as an illegal strategy and they said, we don't do resolutions against other government agencies at a government meeting. that was it. at lunch, they got together, threw down their five bucks and formed the national association -- organization for women. and so, then they had a founding conference which mario will pick -- muriel will pick up that history. so it happened. it's important i think he knows that it was a government meeting, that government money was used to get these women together and that they took advantage of that to actually form their own organization and to see what things they could do with the government's help and what things they had to do on their own. the other thing, there were a lot of women who worked for the government who weren't able to be up front, but they were very instrumental. i'll just say one or two things about myself. i was fortunate to know these fabulous women back in wisconsin. i would play women's college. sister joel reed was another founder of n.o.w., and she was my history teacher. pounded they called loveup and said i will this and that is how i got involved and changed my entire life. so i worked in the chicago chapter of n.o.w. national board member of n.o.w. a recycling in 1982, got elected of vice president of action. then i worked for free choice and people for the american way. that is me. now, i have the pleasure of i will ask her to introduce herself. she's with my longest colleagues in feminism. i met muriel fox in the early days. she's not only a founder but a person whoonderful has made such an enormous contribution to the rights of women in this country and i'm proud to be on the same platform with you. [applause] >> thank you, i just want to mention, you didn't mention one thing. you really kept n.o.w. going in our early days, running all of our mail orders, all our mailings, everything we did, and i think this is perhaps when the labor unions walked out, because the automobile union really served as our secretary and our treasury in the early days, but then, when we decided to report the era, they said they couldn't do it anymore because it was just against their union policy. in with herepped husband, jim collins and they really did all this for us. we would have been lost without them. [applause] we did it. i mean, it's very important, and i'm going to say this again later, when people talk about the modern women's revolution, it begins exactly 50 years ago with the founding of n.o.w. that is what it all started. before then, it was the dark ages. for thousands of years, women were the property of men. they were subordinate to men. it all changed because of n.o.w. we can be proud of that. i will also say it all changed very much because of one woman we must not forget her, that was betty friedan. [applause] here of us who knew heronally, as i said at memorial, she was not a good woman, she was a great woman. had the honor of being the first speaker at betty's funeral. i truly believe this, that she was not just the greatest woman of the 20th century, she was the greatest woman of the second millennium because -- writing the feminine mystique and being the founder of n.o.w., driving force, the strategist. betty is the one who did it. i know there were a lot of people who resented a number of things she did and we will hear of them today but we all know that betty was that founder and we have to keep her memory. incidentally the name came about because at that luncheon, betty friedan wrote on a napkin, n.o.w., national association for women, and she stressed it was for women, not of women, because we were going to have men active and we've had wonderful men who have been active through the years. anyway during that summer, when , everyone went back, having put in their $5, they all organized their people, in the midwest, betty looked at her rollo decks and sent out a couple of hundred letters, and i was on her roller decks, in 1963, i had arranged for her to speak to with the -- to american women when her book, feminine mystique came out i asked her, don't we need an organization, she said, you mean a naacp for women? she said we're not ready yet but in 1966, we were ready. i got in 1966, we were ready. incidentally, in the letter she said we'll be an elite cad dre of professional women. she did not think about a mass movement. that just grew, that just happened. betty organized a board of directors of n.o.w., and we were all professionals who were successful in education and government and labor and business, and it was the typical elite cadre that founded many organizations. one person i also want to mention, in addition to pauley murray, it was pauley murray and mary eastward who kept after betty to start this organization. and also catherine, who was sort of our deep she worked for the third. labor bureau. she kept feeding statistics on how terrible it was. she kept feeding those to betty. it was mary eastward, who is still alive. i'm not the only living founder, i wish mary were well enough to be here and be honored. it was conference,ing organized for october 29-30 in the basement of the "washington post" hotel and "washington post" newspaper, i guess we rented the space from the "washington post," mary arranged for the space, during the summer, betty had asked me, would i do the publicity. i was i was in public relations, i was the vice president of what was the largest public relations agency in the world at that time. i did the publicity and arranged for that famous picture that's in the book here of the founders. there were about 35 of in us that room. my press release which i wrote said more than 300 women and men , it was crew, we were across the country, there were about 35 of us in that room and it said we founded a militant organization, to have laws enforced on behalf of equality and the the early nothing was -- terminology was very much betty for dance. .- friedan;s she also wrote a statement of purpose for n.o.w. you can get that on the n.o.w. website, and just be prepared to be so inspired. i would say, next to the feminine mystique it's just the greatest thing betty ever wrote. elicit everything wrong with society, all the discrimination problems. it also lists some statistics that catherine had given her such as only 7% of lawyers were women, only 5% of doctors were women, all spelled out there, and we made a few little changes but it was betty's document, it's a beautiful document. it said what was wrong with society, and what n.o.w. is going to do to change it and now has changed it. there is no question. [applause] on the basis of that statement of purses, we formed taskforces those two days on every one of the issues that are still important today. we had a, the big task force was on unemployment. jobs was always our number one issue. title 7 of the civil rights act of 1964 had been passed, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex and the equal employment opportunity commission treated that as trivial. they didn't want to pay any attention to sex discrimination. they were much more interested in race discrimination, and we had to press them to pay attention, actually more than half the complaints they were getting were from women who were being discriminated against. so so we pressed that and we had a task force, a big task force on employment. we had one on credit. we had one on child care. that was an urgent issue for n.o.w. from the very beginning, and it's probably still our most urgent unfinished business. in task force on religion. every important issue was there. based in many ways based on the statement of purpose. a big issue, young women today don't believe this, help wanted ad in the newspapers said help wanted, male, help wanted female. really? they don't believe it. we had to work on that. we finally began to get some results at the end of 1968. we marched, we picketed, we had lawsuits. we pressured the government, especially the eeoc. mary jean mary jean mentioned joel reed. i have to tell a story. at our founding conference, joel reed heard there was going to be this conference on sex discrimination. she just walked in out of the cold. no one invited her. she just walked in, into our meeting, because she heard it was going to take place, and when we went around the room, when she stood up, each of us introduced ourselves, she stood up, she was still wearing her nun's habit, later she didn't, she said my name is sister joel reed, i'm a teacher at -- college, i'm one of 50,000 american nuns, and we're working women and we're oppressed. [applause] i will never forget that. and during that conference, also, in walked colleen boland, who was the president of what was then called the stewardess's union, flight attendant's union and she talked about the requiring -- airlines requiring the flight attendants to retire when they reach the age of 32 or or when they got married, and 35 this was an early case also, that n.o.w. took on. again, very successfully. one other thing i want to point out is that we worked on all these cases, we issued w ri ts of mandamus. we knew what we were doing. that's one reason why n.o.w. was so successful. we were professionals in everything we did. we immediately pressed the eeoc to work on sex discrimination, and we pressured president johnson, and i remember we met in the white house with john -- -- john macy who was his associate working on this, and he said, you really want to be included with the other kinds of discrimination. don't you want separate attention to sex discrimination? we said, no it's the same thing. i wrote a letter over betty friedan's signature to president johnson, urging him to put sex discrimination into affirmative action. and one of the most historic events, which was mainly a result of n.o.w., was in october 1967, when lyndon johnson announced executive order 11246, which added women to affirmative action, and this opened the pipeline for millions of women across the country from then on. [applause] i think i've used up my time. >> no, you haven't. >> well, there is just so much that happened and selling people who worked. everyone there worked on what made her angry, and that's why we were all successful. everybody was passionate, and then i remember it was in february, 1967, betty friedand said i think we need chapters. so we started a new york chapter. i sent out the postcards from those who had signed up in the new york area and the new york chapter was the first chapter of n.o.w. and all the chapters really became the bedrock, grassroots of what was happening, and they made action happened very quickly. amazingly quickly. betty friedan and i used to say we never dreamed it would happen so fast. in the 1970s, we got the fair credit act, which meant women could have credit cards in their online. until then a woman lost her credit card if she were divorced or her husband died the fair housing act, a landlord could say, i don't rent to women. that that became illegal. title ix which finally prohibited sex discrimination in education. it's a lot more than sports. it's women promotion. women advancement. and in schools as well as colleges, all of these things happened, actually, in the early 1970s, and every one was mainly the result of n.o.w. activists. so there is a lot we can be proud of. i'll answer questions, i don't know how much time i've used up. we can all be very proud of what n.o.w. did. [applause] >> thank you. >> we're going to take questions at the end, because otherwise, we'll never get past muriel. next, i want to introduce eleanor pam. she's the president of veteran feminists of america which is actually presenting this panel today along with the good graces of the national association for women. it's an organization founded by second wave feminists to keep the history alive and propagated of the achievements of the second wave of women and the women that followed. we are open to membership for everybody. we would love to happen. let me go back to introducing eleanor, the president of our organization now and she is a pioneer feminist and professor emeritus of city university of new york. she co-founded new york city's first education committee, along with kate. good company. she's focused on education issues and women in prison issues through her life, and she gives us excellent leadership and we're proud to be part of being here with her today. eleanor? [applause] >> i want to talk about a second hero of the feminist movement. some people are technical and some people are black and white. betty friedan was definitely technical. who has been a friend of mine for 60 years, also in her own ways made great strides in progress for women. she wrote the other book, sexual politics, which is known as -- as the bible of the feminist movement. so you have the feminist mystique and you have sexual politics. kate was also called the majors. titian of the feminist movement. she was also called by the new york times the nazi talk of the feminist movement. is also called one of the 10 most important people in the 20 century. i knew her in a very different way. and by the way, the world was asleep but kate millett woke it up. i met kate when i was just out of college, with a degree in philosophy at brandeis university. i didn't want to go home after i graduated and live with my parents. my mother sort of thought i was a bit of a failure because i didn't have an mri's degree. mrs degree. i only had a degree with honors in philosophy and that wasn't quite what she wanted for me. so what she wanted for me. so i did -- so i did this very unthinkable thing. i moved to greenwich village and that was really wicked because my mother assumed i was up to no good. which ultimately, i was. i found a friend who was an artist and a dancer, and she was chinese, and she had a very strange circle of friends. in the middle of the night, 3:00 in the morning, the phone would -- not the phone but the bell would ring, and i remember this distinctly, i don't think i had lived with her for more than a week, i opened the door and there were these three grimy men standing there, filthy, they had beards, they had obviously a -- not washed. they were in racks. and they pushed their way were jack carol locke and the next. -- the next. beat necks. we were bohemians, they were beat necks. they made themselves at home and they stayed for three weeks, and slept in the bathtub and on the floor, and finally, we kicked them out. but another friend, another friend of my chinese roommate was this other strange woman. this was a female. her name is kate miller. and kate was very strange. she came from a middle class family in minnesota. but she wanted to live in what i considered you know, , unbelievably squalid quarters. derelicts sleeping on her front porch. i came to her house, i remember when i first met her, and what startled me, aside from the ram shack way she lived, she didn't even have heat. she had a potbelly stove. she was wall-to-wall books, floor to ceiling, she didn't have even a door on her bathroom. and she had just come from oxford, where she had received first honors in english. and that's an amazing feet and she was a female and that was even more amazing. and kate and i became intellectual sparring partners. she was brilliant, obviously, eccentric, obviously, i worried about her all the time. she was she was very pale, poor, didn't have any money at all. i would take her out and feed her and take her to the beach to kind of give her a little color. [laughter] i didn't understand her. like i was from the slums myself, working class family. i wanted upward mobility. she was embracing downward mobility. [laughter] it was very strange to me. kate identified herself as an artist, not a writer. she was actually a far better writer than she was an artist. and she took me around to all these groups. she loved groups and organizations, ultimately, by the way, she said that if there were a thousand feminists organizations she would join every one of them and i believed her, because i was in the craziest places with her, communists,s, whatever fringe group there were, that's what kate was attracted to and that's what she took me to. spiritualists and so on. and i thought, this woman is never going to get to age 23. she was 18 months older than i was. but so brilliant. so unusual. i thought she was an alien, and maybe i would be alien. i was not sure. we both lived in our heads and had wonderful conversations, but she was real rock bottom poor. strange things began to happen around kate. eventually she had an intellectual wagon train. people were moving into the bowery, because they were attracted to her lifestyle somehow. [laughter] and i remember -- one of them, i remember the first time i ever laid eyes on a woman named kate stinson, who was fresh from sara lawrence, she was wearing white gloves and a hat, was a very elegant woman, she eventually, by the way, became the head of the mcarthur foundation and gave out genius awards but she moved in right across the street from kate and became a bowery squatter just like kate. and i did not get it. i still didn't get it. anyway, i had a date celery. i was making $4000 and leave -- a year. take that that was fantastic. she wanted to have some money and i recommended that she should become a teacher. harlem to becomes a kindergarten teacher. she did not last very long. [laughter] first of all, children were making too much noise, they were out in the hall. secondly, she was drawing with them and she taught them how to play the piano and they listened to chamber music, but thirdly, and this was the worst of all, she taught them how to read and the third grade teachers were outraged because that was their curriculum, not in the kindergarten curriculum. so she got fired. fired from just about every job she ever had. then she went off to japan and i said, why are you going to japan? she said, i want to go and live in our colony. i said you don't speak japanese and she said, that's not a problem. she disappeared for two years and in the meantime i went on my career path which was exceptionally good for somebody who was a female, and i moved up very rapidly in the academic world and ultimately i became a full professor and a dean and executive assistant to the president, the director of special programs and the director of -- i had more titles than anybody else in the world, and the head of the collective bargaining unit. and then kate came back and she came back with a japanese boyfriend, the urn of his bed -- dead white sashes and yoko ono. then it became 1965 and they got married. and i remember looking at the doorbell and seeing her name, kate miller. katedered why she was not oshimura. and i had no idea at the time that she was a precocious feminist. the whole issue of keeping one's marital name separate which had not been on the rise and yet was certainly in her brain. am in this academic world and little or no women around me. universitywomen the were full professors. i was an administrator. i thought that was neat. people would say to me, you think like a man. i thought that was a great complement. i had all of these guys who worked for me and it felt very good in some ways. but worse than that, when i was hiring i would hire women at one rank lower than i hired the men and i did that because i could, because that's what you did, and i was balancing the budget on the backs of these women. and i was proud of myself for that. because i thought, i was identified with the institution. i did not have the vision that kate had. i was always one beat behind her, and then something very strange started happening. the women in the colleges began to come to me, because i had power and i had authority, and i had connection, and they would tell me that they were being fired or they were being sexually harassed, they didn't have a word for that at the time, or that they didn't get a promotion that they deserved, or they didn't get tenured, or they weren't getting appointed and so on and so forth. little by little i game go to person for every person in the university almost, and i found found myself, i would call some college president at some school, there were 18 units at city university and i would call them up and i would demand meeting and i would try to fix the issue, and sooner or later the pattern became very clear to me, that something really bad was going on with these women. i i talked the president into buying a private house right next to the college and i turned that into a woman's resource center and i use that as a way -- place where people could come. it became a counseling center, a legal advice center, mortgage advice center and so on and so forth. and then eventually it became headquarters for the subversive work i was doing on behalf of the women. we formed a women's coalition. i funded the newsletter. we had meetings there. i was the one who had access, why you the way katherine niece did on a major scale, i was doing this on a small scale. i i was the mole in the university system and we filed a large class-action against the university, gender discrimination on 12 counts that took us 10 years to prosecute. it was the largest and the most complex of its kind, which we successfully resolved. but i saw one after the other after the other all of the issues that were developing. anyway, in 1965, when kate married, i had my first encounter or glimpse of betty friedan. i was an an apa meeting american psychological association down here in washington and i saw this woman surrounded by a lot of people, and everybody was listening very intently to her. and she was phantom size and very ferocious and very energetic and everybody was listening, and she was mesmerizing, as she always was. that's it who is that? and somebody said that's betty friedan. she wrote the feminine mystique a year or two ago. i said ok. the name state. this was pre-feminist consciousness and eventually kate settled in and she finally took me to a meeting that did resonate, you know, after all the other organizations and meetings and so on. kate liked bars, and one of her favorite bars was the cedar bar on university place in greenwich village. that was her neighborhood bar. we were rubbing elbows, i did not know who i was rubbing elbows with. that was the way it went with kate. these were all not celebs yet, so she takes me down to this first meeting of the national organization for women. and this was, i don't know, 1967, maybe 1968, and there is betty friedan at the head of the room. and the first two rows of people were people that she was furious at and she was directing bullets, like a machine gun at them, bullets of hostility. and one of them was kate. i was terrified. [laughter] i shrank back in my seat. i didn't want her to notice me. don't look at me. [laughter] my experiences with that he never really got much better than that. betty never really got much better than that. but one of the issues that was going on was the lesbian issue, because in those front two rows of people were women whose sexuality were problematic for betty. and i was caught, you know, taken aback because i thought this was an organization that was devoted to fighting the oppression of women, and why were we oppressing this cohort of women, especially by the leader of the organization. they gave as good as they got. they were really trading punches up there verbally and have i never seen such pyrotechnics ever. but when i listened closely, it was more than the issue of the gay thing. it was, they were trading principles and they were trading ideas, and they were so brilliant and so mesmerizing in their articulateness, i was just absolutely enchanted. and i thought, this is an interesting organization. this is an interesting group of women, and i wonder what all of this is really about. ok. so i was in. and at the time, as muriel suggested, now organized itself into issues that bothered you. and, you know, health, sexuality, credit, abortion, whatever, and the obvious committee, and there were very few people in the organization, so the committees were like 1-2-3 people, not much. so so education, obviously, was the right committee for me. and so kate and i, you know, were in the education committee. the committee of i elected her two. president. she elected me vice president. that was it. [laughter] we talked a lot about anecdotal things that we saw. the pink and the blue, the shop versus the home economics classes, all, the fact that girls were tracked, as my mother tried to, with me, into secretarial slots instead of being encouraged to go to college. and the boys were encouraged differently, and i was expected to be a secretary and support my three brothers and let them get to college, whereas it wasn't important for me because i was going to get married. so these were all first hand things that we felt. out of that out of those many conversations became a poop sheet that kate delivered and out of that came published which was the very first thing she published. when she delivered it, i watched her trembling from head to toe. she was terrified as she delivered this brief called token learning, or the pre-token learning brief. and that was kate. she was very brave but she was also always terrified. so we get now to kate doing her dissertation at columbia, which turned into a published dissertation called sexual politics. she had a job at the time with columbia as an instructor. it was of her few jobs, and, of course, the students rioted, and, of course, she joined the students, and, of course, she got fired. along with the fact that she was gay which didn't help. that was my friend, and then, when it was published, she insisted, insisted that the publication party be at cbgb's, which was right next door where she lived on the bowery and the guy from doubleday who came down to take the publicity pictures was beside himself. [laughter] he said, i have nobody i can photograph that looks respectable. [laughter] they are wearing beads, feathers and spanningles and bangles. they look like indians, they look like cowboys. i don't know who is what. you you were there, too, barber bra. -- barbara. i member him putting down his camera. my boss is going to kill me, i can't take a single picture. anyway, i'm going to speed this up a little bit, i know i've run over my time. but kate is so amazing. and so she published sexual politics. she made a little money out of that. with it, she bought a farm and the rest of it she used to give away to prostitutes because she was writing something, her second book was called the prostitution papers, and then the irs wanted to know what about the taxes on those royalties, and she said, what? and then she called me and she said hell. i have 60 years of a relationship so i'm not going to do that but i'll take you to 1970 and the march down fifth avenue. where my friend kate stood up at the microphone looking out at the sea of women, and it was one of the most thrilling experiences of my own life and this person that i thought was a total loser and would never amount to anything, and who was, in fact, an accidental celebrity, cover of "time" magazine, looked at the group and she said, now we are a movement. and then we were. [applause] >> thank you very much. now it is my pleasure to introduce barbara love. barbara love is a lesbian feminist. she was active in the early days of n.o.w. and for years following. with other active organizations as well. she was a coauthor with a book that put lesbianism sort of on the american agenda called -- was a right on woman. and she is, as i said, continues to be active and is also the editor of the book that was produced by veteran feminists of america. >> feminists who changed america. >> some of you are probably in it because you're probably some of the founders that changed america. this was an amazing product, with the help of other folks and the book is published. there is a cd that's also of the book. that can be purchased at the dfa table. but i just want to say, this is a monumental piece of work that actually has a philosophy, which i want to mention, because it's part of what vfa is trying to do and that is, to not just raise up the betty friedans and the kate millets, and the rest of us on this panel but to say that -- families live in the cities and towns of our country and those women that work so hard over the last 50 years are the women who have produced the revolution. so so that's our philosophy. we're going to go to north that is what we are trying to do. carolina next year to celebrate southern feminists, we have a meeting at 4:30 to talk about southern feminists. with that little advertising stuck in there, i will take you back. this is barbara love. [applause] >> thank you. i really want to start off by thanking muriel, for everything she's done. feminists who changed america would not have happened without her leadership and support behind the scenes. absolutely brilliant. second time she helps me. she more than any other person in the woman's movement, she's been my supportive. which makes my discussions very difficult. the feminists who changed america includes as many feminists as many we could find. over six years, 2,550 feminists, biographies are in there. we went an extra year to get the approval of their biographies. of course, everybody rewrote them a couple of times. [laughter] some people as many as six or 10 times. it was a real labor of love. board iteople came on , took long time to find a publisher, went to 24 publishers before i found one and then i found two that would do it. i . i was just going to do it anyway. we were just going to go ahead with it. and then finally we found the right people. i'm proud of that. that was all inclusive. many of their biographies will not be known because it includes the music people, poets, the publishers, the sports people, all of these people contributed to the movement. there are so many others. educators, lawyers in the book. all of these people contribute to the movement. not just activists. i'm very proud of this and the work that so many people did and some people who are here including muriel, and heather booth and some others. i'll move i want to move on to the other half of my talk which is very painful, i thought about not doing it and that's about the , lesbian issue because i was very prominent about that whole battle, in the lesbian movement, particularly with n.o.w. this this was a very divisive and explosive issue in the early days of n.o.w., and i'm glad i'm asked to talk at it but it's -- it's a rocky road. bumpy road to get to a good place, and happy ending, which it does have. but in the early days, and i want to put this in context, because our whole society was not embracing lesbians, and i -- now was not either at the time. it was with the culture. i would say kept in the closet, judy clemens said we were kept in the closet like a demented child. and it was hard. i joined n.o.w. in 1969. it 1967, in the closet. it wasn't until 1969 that i heard the word lesbian mentioned ever. and though i had been there a lesbian. a lesbian came to the meeting. everybody did. invited her to the apartment. she came with flowers. she didn't know i wanted to be an activist. we were invited to a group gathering and we started a group that later became radical feminists, lesbians were always active in n.o.w., all during this. period. and on all issues, and we were -- some of us knew each other. but we were in the closet. and this is very painful because -- i have to figure out like some people said, when you're talking about this lesbian issue, first, be true, which is what my mother told me, when as i was a lesbian. in my own heart, i think, oh, my god, i'm going to be criticizing betty friedan, the leader of the movement that were so painful and hurtful that brought a lot of tears. but the time was, i've got to remember that this was when lesbians were illegal, we were sinful according to the churches, we were also, from the psychiatric point of view, still ill, psychiatrically ill. we we were having our children taken away as lesbians. we were thrown out of our homes when they knew we were lesbians. we couldn't get jobs when it was known. we lost jobs when it was known. so we were doubly oppressed. the women's movement was a place , they werelt safe our issues and we were a hundred percent committed to the movement. it was very painful for us, to feel that we were not wanted, although i understand in retrospect, a lot about betty's feelings and she did say we were hurting and exploiting, unquote, the women's movement. a lot of things i say i'll put in quotes because they are betty's words. i sort of big my name. i was never an officer of anything and now. i was a troublemaker on this issue constantly confronting betty on this, and in november of 1969, at the new orleans executive committee meeting, i think that he called us lavender women. which is what she thought we were, a menace. it was important always to confront her, when we could, because, the media always went to betty for comments about the women's movement and where we were at. and she was always talking about us in ways that i couldn't tolerate. so i would jump up and say something. and then, what happened in 1970, i welcome muriel's comments on some of this. we know where we disagree, but in 1970, i was a lesbian, running for re-election as president. and i had heard, i don't know how i heard it, i was reminded recently through a phone call, that i had telephoned her while she was working on the august 26 march, and told her, they are trying to get rid of you. i'll help you if i can, and she said, don't worry. there is nothing to worry about. i trust the membership. we did nothing. at the leeks, there was another slate introduced, a big surprise. understandte which i was people who did not want the lesbian issue to surface. few --late one by just a there were a lot of people there that we had never seen before, who became members, and she was voted out of office along with her supporters, some straight, someday. and it became known among lesbians and supporters as the lesbian purge. i know we talked about this. but word got around the country very fast through the great time. the next day what to mention, out on the west coast there was a woman named -- well, before i get to that, that was layer in -- later in 1970, that's when kate millett was on the cover of "time" mag zone as the leader of the movement and at columbia, when somebody pressed her and said, wait a minute you're , married and you say you're a lesbian. what are you? she said she's bisexual. well, "time" magazine went with that she's bisexual. she'll no longer be recognized as the leader of the women's movement. can you believe that? so we had to confront that one, and have a meeting at a church down in the village, with the whole feminist that is we could gather, that's not true. this was december 16, 1970. and a lot of feminists came to her support including eileen hernandez who may be here, i don't know, she said it was sexual mccarthyism of the press to do that and she sent a telegram and that's when i came out and was on national tv as a lesbian. that's it, i'm out. i didn't expect to be. i just said i was a lesbian and the press kind of liked that, i guess. i they thought that was news and i think it was because there were two others also, who lost their jobs. i guess it was still news. anyway, in 1971, out on the west coast, arlie scott was working almost by herself, to get a resolution passed to recognize lesbians as feminists, andless and --lessand -- lesbians as a feminist issue. this was in los angeles. the prominent lesbians out there were against it. this is hard to say. more pain. she got a lot of other people worked on it and got it passed. that was in may, and in the los los angeles chapter. then, in the fall in los angeles national convention, 1971, thank god, lesbian issue, recognizing lesbianism as a feminist issue. and to great applause and muriel was supportive of that, which was great. even though you were a big supporter of betty, somehow i've got to figure this out because betty was saying these things but muriel was for this resolution. we like to think that was it and everything was cool. it was not. the resolution even had a little apology in it. said this will not mean it will change the direction our energy or anything, and will not work for lesbian rights, which, in the resolution did not ask for, but it stated clearly that it was not going to change anything because of this. but it did get standing applause, i understand. i was not there. it did change a lot. but then, the next thing i want to skip to, is 1973, 1973, this is the hard part, one of the hard parts but it will tell you what we were up against, there were many tears because of this conflict because we were feminist and we thought betty had changed the world, but for us, it was she wrote an article, 10 years 1973, up from in the kitchen floor. thatis the kind of thing was in the new york times magazine section. our friends and colleagues and families were reading this. nobody was reading what we had to say. , and i have the article here, she called us proselytizers and man haters and pseudo-radical and infantile. seducers. i can't finish in two minutes. >> the workshop is over in 10 minutes. us all theselled things and i felt we should have a rebuttal. i got the new york times and we did have a lot of feminists came to that. we got back in a way to say what we wanted to say and people said that that betty was severely , afraid of lesbians. a woman who had sold out. conjurer of phantoms. the narcissist to has reached and thehts of paranoia joe mccarthy of the women's movement. that was pretty rough but we had a pretty rough. this is what we're up against. 1973 a lot happened at the conference. we got our first lesbian caucus. we had the first out lesbian on the national board. we had a sexuality task force. they wouldn't call it a lesbian task force. we were not infiltrators. we were 100% supportive of the women's movement. we were not man haters. we didn't need men emotionally. that said at-shirt woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. it wasn't important to us. i heard that rita mae brown and threatens to seduce the whole executive committee. [laughter] years later betty free dam in friedan supported the lesbian rights. she made the point that the e.r.a. did nothing for homosexuals. so that resolution passed at the women's conference in houston. there was thunderous applause and balloons everywhere. remember wend and i gave her a big hug at the dinner. [applause] >> we have about 10 minutes left in the workshop. we could be here the rest of the day and half the night. with the number of topics we need to discuss. for that.to just ask >> you have to differentiate friedan andty for the the organization. she thought that lesbians were threat because they were going to try to change the direction of the organization. sexual issuesbout than employment issues. as far as now was concerned. i have to talk about that election, the so-called lesbian purge. that was not about purging it was a referendum on the issues and strategy. strictly strategy. should they adopt lesbianism as an issue? we don't want to turn off the housewives. we don't want to divert attention from other issues. it was strictly a vote on strategy. she was a feminist heroine to. that was a vote about strategy not about the fact that iv was a lesbian. that is a tax later would difference. issueickly debated the and really within a year passed a resolution in september 1971 saying lesbianism is a feminist issue. that was the year i got elected chairman of the board. we argued about strategy very heatedly. conclusion that it was a feminist issue. i came out for this much earlier than any other feminist organization. i think this demonstrates we understand how much the lesbian thegay issue has changed women on this panel and the women were talking about and even those who took an opposite position had something to do with making this happen that is what we are celebrating today. [applause] we were both at the conference. they was adopted at the 1967 conference. how did we happen to support the >> at our first annual conference after our founding to, thene we decided he proposed that we support the e.r.a.. divisive because the labor union women were still supporting protective labor laws that protected women and children and they had worked very hard and were not ready yet to abandon them if you want equal treatment and he can't have any so-called protective laws that actually were protecting women out of most of the good jobs. 1967.was a battle in there was a battle over whether we should make abortion a feminist issue. it was the same kind of heated data. is it too early to take up abortion? frankly i was one of the ones who thought it was too early and i was very wrong. members flooded into the organization. i had thought it would turn people off. these were issues that we fought about. the group was always ahead of the other organizations in the decisions that they made. >> i came into the group in 1971. i was on the country. in a more rural area. it was the biggest city in maine. the issues were not as volatile in some areas. we never had those fights. or those heated discussions in portland. ahead. went it was clear to us that lesbian rights was a feminist issue. debatethe original because i was still in maine. i didn't come out until 1976. ways anybody who is worked within now and has been a lesbian there is a certain amount of recruitment it did happen in a nice kind of way. i fell in love and now. these things happen. they would have happened anywhere. italy said he with proximity. grateful that came out in the feminist movement. i never had time to think that there was something wrong with me. i was admired the women around me, some of whom are lesbians. that was a real gift that i got from my association with the women's move. [applause] >> i was an organizer in st. louis missouri. we did fight over abortion rights and lesbian rights. was given a paper written by lesbians about what i should say at the gay pride parade in 1979. i said i can't say that. i'm not a lesbian on the nice married lady from the suburbs and if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem. them it wasback to still pretty hostile. >> i do remember betty. earlier in comment the discussion about 7% of lawyers were women and 5% of physicians. elementary school teachers probably were 90% women. nursing was 99% women. the 1% of men to become supervisors. is a kind of changes, i have a daughter who is a physician. she started having kids. about whatl stories she was in her second year of medical school and she would occasionally be able to bring my grandson to school with her there was no plans for -- no place for her to nurse him. even in that situation. i think about all the changes and how all of us have done that. i just think it is great. >> can you talk about the impact that the consciousness-raising groups had. the radical feminists seized upon this very much as an emotional issue. it was the now chapters that really have the consciousness-raising groups and spread it through the country. now doesn't get as much credit for that as it deserves. this was in the middle of the 1970's. the idea that people would share the stories of their oppression >> i am a judge. i am not here for any critical reason. i'm not permitted to participate in politics. i'm here to celebrate the 50 years of now. ago i finished a custody case where the dad wanted to bring his two little girls to meet the judge. one was about eight and one was five. i said what you want to be when you grow up. she said i want to be a firefighter. i said when i was a little girl girls could be firefighters. she looked at me in shock. no?said i almost lost it because i had this emotional reaction that this is what we were about. this is what we have accomplished little girls are now growing up with no knowledge of that. they have dreams of being everything and anything they want to do. men are now free to be parents. men are free to walk down the street carrying their kids. men are free to be parenting which they didn't do in the old days. girl girlshe little could even run for president. she said i know because he voted for her. [applause] [applause] >> very good. she might be old enough to vote this year. in reflection over the 50 years so much has changed. so many wonderful points of progress. curious looking at the art of the last 50 years if there had been an e.r.a. what was there about that time i am involved in a coalition and we know we didn't pass and we know that somebody the issues were how would you thetegize today to finish business of the constitution? i think there are couple of workshops that going to talk about that. people in thehe last big battle in illinois in 1980. i was one of the leaders of that a lot of people worked on it. i reflected on it after we were unsuccessful in illinois. the termination date was in 1982. we figure that was the end of the struggle. the second half of this workshop which is tomorrow at 1130, we're going to talk more from the the 1970ve of how meeting made now into a mass movement. i want to say the impact of the campaign on individual women particularly in politics, i can remember women coming to go to the legislature in illinois saying they had never seen a state legislator before. they were in shock. it catapulted women into the public sphere in ways that have been tried to pass everything so we didn't have the ra. it doesn't change the fact that we don't have standing in the u.s. and there needs to be. i don't have an actual answer to your question. i hope that some strategies will be discussed in the workshops here. it is then start cause very monumentally and we should be thankful. [applause] a point thato make when the e.r.a. failed one of the legislators who was a friend of mine who happen to be mayorn-american said daley paid the black legislators to vote against it in illinois. that was one of the key reasons it failed. pbs a long time ago where he was interviewed. that was taken off like many of the documentaries that have disappeared. i would hope that some of the younger feminists could look into that. unfortunately politics is very corrupt. >> it wasn't much of a secret. mayor daley's son was voting against the e.r.a.. the bishops didn't want to be a. lots of history still needs to be written. you said that betty said these were the elite professional women. she said we need chapters. could you talk to that switch that she did. >> she quickly realized as the groundswell of publicity came along. we were on the front page of major newspapers across the country. then he realized we were a mass movement. donna shalala who was in president bill clinton's cabinet as secretary of health and human services tells the story of the boy and the girl playing dr. and the girls said to the boy let's play dr.. doctor and i'll be the secretary of health education and welfare. [laughter] i think we're out of time. i'm going to take a point of personal privilege and say that this is a room full of fantastic women. that we areint out celebrating now but there also was a. of his liberation movement. could you just can't for a minute? -- could you just stand for a minute? [applause] women's liberation. back in 1970. this was the mass movement we had waited for. i was so inspired hearing about dear friends speaking about this. this is so precious, the fighting for equality. happened because we organized not just talking to each other. not just celebrating what we had. talking to other americans. politics is also part of our life. it's a very close election potentially. organize and mobilize those who are committed and talk to those who are not yet committed. thank you for the leadership. you changed my life. we live on your shoulders. thank you for the book. [applause] [applause] >> thank you all for being here. it's been a pleasure to be with you. if you can come tomorrow afternoon please do that. thank you for all that you've done in your now chapters across america thank you. eventually the kids who do very well internalize all that stuff. i no longer have to say it to them. our c-span campaign buses in chicago. at the national conference of state legislators. the issue is taking care of our federal debt. we got to balance the budget so we don't hang those issues on the younger people. mr. trump seems to dislike everybody and foam and violence. the most important issue to me in this election cycle is jobs. we need to provide for new jobs. that's why i support donald trump for president. he has the vision to bring jobs back to the united states. tonight's features former businessman ross perot. candidateindependent in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. perot: we have $4 trillion in debt. we're going into debt more than a billion dollars every working day. we will going to dedicate an additional $50 million in our half. but i'm looking for sue did it? they of the two folks involved so maybe put together they did it. the facts are we have to fix it. somewhere out there is an estrogen terrestrial doing the stuff i guess. everybody says they take responsibility but somebody somewhere has to take responsibly for this. >> that was independent candidate ross perot during the second of

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