>> i am going to be the moderator of the workshop today. [applause] nothing but stars on the panel here. [laughter] i feel very honored to even be here today and be remembering the brave women and men who started the national organization for women. 1966 that they first together. living whove anyone was at that first meeting. at the washington hilton. second meeting. some of the history. very active women's bureau in the department of labor. in 1966, the democrats were in charge. president kennedy had been elected. the women from unions were very active in the department of labor and the women's bureau was very led by feminists. they persuaded the president to call meeting of commissions on the status of women. the commissions on the status of women were organizing going on in the states without a feminist movement to pull everybody together. the commissions often serve as a place where women met and came together. enbock wasine clark boug that of the commission in washington and the head of the commissions, so she was a pretty big deal. she, along with other women, came to the meetings on the status of other women. the eeoc had been created. title vii had been passed. women around the country were getting mad that the enforcement of the law was not what they thought it should be. commissions of the allowed these women to come together. n was there. peopleray was one of the who writes about the founding meeting. mentor andonroy, my also from wisconsin, the book by her writes about the founding meeting. they were at the washington hilton. they were trying to figure out what to do. n'sy met in betty frieda room. of founding an organization, that something like the naacp was needed for women. buddies were, my not quite ready to go over the edge that night. they wanted to try one more time. they went to the government next morning and said we want to move this resolution to mandate the eeoc to declare help-wanted, male and female as an illegal strategy. they said we don't do resolutions against other government agencies at a government meeting. that was it. at lunch, they got together. they threw down their $5 and formed the national organization for women. then they had a founding conference. muriel will pick up that history. notice it wast to any government meeting, that government money was used to get these women together, and they took advantage of that to actually form their own organization and see what things they can do with the government's help and what things they had to do on their own. murieler thing i think will talk about is there were a lot of women who worked for the government who were not able to be up front, but they were very instrumental. i will say one or two things about myself. i was fortunate to know these fabulous women. in wisconsin, i went to a women's college. was another founder of now. she was my history teacher. theynow got founded, called me up and said you will love this. that is how i got involved. it changed my entire life. i worked in the chicago chapter of now. i was a national board member of now. i had a recycling in 1982. i got elected vice president of action. that is how i got to be in washington. i worked for catholics for free --ice and americans now i'm going to ask muriel to introduce herself. she is one of my longest colleagues in feminism. i met muriel fox in the very early days after i got involved in now. she is not only a founder, but she is a mentor. she is a wonderful person who has made such an enormous contribution to the rights of women in this country. i am proud to be on the same platform with you, muriel. [applause] >> thank you. you did not mention that you really kept now going in our early days, running all of our mail orders, all of our mailings. everything we did. i think this was perhaps when the labor unions walked out because the automobile union really served as our secretary and treasurer in the early days. but when we decided to support they said -- e.r.a., they could not do it anymore because it was against their union's policy. with her stepped in husband, jim collins. and they really did all of this for us. we would have been lost without them. [applause] >> we did it. it is very important. i'm going to say this again later. when people talk about the modern woman's resolution -- revolution, it is now that did it. it began exactly 50 years ago with the founding of now. that is when 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 now. we can certainly be very proud of that. i would also say it all changed very much because of one woman. we must not forget her. that was betty friedan. [applause] those of us who knew her personally, she was a big pain in the neck. [laughter] >> as i said at her memorial, she was not a good woman, but she was a great woman. i also had the honor of being the first speaker at betty's funeral. this, and truly believe but she was not just the greatest woman of the 20th century, she was the greatest .oman of the second millennium in writing "the feminine mystique" and being the founder of now, the driving force, the strategist, betty is the one who did it. i know there are a lot of people who resented a number of things she did. we are going to hear some of those today. but we all know that betty was the founder, and we've got to keep her memory alive. incidentally, the name now came about because at that luncheon, betty friedan wrote on the " now -- national organization for women." she stressed it was for women, not of women because we would have been active. we have had wonderful men who have been active through the years. anyway, during that summer when everyone went back having put in their five dollars -- $5, they all organized their people. betty friedan looked at her rolodex and sent out a couple of hundred letters. i was on her rolodex because in 1963, i had arranged for her to speak to american women in radio and television on her -- when her book, "the feminine mystique" came out. when mary jean talked about the term naacp for women, i asked betty, don't we need an organization? she said, you mean naacp for women? we are not ready yet. but in 1966, we were ready. i got her letter. incidentally in that letter, she said we will be an elite cadre of professional women. she did not think about a mass movement. that just grew. that just happened. that he organized the board of directors -- betty organized the board of directors. we were all professionals who were successful in education and government, and labor, and business. it was sort of the typical elite cadre that found many organizations. one person i also want to murray and was polly mary eastwood who kept after betty to start this organization. and also catherine east, who was sort of our deep throat. she worked for the labor bureau. she kept feeding statistics on how terrible it was for women. she kept feeding those two betty. it was mary eastwood, who is still alive, so i am not the only living founder. mary eastwood is living in wisconsin. i wish she were well enough to be here and be honored. at our founding conference which was organized for october 29-30 in the basement of the theington post hotel -- "washington post" newspaper. i guess we rented the space from the "washington post." mary arranged for the space. somebody asked if i would do the publicity. i was in public relations. a vice president of what was the largest public relations agency in the world at that time. so i did the publicity and arranged for that famous picture that is in the book of the founders. there were about 35 of us in that room. my press release which i wrote said more than 300 women and men -- which was true because we were across the country there were about 300 of us. there were 35 of us in the room. it said we found it a militant organization to have lost enforced -- laws enforced on behalf of the quality. the terminology was very much betty friedan's. i want to say she also wrote a statement of purpose for now. you can get that on the now website. just be prepared to be so inspired. to "the feminine mystique," it is the greatest thing betty ever wrote. it was everything wrong with society, all the discrimination problems. it also lists some statistics catherine east had given her, such as only 7% of lawyers were women. only 5% of doctors were women. it was all spelled out there. we made a few little changes, but it was betty's document. it is a beautiful document. it said what was wrong with society and what now was going to do to change it. and now has changed it. there is no question. [applause] basis of that statement of purpose, we formed task forces those two days on every one of the issues that are still important today. taskiggest tax course -- force was on employment. jobs was always our number one issue. of the civil rights act had been passed which prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex and the equal opportunity and limit commission treated that as trivial. they did not want to pay any attention to sex discrimination. they were much more interested in race discrimination. we had to press them to pay .ttention actually, more than half the complaints they were getting were from women who were being discriminated against. .e pressed that we had a big task force on employment. we had one on credit. we had one on childcare. that was an urgent issue for now from the very beginning, and it probably is still our most urgent unfinished business. religion. on task force, every important issue was there, based anyways on the statement of purpose -- based in many ways on the statement of purpose but young women today don't believe this, but the help-wanted ads in the newspaper said "help wanted female."lp-wanted we had to work on that and finally begin to get results at the end of 1968. picketed, we had lawsuits, we pressured the government, especially the eeoc. lley jean mentioned joe reed. i have to tell a story. at the founding conference, she heard there was going to be this conference on sex discrimination. she just walked in and out of the cold. no one invited her. she just walked into our meeting because she heard it was going to take place. when we went around the room, when she stood up, each of us introduced ourselves. she stood up still wearing her nuns habit in those days, later she didn't. she said i am a sister, i am a teacher. i'm one of 50,000 american nuns, and we are working women and we are oppressed. [laughter] [applause] >> i will never forget that. also, inat conference who wasolleen roland, the president of what was then called the stewardesses union, the flight attendants union. and she told us about the airlines requiring the flight attendants to retire when they 35, or the age of 32 or when they got married. this was an early case also that now took on, again very successfully. one other thing i want to point out is that we worked on all of these cases. we issued writs of mandamus. we had good lawyers and we knew what we were doing. that is one of the reasons now was so successful, because we were professionals in everything we did. escmmediately pressed the sexeoc to work on discrimination. we pressured president johnson. we met at the white house with his associate working on this. he said, do you really want to be included with the other kinds of discrimination? separate want attention to sex discrimination? we said no, it is the same thing. i wrote a letter over betty friedan's signature to president johnson urging him to put sex discrimination into affirmative-action. one of the most historic events, which was mainly a result of now, was in october of 1967 when lyndon johnson announced 11246, whicher added women to affirmative-action. in this opened the pipeline -- and this opened the pipeline for millions of women across the country from then on. [applause] >> i think i have used up my time. there is just so much that happened and so many people who worked. everyone there worked on what made her angry. that is why we were all successful. everybody was passionate. in february of 1957, betty friedan said i think we need chapters. will you start a new york chapter? so i sent out the postcards to those that were signed up in the new york area and the new york chapter was the first chapter of now. and all of the chapters, of course, really became the bedrock, the grassroots and they made actions happen very quickly, amazingly quickly. betty friedan and i used to say we never dreamed it would happen so fast. really, in the 1970's, we got the fair credit act, which meant women could have credit cards in their own name. until then, a woman lost her credit card if she were to divorce or her husband died. the fair housing act, a landlord could say, i do not rent to women. that became illegal. title ix, which finally prohibited sex discrimination in education. it is a lot more than sports. it is women's promotion, advancement in schools as well as colleges. all of these things happened in the early 1970's, and every one was mainly the result of now activists. there is a lot we can be proud of. i will answer questions. i do not know how much time i have used up, but anyway, we can all be very proud of what now did. [applause] mary jean: thank you. [applause] mary jean: we are going to take questions at the end because otherwise we will never get past muriel. [laughter] mary jean: next i want to introduce eleanor pam, who is the president of veteran feminists of america, which is actually presenting this panel today along with the good graces of the national organization for women. it is an organization founded by second wave feminists to keep the history alive and propagated of the achievements of the second wave women and the women that followed. and they are open to membership to everybody, so if you have a membership form in your packet, we would love to have you. let me go back to introducing eleanor. she is the president of our organization now and she is herself a pioneer feminist and professor emerita at the city university of new york. york's first new education committee. she has focused on education issues and women in prison issues through her life and she gives us excellent leadership, and we are proud to be a part of being with her today. eleanor. [applause] eleanor: i want to talk about a hero of the feminist movement. some people are technicolor and some people are black and white, and betty friedan was definitely technicolor. but kate millett, who has been a friend of mine for nearly 60 years, also in her own way made great strides in progress for women. she wrote the other book, "sexual politics," which is known as the bible of the feminist movement. so you have "the feminine mystique" and you have "sexual politics." kate was also called the major theoretician of the feminist movement. she was also called one of the 10 most important people in the 20th century. i knew her in a very, very different way. and by the way, it was said 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. and i did not 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 did not have an mrs degree. i only had a degree with honors in philosophy, and that was not quite what she wanted. so i did a 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. [laughter] eleanor: 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, not the phone but the bell, would ring, and i remember this distinctly. i do not think i had lived with her for more than a week. i opened the door and there were these three grimy males standing there, filthy, with beards, and obviously not washed and were in rags. they pushed their way through. they were jack kerouac, and beatniks. we were bohemians. they were beatniks. they made themselves at home and and slept three weeks in the bathtub. we finally kicked them out. another friend, another friend of my chinese roommate was this other strange woman. this was a female and she lived on the bowery, and her name was kate millett. kate was very strange. she came from a middle-class family in minnesota, but she wanted to live in what i considered unbelievably squalid quarters. winos and derelicts sleeping on her front porch. i came to her house, and i remember when i first met her. from thetled me, aside ramshackle way she looked, she did not even have heat. she had a potbelly stove. she had wall-to-wall books, floor to ceiling. she did not even have a door on her bathroom. and she had just come from oxford, where she received first honors in english. that is an amazing feat. 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 very pale. she was very poor. she did not have any money at all. and i would take her out and feed her and take her to the beach to kind of give her a little color. [laughter] eleanor: and i never, i did not understand her. why are you living on the bowery? i was from the slums and i wanted upward mobility. she was embracing downward mobility. [laughter] eleanor: it was very strange to me. now, kate identified herself as an artist, not a writer. she was a far better writer than she was an artist. and she took me around to all of these groups. she loved groups and organizations, and ultimately, by the way, she said she would join every feminist organization and i believed her. because i was in the craziest places with her. anarchists, atheists, communists, whatever fringe group there was, that is what she was attracted to and that is what she took me to. spiritualists and so on. 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 then, maybe, i was the alien and i was not sure. we both lived in our heads. we both had wonderful conversations. but she was real, rock-bottom poor. strange things begin 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] eleanor: i remember one of them, the first time i ever laid eyes on a woman named kate stimson, who was fresh from sarah lawrence, and was wearing white gloves and a hat, a very elegant woman. she eventually became the head of the macarthur foundation, gave out genius awards. she moved right across the street, and became a squatter, just like kate. i did not get it. i just did not get it. i had a big salary. $4000 a year. kate thought that was magnificent. she wanted to have some money, too. i recommended that maybe she should become a teacher. so, she goes up to harlem, and becomes a kindergarten teacher. and she did not last very long. [laughter] eleanor: first of all, the children made to much noise, 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. thirdly, worst of all, she taught them how to read. the third-grade teachers were outraged. they said that was in their curriculum, not kindergarten. so she got fired. kate actually got fired, i think, from every job she ever had. then she went off to japan. i said, why are you going to japan? she said, i want to go live in an art colony. i said, you don't speak japanese. she said, that is not a problem. so she disappeared for two years. i went on my own career path. which was good if you're somebody who is a female. i moved up very rapidly in the academic world. ultimately, i became a full professor and a dean, assistant to the president, director of special programs, i had more titles than anybody else in the world, head of the collective-bargaining unit. and kate came back. she came back with a japanese boyfriend. and the urn of his dead wife's ashes, and yoko ono. and then it became 1965, and they got married. and i remember looking at the doorbell, seeing her name, kate millett, and under it, yoshimura, and i wondered why she wasn't kate yoshimura. i had no idea at the time, she was a precocious feminist. that the whole issue of keeping one's marital name separate, which had not even been on the horizon yet, was certainly in her brain. so, here i am, in this academic world. and, little to no women around me. only 1% of women in the university who were full professors. and i am an administrator. i kind of thought that was neat. people said, you think like a man. i love that was a great compliment. i had all these guys who worked for me. i thought that was good. i would hire women at one rank lower than i hired the men. and i did that because i could. because that is what you did. and i was balancing the budget on the backs of these women. i was proud of that. i thought, i identified with the institution. i had not really, i did not have the vision that kate had. i was always one beat behind her. and then something very strange started to happen. the women in the college began to come to me, because i had power, i had authority, i had connections. and they would tell me that they were being fired, or sexually harassed, we did not have a word for that at the time. or they got passed up for a promotion that they deserved, or did not get tenure, or were not getting appointed, or so forth. little by little, i became the go-to person for every person in the university. and i found myself a peripatetic person. there were 18 units at the university and i would call them up and i would demand a meeting, and i would try to fix the issue. and, sooner or later, if hit me that something really bad was going on. i talked the president into buying a private house right next to the college, and turned it into a women's resource center. i used that as a place where people could come, and it became a legal advice center, the mortgage advice center, and so forth. eventually, it became headquarters of the subversive work i was doing on behalf of women. i funded the newsletter. we had meetings there. i was the one who had access. i was doing this on a small scale. and we filed a large class action against the university, gender discrimination on 12 counts. it took 10 years to prosecute. the largest of its kind to be successfully resolved. but i saw, one after another, all the issues that were developing. anyway, in 1965, when kate married, i had my first encounter with betty friedan. i was at a meeting, down here in washington. i saw this woman, surrounded by other people, and everybody listening very intently to her. and she was bantam size, and very energetic. everybody listening, and i asked, who is that? and somebody said, that is betty friedan. she wrote "the feminine mystique" a year or two ago. and eventually kate settled in. she finally took me to a meeting. after all the other organizations. before i get to that, she liked bars. one of her favorite bars was on university place in greenwich village. that was her neighborhood bar. we were rubbing elbows. i did not know who we were rubbing elbows with. jackson pollock. and so on. that was the way it went with her kate. these were all not celebrities yet. so she takes me to this first meeting of the national organization of women. this is maybe 1967, 1968. and there is betty friedan, at the head of the room. and in the first two rows were people she was furious at. she was firing bullets at them like a machine gun. one of them was kate. and i was terrified. [laughter] eleanor: i shrank back in my seat. like, don't look at me. [laughter] eleanor: but one of the issues that was going on, was the lesbian issue. because in those front rows of people were women whose sexuality was problematic for them. i was taken aback, because i thought this was an organization devoted to fighting the oppression of women. why were we oppressing this group of women, especially the leader of the organization? but they said this was as good as they got. they were really trading punches up there, verbally. i had never seen such pyrotechnics, ever. when i listened closely, it was more than the issue of the gay thing. they were trading ideas. they were so brilliant, so mesmerizing, articulate. i was just absolutely enchanted. and i thought, this is an interesting organization. an interesting group of women. and i wonder where all this came about. ok. so i was in. at the time, as muriel suggested, we worked on issues that bothered you. health, sexuality, credit. abortion. whatever. the obvious committee, there were very few people in the organization, so the committees were like 1, 2, 3 people. not much. education, obviously, was the right thing for me. kate and i were in the education committee. i elected her president. she elected me vice president. that was it. we talked a lot about anecdotal things that we saw. the pinks and blues, shop and economics classes. as my mother tried to put me into secretarial slots, instead of college. the boys were encouraged differently. i was expected to be a secretary. and to support my brothers who did not get to college. so, these were all first-hand things. out of that, those conversations, came a poop sheet that kate delivered. out of that came something now published, token learning. 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. that was kate. she was very brave. but also 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, one of her jobs. and, of course, those students rioted, and she joined the students, and of course, she got fired. along with the fact that she was gay did not help. so, that was my friend. and when it was published, she insisted, she insisted that the publication party be at cbgb, next door to where she lived at the bowery. and the guy to take pictures was besides himself. he said, i have nobody i can photograph that looks respectable. they are wearing beads, feathers, dangles. they look like indians, like cowboys. i do not know who is what. you were there, barbara. i remember her instantly sitting, saying, my boss is going to kill me. i did not take a picture. i better speed this up a little. i am really over my time. so, she published sexual politics. she made a little money out of that. with it, she bought a farm. the rest of it, she used to give to prostitutes because her second book was "the prosecution papers," and the irs wanted to know what about the taxes on those royalties. and she said, what? and she called me, and said, help. now, i'm going to, i have many years of relationships, so i will not do that, i will take you to 1970, the march down fifth avenue, where my friend kate stood up at the microphone, looking at this sea of people. one of the most thrilling experiences of my own life. this person i bought was a total loser would not amount to anything on the cover of time magazine. looks at the group, and she says, 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. 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 -- of america -- feminists who changed america. >> some of you are probably in it because you're probably some of the feminists that changed america. this was a magnificent 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 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 milletts and the rest of us on this panel, but to say families that 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 that's our philosophy. that's what we're trying to do. we're going to go to north carolina next year to celebrate southern feminists, we have a meeting at 4:30 to talk about that with southern feminists. with that little advertising stuck in i'll take you back. this is barbara love. [applause] ms. love: 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. it was the second time she helped me and more than any other person in the woman's movement, she's been my supporter, which makes my discussions very difficult. the feminists who changed america includes as many feminists as we could find. there were 20 minute -- women who worked on it over six years, 2,550 feminists, biographies are in there. we went an extra year to get approval of their biographies. of course, everybody rewrote them a couple of times. some people as many as six or 10 times. it was a real labor of love. of all of these people, so many people came on-board, it 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 didn't even know who would publish it. i was just going to do it anyway. we were just going to go ahead with it. we were just moving along and then finally we found the right people. i'm very proud of that. that was all inclusive. i think it was an important book because so many people -- 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. it was 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 grace wells and many others. i want to move on to the other half of my talk, which is very painful, and i thought about not doing it many times 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 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 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 was not either. at the time it was with the culture. we were -- 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 1967. in the closet like others and it wasn't until 1969 that i heard the word lesbian mentioned ever. that was rita mae brown coming to a meeting in a see-through blouse and a phi beta kappa cape. i invited her to my house and 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 -- my mother told me when i told her 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 were having our children taken away, 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 where we felt safe. they were our issues and we were 100% committed to the movement. so 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" woman's movement. a lot of things i say i'll put in quotes because they are betty's words. i sort of made my name. i was never an officer of anything in n.o.w. 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 betty called us lavender menace, 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. that's what she said. so we did nothing. at the election, there was another slate introduced, a big surprise. big surprise to us. i understand, there were people who did not want the lesbian issue to surface. that slate won by just a few -- 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, some gay. and it became known among lesbians and supporters as the lesbian purge. i know we talked about this, but it worked out around the country, very fast, the grapevine. the next thing i want to mention is out on the west coast there was a woman named -- well, before i get to that, that was later in 1970, that's when cape millett was on the cover of "time" magazine 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, i'm 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 all the feminists that we could gather and she said, 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, you know, 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. 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, and lesbianism as a feminist issue. this was in los angeles and i hate to say it, but the feminists and leadership and prominent lesbians out there were against it. this is hard to say. more pain in this. she got a lot of other people worked on it and got it passed. that was in may, and in the 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. well, it really wasn't. the resolution even had a little -- some apology in it and said this does not mean now it will change its direction or its energies 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. and it did change a lot, but then, the next thing i want to skip to, is 1973. it was 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 and we were feminists and we thought betty had changed the world, but for us, it was terrible. she wrote an article -- this is 10 years after the book, 1973 "from the kitchen floor." and this -- this is the kind of thing that was the "new york times" magazine section. of course this is the thing that our friends, our colleagues, our families were reading and nobody was reading what we had to say. and she said in there, and this direct from the article and i'm going to -- i have the article here, anybody wants to see it. but she called us and this was two years after that resolution. that she called us -- let's see, proselytizers, man haters, infiltrators, pseudo radical infantilisms. she goes on. seducers. i can't finish two minutes. i get a little extra time. >> the workshop is over in 10 minutes. barbara: let me get on to this fairly quickly. she called us all of these things. and i felt we should have rebuttal. i got people at "the new york times" is together and we did have -- a lot of feminists came to that and we got back in a way to say what we wanted to say and people said that betty was severely myopic, a lesbian phobe, a dike baiter, a woman who has sold out, joan of arc friedan, conjurer of phantoms, a narcissist who had reached new heights of paranoia. the joe mccarthy of the women's movement. that was pretty rough but we had had it pretty rough. i just want you to know what we were up against. in 1973 in the fall, this was 1973 in march, a lot happened at the n.o.w. conference. we got our first lesbian caucus. we got a lesbian rights resolution. we had the first out lesbian on the national board, del martin and a sexuality task force. they would not call it a lesbian task force, it had to be sexual out -- sexuality and it had to be a straight woman that was with the lesbians to sort of balance that out. we were not infiltrators. we were definitely women 100% there for the movement. totally in there. we were not man haters. we didn't need men emotionally or financially. there was a t-shirt that i just love that some people wore called a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. it wasn't important to us so we didn't hate men. we didn't care about them. and seducers. i heard rita may brown threatened to seduce the whole executive committee. did that happen, muriel? muriel: we never got seduced. barbara: that didn't happen. anyway, years later, betty in 1977, i'm wrapping up now, did support and talk to the lesbian resolution for lesbian rights. she had to make the point, though, that she had to do this because the e.r.a. was going to do nothing for homosexuals so it was ok for her to support lesbian rights and she did and that resolution passed in houston and to much applause and thunderous applause and balloons everywhere. she did come around and later we came around and i remember at a dinner for her, we gave her a big hug, i did and talked about what she had done for all the women and kate millett did too. we both spoke for her. so that is the end of that. [applause] >> thank you. >> we have about 10 minutes left in the workshop and we have -- we can be here the rest of the day and half the night with the number of topics we need to discuss so i'm going to -- i'm going to just ask -- open the floor -- >> can i have a little rebuttal? >> just a couple of points in which i differ with my good friend barbara. first of all, you have to differentiate between betty friedan who had her own ideas and passions and ways of expressing herself and now. betty, when she talked about the lavender menace, she was talking about people. so there is no question she thought that lesbians were a threat because they were going to try to change the direction of n.o.w. and it was going to talk more about sexual issues than employment issues, but as far as n.o.w. is concerned, i have to talk about that election. the so-called lesbian purge. that election was not at all about purging lesbians an we all -- and we all loved ivy bottini. it was an issues referendum on strategy. strictly strategy. does our chapter of that, which is the new york chapter, adopt lesbianism as an issue or do we delay for the time being for strategic reasons because we don't want to turn off the housewives. we don't want to direct attention away from our other issues, mostly employment and the other issues we were working on. it was strictly a vote on strategy. it was not at all personal. we still loved ivey. incidentally the person that had the slate that won was jacqi ceballos, who many of you know and she was a feminist too. as i say, that was a vote about strategy. not about the fact that ivey was a lesbian. that had no interest whatsoever. betty's attacks later were different and i must say that now quickly debated the issue among itself, all the chapters and really within like a year and a half passed this resolution in september 1971 saying lesbianism is a feminist issue and that was the year i got elected chair of the board of n.o.w. so we debated. we argued about strategy, very heatedly, and we came to the conclusion, yes, it was a feminist issue. n.o.w. really came out for this much earlier than any other feminist organization. >> thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> i think this demonstrates any of us who have been on the planet for a while understand how much the lesbian-gay issue has changed over the last 50 years since n.o.w. was founded. and let us say that the women on this panel and the women we're talking about and even those who took an opposite strategic position had something to do with making this happen. that's what we're celebrating today. [applause] >> now it is your turn. anybody have a question, comment? way in the back. >> would you comment on -- tell us a little bit about how n.o.w. ended up adopting the equal rights amendment as one of their key issues? >> well, we were both at the conference. you want to start? this was adopted in 1967. muriel: what was the question? mary: the e.r.a. muriel: at our first annual conference after our founding conference, we decided to -- betty friedan proposed in the women's bill of rights that we support the e.r.a. it was very divisive because the labor union women were still supporting protective labor laws that protected women and children and they had worked very hard, the labor unions, for these laws and were not ready yet to abandon them and of course if you want equal treatment then you can't have so-called protective laws which actually were protecting women out of most of the good jobs. so there was a battle in 1967 that was the same convention where we had a battle. should we make abortion a n.o.w. issue and again, it was the same bitter, heated battle. do we take up abortion or is it too early? and frankly i was one of those who thought it was too early, and was i wrong. because once n.o.w. supported abortion, members flooded into n.o.w. but i had thought it would turn people off. so these were issues that we fought about and but n.o.w. was always ahead of all the other organizations in the decisions that we made. mary: yes. yes. >> i came into n.o.w. in 1971 but i wasn't in new york. i was in the country in a much more rural area, not that it wasn't the biggest city in maine. [laughter] >> 60,000 people. but you know, i think that the issues were not as volatile in some areas of the field. we never had those fights or heated discussions in portland, maine. we just sort of well, oh, gee, ok. we just went ahead. it was clear to us that lesbian rights was a feminist issue and we just never thought much about it. my first national convention was in 1973 so i missed the original debate because i was still in maine trying to make equal pay. i didn't come out until 1976. it was like -- and with regard to one of the accusations, i mean in some ways anybody who has worked within n.o.w. and who is currently and has been a lesbian, there is a certain amount of recruitment that did happen, you know? in a nice kind of way. i fell in love in n.o.w. it is like these things happen. but they would have happened anywhere. it only had to do with proximity and the fact that i've always been grateful that i came out in the feminist movement because i never took the time to think there was something wrong with me because i really cared about and admired the women around me, some of whom were lesbians. so i didn't have to feel bad about myself ever. so that was a real gift that i got from my association and the women's movement was that i could be a good person, even if i happened to be a lesbian. for that, i'm very grateful. so i think that the struggles were slightly different outside of the big cities. that's my point. >> thanks, louis. >> i was on organizer in st. louis, missouri. we did fight between abortion rights and lesbian rights. i was given a paper written by lesbians about what i should say at the gay pride parade in 1979. i told them i couldn't say that. i said i'm not a lesbian. i'm a nice married lady from the suburbs and if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. that's what said but what i said back to them they said you never work on lesbian issues. i said i don't see an abortion clinic either. it was still pretty hostile. >> yes, back here. >> i do remember betty friedan and but i wanted to say in relation, there was comment early in the discussion about 7% of lawyers were women and 5% of physicians, engineers, there were very, very few women as well. but conversely, elementary school teachers probably better than 90%. i don't know if that has changed that much. nursing was 99% women. and the 1% of -- i was a young -- would become supervisors within months of graduating. i was a young nurse in those days but the men would be our supervisors within six months after they graduated. these were the kind of things, the changes -- i have a daughter who was a physician. when she went to medical school, she started having kids. she could tell stories about when she was in her second year of medical school and she occasional would be able to bring my grandson to school with her and there was no place for her to nurse him. except go to the bathroom. even in that situation. so when i think about all the changes and how all of us have done -- i just think you know, it's just great. we got a lot more to do. >> yes? >> can you talk a little bit about the impact that the consciousness raising groups had? >> well, the radical feminists seized upon this as an emotional issue, but it was the n.o.w. chapters that really that is -- really had the consciousness raising groups and spread it throughout the country and the truth is n.o.w. doesn't get as much credit for that as it deserves, but when it happened, in the middle of the 1970's, of course the idea that people would share the stories of their oppression, it just caught on immediately and helped people understand why they were in the movement. >> yes. >> i'm currently still a judge. i am not here for any political reason because i'm not permitted to participate in politics. i'm simply here to celebrate the 50 years of now but i have something really sweet detail. eight years ago i had finished the case and the dad wanted to bring his to love girls into the courtroom to meet the judge. i said to the five-year-old, what do 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 not be firefighters. she looked at me in shock. she said no? 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. and also, 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. i said to the little girl girls 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. i'm just 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 talking about how would you strategize today to finish the business of the constitution? >> i think there are couple of workshops that going to talk about that. i was one of the people in the 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 figured that was the end of the struggle. the second half of this workshop, which is tomorrow at 11:30, we're going to talk more from the perspective of how the 1970 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] >> i wanted to make a point that when the e.r.a. failed one of the legislators who was a friend of mine who happens to be african-american said mayor daley paid the black legislators to vote against it in illinois. that was one of the key reasons it failed. this was on 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 it either. lots of history still needs to be written. >> you said that betty friedan 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, education and welfare tells the story of the boy and the girl playing doctor and the girls said to the boy let's play doctor. you be the 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. i want to point out that we are celebrating now but there also was another focus of the liberation movement. 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. it only happened because we organized not just talking to each other. not just celebrating what we had. but organizing talking to other americans. politics is also part of our life. it's a very close election potentially. we need to 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. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> you're watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend, c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. communicators visits middle east broadcasting networks along with other u.s. sponsored broadcasting news. we speak with the president of the middle east broadcasting and the, fran myers, digital managing editor of fraser boyce, but how they share democratic values with an audience that would not otherwise be exposed to a broader spectrum of opinions. >> we've been on the air for 12 years now and over that time i think the audience has come to propaganda,n some we do strive to be balanced, but we also provide and cover topics and provide information that is not readily available. >> there aren't enough people telling the stories of how difficult it is to be a woman and a girl child. how many stories have we done on child marriages, i cannot even count. so you cannot do enough, because it's too close to home. inthe campaign was launched september 2015 to encourage people in the middle east to engage in be part of the discussion of the issues in the extremism,luding unemployment, women's rights, all these issues. >> watch monday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. >> the c-span radio app makes it easy to continue to follow the 20 10 election wherever you are. it's free to download from apple app store or google play. get audio coverage it up to the minute schedule information for c-span radio and c-span television, plus podcasts for book in history programs. stay up-to-date on all the election coverage. you always have c-span on the go. >> now, the contenders, our series on key political figures who ran for president and lost, but who nevertheless changed political history. tonight we feature former texas businessman ross perot, who is an independent candidate in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. this is about two hours. you're watching american history tv, only on c-span3. >> were going into debt and additional $1 billion, more than a million dollars every working day of the year. >> it's not republicans fault, it's not the democrats thought, but what i'm looking for is who did it? together, they did it. the facts are, we have to fix it. somewhere out there there is an extraterrestrial who is doing it to us, i guess. somebody, somewhere has to take responsibility of this. >>

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