When the Nineteenth Amendment was Born So Was My Feminist Mom
By Christy Carpenter
The winning of women’s suffrage took over 70 years and three generations of extraordinary women spearheading one of the longest and most successful political mobilization efforts in U.S. history. It was a scaling-Mt.-Everest-backwards-in-high-heels kind of accomplishment. After all, every one of the “deciders,” state legislators, members of Congress, and one very important opponent – President Woodrow Wilson -- were men.
Lest anyone be deceived by their photographs to think of these suffragists as prim, always ladylike, permission-askers, get something straight: These were full-throttle “nasty” women willing to buck every norm and break the social-cultural china to bring about a revolution in women’s power. I am totally in awe of their courage, and, no question, we are ALL – men and women alike – in their debt.
This seismic victory is made even more personal for me by my own family history. One hundred years ago, specifically, September 1, 1920 – just days after the Nineteenth Amendment was finally adopted -- my mother, Liz Carpenter, journalist, White House official and feminist leader was born. I cannot help feeling that the confluence of these two events -- the coming of suffrage and her birth -- is no coincidence because feminism was embedded in her DNA. Her birthdate suited her to a “T.” She hailed from a storied family of Texas pioneers, populated by strong, educated women who had for decades promoted the education of women, an expanded role for them in public life, and their right to cast ballots. These were “women of grit,” as my mother liked to brag.
Beginning in my childhood, she made sure I learned about the suffragists in our family. Her mother and aunts, based in Salado, enhanced their efforts with home-baked cakes and pies to win the backing of Texas voters and legislators. Others, such as her great-aunt Birdie Robertson Johnson played a bigger role on a bigger stage. After marrying lawyer-politician Cone Johnson, who my mother insisted was “the smartest man in Texas,” the duo became what we call today, a true “power couple.” Birdie was a born leader who served as president of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, and as a vice president of the Woman’s National Wilson and Marshall Organization in support of Woodrow Wilson’s 1912 race, working from the Democratic party headquarters on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Immediately after, she founded the Equal Franchise League in her home turf in Smith County, Texas, and the following year she continued her suffrage efforts in the nation’s capital when the new president appointed her husband Solicitor of the U.S. State Department.
Birdie was well known in Washington power circles as a savvy political strategist and society favorite. She leveraged her considerable intelligence and charm in the cause of suffrage, riding to the U.S. Capitol in a carriage, dressed in white, to lobby members of Congress. Once America joined WWI, like many suffragists, she organized women to volunteer for the Red Cross and raise funds for war bonds. The massive mobilization of feminine power in the war effort was adroitly orchestrated and strategically leveraged by suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt to break down President Wilson’s resistance to women’s suffrage and garner the necessary votes to squeak through passage of the 19th Amendment in Congress.
As the suffrage amendment undertook its ratification journey through state legislatures in the summer of 1920, Birdie and her husband were elected as the first husband-wife team of delegates to the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. So esteemed was she that the delegates elected her Texas’ first Democratic National Committeewoman, a position my mother also gained half a century later. Once suffrage for women was a reality, Birdie turned her efforts to the newly minted League of Women Voters, galvanizing women to vote and support issues with particular impact on women and children.
Another great-aunt and Birdie’s sister, Imogene Robertson Gamel, joined the more radical suffragists – Alice Paul and members of the National Women’s Party -- in demonstrations staged in front of the White House intended to shame President Wilson into lending his support for suffrage. It is worth noting that these were the very first demonstrations to ever take place at the home of the president, and they stirred up quite a fuss. Legions of men showed up daily to attack the protestors verbally and even physically.
Family lore recounts that Imogene endured the abuse, joining her fellow suffragists in defiantly throwing eggs over the White House fence. Alice Paul and many of her cohorts were arrested multiple times, imprisoned, and some like Paul were force-fed a foul liquid through tubes injected through their noses – for no crime other than exercising their First Amendment rights. Our family stories do not suggest Imogene was among those incarcerated, but my mother and I loved imagining Imogene was gutsy enough to risk it. Her sister Birdie was less impressed, and wrote home that she found Imogene’s behavior an embarrassment. At the time, people labelled these two “camps” of suffragists the “wiles girls” (like Birdie) and the “axe girls” (like Imogene). My mother was proud to be related to both types, and so am I, as it took more than one strategy to achieve the goal.
When suffrage finally came, my ancestors were quick to take advantage. Among my most prized inheritances from my mother is my grandmother’s poll tax receipt from her first vote in 1920 just a few months after the 19th Amendment was adopted, which I have lovingly framed. It spoke to my mother (as it does to me) as a talisman reminding her of an obligation born of heritage to carry on the fight for equal rights for women and all people. And that she did, big time, and with her characteristic zest. After all, the monumental victory of 1920 did not represent an end point but rather a milestone – albeit a gigantic one -- along a very long road to achieving full equality, and securing the promise of America’s founding ideals for half the population.
With feminism imbedded in her DNA, my mother made her mark professionally in what was still largely a man’s world over a three-decade career in Washington, D.C. as journalist, staff director and press secretary to First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, public relations executive, public speaker, and author. Her magnetic personality, legendary wit, intelligence, and drive catapulted her over the years onto an increasingly national stage. Sisterhood came naturally, and, along the way, she participated in women’s organizations, including serving as president of the Women’s National Press Club, and frequently made time to boost the accomplishments and successes of other women. By the end of the 1960s, the feminism that she had practiced by instinct all her life increasingly had become part of the popular culture and national conversation. However, it was not until Betty Friedan telephoned her in the early summer of 1971, and asked her to attend a meeting, that she joined what by then had become a highly visible women’s movement.
Friedan shared what she had concluded: the movement was in danger of hitting a wall if it did not become political, elect more women to office, and achieve legislative victories helpful to women. Aware of my mother’s political savvy, extensive national network of contacts, and public relations know-how, Freidan invited my mother to join a meeting at a downtown Washington hotel that assembled a host of other influential feminists, including Congresswomen Bella Abzug, Patsy Mink, and Shirley Chisholm; Gloria Steinem; leaders of unions and organizations such as the League of Women Voters, NOW, Business and Professional Women, and the AAUW; some lesbians and blue-jeaned peace activists; and me, college student.
With a mixed group, spanning radicals and more establishment figures, the discussion was boisterous, exciting, and sometimes as hot as Washington’s summer weather. As Gloria rose to speak in an attempt to lower the temperature, the participants became quiet, “Looking around the room, I see there is at least one thing we all have in common – a vagina.” My mother jumped noticeably, later noting wryly, “I had never heard that word except in my gynecologist’s office.” Yet, her widening eyes revealed something more: that wild horses were not going to keep her from taking on a new life role -- movement activist. I’ll always be grateful that she brought me along to this vividly memorable meeting because it gave birth to something historic – The National Women’s Political Caucus – envisioned as the launching pad for women candidates of both parties for offices high and low, from county sheriff to President, across all 50 states.
The meeting participants agreed to stage an Organizing Conference for the NWPC several weeks later, in July, at the Statler Hilton Hotel in Washington, which assembled a much larger mix of women from around the country – 271 strong -- to shape and officially launch the new organization. In her opening remarks to the conference, Betty Freidan laid out the challenge: “The women’s liberation movement has crested now. If it doesn’t become political it will peter out, turn against itself and become nothing.” She presented the goal: “Women, who have done the political housework in both parties, ignored by the very men they elected, know what we in the women’s movement have learned trying to get priority or money appropriated or even legislation enforces on issues like child care or abortion or sex discrimination: what we need is political power, ourselves.”
The conference participants divided up into caucuses such as youth (under 30), prime-time (ages 30-40), Black, Chicano, working women, etc. debating and sparring in the ballroom, corridors, and powder rooms over legislative priorities. My mother managed the media coverage and was largely successful in getting considerable ink and airtime for the budding organization while avoiding ridicule (bra-burning jokes, anyone?). Although she worked successfully to steer the media away from characterizing the boisterous discussions as a “cat fight,” the high-energy and dynamism exhibited by the conferees was truly cat nip for my mother. She likened it to being at Seneca Falls and described it as the “most exciting meeting” she ever attended. “I guess this is what a revolution feels like,” she remarked to me with a grin.
The conference organizers pointed to the gender gap among office holders: although women comprised 53% of the population and turned out in bigger numbers than men, there were no female governors, only one U.S. Senator and a mere 12 Congresswomen. Moreover, there were no women in the Cabinet nor on the U.S. Supreme Court. The need to gain political power was paramount, and this unprecedented and diverse gathering of women coalesced around a primary mission – taking the movement into the halls of power and getting more women’s voices into “the room where it happens,” as we would say today. And, the urgency was crystal clear: the following year, 1972, was a presidential election year.
As the NWPC quickly spread its wings across the American landscape through the formation of state caucuses, my mother’s involvement grew. She found herself in ever more demand because of her ability to rouse a crowd to action -- galvanizing women to either run themselves, work for women candidates, or lobby an issue. As she put it, “I was invited to make the most speeches because I was funny, and I didn’t scare everybody to death.”
She delivered the keynote at the initial meeting of the very first state caucus in Florida and soon thereafter in Texas, where the second state caucus met in November, 1971. At the Texas meeting she said, “So let every party chairman know, let every Governor and every candidate for Governor know now – that today women are issuing a declaration of independence. We are tired of making the coffee, licking the stamps, and writing the checks…We mean to be in on the decisions. So – if we seem a little pushy. If we seem a little noisy—it is because we shout so you will hear us.” She carried her enthusiasm to the campaign stump as well speaking out for individual women candidates such as the civil rights legend Fanny Lou Hammer in her race for the Mississippi State Senate in 1971.
The momentum unleashed by the NWPC began to bear fruit by the following summer. After it conducted seminars around the country to teach women how to run for delegates to the national parties’ political conventions in 1972, women gained almost 40 percent of the delegates at the Democratic National Convention as compared to 13 percent in 1968, and, at the Republican National Convention, the percentage of female delegates rose to 35. The female energy at the DNC was particularly high: New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm received the votes of 151 delegates for President and former Texas legislator Frances (Sissy) Farenthold received a surprising 408 delegate votes for the vice-presidential nomination as a wave of spontaneous enthusiasm swept the convention floor. Moreover, the Democrats elected a woman to be party chair and the Republicans tapped a woman to serve as co-chair of its convention. In the meantime, as the NWPC staged candidate trainings, the numbers of women seeking offices at every level mounted. In late August, Congresswoman Bella Abzug declared to a New York Times reporter, I think it’s fair to say that what has happened in the last year or so is the first real political movement by women of any national scope since the suffrage movement.”
The growing clout of the NWPC and other women’s organizations finally broke the logjam, and, in March, 1972, it passed the Senate and House with the necessary two-thirds majorities. By the time the national party conventions had wrapped up at summer’s end, 20 states had ratified the ERA. But, the momentum of ratification began to hit speed bumps over the next few years as right-wing women mobilized, forming an opposition campaign under the direction of Phyllis Schlafly. These “pink ladies” with their cupcakes and fallacious propaganda about the ERA’s legal impact so fired up my mother that getting the necessary 38 states to ratify the proposed amendment became a huge preoccupation. She felt as though her suffragist ancestors had passed her a baton, and by God, she was going to carry it forward.
A new organization – ERAmerica – was born in 1976 with a single focus -- ratification by the necessary 38 states required by the Constitution, and my mother eagerly took on the role of co-chair even though recently widowed and forced to juggle her leadership duties with her paid work as a writer and speaker. As a frightened flyer, adding more travel was a sacrifice, but she swallowed her fears and parachuted into unratified states, such as Arkansas, Missouri, and Florida, lobbying governors and state legislators and speaking at countless women’s forums to drum up grassroots energy and financial contributions to the cause. It was heavy lifting yet fed her soul.
Sometimes, spearheading the ERAmerica campaign brought laughs, especially after my mother successfully recruited the humorist Erma Bombeck to join her on the road, providing audiences something like a Hope and Crosby soft shoe. Erma liked to introduce my mother this way: “During the last few years, Liz has been a registered terrorist for the ERA. In that role she has been charged with several acts of violence – one of making a diabetic listen to Phyllis Schlafly for two hours.” Bombeck also had fun puncturing holes in some of the ridiculous claims such as the amendment would mandate unisex bathrooms: “Will unisex bathrooms affect your kidneys? Of course, they will. We have had a unisex bathroom in our home for the last 20 years and I want to warn you that if you get behind a 16-year-old boy, you can possibly die of kidney failure.”
When Mormons and some Catholics joined Schlafly’s cause claiming the amendment would weaken the family, my mother started taking their opposition head on in speeches: “I do not think we should allow Salt Lake City – where the church leaders over-married – or Rome – where the heads of the church never marry – to delineate what the American family is.” Wielding her wit as a weapon, she characterized state legislators who refused to vote for ratification of the ERA as being of five types: “Senator Apron Strings (hides behind his wife although he hasn’t asked her opinion), State Representative Consensus (you girls get together), Senators States Rights (gets apoplexy when ‘Federal’ or ‘Congress’ is mentioned), Senator Macho (dirty old man that grew up from a dirty little boy), Senator Master of the Castle (only associates with women in bed or in the kitchen).”
The National Women’s Conference – held in conjunction with the United Nations’ International Women’s Year in Houston in November, 1977 – was a high-water mark for the effort. The Conference drew more than 1,400 delegates to develop a women’s agenda for the nation. President Ford had appointed my mother an IWY Commissioner, and as a featured speaker, she took the opportunity to remind the audience that, “We are the faces and voices forgotten in Philadelphia, ignored by state capitals, urged to silence by the decision makers.”
She also made sure ERAmerica capitalized on the enormous gathering by holding a nearby event where she recruited – Roslyn Carter, Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson -- to attend an ERA rally and fundraiser, which attracted 4,000 until the Fire Marshall closed the doors. A photo ran in papers across America featuring this unprecedented array of three First Ladies on stage under an ERAmerica banner -- alongside my mother, Betty Friedan and Republican feminist Jill Ruckelshaus -- holding hands and lofting their arms in a bi-partisan display of sisterhood.
Yet, across town, Schlafly’s Pro-Family, Pro-Life Coalition held a counter rally where a legislator from Texas, according to news reports, drew thunderous cheers when he called the conference delegates “perverts.” Her organization ran half-page advertisements in both of Houston’s daily newspapers showing a little girl asking, “Mommy, when I grow up can I be a lesbian?” Such was the nature of the opposition.
By the time of the Houston conference, 35 of the necessary 38 states had ratified the ERA, but the challenge to get those final three states proved daunting -- and ultimately elusive -- even after the Congress extended the deadline by three more years to 1982. After logging so many miles and riding an emotional roller coaster of hope and disappointment over six years, the loss was hard to bear. She had put everything she had — every ounce of her formidable energy, moxie, and political savvy — into the fight. She was angry and frustrated yet somehow managed to retain her characteristic optimism and faith that someday the ERA will be enshrined in the Constitution. Speaking of the ERA several years later, she wrote, “But it will come, and we will look back, as we have on the days when blacks sat at the back of the bus, and wonder why anyone was ever against giving women equal rights under the Constitution of the United States. This I feel in the marrow of my bones...The issue still burns within us. The fight goes on, and I will go on with the fight.”
And, the fight goes on indeed. Progress in achieving our nation’s ideals is never accomplished evenly or smoothly, or without set-backs, but it moves along a continuum, with generations of women passing a baton one to another. I’m proud my mother picked up the baton of our ancestors and carried it proudly across the nation in a quest for equal rights. As I consider the 100th anniversary of her birth and the Nineteenth Amendment, I envision her smiling from that great feminist caucus in the sky where she is cheering the promising efforts currently underway to revive to ERA as well as the diverse rainbow of women who increasingly populate the Congress, statehouses, and city halls across the land. At the same time, I can sense the hot breath of her rage as she watches ongoing efforts to suppress the vote.
The linkage between three generations of suffragists, participants in the women’s movement, and today’s activists is clear. In fact, every generation of women stands on the shoulders of the ones that came before. Now that we have reached this hundred-year milestone, let us embrace their legacy, courage, and vision as we make the kind of “good trouble” that can carry us over the finish line of full equality and unfettered universal suffrage.
Article by Christy Carpenter, August 26, 2020. All rights reserved