WEBVTT - The 1977 Women's Conference That Changed America 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:09.320 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.360 --> 0:00:14.200 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:17.720 and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know. 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:23.200 The watershed moment in American history edition. 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:28.800 That's right, in which we tackle not literally take on 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:30.320 no cover. 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:31.680 Yeah. 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:39.320 Yes, the Houston, Texas Conference, the National Women's Conference in Houston, 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:44.160 that was from November eighteenth to twenty first, nineteen seventy seven, 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:49.560 which was the only time that the US government got 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:53.680 together and said here's some money, go out and put 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:57.440 together a conference and a group of delegates that represent 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:00.480 the women in this country and come back to us 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:04.839 with ideas on action we can take but mostly won't. 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:08.119 Well, they left off the mostly won't part. They didn't 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:09.560 find that out until afterward. 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:10.880 Yeah. 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:13.360 Gloria Steinem, who is one of the co founders of 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:17.560 Now and like a quintessential second wave feminist, she called 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:21.560 this the most important event nobody knows about, and it 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:25.039 really was. This was a very specific moment in time 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:28.440 where Olivia helped us with this, where she pointed out 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:33.360 that this is probably the last moment where the federal 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:36.399 government would be like, sure, we're going to fund a 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:44.560 conference to find out how to better womenkind womenkind, and 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:48.080 then at the same time the last moment where those 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:52.120 women could go into that conference assuming that the stuff 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:55.040 they came up with was going to actually have legs 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:56.480 and move forward in Congress. 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:00.800 Yeah. Did you see the FX mini series This Is America? 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:03.840 I did not, which is surprising because I've been chewing 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:06.600 around the edges of it in other research and I've 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:08.240 still not seen it. 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:09.800 It was really good. 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:12.920 Oh, I'm sure it looked like it's just a murderer's 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:14.600 row of great actors. 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:18.280 Great actors, and it's I'm sure you can still watch it. 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:22.320 But a lot of the people in this story figure 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:23.440 in that mini series. 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:25.840 Well, that's the thing. This is a It was a huge, 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:30.400 huge deal. The historian named Marjorie J. S. Spruell wrote 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:32.960 a book on this, and she called it the crest 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:36.280 of the second wave of US feminism. It is also 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:44.720 conceivably the time the moment where the Christian right became 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:48.680 a thing, where the religious rite, i should say more specifically, 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:53.000 and that the religious right became came to hold tremendous 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:55.880 way over the Republican Party. A lot of people point 0:02:55.919 --> 0:02:59.080 to the election of Ronald Reagan. Some people take it 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:03.000 a little further back and point to Jerry Folwell's organization 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:07.239 of the Moral Majority Political Action Committee. Nope, Apparently it 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:10.520 happened two years before Fallwell in Houston, Texas, and it 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:15.160 was an rally that was designed to oppose this women's 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:18.960 conference by women who were threatened by the idea of 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:24.480 women being stripped of their traditional roles of homemaker. There 0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:28.960 was a huge opposition of women who believed that the 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:34.079 family was the basic unit of society and that that 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:36.480 family was meant to have the mom stay home with 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:38.480 the kids and the dad go off and be the 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:41.720 wage journer. And that worked fine in Dandy after the 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:46.800 post war World War two era, but that became increasingly 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:51.280 difficult as this time war on wag's real wages failed 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:53.320 to keep up with inflation, and all of a sudden, 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:55.280 you actually kind of needed the mom to go out 0:03:55.320 --> 0:03:57.680 and work. And so to these women, this is like 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:00.840 a literal breakdown in the fabric of society, and they 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:03.120 were very upset about this, and they very much blamed 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:06.600 feminists who seemed to want to push things in that direction. 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:09.440 Not only weren't opposed to it, they wanted to push 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:12.240 things in that direction, and so this huge opposition came up. 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:17.719 That's right. And it was also a time specifically, you know, 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:20.480 you were talking about the opposition movement just in general, 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:24.719 but specifically to oppose the Equal Rights Amendment, which was 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:29.839 proposed first in nineteen twenty three, technically passed the House 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:33.200 and Senate in nineteen seventy two, still not written into 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:38.039 the US Constitution. We can't get into it now because 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:40.680 it is a very long and convoluted story. 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:43.120 Well, we did an episode on it, did we on. 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:47.359 The whole thing? How when was that? 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:50.560 I know, man, I know, I would say in the 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:51.600 last three years. 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:55.000 Interesting because there's new stuff that's happened in the last 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:57.240 few years. So I wonder, yeah, if it was before that, 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:03.080 dish well, I mean, just like lawsuits like Virginia coming 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:07.240 on board, which meant which means we had three quarters 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:10.359 of the state approval basically everything in place that is 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:14.200 required to make a constitutional amendment. But then people are like, 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:18.080 well wait a minute, other people rescinded THEIRS and Virginia 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:21.479 came on late and there said previously been rescinded. So 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:24.720 then there were lawsuits and here I said, we weren't 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:26.159 getting into it, and I'm kind of getting into it. 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:33.559 But I think the last lawsuit said it's still not happening, man, 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:35.599 and that was in the last couple of years. 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:37.440 That's still just crazy to me. 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:40.000 Yeah it is. But anyway, Yeah, we did do an 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:41.839 episode on that. That's why it seems so familiar. But 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:42.280 we did. 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:45.839 And the reason why it seems familiar is because Phillis 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:48.440 Shaffley figured Big into that, and she figures Big into 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:48.920 this too. 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:53.760 Yeah. So Phillis Shafflee was an attorney, a very much 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:58.320 conservative right wing activist, and who was played by Cate 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:03.960 Blanchette wonderfully in Missus America. Yeah, she did a great job. 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:10.840 She founded the Stop Era. I was about you call 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:14.599 it a club or organization, and I just have to 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:19.159 shout out the fact that stop is what's called a backronym. 0:06:19.680 --> 0:06:22.359 That's when you have an acronym that's already a word, 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:26.920 So all you really needed was an organization called stop Era. 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:32.719 It actually stands for stop taking our privilege privileges. And 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:37.480 you can't use a word from the acronym or backronym 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:40.360 in your acronym or backronym, it's no. 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:42.680 Or else you're just saying it twice, right, Yeah. 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:45.040 It's just so clumsy, and we like to critique acronyms 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:50.479 as good or bad. I give stop Era just an unnecessary. 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:54.200 Okay, yeah, we need a rubber stamp for that, or no, 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:57.400 a metal clanging sound like you've embossed it. 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:01.080 At any rate, philishafflete foun you don't want to work 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:03.880 this out? All right? What are we doing? 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:08.320 The So you remember like the old production company that 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:11.880 created Dragnet, It was like Mark seven or something like that. 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:15.160 Don't remember that, but sure, well we'll go. 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:16.880 Off and watch an episode of Dragnet and then at 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:18.560 the end I'll point it out to you, okay. 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:20.960 And it was like a set ubu set good dog thing. 0:07:21.120 --> 0:07:23.440 Kind of but yes, exactly it was the same premise, 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:26.640 but it was it was somebody like putting like a 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:30.560 metal stamp and they hit it with like, ah, like 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:35.239 a hammer. Yeah. It made that that metal emboss engraving sound. Okay, 0:07:35.320 --> 0:07:37.200 that I want to rip off is what I'm saying. 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:41.360 All right, so we give stop e r a an 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:44.200 unnecessary Oh. 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:46.040 That sounds good. That was really good, Jerry. 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:51.480 The we should talk about the beginnings, the seed of 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:56.120 this conference It happened on the heels of the UN 0:07:56.400 --> 0:08:01.720 saying nineteen seventy five is the International Woman's Year, and 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:05.480 they had a international conference in Mexico City that year. 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:09.120 And that's when gerald Ford stood up and said, all right, 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.000 here's an Executive Order number one one eighty three to two. 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:15.760 We'll give you five million bucks to about twenty nine 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:20.160 million dollars today to create the National Commission on the 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:24.640 Observance of in an International Women's Year, and like, go 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:27.680 have your big conference, work out what you want to 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.040 bring back to us, which is what we're refer too earlier. 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:32.120 Yeah, and that five million sounds like a lot to 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:34.920 fund some conferences, and it is, but I've read from 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:37.199 somebody who was kind of sour on the whole thing 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:39.880 point out that that's less than a nickel a woman 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:42.360 for every woman that was in America at the time. 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:47.199 Yeah, but twenty nine million comparatively, you can't pull a 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:50.400 conference off for that. I'm with you, But okay, they'll 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:51.160 do it for a million. 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:54.800 A very important point was it was also a series 0:08:54.800 --> 0:08:58.360 of conferences. First. They had state conferences first, Yeah, figure 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:01.280 out what they were going to bring the national conference. 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:04.440 So it was like this year long of conference, and 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:08.040 like looking back now, you're like, wow, people were talking 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:10.840 about women and women's rights a lot at the time, 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:13.960 and it was a huge like there was. It was 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:16.839 just in the zeitgeist, like women's rights was moving forward 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:21.520 at this incredible clip. Just two things. Time declared the 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:24.000 nineteen seventy five Man of the Year to be the 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:27.840 American Woman. Yeah, and I read that the nineteen seventy 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:30.480 one seventy two Congress, I think that was the ninety 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:35.480 second Congress, they passed more women's rights legislation than all 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:39.440 previous legislative sessions combined. So it was it was a 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:41.960 huge It seemed like a juggernaut. And of course women 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:43.920 were going to have all the rights that men have. 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:46.400 The Equal Rights Amendment was going to be become a 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:48.360 part of the Constitution. It was just in the air. 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:50.920 So this conference just made sense. 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:53.880 Yeah. Can I read that Time magazine quote because it's 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:57.679 pretty great. Yeah, this was in the quote unquote Man 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:00.560 of the Year article said enough US women have so 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:04.280 deliberately taken possession of their lives that the event is 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:08.000 spiritually equivalent to the discovery of a new continent. 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:09.040 That's so awesome. 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:11.560 Man, whoever wrote that, nice work. 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:12.800 James time. 0:10:14.800 --> 0:10:18.880 Oh, Jimmy time. So there's a congress person named Bella 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:23.440 Abzug battling Bella Abzug from New York who was a 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:28.120 real firebrand and was one of the biggest advocates for 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:32.040 this congress. I'm sorry for this conference in Congress. And 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:35.200 she got together with some other organizers, like you mentioned, 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:39.800 there were state and regional conferences. They were gonna choose 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:43.800 about two thousand delegates, and they were really really smart 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:47.679 because and you know, maybe if we told Josh I 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:51.280 was putting together sort of a easily two parter on 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:54.080 just the history of feminism. 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:56.360 Oh, you weren't talking to me just that. 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:59.000 I see, No, let's talk to the listener. You know. 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:01.800 I got to people out there in podcast land. 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:03.960 I'm psyched about that one. I've been wanting to do 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:06.800 that forever and we need to We need to do 0:11:06.840 --> 0:11:08.839 that sooner than later, for sure, because I've been wanting 0:11:08.840 --> 0:11:10.079 to do that one for years. 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:13.080 Yeah, for sure. But I think where I was going 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:16.360 was that they were really smart in that. Uh oh, 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:20.360 I nowhere else head it is that in certain ways 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:24.160 of feminism, there was not the most representation and as 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:27.920 feminism grew through the different movements that expanded, and this 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:30.560 was one of those moments where they got really smart 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:33.120 and they were like, you know, we can't just make 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:37.560 this about white suburban women or white you know, I 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:41.880 guess urban women either. We need to expand our pool 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:45.960 and talk to women who are farmers and women who 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:50.760 are basically women who haven't been you know, minority women 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:55.120 who haven't been included as much in this conversation. Will provide, 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:58.760 provide childcare. If you can't afford to come, we'll pay 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:01.199 your entrance fee. Like it was just a really smart 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:02.880 way to go about it, which is like, let's bring 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:06.120 everybody together finally here in the nineteen seventies. 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:09.360 Yeah, and it is the conference encouraged that they were 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:12.880 trying to get the best representation of women in America 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:15.840 that they possibly could, and so that conference kind of 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:20.600 inadvertently encouraged all these different types of feminists to come 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:23.160 together like they never had before. That was a huge 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.280 lasting impact of it. Yeah, a lot of there was 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:30.960 a lot of infighting in feminism at the time. There 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:33.880 was the old Guard, kind of personified by Betty Ferdan 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:38.559 who wrote The Feminine Mystique, who was kind of opposed 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:43.760 to say, the gay contingent, which she called the lavender menace, 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:48.680 which she believed prevented mainstream society from accepting feminism and 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:53.640 seeing it as credible. Like you said, feminism was largely 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:59.199 viewed through the lens of white, middle class women. This 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:02.679 was an expand scope and it was it made some 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:04.360 people nervous. They were like, well, how are we going 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:07.280 to get anything done with all these opposing views? And 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:10.760 it was very fortunate that there was that small contingent 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:14.319 of conservatives who were super mad about this, it still 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:17.720 attended this conference that allowed all the other groups to 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:21.160 come together to oppose them and get these planks pushed 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:24.280 forward rather than fighting it amongst one another. And it 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.000 actually brought together different branches of feminism that are still 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:29.680 just part of this coalition today. 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:32.720 Yeah, there was a lot of coalescing on both sides 0:13:32.760 --> 0:13:36.240 because of this event. It's pretty incredible. Yeah, because philis 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:41.440 Shaffley early on championed to try and stop this from 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:45.240 even happening, like, hey, Congress, don't fund this thing. That 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:49.440 didn't work. And so a woman named Lottie Beth Hobbes 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:53.559 of Texas, who features pretty prominently here, had the idea 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:57.200 to like to show up and rabble rows and make 0:13:57.280 --> 0:14:01.160 their voices heard on the other side. She initially proposed it, 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:05.280 and interestingly, Shaffley, I think you found this wasn't immediately 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:09.880 on board because she was very you know, she liked 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:13.320 to play chess and not checkers, and she was like, Hey, 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:16.880 if we show and there's a low opposition turnout, we're 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:21.320 going to look like fools. But Lottie Beth Hobbs said no, 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:24.360 we're going and you should get on board, and she did. 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:28.960 Yeah. That was Marjorie J. Sproule, the historian turned that up, 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:31.520 which is fascinating as we'll see how that played out. 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:35.880 And the committee that was actually formed by the anti 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:42.520 era activist was the IWY Citizens Review Committee, and again 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.240 a coalescing, They're like, are you anti gay, come and 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:48.320 join us? Are you anti abortion? Get over here? Do 0:14:48.360 --> 0:14:55.400 you not want the era bill passed? Come along Catholics, Mormons, evangelicals, 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:57.880 And this is what you were talking about earlier. That 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:00.960 really sort of galvanized the beginning of the religious right. 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:05.160 Yeah. So the more inclusive the feminists were in the conference, 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.840 the more targets it presented to people opposed to it, 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:11.600 the more likely it made for those opponents to come 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:16.680 together in opposition and form like an actual movement with 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:21.000 real political clout, and that became the religious right. And 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:24.360 apparently it was the inclusion of a woman's right to 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:27.960 abortion included as part of the like the goals of 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:33.240 this conference that really kind of created that what had 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:36.240 not been a coalition before where it was basically the 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:39.320 Catholics who were anti abortion up to that point and 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:42.240 the Evangelicals were saying, like anti gay. Well, now they 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:46.520 had something in common feminism. Feminism is going to ruin everything. 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:48.520 There are other people who are anti era, and it 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:51.040 just brought all of them together. Like you were saying, 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:56.440 it's just nuts how the fabric of our society today 0:15:57.120 --> 0:16:01.520 formed over this weekend essentially in November. Yeah, it's insane 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:06.240 to me, Like history so rarely tucked into one little 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:10.360 tiny corner three days. Yeah, and this is a really 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:13.080 good example of that rare, rare instance. 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:17.040 Yeah, because you know, you mentioned the anti abortion like 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:19.800 Roe v. Wade went through in seventy three, but it 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:24.200 didn't even become officially part of the Republican platform anti 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:28.040 Roe v. Wade until nineteen seventy six, And like you said, 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:32.000 it was something to coalesce and bring people together. So 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:34.640 like both sides it's almost like they're going to war, 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:37.880 you know, both sides are bringing in back up and 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:40.480 they're mounting the troops to sort of dig in on 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:44.760 both sides. At this one weekend in Houston, there were 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:51.400 conservative delegates that did get elected. Utah, Mississippi had delegates there. 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:54.520 They got elected because they had more you know, conservative 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:55.440 voters in those states. 0:16:55.600 --> 0:17:00.800 Yeah, those state conferences that were held before the nation conference. Yeah, 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:02.760 that's where they elected delegates. And if you're in a 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:06.000 conservative state, you were sending conservative delegates. So much so 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:10.800 Mississippi sent six men to the women's conference, as I 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:13.760 guess a symbol as well of like these are the men, 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:16.080 these are this is who in charge. Is in charge, 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:18.719 they should be the ones who are the delegates. There 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:24.120 was actually seven men. South Carolina sent a male delegate too, 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:26.720 but he apparently didn't show up. So you will very 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:29.440 frequently see that out of the two thousand delegates, only 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:30.560 only six were men. 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:35.600 Yeah, and Mississippi also sent Dallas Higgins, who was married 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:40.040 to George Higgins, who was the leader of the Kukux 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:42.880 Klan in Mississippi. So do with that what you will. 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:45.440 Got a lot of ground to cover Mississippi. 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:50.760 So as far as the other delegates on the you know, 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:55.280 the non conservative delegates, they were obviously feminists there with 0:17:55.480 --> 0:18:00.640 their agenda. A lot of them were political insiders who 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:03.440 had been around for a long time. They brought out 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:06.480 all the stars though, they're like, Gloria Steinem, you get 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:11.520 in here, Correta, Scott King, come on down, Shirley Chisholm, 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:15.919 who Ruby just did a project on Churley Chislm for 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:18.440 Black History Month, so I learned all about her, which 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:19.040 is amazing. 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:21.800 She was the first black woman elected to Congress. 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:24.160 Right, first black woman elected to Congress, and first black 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:26.400 woman to run for president of the United States. 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:27.720 Oh, I didn't know that, nat. 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:31.080 Which is incredible. Barbara Jordan of course was there. And 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:34.960 if you want a real showstopper, you got to get 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:37.920 my Angelou to write a custom poem for the event. 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:40.720 Yeah. What was it called? Like toward to More Perfect. 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:43.439 Union, to form a more Perfect Union that was written 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:44.120 for this conference. 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:49.560 Yeah, pretty cool. So we keep talking about Houston and 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:51.320 Texas and if you're like, well, why would they hold 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:55.360 a women's rights conference in Houston? Or in Texas. There 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:57.479 are a couple of reasons why Texas was actually one 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:01.200 of the states that had already ratified the ER, and 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:05.000 Houston was a well. Also, Barbara Jordan was a congress 0:19:05.000 --> 0:19:08.240 person from Texas from Houston, so they had even more 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:14.119 feminist cred And then Houston actually had a an agency 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:20.760 basically a Woman's Advocate agency in the city office. And 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:23.000 so like all of these things put together, mete Houston 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:24.960 seemed like, hey, this is a city on the rise 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:29.080 as far as feminism goes in. In reaction and response 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:31.600 to finding out that Houston was where the national conference 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:34.000 was going to be, the Governor of Texas declared that 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:38.040 week national Family Week. Very clearly through his lot or 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:44.120 Texas's lot in with the anti era people, the Houston 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:48.200 City Council had diminished the funding for that Woman's Advocate 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:52.800 office to one dollar a year and essentially just eliminated it. 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:55.159 They took a lot of steps to kind of go 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:57.919 backwards when they found out this is this is going 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:01.800 to be in Houston, like most of Houston's establishment was 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:03.800 not happy that this was going to happen here. 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:06.120 I thought you were going to say it happened in Houston, 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:07.960 because that meant that I'm one day closer to you. 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:14.720 M Mmm, No, No, you ever heard that song? 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:17.200 No? Is that a tron D song? 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:20.520 No, it's uh, he's a Gallon Brothers or Larry Gatlin. 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:21.720 Maybe what's the song? 0:20:22.480 --> 0:20:27.720 Houston? Parentheses means I'm one day closer to you. It's 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:28.200 a good song. 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:29.800 Okay, I've not heard it. 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:33.240 Stun means that I'm one day closer to you. 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:34.560 Nope, still have not heard that. 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:39.120 Yeah, I guess maybe she lived in Dallas or something. Anyway, 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:42.000 that joke didn't work. So let's take a break. 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:43.840 Is this our first break? 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:47.400 It's got to be Yauza. All right, we'll be right back. 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:17.200 All right. So this conference began with a very symbolic 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:20.480 event or gesture, I guess, or a series of gestures. 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:23.879 They modeled it on the Seneca Falls Convention of eighteen 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:27.879 forty eight, which was the big sort of bedrock event 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:31.720 of the beginnings of the woman's suffrage movement. And so 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:36.440 they got a torch Olympic style, got all these athletes, 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:39.560 all these women to go, I mean all across the board, 0:21:39.560 --> 0:21:43.879 like high school girls, all the way to Olympians themselves, 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:48.320 and they passed that torch quite symbolically from Seneca Falls 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:51.760 all the way to Houston. Maya Angelou comes in with 0:21:51.840 --> 0:21:55.280 that poem, brings the house down. All the heavy hitters 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:59.600 are there. That national news coverage is just going bonkers. 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:02.720 There were morning TV shows that literally set up camp. 0:22:02.760 --> 0:22:07.320 There was in all the magazines. The first Ladies got together. 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:11.080 I think Roslynd Carter was the active first Lady at 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:14.040 the time, but Lady brig Johnson, Betty Ford, they all 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:17.120 came and got on stage together and in the end, 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:24.800 including the delegates, anywhere between seventeen and mid thirty thousand people, 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:26.840 it depends on who's counting. 0:22:27.359 --> 0:22:30.000 Yeah, that's a significant number of people who came to 0:22:30.000 --> 0:22:34.200 show up. And so they were talking about a ton 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:37.520 of different stuff. Remember all each state sent delegates. In 0:22:37.560 --> 0:22:41.679 each delegate or group of delegates had their own pet 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:45.560 project that they wanted to pass their own The point 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:47.560 was to put together a bunch of planks to form 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:49.960 a platform to send to Congress and the President and 0:22:50.000 --> 0:22:52.879 say this is what you start passing this and women 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:55.240 will be much more equal in the United States. Right. 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:59.800 So Olivia pointed out, some of the planks are all 0:22:59.840 --> 0:23:04.160 of the planks in The final plan covered arts and humanities. 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:09.520 May I do this one sure? Battered women, business, child abuse, childcare, credit, 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:16.280 disabled women, education, elective and appointed office, employment, equal Rights Amendment, health, homemakers, insurance, 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:22.920 international affairs, media, minority women, offenders, older women, rape, reproductive freedom, 0:23:23.320 --> 0:23:28.080 rural women, sexual preference statistics, and women welfare and poverty. 0:23:28.560 --> 0:23:31.880 Those are the planks that ended up in this final platform. 0:23:31.920 --> 0:23:34.880 It covered everything, and that was a direct result of 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:38.240 bringing so many different women from so many different walks 0:23:38.240 --> 0:23:40.560 of life together and say like, what do you need 0:23:40.600 --> 0:23:43.240 to be to thrive in the United States? 0:23:43.960 --> 0:23:46.359 Yeah, they've tried foot rubs here, Like can we just 0:23:46.400 --> 0:23:49.199 get like one a week from our partner? Is that 0:23:49.240 --> 0:23:51.520 too much to ask without some without grousing? 0:23:51.680 --> 0:23:54.240