Speaker 1: It's the middle of winter in Connecticut. Nine. The members
Speaker 1: of the Yale crew team are headed to the Housatonic River.
Speaker 1: We would take a bus from the undergraduate campus out
Speaker 1: to Derby, Connecticut. That's where the boat house was. The
Speaker 1: river itself is no longer frozen, but air temperatures are
Speaker 1: still below freezing. It's stormy, it's winter. In the wind,
Speaker 1: you get soaked pretty quickly. There's water splashing off of
Speaker 1: the oars onto your back, and not infrequently, her sweatshirts
Speaker 1: would be frozen. When we came back in, your hands
Speaker 1: would stick to the ore because they'd be frozen. Then,
Speaker 1: after hours of training in the wind and the rain
Speaker 1: and the snow, it's time for the Yale men's rowers
Speaker 1: to hit the showers. The women didn't get showers. They
Speaker 1: had to wait on an unheeded bus. While every last
Speaker 1: Yale member of the men's rowing team would shower, come
Speaker 1: out steaming pink, and the women were shivering. They were
Speaker 1: getting pneumonia. The women petitioned Yale for their own shower facilities.
Speaker 1: For months, no help came. Finally, the women were like,
Speaker 1: all right, we've had enough of this, And so one
Speaker 1: frigid evening. Waiting there on that unheeded bus, wet and shivering,
Speaker 1: the members of the nineteen seventy six Yale Women's Crew
Speaker 1: team hatched a plan. They decided to do something really bold,
Speaker 1: and the impact of what they did continues to be
Speaker 1: felt today. To peacefully protests their plight, yasies had to
Speaker 1: strip for their rights, that old nine Hadden and Plain
Speaker 1: sign a message clear as day, let us play, Let
Speaker 1: us Play. I'm Sean Braswell and welcome to The Threat,
Speaker 1: a podcast where we unraveled the stories behind some the
Speaker 1: most important lives and events in history. This season, we
Speaker 1: began with a major event in sports districts. That goal
Speaker 1: of Women's World Cup marked a pivotal moment. Brandy Chastain's
Speaker 1: penalty kick had the weight of women's soccer on it.
Speaker 1: If she scored it, there was gonna be one story
Speaker 1: and it was going to change soccer and change the
Speaker 1: way people thought about soccer. If she didn't, maybe that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen, but it did happen, and one of the
Speaker 1: reasons it happened for THEE were the efforts of the
Speaker 1: women who wore the USA jersey before them, Starting with
Speaker 1: the very first women's national team team had literally nothing.
Speaker 1: I think we maybe went home with a T shirt.
Speaker 1: That first team played under harsh conditions for little pay
Speaker 1: and even less recognition, but they were given something more valuable,
Speaker 1: a chance to play. That was because of Title nine,
Speaker 1: the law that banned sex discrimination in federally funded education programs.
Speaker 1: But a law like Title nine means nothing if it
Speaker 1: is not enforced, which is why what the women of
Speaker 1: the Yale crew team decided to do that cold winter
Speaker 1: in ninety six still means so much. When you think
Speaker 1: back before Title nine, which is before nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: you have to imagine world that's really hard to conceive
Speaker 1: of today. Karen Blumenthal is a journalist and author of
Speaker 1: Let Me Play, The Story of Title nine, the law
Speaker 1: that changed the future of girls in America. Back then,
Speaker 1: women were really second class. There were almost no organized
Speaker 1: sports for girls. You could play tennis, you could swim,
Speaker 1: maybe you could run track, but that was it, just
Speaker 1: the individual sports. For most of American history, sports was
Speaker 1: the exclusive preserve of men. Women were expected to be
Speaker 1: feminine and delicate and to avoid strenuous activity. It was
Speaker 1: often said that quote nice girls don't sweat, and when
Speaker 1: women and girls were allowed to take the playing field,
Speaker 1: it was not to play the same sports as men
Speaker 1: or in the same way today. Miss Undergraduate plays field hockey.
Speaker 1: She has an enthusiastic archer, and since the game was
Speaker 1: always to combine, stenu was exercised with grace and charm.
Speaker 1: She participates in the modern dance. I think the best
Speaker 1: way to think about that period is almost to imagine
Speaker 1: it as a treehouse which says on the outside, no
Speaker 1: girls allowed. Susan Ware is a historian an author of
Speaker 1: Game Set Match, Billy Jean King and the Revolution, and
Speaker 1: Women's Sports. Women and girls were just not encouraged or
Speaker 1: allowed to play sports that their brothers and fathers did,
Speaker 1: and somehow sports was portrayed as being entirely natural and
Speaker 1: important for boys, and it was seen as being unnatural
Speaker 1: and unladylike for girls and women. Still, generations of women
Speaker 1: and girls wanted to play sports, but what they didn't
Speaker 1: have were the kind of organized resources that were available
Speaker 1: to boys and men in our society. While schools paid
Speaker 1: for men's teams to travel and charter buses, women's teams
Speaker 1: held bake sales to pay for their trips. They shared
Speaker 1: uniforms they practiced late at night because that was the
Speaker 1: only time that the gym, or the pool or the
Speaker 1: field was available. Nobody thought it was odd that a
Speaker 1: school sports budget would be devoted to men's sports and
Speaker 1: the girls would maybe get one percent. In the year
Speaker 1: before Title nine was passed, girls made up only seven
Speaker 1: percent of high school athletes, and an even smaller fraction
Speaker 1: of women played college sports. That was about to change
Speaker 1: big time, But as the women of the Yale crew
Speaker 1: team later found out, that chain was not going to
Speaker 1: happen fast enough. Title nine of the Education Amendments Act
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy two is only thirty seven words long,
Speaker 1: but the implications of those words are enormous, author Karen Blumenthal.
Speaker 1: So Title nine it seems really simple, right, you don't
Speaker 1: discriminate on the basis of sex and education. But it's
Speaker 1: really complicated. This is a time when girls and boys
Speaker 1: are given different career aspiration tests. This is the time
Speaker 1: when boys run the school projector and are the safety
Speaker 1: crossing guards and girls are not allowed to do that.
Speaker 1: This is a time when there are no organized sports
Speaker 1: for girls in many many places, and efforts to level
Speaker 1: an uneven playing field could not happen overnight. Especially when
Speaker 1: it came to actual playing fields, the reality was truly shocking.
Speaker 1: Schools were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, in some
Speaker 1: cases millions of dollars on sports for boys and virtually
Speaker 1: nothing on sports for girls, and the idea of somehow
Speaker 1: making that equal was daunting. But the demand was there.
Speaker 1: Women wanted to play organized sports, so the laws signed
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two. Girls are looking at this, going
Speaker 1: where's my chance seventy three, seventy four, seventy five. Schools
Speaker 1: and universities were reluctant to implement Title nine. It was
Speaker 1: costly and difficult, and the federal government was not exactly
Speaker 1: holding their feet to the fire, especially when it came
Speaker 1: to women's sports. Powerful groups like the n c a
Speaker 1: A were worried the Title nine with harm college football
Speaker 1: and other men's sports, and so they spent a great
Speaker 1: deal of time and money trying to smother the young
Speaker 1: law in its cradle. Historians susan ware again, so you
Speaker 1: start to have people realizing it's out there. What you
Speaker 1: don't have is any guidelines from the federal government of
Speaker 1: out how this law is supposed to be enforced. And
Speaker 1: you have no enforcement at all. Zero. It took three
Speaker 1: years for the government to draft the regulations necessary to
Speaker 1: implement the law. Now it was up to colleges like
Speaker 1: Yale to abide by them. Once upon a time, Yale
Speaker 1: University was known as a powerhouse on the gridiron. Since
Speaker 1: its first game in eighteen seventy two, Yale has won
Speaker 1: more games than any college in the nation. You can't
Speaker 1: name them all. Yale has had eighty one all Americans.
Speaker 1: Yale success in sports didn't stop at football, but it
Speaker 1: did stop with men. Yale was an all male school
Speaker 1: until nineteen sixty eight, and the main reason Yale finally
Speaker 1: went co ed was that it was afraid it would
Speaker 1: lose male applicants who preferred schools that had women. Yale's
Speaker 1: president put it this way to a group of alumni
Speaker 1: at the time, our concern is not so much what
Speaker 1: Yale can do for women, but what can women do
Speaker 1: for Yale. The colleges administrators found out in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six just what women could do to Yale susan ware. Again.
Speaker 1: Yale had just gone co educational maybe five years before,
Speaker 1: and women were being brought into a very male institution.
Speaker 1: These were growing pains in the early days, and painful
Speaker 1: ones at that. Mary Mazzio is a documentary filmmaker and
Speaker 1: a former Olympic rower. She wrote and directed A Hero
Speaker 1: for Daisy, a film about the nineteen seventy six Yale
Speaker 1: Women's crew team. And this was a time in the
Speaker 1: seventies where you didn't see as many women running on
Speaker 1: the track, and you didn't see as many women in
Speaker 1: the weight room. This was a time when women were booed,
Speaker 1: they were jeered. The male athletes at Yale looked down
Speaker 1: on their female peers, sometimes quite literally. Well members of
Speaker 1: the women's crew team lifted weights, some men would stand
Speaker 1: on a platform above the weight room, hooting and hollering
Speaker 1: and calling the women names. Yale itself did not treat
Speaker 1: them much better. Historian Susan ware they were finding that
Speaker 1: they were not getting anywhere near the resources that were
Speaker 1: being given to men's teams. The Yale men's crews had
Speaker 1: state of the art boats, the women had old, worn down,
Speaker 1: wooden ones. The disparities did not stop there. We were
Speaker 1: at a boat house where almost all of the boats
Speaker 1: belonged to the men, and the men had a locker
Speaker 1: room upstairs that they used. Cathy Pugh was a member
Speaker 1: of the nineteen seventy six women's crew team and today
Speaker 1: as a pediatrician in Seattle. So the women would come
Speaker 1: out and wait on the bus for thirty minutes while
Speaker 1: the men took a hot shower. Then you're sweatshirt is
Speaker 1: slowly throwing out in the bus, but there's not really
Speaker 1: heat in the bus. Then the shivering women would have
Speaker 1: to endure a thirty minute unheated drive back to the
Speaker 1: Yale campus, and oftentimes we would arrive just in time
Speaker 1: to get to the last open dining hall for dinner.
Speaker 1: Mary O'Connor was also a member of the nineteen seven
Speaker 1: six crew team. Today she's an orthopedic surgeon and works
Speaker 1: at the Yale School of Medicine. So there was no
Speaker 1: time for me to go back to my dorm and
Speaker 1: and change out of my cold, wet, sweaty clothes and
Speaker 1: then go to dinner. And some of our teammates got sick.
Speaker 1: The women started to complain about the conditions. There had
Speaker 1: been some efforts to bring to the attention of the
Speaker 1: university leadership. Are are polite? Nothing was happening, filmmaker Mary Mazio.
Speaker 1: So the women were told, the wheels of change grind
Speaker 1: slowly here at Yale University. So after about a year
Speaker 1: of trying to pursue a diplomatic resolution to hey, maybe
Speaker 1: the bus can stay longer so that we can shower
Speaker 1: after the men, Well, then the men would be late
Speaker 1: for class. That's not acceptable, right. There were a whole
Speaker 1: series of obstacles thrown up at every juncture, and so
Speaker 1: the team's two leaders and best rowers decided something more
Speaker 1: needed to be done. When I was a freshman, Mary O'Connor,
Speaker 1: there were two senior women on the team. Chris Ernst
Speaker 1: was the captain and Anne Warner was a junior, and
Speaker 1: they had both been on the nineteen uh national team
Speaker 1: for women's rowing and had competed at the World Championships
Speaker 1: and won silver medals. And they were like goddesses to us.
Speaker 1: They were very charismatic. They just offered a kind of
Speaker 1: world that I had never even imagined, where women, you know,
Speaker 1: like to be strong and they liked they had once
Speaker 1: and desires and they fought for them and they liked
Speaker 1: to win, and they liked having muscles. And it was
Speaker 1: just earth shattering for me to meet these women one day. Well,
Speaker 1: they waited on the cold bus for the men to shower. Chris,
Speaker 1: Ernston and Warner discussed what to do about it with
Speaker 1: their teammates. Title nine started to be mentioned while we
Speaker 1: were sitting on the bus, when Anne and Chris were
Speaker 1: back from pneumonia and feeling angry and also feeling very
Speaker 1: scared that they might not be able to make the
Speaker 1: Olympic team if they we're gonna get sick again. Someone
Speaker 1: on the bus joked that they should throw Johnny Barnett,
Speaker 1: the director of women's Athletics, into the river so she
Speaker 1: would know what it felt like. Other outlandish suggestions followed.
Speaker 1: So all of those those ideas were hatched because we
Speaker 1: were all wet and shivering on this bus for thirty
Speaker 1: minutes while the men took showers after practice. Then another
Speaker 1: idea was raised, one that was also unconventional, even a
Speaker 1: bit outrageous. Chris and Anne, the two team captains, looked
Speaker 1: at each other. What they recall is that they kind
Speaker 1: of dared each other. Neither of them quite had the
Speaker 1: nerve until they just caught each other as I and
Speaker 1: said dare, and the two leaders and seventeen of their
Speaker 1: teammates accepted the dare honestly there we were at Yale.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're at Yale University. We are incredibly bright women,
Speaker 1: and if we were to say it's okay for us
Speaker 1: to be treated this way, what kind of message would
Speaker 1: that be for us to send out into the universe?
Speaker 1: And the statement the Yale nineteen made the following day
Speaker 1: changed everything in the Yale universe and beyond. On the
Speaker 1: afternoon of March third, ninety nineteen, members of the Yale
Speaker 1: Women's crew team met in the locker room at the
Speaker 1: Pain Whitney Gymnasium on the college's campus. The women were nervous.
Speaker 1: Team member Cathy Pew, there were some athletes who chose
Speaker 1: not to participate. Two of them were afraid of losing
Speaker 1: their scholarships and um others just didn't feel like they
Speaker 1: want to be that out there in vocal. Most of
Speaker 1: us were just devoted to both In and Chris and
Speaker 1: would have done anything. They came up with team member
Speaker 1: Mary O'Connor. It was pretty simple, and we met down
Speaker 1: in the locker room and we had a marker and
Speaker 1: we wrote title nine in big letters on our bare
Speaker 1: chests and our bare backs, and then we put on
Speaker 1: our Yale Women's crew sweats and we had nothing on underneath.
Speaker 1: The nineteen women marched past the workout tanks toward the
Speaker 1: office of Johnny Barnett, Yale Athletic Director in charge of
Speaker 1: women's athletics. Cathy Pew. We had a Yale Daily camera
Speaker 1: person with us, who promised us that um he would
Speaker 1: just only take pictures from the back and from the
Speaker 1: waist up. We had a New York Times reporter ready
Speaker 1: with no camera. The women marched up the steps to
Speaker 1: Barnett's office behind team leaders Chris Arnston An Warner, the
Speaker 1: Yale photographer climbed up on a desk well. The New
Speaker 1: York Times reporter sat in a chair, his back to
Speaker 1: what was about to unfold. Mary O'Connor. Chris gave us
Speaker 1: the signal and we stripped. We we took off our sweats,
Speaker 1: and we stood there naked with our Title nine message
Speaker 1: on our chests in our backs. That's right, twenty three
Speaker 1: years before Brandy Chastain took off her jersey and exuberants
Speaker 1: at the Women's World Cup, the members of the Yale
Speaker 1: Women's crew team took off everything in protest. Cathy Pew.
Speaker 1: We were all absolutely terrified. It's super scary to walk
Speaker 1: in and be naked in an athletic director's office with
Speaker 1: the stun Barnett looking on. Chris Ernst read the statement
Speaker 1: that the women had composed. It was not your average
Speaker 1: grievance letter. It was a manifesto. These are the bodies
Speaker 1: Yale is exploiting. We have come here today to make
Speaker 1: clear how unprotected we are, to show graphically what we
Speaker 1: are being exposed to. These are normal human bodies. On
Speaker 1: a daylight today, the rain freezes on our skin. Then
Speaker 1: we sit on a bus for half an hour as
Speaker 1: the ice melts into our sweats. To meet the sweat
Speaker 1: that has soaked our clothes underneath, we sit for half
Speaker 1: an hour chilled. Half a dozen of us are sick now,
Speaker 1: and in two days we will begin training twice a day,
Speaker 1: subjecting ourselves to this twice every day. No effective action
Speaker 1: has been taken, and no matter what we hear, it
Speaker 1: doesn't make these bodies warmer or drier or less prone
Speaker 1: to sickness. We are, as you can see, desperate. We
Speaker 1: are not just healthy young things in blue and white
Speaker 1: uniforms who performed tasks of strength for Yale in the
Speaker 1: nice spring weather. We are not just statistics on your
Speaker 1: wind column. We are human and being treated as less
Speaker 1: than such. Mary O'Connor again. So we did our demonstration
Speaker 1: and it was very a very silent event. We put
Speaker 1: on our sweats, we went back downstairs to the locker
Speaker 1: room and changed into our workout clothes to get on
Speaker 1: the bus and go to the boathouse for practice. The
Speaker 1: imprint of their protests remained, especially on its intended target.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite pictures is is you can see
Speaker 1: Chris Earns back with title nine written on her back,
Speaker 1: and she's reading the statement and the athletic director is
Speaker 1: looking down at the floor, arms folded, very closed body language,
Speaker 1: because of course this was a very negative moment for her.
Speaker 1: The following day, a brief article about the protest appeared
Speaker 1: in The New York Times, filmmaker Mary Mazzio again, and
Speaker 1: the story went around the world in a nanosecond. Yale
Speaker 1: Women's strip and this becomes this huge story. Author Karen
Speaker 1: Blumenthal again yell alumni or Paul that women have been
Speaker 1: mistreated in this way, that they haven't been allowed to shower.
Speaker 1: Alumni wrote concern letters to campus administrators, some enclosed checks
Speaker 1: to contribute to new facilities for the women. Newspaper cartoonists
Speaker 1: lampoon the college drawing pictures of naked women inside Yale boats.
Speaker 1: The college was embarrassed. We needed to speak our truth
Speaker 1: and and we wanted our voice to be heard. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: our voice was heard, Team member Mary O'Connor again. So
Speaker 1: the bottom line was that by the next spring, there
Speaker 1: was an addition onto the boathouse and we had a
Speaker 1: locker room. I mean like it worked. It was honestly amazing.
Speaker 1: It worked. The Yale Women's Crew team got their locker
Speaker 1: room and their showers, but they accomplished much more than that.
Speaker 1: Word of the Yale protests spread. It became a rallying
Speaker 1: cry for women on other campuses. This Title nine was
Speaker 1: now more than an obscure law. It was a cause.
Speaker 1: And I can imagine that in other athletic departments, athletic
Speaker 1: directors all of a sudden said, oh my god, did
Speaker 1: you hear what those those women at Yale did? And
Speaker 1: maybe they started to think, could that happen here? How
Speaker 1: are we treating are our women's teams compared to our
Speaker 1: men's teams? Team member Cathy Pew. Every time we would
Speaker 1: raise another school, they would ask us about it, and
Speaker 1: they were all kind of ashamed because they had, in
Speaker 1: many respects less for their women's crew than we had.
Speaker 1: Filmmaker Mary Masa. When the women stood up and said
Speaker 1: we are going to be counted, we are going to
Speaker 1: say something. We're gonna speak what needs to be spoken.
Speaker 1: Athletic directors across the country stood up and they said, well, well, well,
Speaker 1: we don't want articles in the International Tribune or the
Speaker 1: New York Times like this is what gender equity means,
Speaker 1: all right, let take steps. In the end, Yale benefited
Speaker 1: hugely from the team's protest. Mary O'Connor, and we were
Speaker 1: a very successful team, producing national team rowers, Olympic rowers,
Speaker 1: We were collegiate champions. I mean, we were a powerhouse
Speaker 1: in women's rowing and created a legacy at Yale that
Speaker 1: has continued to this day. That legacy also extends past
Speaker 1: Yale's walls. Mary Mazzio. Again, what they didn't realize was
Speaker 1: the impact that it would have on women today. If
Speaker 1: you look across the spectrum, what Title nine has done
Speaker 1: for women has been nothing short of extraordinary. If you
Speaker 1: look at the statistics of women in sport in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six when the women did this and made this
Speaker 1: statement and protested in the fashion that they did, and
Speaker 1: you compare it to the number of athletes today, it
Speaker 1: is exponential, since the number of women playing college sports
Speaker 1: has gone up by three and impact. The Yale crew
Speaker 1: team could not have imagined Cathy Pew. When I look
Speaker 1: back at myself doing that protest, I was just doing
Speaker 1: it out of that bond of friendship and for an adventure,
Speaker 1: and I did not appreciate the meaning of that at all.
Speaker 1: I really didn't, and yet it has come to affect
Speaker 1: my life. People ask me about it, and I have
Speaker 1: really come to appreciate how much that was needed. Mary O'Connor,
Speaker 1: it was a very personal moment, at least for me.
Speaker 1: It was a moment that also really created a deep
Speaker 1: bond with those of us that experienced this, and I
Speaker 1: remained extremely close to Many of those women. Members of
Speaker 1: the Yale nineteen went on to become Olympians, doctors, professors, lawyers.
Speaker 1: They include a taekwondo world champion, the owner of a
Speaker 1: w nb A team, the head of an all female
Speaker 1: plumbing company. Many have sons and daughters who are also
Speaker 1: rowers and who continue to benefit from their mother's bold statement.
Speaker 1: My youngest child, one of my daughters, Rose, she's a
Speaker 1: lightweight women's rower and excellent grower at Boston University. Mary
Speaker 1: O'Connor again, she never told Rose about what she did
Speaker 1: in college. And then one day and she was reading
Speaker 1: a story about Title nine and came across the demonstration
Speaker 1: at Yale and she mentioned it to my husband, and
Speaker 1: my husband said, well, you know, your mother was there,
Speaker 1: and my daughter says, what are you talking about. He said,
Speaker 1: your mom. Your mom was part of that demonstration. So
Speaker 1: I came home and she was like, Mom, I can't
Speaker 1: believe you never told me this story. And I said, well, honey,
Speaker 1: I guess I never really found it important to tell
Speaker 1: you that story. And she said, but of course it's
Speaker 1: important that you tell me the story. She actually gave
Speaker 1: me the perspective that sharing the story matters because she
Speaker 1: needed to hear what I had done. She knew that
Speaker 1: this demonstration made a difference for her. Mary O'Connor, Cathy Pugh,
Speaker 1: and the other members of the Yale nineteen fought to
Speaker 1: uphold the promise of the law that was supposed to
Speaker 1: protect their rights, but that law, Title nine could not
Speaker 1: have happened without the efforts of another woman. My mother was.
Speaker 1: My mother was a badass. Bernice Bunny Sandler wasn't always
Speaker 1: a badass. She was a mild mannered Jewish wife and
Speaker 1: mother of two from Brooklyn. Then everything changed. Sandler earned
Speaker 1: a doctorate from the University of Maryland when she was
Speaker 1: forty one years old, but she wasn't considered for any
Speaker 1: of the open teaching positions she applied for. She was
Speaker 1: told she came on quote too strong for a woman.
Speaker 1: Bunny Sandler went home and cried. Then she showed just
Speaker 1: how wrong a woman she was. She had, I think
Speaker 1: a sense of righteous outrage whenever something was just, not just,
Speaker 1: when something wasn't fair. On the next episode of The Thread,
Speaker 1: the story of the badass women like Bunny Sandler who
Speaker 1: went to remarkable lengths to get a law passed called
Speaker 1: title nine, let Us Play, Let Us Play, let Us Play,
Speaker 1: let Us Play. The Thread is produced by Robert Coulos,
Speaker 1: Shannon Williamson, and me Sean Braswell. Evan Roberts engineered our show.
Speaker 1: This episode features the song let Us Play, written and
Speaker 1: performed by teacup Jin. You can hear more of their
Speaker 1: songs at teacup gin dot com. To learn more about
Speaker 1: the thread, visit Aussie dot com. Slash the thread all
Speaker 1: one word, and make sure to subscribe to the thread
Speaker 1: on Apple podcasts, follow us on I Heart Radio, or
Speaker 1: listen wherever you get your podcasts.