The Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade earlier this
summer is the latest front in the battle for women's rights in this
country, a fight that goes back more than 100 years. Judy Woodruff
recently sat down with author Elizabeth Griffith, who explores the
history of women and the rights they have sought to secure in her
latest book, Formidable American Women and the Fight for Equality
1922 2020.
Betsy Griffith. Welcome to the news hour. You and I have known each
other a long time. You've written this remarkable, definitive book
on the early women's rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. And
here you are with this book on 100 years, a century of American women.
What did you want to do with this book that hadn't been done in other
looks at American women I wanted to talk about and one place
How women used the vote so much hoopla about the 19th amendment getting
the vote but that it didn't end there. That was not a complete victory.
It took formidable women against formidable opponents taking a long
time to reach these victories.
There were the cast is huge, and it's a much more diverse cast than
most people understand.
Much more diverse and in ways that hardly anyone had written about
before you spell out so many of the ups and down the obstacles the
movement confronted along the way, and you're very clear about the
cross currents with the fight for racial equality in this country.
I mean, in writing that even some of the early best known women's
rights activists were outright racist.
Had the biases of their era. Yeah, and it made it hard to create
the coalitions that were necessary. It's really only in the immediate
lead up to the passage of the 19th amendment, They begin to understand
the need for multicultural cross generational, multiracial coalitions.
But they splinter again because black and white women had different
goals. Black women wanted all the rights that white people had, but
primarily physical safety. They wanted to end racial violence and
lynching.
Have access to jobs and all the discrimination they confronted. White
women had a much narrower list. They wanted equal legal treatment,
equal political access, and it took them a long time to understand
that working together they might gain more. So there were parallel
tracks for a long time. It really isn't until after the 19 seventies
that there's much coalition at all among these groups describe if
you will, just a few of the frankly overlooked black and Hispanic
Panic. Women activists that that you write about black women.
And some ways purposely kept themselves behind the scenes. They wanted
to put black men upfront. They've been so
Discriminated against for so long that allowing ministers and civic
leaders to take the public Ross so black women worked behind the
scenes. But women like Ella Baker, Daisy Bates, Septima Clark slowly
supported. We're able to support the people in the front.
Baker is an excellent example. She was a longtime member of the in
North Carolina, then in New York City.
And then, when the Montgomery bus boycott starts, she says, to Martin
Luther King, I'll send you money and then when it succeeds, and he
just wants to be a parish rector, she and the women in his congregation
say no, no, Martin, you need to do more. He found the Southern Christian
Leadership conference and she's his first employee. And then there
were Hispanic Latino women as well. There were, um
The first woman to run to really come to public notice in the 19
twenties, became secretary of state and New Mexico, Soledad shaken,
But most of those women grew up from farming roots, uh, having to
be agricultural workers. Dolores Huerta, of course, is the splendid
example of lifelong leadership in that regard. We think of the women's
movement as all about equal pay that it's a Democratic
Party movement. But in fact, there's so many prominent women, of
course, at the conservative side of the ledger from Phyllis Schlafly
today, Marjorie Taylor greens that women prominently supporting Donald
Trump. This is a much broader backtrack a minute because the early
women's movement was primarily Republican for for both black and
white women
with the Republican Party was much more supportive because the Democrats
were dominated by Southern Democrats and white supremacist.
So the Equal Rights amendment is first introduced by Republicans.
Black women don't change to the Democratic Party until late into
the new deal, Encouraged by Mary McLeod Bethune, So within the parties,
you have issues about women's rights, and then the parties divide
over women's rights. What do you make of the fact that see Griffith
it? You look at the Supreme Court. All three of the liberal members
of the court now are women.
One of the six more conservative members is a woman.
What does that say to us? Do you think that's a pretty good demonstration
of the diversity of political opinion among women and leadership,
But it also shows the power of of politics and presidential appointment
and issue driven, um, elections. The Supreme Court is critically
important in the history of women in the sixties seventies and partly
into the eighties, many of their decisions advanced women dramatically.
But then, as the appointments become more conservative during the
eighties, the tenor of the court changes you see it most dramatically
in the abortion decisions, But you see it in other restraints being
put on women. Is it possible to even write comprehensive history
of women anymore? I mean, women are everywhere there in virtually
every walk of life. Well, one could say, except the Oval Office.
Um this is true. Frustrating, And in my conclusion, I was clearly
enormous progress has been
Made for women in this last century.
But it's not enough. We haven't gone far enough. Um
Women are underemployed and underpaid and and lowest paying jobs.
Women are undervalued and domestic roles. Women are victims of domestic
violence. Maternal and infant health has not improved dramatically
since 1920
women more than the majority of the population. More women are registered.
More women turn out and the largest percentage of women in any political
office as the state legislature and were under 30%.
So I wouldn't say we were making progress too quickly. And among
those women, of course, there's all that division and indeed, as
you say in the book, the fight for Equality goes on the baton has
to be picked up.
By each generation Elizabeth Griffith Thank you very much. The book
is formidable American women in the fight for equality. 1922 2020.