This hour and 15 minute talk took place in new york city. The New York Historical society and the reading room cohosted the event. It is my pleasure to introduce our speaker, an authority on the womens Rights Movement. She is the professor of history at the university of South Carolina and the author of new women of the new south. She has served as an advisor or many museum exhibitions, documentaries, and feature film. She is the former president of the Southern Association or women historians. Her new book is divided we stand, the battle over womens rights. Ladies and gentlemen, marjorie spruill. Marjorie spruill this is an amazing venue. It is wonderful to be here. This is such a great tradition that this institution has, to get book lovers out here on these warm Summer Nights together and talk about books. I am pleased to be part of it and have a chance to talk about my new book. It is about the role of women and women issues in american politics. It tells the story of the modern Womens Movement, which in the early 70s enjoyed tremendously this and the story of a conservative Womens Movement that organized in opposition and became more powerful. I have tried to load it with juicy anecdotes and colorful characters. There were people and things that happened that you just cant make up. I hope you will find it a good read. At some point it is unusual, it puts women at the center of the story. It is unusual in books about womens history because it deals with feminists and conservative women in the same volume. It has been my goal to describe is fairly and accurately the ideas of the women on both sides. The idea is to shed light and not turn up. There has been plenty of that already. This is about something that is seriously disturbing, something we need to understand better, the transformation of american and the origin of this deeply polarized political culture in which we now live. I am convinced the great debate of the 1970s over womens rights and social roles played a crucial and unrecognized role in that transformation. Over the dozen or more years ive been working on this book, it has seemed more relevant to contemporary affairs. Never more than during the 2006 election, when the polarization reached the point none of us imagined. It became lightning rods for cultural politics in 1977. It recalled International Womens year or conferences. They were inspired by a Worldwide Movement promoted by the United Nations which declared 1975 to be International Womens year. Gerald ward commissioned to staff members. They are in the audience. They wrote their own inside story that you should read. He appointed a republican feminist as the presiding officer and it was a conference, an International One that took place in mexico city. Delegates from many nations came together to produce a world plan of action. They urge participating nations to have conferences and involve women in drafting policy on womens issues. American feminist leaders who attended the mexico city conference lawrence were inspired. They believe involving women all over the country in the process of formulating recommendations was going to help introduce them to the Womens Movement, to expand its reach, and to diverse up by the movement it self. In 1975, Congress Approved a bill that mandated and funded his meetings that would be held in 56 states and territories. People would come together, anybody who was a resident of the state could debate and elect delegates. They would go on to a womens conference that took place in november, 1977 in houston. It would guide future policy in this country. If it was woken of as a blueprint or future action that congress and the president were supposed to respond to. That final houston conference and those 56 meetings leading up to it proved to be polarizing events. As womens rights supporters put aside their differences and came together behind an expansive set of goals, conservative women opposed to those goals joined forces to oppose them with enduring consequences for the nation. These conferences are hugely important. They attracted a feeding frenzy at the time. They have largely been forgotten except by the people who participated. Those feminist and conservative leaders regard them as watershed event in American History. Gloria steinem speaks of the National Womens conference as a Constitutional Convention for women, for the milestones that divide time. To my delight and to that of my editor and publicist, she also made that point in her recent book, her autobiography. She told an interviewer for the new yorker that the conference may take the prize as the most important event that nobody knows about. On the other hand, conservative leader Phyllis Schlafly who died this past year said that the it was a major strategic blunder. She called up that all of midway in a war between feminist and social conservatives that sealed the fate of the e. R. A. To me, both sides assigned the iw i tremendous historic significance. Both sides claimed it as a victory. It caught my attention and this was significant that this was an important story that needed to be investigated and that became more and more convinced of this as i plunged into the sea of primary sources that were generated by this historic event. And i interview leading participants, including gloria steinem, Phyllis Schlafly, jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. And jimmy carters presidency, political fortunes and legacy, i believe were greatly affected by the iwi. Now, i realize that in order to understand this event of 1977, i had to go back to the early 1970s and to the events that set up this historic contest that steinem celebrated as the first federally funded revolution and Phyllis Schlafly denounced as federal sponsorship of one side of a national debate. And in the process, i rediscovered an era in our recent past and my adult life so different from the culture of the day, the political culture of today, as to be almost forgotten. An era when the broader womens Rights Movement was enjoying widespread support among republicans and democrats alike. And politicians who were speaking to rally conservative support focused on race or economics or foreign policy, but not on gender. I also needed to look at the period immediately following the iwi conferences, 19781980, to understand the radically different Political Climate that developed in those years when the two parties chose up sides in an increasingly volatile debate about womens rights and family values. These were years when a tectonic shift in american political culture, one that had been revealed and encouraged by these iwi conferences in 1977, became increasingly evident. So, the early parts of the book leading up to the 1977 conferences describe the Widening Division among american women in the 1970s. I began by describing the rise of the womens Rights Movement to a peak period of influence in the first half of the decade. This was a remarkableperiod in which feminists were highly visible in both parties and working together through bipartisan National Womens political caucus founded in 1971. And conservative women had yet to become organized an active. All three branches of the federal government acted in support of feminist goals. I know you find this hard to believe or to remember, but even richard nixon, no friend of feminism, in fact, bella abzug referred to him as americas number one chauvinist pig, still obliged to cater to them believing that was what women want. Women voters wanted. And during the 92nd, congress 19711972, more womens right sessions were passed than more women rights goals were passed in all previous legislative sessions combined. And that included one that we all talk about all the time which was title ix which banned sex discrimination in education. And people seem to remember it all the time particularly for its impact on sports but it banned every form of sex discrimination from k through university level. The most dramatic evidence of congressional support for womens rights came in 1972. By its approval, by overwhelming margins of the proposed equal Rights Movement, that had the support from the left and the right, from republicans and from democrats. The vote in the house was 350 yes and 15 no. In the senate, it was 84 for and 8 against. And then the states scramble to ratify. Within a year, 30 of the 38 states that were needed for ratification had approved it. Then the next year, 1973, the Supreme Court acted issuing the roe v. Wade Decision Making abortion legal, and there was widespread support. In 1975, gallup poll showed that 34 americans believed abortion should be legal in some circumstance. Meanwhile, conservative women were quietly simmering, as national politians seem to accept feminists as speaking for all american women. Congressional approval of the era was the last straw that turned their anger to action. Phyllis schlafly, a season republican activists from the parties far right, quickly emerged as a leader of the conservatives and founded an Organization Called stop era, which meant stop taking our privileges. A few years later, Phyllis Schlafly had been pushed aside as the leader of the National Federation of republican women by Nelson Rockefeller and other liberal and moderate republicans as result of her role in getting very goldwater nominated in 1964. I dont know how many of you know this but she was the author of the infamous booklet called a choice not at go, that convinced a lot of republicans to support his candidacy. Being pushed out of this leadership role putter and in an ideal position to leave what became a bipartisan movement against the era. As Phyllis Schlafly took up the cause, she already had been a large group of followers, experienced actress with whom she communicated through what they called the foolish left the report. These activists could never have been so effective or done the job without a large body of foot soldiers. And most of them, Christian Conservative women, completely new to politics who saw themselves as defenders of traditional morality and empowered by the conviction that god was on our side. By mid decade, the conservatives had managed to stall the era, four states needed for ratification and for the first time its success seemed in jeopardy. And, encouraged by that success, Phyllis Schlafly created an organization, the eagle forum, which she offered as an alternative to womens lib, and she plays not only to stop the era but rollback other feminist gains. This is an organization that is still flourishing. Still, in 1975, at this midpoint in this crucial decade, the feminist women continue to have strong support in congress and president gerald ford, whose wife betty was an ardent feminist, were solidly behind it. And conservative women were appalled and angry at the establishment of this feministdominated International Womens year program which congress, as i mentioned, mandated with a 5 million appropriation. We turned back to this iwi program. A fight that hightened tensions between the two sides that had been brewing and was profoundly polarizing. Much of the conflict came before the final houston conference and took place at these preliminaries state meetings leading up to the National Womens conference that took place over a steamy and controversyfilled summer of 1977. In chapter such as armageddon state by state, out of the kitchen and into the counterrevolution, i describe this astounding sometimes physically violent conflict that ensued as the Womens Movement turned out their troops and forced coalitions and armed themselves with the rules of parliamentary procedure and competed to control the state gatherings and to speak for american women. My central argument for these. In creating the iwi program, congress had done something very unusual and with huge unintended consequences. This unique and rotation from congress propelled feminist and conservatives, already embattled over the proposed era and each claiming to represent the majority of american women, into a formalized, highstakes competition for influence. Feminists, particularly bella abzug, had convinced congress to create the iwi program and president gerald ford and later jimmy carter appointed feminist from the party to lead it. And so, this success of feminists in gaining this mandate for the conferences from congress and from two president s fueled the fires of conservative resistance. The iwi conferences of 1977 had another crucial effect. Before 1977, many feminists had thought to disassociate the era from controversial issues including abortion and gay rights. During iwi, they chose a different course formally embracing abortion and also taking a new and dramatic step, which to add to the feminist agenda, the protection of lesbian and gay rights. That was a brandnew an extremely volatile political issue in this crucial year of 1977, thanks to Anita Bryants save our childrens campaign, which you may recall originated out of dade county in florida. Major increases in feminist programs to meet their goals. And the fact that the iwi program had ties to the United Nations a large conservatives to be deeply distrustful of that organization. As the iwi program proceeded through the year 1977, the campaign that had been organized by Phyllis Schlafly in 1972 to block era ratification grew into a fullblown political movement. Phyllis shapley and other leaders forming an iwi citizens review committee, brought together social conservatives, religious conservatives in an unprecedented display of unity among conservative catholics and protestants, Orthodox Jews and mormons. This was the cutting edge of the movement to recruit previously apolitical evangelical and fundamentalist protestants into politics. It was the precursor to what would soon be known as the religious right, in which new right leaders would take the credit, or blame. Conservative coalitions protesting feminist leadership of these conferences varied from state to state but in some areas attracted far right groups including the John Birch Society and the american party. Even more shocking ku klux klan leaders claim to have infiltrated iwi conferences. And in some states, including utah, oklahoma, mississippi, and alabama, conservatives gained total control of the conservatives. But it offered a challenge to feminists even in such states as massachusetts, california, hawaii, and the great state of new york where rumors that the conservatives were trying to take over the conference and turned out in large numbers led huge numbers of feminist to change their plans and head for albany to participate in that event. One of the most important developments of these battles between feminists and conservatives for control of these meetings, mind you, and then be able to take voters to the National Conference and dominate the National Plan of action was that an alliance was forged for the first time between a antiera and the Prolife Movement which previously in their efforts to attract as wider range of supporters as possible had chosen to remain single issue movements. Conservatives, when all the smoke cleared in the summer, they had succeeded in electing only 20 of the delegates to the houston conference. But they likened it to the victory of david over goliath. The next section and one that many readers have said was their favorite and i have to admit is mine also, focuses on this houston conference, on this grand culminating, starspangled National Womens conference in houston in november of 1977, one of the most dramatic and inspirational moments in the history of the modern Womens Movement. Sometimes referred to as the crest of the second wave. The conference, and a massive conservative counter conference that took place across the city of houston in the astro arena, put on display for all the world the massive divisions that had developed between feminists and socially conservative women and produced a consciousnessraising experience of massive proportions. Outside the conference, as the delegates arrived, they saw protesters denouncing in signs the National Womens conference as a tax ripoff for lesbian lobby, communist, abortion and antichristian. It was an event that few women in politics would have missed. Women distinguished in many other fields were eager to attend, conjures of it being an event of historic significance. It received extraordinary publicity. There were over 1500 applications for press credentials ranging from Foreign Press to smalltown papers. A list journalist from left, right and center flocked to houston including tom brokaw, james kilpatrick, and joe kline. In the glare of national and international publicity, the delegates arrived with this cast of celebrities. The poet, maya angelou, billie jean king, scholar margaret mead, actress jean stapleton, who as some of you recall, played edith bunker, the most beloved housewife in america in all in the family. Now, mos