Oral History Interview with Allie Hixson, Part II

ALLIE HIXON: Into Collegiate School. And I said, the people I am going to target for education is going to be the adults in the community first. And I’m going to begin back in my little bailiwick of Green County and Adair County. And I’m going to begin to go and travel for AUW. And, now, you see, E-, ERA, I didn’t know anything about it when it passed in ’72. Now, my young daughter who’s a lawyer in, in Minnesota, has been there a number of years, and was also in Washington, with a grand jury coalition of views, and then was in, as assistant executive director in, in Missouri, and then became the, the head of the Civil Rights Commission in Minneso-, Minneapolis. Emmy says she doesn’t remember 1:00a lot of that, but I remember, she was now at, going to U of L law school. And she had had her own ‘clicks’ where they weren’t prepared or did not want women lawyers [laughs] in those days either. So she, I began to filter some information from her too, you know. But, I just, I realized that, that the education had to be out there. And then while the ERA passed in 1972 out of Congress, and Kentucky was among the first twenty that ratified it just like that. That wonderful woman that you should talk to some time is attorney Virginia Burbank who told me that she was the first person to give testimony on the ERA. And it, and the ERA was ratified in Kentucky in a summer session. Now Emmy and the other young lawyers were there. And Virginia just kind of remembers giving that testimony. And she herself is trying to do some research 2:00back in the ’60s, pre-dating.

BETSY BRINSON: Where does she live now?

HIXON: She has her law office down on Fifth Street, I believe.

BRINSON: [ ] HIXON: Burbank. And her daughter, Bur-, uh, I, I, I guess it’s, I don’t know exactly how the title is.

BRINSON: That’s okay. But living in Louisville.

HIXON: But Virginia Burbank and the law office. The Virginia Burbank law firm.

BRINSON: Okay.

HIXON: And, so— BRINSON: Talk about the history of the ERA and [ ].

HIXON: Yeah, right. So I, as I said, I began to hear about the ERA. I suppose, reading the first AAUW magazines and then the caucus, which has always been pro-ERA. And, in fact, Mar-, Mary Lou Mor-, Mary Lou Morrison in the legislature here says that I was the first person she’d ever heard talk about the ERA, so you can see how early it was that we all got into it. But, I, 3:00I understood, and Susie Post and Martha Pickering—Martha Pickering is, has been quite a while in a nursing home with a, she had a stroke. And she’s the one that, when I sent the scrapbook of materials of the ERA Alliance history over to the history, historical center, Martha collected all those clippings. Of course, I had most of those here and there, that I’ve got to get together. But I felt that you all should have it as Martha presented it. I may have added a thing or two updating it or something. But anyway, there were about a half-dozen of us. I think a head of, we’re going to have a political caucus meeting the next day or something. But that night we all got in a hotel room and we had heard something about the emergence of an anti-ER-, Stop ERA coalition that had emerged in some state, somewhere, giving trouble. And Susie told us that this was, 4:00this was coming our way. Now this was in ’74, I’m sure. Because I think that, with ’76 they met with, the Schlafly deal began to, to really make its presence.

BRINSON: Phyllis Schlafly and [ ].

HIXON: Yeah. I have to tell you something about that that not a lot of people know. It’s been like kept as a great big secret, only in the couple of historical books that I’ve, have had some input with by just being interviewed by people. When, when ERA passed in 1972, Mar-, I, I spent a night with Martha, Representative Martha Griffiths, who was one of the main sponsors of the ERA, from Michigan. And we were staying—and I had, I had now begun to travel to, 5:00in 1992 or -3. I had begun to organize the ERA summit with some of my friends from various women’s organizations in, in Washington. And got all of the—I’ll tell you when, when, in 1981, I’m going to jump way ahead now and then come back—1991, you remember, Bush or that [laughs]—God, today it really makes you think of these things—Bush, who was pro-ERA, as was Ronald Reagan, who, as soon as the far right got him in there and got him following their orders. And of course he took ERA out of the platform. Now the Republican Party had endorsed the ERA, included it in their platform three years, or four years, then, before the Democratic Party did. In 1980, after all those 40 years, R-, 6:00Reagan took ERA out. Now Bush and Mrs. Bush had both been on record for support of the ERA. But now they aren’t. Okay. So I’m standing—when Reagan gets in-, inaugurated, by this time, and the ERA has, you know, gone down, 1982, about. But, anyway, we know it’s on the way, that it’s not, we haven’t gotten the last three states. The last state that ratified was ’77. Now the, the, there’s two things that come in together here that you need to know, that Martha has, Martha Griffiths has made clear to me. In 1972, Martha and Burch Bye, neither said they had any idea there would be any problem with ratifying the ERA. They’d had, you know, it had been introduced by Alice Paul in 1923. 7:00For those who do not know that history, she was a suffragist, and part of the English suffragist group, young, brilliant, woman lawyer that sat up the National Woman’s Party that pushed the vote through, go to jail, and all that marvelous story. And she realized that, when they got the vote, that, that was only one, the first step to women’s equality. And she tried to tell that to the National Woman’s Party group. But nobody bought it. They were tired of the suffragist drive. They didn’t see any danger. Nevertheless, she got it introduced, ’23. Now, it was held captive in the committee of a very hostile anti-female man who wouldn’t let it out of the committee until finally then Martha Griffiths and—well, if you go back to the history, I, it, it, you know, 8:00may have gotten through another committee, another time. I’ve got the history of that, but I d-, I don’t know the, recall it right now. But at any rate, neither Burch Bayh or Martha had a, really any sense that after all this long crusade, for the Suffrage Movement had gone, had been ratified almost immediately. So—and a long, long perilous crusade—so they thought, given the long history of the fight for the ERA, this would be [snaps fingers] just like that. So, and so, Kentucky—and Hawaii was the first state to ratify in 1972—and I’m real proud that we, we were right up in there, you know. But what had actually happened is, that just before the last gavel was down on that, Senator Sam Ger-, Irvin, of North Carolina, 9:00an adamant anti-feminist and anti-woman’s equality advocate, who thought a woman’s place was in the home and it would ruin the whole society if this wa-, law, these laws, if this was in the constitution. And you can read that whole history—even, I mean, it’s just astonishing to this day that so few people were aware. But you know what he did, and this is what is the big secret. Most people don’t know, and I tell it when I can. He saw it was going to pass, overwhelming votes for the ERA. And he calls up his acquaintance, more than his friend, I guess a friend, Phyllis Schlafly, who had been working for Goldwater, had put out her little books, you know. Never heard of the ERA. He calls her up and he tells her what’s going to happen to women. Going to ruin the homes 10:00and all that. But anyway, he’ll tell her. And she, Phyllis knows how to take it and run with it. And he told her she could have his franking privilege, use his franking privilege for postage. She sat up her, now this is—you know, we need to know these things!

BRINSON: [ ] HIXON: Well, it’s documented. I can give you the—I’ve copied it for other people.

BRINSON: No, I believe you. I’m, I’m glad to hear you [ ].

HIXON: She set up her so-called Stop ERA kitchen networks. Started sending out her little newsletters.

BRINSON: Um-hm.

HIXON: Organized in consultation with him, with the power that he had. Begin to get little groups to infiltrate. Well, by ’76, they had Stop ERA w—now the big show hadn’t come yet, but they had, they had come up and made their presence felt. And we had a good chair of the Senate committee 11:00who kept it from getting out. I, I, you know, you have to review, just who introduced it first and who was trying to protect it and who was against it at the beginning. But at any rate, the, the male species has been acculturated to think that they, they are it and that women don’t have business being in the legislature. I mean, you look at the pitiful few numbers that we’ve still got and you know what the answer is. So they didn’t— BRINSON: When you were all, met in the hotel room— HIXON: Yeah, okay, we decided, this had happened, what I’m telling you about. That we had heard now that this Stop ERA thing was real. It was coming our way. And while they hadn’t gotten anywhere with the first attempt in ’74, 12:00we decided that we’d better get a network together. The Kentucky Pro-ERA Alliance was then organized the next day. We had about forty some people signed up. And we set up coordinators from every state. And I was named one of the coordinators from my district, you know. Martha Pickering and we, we elected Susie and Martha Pickering. Actually I had been in touch with them earlier, and the interesting thing is, and Mar-, Susie told me, or not long ago, that she hadn’t quite remembered the first time she ever called me was to get me to get active for reproductive rights, that there was a, you know, the fight coming up for abortion and that, yeah. And I didn’t know much about that, but I had enough of my experience about what men could do to women to believe what she was telling me. So, but then 13:00I turned to her, too, and we all got together, and we set up a pro-ERA alliance. Then, Susie says, they decided I was the best speaker. So, they send me out the first time. That was before, that was ’76 by now. We, we organized in ’75. So, she said that she had been called to come to Owensboro. Actually, supposedly Phyllis Schlafly was to be there, but she’d started her infamous debates, and, I don’t know, whether Susie just didn’t want to fool with her, tackle her or just what. But she always laughed and wouldn’t say anything except that you’re the best speaker. I walked in there with no experience whatever of having a debate and knowing very little of what it was all about as far as opposition was concerned because I’d been working positively all this time. And thank goodness I had, I had enough AAUW 14:00acquaintances. I called up the librarian at Bowling Green, and she agreed to go. Alice Roe. She agreed to go with me. Poor dear Alice told me after that, “Don’t ever ask me to do everything. It was such a terrible thing.” You know what happened? [Laughs] I learned quickly, and, oh, it was valuable. Because I’ve, in every state nearly across the union I’ve been to, I was always aware of what her plans were and how the opposition was going to meet. Anyway we got down there. Well, Claire Oldham was one of the greatest feminists in Owensboro and who was also part of this early organizing of the Pro-ERA Alliance and caucus and AAUW, and just a marvelous woman. Just talked to her last night. Owens-, she said that they had tried to get, I don’t know how much media they were able to get, but nothing—we were all new at that. And so what had happened? Schlafly—not Schlafly, 15:00her sister, Elaine Donnelly, you’ve heard of her?

BRINSON: Um-hm.

HIXON: Her sister or sister-in-law, I, I guess it was. It, she turns, she turns up instead of Schlafly. But they had a whole half of the, the room that—the opposition was over here and we were over here, and we had not a bad little attendance, but nothing like the crowded to the walls. They had been on the, she had, Schlafly herself had been on the radio, been to the newspapers. I mean they had the money and they had the g-, expertise from Washington on, you know. Well, I, Alice did what she could do, but it, she was just absolutely terrified of them. And I took the, well being a big talker, I, I, you were never going to get me down, you know. I gave tit for tat and I, and I, everybody said that I won the argument. 16:00But the thing was, it was a, a revelation of what we were, the whole thing that was happening. So we were in, fully apprised of everything that was coming down for ’78 when The-, when Thelma had to end up vetoing the recision.

BRINSON: Right.

HIXON: In the meantime, you know, why, we’d learned what was happening in all the other states and all that. And in between, don’t forget, in between, the international women’s year occurred in 1977.

BRINSON: And you were the chair?

HIXON: I was named, I was elected the chair of the Kentucky coordinating committee.

BRINSON: The chair. Okay.

HIXON: And wonderful, all of those women that I’ve worked with. Some of them are going to be on your panel. We had, we sent twenty-four delegates and five alternates, I believe it was, to Houston. But first, we had another whole book you could write, on my first experience 17:00with, with a, a conference. And I had been to Washington, been to Bella’s meeting, got acquainted with Bella Abzug. Learned some really good tricks with her that saved us when they thought they would put us down in Lexington. That’s another whole story. I, you know, I— BRINSON: What do you mean, they put you down in Lexington? Put [ ]?

HIXON: Oh, they thought they were going to close us down. I had just moved into the top floor of the Hyatt Regency in Lexington.

BRINSON: The alliance or the International Women’s— HIXON: The Conference.

BRINSON: The Conference. Okay.

HIXON: In 1977, Kentucky IWY conference.

BRINSON: Right.

HIXON: And I’d been suspicious that not too much had to happen to, to, well, I know that they kept some people from being there. But at any rate, they had organized. They had, well I don’t know how many people they had outside that building. But— BRINSON: Where did you have the meeting?

HIXON: In the Hyatt Regency. I had to, I had— BRINSON: And where? In Lex-, in Louisville?

HIXON: In Lexington.

BRINSON: In Lexington.

HIXON: And we had, you know, Bella, I’d worked along with her. And I, I was in and out of, 18:00in fact, I was named one of her vice-chairs at Houston, and I knew good people. And Bella helped me get Shirley Chisholm, one of our main speakers. Carolyn, Carolyn, you know, who wrote one of the ERA books. What am I trying to say? Carolyn Beard, Carolyn something-or-other. I’ll have to think of her name.

BRINSON: I’m sure that will come to you.

HIXON: I had, we had good, great workshops. Pam Elam was the program director. We keep close in touch. She’s from Kentucky and she’s now in, in New York and has been very active in Hillary’s election.

BRINSON: Um-hm.

HIXON: And, but the, the beautiful thing was that we named Thelma as my honorary chair for us. And Thelma was just there for us, anytime we wanted it. And Mrs. Singletary was instrumental in the site location and bringing her expertise to, to be involved. 19:00Now— BRINSON: Because at the time her husband was the president of UK.

HIXON: That’s right, of the, of the university. So, that was a lot. But what they had tried to do, they miscalculated. They knew, I guess, with the name people we had, Mrs. Singletary and Thelma and all of us, that we would have quite a bit of clout. So what they thought they would do, they—see our mandate for, passed by Congress—this is the only bill, ev-, any legislation that ever was passed to sponsor a women’s conference. And Bella got f-, she was still in Congress, and she got five million dollars. Now that’s about, I tell it, and Bella always said it, [laughs] it was about a nickel for every woman, you know. And each state had so many dollars. And we was very good with ours. In fact I’ve always been real proud of—little Alice Akers was the secretary and we had, 20:00we, we had, we sent back about four hundred dollars. And we were about the only state that ever sent a dime back, I can tell you that. But at any rate, what the antis—oh and the League of Women Voters, very crucial. They, they, Dot Rodding was on the board and a good friend of mine and all of us. And so she arranged for the League to staff the vo-, set up the voting booth for our resolutions. All of the, oh, they just—well, surely in the records you’ve seen the IWY listing of those marvelous women.

BRINSON: Right.

HIXON: Every one of these women have really achieved wonderful things coming out of that conference as far as I can tell. It was just really something. But any rate, what the antis miscalculated was, they took a letter that I had put out as chair, and which 21:00I had checked already with Bella about and her lawyer, that our mandate from Congress was that this was a conference designed for women to study the status of women, to identify the problems that hamper women’s equality. And to set up the, the, to pass the resolutions from each state, that women of each state felt needed addressing. And that was our job. And we were, while we were inviting people—this is the crucial point—while we were inviting people, men, women, children, to that conference, and there were three thousand or more there, even though I know that, 22:00that the eastern, there had been a big flood in the eastern section of the state, and we didn’t get the mountain people that we had hoped to have, but we had some. But at any rate, it was very clearly de facto, we were in charge of the program. Our mandate was to, women themselves to identify these problems and draw, and vote on these resolutions and so on. But we were in charge of the agenda. In other words it wasn’t a fair where anybody could come in and set up a booth. Now, the Helleringer lawyer, representative Kentucky, had the bright idea, I guess, that the Schlafly-ites could just close us down because he said, my letter said that—oh, 23:00the antis had put in, wanted to put in, I don’t think, know they called it a right to life thing, but they wanted to put an anti-abortion workshop in.

BRINSON: Um-hm.

HIXON: And, and, you know, show fetuses and things like that. And I said no. I, I called and talked to, I talked to Thelma, I talked to Bella. And, of course, my staff was all in agreement. I think there were some other names that I won’t mention who really got kind of mixed up on what to do about this. You know some people really think if you just give everybody a chance to do everything—you know what we’ve had since. You’ve got it, unless you want to be completely done in, you have got to view the line and be legal about what you’re doing, but you’ve got to have some, some, some intelligence and you’ve got to have some control. So then they though—they did not. 24:00Their other game was this. They did not have their people all registered to come. Because they thought they going, this Helleringer was going to close me down. Because he called me—I’d just moved in, as I said, the top of the Hyatt Regency, and I get the phone call, “Mrs. Hixon, I—you’re not going to hold a conference here” or something to this affect. I said, “Oh, why not?” BRINSON: Was he actually the legislator from the Lexington area?

HIXON: He, he’s from Louisville.

BRINSON: From Louisville.

HIXON: Um-hm.

BRINSON: Okay.

HIXON: And he said, “Because I’m going to close you down because you have refused to allow participants, and I’ve got your letter here.” And he says, “You’re not going to let our people, who oppose what you’re doing, in.” I said, “You just read right on to the bottom of that letter.” And I said, “This is, these are words right from Bella Abzug and her, her 25:00lawyer. And you just read that and you’ll see that we’re going on with our conference. And simply stated out we are in charge of the program and if we say you can’t do this on our program, then, that’s it.” Well, there they were. They didn’t have enough people to vote us down. All we had to do, really, was to have our people all day. They passed out over seventy resolutions without enough opposition to even fe-, defeat, I don’t think very many, if any. And the other thing they tried to do, and I can’t prove it now. But I know they had someone in there, and I think probably Mrs. Singletary knew something about it, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. But they, they tried to gum up then the, the audio works. So I had some people that had their own little tapes. But just one of those things. But I tell you— 26:00BRINSON: [ ] HIXON: When that—that was the second big ‘click’ in my life. When I, after I hung up that phone from him, I went over to the window and I looked down on the city of Lexington. I thought, Allie Hixon, you’re in dangerous business, but this is what you’re here for. And I never, ever have been afraid since then. And so that was ’77. Seventy-eight, then, you know, they came back in full blast. And that was the day that Thelma, I mean that, yeah, Thelma was there. And we’d all worked closely with her. I had been her—and, and a couple of other women that she had worked closely with.

BRINSON: Were you actually working with her?

HIXON: With Thelma? Yeah, as her liaison with women’s groups.

BRINSON: Okay.

HIXON: And there were other women that helped her. But you see, we were very careful. We were not using any money now from the ’77 conference. This was my own voluntary help. 27:00I used no money whatever. And Thelma did not use any money to, out of her office. And, but we—now Pam Elam and I had been the first and only lobbyists that women had ever had in the legislature.

BRINSON: And Pam was— HIXON: When we came—Pam Elam.

BRINSON: She was working for the Kentucky Civil Liberties Union at that point?

HIXON: I believe she was. Yes.

BRINSON: She was?

HIXON: I believe she was. But any rate—and a very sharp mind. And she was in charge of the, of the program, and really, really good. I just saw her when I went, on the last trip I went wi-, from Baltimore. The Feminist Exposition, last year. And we got together for lunch and she, she comes, has folks here, at least one parent here. And she’s going to be delighted that I’m back, that I’m moving back to Louisville. But at any rate, Pam, 28:00Pam and I then—you see, now, by this time, we formed something called the Kentucky Women’s Agenda to, to follow up and to react in Kentucky to help Kentucky women, not just go and join the national, which we had to go in November, of course, and join the whole Spirit of the Union and the whole platform of women’s resolutions for the United States. And of course, all part of the whole decade for women. But at any rate, we organized the Kentucky Women’s Agenda Coalition. And I was the chair and [] Alice and Pam, and, and, oh, a big bunch of us. Some of these young women lawyers. And a lot of—well, you, you, I think I’ve given you that brochure of names too.

BRINSON: Okay.

HIXON: But our whole goal was for, to be the first time 29:00that women ever sponsored any women—any legislation for women’s issues in the legislature. Georgia Powers was there. One of the big items that had come up was the plight of the displaced homemaker. And the, and so, not only did we have a bill to fight off, to, to be ready to keep ERA, to fight recision. We knew it was coming in ’78. A real hard fight. But we also had—Georgia Powers agreed to sponsor the displaced homemakers bill, which passed. And we got funding, eventually for the seeder funds from the Governor, and that’s another whole file of material. And we introduced the first, the first domestic violence bill. And this was—three, 30:00we had three items we wanted to push. The one we got through was that if a woman were— BRINSON: Need me to turn it?

HIXON: Yeah. [INTERRUPTION—TAPE STOPS] HIXON: If a woman, a woman were forced to leave her home to save her life, she should at least not be held responsible, be called an abanment-, abandoning her children. So we passed that. We also had a rape bill, but it didn’t pass that year. But it’s the first time that we had one. I never will forget hearing testimony from some guy who said, “Well, if a woman 31:00is married, a husband’s got a r-, got a right to do with her whatever he wants to do,” you know. So we had women there testifying and everything. The other interesting bill that came along that didn’t get anywhere then. And you may have heard about it. The, a woman had, was teaching for UK, and she married. And she wanted to keep her maiden name because she was known as a professional person. Well, the law wouldn’t let her in Kentucky. You could not keep, you could not take, not take your husband’s name. So it was, it was a very interesting thing. And I’ve been so proud that, even though we don’t have very many women yet, that they, they have pretty much kept the line going in some way, in whatever way they could to push us along. And it’s a lot better. I don’t know now, I, you know, I’m not trying 32:00to, to go on to—I just kept on working then with the AAUW. I became their ERA chair and— BRINSON: I wanted to ask you briefly, that, because I noticed from your resume that you had stayed active with the ERA until about 1997, I believe. And— HIXON: Well, I’m, I’m, I’m still, I’m still active. But I have been forbidden by the doctor to get on any more airplanes. So—but the people I’ve worked with— BRINSON: [ ] HIXON: And I’ve been always the advisor over the telephone and email and still consider myself active. But I am physically unable to, to be active. In fact, I just sent the last bunch of these ERA facts and action guidebooks to a woman in Missouri, Missouri. You know, we, we’ve developed and, n-, and we had a lot of press on that. And we’ve now even, even NOW endorses it now as—and 33:00more women are seeing that you don’t just give up. I mean we began to fill the void when women said, “Well, let’s do this legislation piece by piece.” So that was the thing about George Bush. He comes in, he’s supposed to have been ERA, turns away. And the, one of his first acts, not unlike his son here and what he’s just now done about the, in the national help for women, but Bush vetoed the Family Medical Leave, after the women had worked so hard to get it through. And Flora and I and I called Molly Yard, who was president of NOW then. I called president of AAUW political caucus. I got about a dozen—now most of, they had a council of presidents then. It’s changed its structure over time. But there must have been, oh, twenty or so leaders of women’s organizations there. But I took a little committee of us that had been really closely working on the ERA. 34:00And we went and we said to them, now—oh and we were working with the National Woman’s Party, Sharon Griffiths who was the executive director then. She was great. She said, “Allie, if you want to do this, I’ll be, be right there and we’ll use the office. This is what Alice Paul would have wanted. You’ll have a place for meeting and I’ll go with you and extend the invitation.” And, as I said, I called the other women, and they said, “Fine, let’s do it.” Dorothy Height with the Nation-, the National Council of Negro Women, another one that’s been very supportive of all these. Anyway, we said, it, it has to be clear to everyone now that we can’t give up just because we lost three states, for three states, that we ha—this is before we devised the, three, before I learned a few things and other people that were few, learned a few things about this was, this was a bad deal. Just as Martha Griffiths had said, they had no idea that he would, 35:00when he didn’t get his seven—see that’s what she thought, that he said that all amendments—that Sam Irvin had said, that all constitutional amendments had had deadlines. Nonsense. None was ever put on before the eighteenth. The nineteenth suffrage certainly didn’t have in it or it wouldn’t have gone through as fast as it did.

BRINSON: Um-hm.

HIXON: There have only been about four that have a seven year in the text. The ERA does not. Most of them have been in, up in the introductory part, which is not part of an amendment, the preamble. ERA does not have a deadline in its text. It is a matter, a political matter, not a part of article five. No constitutional basis ever for any—the only reason the eighteenth had on it is because they wanted the prohibition, they wanted to kill it.

BRINSON: Um-hm.

HIXON: And that’s purely a congressional, political thing. 36:00Now, women have just been kept, knowledge has been kept from them. Men have not said anything about it. And so, I remember when I took a copy of this ERA: Facts and Action Guide that Riane and I, Eisler and I did, and I went into Congressman Don, Don Edwards who had with, with Schroeder, Patricia Schroeder, had been for a long time the main sponsors of the ERA, that I and Laura and a lot of us had been really un-, un-, very disgusted when here it was re-, being reintroduced with that seven year deadline again. So I began to do some research, and I, I brought it up to, to Congressman Edwards, and he kind of smiled, and he said, “Well, you Ph.D.s are pretty sharp aren’t you?” But he didn’t really want to get into it. So that kept grinding at us. And Riane called me up. And a lot of people had wanted her—she did the first little book 37:00on ERA that has ev-, pocketbook, handbook on the ERA, in about 1977.

BRINSON: I think I remember that. Little, gray [ ].

HIXON: You remember? The little, little, yeah. I’ve got one or two and they’re just—you know, it ought to be reprinted. But, she, they’d been after, people had been after her to write again. Brilliant lawyer. She’s now into worldwide partnership things. I, I’m in touch with her all the time. But she, she said that she knew I was going to Nairobi in 1985 to the mid-decade conference. The, the only mid-day conference I had gone—only decade conference I had gone. I didn’t go to th-, up to k-, Scandinavia and I was not able to go to China. But at any rate, I’ve always been glad I got to go to Nairobi. And Bella, and was in the same hotel as Bella. And Riane was there. And Riane and I had made an appointment, said she wanted to talk to me 38:00about something. And what it was: she wanted me to write the update of the ERA book. I said, “Riane, you gotta be kidding. You are the lawyer. I’m not the, the constitutional lawyer. I’ll help you.” So—but she had this other, these other books that she was getting ready to come out. Wonderful, beautiful books, you know. And, well, so we agreed. As it turned out, and I talked to other women’s organizations and got them to agree to send me materials about what had happened, what they had done during the ERA campaign. Now what we were going to do was try to make a very simple, I proposed to her, a very simple guide because nobody has anything, really, for the basics and that’s what it’s designed for. And she, so she, so she agreed. And she wrote the first chapter. It’s beautifully written. And then I did the rest of it. And then Sally Bingham funded 39:00the first 5,000. And they went like hotcakes [snaps fingers]. So then she funded—I called her, and I said, “Sally, [laughs] I only got about fifty left in there. People are wanting it.” So she handed me over another 5,000 as a personal, personal gift while it, it’s credited to the Foundation for Women. She wanted it very clear that it was not part of their budget. That she did it as a personal, you know, donation. And I, I just finished shipping today the last of that 10,000. I sent five bo-, I’m sending five boxes today to the Missouri Women’s Network that came within a very few votes to ratify last year, and they’re, they’re really going again. Pat Polis in ERA Illinois, of course, is so historically important with the ERA and all the great—I’m sure you—were you in Illinois— BRINSON: No. [ ] HIXON: When we had the big, last halloo up there? Well, 40:00she says Louis Lang has reintroduced it and she’s getting very h-, hopeful about its chance now. And BPW woman in North Carolina said, “Oh, I’m so glad you called. I wish I had these books today. I’ve got a big conference coming today. But if you’ll send me five boxes, I guarantee you I can use them in June to my convention.” And Pat Polis was going to distribute hers to the legislators because she said, “These legislators don’t know anything about the ERA campaign, a lot of them.” Or ER—and then Virg-, and then I called Flore and I said, “Flore, can Virginia—” I mean we were trying to target, with the ones that we, the balance we had left, that we were targeting—you know there are fifteen unratified states, and the ones that have the best chances. Now that isn’t that we won’t keep on sending the material, but that’s, that’s what it has done. But at any rate, wonderful people like that.

BRINSON: So the effort continues.

HIXON: Oh, absolutely. Then, then the last part of this story really is, not 41:00only did the Kentucky Pro-ERA Alliance then continue to do its education and its lobbying and its networking all over the state. But we got, each of us got into whatever national organizations we could to be a part of the debate of getting more women, pro-ERA women elected and all of these things. And—but, I got called by someone at the National Woman’s Party who said, “You know, people are really mixed up.” And, and I was aware, and I’d been in touch with Flore, that people would think that all they have to do is to just pass one bill at a time and we’ll get equality. Well, you know what happens, happens there. They begin to see that, like R-, like Bush, the, the day I’m talking about, vetoing the ER-, the Family and Medical Leave. 42:00So we went with our assembly, little group, and we said, now it must be very clear to all of us that we are not going to get constitutional equality piece-by-piece. Martha Griffiths herself said, “I never dreamed that this would happen or I would never have allowed the seven year deadline on there.” And—poor dear, she’s practically blind. But she came to our, we organized then—they agreed that we’d meet. This was in September that we went to their, to the organization— BRINSON: Of last year, 2000?

HIXON: No. No, no. Of ’91.

BRINSON: September of ’91.

HIXON: Ninety-one. Our first ERA Summit.

BRINSON: Okay.

HIXON: And I named that just thinking it’s a summit. You know, like the men always have summits. In fact, they had, they called one, we think [laughs], on purpose that got all the news when all the women in Houston were calling back to their husbands 43:00and friends, “Did you see us in Houston?” “No.” Well, there had been Carter and, you know, all the international leaders with a big summit, you remember? It just wiped—it almost looked as if it were absolutely as—I always said that Carter’s little Georgia mafia male gang just set that up to, to just wipe us out. Don’t think the antis are not capable of that. I’m getting paranoid, but it happened. But at any rate, wh-, in ’91 with the first meeting of the ERA Summit. And there must have been about forty women from different organizations. You name them, all of them, wi-, wide range. And I said, “Well, now, I, I’m glad to moderate this meeting, but this is not an election of anybody to do anything. This is for all of us. And if somebody else wants to—” They did agree they wanted to stay in. That we, 44:00they had to get back on the ERA. And so, we could, you know, make it, bring it back alive. And second time I, I was there, I offered to let somebody moderate again. They said, “No, we want you to stay as moderator.” And I said, “Alright, I’ll do that. But whenever you are ready to have a more ordered, more formal structure—now, I get on an airplane and come when I can, and I’m coming,” I was coming pretty regularly then, “but it’s not just that. I think that it has to be a group that, you know, stays together and meets objectives and do these things.” But they kept me on as moderator from ’91 to ’96 when I had to have the pacemaker put in. And then ’97, I knew I had a, a bypass, that I just couldn’t do it anymore. 45:00And I have some more good people coming on.

BRINSON: I have two questions I want to ask you, Allie. How did the media cover the ERA in Kentucky, generally?

HIXON: Well, we’ve always had some go-, very good liberal writers who followed what was happening in women. Joe Ward went all the way to Houston with us, with the Kentucky group. And, I, oh, I can’t think of— BRINSON: And was Joe, J-O or J-O-E?

HIXON: J, J, J-O-E. Joe Ward who— BRINSON: And he was representing?

HIXON: He writ-, for the last few years he’s been more involved with, I think, economic.

BRINSON: And he works with the Courier-Journal?

HIXON: Courier-Journal, long time. Um-hm. And he, he always followed us to all of our meetings. Kind of kept in touch with us, to see what we were doing. And then, then I have to— BRINSON: Kind of interesting that it was a man.

HIXON: Huh?

BRINSON: Kind of interesting— HIXON: Oh, yeah. Well, 46:00he’s got a w-, he’s got a daughter now. Terri Shep-, Pew, Ward-Pew, isn’t that her name? Anyway, he’s got a daughter that’s quite a feminist.

BRINSON: Um-hm.

HIXON: I’m sorry if I, I hope she doesn’t hear me muddle up her name here, but— BRINSON: How about the other newspapers? The Lexington papers?

HIXON: The Lexington paper did fair amount of publicity. Oh, the AAUW was pretty strong, and the caucus and other groups in Lexington for quite a while. And they got pretty fair coverage. I don’t know what the Lexington women would say now. But, we were new on the scene. So, I’ve got an awful lot of clippings people send me from all over. And, Owens-, you know, some very conservative towns like Owensboro actually would give us coverage and so on. Because not many women were writing things, or doing, or holding these meetings and doing these things.

BRINSON: Was it generally 47:00supportive coverage? Like [ ] editorials?

HIXON: Well, with the Helleringer gang and the Schlafly-ites, they certainly put in plenty of the anti stuff and a lot of us had to begin writing letters. Courier-Journal has been pretty fair about women.

BRINSON: Okay.

HIXON: And I think they try to be fair. I, they certainly published an awful lot of my, of my articles and from a lot of the others who were in the Houston conference and the Kentucky conference.

BRINSON: Okay.

HIXON: That doesn’t mean that you’re always happy with what you have. By the way, I was glad to see Judy Jennings’ article, just in the Sunday’s paper. Did you see it?

BRINSON: No, no.

HIXON: The forum. Nice big article on com-, comprehensive feminism. You’ll want to read that.

BRINSON: I’ll have to look for that. [ ] HIXON: You’ll have to look that up. Yeah. We’ve been on radio. Then KET—I did that pan-, series of five interview panels with various women from displaced homemakers to women in Eastern Kentucky. 48:00I just, and I’ve got those tapes sitting there on my shelf. I’ve been thinking what I should do with them. I guess, you know— BRINSON: You might want to put them in an archive.

HIXON: I’m going to have to. Now, I had been sending, and I got others that—see, then we, when we, just as we organized the Kentucky Women’s Agenda Coalition to implement our resolutions in Kentucky, we organized the, the National Women’s Conference Continuing Committee. Now, you see we, the Congress really intended to provide funding for another conference in between ’77 and the mid-decade conference. And instead of that, Carter and his gang, the little mafia gang, fired her.

BRINSON: [ ] HIXON: And it was just a blow to all of us. I was there and a bunch of us were there. And, of course, 49:00I know Rosalynn Carter always and was very strong supporter, and all of the wives of the Presidents, you know, were in Houston. It, that, you know, most of them at least. And— BRINSON: I want to ask you one more question. Then we’re going to wrap up because we have talked about two hours.

HIXON: Oh, sure, right, right. But anyway, I want you to get the message out that people really need to know. That deadline, we have now put out the evidence since the Ma-, so-called Madison amendment was passed that took a part of the original constitutional Bill of Rights that didn’t get put in, passed now wi—and after over 200 years you can suddenly say that’s contemporary. And it had to do with the, the pensions of, or something of members of the Congress.

BRINSON: Um-hm.

HIXON: And so 50:00we did our research and we said, “This, this deadline is a political thing, not a constitutional thing. And if the Madison amendment can pass, you, we will go on with ratification and forget the deadline.” BRINSON: That’s— HIXON: Of course we’d managed to get Senator Kennedy and, and, and the current sponsors of the ERA do not put the deadline on it anyway.

BRINSON: Okay. I want you to think back to Kentucky now with the Women’s Movement.

HIXON: Um-hm.

BRINSON: The modern Women’s Movement.

HIXON: Right.

BRINSON: And we’ve talked a little bit about the anti-choice and the anti-ERA. To what degree was there any filtration within the pro- groups? And was the FBI ever involved in any way that you know of?

HIXON: Not that I know of. I, I think that their main target, I’m sure, I’m sure the far-right agencies behind the—they made their target 51:00abortion rights, instead of ERA. And it just overwhelmed, whelmed the ERA crusade for quite a while, too. Because, and you, you can understand that. And I certainly, personally have understood that. If you cannot control your own body, you can’t control anything. On the other hand, we have Roe v. Wade, which now the Bush administration evidently is going to go along with trying to kill it. And so a lot of women that are now saying, “Oh, we do need that constitutional amendment.” Because right now, other laws have come up that the Supreme Court has shown that they cannot yet give women the same strict scrutiny that they give race now, as they’re enforced to do, because, Ginsberg, as hard as she tried, you know, there was that rape case, and they could, 52:00she could only get the intermediate level of sc-, of intense scrutiny because women are not yet eligible for the first-class ex-, full scrutiny.

BRINSON: Right.

HIXON: And we, so women now realize, and men now realize, and it is, it is honestly going to be the absolute ruling of what is supposed to be called a democracy, and if—no way, it never has been—and if we do not get men and women as legal constitutional partners, legal equals, this county has nothing but a, to go but a way down.

BRINSON: Thank you very much.

HIXON: Oh, thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW]