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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview C-0076, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Martha McKay was born in Winchester, Massachusetts, in 1920. Shortly thereafter,
her family relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida, where she was raised. During
the late 1930s, McKay transferred from a junior college there to the University
of North Carolina, where she graduated with a degree in economics in 1941. McKay
then settled in North Carolina, working as a women's right activist. McKay
describes her involvement in UNC campus politics during her time there as a
student, and discusses her initial support and friendship with Terry Sanford,
future North Carolina state senator, governor, United States senator, and
president of Duke University. During these years, McKay was the first woman to
serve on the University Party steering committee, and she also wrote a column
for the Daily Tar Heel. In 1941, McKay was married. She and
her husband worked for the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company in Wilmington,
North Carolina, during World War II. At the end of the war, they settled in
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where McKay became increasingly involved in
political activities. In 1960, McKay campaigned for Terry Sanford in his
gubernatorial race. Subsequently, Sanford appointed her to the Democratic
National Committee. With Sanford's support, McKay helped to organize the North
Carolina Commission on the Status of Women. During the early 1960s, McKay formed
connections with other women's rights activists, including Grace Jemison Rohrer
and Anne Firor Scott. In 1972, she became a founding member of the North
Carolina Women's Political Caucus (NCWPC) and served as its first chair. McKay
describes her involvement in this organization and asserts her opposition to the
formation of separatist women's groups within the Democratic Party. In addition,
she describes the initial organizational meeting of the NCWPC at Duke University
in 1971, the goals and policies of the group, and the role of leadership. McKay
argues that tensions within the group and the failure to establish more
effective leadership early on compromised its effectiveness. She describes how
the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) became the central focus of the NCWPC shortly
after its formation. McKay concludes by offering comments regarding the changing
role of women in North Carolina politics, the status of women within the
Democratic Party, the need for women to be trained in political skills, and the
impact of women's exclusion from decision making processes.
Martha McKay was actively involved in student politics at the University of North Carolina before her graduation with a degree in economics in 1941. Here, McKay describes her active involvement in Terry Sanford's gubernatorial campaign, the Democratic Party, and the women's rights movement during the 1960s and 1970s. She discusses her role as a founding member of the North Carolina Women's Political Caucus, the need for effective leadership and organization for women's rights, and the progress women have made in politics.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Kathryn Nasstrom interviewing Martha McKay on June 13, 1989 for the Southern Oral History Program, Notable North Carolinians Project. I'd like first to establish a little bit of family background, where you grew up, family composition, that sort of thing.
I grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida and I went to school there, secondary school, then I went two years to junior college there. Then I went two years to the University of North Carolina. I have two brothers, both younger than I.
Okay. Since the focus here is going to be on women in politics, do you trace any of your interest in that to these early years, let's say, before college.
Well, yes, I think so. My family were strong, strong Democrats. My grandmother who also lived in St. Pete—in fact, her father moved to Florida from Tennessee after the War Between the States—she hated Republicans with a passion. And so, yes, I wore political buttons to school in grammar school. It was the South, as you know the South was solidly Democratic, came out of Reconstruction. Yes, I was very much interested in politics, in the Democratic Party.
Am I right in saying that at least for the two years you were at Chapel Hill, you were somewhat involved in campus politics at that point?
Yes, I was very involved.
Would you describe the kinds of positions you held and the work you did?
For one thing, there were two parties, and I suppose there still are, I really don't know, on campus: the University Party and the Student Party. That's what they were called in those days. Terry Sanford was active in politics then and we were allies. Most of the sororities and fraternities were in the University Party and I was elected or chosen to represent my sorority in the University Party. When I talked to some of the people, most of them were men. Let's see, back then there were about three sororities.
Actually, would you say which years it was that you were at Chapel Hill? I should get those dates down.
I went there in '39, I graduated in '41. There was a steering committee,
a University Party steering committee, which was composed of one
representative from each fraternity and there were several other allies.
Terry was an ally, although he did not belong to a fraternity. There
were a number of people who were independents, more or less, who
belonged to the University Party. Back then the people who were student
help people were not allowed to join the fraternities and sororities,
and Terry worked in Lenoir Hall and various other places as a student
and so he was precluded. Whether or not he had any desire to belong, I
don't know, but he was precluded from belonging as were all students who
got student help. But anyway, I was told by the University Party
steering committee that I could not go to their meetings and I asked why
and they said, oh, well, we meet various places, various fraternity
houses, and sometimes bad language is used and so on and so forth. And I
said, well, too bad, noTar Heel.
So, he went to Chapel Hill?
And we were good friends. We happened to be both majoring in
economics. You know, if you're in the same school,
And continued on.
And continued on.
That's my sense from people I've spoken to, that some connections made at Chapel Hill really have stayed through their political life. Your working for Terry Sanford now, that's quite a bit of time.
Right.
A question I have related to that is: How much connection was there between students in college and their college political work and, let's say, the North Carolina Democratic Party? Was there anything along the lines of Young Democrats or Young Republicans? Were people in Raleigh trying to make connections with students, either at the Chapel Hill campus or elsewhere?
I don't remember activities along that line from my student days. I certainly remember them well later on when I was a resident of Chapel Hill, because I worked with many students. When Terry ran for governor lots of students helped at Chapel Hill and State and so on and so forth. So definitely by the time he ran, which he began preparing to run in '59, by the time he ran in '60, there definitely was a good deal of activity on college campuses. And those of us who worked for the party in Chapel Hill worked with those young people and got them in harness and got them to help. But I really don't have a memory of that happening when I was a student. But you see I wasn't from North Carolina, so it could have among North Carolina students and I didn't know anything about it. But I don't remember any big thing on campus.
Do you think that part of the greater connection in the late 50s and early 60s would have to do with the politicization of the civil rights era?
Not necessarily. When I went to school, and for some time thereafter,
people couldn't vote until they were 21, right? And also, people were
younger when they got out of school.
Right.
So that's all I can comment about that.
Okay. You majored in economics, is that right? What did you think you would do, what plans did you have for the next stage of your life when you graduated from Chapel Hill?
I don't know that I had any particular plans. As it turned out, I got married. But an economics professor that I had urged me to think about a career with the government and actually before I got out of school, or right after, I did take what was then called the Junior Economist Civil Service Test. I remember doing that. That was really at his urging. Actually, too, this is interesting, this man was kind of a mentor for me and there were very few women in his classes.
What's his name?
He's dead now, but his name was Rex Winslow. A marvelous professor who really did his best to get me and the other female that was in his class out of the class by all kinds of little embarrassing tricks that he used. But once he decided that we were serious students then he dropped all that. And actually his bias was against people being in his classes who weren't serious. And he just figured because we were female we weren't serious.
He'd start there.
He'd start there. He said he was in favor of the university giving a
degree in sound and fury. Back then we had a musical organization called
Sound and Fury, and he thought that would be great to give anybody that
wasn't serious that degree, but just to keep them out of his classes. At
the same time, he told me to take that exam. He said you should go ahead
and learn
Some things are too hard.
Yes, that was one of them. At any rate, I liked economics. I took
whatever the general introductory course is, and I liked it a lot. I had
planned to major in journalism because I had written for the paper in
high school, wrote for the paper in junior college, wrote for the Daily Tar Heel. I had a column in the Daily Tar Heel. I was editor of the annual in junior college.
And so journalism was what I was interested in, but once I took that
economics course I liked it very much and I wanted to change. I was
discouraged by whoever it was I had to go to. I remember his name was
Dr. Wolf, he was wonderful, but I was discouraged. He said, oh, it
doesn't matter what you major in, he said, you're only going to get
married anyway.
Now, who is this Dr. Wolf?
He is also dead. He was a professor in the School of Business.
As well.
Seems to me they called it the School of Business back in those days,
instead of Department of Economics. But anyway it was all in one pot, so
to speak. Despite his discouragement, I changed my major. I majored in
economics. But my idea had been, go into journalism. I met my husband at
Carolina, and what happened after we graduated in '41, things looked
pretty bad. England was already at war, and something was passed here
called-
And his name?
Herbert McKay, "Hotch" McKay. Actually, he taught school the first year we were married, which was '41. And of course in December, Pearl Harbor came. Anyway, that's why we speeded up our plans, because of that year and a day draft. So I got married, and, actually, went to work at the shipyards—again, through this same professor, Rex Winslow. The controller from the NC Shipbuilding Company in Wilmington, North Carolina, which was a subsidiary of Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, went to Carolina looking for people to work.
I'll bet.
He [Dr. Winslow] recommended me, and I was interviewed and hired and at
that point we thought my husband would be drafted. Actually he tried to
volunteer and was turned down because he had very bad sight in one eye
and nobody would have him, in terms of enlisting. So we both went to
work down at the shipyard. We stayed there during the war. I worked
first in, what did they call it back in those days, it was IBM Machines
when they had about, I don't know, ten or twelve machines that do what a
computer does today. They had an electric accounting machine, sorters
and multipliers and collators and a whole huge warehouse full of
machines. I worked on the floor and then I did payroll controls, then I
worked on the controller's staff. And
The company name it belongs to.
They did all the record keeping, the payrolls, all that stuff for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
So this would have been in 1945, 1946. As I was looking through the biographical materials you sent me, trying to establish a starting point for your work in Democratic Party politics in North Carolina, it seemed to be sometime in the mid-50s you started in doing precinct work. Is that right?
Well, probably. No, it may have been before that. I believe I began going
to precinct meetings as soon as we moved to Chapel Hill, which would
have been when the war ended, which was August, '45, as I remember, '46
or whatever. I started going to precinct meetings and working in
campaigns and raising money and going to the district conventions,
county conventions. Back then, it was really the smoke-filled room
business. By the time we got to the district convention, everything was
all cut and dried, everything was all planned. The men had decided who
was going to be a delegate to the National Convention and so on and so
forth. I got on some district committees, like the Congressional
District Committee, which only come into play if the Congressman resigns
or dies in office, that kind of stuff. So I did the precinct and county
work and was becoming active in the district level and that's about
where I was when Terry
I mentioned to you before we started that part of my interest is in documenting women's political activities in this period, in your case it fits neatly right at the end of the war, '45, up until the resurgence of the women's movement in the late 1960s. I suppose my first question is really a general one of what issues did women organize around in this time? Was it determined largely by the Party or were there women who had there own ideas about what they wanted to see happening in the political process?
You really have to look at campaigns, I think. When Terry ran, I really
in effect co-managed his campaign. Bert Bennett was his campaign manager
and I was head of the women's activities, but I was involved in all the
smoke-filled room meetings. Terry had me in all of them. But I also had
a women's group and our theme, because this was Terry's theme and this
was the way we were able to organize women, was education. It was that
simple. For education, the money situation in North Carolina has never
been good, but it was very bad at that time and people were really
concerned and so we organized the people. We had mass meetings at six or
eight places around the state, had a steering committee. Now it wasn't
just to organize. We reviewed position papers and brochures and so on
and so forth. I think Liz Hair of Charlotte was a part of that group. We
were into the substantive part, which is the way Terry operates. He
doesn't put people off to the side, and so we were operating onJim Holshouser was governor.
Grace Rohrer and several of us whoThe Second Sex. I
think our Commission on the Status of Women—and as I say, I can't
remember if it was called a council or a commission—was the first in the
country. Terry just did it by executive order.
So even before Kennedy's national one or following immediately after?
Well, after, I mean Terry and Kennedy went in at the same time. So that
was January, '61. I went to him probably in about '63 on this
commission, council on the status of women, and it was formed, and it's
been there ever since. As I say, some of us were certainly aware of
women's issues. Women's wages, you know, women had been exploited in
North Carolina textile industry lo these many years and labor has never
gotten a foothold to amount to anything in this state. It's here but
it's not a powerhouse. You know, we're the least unionized state in the
country. So certainly we were aware of some of those things. At least,
I'm talking about the leaders, I'm not necessarily talking about the
person in the street. People continued to be concerned about education,
public school education. I will say that the whole time that Sanford was
governor, I had the opportunity to
So it seems that a lot of the progress in this period had to do, really, with Terry Sanford's willingness to appoint women to positions.
Yes.
My recollection too is that somewhere at this point—at least within the Democratic Party, I don't know what was going on in the Republican Party—that women started being interested in more of an equitable representation within the party structure.
I think that's right.
Do you have a recollection of how that proceeded?
Somewhere along the line, and I really can't tell you when, we began to work on the party plan of organization. Jane might remember more of that than I do. She's clearly much younger than I am. But still she's been active for some time, and she was one who worked on the plan of organization.
Is this Jane Patterson?
Yes. And at some point we got that plan changed so that at every level of the party organization, if a person of one sex was the chair, the vice-chair had to be a person of the opposite sex. Terry might have been governor when we got that in, because he would have supported that, that's for sure. It might have happened way back then. Gladys Tillett, now dead, was very aware of this kind of thing, working for it. Terry put Gladys on the UN Commission, Human Rights, I think.
No, I think she was on the—she may have been on that one as well—but I think she was appointed to the . . .
Status of Women?
Commission on the Status of Women, yes. There's actually an interview with her in the Southern Historical Collection. I think that's where I must be getting this recollection from.
Gladys was always a feminist. That's right. It was the Status of Women
instead of Human Rights that she went on. So, yes, we were aware of
things, and working I guess as best we
I suppose my next question has to do with figuring out who these women were and where they came from. By that I mean both geographically within the state—where did women reside who tended to be interested in these kinds of issues? And then also, did they tend to come from certain organizations? Had they been active in some kinds of women's groups, whether it be the League of Women Voters or women's clubs, something along those lines?
They were party people.
All party?
Well, party people or people who if they weren't involved in the party
had overriding concerns about government. I don't think there was any
other spawning ground. I remember I heard Paul Douglas speak at Chapel
Hill when I was not a student. I lived in Chapel Hill and I went to hear
him. He was a great hero, certainly one of mine . . . (he was a senator
from Illinois) . . . saying to that group—and of course Chapel Hill was
very taken with the League of Women Voters—that women ought to just stay
so long in the League of Women Voters. They ought not to stay
indefinitely, ought to serve an apprenticeship and get out, and get into
politics, which is true. And so we've had some League people come into
politics, but, no, I wouldn't say that it was anyone in particular. In
more recent years BPW [Business and Professional Women] has become very
aggressive in terms of women's issues, more than the League, I think.
But, no, I think it was more party. The people I remember were party
You mentioned education as one of the areas that most interested women in politics. I'd like to take off from there. A question that may be too general to answer, but I'm wondering if there's a certain common motivation or set of beliefs or set of interests for the women who were active at this time? Is it possible to generalize in that way?
I think most of them subscribed to the historic positions of the Democratic Party. I think that most of us who continue to be active, even if it's intermittent, it's based in the party. Those two things. The things the party stood for. To me Franklin Roosevelt was a great figure and I was very happy that I was able to vote for him. My first vote was cast for him. So the things that he stood for. Raising the level of, not just education, but the economic level of all people in this country and serving those who were not ordinarily served by the class structures. I think it's the party. In my view that's still there, we need to go back to those issues, viable, valid issues.
It's interesting that you mention Roosevelt. I can't remember now—I've
done a set of these interviews, who said what starts to blur—but someone
made a comment that ever since she could remember—and so she must have
been born, I don't know, let's say sometime in the early 1920s—that
while she was growing
That's right, he was president for a long time. However, I remember Hoover, even though I was a child. We all hated Hoover, justifiably so in terms of the condition of this country, not in terms of anything personal. I've read a little bit about him since, and he was a decent person and a good man and had laid some groundwork for some things that ought to happen. He just wasn't incisive. It was clear when Roosevelt came in. But anybody that lived through the Depression remembers those things. I've heard many Democrats say, "too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash," so lived through hard times, bad times in this country. Hope it never happens to them.
That's for sure.
And Roosevelt did something about it. My mother was a WPA artist. She's a good artist and she got work working for the WPA. Painting, I don't know, murals in school cafeterias or something like that. He did something. So of course if you were affected by all that, one remembers it.
Especially at the age that you were at. It must have been very, very striking. Off on another tack, I'm curious about an organization that flourished in the North, the National Women's Party. Well, I shouldn't say flourished, it was a small number of women. I've heard it generalized that the National Women's Party didn't really exist in the South, it didn't make any inroads. Do you have any recollection of that?
No, I didn't hear about it until we all got active in the caucus and other things, until the women's movement came along. I've read some of the stuff that they sent out and obviously they've been there a long time and they did a whole lot. I don't know how much of a push they ever put on in the South. There are some people who belong here and there but I don't ever remember any, and I don't think it was necessarily their way of doing things. They seemed to propagate their issues and ideas just through their literature and so on and so forth. I don't think it had chapters, that's my perception. It sure never did down here and I don't ever remember anybody trying to start a chapter. I don't believe they had chapters. I think it's just a national membership organization.
I think it is too. I was figuring that if there had been anything the least bit visible during this time that you would have been aware of it. So I was curious if you'd heard anything.
I don't remember it, no. I just remember getting literature from them and knowing that they were there. Of course, they were suffragettes originally, and they had quite a record, I think, of accomplishments.
And certainly the ERA connection is what carries through, I think, to the
work that you have done. I think that there is a general
characterization of the period that we've just been talking about, 1945
to the late '60s, as a time when there were certainly women active for
women's rights, but there wasn't
I think it's probably true. We were just trying to work through the party, as I said, and I personally was never in favor of the Democratic women's groups becoming like a federated group, and I fought that when I was on the Democratic National Committee. Later they did become that. A woman who lives here in Raleigh, who's a friend of mine, was then living in Tennessee and she was instrumental in doing that. But I fought it. I didn't think we should have a separate organization for women. I thought we should stay in there and fight for women to be amalgamated into the larger group. I thought if we formed a separate group it would always be off to one side. So what work was done on the part of most of us that were working, all of us who were Democrats, was done on the basis of trying to change the party and also women's appointments and that kind of thing.
Actually that's a good starting point for the next period I want to cover of the late '60s and the early '70s. I mentioned to you before we started taping that I thought the two interviews that are already on deposit at the Southern Historical Collection, done with you in 1974, do a good job about talking about the beginnings of the North Carolina Woman's Political Caucus and certainly the first go-round with the ERA campaign here. But picking up on what you just said, that you thought you fought the separation aspect and were interested more in amalgamation, did your ideas about that change in the early part of the 1970s?
No. I thought we needed the caucus, but as a group that could promote the interests of women and work for women to get elected. But also continue to work for women to play a larger role in the party and to push for what we hadn't been able to achieve inside. That group is not in competition with the party. We were ready for it because we hadn't got where we thought we ought to get working inside the party until the women's movement came along, the Women's Political Caucus. That galvanized women to organize and to form groups that did have some power at the polls and could get some leverage (on that basis) for change in the party and also in terms of running for public office and appointments. And also legislation. We had been able to change some legislation in North Carolina, create some.
I think it's easy to focus on the ERA and it certainly is a popular topic now. But then I think also of the . . .
Equitable Distribution . . .
of Property Act, right.
Right. And there are some others. Kathy Sebo, no longer in North
Carolina, was in the state Senate and did a report, she did a report on
legal status of women. Probably there was a committee. Kathy was head of
it. Good report on that, which has to exist somewhere. I had it at one
time. Kathy wasn't a lawyer when she was elected. She began going to law
school and eventually got her degree and so that was just simply a look
at the laws, the North Carolina laws, and the extent to
I do have, after reading those two interviews, a couple of areas that I'd like to flesh out some information about the early years of the Political Caucus. And the first question is that, I think that in North Carolina, as with the National Women's Political Caucus, there was an effort to line up women's organizations in support. So the letterhead lists all of the women's organizations that worked with it. But I'm wondering too if any women joined into the North Carolina Women's Political Caucus that hadn't particularly been active in politics before for one reason or another. So I suppose the question is, was there any way in which a new constituency came in at this point?
Yes, I think some new people came in.
Could you describe who they were, not so much names, as what was their link to the Caucus?
Well I think I've mentioned BPW. They had their own legislative agenda
and it's quite impressive. They have an annual meeting, and I spoke to
one of their annual meetings at one point. And they've had other people.
There's no question but what they, on their own, galvanized their people
to get into ERA and lots of other things. They have other things on
their agenda. So I'd say no doubt some people from BPW. Ruth Easterling
who was in the General Assembly was active when Terry was Governor. She
was head of BPW in North Carolina at one point. It may have been while
he was governor, but she pushed for, and helped, and wrote Terry at the
time when we were asking
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
My next question, along the lines of the groups that the North Carolina Women's Political Caucus drew on, is, I'm wondering if there were college students involved at all?
Yes, there were.
Okay. Would you describe a bit about that.
There was one young woman in particular whom I remember from Carolina. I can't remember her name, but she was—let's see, we first met in the fall of '71—she was involved all the way along. I guess young people were just moving into their alternative styles. At any rate she always showed up with a headband on and very long hair and what not. But she was a part of the group and I guess—she was definitely on the steering committee—and I guess through her and through others on college campuses we reached out to young people. I have neither any knowledge or any recollection of how many came to our first meeting which was in January '72. I know we had a thousand women, I'm sure we had some young people, but I don't have any idea the numbers. But they were involved.
The meeting was at Duke. Was the decision to have the meeting there, did it have anything to do with reaching out to students or was that a coincidental thing?
It was because Terry Sanford was President of Duke and we wanted a place
to meet that we didn't have to pay for. So I called him up and asked him
if we could meet there and he said yes. He also arranged for their food
service to fix lunches for us for a dollar each. Actually we had some
women to come from
To me that seems like a remarkable turn-out.
The next general question I have is in some ways trying to locate the Caucus in relation to other things that were going on at the time. And my question revolves around the idea of any tensions or splits or conflicts that might have come up for the Caucus around related issues but not central necessarily to electoral politics. For example the labor organizing drive at the time. Was there conflict within the Caucus as to how to respond to that? School desegregation throughout the state. And then around the issues of race, Shirley Chisholm's candidacy in '72. How did those things work out in the Caucus?
The issues you mentioned, first, in your list, no they didn't come into
play. Actually we had a set of goals which was to get more women into
public office and we thought that was a pretty large agenda to stir up
the Caucus with and to start caucus groups in various locations around
North Carolina. In terms of somebody like Shirley Chisholm, that was
absolutely up to individuals. I mean the Caucus, when we started out,
decided that they would not endorse. We thought, to my memory, we
thought that would be divisive. And also we had Republicans and
Democrats and we were kind of feeling our way. So we decided the Caucus
would be stronger if it did not endorse. Later on, and perhaps
appropriately, they decided to endorse. I mean, I can't remember how
many years it was, but down the road. But when we started we did not
endorse. And I think that probably precluded
Right. So in that sense it was similar to the National Caucus's agenda. Did issues like labor organizing and school desegregation just not come into the picture?
No, not that I know of.
Related then to the National Caucus. I know that they set certain guidelines but gave the states a lot of flexibility. How did North Carolina proceed relative to the national organization? What flew in North Carolina and what didn't?
I had not anticipated taking the presidency or chairpersonship, I forget
what they called it, of the Caucus, when I set out to organize it. I had
my own business and if you have your own business and it's small, you
know, you're it. It turned out that by the time we went through the
series of planning sessions—and everybody worked very hard, we got a lot
of work out of Chapel Hill people, and everybody on the group had worked
very hard. Our first meeting, it got out that we were going to meet and
when it got out in the paper, my response was, anybody can come that
wants to. It would be against everything we were standing for to exclude
women. So we had a little bit larger group than I had anticipated. Seems
to me about 125 came to the planning meeting. And we had Republicans.
Grace [Rohrer]
And who was this?
Marilyn Bissell. Marilyn later became a state legislator, went to law
school, (still living in Charlotte and married and with daughters)
By the time we went through all this planning process, and we had a divergent group, young, old, black, white, they really almost insisted that I take the first turn as chairperson. In my view, simply because in the process we'd gone through, they trusted me and then everybody didn't know everybody else. So anyway, you understand what I'm saying?
Yes.
The Republicans trusted me. Okay, so I took it. So I went on the NWPC
[National Women's Political Caucus]. When I went on the NWPC they didn't
have any by-laws or rules or anything else. It was kind of an ad hoc
thing. And they were fighting like mad, which was discouraging to say
the least.
The first national meeting then after 1971?
In 1972. No, no, after we organized. We organized in
1972. Then, seems to me, that next meeting was 1973. It was in Houston
and that was a pretty large meeting.
Was the organization more organized than it was in '71, '72?
I think that's probably right.
It's something that evolved over time.
Well that's right. There was a group that wanted to control it and I think that they meant not to have a formal organization. And actually when they did get by-laws there was difference of opinion over that. When I say them, I mean Bella Abzug and the people that stood with her, [they] wanted to control and indeed did control for a long time. I think that's the reason, it's my view, that today the Caucus is now second to NOW in terms of money, membership, influence, everything else.
Even though NOW takes on a larger agenda in terms of the kinds of issues it considers.
Sure. Mind if we stop for a minute.
We were talking about the National Women's Political Caucus and there
were numbers of well-known figures on that board when I went on it. As
we moved along it became clear to me, and to some others too, that Bella
Abzug and the group around her—I guess Gloria [Steinem], although Gloria
has never been as confronting and abrasive as Bella—their major goal was
to control and to have a power base. I'm not saying they weren't
feminists, of course they're feminists, and Bella had done some terrific
things in Congress. But, for instance, when we went to the convention in
'72, Bella had lost her race and she was using the Caucus as leverage
for a power base and her interests as opposed to Caucus interests. And
that was too bad. And this went on for some time and I do think it
stunted the growth of the Caucus. For instance, in the '72 convention
one of the National Women's Political Caucus's big things was abortion.
It wasn't one of ours, I mean in North Carolina. We had a workshop on
‘reproduction and its control’ when we met and people expressed their
views, but we didn't have a series of platform stands and so on. We
worked mainly to get women into public office. But down there, they had
made lots of noise about abortion. Then when it came time to act (the
platform they wanted was not adopted as a party platform, it was part of
the minority report), when it came to be presented to the convention,
they didn't want to call for a roll-call vote. That was because Bella
was playing footsie with McGovern. She'd lost her congressional seat,
McGovern didn't want it to come up and so they didn't want to
In what sense?
I have always felt that if you serve in an office that you do your thing
and then you leave. I felt that with the Democratic National Committee.
The times I went to those meetings as an incumbent there were lots of
people who were ex-DNC members who kept showing up at these meetings.
Not that they could vote or have any impact, but I just think you do
your thing, you move on. One of the functions of leadership is to
provide new leadership. But this was a new organization, this whole
thing was new to the women in this state, and Grace and I think we
probably should have propped it up and supported it for a longer period
than we did. I did what is my habit to do after I serve, I guess I
stayed on the board or something for a year, but basically I moved on
out. That's not to say I dropped out of the organization, but I moved
out of any kind of, not just decision-making role, but process role. It
was a little soon for a baby organization to lose its parents.
It seems too, although maybe I'm making too much of a connection of this, that very soon the Caucus was deeply involved in the ERA campaign here in North Carolina.
Yes, we were involved in that when I was still president. 1973.
So when it first went down to defeat in '74
'73.
No, '73. Okay, so it seems right off the bat the organization had sort of . . . something it had been working for go down in defeat.
Yes, but it wasn't that bad. That's the closest we ever came to passing
it and the only reason it didn't pass is one guy switched his vote after
the Senate was in session. That particular man had committed himself in
writing to vote for it. And has made noises since about running, but
he's never come out to run, and if he had you can believe there would
have been organized opposition. Guy name Gordon Allen. He switched and
Charlie Dean, the floor leader for the bill—if it was a bill, or the
resolution, whatever it was—let him switch. Good guy, nice guy, for the
all the right things, but not really strong. I mean a strong leader like
Bob Byrd in the senate would have said, "No! You've given me your word."
They hold, in the U.S. Senate, they hold the darn troops together. At
any rate, that's what happened, and of course his name, Allen, was right
up there near the front. We watched him from the gallery go over and
speak to Charlie Dean and got down on one knee and had a big conference,
then went back and said that he—I don't know if it was the
Actually the process by which Gordon Allen walked and the fallout from that you did describe in that other interview.
But you see the reason it was in the Senate is because we were too
successful in the House. Terror struck the hearts of those guys when the
house vote was—I can't remember what it was—but it was over, 60, 70, I
don't know. At any rate there were only about 40, it seems to me, "anti"
votes. So we were too successful. Then when they were able to get Bill
Witchard to agree to postpone the next vote in the House they were able
to switch it to the Senate. Betty and I and the people here working—we
had an organization set up, we had some paid people here in
Raleigh—didn't have but about a weekend to work on the Senate, maybe
five days, not much, when they pulled that switch. But we knew it was
25-25 and Gordon Allen had put it in writing to his constituents. Of
course you always go to their constituents, to get the commitment from
them. Anyway, I did go over that, so that's enough of that. No, we
didn't feel like
Did you just think then that if you spent more time the next time around it would be successful?
I think we probably were more sanguine than it turned out we should have been about the next time around. In the meantime the opposition got organized. We didn't have that organized opposition, not organized the way they were later on, that first time. Of course we were angry. We were angry because it was simply a maneuver on the part of the leadership, two or three people, that did that. It was not what you might call the will of the groups. It was just maneuvering. Well, of course, that's par for the course, the General Assembly or any other body, that's not something you would say was unique.
In the next, what would it have been, almost ten years that North Carolina women were working for the ERA, was that the primary focus of what the Caucus did for the next ten years?
I think it came up about four times. It'd be '73, '75, '77, '79, I think it was defeated. I think time ran out. Yes, I would say so, yes. And lots of other groups like BPW and so forth. Yes, I think that was the primary . . .
Focus?
Well, primary, yes. When we formed the Caucus there were two women in the
General Assembly. The next time the General Assembly met there were
nine. That was a plus seven. Then we kept going up, the numbers kept
going up, so obviously women were running. They started running for
county commission,
And I think too especially, I read something recently, the school boards . . .
Well, women had served on school boards, but probably more women are running, I don't know. Rutgers [University] has probably got those figures. They do a good job of keeping up with women in public office. Yes, those two things, the ERA and women in public office.
I think maybe at this point I'll move to a more general question which is to ask you what progress you think women have made in North Carolina politics in the last fifteen years?
I think that we in North Carolina, as would be true in any state, we more
or less reflect the national trends to some extent. In the world of
work, and probably in politics, women have gone, you know the same old
story, two steps forward and one step back. I think in the past—during
the Reagan administration—that we certainly have gone back in the world
of work and to some extent this is reflected in other segments of the
society, including the parties. The Democratic Party now is trying to
move away from having to deal with all the special interest groups. And
there's some point in that. It got to the point where the DNC had, I
don't know, something like twenty-two caucuses. Everybody you could
think of had a caucus. And I
And who was that?
Janice Faulkner. Very, very good. In my view she did the best job of executive director of anyone we've had in the last ten or fifteen years. But it's very hard when you don't have a leader, it's hard. It's a kind of an ebb and flow where people are coming together and calling the shots and there is no leader. It's difficult, and it's hard to draw any real conclusions when we're leaderless. Women are not out, yet they're not being pushed in terms of the party. They're probably are groups of men that think they should be calling the shots and aren't, or helping to call the shots. Perhaps some of the younger people. So it's hard to draw a comparison since we're out of power. But the party in North Carolina is not in good shape, because of the lack of leadership. You've got to have a focus, you've got to have a leader.
One of my questions for you, which I think you've just answered in a way, is, what's in the Democratic Party for women at this stage? And I think especially my question comes from seeing that your entire time in politics you've been as committed to the party as you've been to women's organizations, electoral politics organizations.
I've always had a commitment to the party and still do. I don't know that
the commitments were equal. When we formed the Caucus, and in the years
following that time, I certainly made a commitment that I was going to
spend my time and
Most recently I asked generally what's in the North Carolina Democratic Party for women?
Okay. I think the party is trying now to make it clear that they don't
want to and can't respond to all these special interest groups and I
think they have a point. So within that I think we have to work for
women and work for holding the party together. I think now we have to
work for that double thing. I think we have to work for both. That does
not mean we stop looking for women candidates and that we stop
supporting them. There's an organization on the national level and I
have talked about this to some people here and who knows, we may pull it
off one of these days. There's something out of Washington called
EMILY's List. That stands for Early Money Is Like Yeast. I really think
that it's something we probably should do here. They have been
successful recently in two seats that were filled. Women that they
supported won. One was Quayle's seat in Missouri and to tell you the
truth I've forgotten where the other one was. It might have been
Alabama. Anyway, two seats, two women ran. They have a very pragmatic,
tough process that they go through in terms of selecting the candidates
they will support. Then they select a small group, relatively speaking,
and then they give them money. They gave Barbara McCulsky, I
I'm afraid I wouldn't know.
Anyway, they gave her a substantial amount of money and they gave it early. That's what you have to do. You can't wait until somebody's in a hot race. You've got to give that money early so that people can have an organization, and a base and money to raise money and so on and so forth. Some of us are kind of looking at that idea for North Carolina. I think that we're still committed to identifying women who can and should run and supporting those women however we can. Certainly there's a group of us who think that we have to do what EMILY's List has done, whether or not we have the money, and that is to have a narrow focus. And I think most of us are thinking about the General Assembly.
There's a new woman, relatively speaking, legislator that's showing a lot of leadership and that's Sharon Thompson from Durham. A lot of leadership, we need some more Sharons in there.
Isn't she getting a lot of support from the new speaker?
I don't know. I think he's given her some tasks to do, but she was not one of the twenty who voted for him.
I think that's right. I don't think she voted for him.
No, I think she probably belongs to the Kennel Club.
Meaning the Liston Ramsey Kennel Club?
Well, all the people who didn't vote for Maverick. Sorry, that's a
Freudian slip.
Is that the same as being in the doghouse?
Well, that's just what they call it.
If you could say, generally, what it will take for women to be successful in North Carolina politics, what would you say?
You thinking about the General Assembly or the Party, or what?
I suppose the General Assembly because that seems where women have ended up. But even, let's say, women running for state-wide office.
We've never had but two to run. Margaret Harper ran for Lieutenant
Governor not too long after the Caucus was formed, and Grace [Rohrer]
ran for State Treasurer. I don't think any other women have run. We're
behind other states in women running for state-wide office and that's
where some of the women are complaining that the party hasn't supported
them. Now of course the party can't support people in the primary. But
informally people get together and pick out somebody and try to help
them, particularly in the governor and lieutenant governor races. I
think—and I think a lot of other people think—that the party should have
had some kind of pow-wow before the last election and figured out how
they could support a woman and a black running for Council of State,
because there were two vacant seats. It's a little bit hairy. The party
itself can't do it, but movers and shakers can do it. In terms of how
they will fare in terms of running, it's going to have to be the same
way everybody else runs. I mean you've got to find candidates and stake
yourself out and start early and get the money and so on. What we need
to find is people who are willing to take some leadership role and take
some risk and then get there. See, not everyone has done that. Betsy
Cochrane I think is a good example of a woman who has fulfilled very
well a leadership role. We also have to have women who are politically
astute. And not all the women are politically astute in terms of
recognizing what is happening, the
It seems you've commented on two things, really. One being structural elements of child care and leaves, and that sort of thing that are harmful to women's advancement. But earlier too I think you talked more about an attitude that comes through socialization. You mentioned the women you worked with at AT & T saying, I don't want to be part of that.
That's right. That's the way it's played out among many women managers within corporate cultures.
I would say it's impossible to pinpoint what's a structural element and what's an attitude. The two play off of each other.
It's conditioned behavior more than identifiable attitudes, in my view. Behavior of all people, men and women, is conditioned. Women have a lot of skills, a lot of strategic skills, a lot of political skills. In the world of work they simply don't see them as appropriate, let's say, to the corporation, therefore they