|
BARRED FROM THE BAR -- A HISTORY OF WOMEN AND THE LEGAL PROFESSION |
|
NOTES Introduction 1. Quoted in Current Biography, February 1994, p. 32. 2. From the 1869 decision of the Illinois Supreme Court denying Myra Bradwell the right to practice law in the state. Quoted in Judith A. Baer, Women in American Law: The Struggle toward Equality from the New Deal to the Present (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1991), p. 269. 3. Quoted in Baer, p. 269. 4. Alfred Stille in the 1871 Transactions of the American Medical Association. Quoted in Hedda Garza Women in Medicine (New York: Franklin Watts, 1994), p. 51. 5. Quoted in Baer, p. 269. 6. David Margolick, "Remaking of the Simpson Prosecutor," The New York Times, October 3, 1994, p. A10. Chapter 1 1. Quoted in Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 47. 2. One woman, Margaret Brent, had acted in a more or less legal capacity in colonial Maryland and two African American women had argued their own cases in court, perhaps because no one would represent them (see Chapter 2). Except where otherwise indicated, most of the facts in this chapter are based on Karen Berger Morello, The Invisible Bar: The Woman Lawyer in America 1638 to the Present (New York: Random House, 1986). 3. Before the last decade of the century, almost any one could open a training school for doctors or hang out a shingle and practice medicine. In 1850 the first women's medical college opened in Pennsylvania, despite strong resistance from the state medical society. By then more than 11,000 women had received medical degrees from one or another institution. When more stringent standards were set, most medical colleges maintained strict male-only admission policies. For the full story of women in medicine, see Hedda Garza, Women in Medicine (New York: Franklin Watts, 1994). 4. The information on the struggle for women's rights is based on Bettina Aptheker, Woman's Legacy: Essays on Race, Sex, and Class in American History (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982); Baer; Flexner; Elizabeth H. Pleck and Ellen K. Rothman with Paula Shields, The Legacies Book (Washington, D.C.: The Annenberg/CPB Project, 1987); Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990), pp. 102-123. 5. Quoted in Zinn, p. 116. 6. The laws, set down in 1632 in a document called "The Lawes Resolutions of Women's Rights," state that "a woman as soon as she is married is called covert ... that is 'veiled'; as it were, clouded and overshadowed, she hath lost her streame...." When the American colonies were established, this feudal doctrine of coverture was carried into the new wilderness. The biblical origins of the so-called coverture laws are covered in Leo Kanowitz, Women and the Law (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1969), p. 35. 7. Aptheker, p. 16. 8. Blackstone set down the marriage rules:
By marriage, the husband and wife
are one person in law; 9. See David F. Noble. A World Without Women (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), pp. 208-209. 10. Quoted in Garza, p. 20. Over the course of more than 200 years after 1479, estimates run as high as 9 million people tortured and executed as witches throughout Europe. Women victims outnumbered male victims by as high as ten to one in many places. Even in the American colonies, nineteen women were executed by hanging in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1696 when they would not confess to witchcraft. 11. Quoted in Kanowitz, p. 37. 12. Quoted in Zinn, p. 109. 13. This seldom reported response is cited by Judith A. Baer, Women in American Law: The Struggle toward Equality from the New Deal to the Present (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1991), p. 19. 14. Quoted in Flexner, pp. 14-15. 15. Colonial poverty is covered by Zinn on pp. 50-53. 16. Quoted in Zinn, p. 108. 17. She wrote in part: "Will it be said that the judgment of a male two years old, is more sage than that of a female's of the same age? I believe the reverse is generally observed to be true. But from that period what partiality! How is the one exalted and the other depressed, by the contrary modes of education that are adopted! The one is taught to aspire, the other is early confined and limited. As their years increase, the sister must be wholly domesticated, while the brother is led by the hand through all the flowery paths of science." Quoted in Flexner, p.16. Two years later, the better-known Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft appeared in England. This book's appearance usually is considered the opening gun of the modern women's rights movement. The two books circulated around the United States around the same time. Wollstonecraft's work was in answer to Edmund Burke, an Englishman who took the myth of female inferiority to a new level, writing that "a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest order." Wollstonecraft urged women "to acquire strength, both of mind and body ... and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love ... will soon become objects of contempt ... " Quoted in Zinn, p. 110. 18. Hannah Mather Crocker, for example, author of Observations on the Real Rights of Women in 1818, supported the educational advancement of women but added words that undoubtedly pleased the male legal establishment: It would be morally wrong, and physically imprudent, for any woman to attempt pleading at the bar of justice, as no law can give her right of deviating from the strictest rules of rectitude and decorum. -- Quoted in Flexner, p. 24. 19. Quoted in Zinn, pp. 116-117. 20. She warned that "until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly ... Until power is annihilated on one side, fear and obedience on the other, and both restored to their birthright -- equality." Quoted in Zinn, p. 120. 21. Quoted in Flexner, p. 29. 22. Ibid., p. 30. 23. See Flexner, p. 342, note 13. 24. Quoted in Flexner, p. 58. 25. Ibid., p. 42. 26. He said "When the true history of the antislavery cause shall be written, women will occupy a large space in its pages, for the cause of the slave had been peculiarly woman's cause.... Her skill, industry, patience and perseverance have been wonderfully manifest in every trial hour. Not only did her feet run on "willing errands," and her fingers do the work which in large degree supplied the sinews of war, but her deep moral convictions, and her tender human sensibilities found convincing and persuasive expression in her pen and her voice." Quoted in Aptheker, p. 15. 27. Quoted in Flexner, p. 47. 28. Ibid, p. 48. 29. In 1837, a pastoral letter from the Council of Congregationalist Ministers of Massachusetts, ranted against the unwomanly and un-Christian behavior of antislavery women. Quoted in Flexner, p. 46. 30. Quoted in Flexner, p. 51. 31. For details of this little-known story, see Aptheker, pp. 29-30. 32. Quoted in Zinn, p. 122. Chapter 2 1. Quoted in Jane M. Friedman. America's First Woman Lawyer: The Biography of Myra Bradwell. (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1993), p. 17. Much of the information on Myra Bradwell in this and subsequent chapters is based on Friedman's path-breaking biography. 2. Governor Calvert returned to England in 1643, leaving Margaret Brent as his appointed counsel. Brent put down a rebellion against Calvert during his absence, promising payment to the hired soldiers. Calvert died soon after he returned, but he assigned Brent the job of settling his accounts and the court formally recognized her as the "administrator of Leonard Calvert." She believed she had the right as attorney for the governor to have "vote and voyce" in the Maryland Assembly, but none of the legislators would go that far. Gaining the reputation of a most able lawyer, she represented Calvert's estate in court and pressed legal action against his debtors in order to pay his defending army. Charges against Brent were sent to the Maryland Assembly by angry debtors, but the assembly refused to move against Brent, instead complimenting her for keeping the peace. There can be little doubt of Margaret Brent's capability and courage, but there is no evidence that she said or did anything to improve the lowly legal status of other colonial women. For more on the life of Brent, see Karen Berger Morello, The Invisible Bar: The Woman Lawyer in America 1638 to the Present (New York: Random House, 1986), pp. 4- 8. 3. Quoted in Friedman, p. 78. 4. She had been admitted during the last years of the Civil War, when enrollments of men were at rock-bottom. 5. She became a well-known lecturer on women's rights, and later she and her husband joined the faculty at DePauw University in Indiana. 6. Quoted in Friedman, p. 133. 7. Quoted in Morello, p. 132. 8. Quoted in Friedman, p. 132. 9. Ibid., p. 133. 10. Sources for this section on the women's rights movement are Bettina Aptheker, Woman's Legacy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982); Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race & Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1983); and Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959). 11. Quoted in Flexner, p. 144. 12. Frederick Douglass rose to make an angry speech in response: When women because they are women, are dragged from their homes and hung upon lamp-posts; when their children arc torn from their arms and their brains dashed out upon the pavement ... when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads; when their children are not allowed to enter schools; they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot. Someone in the audience yelled out, "Is that not all true about black women?" Douglass replied: "Yes, yes, yes, it is true of the black woman, but not because she is a woman but because she is black." -- Quoted in Aptheker, pp. 47-48. 13. Details of Bradwell's reaction to the events are recounted in Friedman, pp. 168-173. 14. Quoted in Morello, p. 71. 15. Ibid., pp. 31-32. 16. Ibid., p. 34. 17. States' rights provisions in the U.S. Constitution became a real barrier to voting rights for minorities and legal rights and suffrage for women for more than a century. As long as no constitutional amendment prohibited it, individual states could pass and enforce legislation that blocked progress. 18. Quoted in Friedman, p. 144. 19. Quoted in Morello, p. 25. 20. Quoted in Friedman, p. 135. 21. Quoted in Morello, pp. 173-174. 22. The quotations are from Friedman, who, despite the deliberate destruction of much of the correspondence involved in the case, was able to dig out the facts. (pp. 47-69) 23. Mrs. Lincoln wrote: "When all others, among them my husband's supposed friends, failed me in the most bitter hours of my life, these loyal hearts, Myra and James Bradwell, came to my assistance and rescued me under great difficulty from confinement in an insane asylum." Quoted in Friedman, p. 51. 24. Quoted in Friedman, p. 102. 25. Ibid., p. 103. 26. Ibid., p. 130. 27. Quoted in Morello, pp. 90-91. 28. Ibid., p. 67. 29. Ibid., p. 68. 30. Ibid., p. 47. 31. Ibid., p. 47. 32. Ibid., p. 48. 33. Quoted in Friedman, p. 131. 34. The story of Clara Foltz is based on Mortimer D. Schwartz, Susan L. Brandt, and Patience Milrod, "The Battles of Clara Shortridge Foltz," California Defender, Spring 1985, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 7-13; Morello, pp. 54-55; and Friedman, pp. 131-132, 35. Quoted in Morello, p. 59. 36. During a rancorous debate, Foltz later described that "narrow-gauge statesmen grew as red as turkey gobblers...." The state legislators were willing to eliminate the word white but strongly opposed removing the word male. Opponents presented the same old arguments, many of them sprinkling the sugar of flattery onto the vinegar of their contempt. Women's sphere "was infinitely more important than that of men, and that sphere was the home." Women were far too "delicate" to hear the "indelicate evidence" heard in many courtrooms. One supporter reminded his fellow legislators that women had been officially licensed to practice medicine since 1867. Clearly they were not too "delicate" to deal with illness and corpses. The bill nevertheless was defeated by a three-vote margin, but its supporters managed to pass a bill to reconsider the next day. Foltz worked the corridors of the legislature all night, finally winning by two votes. Women in California would be admitted to the bar. 37. Quoted in Morello, p. 62. 38. Ibid., p. 64. 39. Quoted in Friedman, p. 129. 40. In October 1874, a unanimous Supreme Court decision brought a major defeat for the suffrage movement. Two years earlier, Virginia Minor, the president of the Missouri Woman Suffrage Association, attempted to register to vote in Missouri and was turned away. Minor and her lawyer husband, Francis Minor, filed a suit that finally made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. They based their appeal on the rights of citizens as outlined in the Fourteenth Amendment and lost their case. The Minor decision made it clear that voting laws were to be decided by the states. See Karen DeCrow, Sexist Justice (New York: Random House, 1974), pp. 18-20. Chapter 3 1. Quoted in Karen Berger Morello, The Invisible Bar New York: Random House, 1986), p. 83. 2. Sources of information in this chapter were Bettina Aptheker, Woman's Legacy: Essays on Race, Sex, and Class in American History (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982); Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race & Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1983); Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Women in Law (New York: Basic Books, 1981); Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970); and Karen Berger Morello, The Invisible Bar (New York: Random House); 1986. 3. For details see Hedda Garza, Women in Medicine, (New York: Franklin Watts, 1994), pp. 53-56. 4. By the turn of the century, about 115 black women were practicing physicians, about half of them graduating from black medical schools. Four African American women became the first of any race to pass the state licensing examinations in four southern states. See Garza, Women in Medicine, p. 87. 5. See James D. Cockcroft, The Hispanic Struggle for Social Justice (New York: Franklin Watts, 1994). 6. Quoted in Flexner, p. 99. 7. See Aptheker, pp. 107-108. 8. The best source for biographical information on African-American women is Jessie Carney Smith, ed., Notable Black American Women (Detroit: Gale Research, 1992). The biographies are arranged alphabetically. 9. For more on this little-discussed collaboration, see Davis, pp. 98-109. 10. Quoted in Smith, p. 922. 11. Quoted in Flexner, p. 128. 12. Ibid., p. 128. 13. Quoted in Morello, p. 144. 14. Quotes are from Jane M. Friedman, America's First Woman Lawyer: The Biography of Myra Bradwell (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1993), p. 132. 15. For details see Flexner, pp. 188-192, and Davis, pp. 127-136. 16. Quoted in Morello, p. 54. 17. For details, see Mortimer D. Schwartz, Susan L. Brandt, and Patience Milrod. "The Battles of Clara Shortridge Foltz." California Defender, Spring 1985, Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp. 7-13. 18. Quotes are from Schwartz, Brandt, and Milrod, p. 10. 19. Quoted in Morello, p. 177. 20. Quoted in Flexner, p. 161. 21. Quoted in Friedman, p. 177. 22. Quoted in Flexner, p. 138. 23. Quotes are from Morello, pp. 90-91. 24. Ibid., pp. 120, 121. 25. Quoted in Morello, p. 121. 26. For further information, see Mary V. Dearborn, Love in the Promised Land (New York: The Free Press, 1988), pp. 45- 47. 27. They included J. Ellen Foster, of Iowa; Ada H. Kepley, the first woman law graduate in the nation, who published a newspaper in Illinois listing the names of men frequenting saloons in the area; Lavinia Goodell, Wisconsin's first woman lawyer; and Nebraska's first, Ada Bittenbinder, who became the attorney for WCTU in 1888 and ran for a state Supreme Court judgeship on the Prohibition Party ticket in 1891. 28. Quoted in Morello, p. 79. 29. Ibid., pp. 80-81. 30. Others at the Women's Legal Education Society said that Dr. Kempin left because of the rude treatment she received from the students at the University of New York, as well as the impossibility of receiving a full-time appointment. See Morello, pp. 79-80. 31. It was later said of her that "whatever claims may be made as to the exact brain in which the idea of equal pay was born, it is undisputed that Kate Hogan brought before the people of the state sex discrimination in the salary schedules of the Board of Education and sent the slogan 'Equal Pay for Equal Work' thundering round the world." Quoted in Morello, p. 82. 32. For details, see Davis, p. 131. 33. Quoted in Morello, p. 83. 34. Ibid., p. 42. Chapter 4 1. Quoted in Karen Berger Morello, The Invisible Bar (New York: Random House, 1986), p. 126. 2. Quoted in Morello, p. 176. 3. According to both U.S. Bureau of the Census data and Law Directory figures, even in 1963, women lawyers were estimated at 2.7 to 3.3 percent of the lawyers in the United States, with growth remaining just about static from 1910 to 1960. See tables in Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Women in Law (New York: Basic Books, 1981), p. 4. 4. The story and quotes are adapted from Morello, pp. 125-127. 5. Details on women lawyers during the presuffrage and early postsuffrage periods can be found in Morello; and Ronald Chester, Unequal Access (South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, 1985). 6. MacLean's law partner founded a similar school for men, later called Suffolk Law School. Washington College of Law was open to men and women from its founding days. In 1914, twenty-five men and twenty women graduated. The history of Portia and Suffolk law schools is covered by Chester. 7. For more on this see Hedda Garza, Women in Medicine (New York: Franklin Watts, 1994). 8. Quotes are in Morello, pp. 175-76. 9. Quoted in Morello, p. 180. 10. On one occasion at a public meeting Rose Schneiderman was asked by a New York state senator whether women would become less feminine if they went to the polls. Schneiderman did not mince words when she replied: We have women working in the foundries, stripped to the waist, if you please, because of the heat. Yet the Senator says nothing about these women losing their charms. They have got to retain their charm and delicacy and work in the foundries. Of course you know the reason they are employed in foundries is that they are cheaper and work longer hours than men. Women in the laundries, for instance, stand for thirteen and fourteen hours in the terrible steam and heat with their hands in hot starch. Surely these women won't lose any more of their beauty and charm by putting a ballot in a ballot box once a year than they are likely to lose standing in foundries or laundries all year round. There is no harder contest than the contest for bread, let me tell you that. -- Quoted in Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Women's Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 258-259. 11. Quoted in Morello, p. 129. 12. For details, see Morello, pp. 142-172. 13. Quoted in Morello, pp. 147-148. 14. Quoted in Flexner, p. 281. 15. For the story of African Americans in World War I, see Hedda Garza, African Americans and Jewish Americans (New York: Franklin Watts, 1995), Chapter 3. 16. For details, see Flexner, pp. 283-287. 17. These included Ohio, Indiana, Rhode Island, Nebraska, and Michigan. Arkansas broke the solid southern block against suffrage on March 6, but the women lost a referendum in Maine. They geared up for the most important wartime referendum, New York State. In New York City right before the vote, powerful Tammany Hall politicians, the greatest stumbling block to women's suffrage, announced that they would not oppose the referendum. Many of the politicians had female relatives working in the Woman Suffrage Party or NAWSA. Suffrage won by a margin of 100,000 in New York City, with just about a fifty-fifty split vote in the rest of the state. 18. For details, see Flexner, p. 302. 19. Quoted in Garza, African Americans and Jewish Americans, p. 118. 20. Quoted in Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), p. 161. 21. Quoted in Ewen, p. 160. 22. Ibid., p. 161. 23. In 1924, 82 percent of Portia graduates passed the bar examination. As the tests became more difficult, by 1929, 65 percent of Portia's women passed compared to the overall pass rate of 40 percent. In 1932, only 130 out of 693 applicants for the bar examination passed the test on the first try. An amazing 91 of them had studied at part-time schools. Ten women from Portia and six other women passed. See Chester, p. 10. 24. This and subsequent sections on poverty law are based on Martha F. Davis, Brutal Need: Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement, 1960-1973 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), and Marlise James, The People's Lawyers (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973). 25. Using language that was heard again and again in future decades, President Roosevelt insisted that "continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber...." Quoted in Davis, p. 7. 26. Quoted in Davis, p. 16. The American Bar Association, instead of urging its members to take on some poor clients, stepped up its support for Legal Aid societies. The number of cases handled by Legal Aid societies rose from 96,000 annually in 1920 to almost 172,000 in 1929. 27. Quoted in Davis, p. 17. 28. Quotes are from Morello, p. 85. 29. Quoted in Morello, p. 187. 30. See Morello, p. 226. 31. Quoted in Morello, p. 96. 32. Ibid., p. 97. 33. Sources for information on black women attorneys are Morello; Jessie Carney Smith, ed., Notable Black American Women (Detroit: Gale Research, 1992), with biographies arranged alphabetically. 34. For details, see James D. Cockcroft, The Hispanic Struggle for Social Justice (New York: Franklin Watts, 1994). 35. For details on Latinas in the professions, see Hedda Garza, Latinas (New York: Franklin Watts, 1994), pp. 131-162; and Diane Teigen and Jim Kamp, eds., Notable Hispanic Women (Detroit: Gale Research, 1993), with biographies arranged alphabetically. 36. Quoted in Morello, p. 149. 37. For details, see Smith, pp. 165-166. 38. See Smith, p. 94. Chapter Five 1. Quoted in Alan Covey, ed., A Century of Women (Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1994), p. 52. 2. Quoted in Karen DeCrow, Sexist Justice (New York: Random House, 1974), p. 108. 3. The proportion of women in the law profession rose from 2.1 to 2.4 percent from 1930 to 1940 and then to 3.5 percent by 1950, declining again to 3.3 percent by 1960. Source is Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Women in Law (New York: Basic Books, 1981), table on p. 4. 4. Sources for this chapter unless otherwise noted are Judith A. Baer, Women in American Law: The Struggle toward Equality from the New Deal to the Present (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1991), pp. 269-275; Covey; Karen DeCrow, Sexist Justice (New York: Random House, 1974); Leo Kanowitz, Women and the Law: The Unfinished Revolution (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1969,) pp. 100148; and Karen Berger Morello, The Invisible Bar (New York: Random House), 1986. 5. Quoted in Hedda Garza, Women in Medicine (New York: Franklin Watts, 1994), p. 75. 6. Quoted in Kanowitz, p. 34. 7. For details see Marlise James, The People's Lawyers (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), pp. 88-96. 8. Quoted in James, p. 91. 9. Quoted in Epstein, p. 239. 10. The Barbie story is told in James D. Cockcroft, Latin America, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1995), p. 503. 11. Quoted in James, p. xvi. 12. Ibid., p. 91. 13. For details, see Martha F. Davis, Brutal Need: Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement, 19601973 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 19. 14. For details, see Baer, pp. 209-241. 15. Quotes are from Morello, pp. 101-104. 16. Quoted in Jill Abramson and Barbara Franklin, Where They Are Now: The Story of the Women of Harvard Law 1974 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1986), p. 12. 17. Quotes from Ruth Bader Ginsburg are in Lynn Gilbert and Gaylen Moore, Particular Passions (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1981), pp. 167-169. 18. Quoted in Current Biography, 1982, p. 298. 19. See also Morello, p. 218. 20. Quoted in Morello, p. 103. 21. Quoted in Baer, p. 215 22. Mona Harrington, Women Lawyers: Rewriting the Rules (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), p. 12. 23. For details, see Kanowitz, p. 29-30. 24. For more on Vidal Santaella, see Diane Teigen and Jim Kamp, eds., Notable Hispanic American Women (Detroit: Gale Research, 1993), pp. 369-371. 25. Quoted in Morello, p. 154. 26. The principle sources of information on civil rights during the post-World War II period are Donald McCoy and Richard T. Ruetten, Quest and Response: Minority Rights and the Truman Administration (Wichita: University Press of Kansas, 1973); and Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (New York: HarperPerennial, 1980), pp. 409-434. 27. For the full story of this effort, see Hedda Garza, African Americans and Jewish Americans (New York: Franklin Watts, 1995), Chapter 5; and James D. Cockcroft, The Hispanic Struggle for Social Justice (New York: Franklin Watts, 1994). 28. Quoted in McCoy and Ruetten, p. 48. 29. Quoted in Zinn, p. 440. 30. The information on black women lawyers is based on Morello, pp. 173-193; and Jessie Carney Smith ed., Notable Black American Women (Detroit: Gale Research, 1992). 31. Quoted in Morello, p. 156. 32. For details on Motley, see Gilbert and Moore, pp. 136-141; and Smith, pp. 779-781. 33. Quoted in Smith, p. 970. 34. There are dozens of excellent books on the Civil Rights Movement, including Dorothy Sterling, Tear Down the Walls, (Garden City: Doubleday, 1968); Emma Gelders Sterne, I Have a Dream (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965); Langston Hughes and Milton Meltzer, African American History (New York: Scholastic, 1990). 35. Quoted in Covey, p. 50. 36. Quoted in Kanowitz, p. 102. 37. Baer, pp. 52-116, thoroughly covers the issue of laws relating to working women. 38. Details on the struggle for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 can be found in DeCrow, pp. 105-107; and Kanowitz, pp. 100-106. 39. Quoted in Kanowitz, pp. 104-105. 40. Quoted in DeCrow, p. 106. 41. Quotes are from Covey, p. 52. 42. Quoted in DeCrow, p. 108. 43. Ibid., p. 108. 44. Quoted in Covey, p. 52. 45. For details, see Covey, p. 53. Chapter 6 1. Quoted in Judith A. Baer, Women in American Law: The Struggle toward Equality from the New Deal to the Present (Holmes & Meier, 1991), p. 167. 2. Quoted in Karen Berger Morello, The Invisible Bar (New York: Random House, 1986), p. 189. 3. Quoted in Catharine A. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 70-71. 4. Much of the information in this chapter was based on Baer; Mona Harrington, Women Lawyers: Rewriting the Rules (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994); Marlise James, The People's Lawyers (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973); and Morello. 5. At the 1965 convention of the leading student organization, Students for a Democratic Society, for example, a group of women pressed for a statement on women's liberation and were ridiculed and expelled from the meeting hall. Four years later, during a demonstration against the Vietnam War at President Richard Nixon's inauguration, one woman speaker made remarks favoring women's equality and was greeted with catcalls and crude sexist insults from her "co-thinkers." Even in the Latino movement, where Dolores Huerta had gained national respect for her role in the United Farm Workers, a new organization called La Raza Unida presented a multi-issue platform covering racism, employment issues, farmworkers' rights, and an end to the Vietnam war, but prohibited the discussion of women's rights. For more details, see Hedda Garza, Latinas (New York: Franklin Watts, 1994), pp. 111-114. 6. For details, see James, pp. 93-96. 7. Quoted in James, p. 274. 8. NWRO also conducted an educational campaign to counter the stereotyped portrayals of welfare mothers as cheaters and liars. NWRO publicized the fact that most welfare recipients in the nation were elderly, disabled, or blind. More than half were children and only 13 percent were the mothers of small children. Many of them were the working poor, fulltime hospital workers, domestics who were paid so little they qualified for aid. Basically this permitted their employers to continue paying them minimum wage salaries. 9. For more information, see Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Women in Law (New York: Basic Books, 1981), pp. 141-150. 10. Quoted in James, pp. 116-117. 11. For details, see Morello, pp. 103-104. 12. The section on Hillary Rodham Clinton is based on Judith Warner, Hillary Clinton: The Inside Story (New York: Signet, 1993); and Donnie Radcliffe, Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York: Warner Books, 1993) 13. Quoted in Lynne Gilbert and Gaylen Moore, Particular Passions (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1981), p. 186. 14. This section is based on Jill Abramson and Barbara Franklin, Where They Are Now: The Story of the Women of Harvard Law 1974 (Garden City, KY.: Doubleday, 1986). 15. Quoted in Abramson and Franklin, p. 123. 16. For details, see Sarah Weddington, A Question of Choice (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1992). 17. Quoted in Weddington, p. 11. 18. Ibid., p. 70. 19. In Georgia, Margie Pitts Hames, a volunteer for the ACLU, was in court with Doe v. Bolton. In Minneapolis, a woman doctor was appealing her 1970 conviction for performing an abortion on a woman who had German measles and feared that her baby had been damaged. 20. For more on the ERA, see Baer, p. 127. 21. Actually, the pregnancy rate is about the same no matter what the circumstances of sexual intercourse -- about 4 percent. See Baer, pp. 203-204. 22. Quoted in Baer, p. 203. 23. Quoted in Hunter College, Women's Realities, Women's Choices (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 427. 24. Excerpted from Hunter College, p. 428. 25. Quoted in Harrington, p. 177. 26. Quoted in "Gender Bias in the Judicial System," in Wildfire, vol. 6, no. 4, Fall/Winter 1994, p. 25. 27. See Harrington, p. 179. 28. Quotes are from James, pp. 282-287. 29. Quoted in Gilbert and Moore, p. 144. 30. Quoted in Morello, p. 172. 31. For details on Latina attorneys, see Nicolas Kanellos, ed., The Hispanic American Almanac (Detroit: Gale Research, 1993), pp. 238-241. 32. See in Diana Teigen and Jim Kamp, eds., Notable Hispanic American Women (Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1993), p. 197. Unless otherwise stated, all subsequent biographical sketches and quotations from individual Latinas may be located in alphabetical order in Teigen and Kamp. See also Garza, Latinas. 33. New York Times, December 2,1993 p. B2. 34. In 1978 only eight states had more than 4 percent of women attorneys actively engaged in litigation practices. For more information, see Paul B. Wice, Criminal Lawyers: An Endangered Species (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1978). 35. Quoted in Wice, p. 68. 36. Quoted in Morello, p. 175. 37. Ibid., p. 189. 38. Quotes are from Morello, pp. 192-193. 39. Quoted in Morello, pp. 270-271. 40. Ibid., p. 245. 41. Ibid., p. 245. 42. Although by 1983, 13 percent of lawyers were women, only 5 percent were state appellate judges and 2 percent state trial judges; and on the federal bench, 11 percent sat on the court of appeals and only 6.9 percent on district courts. In 1969, Shirley Hofstedler was the only woman serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals since Florence Ellinwood Allen was appointed to that position. Only three women, Sarah Hughes, Constance Baker Motley, and June L. Green, served on the federal district court. As late as 1977, Cornelia G. Kennedy, Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals judge, commented about the rarity of women judges. Data for this section on woman judges are from Morello, pp. 218-223. 43. Quoted in Morello, p. 218. 44. Quoted in Jane M. Friedman, Americas First Woman Lawyer: The Biography of Myra Bradwell (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1993), p. 212. 45. See Susan Faludi, Backlash (New York: Crown Publishers, 1991). 46. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, "Equal Employment Opportunity File," 1990. (Unpublished but issued in 1993 on CD-ROM only.) 47. For background and details, see James D. Cockcroft, Hispanics in the Struggle for Equal Education (New York: Franklin Watts, 1995); and Kanellos, p. 356. 48. There were almost 4,000 "Asian and Pacific Islanders" women in the legal profession in 1990 and almost 7,000 men. 49. See "The Truth about Women's Wages," in Working Woman, April 1993. 50. David Gates, "White Male Paranoia," Newsweek, March 29,1993, pp. 48-53. 51. Quoted in Catharine A. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 70- 71. 52. Quoted in Harrington, p. 10. 53. Quoted in Laura Mansnerus, "Why Woman Are Leaving the Law," in Working Woman, April 1993, p.65. 54. Quotes are from Harrington, p. 62. 55. Between 1986 and 1991, about 1,000 people, again more women than men, had left their nine midsize and large Manhattan firms. Twenty-one percent of the men had achieved partnership status compared with 8 percent of the women. For details, see Mansnerus, p. 65. 56. New York Times, February 17, 1995. 57. CBS "Evening News," February 23, 1995. 58. Quoted in Morello, p. 54.
|