University of Oklahoma Graduate College Oklahoma and the Era: Rousing a Red State, 1972 – 1982 a Dissertation Submitted To
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UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE OKLAHOMA AND THE ERA: ROUSING A RED STATE, 1972 – 1982 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY In partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By JANA S. VOGT Norman, Oklahoma 2010 OKLAHOMA AND THE ERA: ROUSING A RED STATE, 1972 – 1982 A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY _________________________ Robert L. Griswold, Chair _________________________ Catherine E. Kelly _________________________ Judith S. Lewis _________________________ Donald J. Pisani _________________________ Cindy Simon Rosenthal © Copyright by JANA S. VOGT 2010 All Rights Reserved. For the woman who gave me her love of history – We miss you, Mom. And for Caitlin and Emily who hate history – Thank you for making life so sweet. Acknowledgements The bright world of scholarship I found at the University of Oklahoma has enriched my life immeasurably and I owe a profound debt of gratitude to those who embody that world. I am deeply indebted to my graduate advisor, Robert L. Griswold, whose enthusiasm for teaching and love of learning are contagious. His steady guidance, wisdom, and faith in me kept me going through this last year especially. I extend my deepest appreciation also to the other fine scholars on my committee, Catherine Kelly, Judith Lewis, Donald Pisani, and Cindy Simon Rosenthal. I am honored to have worked with and learned from each of you. My gratitude goes also to Professor Lee Williams, Dean of the Graduate College, for his support and understanding in allowing an extension to my doctoral candidacy. I hope this dissertation in some small way repays your trust in me just as its existence certainly confirms your compassion. I wish to acknowledge the gracious aid I received from archivists and librarians throughout my years of working on this dissertation – my words are scant repayment for your tireless efforts on my behalf. Thank you to the archivists at the Carl Albert Congressional Research & Studies Center, in particular Erin Sloan and Carolyn Hanneman, and for your most timely and valuable photocopy grant. My appreciation goes also to the women and men of the Western History Collections at the University of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Historical Society as well as those of the Oklahoma iv Department of Libraries, the Jan Eric Cartwright Memorial Library at the state capitol, and the Cameron University Archives in Lawton, Oklahoma. Thank you, also, for the long-distance aid from the archivists at the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville, Tennessee, particularly director Bill Sumners. I would be remiss if I failed to mention the patient and knowledgeable librarians of Bizzell Library at this university, especially Laurie Schrivener and Janet Croft. To the family of Ruth Murray Brown, thank you for your generosity in allowing me access to her primary materials from the ERA decade. Both those materials and her book were invaluable resources. I hope this dissertation will not disappoint. A part of my research involved interviewing participants of the ERA decade. I owe much to the generosity, patience, and good humor of state activists Helen Arnold, Bunny Chambers, Eddy W. Collins, Dianne Edmondson, Shirley Hilbert-Price, Glenda Mattoon, Anna Mayer, Pat Rigler, and Wanda Jo (Peltier) Stapleton, who were willing to share their ERA experiences, knowledge, primary sources, and personal stories with me. Each of you has earned my respect, admiration, and gratitude. While the people named above provided support, encouragement, and material resources during the research and writing process, any errors within the dissertation are mine alone. I would like also to thank the History Department staff – Barbara Million, Kelly Guinn, and Rhonda George. In particular, your guidance and v proactive assistance through the final technical stages of the dissertation proved both invaluable and a godsend. Thank you. And, to the “Sisterhood” – Heather Clemmer, Linda English, Holly Berkley Fletcher, Sarah Eppler Janda, and Robin McMillin – thank you each of you for your support and friendship throughout our years together. To Sarah, specifically, thank you for thinking of me and this project while you labored in the Cameron University Archives for your own project – I appreciate and used the letter from the state senator. As is typical among the Sisters, I have a few things for your next study, too. To my daughters, Cait & Em, and to AAGC, CC, and DC – you each kept me going with your winning ways. My gratitude and love. vi Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................viii Chapter One Oklahoma : A Gendered Heritage ................................................. 1 Chapter Two Struggling for Equality : Fighters for the ERA.............................. 28 Chapter Three Summoning God’s Forces : Crusaders against the ERA........ 119 Chapter Four Walking the Tightrope : The Political Conundrum of the ERA .. 197 Afterword .................................................................................................... 296 Bibliography .................................................................................................... 317 Acronyms .................................................................................................... 351 vii Abstract From 1972 through 1982, the national battle over the Equal Rights Amendment fomented dissension and unrest. Far from the early and easy passage many Americans envisioned for the amendment, the ERA brought to the nation a ten-year struggle between activists who invested ratification with two differing ideological and personal meanings. For feminists, ratification would guarantee for American women two long-denied principles of the Constitution – equality and justice. For antiratificationists, the amendment would disrupt accepted cultural norms of the day and would continue the dissolution and destruction of the traditional beliefs they held dear, striking at the heart of the nation’s founding doctrines. As the first state to deny ratification, Oklahoma became a battleground between those two factions from the moment Congress sent the amendment to the states. Caught between the two sides, politicians used compromise, concession, and avoidance of the issue to negotiate the political dilemma of the ERA and to save their political careers. By the latter years of the decade, the struggle over ratification had politicized large numbers of female state Christian ERA opponents, which helped lead to the Oklahoma political realignment from Democrat to Republican. As founding members of the Pro-Family, Religious Right movement, Oklahoma and other states’ anti-ERA Christian women helped initiate, and provided one primary element of, the conservative movement influencing national politics beginning in the 1980s. viii Chapter One Oklahoma : A Gendered Heritage In March, 1972, a proposed constitutional amendment arrived in the separate states to be considered for ratification. Eagerly awaited by many Oklahoma women, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) represented for them the embodiment of equality and the culmination of over 124 years of American women’s struggle for parity with men. Conversely, the arrival of the ERA in the state immediately engendered doubt in the minds of at least a few Oklahoma women who thought ratification would ravage the proper functioning of U.S. government and society as well as obliterate the appropriate place of women and men within that society. They began objecting to ratification and like-minded women soon flocked to the cause.1 Rather than the anticipated early and easy passage of ERA, the state women who had excitedly awaited the amendment found themselves instead embroiled in a decade-long battle with antiratificationists over the two groups’ separate and diametrically-opposed interpretations of the ERA. Caught between those disparate factions and ultimately responsible for the 1 “Report of the Woman's Rights Convention, held at Seneca Falls, New York, July 19th and 20th, 1848. Proceedings and Declaration of Sentiments” (Rochester, New York: John Dick at the North Star Office, July 19, 1848), Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897-1911; Scrapbook 6; page 68, Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Washington, D.C. 20540, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.rbc/rbcmil.scrp4006702; According to the National Park Service Women’s Rights web site, the Declaration of Sentiments was signed Thursday, July 20, 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York. For this information see “Signers of the Declaration of Sentiments,” Women's Rights National Historical Park, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, http://www.nps.gov/wori/historyculture/signers-of- the-declaration-of-sentiments.htm. 1 fate of the amendment within the state, Oklahoma politicians worked to protect their political careers while simultaneously attempting to satisfy constituents on both sides of the issue. By the end of the ERA decade in 1982, the battle over ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment transformed the state’s political landscape, leading to an Oklahoma party realignment. Moreover, the state’s political reformation reached beyond Oklahoma’s borders and helped to advance a similar and equally enduring transformation within one of the nation’s principal political parties. By the 1970s, the debate over ratification of the ERA revealed that a functioning culture of gender remained embedded in the minds