Second interview with Kathryn F. Clarenbach

Kathryn Clarenbach #466 Transcript

MA: You were nominated for an office in the National Organization for Women. Why were you nominated? What do you think you had to offer the movement, or what did they think you had to offer the movement?

KC: This nomination of course was at the October 1966 Formal Organizing Conference. That's the way it was billed. As you know, I was not there because I couldn't afford another trip to Washington. I had been there in June when we had first really gotten the idea and proceeded with the forming of the organization. 00:01:00That was at the time of the smoke filled room and all of that. At that time, in June, I was named temporary chair -- chairman actually, by my friend Catherine Conroy. Also, I was given the treasury, the big treasury of 27 times $5.00, and brought it back to Wisconsin. I had functioned from June until October as the temporary chair. I had put together an advisory group so that whatever moves we made were either group decisions or cleared with this quite broad based group of some half dozen people. Then I had gone to Washington to work with Marguerite 00:02:00Raywalt, Mary Eastwood, Phineas Indritz, Betty Friedan --I can't remember whether Catherine East sat in on those sessions or not -- but to put together a proposed constitution and bylaws. I had had those sorts of temporary leadership roles already before that October meeting. Even though I wasn't there, there were people there who did know me. I have a photograph that I should have fished out just to let you to look at, taken of the people at that October planning meeting. Actually there were many people -- it wasn't a huge group, I suppose around no more than 50, and there were many of them whom I do not know at all, 00:03:00so it wasn't that I was an outstanding, well known person at all. I think the core of the people who were at that October meeting who had also been at the June meeting and had an ongoing relationship did know me and I think they were probably instrumental in not only naming me to chair the Board but in devising the organizational structure so that Betty Friedan who was a natural to be the president and had no organizational experience and no known organizational skills --it worried people. While it was important to have her with her expertise and enthusiasm and fame in the leadership, they worried what would 00:04:00happen to the organization or if there would ever become one under those circumstances. I was known to a handful of those people, the ones that I mentioned -- I think Pauli Murray also had a hand in designing the bylaws. Those people who knew me not only from that few months experience with this fledgling organization, but knew what I had done with our Wisconsin Commission on the Status of Women, had heard me speak at each of the national meetings that we had held commissions, 1964, 65 and 66 I had made presentations and they knew something of the success of our Wisconsin Commission.

MA: Basically they knew the kind of work that you did. They were aware of both 00:05:00your ideas from your speeches and your organizational expertise?

KC: I suppose it also didn't hurt, although nobody ever said this directly, that I had a Ph.D. that was associated with a reputable institution.

MA: So the fact that you had a Ph.D. and were associated with the university probably helped.

KC: Sure. One of the people who was at that organizing conference was Alice Rossi. She and I did know each other, we had had her here as a primary speaker the year before at an excellent conference on women and science. Some issues 00:06:00never end do they, that's still on a front burner.

I did have two, at least two, maybe three, phone calls (I was here in Madison during that October conference) from Pauli Murray telling me how they wanted to structure the organization in order to have a two-headed thing and then urging me to accept that. I wasn't too keen about doing it to begin with. I don't know why, maybe I do need psychoanalysis after all, but I am so often either am conflicted about invitations of that kind or just plain turn them down. I certainly turned them down with the National Women's Political Caucus but that's 00:07:00another story.

MA: Why do you think you were hesitant? You didn't turn this down but yet you had feelings of uncertainty.

KC: I don't know. There was a practical reality of time and money.

MA: And you would not be paid for this and your trips would not be paid for?

KC: That's right. I often say in jest that I have now timed all of my activities in the women's movement. I get into the act when it's all self-help.

MA: Did you have any concerns about working with Betty? You've mentioned that in earlier interviews that she could be difficult to work with.

KC: Those concerns grew more actually after I began to work with her than at the outset, although they were present. It took quite a while before we began to 00:08:00trust each other and tolerate each other. I'm sure that her frustrations were equally as great as mine because I'm a slow learner and she's a fast doer.

MA: It sounds like your styles were very, very different.

KC: Yes they were. You weren't at that October event this year were you?

MA: No.

KC: She made a lot of references to our style differences. Somebody asked her --I can't remember when--oh it must have been one of the television interviewers or newspaper interviewers who accosted her before the event and said "What did she and I have in common besides our feminism?" Which was such a foolish question to begin with, because that is enough to have in common, I would think. 00:09:00The response she gave at the banquet was that we are both mothers and have children and then she remembered how in jest one time we were trying to get my daughter and her son together. They were both in California and each had just terminated a love affair so we thought that might be a great mating but it didn't come off.

You had suggested whether my participation in the Commission on the Status of Women was a factor. What I wanted to clarify were some dates and some Commission involvement. I was never a member of the National Commission on the Status of Women. That Commission was appointed by John Kennedy in December of 1961 existed 00:10:00until October of 1963, at which time they issued their report which is called American Women. There was never any intention that that be an ongoing Commission. It was to be an investigative and reporting body which in fact it was and it was intended from the outset to go out of existence. I was not a member of that Commission nor was I ever invited in to participate in any of their doings. I did have some contact with Esther Rauschenbush who chaired a subcommittee on education. I think she was in touch with a number of people who were doing continuing education. I probably wrote a memo or two but I actually 00:11:00had nothing to do with that Commission.

Mary Eastwood and Catherine East both were staff people to subcommittees of that Commission. Both of them I think became feminists, they were probably latent feminists, but because of their experience working with and digging into many of the ways that women were discriminated against and disadvantaged and some of the changes that seemed obvious that could be made.

MA: Did you know Mary Eastwood and Catherine East when they were working with the National Commission?

KC: No I never had met either one of them. I may have met them before 1966 00:12:00because they both came to national meetings of Commissions. The first national meeting of State Commissions was held in 1964. I know that Catherine East was at all of those meetings. When the National Commission, Kennedy's Commission on the Status of Women, terminated its work, one of its recommendations was that a Citizen's Advisory Council on the Status of Women be formed to help implement the recommendations of that Commission. Catherine East was named Executive Director of that Citizen's Advisory Council and she continued in that capacity for the thirteen years of the Advisory Council's existence. I knew Catherine 00:13:00East in that capacity. She was really servicing the State Commissions on the Status of Women, sending information, making phone calls, getting us together with somebody else who had a common interest, really created a network and was probably as important to the development of the women's movement in this country as any person.

I don't remember knowing or meeting Mary Eastwood prior to the 1966 thing even though we may have encountered each other.

MA: But you were involved with the State Commissions on the Status of Women of course before you became involved with NOW?

KC: That's right.

MA: I think that was probably what we were thinking about when we put that question together and you have already answered it basically.

KC: I just wanted to clarify the dates.

One of the reasons that Catherine Conroy volunteered me to be the temporary chair of NOW, which then snowballed into all of these other things, was that she and I worked closely on our Wisconsin Commission on the Status of Women. She knew that I would be able to, in fact in the same breath in which she said I ought to be the temporary chair she said that she and the other Wisconsin folks who were there would help, which of course they did.

MA: You noted that eight or ten of the original 27 or 28 people were from Wisconsin.

KC: That's right. Also, by October of 1966 when that organizing meeting took place in Washington, by then we had 300 members around the country. Just sort of by word of mouth mostly or we would get in touch with a friend. Of those 300, 00:15:00120 were from Wisconsin.

MA: To what do you attribute that?

KC: I attribute it to the fact that we had a good Commission on the Status of Women which was doing a great deal of outreach. We had educational conferences around the state. We brought in outstanding people like Martha Griffith and Esther Peterson who was director of the Women's Bureau in Washington. We were just doing a first rate job as a Commission. Then of course, I mentioned in much earlier interviews, that there was publicity in Wisconsin about the formation of NOW. Analoyce Clapp had sat with us and taken the minutes of that little lunch 00:16:00table at which there were eight of us I think, where the famous paper napkin recorded the name, statement of purpose, etc. That got in to the Milwaukee Sentinel so people began to read about that and that's who our various connections...Catherine Conroy of course was in the Wisconsin labor movement and so she got in touch with labor women. We had a variety of contacts.

MA: That was the next question I was going to ask. Of the 120 women, were these women professional women, labor union women? You've referred to kind of a broad coalition.

KC: Yes, and academic. We had had, for example, our Governor's Commission on the 00:17:00Status of Women had had conferences by then on all of the University campuses in the state. Not simply for undergraduates, but related to the continuing education so that ordinary folks, housewives, people interested in going back to school, people interested in discussing their economic situation. These were people who had already been touched in some way by some of the notions like "Hey, what's going on here? Life ought to be better for women than it is." I don't know at what level people's insight or level of consciousness -- there was a fertile field.

MA: Would you classify some of these women as working class women actually who were drawn to the issues?

KC: Yes.

MA: I guess that leads us to our next question which relates to NOW and their original purpose, whether NOW was trying to build a broad coalition or a pressure group? Did they want to find a small group of elite people who would garner a lot of publicity?

KC: Very, very good question. In fact, there was a great deal of ambivalence among the founding and the first national board about what kind of an organization....I only found out belatedly, in fact quite belatedly, that a number of the founding leadership people, Betty Friedan, Catherine East, Mary 00:19:00Eastwood, Pauli Murray, had had a series of conversations well before that June 1966 meeting and had kept saying there ought to be something for women comparable to the NAACP for Blacks. That of course suggests a mass movement, not just a small elite group. This question was put to us by ourselves. I remember at our first national Board meeting of NOW which was about in November or soon after the organizing conference, we met in Betty Friedan's "Victorian apartment," as it was billed in the New York Times, and raised the question. I 00:20:00remember Pauli Murray asking the question, "Do we want to stay a small, top leadership group or broaden our membership and work toward more of a mass organization." I don't know to what extent -- we didn't come up with an answer right away, there was no questions but what we wanted publicity and wanted to get the issues and the ideas as broadly spread as possible. One of the early women on the founding board was Muriel Fox who has continued to remain in leadership, largely with the legal defense and education fund in recent times. She is a publicist, a PR person. She has been a vice, in fact I guess she's now 00:21:00retired, but as a Vice-president of Carl Beylar and Associates in New York which is an advertising outfit, so that professionally she....I probably mentioned in our earlier interviews how at every board meeting, and we had these board meetings around the country so that while we were there we could get some local publicity and as much TV and press as possible and recruit new members and that's when Betty Friedan would pick people to be on the board, to invite them and that kind of democratic participation we had in those early days. It wasn't all bad either. Muriel would write up the report of the meeting and made it sound as though we really knew what we were doing and that we did it well. She 00:22:00would hoof these things around by taxi in the middle of the night so that they would make the morning papers or the morning press and we did manage to get publicity that went well beyond our numbers or our influence or whatever else. Whenever there was an action someplace when we got sufficiently organized so that things were going on, once again either she or others....In the very earliest days there was a great deal of either paranoia or perhaps reality in excluding press people from our meetings. I think that continued for a long time in many strands of the women's movement and to put out our own report of what happened.

MA: Are you suggesting that the publicity helped you build a mass base without you consciously saying "We're going to build a mass base?"

KC: Yes, I think so. The publicity did and then of course other strands were developing on some campuses, the so-called self-styled, radical, women's liberation efforts. These things were spontaneous in many ways. They reflected the times in many ways and we know about the anti-war, anti-Vietnam groups where women felt put down even by their own colleagues, their male colleagues, and the same thing from the civil rights efforts, the women who were participating 00:24:00there. These things feed on one another.

I think also, out of the whole Commissions on the Status of Women who served a most important role in disseminating information. Let me get back to the Kennedy Commission on the Status of Women. Their report American Women was really not only ground breaking but in many ways terribly radical. People who read it think "My god this is mild stuff, of course we all know this and we all know that." But in 1961 to 63 we didn't all know how many legal disabilities there were, how much change needed to be made in the law. We hadn't really put together facts and figures on how few women were in elected office and what the economic situation was and the whole ball of wax. The information that was dug up and 00:25:00written about and the membership on that National Commission was really outstanding. That commission had access to endless expertise of people who were made available to them. That report was wonderful, but what's going to happen to it? It was predominantly the Commissions on the Status of Women which digested and purveyed and made accessible that information. They weren't the only ones but it took awhile for a lot of other organizations to catch on and to glom onto 00:26:00this. I think perhaps that is one of the primary benefits of the state Commissions. I know that in Wisconsin we patterned our organization and our selection of issues and our concerns pretty much after -- at least at the outset -- after the National Commission. It was the only model that existed.

Even though we as an organization, NOW, didn't say "now we are going to be a massive group." Nevertheless, as Betty Friedan flew around the country making 00:27:00speeches and giving her various presentations, she began to urge groups in the communities, there were enough, or even just a handful, to organize a chapter. We had absolutely no procedure for organizing chapters or chartering chapters. I can remember the first letter I received as chair of the board from a group in Philadelphia -- I think it was Philadelphia, anyway it was in Pennsylvania -- that they wanted a charter for their chapter and what was the procedure. I had to make up something. So we were very informal and lackadaisical because "chapters," and then when we would have a national board meeting Catherine Conroy finally began...people would expect and almost laugh when she would say 00:28:00"Now if we are really going to have chapters all over the place, and we are going to have national conferences or conventions, we better begin thinking about some kind of procedure and delegate selection procedure". She had her experience with the AFL-CIO and the unions and knew the importance of that kind of thing. Well, either the other members of the national board didn't think that was important or we were still so small and so non-cohesive that even being able to get a couple hundred people to come to a national meeting seemed a bonanza and when we met in Chicago we hoped that a lot of people from Chicago, Wisconsin, and Iowa would manage to get there, so why exclude....There were 00:29:00differences of opinion based on different kinds of experiences and different expectations. Conroy's expectation or hope was that it would be fair, and just because we were having a national convention in New York didn't mean that the New York and New Jersey folks ought to set the agenda for the nation. But it took quite a few years before NOW as an organization did develop a process both for chartering local chapters and then we moved gradually to the notion of a state organization. But it was all sort of like topsy, it just grew; it wasn't at the outset planned necessarily this way.

MA: Initially then it sounds like policy probably was made by those members from 00:30:00the region where the conference would be held to a large extent because they were the people who attended.

KC: That's right. Anyone who was a member or claimed to be a member could come in and vote, and so gradually that changed. I think it was always important as a position, I mean consciously important, that there be some if not elite --I think that was already a dirty word even that long ago -- but some people who knew what they were doing. On our first national board for example, the historian, Carl Degler, was a member.

We had -- I've said this earlier too I'm sure -- black men and black women and 00:31:00white men and white women and labor and non-employed and professional. A lot of the criticism of either the women's movement or of NOW as an organization that it was white middle class isn't entirely accurate.

MA: You're saying that there was a conscious attempt that it not be so.

KC: Of course the whole statement of purpose of NOW said that for eligibility for membership one had to eschew racism as well as sexism and that was from the beginning. Which isn't to say that it was always easy to recruit members from a wide ethnic range.

MA: How did you try to do that? Did you have a policy or a program for how to recruit women of color and working class people?

KC: I don't know that there was any great plan, in fact I haven't seen a great plan yet out of any organization that is successful, but certainly the will to do it was there.

MA: Did you have for example an outreach committee or something to that effect?

KC: The whole organization was an outreach committee.

MA: Did you want to say any more about that before we move on?

KC: I just think that it was important that there be people who, spokespersons and people with skills in the leadership of the organization. That was not something that anyone was suspicious of, that was absolutely essential.

MA: So having a core of "elite" leaders if you will and a broad based movement were not necessarily contradictory?

KC: That's right.

MA: Let's move back to the Commission on the Status of Women. You have given a fair amount of information on how it worked -- and what I recall from reading the transcripts are the conferences and the speakers that would address a wide range of issues.

KC: You're speaking now of our State Commission?

MA: Yes, your Wisconsin State Commission on the Status of Women.

KC: The membership on our Commission was always excellent. Not all 30 members equally excellent but that was crucial, of course. On our Wisconsin Commission 00:34:00we had men and women and we had again this broad range of people. They had to be named by the governor. This was not like a sorority or a voluntary organization. It was voluntary in the sense that we had no compensation for serving on the Commission and we had to pay out of pocket for travel and meals and other things. We were able always to ask the governor, to say "It is important for what we wished to accomplish to have representation from the following segments". We would urge the governor to be sure we had farm and industry and business and educators and housewives, employed and not employed, poor people, 00:35:00we almost always had at least one welfare recipient and AFDC, and handicapped. Then we would suggest to the governor -- this was five different governors over a period of time -- that here is a solid core of individuals who in our judgment ought to be renamed, these are the workers, the drones, and these are sort of deadwood who never came or didn't do much.

MA: So he could reappoint in their position?

KC: Yes. Then, one of the strengths of the Wisconsin Commission was that we always had representation from at least a half a dozen key state agencies whose 00:36:00work and programs impacted very immediately on the lives of women. Unfortunately that no longer exists, even on the Wisconsin Women's Council, and some of us argued in vain but...Why that didn't happen is another story but it did happen on our commission and that was so critical, so critical. I remember Doug Ager from Industry Labor and Human Relations who would tell us....Some of us who didn't have any great expertise eventually found out, for example, that our unemployment compensation rules were very discriminatory on the basis of 00:37:00pregnancy and that no female could collect unemployment compensation ten weeks before the birth of a baby and eight weeks after or whatever. How do you go about changing that? We didn't know whether that was by statute or by administrative rule or how long it had existed or what was the rationale for doing it in the first place. We did know that it was damaging. By having a man like Doug Ager, he found out for us and said that is an administrative rule and can be changed at any time by the unemployment comp board and it had been in existence for this long, etc., and the way to get it changed is to request a presentation before that board and an explanation of why this was so damaging. That didn't happen overnight, it took a lot of doing, but that was just one tiny 00:38:00illustration. We had people from the Department of Public Instruction and I remember one of the -- this is just one of tens of fishes one could name -- when the Department of Public Instruction finally put out a requirement that teacher education institutions in the state, wherever they had teacher training, needed to incorporate in their curriculum some human relations training but they said nothing about sexism and we wanted that modified. Sister Doral Reed who was the president of Alverno College was on our Commission at that time I remember and she knew how to write up some of this stuff so that it carried some weight.

MA: Did you get that changed?

KC: Yes.

MA: So that is a very good example of how your Commission on the Status of Women worked at one level in terms of changing policy.

KC: I guess what I had in mind when I mentioned the importance of having such good people...In some states a governor who didn't have any interest or understanding of what a Commission on the Status of Women could do would simple simply name a whole snag of women who had contributed to his campaign or they would be all Republicans or all Democrats depending on the party membership of the governor and some of them resembled a garden club. I am sure that Betty Friedan's continuing denigration of commissions, and she continued this year when she spoke at my retirement thing, without understanding that they were not all tea party, garden club kinds of people, but she got that impression at the 00:40:00outset and never changed, never eradicated it. That was true in some states.

We had divided our commission into committees to work at what are the issues and where do we go with them. We had terrific people in the state heading up those and membership on the committees.

MA: So you would have on the one hand legal investigation of issues and then attempts to make change as a result of what you found?

KC: And we looked at policies in Health and Social Services, of policies in respect to AFDC and others. The Justice System, Judge Irv Brunner chaired a 00:41:00committee that looked at that. We would visit the jails and other facilities to get a little better notion. Childcare, I suppose we called one committee Home and Family or some such thing which then gave us a broad range...We would zero in on some key issues and then where do we go with them? You don't affect change only by going to the legislature or by speaking to the head of an agency but by educating as much of the citizenry of the state as possible and that then we would say this is such a hot issue and it is so important and there is so much ignorance or just lack of information that this really requires either a 00:42:00statewide conference and we had quite a few of those, or a regional conference. A number of times we had regional conferences simply because everyone in the state can't just pick up and come to Milwaukee or Madison. By taking the meeting out to Platteville, Superior, and Oshkosh, etc, more people were able to get there. The public education aspect of what we did undergirded everything else. We put out sometimes brochures, or reports. I did one wise thing --in 1965 we issued are first report...Now when the President's Commission on the Status of Women had one report American Women and that terminated them, that was the end. 00:43:00My suggestion was that we call it our First Annual Report and not let anyone thing that we were going out of existence once we had surveyed the scene and investigated and made recommendations. That was what we did and every two years we....These reports were good. They were well written, not voluminous but right to the point. When you consider that we had absolutely no budget for the first ten years of our State Commission, zero budget.

MA: How did you work without a budget?

KC: Very cleverly! I used to tell people that I grew up in the home of a Methodist preacher, which of course I did, and therefore I learned at an early age how to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. One of the reasons that the Commission 00:44:00could exist without any budget was that I chaired it all those years and had permission from, consent from the university to use my office and my files and telephone and typing service and occasionally even travel money because it was consistent with the mission of my university office. That, of course, is what made the difference. In many states people had to work off their kitchen table without any Xerox or typing or anything else. So that was part of it. When it came to publishing reports, we found ways of having agencies, and agencies who had active members on our commission, buy copies. Sometimes we would sell them. We would have reports available at these meetings around the state and add 50¢ 00:45:00to the registration cost and give out a copy of the publication.

MA: As a money raising?

KC: To help pay for the publication cost. Some agencies who had budgets to do it with would buy $1,000 worth.

MA: To back up just a little, you said that the educational component was so crucial in all of the conferences around the state. At the time that you would be sharing with the population your findings would you also be getting information from them as well and learning?

KC: Sure.

MA: How was that done?

KC: At our conferences we would have small workshops and give and take so that folks from the audience would participate. We would frequently establish a 00:46:00panel, including local people, who would participate in these discussions. We also had good publicity for our State Commission. Thanks to, particularly to, some feminist journalists, Dorothy Witte Austin, I have a notebook about 3 inches fat of nothing but clippings of her coverage of our meetings in just the earlier years. That of courses is another educational tool. If you get a really first rate report of something that happened, not just the fact that it did happen. Also the brochures, when we would do a brochure announcing a forthcoming conference of some kind, I have always been of the view that any brochure, or 00:47:00almost anything, ought to give a lot of information, because probably nine out of ten of the brochures that get distributed go to people who don't get to the meeting. They ought to learn something more than just the title of the meeting or who is going to be participating. We always managed to get a little bit of information....so there were many ways. I was surprised, pleased and surprised I guess, last year and the year before when I was doing interviews to incorporate into the course on American National Government under the Annenburg grant, and I interviewed Arthur Schlessinger, Jr., and he was talking about what qualities make a good president and one of the things he said was that a good president or 00:48:00effective executive must know that politics is an educational process. You educate people or you don't move along in the path that you want to go. I guess I had known that all my life but I had never articulated it in just that language. I thought very much of our Commission work when I heard his comment about that.

MA: One of the questions that I had for you was "What was your goal for the Commission at that time?" Would you say that educating people certainly was one?

KC: Yes. I don't know whether that was a goal or a means to the goal but it certainly is an essential, absolutely essential. One can only...when you see the 00:49:00way that many people vote or the fact that people don't vote, it highlights again the importance of that.

MA: What were the other goals for the commission? As a group did you actually sit down and articulate general goals?

KC: I think we did from time to time at least. In fact I have a couple of videos of -- I can't remember the date now but maybe around 1975 -- we did some videotaping at a Commission meeting that was held in Stevens Point and about ten or a dozen of us on the Commission were interviewed by I guess a student or a faculty person up there but anyway we have it on video and each one talking about a particular issue area and what our goals were. Each person could speak 00:50:00on behalf of the whole commission. We had pretty well defined goals. The overall goal was to create fairness and greater equity throughout our state with respect to men and women. I remember once again my friend Conroy used to say, in fact she told me she thought she was quoting me and I always thought I was quoting her so we obviously agreed on it that it was not the burden or goal, it was not the intent of our Commission on the Status of Women to shift disadvantages from one group to another but to eradicate the disadvantages.

MA: Did you see legal changes as being a primary vehicle?

KC: I don't know if I would say primary but it certainly was -- because it took 00:51:00quite a little while for me at least, and I think for others too, to realize the extent to which there were illegal disabilities. We encountered a few of the more flagrant things right at the outset. I remember a book, one of the earliest books that I bought that was addressed to women's status was by a sociologist from Iowa whose name escapes me, the book was called The Potential of Women, Lewis was his last name. It was a wonderful book for its time. It came out in the early or middle 60's. He makes the statement that women have -- he was 00:52:00talking about a lot of things that need to be changed throughout our culture and our society -- however, he said women have attained legal equality. I wasn't startled by that, I thought well we can vote and we can do this or that. By 1970, our Commission had been going for six years, when the big push to get congress to pass the Equal Rights Amendment began, and finally in 1972 congress did pass it. While that accelerated debate was going on, between 1970 and 1972, 00:53:00some of us on our Commission in Wisconsin spoke to the Governor and the Legislative Council and said by the time the Equal Rights Amendment is passed every state is going to have to bring all of their statutes into conformity with that principle and we might just as well get going in Wisconsin now. There was agreement and Wisconsin got going. We had the assistance of a wonderful, wonderful staff person I'm trying to recapture his name, I'm sure it will come to me in a minute, and Marion Thompson, my colleague at the University and also a member of our Commission on the Status of Women, was named to that and Midge Miller so it was a good study committee. They discovered 280 provisions in the 00:54:00Wisconsin statutes that treated men and women differently by the very language of the statutes, 280 provisions. If the great progressive state of Wisconsin had 280 you have to wonder how many Alabama and Louisiana, etc. would have. They did get going on making a lot of those changes so that omnibus legislation that was designed and then to get -- they took care of most of them except divorce reform and marital property and some welfare changes. hose things were just so huge that they needed to be dealt with independently and were dealt with. Once the 00:55:00study committee did all of its work -- that guy's name keeps coming back and plaguing me, it isn't Boynton but it starts with Boy -- then how are we going to get this thing passed? We put together a temporary coalition of some 13 organizations in the state with leadership from the Commission on the Status of Women and got support from -- I don't remember what they all were -- but a number of labor unions and League of Women Voters and I don't remember if Business and Professional Women....some little variety and together managed to 00:56:00help get that legislation passed.

We also in 1973 hoped to have a state Equal Rights Amendment which was on the ballot, the spring ballot, and that was defeated even though this coalition was working hard to get it passed. It was the combination of the Catholic Church and the veteran's organizations and whatever other right wing stuff -- Eagle Forum -- that were a lot more powerful than we had anticipated. The big hue and cry on that spring ballot, in fact there were bumper stickers from the opposition saying "Vote yes for bingo, no for equal rights". That was the year that bingo became legalized in Wisconsin and that is what happened. I guess police and fire 00:57:00departments gave a lot of right wing leadership in their communities because they wanted the opportunity to play bingo. It wasn't necessary to vote yes for bingo and no for equal rights but a lot of them did it.

However, I was just pointing out how some of those legal changes...first we had to figure out what needed to be done and then how did it get done through law through legislation or through court or through administrative rule and then how do you rally the support, how do you get the word out to people that this is important and that this change would result in this and not in that. It took a lot of educating and a lot of speechmaking.

MA: Did you make a lot of speeches personally?

KC: Yes I did. I think I probably...I used to average 30 - 40 speeches in a 00:58:00year. I wrote them all at home, on my own time, and loved doing it. I used to love to give speeches; I don't love to do that so much anymore.

MA: You've certainly done your share of it!

Do you think that once you were involved with NOW, you did continue working with the state Commission as well, did your work with the state Commission or did your approach to the Commission change after you became involved with NOW?

KC: I don't recall any dramatic change at all. I know that my vocabulary became 00:59:00a little more forceful as I went along. How much was an influence from NOW and how much was just my own maturing and a greater receptivity to these ideas so that one didn't have to mince words so much I don't know. I imagine all of these things were going on at the same time. I have some audio tapes of interviews and things over the years and one of the most...David found one when he was cleaning out a closet a couple of years ago so I hadn't thought of it or listened to it and I couldn't believe....I was as correct on the issues and had as much of a global view as I think I do now but my language was so...not that I am ever anything but ladylike anyway, it may be one of my shortcomings but, so it wasn't 01:00:00a question of using vulgar language but we would talk about "disadvantages" instead of "discrimination."

MA: And you didn't use the word oppression I imagine.

KC: Oh right.

MA: That's interesting.

KC: I don't know...I do know that for a period of time after the formation of NOW my personal relationships with the Women's Bureau of the Labor Department were less than congenial. I think I mentioned that in earlier tapes.

MA: You mentioned the conflict within the early NOW organization over the ERA.

KC: Yes, that was one factor. But I think even more important almost, Mary Keyserling was director of the Women's Bureau and she felt stabbed in the back 01:01:00by the formation of NOW as though the Women's Bureau and the State Commissions were all that was needed to affect change. For another group to get itself together and say, "No that's not enough," was somehow an insult. I don't know what other feelings she had but she certainly didn't want any kind of communication. It was really only until Libby Koontz came in as director of the Women's Bureau that she made a conscious effort to mend those fences. She understood the importance of an outside force pushing and giving credence really to what the inside force was trying to do.

MA: Do you think this spread to the state level and affected your relationship 01:02:00for a time with state labor leaders? Were you suggesting that?

KC: No, not at all.

MA: It didn't go beyond the problem you were having with her then?

KC: That's right. In fact I had, as chair of our Wisconsin Commission and also in my capacity at the University in doing continuing education, had relied very, very heavily on the Women's Bureau of the Labor Department in Washington to provide information and to dig up information if they didn't already have it. Catherine East in her capacity with the Citizen's Advisory Council on the Status of Women was based in the Women's Bureau of the Labor Department although she was not beholding to them in policies and administrative things. Both of those 01:03:00were constant and necessary and effective sources of the kind of information....it's one thing to say women are discriminated against in employment then if you don't know and can't cite the facts and figures and the consequences of those facts and figures, what are you talking about. I did miss the, of course I could call Catherine East in any case, and then I would find other staff people in the Women's Bureau who would still be responsive.

MA: So you no longer had the direct link to the Women's Bureau that you had had before, that was the primary change?

KC: Yes. It was a negative from my standpoint. Furthermore I felt I guess I don't like to have friends turn on me and be annoyed for something that I didn't 01:04:00regard this as a traitorous act and I didn't regard it as an opposition to what was going on. I had always, I don't know from when, but believed that you needed friends on the inside, allies on the inside, and you push from the outside and do these things always simultaneously. Maybe it isn't always the same people who do these things but both have to be going on. That is one of the great losses that the women's movement sustained under the Reagan administration, that the enormous wealth of brilliant women who were in the federal bureaucracy in the Carter years for example and even before that are just totally swept away. I may have mentioned in our earlier interviews the book called Women in Washington, I 01:05:00think that's the name of it, edited by somebody Tinker, that has about 20 separate essays each by a woman in a key government position, almost all of whom I had the opportunity to know and to work with at some level at least and they are all gone, they're not there. They had influence on the policies of those departments and they had contacts with some of us on the outside so that we could push them and they could respond.

MA: That is just what I was thinking, that was what you were able to successfully do in the state of Wisconsin.

I think that actually you have answered this last question about your assessment 01:06:00regarding the commission but perhaps you have more that you would like to say about it? It certainly sound like it worked well from everything you said.

KC: Out state commission.

MA: Yes.

KC: Then of course in 1970, again with the encouragement and enabling action of Libby Kontz we did create a National Association of Commission for Women. Very loosely organized but...In 1969 Libby Koontz, George Schultz was then Secretary of Labor, invited one representative from each of the 50 states. The invitation went to the governor to send one person, it could be the chair of a commission or it could be someone else, and so we did meet, 50 of us.

MA: And you were sent from the state of Wisconsin?

KC: I was. We were asked did we want to have our own association so we could have our own national meetings without reference to the invitation coming from the feds and we all said yes we'd like that, so we established a steering committee of ten people and I was chosen to be on that steering committee and then I think I told you I left the room and was named chair of that steering committee. Then I worked for a year with other members of the steering committee being in touch with all of the states and deciding what kind of an organization, etc., etc., so in 1970 when the Women's Bureau had a big national meeting celebrating their 50th birthday the commission members came together the 01:08:00previous day and actually organized and elected officers. I was elected first president of that....first we called it the Inter-state Association of Commissions and later changed the name to National Association of Commissions. We organized that national association as much as possible along the lines that the Wisconsin Commission had....I suppose it was a natural that as chair of the planning committee and then first president I wouldn't suddenly be doing something totally different. Also, we managed to get into that national association some of these notions of the importance of broadly based membership on their own state commissions and the importance of a progressive agenda and some "how to get things done" kinds of information, so that some of the less 01:09:00progressive commissions did benefit a great deal from the kind of....We put out for example three different editions over several years of a handbook called the Handbook for Commissions on the Status of Women. The "we" who put it out were right here in Madison. Mary Thompson and I were the primary writers. It sounds like a nothing, handbooks for commissions, were in demand by all kinds of organizations nationally and because they had ideas in it that were applicable to any kind of organization. Then a couple of years later we were asked to update it. We had some funding from the Women's Bureau of the Labor Department 01:10:00to do those publications. They helped us fund quite a few of those things.

I should say, having used Libby Koontz's name so often and Catherine Conroy's too, Libby Koontz died last December of cancer at age 69. She was in her home in Salsbury, North Carolina. Catherine Conroy died this February, age 69, of cancer, here in Wisconsin. I just wanted to record that.

MA: Libby Koontz's name is spelled with a K?

KC: K-o-o-n-t-z. Her name is Elizabeth Duncan Koontz.

MA: Conroy is with a C?

KC: Yes.

MA: It sounds like in your assessment regarding the Commission you just gave an excellent example of the broadness of its influence in terms of being a role 01:11:00model in a sense for your national commission and then the book, the Handbook on Commissions. Of course through your chairing and your being first president I can see how that would happen but it would also need to be approved by other people. It must have certainly been seen as a very good commission.

KC: Sure. But I think once again just historically, I don't believe we would ever have had either NOW as it was in its early days or the kind of snowballing of the women's movement, the feminist movement in this country except for the role played by the Commission on the Status of Women.

MA: Yes, and that is a role that has been ignored.

KC: Yes, or denigrated or at least underplayed.

MA: Is there any more that you want to say about the Committees on the Status of Women, the state committees?

KC: I suppose...that national association continues to exist. Some states do and some states don't have commissions or their equivalent because nomenclature has changed over the years. I haven't gone to a meeting of the National Association, they have annual meetings, I can go whenever I want to because there is a council of past presidents and we get to attend conferences without paying the registration costs.

MA: Now finally when you can afford it you no longer have to pay.

KC: I clipped a little cartoon, I sent it to my daughter recently, of two old duffers sitting on a park bench and one of them saying "You know, by the time you have money to burn the fire is gone." Mine isn't quite money to burn yet, nor will it be. I guess what I was going to say was that I'm not sure, I don't think that the National Association of Commissions is as effective now as it was for awhile. We did have a Washington presence. We didn't have an office but we always had somebody who would speak on our behalf and when heads of national organizations would convene or would work together in coalitions to try to get something to happen in Washington we would have representation. It sounded like 01:14:00NOW in its early days. We made it sound as much like the marching millions as possible, so the national association....In fact, that was the auspices under which I was signed on to the Rowe v. Wade amicus brief.

MA: I don't think we've talked about this. I'm positive we haven't.

KC: I uncovered this little paperback when I was pawing through my office stuff and discovered it was the amicus brief for Rowe vs. Wade. The brief was filed in 1972 and the court decision came down in 1973 and low and behold there I was, my name was in it as president of the Inter-state Association of Commission. Then I remembered that Maria Maas, the author, had been the person who was soliciting 01:15:00signatures on this thing and had written to me and phoned I think. I'm in very good company. There were a lot of wonderful people who signed on to that from various organizations. That was just kind of exciting because it was one of many things that always slip my mind totally unless I paw around.

MA: I'm glad you mentioned that.

I'm thinking back to the state commissions, the conferences that would exist, the middle class housewives and working class people and various people who would come to the conferences. Do you have any information about what those people would do when they would leave? Did any of them form groups of any sort to continue contact or continue some kind of process around the issues?

KC: I don't know that we kept...I know that we did not keep actual tabs on who 01:16:00came to something and what happened afterwards. I do know that a lot of people, you know NOW has something like 22 or 27 chapters in this state. My University office used to keep a map of Wisconsin and had different colored pins for different organizations. It was very useful when we were trying to get some coalition stuff together but the number of League of Women Voters, and AAUW and DPW and NOW around the state, and I do know that some of this was a result...I don't know...When I was doing for three years a project to move women into apprenticeships we know that...

MA: This is part of your continuing education program?

KC: Yes. Moving women into nontraditional occupations. We had meetings and 01:17:00speeches and things around the state and there were people who would come to the meetings and say I'm thinking about this.

MA: So there was overlap you're saying?

KC: Sure. In the early days of my continuing education stuff which I began in 1961, by 1963 I was getting a little bored, not bored but weary of having so many individual people coming into my office and a lot of things were beginning to sort of repeat themselves. Patterns were emerging of the needs and so in large part to try to kill many birds with one stone we set up a summer evening four session course, once a week for four sessions. We called it "Today's Woman 01:18:00in Tomorrow's World". That was a not very flashy title that we stole from the Women's Bureau of Publication. We thought maybe we'd get 20 or 30 people in one fell swoop and could help them with some individual counseling and some encouragement, etc. One hundred and twenty signed up the first year. They came from all over the state. Many of them had been to a conference or a something. This was still in 1963 mind you. I still hear from some of those women that this opened up a whole new...We repeated that course for three summers and gradually the enrollment fell off but not totally, I'm sure we could have continued it for 01:19:00a long time. But three years was about as often as I wanted to do much of anything, so I would find a legitimate reason not to do it anymore.

MA: So you think that you can't actually identify but you think some of the new charter organizations of NOW in the state certainly had people who were involved?

KC: Yes, and who were influenced.

MA: In the state commission or perhaps had been to continuing education classes?

KC: Or had read reports or whatever. We did a lot of television stuff. When our Commission on the Status of Women in Wisconsin put out its first edition of Wisconsin Women and the Law we did first one in 1975, then one in 77, and one in 01:20:0079. I used to joke about it and say you'd think it was Peyton Place revisited it was such a hot item Wisconsin Women and the Law. We distributed 10,000 copies and more were in demand.

MA: That's a very good example.

KC: At this last October 20, 1988 retirement party at the Sheraton there were five presidents of the National Association for Commissions who came. I was the first and then Joy Simonson who lives in Washington, D.C., then Emily Taylor who is now back in Kansas, and number four from California didn't come, but Patricia Hill Burnett the portrait artist from Detroit was the fifth one and then the 01:21:00incumbent president, a women who lives in Iowa and chaired the Iowa Commission came. I didn't know who the guest list was that were appraised of the fact that this event was going to take place until I started getting phone calls from Joy Simonson, from Catherine East, from Emily Taylor saying "we're coming". I just about dropped the telephone. Then I said "Do you want to stay at my house?" Because I figured if they were paying their air fare that that was enough of an expense without a motel, so I had what my daughter Janet called a slumber party.

MA: How wonderful!

KC: It was wonderful. It was wonderful that these folks came but it also suggests that we've stayed in touch all these years and we continue to do 01:22:00business together.

MA: A beautiful example of the old girls network.

KC: That's right. Catherine East, I just saw a reference to her in the newspaper the other day is some kind of researcher in residence business and professional...She's writing up a book about the women's movement that I hope to give greater accuracy than a lot of the stuff.

MA: And you have faith that her recording will?

KC: Oh yes. In fact she is a stickler for, she would never have an interview like this and rely on her memory! She'd have documents down here and would have dates and names absolutely authenticated and documented. When Catherine was here in October she had to rush back, she was the first to break up the slumber party, and one of the reasons she was going back was the hope to do some 01:23:00interviews with Libby Koontz, in fact hoped to go and visit her. She never did get to visit her because Libby wasn't well enough to receive visitors. However, at Libby's suggestion, on a good day when she felt like talking she would get in touch with Catherine and Catherine was able to do several hours of taping interview over the telephone.

MA: Wonderful!

KC: So she has those but I'm sure not nearly as much.... Now we were interviewing, we, Joanne Reka was interviewing Catherine Conroy as part of this oral history program and at Catherine's funeral services this woman came up and introduced herself and she is your counterpart, the woman who was conducting interviews with Catherine and with several other labor women, feminists, in the Milwaukee area. I asked her how much she had. She said she only had the tip of 01:24:00the iceberg, but she had eight hours of interview on tape.

MA: Good. That's nice. It's happening all over isn't it?

MA: Let's begin with the Houston Conference and the national plan of action.

KC: I think maybe I should, even at the risk of repeating some of the things we've said earlier, let me at least remind you once again of how I got involved in the Houston Conference, the International Women's Year Commission. It was 01:25:00President Nixon who first proclaimed after the United Nations said "1975 will be International Women's Year" that proclamation was made prior to 1975 while Nixon was still in office so he did declare that the United States would participate and would have some recognition of International Women's Year. Then he was out of office and Gerald Ford was in the Presidency, so Gerald Ford then did name a commission, a U.S. Commission on the observance of International Women's Year. Ford named Jill Ruckelshouse to chair that commission. I think she is one of the outstanding and wonderful women in the United States. She was at one time the national president of the National Women's Political Caucus and is a very 01:26:00attractive in every way person and a very able administrator. While she was chairing the commission which, because it was named by Ford had a predominance of Republican members on the commission but not totally and there were a few men named on that commission. Catherine East was already on the staff. She had resigned from the executive chair of the Citizen's Advisory Council and was on the staff. I am sure that it was Catherine East who suggested to Jill Ruckleshouse that I might be a useful citizen member of some of their subcommittees. I had just in 1973 had an active part in our first national conference on Women in the Arts which was held at Wingspread and which was a 01:27:00very influential and important conference with a publication that was very useful. With that experience, I was asked to serve on the subcommittee on Arts and the Humanities so I would go to Washington when that committee would meet and met for a couple of days. I met quite a few people in that process. Not very long after that they were developing another subcommittee on homemakers. Well, Catherine East knew that as chair of the Wisconsin Commission I had helped to organize and put on six conferences around the state on Homemaking and the Family: Changing Values and something else in the subtitle. Once again she 01:28:00suggested, in that case Martha Griffith was chairing the Committee on Homemaking and the Family, that I would be a useful person. So I was on two committees that met at different times so I make a number of trips to Washington and again met more and more people and enjoyed it.

While I was there Jill Ruckleshouse asked me if I would be the conference coordinator for the national conference. Now I should back up again to say that in December of 1975 Bella Abzug and Patsy Mink introduced to congress legislation calling for a national women's conference to be subsidized by the government, to have preliminary meetings in all 50 states and 6 territories that would be in preparation for the national conference at which delegates would be 01:29:00elected and issue ideas would be voted, on etc. So, Jill Ruckleshouse asked me if I would be the conference coordinator and I couldn't picture how that would work out in my life because it really meant staying in Washington and being there all the time which I didn't feel able to do. I finally worked out a compromise with her and said that I could be part-time. I could come to Washington for a week or two at a time knowing that I could stay with Catherine East and just take part-time leave from the University and that that would work out. So I was called the Deputy Conference Coordinator and did that on a part-time job. Then with the change, well I don't need to move into the Carter administration yet. At some point Jill Ruckleshouse left Washington. It was 01:30:00after the Saturday night massacre when her husband resigned his job because Cox was fired, etc., so the Ruckleshouse's moved to the west coast and Ford then had to name a new chair to that commission and named Elizabeth Vanasaucus who was an attorney and a judge in Florida. I still continued, I mean she didn't unseat me and it was still a very compatible, a nice bipartisan thing which in my observation and experience women are frequently better able to do than men. Not always, certainly during the Reagan years and subsequently, a lot of that 01:31:00bipartisanship has unfortunately evaporated even among women.

One of the things that I did at some stage and I can't remember if it was - I guess it was while Vanasaucus was still there - one assignment that I was given was to prepare a handbook for these state and territorial meetings, how to conduct their business because one of the things the national commission had to do was to name the planning committees in the 56 states and territories. Well to sit in Washington and to identify individuals in all of those states who would be widely representative and still able to function and to work together was no mean trick. So, from Washington we sent to organizations, including labor 01:32:00unions, a letter saying, "Would you identify individuals in these various states who should be considered to serve on those planning committees." Some of us who had state connections, I had no problems making suggestions for the state of Wisconsin, and we had friends that we could call on from other states and say "Whom would you suggest?" Sometimes we had to rely on national organizations. I remember several unions that responded immediately and gave us good names in all of these jurisdictions and others didn't respond. There were 40 or 50 national women's organizations that were very good about responding.

MA: What would you do if you didn't get a response?

KC: Well, we'd pick up the phone and call....you mean from an organization?

MA: Yes, if you were still searching because the organization had not responded?

KC: Well, we did some phone follow-up if not with national officers with individuals we knew who had been influential in that organization and were acquainted around the country. Or we would.... oh if we might have known a law professor in Arizona or a former commission member somewhere else and we relied on our own little networks to say "Would this be a good person to chair that committee?" or "Do you know any Native American women in your state who should be on this?" We had to do a lot of that sort of thing just to get those committees named and in place. Then, in addition to that, the assignment that I had that was fun to work on was to prepare a handbook detailing how those 01:34:00planning committees should function. I did do that and then they named a journalist named Dorothy Journey who was appended to the staff or was a consultant to the staff, a very nice person and a very able journalist, to help us on the editing of what I had done. We sat down together a couple of times and made a few corrections. I can remember a very high compliment that I received on that handbook when it was finally finished. It was good. It took into account a lot of aspects that might not normally...I think I'd had so much experience in running conferences and I liked to write things like that, so anyway, it was a 01:35:00fun assignment for me. Anyway, the high compliment came from John Mack Carter, the editor of Good Housekeeping I think. He and Sy Chestler and a number of men were on the IWY Commission and so were a number of women who edited big women's magazines, which was very useful. They would get the word out about a lot of things, issues as well as the forthcoming conference, etc. Anyway, he said it was the best thing he'd ever seen along those lines.

MA: How would you characterize it? What made it so good? For example, if I was given the task of writing a pamphlet of that sort what would you tell me?

KC: I don't know if I can dredge enough of it up to even give you a proper 01:36:00response. How to go step-by-step, how to get your folks together, how to conduct meetings, what the objective was and what the intent of the legislation was that they needed to stay in touch with, and how to outreach so that people would come to their statewide meeting, how they would hear about it, how they would know they were welcome. How to conduct all this planning in advance and then how to conduct their statewide meeting. At each statewide meeting...hen we had to kind of schedule...Now I'm away from the handbook again.

MA: That's fine.

KC: Each of these 56 state meetings had to be held before a certain date in 01:37:00order that we would have the results of what they did and could shuffle ahead before the November Houston conference. So we needed to have dates. Then the IWY Commission decided that they would have at least two commission members present at each of these state meetings to be sure that they were run in accordance with the requirements of the Feds so we had to allocate those people and ask them whether it was appropriate for them to go. We tried to foresee glitches and head them off but we certainly were not always successful in that. For example, there was no prerequisite of age in order to come to the state meetings and vote. My 01:38:00recollection from reading the transcript of our previous conversation was that you were present at the state of Washington meeting and that busloads of Mormons came in with their little children and I suppose we had no requirements that you had to be twelve years old or sixteen years old in order to vote for delegates so these busloads that came in with little kids all voted.

MA: Do you think they voted for their children as well, I mean the children's vote was counted as well?

KC: Sure. I know that.

MA: Oh my! What a glitch!

KC: That was just one of the things. We also didn't anticipate these busloads.

MA: Of course. That's the kind of thing it would be really hard to anticipate.

KC: After this had happened in a few states, you know too little too late. Even 01:39:00then the Utah meeting was still an absolute shock. What was the name of the lieutenant governor from the state of New York? I want to say Mary Anne Kusack but that wasn't it. It was something that started with "K". She was one of the commissioners who went to the Utah meeting and she kept phoning in that morning as additional busloads

MA: You were talking about the Utah delegation and the representative phoning back.

KC: As the mobs increased and a "What do I do now?" sort of thing because 13,000 people came to a meeting where they expected 5,000. Anyway, there were a lot of things like that.

MA: I'm curious about outreach. You said in your handbook you gave instructions or guidelines for outreach. What were they? I think outreach is always a 01:40:00problem, that's why I'm asking.

KC: I suppose essentially the message was that the normal mainstream channels of communication do not reach people who don't belong to organizations, don't reach people who just...I'm thinking of unorganized but also low income, poor, in many communities minorities, so that they needed to have methods of getting the word out that would go through other kinds of channels. We were very specific in suggesting places and people and putting notices in churches and I suppose at 01:41:00the welfare office. I don't remember but we had a lot of specific suggestions. Then some concrete stuff on how to conduct elections for delegates and pointed out that delegates to the Houston conference needed to be elected at the state meetings so that whole apparatus. Then of course once the state meetings were about to be held the most specific business of those state meetings was to have an educational component on the issues and to take some votes on the issues. The staff in Washington had been very busily preparing materials that could be used 01:42:00by the Planning Committees on a whole range of issues that were very likely to be incorporated in the final national plan of action. Our staff prepared material on maybe 20 or 30 umbrella issue areas and suggested literature they could be reading, distributing, speakers they could call, questions that they could consider, just a lot of wonderful educational material for the use of the Planning Committee and for their use at the state meeting. It was not to put words in their mouth to say this is where we want you to come out with this but rather, "these are the obvious issues confronting women these days and we want to hear from your state meeting on what people feel about this."

MA: Do you recall what the most controversial issues were at the time?

KC: Sure, reproductive rights, the lesbian question, not question but lesbian rights, in some communities the Equal Rights Amendment. I think those were the predominantly...However I think at Houston itself, only one plank in the national plan of action was carried unanimously and that was one that dealt with women in business.

MA: Really, only one carried unanimously?

KC: Because there were seven or eight or maybe as many as nine states that sent 01:44:00delegations that were quite conservative. Some of them just went down the line opposing everything. So, that was part of the politics at Houston. Let me see if I've done enough...

I should repeat, and I know I said this earlier, the national legislation which Bella and Patsy Mink had initiated was specific that the representation that elected delegates 2,000 elected delegates going to Houston. They were to be elected by states; each state would have a proportionate number related to the Congressional Delegation so it was a population representation. Each delegation 01:45:00should be a real mix and the legislation was specific, a mix with respect to economics, educational attainment, race, religion, not previous condition of servitude but occupational

MA: Was sexual preference in there?

KC: It was not in the legislation, no. Anyway, this was something that was really stressed in the handbook to the state people to make darn sure that their delegation really was balanced. I did mention in an earlier tape that when the list of delegates came in to the National Commission and we checked it for demographics, there was no opportunity for the National Commission to make 01:46:00corrections, I mean to say to the state you flubbed the dub here. However they did have the opportunity to name some additional people to balance out the total thing and they were called delegates-at-large. What was discovered was that with the exception of these few states that had very conservative votes on issues as well as obvious over representation at their meetings of ultra conservative

MA: So those six or seven states you're not talking about when you talk about the broad representation?

KC: That's right. All the rest had more minority people than were represented in their total state, a higher percentage of racial minorities, of low income, of young people. All the categories that we were worried would not be properly 01:47:00represented were in fact over represented. When the National Commission had the option of naming some additional delegates-at-large to fill out, the short falls were in white, middle class, and elderly which was just a total surprise because the people had bent over backwards in their state to do a proper job. Of course it was possible to elect and send people of low income and otherwise because the payment to the National Conference was subsidized by the money...Congress only allocated five million dollars for this whole enterprise, all of the state meetings, all of the staff work that I've talked about and the Houston conference itself. They first authorized ten million and then the right wingers 01:48:00got on it and persuaded people to cut that back to five million. We were able to do it partly, we were able to do it because the State Department lent staff people and picked up the postage and provided the office space so that those things didn't need to come out of that five million or it would not have gone nearly as well as it did.

MA: You paid the way then to the conference for all of the delegates?

KC: That's right, and that made it possible for people to be there.

MA: It sounds like then that we could conclude that in most states the outreach worked then?

KC: That's right.

MA: Really worked!

KC: Right. A lot of these state meetings were very embattled and very political, 01:49:00not in the partisan sense but in doing political maneuvering and negotiating. The New York meeting, I didn't attend but certainly heard a lot about, and that was one that was just fraught with

MA: Do you remember what the issues were in the New York meeting?

KC: No, I don't really. I could dredge awhile but...and Bella was there...I should get back I guess to say that by the time Carter was elected president he then named Bella Abzug chair of the Commission and made a lot of other changes in the personnel on the Commission. Allen Alda was there for awhile and I think was a Carter appointment and Jean Stapleton and both of them were very active 01:50:00participants. Other actors and star people had been named on previous commissions, Katherine Hepburn at one time and I can't name others right now, but who didn't really come and get involved but Jean Stapleton was as knowledgeable, and enthusiastic, and participated as much as any person on that commission. She was just a real pleasure, nothing "big shotty" about her at all, very lovely to work with.

So when Bella came in as chair she said to me, she didn't ask me, she told me that I had to be the Executive Director. So I finally...

MA: Again you were reluctantly pulled in.

KC: My reluctance wasn't that I didn't want to do it. We all kept telling each other that it was the only show in town. I mean, it was the only place to be and to be doing things. It was my personal life and how to handle things but it worked out.

MA: How old were the kids when you were doing this?

KC: It was 1975-76 until 1978 that I was really doing all of that.

MA: Eleven years ago, so young adults.

KC: Oh yes, and not around.

MA: But Hank was sick then?

KC: Yes. Janet may have still been--she was still here at the University but she 01:52:00wasn't living at home.

MA: But you had to balance care for Hank with being away.

KC: Yes. In fact he was still working a little bit, still had his office over here at Regent and Allen. It was while I was in Washington that he closed down his office and stopped working altogether. He kind of sneaked that. He had been talking about that for a while and I had been encouraging him not to do it because I thought it was important for his psyche that he have a reason to get up and get dressed and go over to his office whether he conducted any business or not. He got his brother to help him move his desk out of there.

Gerta had asked us to talk a little bit about what we did at Houston and I had 01:53:00earlier talked about all of the negatives and the anxieties and what we did about that but I guess I didn't really talk about adopting the National Plan of Action which was the purpose of the meeting. The IWY Commission and staff had had from each state meeting had had votes on all of the results of the voting and the issues and had those all together in Washington and then we put them together in a very honest kind of way and by pooling all of that information we 01:54:00put together a tentative plan of action which would then be what the elected delegates would consider in Houston and could amend from the floor and make changes and then vote them up or down as amended on the floor so it was a democratic kind of process in Houston. There were people who came to the conference wearing big "pro-plan," people who were going to adopt this tentative plan and vote entirely for it and there were others who were not "pro-plan." Before Houston (I think I may have already talked about this) there were some forty national organizations with headquarters in Washington whose leadership 01:55:00met together once a week in order to counter the negatives of the ultra conservatives and to dispel some of the lies that were being flooded around, they would get the word out to their constituency across the nation saying support Houston, come to Houston, don't believe this, that, and the other, and did whatever they could do and then also from their national offices in Washington, got publicity. One of our staff people, Kathy Bonk, whose name I mentioned earlier, not today but in previous sessions, had some staff assistance and she was just on the telephone constantly drumming up press people to be at 01:56:00Houston. Ultimately 1,500 press people from all of the media were there so getting the press briefing books together for that many people was an enormous chore, and one that was very well done.

In addition to the plenary session where the 2,000 elected delegates debated and voted

MA: On each plank?

KC: Yes. In addition to that there was a regular...this whole conference had probably 20,000 people who came not as delegates and there were--I was going to say side shows--other conference activities going on in this big conference center not plenary session at all.

MA: Simultaneously?

KC: Yes. There was a huge area of booths where people were displaying stuff or selling stuff and all of that had to be arranged and set up and then there were some forty or fifty women who had key national positions who each did an hour or half hour presentation of what her job is and what policies came out of her office and what useful for women could be done. It also encouraged folks in the audience not only to be informed but to be able to lobby and to push certain things.

MA: So those 2,000 people in the audience

KC: The 2,000 delegates were there doing business all the time.

MA: Then how many people in the audience?

KC: Not in the audience but milling around the place and going to

MA: The periphery and going to...

KC: To displays and presentations.

MA: They just came on their own to see what was happening?

KC: That's right. There was an area where there was art stuff and there were performance, there was a theater with performances. I remember I sneaked out at one point from backstage where otherwise I spent my entire time to see one performer, a woman I had known in New York and I didn't even know she was a performer and comedienne, and I went in to watch her thing. There just were many other things that were all feminist going on. There was plenty for people to do. There were some audience spaces up in the balcony for people who wanted to watch 01:59:00the proceedings but it would by no means hold 20,000 so they were milling around doing other things.

MA: Did the 2,000 delegates pretty much stay for the whole thing and vote? I think of the House of Representatives or the Senate where people are absent so often.

KC: No. They did in fact stay and do their job. There were alternates for each...The delegates were seated by states with big placards telling where they should sit and there were alternates so that if someone wanted to leave for awhile she would summon her alternate to sit in. For the most part they wanted to make sure that they were there to vote. Some things had...for each of the twenty-five planks, one member of the IWY Commission made the presentation, made 02:00:00the motion that this be adopted, and then there was debate.

I think one of the exciting planks was the minority women's plank. There had been a lot of...The proposed plank that had been brought to Houston, if my memory is correct on this, I've forgotten what we called that preliminary thing--we didn't call it preliminary or tentative--the think that came as an agenda to Houston was a...gave us something to go by. My memory is that there was one plank for minority women. The various constituents of racial minority 02:01:00women were very unhappy with this because each Native Americans, Asian Pacific women, and Black women, and Hispanic, each felt, and rightly so, that they had some unique and specific goals and situations that should be expressed so they didn't want to all be lumped together.

MA: Did the plank then get broken down into more?

KC: Yes. In fact, knowing that this was the way people felt there were sessions scheduled in the evening before this was even taken up in the plenary session for these categories, for the minority women to meet together and see what they could work out. There were some very well known leadership people and then 02:02:00others who were elected delegates who came to those sessions. What they handed out was just wonderful. It's in the National Plan of Action now with a separate subsection from each category and then an overall of things that applied to them all. That was what got presented as a substitute on the floor and that's what was passed. It was a very emotional part of the plenary session.

MA: I'll bet it was.

KC: On the videos of the Houston conference you see this.

MA: They had given their representation then, they had enough numbers to make that happen and to feel powerful enough to make changes.

KC: That's right, and of course it wasn't opposed except by a couple of the all white southern states to which no one paid too much attention.

MA: That's very interesting.

KC: That was very emotional.

When the plank on sexual preference was being debated there were some very impassioned negative statements, especially from some of the very religious fundamentalists. It was a great joy to a lot of people when Betty Friedan gave an impassioned speech in favor of adopting the plank. She has of course a long history of not being too friendly with the lesbian community and being not very well liked by people in the lesbian community so that was a very well received statement. She wasn't being a hypocrite, she was saying she had changed her 02:04:00views on a lot of these things and felt obliged and wanted to make this public statement.

MA: You have referred to that in the past and I have been struck by it because your description of this differs of course from what I have read. I don't think that Betty Friedan is given credit for an honest change of opinion at Houston and you certainly have stressed the honesty with which she has confronted this issue all the way through.

KC: I think if there is one thing that describes her it is integrity and honesty. She was in great...Betty Friedan had a great difference of opinion with a lot of the women in NOW and in the caucus. Just a couple of years ago on the subject of whether there should be special treatment in the law regarding 02:05:00pregnancy. Catherine East and Betty were just at opposite ends of the...Catherine East is of the view that if we do anything special for women because of reproduction that this is going to turn out to be a negative for the employment of women. Betty Friedan says that the fact is that unless women have some special attention they are never going to compete on any equal thing. They were both giving testimony in some West Coast thing, I think the State of Washington

MA: It was probably the comparable worth debate that brought in a lot of other issues as well.

KC: But, those are two people who have very definite opinions on a lot of things. In fact Catherine East spoke at Houston to our astonishment in 02:06:00opposition to the sexual preference plank.

MA: Oh she did?

KC: Yes she did. Her view is that that is not a women's issue. Sexual preference, while she disapproves of discrimination on the basis of sexual preference and thinks that there should be legislation prohibiting, and housing and that it should apply to both men and women and she doesn't see sexual preference as a "women's" issue and so on that grounds she spoke. I know that her daughter was there at the conference, she wasn't an elected delegate but she was there, she had been very helpful in the torch run, you know prior to Houston the torch was run from Seneca Falls to a place called Seneca Falls South. Betsy 02:07:00East is very active in the National Association of Sports for Women and Girls and she came to me in tears before that session, and she said "My mother's going to speak against this, can't you do anything to stop her?" I said "Betsy I wish I could but I can't."

MA: But the plank passed?

KC: Oh yes, with only a few of these state delegations and a few individuals who voted against it. When it did pass of course there was this out flying of balloons from all over the place which said "We are everywhere."

I've told you this little...Did I tell you previously, if so I won't tell you now about my two friends from Milwaukee who were sitting up in the balcony?

MA: No you didn't.

KC: And watch these two men from Utah telling the women in their various Mormon delegations how to vote.

MA: I don't think you've told the story. I think we've alluded to that because it was made fairly public in things that I've read that this sort of thing was going on.

KC: The thing that Annie Kromp was not a delegate but was up in the balcony watching, she was one of Catherine Conroy's protégées, I don't know who she was with but a couple of these Milwaukee union young women were up in the balcony and getting more and more furious because they were sitting right behind these two men who were giving hand signals to the women on how to vote and when to speak and it was making these two furious wondering what to do about it. 02:09:00Finally, at one point one of these men was leaning over the other with his arm kind of on his shoulder and they were whispering about what they were going to do next and Annie leaned over and tapped them both on the shoulder and said "It's so nice to have you gay men with us."

MA: You didn't tell me the story. I'll bet that just made them terribly embarrassed.

KC: Now in between votes in the plenary session there were important speeches by wonderful people. Barbara Jordan and the three First Ladies, Lady Bird, Betty Ford, and Rosaline Carter, and Judy Carter, the daughter-in-law of the 02:10:00President, was very active throughout the planning and of course she barnstormed the country with--

I was just mentioning Judy Carter whom I got to know when we were both at the Woodstock Conference Center down in Illinois. She was one of the six of us who tried to put that together and worked on it for awhile. Anyway, she is a very remarkable person.

So, the voting and discussion of issues was interspersed with various things and of course a very melodramatic beginning of the whole conference with the sort of drum and bugle corps and the torch was carried in and a lot of these dramatic things.

MA: It must have been very touching to observe.

KC: It was, and very exhausting because Bella is such a taskmistress that she 02:11:00would have the whole staff at the end of the day when we were already ready to just succumb then she'd have a staff meeting till two or three in the morning and then we'd start again at seven in the morning. A couple of us, Linda Doering and myself, Linda was our legal counsel, both had terrible colds, almost flu, so we were trying to function and under those circumstances it was not easy.

MA: I can imagine.

KC: Anyway, these program highlights...Toward the end of the, in fact the very last plank in the National Plan of Action, number 26, I speak of the 25 substantive plans because the 26th one was a proposal calling on the President 02:12:00of the United States to name an ongoing commission to be responsible for implementing this National Plan of Action. That was the most controversial of any of the planks. It was not something that had come from the state meetings. It was something that the National Commission and especially Bella Abzug had wanted to have passed. In order to try to make sure that it got passed Bella had sent some of her lieutenants out to twist arms, to get people to understand why this was important or to go for it. Gloria Steinem was going around twisting 02:13:00arms and somehow this was interpreted by a lot of people as a bid on behalf of Bella for a place, a podium.

MA: Was there fear of institutionalizing this?

KC: I don't think so. I think there was just

MA: Fear of her power?

KC: Yes. I don't know just how much of the fear was actually toward Bella or what it was but it was not going. Then people resented having their arms twisted in this fashion. There was a real...From the chair there was a real...The whole feeling of the plenary session which had been one of great unity and of significant comments. You know when people spoke it wasn't just to hear their own voices; it was because they felt very strongly one way or another. There 02:14:00were some excellent amendments made from the floor to some of these...I remember the rural women one had -- which was of special interest to me -- had a couple good amendments and others did too, so this wasn't a steam roller operation. Even from the beginning the stuff that they were voting on had come from the state meetings so it was a very democratic process all the way through.

MA: But this 26th plank was an exception.

KC: That's right. The meeting disintegrated and the chair had trouble keeping order and just a lot of things were leaving a very bad taste because this was the final thing to be done. One of the staff women came to me and said "This is 02:15:00terrible! We can't let the meeting end on this kind of a shambles." She had already spoken with Margie Adam who was there.

MA: The singer?

KC: Yes. To say would Margie do something to give us closure, that would be on an up-beat note. In order to do this we needed the piano up on the stage and the stage was up steps but mostly it was the kind of pushing...I was backstage and I wasn't as aware of how in shambles...So I did agree with this young staff person, Fran Henry, and we managed to locate a janitor or two to move the piano 02:16:00up on the stage and then Margie Adam, after the adjournment, played and sang a song which she composed which is in the publication The Spirit of Houston called "We Shall Go Forth."

MA: I know that song.

KC: Then she taught it to the whole delegation and everybody sang it. It did make a good termination of the meeting.

MA: What did happen to the 26th plank?

KC: It forms the basis, it must have been passed in some form, for an organization now called the National Conference...We called it the Continuing Committee of the Houston Conference for awhile and then have subsequently 02:17:00changed its name to the National Women's Conference Committee, NWCC. That organization continues. It is the organization that a year ago in November had the 10th anniversary celebration of Houston which was held in Washington. A number of us from Wisconsin had been very instrumental in keeping it going. It's kind of a limping organization but it has kept the National Plan of Action in front of a lot organization. We did an update of the National Plan a couple of years ago and published it.

MA: Looking at what kinds of accomplishments had taken place?

KC: That's right. Which things had been implemented and to what extent and which had not. Of course President Carter did name another advisory committee on 02:18:00women, or women's advisory committee which didn't have a long life. Bella was chair, this was after Houston, Bella chaired it for awhile and then had a falling out with Carter. The committee which Bella headed put out a criticism, a very firm if not angry criticism of some budget proposals that Carter was making and they did that without clearing with Carter and had a press conference without in advance giving their recommendations to the President which I guess by protocol would have been the way to go. Carter fired Bella and then half of 02:19:00the committee resigned in protest of her firing and some of them stayed on. They did exist for awhile longer and put out one report and then kind of faded into the sunset.

But, this Continuing Committee of the Houston Conference has continued and has maintained that its justification for existence was based on that final action. Also of course, the legislation that called for the Houston Conference to begin with, the National Congressional Act, had written into that that one of the functions of the National Conference in Houston was to make plans for a subsequent conference. So the National Women's Conference Committee of a few 02:20:00hundred women also gives that as some of its reason for being.

MA: Do you think there will be another one at some point?

KC: Well there won't be another one...I wouldn't want to see one to be called by the current administration, the Bush or the Reagan, because it would not be the same kind of progressive agenda at all.

MA: You're saying that it would in a sense be a tool of the administration?

KC: That's right.

MA: A question that comes up in terms of the conference is who the, if you will, 02:21:00the movers and shakers were? Is there a way of looking at who had the most power, or did anyone?

KC: At the Houston Conference?

MA: Yes. We know that there were a lot of poor women who were delegates. We know that there were a lot of women of color because we've talked about that, yet there were a lot of notable women at the forefront and making speeches.

KC: I don't know how I would answer that. I would say that certainly Bella Abzug was very...She was on the stage at all times. She was chair of the conference and no matter who else was at the podium or who was introducing another plank in the platform she was there and her presence was certainly felt.

MA: Did delegates know her position on various planks?

KC: I suppose so.

MA: Probably she supported all of them?

KC: Yes. There were I would say that a number of the members of the Commission, particularly those who were fairly well known, were influential. I don't know about on the floor. There was just a lot of...Delegations had their own, each state had its own delegation and had their own sort of leadership people within the delegation.

MA: Certainly. In the long run could that have been more important than the 02:23:00visibility of the national leaders on the stage do you think?

KC: It certainly required the votes from the floor to carry things. A woman named Ann Sonia from Ohio chaired some of the sessions and was such an effective chair that she kind of zoomed in to prominence. In fact, she was invited to, or urged by a lot of people to be willing to accept the chair of that new committee that Carter did name afterwards. She gave it some thought and then decided that she had other fish to fry. I think that she had only been known predominantly to 02:24:00some Ohio people and I think in NOW. She was really remarkable. There were people who were especially beloved, Patty Wyatt who was a Black labor woman from Chicago and active in CLUW who was on the National Commission; Coretta Scott King...quite a few people that rang bells. A very lovely, very moving moment in the thing was when Margaret Mead who was there to do some workshop stuff on peace, it was her 75th or 80th birthday, I can't remember which, but it was a 02:25:00birthday and the whole group spontaneously sang Happy Birthday to her. That was nice.

MA: I think this is important. If you can think of any other names just as you've been doing. The question as Gerta and I phrased it was, "Who do you feel were the real movers and shakers at the Houston Conference?" I think you are giving me a sense of that. On the one hand you are describing the nationally visible movers and shakers and you can't tell me who they were at the state level but clearly there had to be, there were people who were more influential at the state level than others certainly.

KC: I think the people...There were people who came as I said being committed to "pro-plan", in other words they were going to make sure that none of those 02:26:00planks were voted down.

MA: That's right. Was that the most extreme feminist position or the farthest left position?

KC: Yes, if you consider any of this to the left, I don't know that I do. Asking for economic equity

MA: Yes, I understand what you are saying.

KC: It would be very hard to single out a particular segment, for me it would be very hard, because there were people in all of these delegations, with the exception of a few states, who came from the major women's organizations, AAUW, League of Women Voters, NOW, BPW, etc., and who had no question about how they 02:27:00were going to support the plan.

MA: And of course they were going to try to influence other people to do so.

KC: That's right. And then the union women were 100% with...I think that to give certain credit to certain categories is just very difficult to do.

MA: You said that Gloria Steinem was there. I suppose that she was another very visible person?

KC: Yes. She also was spending time with delegates and had her ear to the ground I think.

MA: Was Mary Berry there?

KC: I don't remember that she was there. It is possible that she...I could check a list here of the women from agencies who made those wonderful presentations. I 02:28:00know that I had not met Mary Berry until she came to Wisconsin a number of years after the Houston Conference to address our Women's Network. The fact that I hadn't met her doesn't mean that she wasn't there.

MA: Why don't we move on to the organizational problems? We've actually covered them in the past, you've talked about the problems with hotel rooms, the conference site itself, the conspiracy fears that were running amuck, all the way to the Braille in the elevators -- that's a wonderful story! Is there anything else that you've thought of in the interim?

KC: No not really. I made mention of, because I read it in the transcript, I made mention earlier of one of our behind the stage, behind the scenes things 02:29:00was the matter of having food available. Actually the platform participants and all of the IWY Commission members and staff wanted food available backstage. Some of our staff people spent their time dashing out to delis or bakeries or whatever and we set up in one little room backstage a regular eatery.

MA: And had to keep it stocked during the entire conference?

KC: Yes. It was a real business. The facility itself didn't have adequate food 02:30:00and people didn't want to leave, we didn't want to call a lunch recess and take time from a very full schedule. There were I guess hot dog stands and coffee things but no real food.

MA: Were there complaints about this?

KC: Not too serious I guess, but it was a nuisance.

MA: You had mentioned....Before I get on to this question, were there any other things?

KC: No, I don't think so.

MA: You had mentioned that your job was behind the stage. What were you doing behind the stage?

KC: I was making sure that the next person who was either going to chair something or make a speech or whatever knew when it was time to go and when it was being escorted if they needed an escort and being available to either pass 02:31:00messages or run messages.

MA: You were the stage manager then.

KC: Yes, really. Once in awhile I would kind of sneak close so I could hear what was happening or see what things looked like. It was a very discontinuous view of the whole meeting.

MA: Was it your task also to let people know when their time was up?

KC: No that was handled by someone on stage.

MA: Luckily.

KC: We had parliamentarians sitting up there who were frequently called on to give opinions, etc., but that wasn't related to timing.

MA: We've covered all of the questions about Houston--oh no we haven't, there is 02:32:00one more come to think of it. You had talked about in your previous interview the follow-up after the Houston Conference, the year or nine months of work.

KC: Actually, the Houston Conference was in November, the 19th through 21st or whatever the dates were, and our office closed shop on April 1st.

MA: So it was about seven months.

KC: Less than five months I think. Anyway, it was within that period of time that we had to put out our report of the conference, that wonderful document The Spirit of Houston and then close down the office actually. We made a presentation of the report to the President and then sent it off to the 02:33:00Congress. We had a big session at the White House to make that presentation. Just assembling stuff for the Archives, people came from the National Archives and getting the financial records together from Houston. Sometimes there would be delays in getting payment to people in Houston and I can remember getting very irate telephone calls from the -- oh, the off duty police who were guarding the place didn't get their pay very promptly and then there were a few small printing...Did I talk at all about the committee of Houston volunteers who were 02:34:00very much a part of getting the Houston thing off the ground?

MA: No you haven't.

KC: Well there was a very sizable committee in Houston who had in the first place found local printers and local artists, etc., to do part of getting stuff together for the conference and who did some cheerleading I guess in the community of Houston. I suppose some of the 20,000 who came to look at the displays were locals. We had a poster contest which was inspired, conducted, and judged by these volunteers in the Houston community prior to the conference. The 02:35:00winning poster was one called "Women on the Move" and had figures in different colors. I don't know if you've ever seen that poster or not.

MA: I don't think I have.

KC: So there were a lot of things going right within the Houston community in preparation and before. So bills got incurred locally and the whole process of, I never did know....I don't know why the payment, the person on our staff who was primarily responsible for financial things was someone lent to IWY by the 02:36:00State Department. In fact the whole, there were several people responsible for, not for budgeting but for handling money and I don't know what the snafus were but I do know that it was very awkward and embarrassing. I lowered as many booms as I ever had in getting that finally taken care of. Especially these small business that had fairly sizable bills couldn't wait and we'd get these both angry and plaintiff phone calls.

MA: What a terrible thing that must have been. How did you get it resolved?

KC: Just by badgering and standing over and saying "Do it now!" and "What's the delay?" I don't know if it was incompetence or if there were hoops to go through 02:37:00that I wasn't aware of but I think it was more incompetence than anything else.

MA: So in a sense that was another organization problem then?

KC: Right.

MA: It sounds like related to that organizational problem though with the local volunteers in Houston that was certainly a positive outreach result of the conference. I wonder over the long run what has happened in Houston with the women? There must have been so many women who lived in Houston who were impacted by that conference.

KC: Of course they've had a woman mayor for some time, have they not?

MA: I didn't know about that.

KC: They didn't at that time.

MA: But they do now?

KC: I don't know if there is any great cause and effect.

MA: Anything else? Were you satisfied with the follow-up? I mean you certainly 02:38:00weren't satisfied after the Houston Conference. You weren't satisfied with the ability to pay bills, that's clear.

KC: In fact a lot of the work in the office, the staff work in the office, was sort of anticlimactic and mopping up and a lot of the staff people were already having to look for other jobs and do resumes. In fact a couple of the staff people who were quite good at that had little luncheon sessions with the others to improve their preparation of their own resumes and to exchange ideas of where they might look because some of them had been there on the staff for three years and then suddenly had to be looking elsewhere.

MA: How did you feel about it ending?

KC: I guess I was happy enough to be getting back home and cut out the weekly trips.

MA: Then did you go back on the staff at the University or on the faculty of the University full-time when you got back?

KC: Oh yes. I had just been on leave.

MA: Is there anything else about the conference, the Houston Conference that you would like to mention? Did it change your life at all? I guess that is something that I haven't directly asked you, what the long-term affect for you was?

KC: I suppose I had a different...I know that for some people who were there as delegates it was a real change, it really affected some change. I think the 02:40:00whole experience...I can't separate out the Houston Conference from the whole several year experience and I'm sure that all of it gave me a broader look at how universal some of these situations and problems were and of course always meeting more and more terrific people. I certainly was astonished at the effectiveness of the ultraconservatives at taking over the state meetings.

MA: That was a surprise?

KC: Yes and an eye opener to me.

MA: As a result of this did you question the organization of the women's 02:41:00movement in contrast to the more conservative elements, who seem to be so highly organized they came in blocks? Do you feel that the progressive women's movement was as highly organized as the conservative women's movement?

KC: No, nor do I think it should be because it is not a monolithic movement and it has many strands and that is its strength I believe. While when certain chips are down we are not as effective, we certainly aren't as effective as single issue people just because we are more democratic and more broadly based. I don't know where that leads me but

MA: That's very interesting.

KC: Also I don't think that a women's movement doesn't take orders from on high, now we will all do this...that wouldn't go very far.

MA: Do you think if we were to have a Democratic President do you think another conference is in order and if so, why? What would be the new agenda today?

KC: I don't know. That's a very good question. Whether it would be in order, I mean one also has to remember that since that Houston Conference and just before that there was Mexico City International meeting and since then there has been Copenhagen and Nairobi so one has to ask whether the global perspective isn't 02:43:00more in order than the...although it doesn't have to be either/or, it certainly doesn't.

MA: But if you had to kind of think about this either/or and had the money for one conference would you do it for a national or international?

KC: We of course had international representation at Houston. There were people there from a wide range of countries who were not there as delegates but were there as visitors and took part in some of the workshops that were going on outside of the plenary session.

MA: Did they intend then to take this back then to their countries?

KC: Yes. There were relationships that were continued then later on in 02:44:00Copenhagen and Nairobi.

MA: You were in Copenhagen?

KC: No. I wasn't at any of those three international meetings. I think there is no dearth of agenda items for a national conference and certainly there have been....There was a meeting in Iowa, Des Moines, last year of a meeting called by a coalition of some half a dozen organizations to develop what they called "The Women's Agenda", the U.S. Women's Agenda. The National Plan of Action has served as an agenda for a lot of organizations, not that it has to be in exactly that language but at least those are the areas that still need attention. Many 02:45:00of them need more attention now than they did ten years ago or twelve years ago.

MA: Interesting. Can you identify any areas that you think need more attention now than they did ten or twelve years ago?

KC: We have far more people living in poverty. The epidemic of teenage pregnancies has emerged which was not a visible issue at that time. The welfare, AFDC and other welfare measures are more niggardly than they were then. The gaps between the rich and the poor have widened and continue to widen. The benefits that are given to the very rich in our taxation and other economic policies are horrendous. The progress that was being made toward economic equity and the 02:46:00whole comparable worth notion has gotten stalled. The scary stuff for the Supreme Court. Reproductive rights, the strength of the right to lifers. All of those things. The situation for children in this country who are poor and poorer and uncared for. Our failure to provide for childcare. The whole drug situation. What is happening to minority youth in inner cities. Things that we are going to have to pay for in the future. Our educational system is not as great as we used to think it was. While we were concerned about moving more women into college 02:47:00and higher education, etc., and educational equity in the classroom, and sports for girls, etc.

I think while we need to continue to be concerned about gender equity, we also need to be concerned about quality for everybody. The amount of money that we have put into our educational system.... I have some simplistic proposals that I've had for many, many years

MA: I think it's about time to get them on tape then!

KC: I was just thinking about one of them and that is when we have so much unemployment that is regarded as acceptable, I don't regard any level of unemployment as acceptable but when we have unemployed people and so many unmet 02:48:00needs in our society if we would double and triple the ratio of teachers to kids in the classroom and the same with counselors and the same social workers and the same with recreational supervisors. All of the areas where we are not serving people and we are not in part because we are giving all of the tax and economic benefits to the very rich so that more people are poor, anyway, we could take care of a lot of our unemployment by providing the kinds of useful services that are needed. So yes, I think that in many respects women are worse off now, women and children and minorities, than we were at the time of Houston.

MA: And you alluded, as you were talking about this, that it goes beyond being a 02:49:00woman's issue.

KC: That's right.

MA: So in terms of a women's agenda for social change are you suggesting that it would have to be somewhat different to encompass a broader spectrum than just women? Do you think we can continue to advocate for women without including other oppressed groups at the same time?

KC: I don't think that a lot of us have ever restricted our objectives as just improving the lot of women. As my friend Conroy and I used to say to each other, "it's not our objective to shift the disadvantages from one group to another but to eliminate the disadvantages for everyone." As Bella Abzug says, the feminist movement is one that wants to create, has a vision of a society that is fair to 02:50:00everyone, and she sometimes adds that that includes men! I think that this is the feminist agenda, the feminist vision. NOW was begun on behalf of women and minorities and the only prerequisite for becoming a member, in addition to $5, was that one did not discriminate on any of these issues and no one was welcome who did. The concern of all those who are oppressed, that is a concern.

MA: Looking at our government system right now, looking at the Supreme Court 02:51:00specifically and the threat regarding Row vs. Wade, do you have any predictions about that and about what the ramifications of the current Supreme Court, which will be with us for some time, could be for women?

KC: It could be very bad news. I don't think that it is a foregone conclusion that Row vs. Wade will be overturned but it certainly shouldn't come as any great surprise if it is. Of course Bush is just as bad as Reagan in his encouragement of this. I don't think either one of those men personally gives a damn what the right to choice is or isn't but they both have some political 02:52:00debts to pay. They were both voted for by extreme right wingers, fundamentalists so they are paying off their debt to those who voted for them in this way.

MA: What should the strategy of the women's movement be do you think in regard to this or is it possible to even have one?

KC: I don't know. I hear a lot of people whom I respect say that we need to be on the offensive and not the defensive but I don't know exactly how you go about doing that except to keep hammering away at civil rights and the right to privacy. It's my own belief that it is an absolute arrogation of government 02:53:00authority to meddle at all in the reproductive life of women, that the government has no business. I don't know how far one can go in having that human cry. I also believe very firmly in the separation of church and state and that people are entitled to their own religious views of when life begins and when it doesn't begin and what is a soul and what isn't a soul but they needn't inflict that on the rest of public policy, in fact I think that it is wrong to inflict it. These are stands that I think need to be taken quite publicly and firmly and not be drawn into other debates....is this murder or isn't it. You're entitled to your religious views and I'm entitled to mine and when, according to the poles, 75% of the American people think that women have a right to make up their 02:54:00own minds about this whole thing then to have a handful of zealous, single issue people intimidate legislatures, and that is what they are doing, they intimidate them at the state level and they intimidate them in Congress by rallying their troops to force somebody out of office. We know that that happened in the 1984 Congressional, wasn't that the year - it was 84 or 86 - I think it was 84 when Birch Bayh was defeated.

MA: And Church, Frank Church, a wonderful man.

KC: That's right. I think there were four or five good people who were...I heard one of my favorite legislatures in Wisconsin say yesterday that until the right 02:55:00to choice people can intimidate state legislatures by saying "We insist on the right to choice for everybody, poor people as well as...and if you can't see your way clear to vote this way then maybe you will be..." The trouble is that we, the good guys, are not single issue people so we would be reluctant to vote someone out of office who is good on everything else.

MA: What do you think about that strategy?

KC: I don't know. It's worth thinking about. I suppose partly we try to persuade people to change their vote and that they are not going to be voted out of 02:56:00office if they...and that we will work very hard to make sure they are not.

MA: You alluded to the fact earlier, I mean that we all know that the majority

MA: Kay, continuing from where we were a couple of weeks ago, you have already commented about your contributions to the women's movement but I'd like to hear you talk about it more as you look back, reflecting on what you feel your major contribution has been.

KC: I never know how to respond to that. I think that probably, whether it's my contribution or the result of things that I participated in with others

MA: It's hard to individualize this I realize.

KC: I think there probably has been more impact and more result in Wisconsin than nationally. I imagine that at the national level, getting NOW off the ground and continuing to exist in those early years was probably a contribution. I think that the National Association of Commissions, whose organization I had a lot of responsibility for putting together for one year before we actually came into existence, and then serving as president for those first two years was important because it got that organization off in directions that were useful 02:58:00and relatively progressive and found ways of helping those State Commissions that were lagging or hadn't learned how to get a handle on what they could be doing. I think that was very helpful.

I believe that the most, at least from where I sit today, it was actually in Wisconsin. The very fact that the Governor's Commission business was headquartered in my university office and that I had a great deal of flexibility in my university office enabled us to do an educational effort that really bore fruit. We took ideas, got ideas and did what passed in my vocabulary as 02:59:00research, I suppose a real scholar wouldn't regard it as research, but had a sense of where people were in their thinking on what they needed to learn. I did a lot of this through speech making and going to conferences and meetings when I was invited to address groups and tailoring whatever it was, whatever my message was or series of messages were, to a given audience so that it could be heard, and could be received, and in many cases acted upon. I think, I may have already mentioned on one of these tapes that it came as a real pleasant surprise to me when I was doing the interviews for the American Government course, an interview with Arthur Schlesinger, when he made the statement that one of the 03:00:00responsibilities of a political leader is to know that politics is an educational process. I guess I never put that in that language but I understood that from the very beginning. If you want people to be actively participating in a particular direction then that requires a great deal of education. To educate, you have to know what is going on in the other person's head not just what is going on in your own head.

MA: Right. Your educational role then in a sense and the research that you were doing was a part of that because you were trying to uncover exactly what the situation was in Wisconsin.

KC: Then we had a hand in quite a few interesting projects; the one you know 03:01:00about, the E. B. Fred Fellowship; our Women in Apprenticeship project (1970-73) where I worked very closely with our state office of Apprenticeship and Training. We made a film. We stole a title from the Ladies Home Journal and called the film "Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman". There I had the opportunity to work with a really great/good professional documentary film maker and had the experience of getting some ideas, these were ideas - I had ideas of what I wanted to transmit on a film to undermine some of the myths in those days that had to do with working women; working women only worked a few years in 03:02:00order to, they are not serious about their jobs, there are physical limitations to what they can do, they can't do strong beefy things and I wanted to smash those. I would get the ideas and this documentary film person would know how to translate those and then go out and do the filming. That one film, for example, we had requests all over the United States including Hawaii for copies of that film which then was used by many, many groups who were trying to do the same thing. The Women in Apprenticeship project that we had which was really an effort to move women into non-traditional occupations and this seemed a route that was small enough to get a handle on and was in contact with unions, with 03:03:00vocational educators, with employers and with women themselves -- potential workers. That project and the publications that came out, there were several publications from that, became a model then for the U.S. Labor Department and their Women's Bureau which subsequently, I don't know if they are still doing it but a few years ago they were still copying our program and doing it all around the country.

A lot of these individual projects, maybe ten to a dozen, Women in the Arts, two national conferences over a ten year period, I think had a lot of impact and a lot of utility. The little project that the National Advisory Council on Women's 03:04:00Educational Programs, when Jerry Simonson was the executive director there, asked me to first do a literature search on educational needs of rural women and girls and then to propose a project, which I did, which involved four regional conferences bringing together rural women and girls and the various educational and other kinds of services that should be paying attention, some of which were paying attention. Then I did a final publication for them with that title "Educational Needs of Rural Women and Girls" which was distributed again nationally. I at one point, this was in the middle 70's I guess that we did that 03:05:00over a several year period including all of the meetings, etc., at one point a few years after that was finished I was personally familiar with nine different funded projects across the country based on that one little publication and they used this as their basis. It's hard to say what but there certainly was this underlying educational component. I've never been a great marcher or street person, I'm inhibited in many ways and that's one of them, so whenever I participated in those things I've been very ill at ease and was delighted when they were over. I'm glad other people like to do it or are willing to do it whichever is the case. I have taken great pleasure in the kinds of things I have 03:06:00just described now, a little bit of writing, I've always had fun just writing speeches and I mean really fun, sometimes there is an anguish that goes into it but once I've decided that this is the thrust of what I want to do then it is pure pleasure.

MA: Do you have in one spot all the speeches you've ever written?

KC: No I don't, I have quite a few of them. I think I probably sent a total, pretty well complete set to the Archives.

MA: Oh good!

KC: But I don't know that they have them in one place, I really don't know. I 03:07:00have a nice little batch of them here.

MA: It would be a nice collection to look at.

KC: It is interesting. Once in a while when I would paw through some of them I found it very interesting to reread some of them that were done some time ago. I have a couple of audio tapes here of, one was a Meet the Press segment that was done probably in the late 60's and then others that are somewhat similar from a decade later or whatever. I find it fascinating the change of vocabulary.

MA: Yes, just as we were talking about earlier. Can you identify...

KC: Not that it is more or less feminist vocabulary, I wasn't even thinking of that, but how gentle, I was not going to offend anybody. Maybe my own views were 03:08:00more gentle, I don't know.

MA: That was what I was going to ask you. As you were looking through your speeches could you identify political changes that you went through as a result of the process?

KC: I suppose I'd really have to look at some of them and give it some thought in order to make an intelligent response. I know there have been a lot of changes and I don't know how many of those reflect changes in me and how much in the outer world. I can remember making a presentation in Minneapolis, I don't know when but certainly no later than 1970, could even have been earlier than that, at some kind of a national meeting of farm agents or cooperatives -- that 03:09:00was it some farm cooperatives national meeting -- and a lot of the emphasis of my talk was to demonstrate that there is nothing freakish about women being in the workforce, that women have always worked and have always made an economic contribution. Then of course I could put that in terms of rural and farms which they understood and they knew before I said it. It was necessary in those days to make that point, not just to men in the cooperative movement but to a lot of others. There were some kind of fundamentals that had to be really dwelled on. I 03:10:00once addressed a national meeting in Lake Tahoe of people in state labor departments who had something to do with vocational education and job preparation, job service, etc., and again there was just...they had to be spoken to at that level. I can remember saying you know the old stereotypes that women don`t have big muscles and can't do...I can remember making a statement that big muscles went out like high button shoes. We have mechanized the heavy duty kinds of jobs and it isn't necessary...Just some of those fundamental things and some equally fundamental things when I would be invited to address state conferences 03:11:00of the school counselors and meet with really hostile men sitting there. I'd talk about how we short changed girls in junior and senior high school by urging them to take typing and possibly prepare to be a nurse or whatever. That was met with hostility. These people had been doing that for so many years that they thought that was a benefit to women, to urge them to take typing so they would have something to fall back on.

MA: That's what I was told!

KC: I don't know, have I changed or have they changed?

MA: You're suggesting that that is no longer necessary?

KC: No, I think it is not although there still are some pretty fundamental things that have to be....but not quite that basic.

MA: As we've talked, we've spent a lot of time talking about your background and how it very comfortably led into your college education and your degree in Political Science. Would you elaborate a little more on your Midwestern background and what you think being from the Midwest and holding the values that you held, how important do you believe that has been for perhaps your ability to influence. In what areas do you see it as being helpful?

KC: I think it is probably helpful in the Midwest. I have a British friend who 03:13:00lives in Canada who still can't stand Betty Friedan because Betty once was quoted as describing me as a "raw boned Midwesterner" and my British friend thought that was an insult. Of course I didn't think it was. I thought it was a fairly accurate description. I'm also remembering that when I was at the Aspen Institute in Berlin, Alice Cook who is quite a well known labor economist, old enough to be my mother and as far as I know still going strong, three for four years ago she was at a Wingspread conference which I attended, she is just wonderful. She was at the Aspen Institute thing in Berlin and she and I met in the airport at Heathrow by accident a few days after the conference and she had 03:14:00a copy of a London newspaper which told about our doings at the Aspen Institute. The two British women who had been there, I didn't realize they were reporters, I thought they were there as participants but one of them at least had been there as a reporter and she had described me in equally unflattering terms using the word Midwestern in part to describe to me and using it really in a pejorative kind of way.

MA: Do you recall what she said?

KC: I don't recall. She was quoting something that I said but she put in this physical description of bony or what else went with it. There are places in the world where it is not greatly advantageous to be from the Midwest. In fact when 03:15:00my daughter Sarah went first to law school at Berkeley at Bolt Hall I remember the time that she and her friend, another law student, Bob, he had graduated from Princeton and was invited back to Princeton to participate in the wedding of one of his friends and invited Sarah to go along. They drove and got from California to Wisconsin and all of a sudden Sarah got great cold feet about going to this thing in Princeton and I asked why. It was because everyone at Berkeley regarded her as an "Agie" and referred to her that way and she thought she would be so out of place at an Eastern Princeton doings, and finally, in 03:16:00tears, she was in tears and was thinking about not going and she said "But I'm so homespun!" I tried to persuade her that she wasn't and that I thought she was quite sophisticated. I reminded her of her summer in the Bryn Mawr thing in Madrid and her travels in Europe and her year in Mexico and all of these and that she wasn't a total hick and it wasn't selling. So finally when she had this teary being so homespun I said "Sarah, homespun is beautiful and very hard to come by!" So then she was willing to go and did go and had a good time.

I think one of the reasons I accepted my first teaching job at Purdue instead of Bryn Mawr was very much the same. I had felt that I wouldn't fit in. I had had 03:17:00experiences during World War II when I was in Washington for two years with the War Production Board, a lot of social gatherings with women and some men who had been Ivy League students and fresh out of college just like I was and I always felt a little bit less than....I would go to these events but I was always more comfortable when I would be with people who had gone to Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin. How much of that was just in my own head...I felt kind of like a hick when I came here to the University as a freshman at age sixteen. I felt very overgrown

MA: Because you were tall?

KC: I was tall. I wasn't exactly overweight but I wasn't scrawny either, I was just big. I had a very limited wardrobe, it was adequate, it was the best that we could do. I often felt, you know, like a small town, which I was. That didn't last forever but the first year or so I was there I had a lot of discomfort. I felt very much at home when I would go to the International Club and when I would go to progressive or left-wing things on the campus and I chaired half a dozen things practically my freshman year and was acceptable without any question. When I had to go to a fraternity or sorority event of sophisticated 03:19:00people and probably rich people I just felt kind of out of it. I once read, I'm remembering this now, in a Reader's Digest somewhere about my sophomore year I guess, one of those little footnotes that said "Most people would care less what other people are thinking about them if they knew how seldom they do." I probably screwed up the punch line but here I am walking down Langdon Street feeling ill at ease and probably nobody is watching or caring or thinking anything about it and I finally talked myself out of that.

MA: Do you think though that this experience heightened your sensitivity regarding issues around poor people, people of color, or difference in that 03:20:00being from the Midwest was a little bit different within the larger scheme of things?

KC: I know that I have always been and was in those days and have continued to be sensitive to people who are feeling out of it or who appear to be uncomfortable. I have a tendency at gatherings to gravitate towards such a person and to be very conscious of what it feels like. However, Midwest now is chic as you know. I read that all the time!

MA: Oh yes, it is huh? That's good.

KC: In fact Sarah sent me a couple of articles from California newspapers in which they use the expression "Midwest chic." Some film makers have come around Wisconsin and other places now to use that as a setting for movies.

MA: Interesting! As I think of your work, the rural women's project and your continuing education project here dealing with returning women to school, do you feel that your background made it easier for you to communicate and to have a sense of trust?

KC: Yes, I`m sure of it.

I'm also remembering right now that I have not been universally popular. I very rarely get a direct...I've told you about the hate mail that once in a while

MA: For you and David.

KC: Yes and some of those were from people who were like right to lifers and 03:22:00religious fundamentalists but a number of my friends would tell me during years when I had fairly high visibility in some of these things that they would have to defend me with their bridge club or their garden club. These members of the bridge club and the garden club have never confronted me but would apparently, behind my back, wonder what kind of a nut is she, etc. These tended to be full-time homemaker/bridge players or antique buyers so it didn't ever upset me.

MA: More of the leisure class in a sense.

KC: Exactly.

MA: Very interesting.

MA: Do you think that....? You have talked about your family in great detail too, that your family was open to many kinds of people and that throughout your life you saw diversity in your own home thanks to your mom and dad. Do you want to elaborate on that at all in terms of how your family affected your political activity?

KC: One thought that we probably covered this quite fully in our earlier tapes some time ago, but one thought that did occur to me...Yesterday I had an hour interview on WTSO radio and didn't really get into anything in any depth or length and I thought of this at the time but didn't actually get around to saying it. One of the things that I experienced and one of these subconscious, 03:24:00unconscious learnings from my birth family had to do with my attitude toward men. I lived and grew up with three brothers and a father who were very gentle, kind people and then married one who was gentle and kind. The kinds of hatred, or fear, or hostility, or whatever, or generalizations that "all men are" are something that I never accepted. I believe that women do not have a monopoly of the virtues. One has only to recall the women who have thrown stones at the buses in Detroit and who stood with the bastards in Alabama and Mississippi. At 03:25:00the same time I do not believe that all men are MCPs. In fact I think that this is one of the things that the gay and lesbian movement and openness has also helped people to understand. In any case, I think in addition to having a nonsexist, a relatively nonsexist upbringing at least in my home, I also have this other view. I would almost venture to say that of my three children, the most sensitive one of all is the male.

MA: I think that that is very significant but it has taken some of us a long time to get to the point that you began at.

As we look at the women's movement since 1960, the question that I have here is what you see as the insights that have come out of the movement and the other side of that would be the errors that have been made as you look back on the movement. I'd like to begin with what you see as significant insights or I suppose a better way of putting that would be the educational advances that have been made as a result of the women's movement perhaps what you see as most significant.

KC: I don`t know that I can put forth any kind of concept but in general I think 03:27:00there is a far greater what I like to call credibility of women, the generalized acceptance on the part first of all of women and secondly of men that women are not a breed apart or a lesser breed and that it is not just the exceptional woman who can make a decent public speech or handle an administrative job but that there is equivalent talent and ability, etc. I think that there is a fairly, not universal, but a fairly general acceptance. I think that is almost the beginning point. Then we see that women are moving whether you say with a 03:28:00great deal of speed or much too slowly into positions of authority and that we are still relatively powerless in foreign policy and in high finance and in certain other places that are necessary for women to be but that many, many of the barriers have gone down. That is not to say that there is still not this glass ceiling or whatever and certainly many, many more women in poverty than anyone else.

I think that all of this is to the good. I think the whole development of Women's Studies and what eventually will be a revision of human knowledge in 03:29:00that ultimately. A wonderful book by Nancy Reeves which I may have talked about on previous tapes called Womankind was written I'll bet in the late 60s. It was a really a total calling for this complete revision, it's a brilliant book! I hope I didn't give it away, I may have--I gave most of my books away when I moved out of the office but I hope I hung on to that one.

MA: What do you see as being significant particularly about Women's Studies? You talk about the revision; does it have an impact on the women who are moving into higher positions? Is that where you are seeing the impact? We've talked before about...You don`t believe that women hold any kind of a moral superiority

KC: I said we don't have a monopoly on virtue.

MA: Right. So the fact that women are moving into high positions may or may not be good. We could end up with a Margaret Thatcher.

KC: Or Indira Gandhi or Golda Meir or Cory Acquino.

MA: Do Women's Studies fit there somewhere?

KC: I think it is all part and parcel of a movement. There is not a movement unless there are many, many different strands that come together in the same direction. I see the potential of Women's Studies as being a long-range potential so that as additional history books are written and additional psychology and literature and of course we see this just amazing outpouring of 03:31:00the fruits of women's art in all aspects of art. In some of the tougher places the outpouring is less and is slower--music composers for example. Nevertheless there isn't an aspect of the arts in which we don't see just infinitely more women performing, producing, and being recognized. I was impressed, for example, a few weeks ago or a month or so ago in one of the publications that comes out of the Madison campus called Wisconsin Week that had a front page article by one 03:32:00of our outstanding world class scientists, Van Potter, who was talking about....I guess it was on the occasion of the new book he has just published....he was quoting Carol Gilligan, In Another Voice, and making the point that for the preservation of our planet all of the environmentalists, etc., had better acknowledge that women do speak and think in a different voice. To me that is another sign of progress. It's not just Daniel McGuire at Marquette, the theologian, who is so brilliant on this whole women's question. I 03:33:00see this kind of thing multiplying and happening long-range. I don't know what the connection, if there is a direct connection between the existence of Women's Studies and women in positions of authority. I think most people don't even know that since 1960 eleven nations have had a woman head of government. We've just ticked off five or six of the best known, but Portugal, Yugoslavia, as well as Eva Perone in Argentina, and now of course the wonderful feminist in Uruguay, and Iceland.

MA: Iceland has a feminist parliament doesn't it?

KC: I don`t know how feminist their parliament is, but the cabinet in Norway now 03:34:00is over one-third, close to one-half not only women but they are very progressive.

MA: So you are seeing the influence of the various threads that you talked about.

KC: Right. I see influences in organized religion foment. It must be getting somewhere when the Pope announces that feminism is the root of all evil!

I think the global nature of the women's movement and the beginnings, just the trickles I suppose, of recognition of the universality of the status of women and the movement of women. We are beginning...I don't know if you've ever had a 03:35:00chance to see the study Sisterhood is Global compilation, I think suggests and opens up as Robin Morgan says, "the ignorance in the West of the rest of the world" is monumental. That's not true only of women and the women's movement, it is true of even more so of course of man.

That I think is another of the strengths of the women's movement, the strength towards peace. Not only do women give leadership in identifying violence and opposing it as a method of settling differences at any level whether it is in the household or on a global scale. The experiences that women from every 03:36:00continent had at the three International meetings, the UN meetings and the NGO forums that were simultaneous where Israeli and Arab women would meet together and discuss their situations without name calling, without rock throwing, sets a tone and sets a pace, not over night certainly, but ultimately. It is not an accident that women have been leaders in the peace movement and in other caring...and really rational...

MA: It sounds like you are saying that it is women who are building the bridges in a sense, the international bridges that need to be built to bring us together.

KC: However, in order to really do this, women have to be in decision making positions in the establishment and to do that without being corrupted as some of these people we've already mentioned and without appearing to be even tougher than the men they are working with.

MA: A difficult task!

KC: Maybe when there is a mass of us in positions....

I continue to be appalled and frustrated by the slowness with which women are elected to congress in this country. There have been enormous strides at the state and local level in 15 and 20 years.

MA: Why do you think the difficulty has existed?

KC: I think it's probably that glass ceiling again. That's part of it and it has been very difficult to unseat somebody who is in office at the congressional level. The figures are up to 95% on incumbents who are re-elected even when they have opposition. There are many reasons for that, not that they are doing such a fantastic job but that they have such built-in opportunities to keep their name before their constituents with their newsletters that they have a budget for sending out and staffs to prepare them and funding to get back frequently and 03:39:00their names are well known. With 95% returns it is going to be largely men so that it is just driblets to begin with. But of course more women are getting known through their state legislature and city council and county board and even school boards which, when we first began counting, or at least when I had a hand at doing some counting, a very, very low percentage of women were on school boards. Now certainly in this community and in this state and nationally the figures have just jumped so that by now it is not astonishing at all to have half of city councils and county boards being female. As the pipeline is filling 03:40:00up that may ultimately mean something.

MA: Where do you see cost figuring into all of this? Isn't it becoming more and more expensive to run for national office?

KC: It certainly is. Political parties have been loath to fund a perspective loser and a lot of women don't have money and a lot of women who support other women don't have enormous amounts of money.

MA: Let's move now to the other side of the coin. Can you identify errors that you believe have been made by the women's movement since you've become involved 03:41:00over the past 30 - 40 years?

KC: I suppose... I don't know if it is errors or failures but I think the very fact that we've had such reactionary people elected to national office and women vote in and vote in every bit as high a percentage as men, often higher, and yet are voting against our own best interests. Whether you point the finger at political parties or at the failure of the women's movement to do more to point out--

I think that one of the difficulties has been that not only the political caucus 03:42:00but other organizations, for example the Wisconsin Women's Network and Coalition of 65 Organizations, have all tried to be bipartisan or nonpartisan and bend over backward to endorse candidates in both parties, etc. While there have always been a few wonderful feminists who identify themselves as Republicans, the Republican party in this country at least since I don't know when, certainly 03:43:00since Nixon and eight years of Reagan and now we're starting in with Bush have been absolutely diametrically opposed to the interests of women. The significant and primary issues on the women's agenda in this country have been 180 degrees different and the Republican Party has just been opposed to things that are of necessity for women. Then the Democrats have failed to take advantage of this and have tried to be all things to all people and I don't think that to start a 03:44:00women's party has any potential at all. I don`t know. To me this is one of the great failures, and whose failure it is is another question, but certainly the influence of women in the Democratic party has not been great and the Democratic party has not addressed itself to concerns not only of women but of working people but of minorities. You get a little lip service here and there but...at least at the national level.

MA: Did Jesse Jackson's "rainbow coalition" inspire more hope?

KC: I think so, yes. It did for me. I think if the Democrats ever want to 03:45:00capture the presidency it's only going to be by that. I don't know what the 1990s can do not to resurrect the old New Deal coalition but to move into this kind of a coalition. There is no evidence right now that the new leadership in the Democratic Party is going to be all that different.

MA: That's very interesting Kay!

MA: So when I ask you the next question, "Are we progressing fast enough?", you've actually answered that in a political sense. That's your primary frustration that we are not progressing fast enough in that area.

KC: Then of course the women's movement hasn't done a great job of educating 03:46:00young people. Now some of that education is going to happen whether it's a conscious program of the women's movement or not because kids growing up in households which are less sexist and more enlightened and who see their mothers and well as their fathers doing things of interest will assume that that is the way the world is. But we have to remember at the same time that we have awful situations for a lot of these young people who are in a single parent household, who are exposed to drugs and violence and other things, the unemployment among young people in inner cities and particularly minority kids, they're not going 03:47:00to grow up to be non-sexist, liberated, feminists necessarily, they're more likely to be almost the opposite. Of course once again I have to qualify whose failure and whose shortcomings...it's not the fault of the women's movement that all of these horrendous social problems are with us.

MA: Can you comment on the women's movement and coalition building? How do you see the bridges the women's movement has made to other groups and other organizations? Is that something that has been done well, could be done more of, is it even a role of the women's movement?

KC: When you say other groups you mean an integration of minority women?

MA: Yes, and of addressing as broad a range of issues which deal with the health of our country. You mentioned the inner city, black, teenager who is suffering from poverty, drugs, all of the things that are happening and you were saying you can't really blame the women's movement beyond a certain point for not educating young people because so many other factors are impinging.

KC: There is an awful lot of grass roots service provided by people who identify themselves as feminists or part of the women's movement. I'm thinking of crisis 03:49:00hotlines and shelters and rape crisis centers and education of a whole range of service people, police and hospitals and medical professionals and throughout the court system, and ongoing efforts to sensitize and educate so that the treatment of women who are victimized in a variety of ways is better. Those things have been done on a shoelace by women in communities whereas in the best of all possible worlds the need wouldn't be there but secondly there would be a community responsibility as there is in police and fire protection and clean 03:50:00streets and traffic control. But it has been individual volunteers at their own expense, their own self teaching at how to go about it and experimenting. This is fairly universal, it's not just in Wisconsin or not just in Madison but it's across the country. Those I think are pluses. I don`t know to what extent the women's movement can do something about some of these other situations. I see that our governor has named a woman from Platteville who is a school teacher, Phy Ed teacher, to be coordinator of drug programs in Wisconsin. I thought that 03:51:00was an interesting kind of choice and might be a very good one. Of course our former Secretary of Education is now the drug czar for the United States.

MA: It's interesting that it's coming from Wisconsin. I hear what you're saying. In a sense you're saying that feminism has spread so broadly that we are everywhere on some level and that many of the things that are being done are being done by feminist women.

KC: Then of course you look at the agenda of significant issues in state legislatures and they almost could have been written by the women's movement. Many of the issues of concern that impact primarily on women are the public 03:52:00policy questions that are being debated and voted on at local levels, state levels and to some extent certainly at the national level. The women in congress have managed to work together across party lines in giving leadership to the caucus on women`s issues and have been joined of necessity and thankfully by a great many men without whose votes we'd be whistling in the dark.

MA: So in that respect, coalition building with men at the state political level has been successful, or fairly successful, at least in Wisconsin.

KC: Yes, and in many other states. Since the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment to be ratified by the three more states that were needed, those states 03:53:00have turned out of office the worst offenders and have replaced them with others. There has been a real effort to keep state legislatures a little bit progressive. Of course we don't have enough allies in the Wisconsin legislature to override any vetoes of our governor who is a very anti-feminist person, anti-progressive in every way.

MA: How do you feel about the ERA today? Do you feel it should be reintroduced at this time, or as soon as it could be reintroduced, and an attempt at ratification made again?

KC: I think that we need to be able to count the votes before we invest in the kind of all out effort such as the one that went on for ten years. Until we can, 03:54:00and I don't think we can count them right now, at least I base that on the national elections last November where there were maybe ten states that the Democrats carried. I don't know how that is reflected in the legislative votes but I'm sure the people who do the nose counting would know.

MA: Mary Barry would agree with you.

KC: Was she at the meeting in Iowa?

MA: No, but she wrote a book "Why the ERA Failed" that I had to read and a portion of her analysis agrees with you that that must be a prerequisite. It's interesting that you see that from your perspective.

KC: You don't persuade people, I think, who are dead set against it. You can chain yourself to the capitol steps as often as you want to and they're not going to change their vote.

MA: Do you think that the leadership of the women's movement has been responsible for enlightening people about women's status? The question I have here is in what way has the leadership of the women's movement enlightened us about women's status today and you have answered that I think very, very well in terms of the state level. You have talked about the education that has gone on at the state level. Has it gone on at the higher level?

KC: Oh I think so, I think so. Again, you have to I suppose identify who you are 03:56:00talking about when you talk about the "leadership" of the women's movement but I would say that there are now 40 or 50 national organizations, AAUW, BPW, League of Women Voters, YWCA, National Council of Negro Women and of Jewish Women and of B'nai B'rith Women and a whole snag of national organizations with very hefty constituencies across the country who are educating all day long on the issues and they are all...then they're all kinds of professional organizations which I didn't mention, nurses and dental technicians, etc., and theologians and people 03:57:00in all kinds of religious organizations who are -- and I consider all of these as a part of the women's movement not just self identified feminist organizations -- and they are educating constantly and looking at public policy and needs and all of that.

MA: If you could influence feminists today, in terms of how they could best reach women who were like yourself as a young woman, those young women who perhaps don't want to go out and march, are planning to raise families, how 03:58:00would you suggest to the feminists to best reach this in a sense I suppose silent majority of perhaps feminists, perhaps not?

KC: Reach them, I don't know.

MA: Yes, to get the message. You can have time to think. We have plenty of time left on the second side of the tape and this is the last question. In a way I feel uncomfortable asking this, "How do you think they can best reach women who were like yourself as a young housewife?", well I know a lot about what you were like as a young housewife and I almost feel like you were not you were a very aware young housewife who took a little bit of time off in the midst of a very active and busy life. In a sense I think I would like to address the question to 03:59:00women who were a little less like yourself in terms of their awareness because there are a large group of women, these are the women who opposed the ERA, we had a great opposition to the ERA, perhaps that would be a way of phrasing it. We have many women who say "I'm not a feminist".

KC: I'm not sure that...I don't foresee the day when there will not be opposition, and a very vocal opposition, to the things that...In fact the feminists or the women's movement, whichever vocabulary, is really struggling against the status quo. We are the ones who are wanting to change and our 04:00:00opposition then comes from those who want to defend the privilege, the enormous gaps between those who have and have not, the laws that have been structured to permit the rich to get richer and require that the poor to get poorer, you know this obscene debate that is going on now about raising minimum wage and the absolute insistence of the Republicans at the national and the state level that there be this so called "training wage" which is so far below the poverty level and which has so much potential for abuse and who needs six months of training in order to hand out hamburgers at Wendy's or McDonald's. It is just an absolute non-caring, defend the corporations, defend big business, defend the 04:01:00rich....Anyway, I guess the point I was trying to make was that it is no surprise that there is enormous opposition to, particularly the fundamental struggles such as the Equal Rights Amendment and it wasn't just Phyllis Schlafly and the Eagle Forum and the women in pink dresses who opposed the Equal Rights Amendment. They were the front people and the boys in the back room were smart enough to have women give leadership and make it look as though women themselves were quite divided. It's progressives vs. conservatives who are divided and they're going to be divided no matter what their gender. Maybe this is something we don't talk enough about and don't make clear enough. Nobody can call herself 04:02:00a feminist and be opposed to raising the minimum wage in my definition and in my book. It is no surprise and it is not ever going to be easy to make in roads and it has not been easy and yet I guess there is a great deal of truth in the statement that a lot of feminists make that the things we've done so far, since 1960 or thereabouts, have perhaps been the easy things and that the tough ones are still ahead.

MA: Dealing with the gross inequities in this society.

KC: Right.

MA: So your definition of feminist is that person would have to have a vision of a different society beyond middle class women being able to move into positions 04:03:00of power.

KC: Right. In fact I think that feminism is a vision of a different kind of society in which there is greater egalitarianism...where we don't have people who have no health care and have no health insurance and have no homes and who have no place other than the sidewalk. These things are intolerable! These are the kinds of changes that I think are part of it.

Someone spoke to me recently (maybe it was you on an earlier tape, I don't think 04:04:00so though) asking....I remember who it was now....She was very concerned, this was a fairly enlightened feminist, very concerned that women she works within the battered women's effort and particularly in the Madison community, are so involved in the whole subject of domestic abuse and what to do about it and providing shelter and counseling and what to do about the men who beat up women that they don't see beyond that. They don't see any connection between that and the rest of the feminist agenda. That is their life, their volunteer life. This person was asking, "How do you extend the horizons of committed people of good faith?"

MA: To see the larger picture you're saying.

KC: Yes, and it is an educational process. Sometimes I almost get back to basics, maybe because my most recent assignment has been the preparation of that American Government course, that a real understanding of a democratic society and what that really means and how that really functions and even understanding what the Constitution of the United States is all about. We have so many people, even people who do go to the polls and bother to vote who have no notion of how contrary it is to democratic principles for the secrecy and the covert activity and many of the things that the Oliver North trial is bringing to the floor 04:06:00right now, but people who still accept this and who...I heard interviews on public radio with three young men who had managed to get in to the trial one day to listen to it, but all college students, one in fact from the state of Washington and I don't know where the others, one from DC, all of whom thought Oliver North was a hero after they'd sat in on day they continued to think that.

MA: So they clearly do not understand what democracy is.

KC: And we are getting now what a lot of us knew or suspected all along that Reagan and Bush were in on the whole thing and had lied to the American people constantly saying they knew nothing of any of this. So when we have lying and secrecy and hideous things going on under the secret blankets.

MA: So for you part of the feminist agenda has to address all of that. We're beyond the education about women being able to handle a job in the workforce as well as men and now to the more difficult things.

KC: Some of the more difficult things are not that conceptualized, they are much more concrete. We've got to be providing care, good care for children and that is in itself a massive kind of thing. We've really not attended to making the workplace hospitable to families. That isn't all so secret; I wrote some of my better speeches ten-fifteen years ago on humanizing the workplace. I've 04:08:00forgotten the name of the woman who joined the N.O.W. legal defense -- Kantor, Rosabeck Kantor -- has written some marvelous stuff and details exactly what we could be doing so that families could have some balance in their lives and combine in and out of home and family and do it without the kinds of stress and to short change one place or the other. That's going to be a really tough one especially given the kind of status quo situations.

MA: The kind of changes we make now require that we have a government in power 04:09:00that supports us.

KC: This, I think, great suggestion that just went down to defeat in Wisconsin, this constitutional amendment that was defeated last week in the polls which was only the first step, had it passed it would have given the legislature the right to do some unequal property tax in an effort to give property tax relief which is certainly a necessary thing to do. Now the suggestion of the progressive forces in our state ultimately is that property taxes be assessed on the basis of one's ability to pay. Just because you live in a house, well circumstances 04:10:00such as mine to be retired and have about one-third the income that I was accustomed to living on and yet my house assessment, I just got the information yesterday, has gone up another $5,000 without a penny going in...we paid $20,000 for this house and it is now assessed at $90,000 so my $2,600 property tax that I paid last December will now probably by about $3,000 on the next go around.

MA: When you're on a fixed income that's ridiculous!

KC: And that's why a lot of people are of course losing their homes. But who objects to that? The people who object to a progressive income tax to begin with because the very wealthy don't want to pay a bigger share. They already have all 04:11:00kinds of loopholes on business properties and other things. This shouldn't come as any surprise. All sorts of people voted against that constitutional amendment of course, many of whom were voting against their own self interest. That of course is again where education needs to come in so that people really understand what that means.

MA: I think that those constitutional amendments are often not understood.

KC: This one certainly was not and it was being obfuscated by people on both sides as a matter of fact. The wording was as usual....they've got some good English majors writing those things.

MA: Well Kay, is there anything else you would like to say? Any other thoughts 04:12:00you would like to put down for posterity?

KC: I do think that the influence of the whole cultural milieu, I don't know to whom to point the finger, Betty Friedan kind of pointed the finger at Ronald Reagan at least when Betty prepared the introduction to our book The Green Stubborn Bud but the whole yuppie mentality that success is measured in dollars and prestige and title and the flocking of young women as well as young men into getting MBAs and wanting to go someplace in the corporate world, it is a whole move which I think has affected a lot of other people besides those who are 04:13:00getting MBAs or law degrees or whatever and it has exacerbated what has probably always been the American way and the American dream and has...I think it keeps people who have that mentality and that kind of drive...I even have a little sense of it among people of good will. I think now of the television panel that I saw last night which I mentioned before we were taping of eight or ten people on a panel talking about the importance of women owning film studios and 04:14:00television stations and radio outlets and print media because it is in the ownership that you get to make decisions to say "yes" as well as "no" and to make decisions about hiring, etc. etc. I can't argue about that but also there was in that mentality even though there were quite a few feminists among them or people with feminist leanings sometimes amassing the money and getting the funding and being in the driver's seat begins to smack very much of this success is measured in dollars and therefore I want the law to be such that I don't go bankrupt by upping the minimum wage and I don't want property taxes based on the ability to pay because that will take more out of my...It seems to me that there 04:15:00are some very difficult lines. We certainly can account for the women who imitate men when they get into high places because that's the way the system is. If they want to fit into the system then maybe they have to behave that way. I don't know. I'm of two minds about all of this.

MA: That is a paradox for the 90s.

KC: Yes, I think it is. I think it is.

I can remember having some roundtable informal discussions in Lowell Hall when we still had a place to eat together and when we were talking about the faculty raises and this little pittance that every once in a while would be....you know 2% raise in a good year, this would be our debate, should this little bit of 04:16:00money be across the board, and I always would point out that the lowest paid people would be getting the smallest increase because 2% of a smaller amount is a smaller amount, but sometimes I would be the lone voice at a table of eight or ten of us, most of the others were men, saying that I thought the lowest paid people should get the biggest chunk. People would look at me and say "Would you be willing to forgo?" and I would say "Of course I would!" How do you get equity if you aren't willing to forgo? They thought I was crazy, either crazy or lying, but they weren't' sure which!

MA: That is at the heart of the issue, the protection of privilege.

KC: Privilege such as it was. A lousy 2% which would turn out to be 1 1/2% anyway because the administrators would skim off for their own use.

MA: Thank you very much Kay.

KC: I don't mean to close on such a negative.

MA: Can you think of something positive you want to close on?

KC: Yes, I just think that there is progress. There are infinitely more people now who care and who proclaim that they care and who make a public statement. I think the 600,000 people who marched for reproductive rights in Washington two days ago is certainly a hopeful sign. I don't think that it will have any effect necessarily on the Supreme Court. On the other hand, courts don't live in a 04:18:00vacuum, court judges and justices don't. I think another plus was the reelection of Shirley Abrahamson to our Supreme Court. There are lots of signs. We may also have had our last huge snowfall for the season, that's something to feel good about. I hope maybe I'll get off dead center one of these days and write something.

MA: That would be very nice!

KC: And maybe I won't, but we'll see.

MA: Thank you.

KC: Thank you.