JULY 9, 2009 ISSUE
Library Seeking Mementos of Equal Rights Amendment’s Long History
Evelyn Johnson, Watauga County’s librarian in charge of adult programs, is calling on members of the community to contribute to a program about the Equal Rights Amendment that she has organized for Saturday, July 18, at 11:00 a.m.—the weekend of the anniversary of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, when women first called for equal rights.
It took women 72 years to win the right to vote in 1920. Three years later, at the 75th anniversary of the convention, the ERA was launched. It is still awaiting ratification. The amendment would prohibit sex discrimination across the nation.
Johnson is organizing the program because “the library’s role is educating the public, and this is to make [them] aware of the [status of] the ERA. Many people think it’s already part of the constitution, but it didn’t make it. It fell short by three states,” she said.
Johnson wants newspaper clippings, photos and other mementos of ERA campaigns and she’ll display them in the library for the weekend—the 161st anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention.
On July 18, she’ll show the Equal Rights Amendment: Unfinished Business for the Constitution DVD, a 17-minute history. She has permission from the Alice Paul Institute to air it. She also hopes to have a local speaker and a discussion and will display a map showing which states did not ratify the ERA. North Carolina was one.
Pinky Hayden, the High Country’s first female representative, who served in Raleigh at the time of the ERA campaign, called earlier this year for a national convention in Boone in 2010 to discuss the matter and called on North Carolina to “correct its bad behavior” of the early 1980s when the Senate deliberately killed the amendment.
Some of the questions Johnson would like answers for are: who introduced the campaign to the High Country? What was the response to it? Was there an organized movement for the ERA here? What organizations worked for it?
“Securing women’s rights has always been a co-operative effort,” said Johnson, “and so gathering our history is best as a co-operative effort. I’d like as many as possible to contribute, even if they weren’t living here at the time.”
Johnson said that it is 86 years since the ERA was first launched by Alice Paul, the young woman whose campaign for votes for women ended successfully in 1920. Paul led the first passive resistance campaign in the United States.
For more information, email Johnson at ejohnson@arlibrary.org or call 828-264-8784.
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