Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women’s Sports

5. The Feminist Moment That Wasn’t

Chapter Five The Feminist Moment That Wasn’t In her November 1977 Publisher’s Letter, Billie Jean King alerted readers of womenSports to be on the lookout for “the largest gathering of tomboys and ex-tomboys in recent history.” She wasn’t referring to a sporting event or pre-Olympic competition, but to the National Women’s Conference to be held in Houston on November 18–20, 1977, in observance of International Women’s Year (IWY). This gathering brought together 2,000 elected delegates from every state in the union, supplemented by almost 20,000 alternates, observers, and members of the press, to debate and eventually pass a national plan of action on women’s issues. In many ways the Houston conference was the high point of feminist activism in the 1970s, as women of varying political agendas came together to build common ground. In retrospect, it also demonstrates the growing political power and attraction of the antifeminist narrative, embodied by Phyllis Schlafly’s marshalling of between 15,000 and 20,000 women to a counter-convention for those who claimed that the Houston delegates did not speak for them. Here was the 148 The Feminist Moment That Wasn’t moment in the 1970s when it became clear that the category “woman” was far too broad to embrace everyone of that gender.1 The symbol of the Houston Conference that most captured the public imagination was a 2,600-mile torch relay that originated in Seneca Falls, New York, the site of the seminal women’s rights convention in 1848, to recognize the link between the two historic conferences.2 Organized by a team of volunteers, including members of the National Association of Girls and Women in Sport, the Road Runners of America, and the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, the event began at a candlelight ceremony in Seneca Falls on September 28, when Judy Carter, the president ’s daughter-in-law, read a Declaration of Sentiments written by poet Maya Angelou, who was also an International Women’s Year commissioner. The next morning Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to officially compete in the Boston Marathon, accepted the torch from a descendant of a signer of the original Seneca Falls declaration. After several miles, she handed it off to Donna de Varona, Olympic gold medalist and Women’s Sports Foundation activist. Other runners that first day included Carole Oglesby, a Temple University professor who was the primary sports consultant for the International Women’s Year commission, and Betsy East, a physical education specialist and coordinator of the New York state leg who happened to be the daughter of Catherine East, one of the original IWY coordinators.3 Over the next fifty-one days, the volunteer corps of runners made their way south and east, clearly identifiable as they ran their assigned miles by their bright blue t-shirts with “Women on the Move” embedded in the IWY logo. Their somewhat circuitous but media-friendly route took them by way of New York City, where they held a spirited rally led by presiding IWY officer Bella Abzug, and then Washington, D.C., where the runners circled Lafayette Park and held another rally outside the White House. Then it was on to Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Other than the usual problems of bad weather, traffic, and sore muscles, the most serious difficulties arose in Alabama, where under pressure from Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) opponents, many of the scheduled Birmingham runners pulled out at the last moment, causing the relay organizers to scramble to recruit substitutes, and in one case, fly in marathoner Peggy Kokernot from Houston to run for sixteen miles. In sweet vindication, it was Kokernot ’s picture that graced the cover of Time magazine’s December 5 story about the conference.4 Soon the torch relay was back on schedule, moving steadily through 149 The Feminist Moment That Wasn’t Mississippi and Louisiana and finally into Texas. After a symbolic stop at Babe Didrikson Zaharias’s birthplace in Beaumont, the relay moved into high gear as it approached Houston. In the final mile the official runners were joined by a host of supporters, including Donna de Varona, Olympic skier Suzy Chaffee, IWY commissioner Bella Abzug (with customary hat, but wearing pumps instead of running shoes), Betty Friedan, Susan B. Anthony II, and, not to be left out of such a wonderful moment...