Rita Will_Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser

by Rita Mae Brown

  Shocked as I was at the slovenliness, I was equally amazed at how easy it was to meet people. I didn’t know a soul when I moved to Washington. I’d saved up enough to live for three months, so I was casting about for a job.

  I tried the Arena Theater, but they didn’t need anyone and my repertory theater work didn’t qualify as solid experience.

  While I pounded the pavement I met Senator Edward Kennedy. I stuck my head in his offices and an aide allowed me to speak to him. He was courteous, spoke forcefully about ending the war, and when I asked him about job security for gay people he didn’t bat an eye. I know I had to be the first person to ask him that. This was shortly after Chappaquiddick, and people were saying Kennedy was finished in politics, but I found him smooth and well prepped.

  I met Walter B. Jones, Jr., a congressman from North Carolina who sat on an agricultural committee that interested me. He, too, was courteous.

  I met Patsy Mink and Martha Wright Griffiths, both in Congress. There were precious few women in the House then.

  Nothing prepared me for Senator Hubert Humphrey.

  Remember, I had the sparsest wardrobe. My jeans were clean and pressed. I had a few shirts, a pair of sneakers and my marine tunic and pea jacket for colder weather. That was it. Between sending money to Mom and paying rent, the last thing I could afford was clothing.

  So I presented myself at Senator Humphrey’s office in my sparkling T-shirt, Levi’s and white sneakers. He had the flu and had just walked into the front office. His aide glanced up at me as I walked through the door.

  Dabbing his nose, he reached out his right hand. “Hello.”

  “Senator Humphrey.” I shook his hand. “I hope you feel better.”

  His voice was raspy. “Flu. What can I do for you?”

  “I write for underground newspapers.” The truth. “I’d love to see how the government works from the inside. All I’ve done is criticize it from the outside.”

  Without hesitation he said, “Stick with me.”

  I tagged after the good senator for the entire day. Even with the flu he was a whirlwind. He knew everybody by first name. Not just other senators, but doormen, guards, other officials’ aides. Furthermore, he liked them. You can’t fake that. The man loved people.

  The flu chased away his appetite. Around two in the afternoon, I must have looked peaked. We were on the grounds behind the Capitol.

  “You must be hungry.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Go on, grab a sandwich and meet me back at the office.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll miss something.”

  He studied me, then handed me five dollars. “Go on.”

  “I can’t take your money, Senator.”

  “Sure you can. Who’s paying my salary?”

  I ran over behind the post office since I couldn’t eat in the congressional cafeteria without Senator Humphrey. I grabbed a Coke, a hot dog with mustard, a fave forever, and ate it. Then I ate another hot dog since I wasn’t sure when I’d get the chance.

  Senator Humphrey didn’t want his change back. He knew a poor kid when he saw one. But how kind of him not to make the five dollars seem like a handout.

  He worked until sundown, when the flu worsened. Sweat poured from his head. His face was red.

  When he left he shook my hand and said, “Think twice before you take potshots.”

  And I do.

  Hubert Humphrey would have made a dynamic, strong president. The state of Minnesota was fortunate in their senator, as were the rest of the states. His vision was bigger than the pork barrel.

  While Senator Humphrey was the exceptional senator, he was not the exception that proved the rule.

  Over and over, I discovered that American public officials are accessible. This is a democracy. You can see your congressman and senator without a great deal of trouble. You can see other senators and congressmen, too.

  If I were admitted to a senator’s office now, it would not be unusual. Some of them read, and those who don’t might have dimly heard my name once upon a time.

  But then, I was twenty-four. It’s doubtful those men had read feminist ideological papers. Still, I got to talk to them.

  I even met Justice Douglas, who had read feminist writings. His young wife, Cathleen, was interested in the movement, so they had both read up on it. He “got it.” What a mind. Most men his age were refuting anything to do with the women’s movement, the antiwar movement, any struggle. They had retired and were concentrating on lowering their golf handicap. Justice Douglas seemed like a man in his thirties. The contest of ideas kept him young, I think; he loved what he was doing.

  During my first year in Washington I witnessed the biggest protest against the war—orderly, impressive and making travel impossible. I wondered at these thousands upon thousands of people who traveled at great expense to make their feelings known. Many were young, but by now, middle-aged and even older people had joined the protest movement. The loss of life could no longer be covered up and America was waking up.

  I fell in with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, because of Wade. I felt closer to the men who’d actually been there.

  A ceremony behind the Capitol had the vets marching in single file. Then they would stop and toss their medals into a drain grate. Some men rode in wheelchairs. Others were missing arms. Many, thankfully, were able-bodied. All were angry.

  My heart stopped when a mother, not even forty-five, spoke to the crowd. She held in her hand the Congressional Medal of Honor, the beautiful medal with the sky blue ribbon and white stars. Her son had been awarded it posthumously. She threw the medal down the grate. The crowd roared.

  For days and weeks afterward I saw that medal flying through the air. It is the highest military award America bestows. The list of men who have earned it is slender. I kept hearing the clink as it hit the grate and then finally dropped through and I wondered about the young man who had died for it, never knowing, of course, that he would win this medal for uncommon valor.

  If he were my son, I don’t think I could have thrown away the medal, no matter how much I hated the war. Then I thought of German veterans of World War I selling the Blue Max for bread.

  The grotesque murders ran together in my head. It didn’t matter which war anymore. It didn’t matter which side. People died for nothing. At least men could enlist and see combat. The women and children died like rats in bombed sewers. I’d rather die with a rifle in my hand.

  Despite what history books may tell you, there has never been a good war. If we go to war, it means everyone has failed. Negotiating may lack glamour, but given what war has become, there’s no glamour there either.

  That medal of honor flying across the lawn stays with me. I don’t know the name of the man who died for it nor do I remember his mother’s name. But they gave me something valuable: the knowledge that when it gets bad enough, the American people will finally set things to rights.

  Unfortunately, we always, and I emphasize always, wait for a crisis. But finally we do it.

  Senator Kennedy wore his brother Joe’s flight jacket. He walked down into the mobs and talked to the vets. This was at a time when he received death threats daily.

  I thought then and I think now that he carries a heavy burden, the memory of three extraordinary brothers. Probably all he ever wanted to be was Ted Kennedy.

  Other elected officials came to the crowd, which the New York Times estimated at between two hundred thousand and five hundred thousand. You can never trust the numbers reported.

  At any rate, there was a mess of people and the situation could have become volatile. The senators and congressmen who walked among the people could have been fingered as part of the problem. They took a risk, not just in potential violence, but the minute they showed their faces they joined Nixon’s enemies list, officially or unofficially.

  They came anyway and I think they learned, as did the people who spoke with them. Maybe the entire government was not the enemy. Maybe we could
work inside as well as outside to stop the war.

  And once we stopped the war we could finally turn our gaze inward and start cleaning up our own backyard.

  After the march was over and the people cleared out of the city, I took a bus up to York, then transferred to a local to Hanover. I got off in the square and walked out to Hanover Shoe Farm.

  Baby Jesus rode quietly this time in a little plastic travel case. As soon as I was off the bus, I put on her leash and we walked together. When she complained, I’d pick her up. We must have walked fifteen miles that day.

  I don’t know why, but I wanted her to see where I was born.

  The sun sparkled on the meadows where the foals and mares were turned out. Baby climbed up a fence post. A foal walked over to inspect. Baby Jesus had never seen a horse before; I doubt the foal had seen a cat, and certainly not a cat as grand as Baby Jesus, by now a full-figured girl.

  The cat held her ground as the foal approached. They touched noses. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

  50

  Equal Rights and Equal Wrongs

  One forty-four Constitution Avenue, a lovely red brick Georgian known as the Alva Belmont house, sits right on top of Capitol Hill. Mrs. Alva Belmont gave the house to the National Women’s Party. Alice Paul, two years older than God (actually she was eighty-four), lived there.

  Although she couldn’t walk easily, her mind flew ahead of her feet. In fact, her mind grew stronger even as her body failed her.

  In 1968 I had met her as part of a delegation with Anselma dell’Olio, Jacqui Ceballos and Susan Vannucci. The New Feminist Repertory ladies had descended on Washington.

  Seeing her again, shortly after I moved to D.C., it was apparent that time was running out for this grand old lady of feminism. Alice Paul had inherited the mantle of leader of the party from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

  Impeccably mannered—you had to be in her day—well groomed, well spoken and wise in the ways of Capitol Hill, she was a natural leader for legislative change.

  The big blow came for Alice when her cohorts accepted winning the vote in 1920 in exchange for dropping the push for the Equal Rights Amendment. If you remember Abigail Adams’s letter to John in 1776 concerning women’s rights, “Remember the ladies … all men would be tyrants if they could,” the struggle for the vote consumed 140 years. Those girls were tired and they wanted to sit down.

  Alice and the radical wing soldiered on, trying to secure passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. While she managed to get this introduced each session, it would die in committee. The Democratic Party gave lip service only.

  My hour with Alice involved listening to her tell me how a bill gets through the legislature. I knew the process, but one doesn’t interrupt an old lady when she’s on her pet subject.

  Alice paid attention to bloodlines, another feature consistent with her generation. Mine passed muster. I was a WASP and a Buckingham to boot.

  The few new female faces in Congress, Bella Abzug, for one, gave her hope. She wanted to live to see that amendment tacked on to the Constitution. She didn’t.

  I agreed with Mrs. Paul. And I worked for the amendment in those early years.

  But the longer I thought about Alice Paul’s life work, and the longer I roamed around Washington, the surer I felt that the timing was wrong, not the amendment itself.

  I was supporting myself with freelance editing jobs and I’d mow your lawn for you, too. Sometimes I wonder that I didn’t go into the gardening and lawn care business—I’d been doing it since I was big enough to push a mower.

  The feminists in New York and the other big cities talked to one another. I talked to my neighbors, working-class black women. I talked to my mother and Aunt Mimi. When I bummed a ride into Virginia or Maryland to visit a stable, I’d talk to the “barn rats,” the stable help.

  Most of them had never heard of the Equal Rights Amendment. When I explained it they weren’t violently opposed, but their primary concern was being able to make a living.

  The more I knew of Washington, the more I saw how out of touch the government was with the people. The war threw that into high relief, but the Nixon administration was out of touch on so many issues. I doubt any administration could have survived the tidal wave of change sweeping the country. It wasn’t just the war, it was the Pill, it was television intruding into people’s consciousness in ways no one quite fathomed. It was a generation in their late teens and twenties who said, “You told me this was the greatest nation on earth. Why, then, do we have racial suffering? Why is there an undeclared war in Indochina?”

  The sainted Jack Kennedy couldn’t have weathered this sea of change any more than Nixon did.

  There have been other times in history when a generational gulf has created desperate problems. In Weimar Germany, the generation that fought World War I was more liberal than their sons, who dragged Germany into World War II. The French Revolution was fueled, for the most part, by young men, which also explains the hideous excesses. Youth may be brilliant, but experience is worth as much as brilliance and a society needs older people for balance. Our own revolution was better balanced by age, which may explain the stability of the process. True, the Articles of Confederation fell flat, but no one lost their heads over it. No one was hanged during the Constitutional Convention.

  Compromise saved us, and compromise is the work of mature people.

  The women’s movement was a force of young women. Apart from Alice Paul and Betty Friedan, the burgeoning ranks were women from their late teens to their early thirties. It’s difficult for women with young children to be politically active, so once people settled down many of them dropped back—not necessarily out, but back.

  The other drawback was also peculiar to women. Since we had been denied participation in the political process up to 1920, we had no one to help us. Margaret Chase Smith, the great senator from Maine, was nearing the end of her distinguished career. We had maybe four women in government who could show us the ropes.

  Our mothers and grandmothers couldn’t help us. They weren’t hardened in political wars. Even my mother, who had a keen understanding of the political process, had never held elected office. She could give me the benefit of her experience but she couldn’t tell me what happens once you’re inside the system.

  We might as well have been standing in the middle of the Mojave asking for rain.

  The mistakes of the feminist movement in the seventies and eighties were the mistakes of youth. And thank God, they weren’t mean-spirited mistakes.

  My chilling realization about the ERA’s bad timing first swept over me as I watched Fairfax Hunt take off one crisp October morning in 1970. Children, adults and older folk trotted off as the sun turned a light frost to dew.

  Three generations. We had one. That’s when I knew the Equal Rights Amendment couldn’t be passed at that time. I gave the benefit of my illumination to everyone, including Gloria.

  This is the only issue on which Gloria and I have disagreed publicly. The disagreements we have in private are more in the nature of a city person’s view of life versus a country person’s.

  Gloria, Bella, Betty, all of them, were married to the damned Equal Rights Amendment.

  My argument, simply put, is that you can’t work for a constitutional amendment without years, decades of local organizing, paying special attention to state legislatures, which are usually more conservative than Congress.

  And you can’t expect women to rouse themselves across the land without delivering services to them, whether it’s in the form of child-care centers, rape crisis centers or legal services for those in need. You’ve got to give in order to get.

  The South was the key to passage of the amendment. Too many feminists held the attitude that southerners are backward, so why bother with them? Then, too, coming from me the argument was seen as special pleading for my region.

  The rest of the country mistakes the South’s deep hostility to legislation, natio
nal or state, as backwardness. Old, silly laws are left on the books, and some are plain horrible, but the point is, they’re not enforced. The South’s attitude is “Let sleeping dogs lie.”

  We should know. When our state legislatures passed radical laws for secession, we southerners paid with our lives, our fortunes, our futures.

  The easiest way to explain the War Between the States is that the South was right in the beginning and wrong at the end. We were constitutionally correct in our right to secede and we were right in our resistance to the industrial North’s attempt to destroy our agrarian economy. But we, especially the Delta, clung to slavery. For that we deserved to get our asses kicked.

  Anyway, I knew those old boys needed attention. By virtue of being southern men, they were not automatically opposed to the amendment, contrary to what the Yankee girls thought. But by virtue of being southern men, they needed lots of female attention on this issue and perhaps on issues that might be important to them.

  You can’t just blow people off and then expect them to come around when you need them.

  Another factor is that in our political history, Americans have only amended the Constitution twenty-seven times and two of those amendments involved the Volstead Act, Prohibition. An amendment is the largest political action that our nation can take, and feminists wanted to start with an amendment.

  Gloria conducted herself with grace, as she always does, but I was riddled with blasts from other women.

  First they’d accuse me of splitting the movement over lesbians in the ranks. Right, let’s accuse the oppressed of causing the oppression. Now I was going to ruin the movement by opposing the Holy Grail, the Equal Rights Amendment.

  I understood their need for a show of solidarity. I promised to be silent on the issue—and silence is usually assumed to be assent—in exchange for fighting openly for gay women to be part of the feminist movement.