History of the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
This interview was conducted in Sonia Pressman Fuentes’ home in Potomac, MD, on
December 27, 1990, by Sylvia Danovitch, then-assistant to the chairman of the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as part of an oral history project to commemorate
the EEOC’s 25th anniversary. The following is the beginning segment from
the interview.
Danovitch: Today
is December 27, 1990. This is Sylvia Danovitch. I'm in Potomac, Maryland, and I'm here to
interview Sonia Pressman Fuentes.
Where
were you when the Civil Rights Act was passed?
Fuentes: I was
working as an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] in Washington, D.C.
Danovitch: Do you
have any recollection of it? Is it vivid?
Fuentes: Of the
passage of the Civil Rights Act? No.
Danovitch: Had you
had any part in the Civil Rights Movement?
Fuentes: You have
to go back to my background to understand why I came to the EEOC. You may want to cut me
back here, because it's basically--
Danovitch: No, I
want to hear it.
Fuentes: It's
basically the story of my life, and it's going to go on too long.
Danovitch: Go
ahead.
Fuentes: My
parents were Polish. They both came from a small town in Poland, but by 1933 they had
lived in Germany for twenty-three years. I was born in Berlin, Germany. My family left
Germany in 1933 because of the rise of Nazism and Hitler. My brother, who is fourteen
years older than I, was responsible for our leaving. As a sensitive young man of eighteen,
he saw what the Nazis were doing. He wanted my parents to leave Germany because of Hitler.
Well. My father thought this was ridiculous. He had lived in Germany for twenty-three
years, he had property there, he was a prosperous businessman. The analogy I always use is
that when Senator Joseph McCarthy came to power in the United States, people didn't leave
and go to Australia; they figured he would blow over. Similarly, my folks figured Hitler
would blow over.
So, my brother
left by himself and went to Antwerp, Belgium. He would write letters home to my parents.
After six months of that, my mother said to my father, "You can't let an eighteen
year-old boy be alone in France... So my father sold everything to the Nazis for very
little so they would let us leave the country. Then, we lived in Belgium for a while.
There, my father read in the newspaper that ships were leaving for the United States, and
that's how we came to the United States.
So, you start
with somebody who was here as a refugee from discrimination against Jews. That is my first
consciousness and interest in civil rights, that, first of all, I was a Jew, that Jews
have historically been the victims of discrimination, and that my family and I escaped
with our lives and came here because of Hitler .
We came to the
Bronx, but shortly thereafter we moved to the Catskill Mountains of New York. My parents
frequently went to Florida for the winter, and we drove there. So now we're talking-- I
was born in 1928, I came to America May 1, 1934, so let's say when I was ten, twelve years
old, we were driving to Florida. So, we're talking 1944, something like that. And, we
would pass through Georgia and other places in the South, and I was struck, as a child, by
the separate benches for whites and blacks. The drinking fountains were separate. I
particularly remember the newspaper headlines of the papers in Georgia. [Herman] Talmadge
was governor, and there were these horrendous discriminatory, hateful headlines that have
stayed with me. And the water fountains and the rest rooms, all of that I saw. I was only
a child, but I was very struck by it. Of course, we made these
trips every year. From those early experiences arose my interest in doing something about
discrimination against blacks. So that was the second factor that led me to an interest in
civil rights.
Well, I
graduated from college, and four years later I went to law school. There I had to buck a
great deal of-- I don't know if the word is discrimination--a great deal of stereotypical
behavior towards me, because women were not going to law school in those days.
Danovitch: What
year was this?
Fuentes: I went
to law school in 1954. There were a few women in my law school class, and I had a role
model, a woman who was an attorney. She and her husband were my parents' attorneys. But
women attorneys were few and far between. My parents were opposed to my going to law
school. My brother, who now has two granddaughters who are attorneys, was vehemently
opposed to my going to law school, and everybody who heard that I was going to law school,
said to me, "Why do you want to go to law school?"
Danovitch: What was
their opposition? What form did it take?
Fuentes: Well, my
parents wanted me to get married at the age of eighteen and have a family and learn to
cook and sew. My interest didn't run in those directions. The fact that my life was saved
from the Holocaust left me with the feeling that I had to use that life to make the world
a better place. And that meant doing something other than just being concerned with my own
personal happiness.
My wanting to be
an attorney in the early fifties was comparable to a young woman today saying that she
wants to be an astronaut--that doesn't even do it, because that's accepted. I can't think
of some weird-o thing, if some young girl said she wanted to do some really weird thing,
people would say to her, "Why are you doing that?" Supposing she said she wants
to travel around the world for ten days wearing no clothes. People would say, "Why on
earth are you doing that? It's an odd thing for a woman to be doing." That's what
people said to me. "How come you want to be an attorney?" It just was a weird-o
thing for somebody to be doing. I was constantly on the defensive, explaining why I wanted
to go to law school.
At the time, one
of my answers was I felt that I had certain verbal and writing skills and an interest in
making a contribution to the world, and that it was logical for me to go to law school
with these skills and interests. I said it was like somebody who has a skill of playing
the piano. Such a person would want to play the piano, and I wanted to use these skills I
had. I don't think anybody ever understood that. So, that was the third impact on me. I,
as a woman, was on the defensive in doing something that no man would be asked about. So,
I had these three influences.
Then I came
to Washington to work, and I ran into quite a bit of discrimination.
Danovitch: What was
your first job in Washington?
Fuentes: My first
job was with the Office of Alien Property, which was part of the Department of Justice. I
came here on the attorney general's program for honor law graduates. In that program, I
had an option to decide in which section of the Justice Department I wanted to work, so I
opted for the Office of Alien Property. The Office of Alien Property dealt with claims for
property seized in World Wars I and II from people who were foreign nationals or were
presumed to be from foreign nations. I thought that would be interesting because of my
international background.
During these
early years of my career, I was always looking for a better job. I ran into all kinds of
discrimination because I was a woman. At one point, I was working in California, and a
friend of mine offered to form a partnership with me. He said to me that I wouldn't have
to draw any money out of the partnership since I was a woman, whereas he had a family to
support. This was a close friend of mine.
Danovitch: Why
wouldn't you have needed money?
Fuentes: Because
I was on my own and he had a family to support.
Danovitch: You were
not married at the time?
Fuentes: No, I
was not married.
Danovitch: So, you
didn't pay rent.
Fuentes: Sure I
did. I'm just telling you what he said to me. He was a close friend of mine until he died
this past summer, but he said to me I wouldn't have to draw any money out of the
partnership because I didn't have a family.
I once applied
to the Democratic National Committee for a job by writing to its chairman, Paul Butler. He
called in response to my letter and offered me a job--answering the phone! He said that
the Democratic National Committee didn't need anybody, but he was leaving and going into
private practice and asked me to answer the phone for him because he would have to be out
of the office at times. At that point, he had my resume, which showed that I had graduated
Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell and was first in my law school class. And, he asked me to
answer the phone in his office!
Once, I applied
for a job with a law firm. The interviewer said they couldn't consider me because I was
asking for $10,000 a year, and that was more than some of their male attorneys were
earning! He also said he couldn't hire me because I would hear profanity, and they didn't
have a women's rest room on the floor where I'd be working. I mean, all these classic
things were said to me by this one interviewer.
One time, I went
for an interview and the interviewer said to me, "How do we know you won't get
pregnant?" I was not married at that time, and that question really stumped me.
Afterwards, I thought of wonderful answers I could have given, such as, "I happen to
have a doctor's certificate here with me that I always carry around that shows I can't
become pregnant." He suggested that I'd do better taking a job with him as a legal
secretary because he'd pay me better than he would as an attorney.
I once answered
an ad in the American Bar [Association] Journal, and the advertiser wrote me back
and offered to marry me. He said, when he died, I could inherit the practice. You know, it
goes on and on and on. These experiences influenced my later involvement in women's
rights. At the time they occurred, I had no feeling about women's rights because there
wasn't such a thing in those days. One of the things that the women's rights movement did,
and the EEOC did, was they brought into the consciousness of the country the fact that
there were such things as women's rights and discrimination against women. So, while all
these things happened to me and they were part of me, they did not at that time coalesce
in me. It never occurred to me that there might be a remedy for this type of treatment. I
mean, that was the way the world was. Those are the things that happen to you. It was like
anything else. You were born beautiful or you were born rich or you weren't, and
these were just some of the things that happened to you.
In 1959, I left
the Office of Alien Property and went to work for the National Labor Relations Board here
in Washington. In the early sixties, I moved to California to work for the National Labor
Relations Board in Los Angeles, and after 1½ years, I returned to Washington. There was a
guy who was a trial examiner for the National Labor Relations Board with whom I would have
lunch once in a while. He liked women. His way of getting to spend time with me was to
always promise me that he would introduce me to people so that I could get a better job. I
had another friend at the NLRB, Jackie Williams, who knew this trial examiner. One time I
was out to lunch with Jackie and I said, "I just had lunch with so-and-so again,
trying to get a better job, and he didn't come up with anything."
She said,
"Oh, you want a better job? Why don't you go see [General Counsel] Charlie [Charles
T.] Duncan at the EEOC?" Jackie had gone to Howard Law School, and Charlie had been
one of her professors. (Subsequently he became dean of the law school.) She said,
"It's right across the street." (The EEOC was at 1800 G Street at the time.) She
said, “I know he's looking for people. He's the new general counsel."
So, I called him
up and arranged for an interview. When I went up for the interview, Charlie was sitting at
his desk. After I introduced myself, he said to me, "You see all these papers on this
desk?"
I said,
"Yes."
He said,
"Those are all applications for jobs in the general counsel's office. I don't know
why, but I'm going to hire you.” That's how I came to work at the EEOC.
Danovitch: You
really didn't know why? You hadn't had a conversation with him?
Fuentes: Maybe, I
had some little conversation with him, but what I remember him saying is that. But he knew
I'd been sent by Jackie.
Danovitch: So, this
was your first really legal job?
Fuentes: No. My
first legal job was with the Office of Alien Property. Then, I was at the National Labor
Relations Board. When I started at Alien Property, I was a law clerk, but when I passed
the bar I became an attorney.
Danovitch: You were
performing fully as an attorney?
Fuentes:
Absolutely. I spent 6½ years at the National Labor Relations Board. I had a variety of
jobs at the NLRB, both in Washington and in the field. I had a three-month detail in
Pittsburgh and spent one and a half years in the Los Angeles office.
Danovitch: So, what
you're saying is that in the private sector--
Fuentes: This is
all public.
Danovitch: Yes.
People were offering to hire you as a secretary.
Fuentes: That was
in the private sector. I was already working as an attorney in the federal government.
Danovitch: But in
the federal sector, when you got these jobs, you were fully an attorney.
Fuentes:
Absolutely.
Danovitch: I just
wanted to clarify that.
Fuentes: Oh, yes.
I became an attorney a few months after I started to work.
Danovitch: So,
it’s not unfair to say that there weren’t, during the fifties, at least, good
opportunities for female attorneys in the private sector.
Fuentes:
Absolutely true.
Danovitch: But in
the federal sector, if you got the job, you were fully an attorney.
Fuentes: Fully an
attorney, but let's not give the impression that there was not discrimination against
women attorneys in the federal sector. The difference was as follows. The private sector
wouldn't hire you at all. The federal sector, the government sector, would hire you, but
you didn't go beyond certain grade levels. There were very few women at these higher
grades, and there are statistics that show this.
Danovitch: What
about at the EEOC?
Fuentes: The EEOC
was a brand-new agency.
Danovitch: Let's
get a fix on the time. Do you remember the date that you started?
Fuentes:
Absolutely. I started October 4, 1965, four months after the EEOC opened for business.[i]
Danovitch: So you
were right there at the nascent stage.
Fuentes:
Absolutely.
Danovitch: What was
your first job?
Fuentes: As I
said, there was no such thing as women's rights. I just came in because I was interested
in civil rights, which to me meant black rights.
Danovitch: You had
used "civil rights" several times before.
Fuentes: It only
meant blacks to me at that time, which is what I think it meant to other people, too. Many
years later, you got women's rights, you got ethnic rights--rights for Hispanics--you got
rights for people with disabilities. All that came later.
Danovitch: But you
came from a background in Germany where Jews were certainly deprived, first of their
rights and then of their lives.
Fuentes: Correct.
Danovitch: Civil
rights meant black rights just in the U.S.A.?
Fuentes: The
U.S.A. I was thinking of rights for blacks, who were not called blacks then. I think they
were called Negroes.
Danovitch: I think
it depended on where you were. In some situations, the preferred term early on was
"colored."
Fuentes: That was
earlier. "Colored" was before the time when I was an adult. Then, it was
"Negroes," and somewhere along the line it changed to "blacks."
Danovitch: In the
late sixties, I think.
Fuentes: I came
to the EEOC to be a lawyer, not with any particular axe to grind. At that time, there were
100 people in the EEOC. Charlie Duncan, the general counsel, was black. The deputy general
counsel was a guy named Dick Berg, who went on to have and is having, after he left the
EEOC, a distinguished career. He's still working in the field of administrative law. I was
third in the GC's office. Fourth was a young man named John Dalessio. I have no idea what
happened to him. The chairman at that time was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. The other
commissioners were Aileen Hernandez, who went on to become the first president of the
National Organization for Women [NOW], of which I'm a founder. We had FDR, Jr., Aileen,
Dick [Richard] Graham, someone who is a hero of mine and who is here in Washington. (About
four years ago, I and two other women planned a twentieth anniversary reunion for NOW, and
it was held at Dick Graham's and his wife Nancy's home.
There was also
Sam Jackson, a black. How many have we got there? Oh, and the vice chairman was Luther
Holcomb, a white man who was a minister from Texas. Have I given you five commissioners?
Danovitch: Yes.
Fuentes: I came
in with no preconceived notions, except what I've told you about my background, but no
preconceived notions about the EEOC except I favored the law and the mission of the
agency. The executive director was a guy named Herman Edelsberg. Dick Berg and Herman
Edelsberg were Jewish. Dick was married to a non-Jewish woman. Herman Edelsberg was
married to a Jewish woman. Herman Edelsberg came out of Jewish organizational life. He was
very active in B'nai B'rith. He recently had a book published posthumously, in which he
credits me, along with Pauli Murray, as having turned him around on women's rights.
Danovitch: Some
people have emphasized that sex as a basis of illegal discrimination was thrown in by
Congressman [Howard W.] Smith in order to defeat the act. Is it possible that since black
unemployment was so high and the situation of blacks was so bad that they [certain EEOC
officials] didn't want to dilute the EEOC's efforts?
Fuentes: Well,
first of all, I don't want it to stand on the record that sex came into Title VII solely
because Congressman Smith offered it as an amendment. We all know that story. On the other
hand, there had been lobbying for I don't know how many years for an equal pay bill, which
was passed the year before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [the Equal Pay Act of 1963], and
lobbying for I don't know how many years for an equal rights amendment. So, while there
was no women's movement, as came later after the passage of Title VII, there had been
efforts for women's rights for many years preceding the passage of Title VII. Besides,
Martha Griffiths has stated that she had an amendment ready to add sex discrimination to
the bill before Congressman Smith did it. So, I don't like that "fluke" idea to
stand there by itself.
Danovitch: Since
you opened this door, I could ask you now a question I've asked many persons. Was there a
feeling that the purpose of this act was to redress the unequal status of blacks in this
country?
Fuentes: In
spades.
Danovitch: And that
everything else was superfluous?
Fuentes: Correct.
Danovitch: And
wasn't really legitimate?
Fuentes: The
people who didn't feel that way were myself--and I was a lower level person at the EEOC.
Aileen Hernandez, Dick Graham, and perhaps Sam Jackson, although I think Sam Jackson had
ambivalent feelings about women’s rights.
Danovitch: If this
was the majority view, that the law was there for the blacks, how did it express itself in
terms of budgeting? No agency ever has enough money. Certainly the EEOC had this enormous
backlog.
Fuentes: No, it
didn't start with a backlog.
Danovitch: Well,
practically by the day it opened.
Fuentes: No,
that's not my impression. We did not start with any kind of a backlog. What happened
was—I can't answer your question about budgeting and backlogs, because I didn't work
in those areas. All I knew about was that the overwhelming attitude at the commission was
that they didn't want resources diverted to women's issues. Plus, there was another
problem. Women's issues--and I'll tell you what some of them were--demanded
interpretation. They raised interesting and challenging legal issues. The black cases
didn't.
Danovitch: I'd like
you to explain that.
Fuentes: The
anti-women's rights attitude at the commission was pervasive. I just read the law and I
thought that's what you're supposed to do. I don't know how to say this in English.
There's a Jewish word called chachmas; it means "tricks," or
"silly, cleverly concealed ruses." I didn't know any chachmas. I read the
law. It said you're supposed to prevent discrimination against women. I thought that's
what you were supposed to do. I was totally naive. I didn't have any axes to grind, but it
was like pushing a rock uphill because nobody else wanted that.
Now, Charlie
Duncan was educable on the issue of women's rights, and I educated him in this area. He's
a black guy. He supported me. But in the beginning, he called me a "sex maniac,"
because I was interested in enforcing the prohibitions against sex discrimination. That
made me a "sex maniac" at the commission.
Danovitch: Let me
make sure I understand how it expressed itself in addition to attitudes. Were race charges
put at the top of the list?
Fuentes: I have
no such knowledge. Luther Holcomb asked Charlie--I was assigned to draft the decisions
involving the airline flight cabin attendants.
Danovitch: Do you
have an idea what year that was?
Fuentes: Early.
'66, maybe. I have stuff written where I could dig this out, but I'm guessing '66. I may
be wrong. Luther Holcomb asked Charlie Duncan to take me off writing those decisions
because I was prejudiced. And by "prejudiced," he meant that I favored
eliminating discrimination against women. Charlie Duncan did not take me off writing those
decisions.
You asked me
about some of the issues. The only issue that could have arisen in the race area--I'm
talking early days--the only issue was did you have to hire a black guy to play a role in
a movie that's obviously a role for a white man. That issue really never presented itself
in actuality, to my knowledge; it was just something we kicked around. That was the only
job we could think about in the early days where you could legitimately consider race as a
job qualification. Otherwise, you couldn't discriminate against blacks, and that was the
end of it.
In the women's
area, one of the early issues involved state protective legislation. That issue arose out
of activities in the labor movement in the past. Years ago, women's groups and labor
unions supported protective legislation for women--legislation that limited women to
working a certain number of hours a day, limited the amount of weight they could lift, and
otherwise restricted women's working conditions. Support for this legislation stemmed from
two motives--the idea that women were to be protected and the desire to safeguard men's
jobs.
Those laws might
have served some purpose in protecting women when they were passed--and they didn't do all
that much harm in blocking women's advancement since most women only remained in the labor
force for a number of years in those days, until they got married. But, in the sixties,
when the EEOC began to function, these laws served only to keep women from being hired
into, or promoted into, decent jobs and earning decent money. And some of these laws were
ludicrous. In Utah, for example, legislation prohibited women from holding jobs which
required lifting more than fifteen pounds!
State protective
laws were a terrible barrier to women. Women couldn't be supervisors because a supervisor
might have to work longer hours or work in the evening. This struggle over state
protective laws created a division among women. One of the outstanding proponents of state
protective legislation was Mary Keyserling, a prominent woman, now the widow of Leon
Keyserling, a famous economist. She was in the Labor Department at the time, and I
remember meeting with her. Here was this big-shot woman, you know, who favored state
protective legislation, and here I was, just a lowly employee, and I argued with her. I
didn't have any labor history, I didn't have anything at all, but I had read the law, and
I felt that, well, I was a lawyer and I knew that federal
legislation superseded conflicting state legislation. Very simple principle. Obviously, as
I read the law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 knocked out conflicting state
protective legislation. I didn't need any philosophy or anything to come to that
conclusion; it was just straight law.
So that was the
first big issue. That was a particularly problematical issue because people who didn't
want to enforce the law for women in the first place loved it that they could point to a
division among women and say, "Women themselves don't know what they want. How can we
step in?" That was a wonderful out for them.
Another big
issue that raised problems was BFOQ, bona fide occupational qualification. It was
really the first big issue. The question was: Did you really have to hire a woman for
every job that a man could do? People said, "Oh, women can't lift," they
couldn't be a fireperson, and they couldn't be a police person. You couldn't become a
construction worker. People did not consider women in those days for those jobs. I drafted
the EEOC's first Annual Digest of Legal Interpretations, and we finally ended up
saying the only jobs for which sex could be a BFOQ were sperm donor and wet nurse. You
could legally refuse to hire a woman as a sperm donor and you could legally refuse to hire
a man as a wet nurse. Beyond those jobs (which, to my knowledge, never came up in actual
cases), sex was not a BFOQ.
Pregnancy was
another big issue. All these issues were raised in the sex discrimination area, which
people didn't want to deal with, whereas in the black area, it was a clear cut. You didn't
hire a black for a job? That was unlawful, and that was the end of it. Pregnancy was a big
issue. Did you have to hire a pregnant woman, who might then leave because she was going
to give birth? Could you require women to leave the job when they got pregnant? This was
all uncharted territory. Nobody had ever dealt with these questions before, at least not
at the federal level.
Some of the big
cases that came up involved schoolteachers. Schools used to fire schoolteachers when they
got pregnant. The thinking was, "It's not nice for a child to see a pregnant woman
because the child might realize that that woman had had sex." So, they fired pregnant
schoolteachers.
You had the
airline stewardess issue. I was very involved in that. Airlines, at various times in their
history, hired only women, and at other times, they hired only men. The various rationales
for this varying discrimination were fascinating. In the beginning, they hired only women.
The airlines' rationale was people were afraid to fly because they felt it wasn't safe. So
the airlines hired women and put them in nurses' uniforms so that people would be
reassured that if something happened, there was a nurse on board to take care of them.
Later on, they hired only men, because they could carry the luggage. Then, they went back
to hiring women--this time because of their sexual attraction for the mostly-male
passengers.
Danovitch: But you
didn't take your luggage on the plane.
Fuentes: The
stewards were used to move luggage to wherever the airline was moving it. In the sixties,
airlines were hiring only women for domestic flights because they [the airlines] were
competing on the basis of the "glamour." But, they would hire only men for
international routes. I don't know the rationale for that. They called them pursers or
stewards. That's the wonderful thing about sex discrimination. The rationales are wild.
For example, you would hire only a men to be brain surgeons because they had the necessary
manual dexterity, but you would hire only women as technicians in electrical plants
because they had the necessary manual dexterity. This is wonderful stuff. Whenever
you deal with rationales for discrimination, you get this kind of stuff, because
discrimination makes no sense.
Classified
advertising was a big issue. All the advertising in those days was in either "Help
Wanted, Female," or "Help Wanted, Male" columns. Everybody accepted that;
people were always looking for a "Girl Friday." Now, if you just looked at that
issue as a lawyer, it was obvious that the law required one set of ads. But the country
was at first unwilling, advertisers were unwilling, to do that. So, at first the EEOC came
up with this cockamamie solution. They required a box on the classified advertising page
that said something like, "While we're listing ads under 'Help Wanted, Male' and
'Help Wanted, Female,' we don't really mean it, and anybody can apply." Ridiculous!
That was the early position of the EEOC. Thereafter, NOW was formed, and NOW actively
fought sex-segregated advertising columns. Eventually, the EEOC required non-segregated
classified ads.
These are some
of the issues we dealt with in the early days.
Danovitch: These
issues were issues you dealt with right from the start, from the word go?
Fuentes: Well,
they [the commission] grappled with it unwillingly. I sat behind Vice Chairman Luther
Holcomb when he testified in the Congress that he wanted Congress to take sex out of the
act.
Danovitch:
Afterwards.
Fuentes: Yes,
after it was in the act, of course.
Danovitch: But we
know, at least with the benefit of time, that sex and race in many ways informed each
other.
Fuentes: Correct.
That's true. But that came with time.
Danovitch: Right.
It had a very positive, almost synergistic quality. Certainly when the sexual harassment
guidelines were under fire.
Fuentes: That's
much later. Sexual harassment issues arose much later.
Danovitch: Right.
But one of the ways in which we explained why it was reachable under Title VII was that
sex harassment had some properties to it which were similar to race harassment.
Fuentes: This was
not done much in the early days. The reason was that one of the differences was that even
in 1965 you wouldn't say to somebody, "I won't hire you because you're black,"
but you would say, "I won't hire you because you're a woman." So, people did not
see the similarities between race and sex discrimination. While you and I see them, that
recognition came later to most people.
Danovitch: Is it
because race discrimination was presumed to be hateful, invidious, but nobody hated women?
Fuentes: No, no.
It was because there was a consciousness in this country for years, and especially after Brown
v. Board of Education (1954) and the whole Civil Rights Movement, there was a
consciousness that racial discrimination went against the grain of this country, went
against what this country was supposed to stand for. But, the most recent women's movement
did not start until the mid-sixties, so there was no consciousness in this country that
there was anything wrong with treating women differently. (There was, of course, an
earlier women's movement in the United States, which began about 1848 and ended in the
early 1920s.) Women were considered different from men. It was already acknowledged that
blacks were not different from whites; I mean acknowledged by thinking people. But it was
acknowledged that women were different from men, and therefore, it was acceptable to treat
them differently?
Danovitch:
Anatomically, they were different.
Fuentes: No. Much
more than that. They were considered different in many ways.
Danovitch: Women
did have the capacity to bear children.
Fuentes: They
bore children, they were busy with the children. Their rightful place was in the home.
They thought differently. They couldn't handle finances. They were frivolous. All of that.
Danovitch: We are a
relatively young country and we also have another tradition, which was the frontier
tradition. Women were very much a part of the work world in the frontier. Women had not
always been put on pedestals and left to take care of the children. They took care of the
children, but they took care of the farm.
Fuentes: Women
worked in the factories in the Second World War. But when the war ended, the women went
back to their homes and the men took over the jobs.
Danovitch: Right.
But I'm talking about in earlier periods.
Fuentes: But,
that did not have a lasting effect on the place of women in our country.
Danovitch: But one
explanation that has been offered is that there was an assumption that discrimination
against blacks issued from hate, and that discrimination against women was another matter
and, therefore, in a different league.
Fuentes: I'm
agreeing with you that it was another matter. I think "hate" is an
oversimplification. A lot of people say it had a lot to do with economics. I don't know
that it was hate. I would say it was economics, it was slavery, it was a lot of things.
But, whatever it was, it was acceptable to treat women differently, and it was not
acceptable to treat blacks differently.
Danovitch: In 1965.
Fuentes: Correct.
Title VII became effective on July 2, 1965. But treating women differently was still
considered acceptable after the law became effective, because the law hadn't had any
impact yet.
Danovitch: What I
think you're telling me is that you remember clearly that regardless of the compromises
that went into the law, the way the law was ultimately written, there was still a feeling,
at least in the early period when you were at the EEOC, that that law was a black law,
meaning it was designed to redress the unequal status of blacks, and that even though sex
was included as a prohibited basis of discrimination, there were numerous persons of
influence at the EEOC who really didn't accept that and were willing to sweep it under the
carpet. One went so far as to testify that it ought to be taken out of the act.
Fuentes: I don't
want to say they felt the law was a black law. They knew what the law said. They just
didn't want to do it.
Danovitch: I'm
dwelling on this for two or three reasons, and I'll make it clear. Many persons who have
been interviewed, at least with the benefit of twenty-some years, don't remember that
there was any difference in the way the staff felt about race discrimination as opposed to
sex discrimination. They say from day one, everything was the same.
Fuentes: That's
one of the things that bothers me. I've often said to my friend, Mary Eastwood, "We
need to get the actual history recorded."
Those people who
try to rewrite history after they see the way the wind is blowing, that really makes my
blood boil.
Danovitch: That's
why I'm saying it, because I want to hear your recollections, because they stand out in
contrast to a great deal of the testimony that I've taken.
Fuentes: But, I
was there. One of my outstanding memories is that I used to leave the office of the
executive director, after talking with him about these issues, and I'd be walking on the
street to my car, and the tears would be rolling down my face because I felt like I was in
such a difficult position. Basically, I was battling the whole commission, except for the
few people who felt as I did. I didn't know how I got into that spot. Nobody had elected
me to represent women. I didn't know how I got into the position of battling almost an
entire agency. I used to feel terrible about it, but that's the position in which I found
myself.
It was because
of that that the National Organization for Women was founded. Betty Friedan--and this is
in her book, It Changed My Life. Betty Friedan came around to interview Charlie
Duncan and Dick Berg for this book. The first time she was there, she came to me and she
said, "How are things here? What's the conflict? What are the problems?" As a
writer, she was looking for conflict.
Danovitch: It
Changed My Life was--
Fuentes: The name
of her book.
Danovitch: I
remember The Feminine Mystique.
Fuentes: That was
written earlier.
Danovitch: Written
in the 1950s. [ii]
Fuentes: Yes.
Danovitch: And the
next one was--
Fuentes: I don't
know. She's written a number. But It Changed My Life is the one that deals with
founding NOW.
Danovitch: And
about coming to the EEOC.
Fuentes: Right.
She came and asked me what were the conflicts, what were the problems. How could I talk to
her and tell her what was going on? I felt I would jeopardize my job. So, the first time
she came around, I said nothing to her. The second time she came around--she didn't come
around to interview me; she came around to talk to Charlie Duncan and Dick Berg.
The second time she came around, I took her into my private office and I started to cry. I
said to her, "What this country needs is an organization for women like the NAACP
[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] is for blacks. I said that
because I had this lonely struggle over there. Now, I'll tell you what I did after NOW was
founded, which is one of the things that got the commission moving. How they never found
out about it, I don't know. I've talked about it openly only for the last couple of years.
I was a founder of NOW, and there were about sixty of us who founded NOW. After NOW
was founded, I used to get terribly frustrated because I'd be at meetings of the
commission where things would come up dealing with women, and the commission didn't do
what I thought it should be doing under the law.
Then, at night I
would meet with other NOW members in private homes, and with people like Mary Eastwood,
Phineas Indritz, and others, and I would tell them what the commission had not done
that day that I thought it should have done. Then, we would draft a letter to the
commission, putting in the facts that I knew, and asking the commission to do the right
thing. Those letters were sent to the commission on behalf of NOW, prodding the commission
to take action in sex discrimination areas.
I
don't understand why the commission never realized somebody was telling this organization
these facts. Now, that's an unethical thing to do. I'm just telling you that's how driven
I was to the wall that I did that. We did that for a considerable period of time. We sent
those letters to the EEOC, asking them, "How come you haven't done this? How come you
haven't done that?" and so on. NOW also picketed the EEOC. NOW brought a lawsuit
against the EEOC on the classified advertising issue. If you're saying that people think
the EEOC did the same thing for women as it did for blacks, let me tell you, it took
letters, it took picketing, it took lawsuits to get the commission to move in the area of
women's rights.
______________________________
[i] “I say that I started with the EEOC on
October 4, 1965, four months after it opened for business. My math was simply wrong here.
The EEOC opened on July 5, 1965.” –spf.
[ii] The Feminine Mystique was first published in 1963.
[Editor’s note]
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