Kill That Snake": Anti-ERA Women and the Battle Over the Equal Rights Amendment in Louisiana

267 Pages·2017·1.6 MB·English

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LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School
2014
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Yvonne Brown
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
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Brown, Yvonne, "“Kill That Snake": Anti-ERA Women and the Battle Over the Equal Rights Amendment in
Louisiana, 1972-1982" (2014). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 636.
https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/636
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“KILL THAT SNAKE”:
ANTI-ERA WOMEN AND THE BATTLE OVER THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT
IN LOUISIANA, 1972-1982

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

in

The Department of History

by
Yvonne Brown
B.A., University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2004
M.A., University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2006
December 2014
In memory of my twin sister, Yvette
1956-2004
ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to thank the history department at LSU for giving me the opportunity to earn a
doctorate in history. The department provided me with an assistantship that greatly
facilitated my first two years of study. Dr. Victor Stater, former graduate coordinator, Dr.
Gaines Foster, former department chair, and Dr. Christine Kooi, present graduate
coordinator, were always generous with their time and expertise. My committee chair, Dr.
Alecia Long, deserves a special note of thanks. She gave me good guidance, but also leeway
to pursue my own path, which is what a good committee chairman does. She also went an
extra mile—or two—when she helped me with living arrangements and with support
through a grant, which allowed me to finish vital coursework. The incisive comments,
criticisms, and suggestions of my dissertation committee, including Dr. Gaines Foster, Dr.
Charles Shindo, and Dr. Jas. Sullivan, challenged me, but also gave me hope that a future
iteration of this work will be more mature, focused, and exciting. Words hardly seem
adequate to acknowledge the debt I owe to my kind and enduring husband, Stanley, and my
brilliant and brave daughters, Joanna, Elizabeth, and Ruth. I say in truth that my daughters
inspire me with their accomplishments, and not the other way around. Lastly, I must
acknowledge God’s grace in my life, through the incomparable love, mercy, and forgiveness
of His Son, without which, none of this would have been possible.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………iii

ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………v

INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………..1

CHAPTER

1. FROM WOMAN MOVEMENT TO WOMEN’S LIB: A BRIEF
OVERVIEW OF FIRST AND SECOND WAVE FEMINISM IN
THE NATION AND IN LOUISIANA…………………………………………..12

2. SECOND WAVE FEMINISM AND THE CHANGING STATUS OF
LOUISIANA WOMEN IN THE 1970s………….………………………………52

3. THE RISE OF ORGANIZED ANTI-ERA WOMEN IN
LOUISIANA: CLASHES OVER GENDER, CULTURE, AND
POLITICS IN THE 1970s……………………………………………………….108

4. WOMEN, RELIGION, AND THE ERA IN LOUISIANA……………………..156

5. THE LOUISIANA LEGISLATURE, LOUISE JOHNSON, AND
LOSING THE ERA………………………………………………………………203

CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………238

BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………243

VITA…………………………………………………………………………………………254
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ABSTRACT

This dissertation analyzes the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) ratification battle in
Louisiana and the women who helped defeat it. The study emphasizes the role of anti-ERA
women in the amendment’s defeat, but the views of pro-ERA women are also featured.
Historical evidence shows that ERA advocates underestimated anti-ERA women. They
dismissed anti-ERA women as either ignorant of their oppression or as pawns of male
interests. This study challenges the idea that female ERA opponents in Louisiana behaved
irrationally, worked against their own interests, or acted at the behest of men.
Organized women led in opposition to the ERA in Louisiana. Several factors
motivated them, including their religious beliefs. Anti-ERA women had different
worldviews than pro-ERA women regarding the meanings of gender and equality. Although
they came from different faiths, most ERA opponents believed in a created order based on
gender difference. In their view, a law that forced equality by demanding men and women
be treated the same would not only fail, it would generate disastrous social consequences,
including women being drafted into the military, moral decline, and family breakdown. The
desire to preserve their class and social status also motivated them. Most anti-ERA women
were wives who depended on their husbands financially. They received economic rewards
from their marital status, but also psychological and social rewards. Anti-ERA women
believed the ERA would diminish and possibly eliminate their roles as housewives. An
emerging conservative movement, which began to take shape in the context of the Cold War
and the 1960s social revolution, also influenced and motivated anti-ERA women in
Louisiana. A significant number of Louisiana women rejected many of the tenets of this
social revolution, including feminism and the ERA.
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INTRODUCTION
On June 30, 1982, approximately one-hundred men and women gathered for a
luncheon at the Royale Rouge Hotel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The participants gathered
to celebrate the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) at the national and state level.
When Congress passed the ERA in 1972, it set a seven year ratification period, which would
have ended in 1979. When it became clear the amendment would not be ratified by that
date, Congress granted a three-year extension. Even with more time, however, the ERA fell
three states short of the thirty-eight needed for ratification. The state of Louisiana refused to
ratify, despite a hard fought campaign by the state’s small but dedicated cadre of feminists.
Gail Cox, head of a group called “A Better Way than the ERA,” presided over the June
program, which honored Louisiana legislators who fought against the amendment. The
mood of the event was one of rejoicing, but there was unmistakable gloating in the air.
Participants sang a song called “Down the Ole Drain” to the tune of “Tammy,” a hit song
from 1957 recorded by popular singer and actress Debbie Reynolds. The last verse went,
“Does Ellie Smeal really feel like she could die? My heart beats so joyfully. I think I know
why. I wish that she knew what I’m thinking of—ERA, ERA, glug, glug, glug, glug.”1
Former state representative Louise Johnson of Bernice received accolades for her
leadership in defeating passage. In her words, she “made national headlines in 1972 when
she was the first woman legislator in the country to come out against the amendment.”
Beatrice Hawthorne Moore was the first woman elected to the Louisiana House of
Representatives in 1940, but Johnson made history in 1972 as the first woman elected to the

State Times
1
Lynn Dias, “Anti-ERA forces rejoice in amendment’s death,” (Baton Rouge, La.), July 1,
1982, the song “Tammy” can be accessed online at www.last.fm/music/Debbie+Reynolds/_/Tammy.

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Louisiana House from a north Louisiana parish, Union Parish. Despite her status as a female
political pioneer, Johnson swore to defeat the ERA at the same time she swore her oath of
office. Leaving little doubt as to her intent, Johnson stood a homemade sign on her desk in
the chamber featuring a slithering reptile and the words, “Kill That Snake.” The fact that a
woman presented the ERA as a snake and vowed to kill it presents interesting opportunities
for analysis. In the view of anti-ERA women, just as the first snake in the Garden of Eden
fooled Eve into abandoning her place in paradise, the second snake, the ERA, promised
equality to women, but robbed them of the cherished protections and privileges of
womanhood instead.2
This dissertation analyzes the Louisiana ERA ratification battle in the 1970s and the
women who helped defeat the amendment. It also presents the views of pro-ERA women in
detail. The historical evidence shows that ERA advocates underestimated anti-ERA women
in Louisiana. They often dismissed ERA opponents as pawns of male interests or as
ignorant and anachronistic. Organized women, however, led in opposition to the ERA in the
state. They were motivated by several factors, including their religious beliefs. Most
opponents were evangelical Protestants or traditional Catholics, with small numbers of
Mormon women also active in the movement. Anti-ERA women had different worldviews
than pro-ERA women regarding the origins and definitions of gender and of equality. Not
all anti-ERA women and men believed in the same story of man’s origins, but they believed
in a created order based on gender difference and specificity of purpose. In their view, a law
that forced equality by demanding men and women be treated the same was not only

State Times
2 New Orleans States Item,
WLyonmne Dni aosf ,t “hAen Ltoi-uEiRsiAan fao rLceegsi srleajtouicree in amendment’s death,” (Baton Rouge, La.), July 1,
1982, Joan Kent, “Can ERA friend and foe find happiness,” May 2, 1975; and Louise B.
Johnson, (Farmerville, LA: Greenbay Publishing, 1986).

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doomed to fail, it would generate unintended and even disastrous social consequences.
These consequences included the draft for women, changes in marital laws regarding
spousal support, child custody, and alimony, moral decline, and family breakdown.
The desire to preserve their class and social status also motivated them. Most anti-
ERA women were dependent financially on their husbands, but their economic status
allowed them to be part of social networks and volunteer women’s organizations. As
historian Arlene Kaplan Daniels has pointed out, volunteer women received rewards from
their status, which often went beyond money. Anti-ERA women believed passage of the
ERA would diminish and possibly eliminate their roles as housewives. An emerging
conservative political movement, which began to take shape in the context of the Cold War
and the 1960s social revolution, also influenced and motivated anti-ERA women in
Louisiana. As part of this post-WWII conservative revival, a significant number of
Louisiana women rejected many of the tenets of the 1960s and 70s social revolution,
including feminism and the ERA.
The ERA was almost fifty years old by the time it came up for ratification in 1972.
Alice Paul, head of the National Woman’s Party, first proposed the “Lucretia Mott
Amendment” in 1923, in the wake of the passage of female suffrage. The Mott Amendment
said, “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place
subject to its jurisdiction” and “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation.” Due to the efforts of the National Woman’s Party, Congress
considered the ERA in almost every session for twenty years after 1923. Although the
Republican Party endorsed it in 1940 and the Democratic Party in 1944, the ERA did not
come to a floor vote in either House until 1946, when the United States Senate voted 39-35
3
in favor. The vote fell short of the two-thirds majority required in the Senate, however. In
the meantime, the Mott Amendment was renamed and reworded in 1944, and has remained
unchanged to the present. The “Alice Paul Amendment” said, “Equality of rights under the
law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
Article two stated, “The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate
legislation, the provisions of the article.” Lastly, the law said, “This amendment shall take
effect two years after the date of ratification.”3
Despite its simple wording, the ERA provoked controversy from the beginning.
Opposition to the ERA did not come as much from traditionalists as it did from within the
ranks of the women’s movement. Feminists divided over whether women would be better
off under laws created to protect them in the workplace or under laws that did not recognize
differences between men and women. Organized labor and feminist luminaries such as
Eleanor Roosevelt went on record against the amendment. They fought the ERA because
they thought it “would make it possible to wipe out legislation which has been enacted in
many states for the special needs of women in industry.” Nevertheless, as women surged
into the workforce during and after WWII, perceptions about the amendment began to
change. The US Senate passed the ERA by wide margins in 1950 and 1953. Senator Carl
Hayden (D-Arizona) helped facilitate its passage by adding a “rider,” which sought to

3 Cornell University ILR School,
Thomas H. Neale, “The Proposed Equal Rights Amendment: Contemporary Ratification Issues,”
Congressional Research Services, 2-28-2013, access at
www.digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/key_workplace/1038; and text of Equal Rights Amendment can be
accessed online at “The Equal Rights Amendment: Unfinished Business for the Constitution,”
www.equalrightsamendment.org/overview.htm.

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