The Negro Woman’s Stake in the Equal Rights Amendment (1971)

Summary

Pauli Murray (1910-85) was a Black woman, lawyer, social activist, and later an Episcopal Priest whose own feelings of gender ambiguity allowed her to play a pivotal role in developing the ideas and cases that cemented the prohibitions on sex discrimination into federal civil rights law and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. She strongly influenced the evolving civil rights views of figures ranging from Eleanor Roosevelt to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Here, Murray writes in support of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). 

The ERA was originally introduced in Congress in 1923, shortly after the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Authorship of the amendment is usually credited to two leaders of the women’s rights movement, Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman. The operative language of the original ERA read, “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.” The ERA was then introduced in every Congress for nearly half a century. By the 1970s, the ERA enjoyed widespread support. Both Houses of Congress had passed a version of the ERA by 1972. By 1977, the ERA had been ratified by 35 states, just shy of the 38 states needed for ratification. Congress extended the deadline for ratifying the amendment until 1982, but no new states had ratified it by that date.

Selected by

Christopher Brooks

Professor of History, East Stroudsburg University

Kenneth Mack

Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Document Excerpt

The relationship between racial discrimination and sexual discrimination is close. Negro women are acutely aware of it because of the dual nature of their experience. They recognize that both forms of discrimination are equally degrading, immoral and unjust, and that the law should deal with them in similar fashion. . . .

The history of western culture, and particularly of ecclesiastical and English common law, suggests that the traditionally subordinate status of women provided models for the oppression of other groups. The treatment of a woman as her husband’s property, as subject to his corporal punishment, as incompetent to testify under canon law, and as subject to numerous legal and social restrictions based upon sex, were precedents for the later treatment of slaves. . . .

Race and sex are comparable classes, defined by physiological characteristics, through which status is fixed from birth. Legal and social proscriptions based upon race and sex have often been identical, and have generally implied the inherent inferiority of the proscribed class to a dominant group. Both classes have been defined by, and subordinated to, the same power group—white males. . . .

. . . [T]he rights of racial minorities and women are but different aspects of the fundamental and indivisible principle of human rights for all. . . .

The presence of women in more equitable proportion to their numbers in the legislatures, on the courts, and in leadership positions throughout society is the best guarantee that their rights will be protected. Women also represent a vast untapped resource, the utilization of which may accelerate progress toward the solution of such problems as war, poverty, racism and pollution. The adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment would be an important step toward a new era of human relations.