Phyllis Schlafly

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Phyllis Schlafly bigraphy, stories - American activist

Phyllis Schlafly : biography

15 August 1924 –

Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly ( born August 15, 1924) is an American constitutional lawyer, conservative activist, author, and founder of the Eagle Forum. She is known for her opposition to modern feminism and for her campaign against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. Her self-published book, A Choice, Not An Echo, was published in 1964 from her home in Alton, Illinois, across the Mississippi River from her native St. Louis. She formed Pere Marquette Publishers company. She has co-authored books on national defense and was highly critical of arms-control agreements with the Soviet Union.Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons. 2000. Right–Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Press, p. 202.

Schlafly founded the Eagle Forum in the 1970s and the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, St. Louis. , she is still the president of the organizations, and also has a presence on the lecture circuit. Since 1967, she has published a newsletter, the Phyllis Schlafly Report.

Activism and political efforts

In 1946, Schlafly became a researcher for the American Enterprise Institute and worked in the successful United States House of Representatives campaign of Claude I. Bakewell.Critchlow, pp. 25-29.

In 1952, Schlafly ran for Congress as a Republican in the majority Democratic 24th congressional district of Illinois but lost to Democrat Charles Melvin Price.Critchlow 2005, pp. 47-59. Schlafly’s campaign was low-budget and promoted heavily through the local print media, and local entrepreneurs John M. and Spencer Olin as well as Texas oil billionaire H. L. Hunt donated to her campaign.Critchlow 2005, p. 55. She also attended her first Republican National Convention that year and continued to attend each following convention. As part of the Illinois delegation of the 1952 Republican convention, Schlafly endorsed Robert Taft to be the party nominee for the presidential election.Critchlow 2005, p. 46. At the 1960 Republican National Convention, Schlafly helped lead a revolt of "moral conservatives" against Richard Nixon’s stance (as the New York Times puts it) "against segregation and discrimination."Warner, Judith. , New York Times, January 29, 2006.

She came to national attention when millions of copies of her self-published book, A Choice, Not an Echo, were distributed in support of Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. In it, Schlafly denounced the Rockefeller Republicans in the Northeast, accusing them of corruption and globalism. Critics called the book a conspiracy theory about "secret kingmakers" controlling the Republican Party.Berlet and Lyons. 2000. Right–Wing Populism in America, pp. 180, 202.

In 1967, Schlafly lost a bid for the presidency of the National Federation of Republican Women against the more moderate candidate Gladys O’Donnell of California. Outgoing NFRW president and future United States Treasurer Dorothy Elston of Delaware worked against Schlafly in the campaign.Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism (Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 138-159.

Schlafly joined the John Birch Society, but quit because she thought that the main Communist threats to the nation were external rather than internal. In 1970, she ran unsuccessfully for a House of Representatives seat in Illinois against Democratic incumbent George E. Shipley.

Opposition to an Equal Rights Amendment

Schlafly became an outspoken opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment during the 1970s as the organizer of the "STOP ERA" campaign. STOP is an initialism for "Stop Taking Our Privileges." Schlafly argued that the ERA would take away gender specific privileges currently enjoyed by women, including "dependent wife" benefits under Social Security and the exemption from Selective Service registration.

In 1972, when Schlafly began her efforts against the Equal Rights Amendment, it had already been ratified by 28 of the necessary 38 states. She organized a campaign to oppose further ratification. Five more states ratified ERA after Schlafly began her opposition campaign; however, five states rescinded their ratifications. The last state to ratify was Indiana, where then State Senator Wayne Townsend cast the tie-breaking vote for ratification in January 1977. Schlafly argued that "the ERA would lead to women being drafted by the military and to public unisex bathrooms." She was opposed by groups such as, National Organization for Women (NOW) and the ERAmerica coalition. To counter Schlafly’s Stop ERA campaign, the Homemakers’ Equal Rights Association was formed. Women & Leadership Archives, Loyola University Chicago