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The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was first introduced in the U.S. Congress in 1923. It was introduced in every session of Congress after that for nearly half a century. In 1971 the House of Representatives approved the proposed amendment. The Senate approved the amendment a year later. The issue was sent to the state legislatures and twenty states ratified the ERA almost immediately (Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin). In 1973 Connecticut, South Dakota, Oregon, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming ratified; Nebraska voted to rescind its ratification. Over the next few years, Maine, Montana and Ohio voted to ratify and Tennessee voted to rescind. In an effort to gain the additional three votes necessary for ratification, groups with many pro-ERA supporters boycotted unratified states. As the deadline for ratification loomed near (22 March 1979), Representative Elizabeth Holtzman (D-NY) introduced a bill to extend the deadline for ratification. In October of 1978, Congress set a new deadline for the ERA--30 June 1982. In 1980 Ronald Reagan became the first president since the Equal Rights Amendment was sent to the states to oppose the ERA. On 30 June 1982 the ERA died, falling three states short of the necessary three-fourths ratification.
Beth Leopold worked on the National Organization for Women (NOW) campaign to ratify the ERA. After its defeat, she sought to ensure that the story of the fight for ratification would be preserved and began the Equal Rights Amendment Campaign Archives Project. The goal of the ERA Campaign Archives Project was to "collect and process oral history and photographic materials relating to the ERA campaign between the years 1970 and 1982." The focus of the collecting was on the experiences of participants in the local, state, and national levels of the campaign.
The aim of the original project was to interview 150-200 people involved in the pro or anti-ERA work using archival quality open reel audiotape and to make typed transcripts of the interviews. There were also plans to create an index of the subjects covered in the interviews, along with photographs and a directory for additional materials related to the ERA campaign. Because funding for the project ran out in 1984, the oral history interviews were never created; however, Beth Leopold acted as intermediary between the Sophia Smith Collection and two documentary filmmakers to house their tapes and accompanying printed matter within the ERACAP collection. In addition, Leopold's own ERA-related material came with the ERACAP materials.
The ERACAP Records consist of 22 cubic feet and are primarily related to the fight to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment between 1972 and 1982. Types of materials include correspondence, speeches, legal documents, photographs, press releases, reports, journal and newspaper articles, transcripts of interviews, audiocassettes, videocassettes, legislative records, logbooks, notes, documentary footage, and memorabilia.
The bulk of the records comprise audiovisual materials documenting the ERA fights in Chicago and North Carolina from two documentaries,
Notable individuals included in the documentary footage are: Susan Cantinia, Dennis Cuddy, Donald Deuster, Frances Fitzgerald, Jesse Helms, Wilma Scott Heide, Peggy Madigan, Lamarr Mooneyham, Kathy Railsback, Phyllis Schlafly, Ellie Smeal, Gloria Steinem, and Monica Faith Stewart.
This collection is organized into five series:
The Records are open to research according to the regulations of the Sophia Smith Collection with the following exception: Original videotapes and master copies are closed. Viewing copies are available on DVD.
Note: this collection has not been fully processed and may be somewhat difficult to use.
Permission must be obtained to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use." Copyright to materials authored by other people or organization may be owned by those individuals or organizations or their heirs or assigns. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights.
Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:
Equal Rights Amendment Campaign Archives Project Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Lynn Kanter (Virago Video) donated the audiovisual materials from Fighting for the Obvious in 1984. Beth Leopold donated her personal papers and the records of ERACAP as well as Victoria Costello's materials relating to
Preliminary processing and finding aid by Kara M. McClurken, 2005.
60 videotapes were reformatted in 2008 to digital Betamax (master) and DVD (research use copies).
The majority of the records of the National Organization for Women and the ERA can be found at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
This series contains Beth Leopold's administrative records of the Equal Rights Amendment Campaign Archives Project, including the project proposal, ERACAP's financial and equipment needs, and correspondence with the Sophia Smith Collection. Most of the unrelated publications by history organizations and guides to oral histories have been removed from the collection.
Beth Leopold's work at the National Organization for Women is documented in this series. Media projects played a large role in NOW's efforts to pass the ERA in the fifteen states where it hadn't yet passed. The ERA Countdown campaign materials include photocopies of images dating back to the early twentieth century that were selected for a film to document the struggle for the ERA, with the bulk of the images covering the 1970s and early 1980s. Other media-related projects for NOW can be found in the materials related to the Legal Defense and Education Fund. This series also covers several major marches and rallies for the ERA. The Capitol March for ERA focuses mostly on Chicago, where Leopold directed her energies.
This series also includes subject files, memorabilia, and a bibliography of newspaper clippings from the New York Times related to the ERA from 1970 through 1982.
[see also SERIES V. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS--
This series is composed of the administrative and subject files of Victoria Costello, the director for Who Will Protect the Family?, an hour length color PBS documentary that examines the motivations, beliefs, and larger goals of the two movements fighting for and against the Equal Rights Amendment. Although the documentary specifically focuses on the three year battle to pass the ERA in North Carolina, the materials in this series include legislation, statistics, and organization files from both the state and national levels, as well as subjects that extend beyond the Equal Rights Amendment itself. Only a few transcripts from the film footage are in the collection; nevertheless, the few that exist provide valuable insight into the motivations of individuals fighting for and against the passage of the amendment. The audiovisual materials from the documentary are found in SERIES V. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS.
This small series contains published and unpublished articles and essays that examine the Equal Rights Amendment, its defeat, and its supporters and opponents.
[Original videotapes and master copies are closed. Viewing copies are available on DVD.]
This large series forms the bulk of the collection and includes 30 hours of videotape for Fighting for the Obvious (over 100 tapes), a documentary about the ERA fight in Illinois, as well as several hundred ¾ inch Umatics and ½ inch Betas from the PBS documentary Who Will Protect the Family?, which documents the ERA fight in North Carolina.
A title list of the videotapes is available in the Sophia Smith Collection
[see also Smith College]
[audiocassette cannot be played until use copy is made]
[see also Public Service Announcements]
[see also North Carolina 1981 legislative session, U.S. Congress, Anti-ERA; SERIES II. National Organization for Women]
[note: most of the audiotapes and transcripts from this project are located in the Women's Rights subject collection; see also Corr in series I]
A title list of videotapes is available in the Sophia Smith Collection
[Original format videotapes are closed. DVD copies are available for research use.]