while I breathe, I hope – can I get an amen, sisters?

ticket never used – ERA defeated in South Carolina

In 1972 the United States Senate approved the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution and sent it to the states for ratification. The following is the gist of the amendment according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

Despite the best efforts of many women (and a few men, too), the state of South Carolina failed to become one of the thirty-eight states needed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment by the 1979 deadline (later moved to 1982) that was approved in 1972 by the SC House of Representatives in a unanimous vote but blocked in the state Senate primarily through the deception of the most powerful Senator Marion Gressette who advised supporters they had his yes vote if they wouldn’t create chaos in the state with their protests. Led by the South Carolina Coalition for the ERA organized in 1973, attorney Malissa Burnette who was president of the newly formed Columbia Chapter of the National Organization for Women, two women from the national leadership of NOW sent to South Carolina to help with lobbying in the Senate in 1977, activists relied on the word of Senator Gressette who ultimately voted against ratification to block the amendment.

Virginia became the 38th. state to ratify the ERA in 2020, but unfortunately the deadlines for ratification were long gone, and today controversy remains in Congress over whether they can change the deadline to accommodate the Virginia vote.

When Pretty and I toured the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D. C. in 2003, we saw this quote of his that best expresses my social justice activism over the last fifty years:

“We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.”

While we breathe, we hope. Can I get an amen, sisters?

Onward.