A short commentary like this usually focuses on a single topic. The first paragraph should give the reader a pretty good indication of what is to follow. Patsy Mink’s impact
on women’s rightsMy problem is to decide which is more important:
The tale of college sports in America unexpectedly opened wide to women as an unintended consequence of a few lines placed in a many pages-long piece of federal legislation by a woman from Oregon and a woman from Hawaii?
All of the above apply to Hawaii's 20-year veteran in Congress, Rep. Patsy Takemoto Mink, born Dec. 6, 1927, in Paia, Maui, and now representing Hawaii's Second Congressional District, embracing all the state except for metropolitan Honolulu. She flies multi-miles to visit her six-island district plus 5,000 miles back and forth to serve in Congress.
Just out of the University of Hawaii in 1948, she enrolled in the University of Chicago Law School, after 12 top medical schools rejected her because she was female. Law degree in hand, she found no major Hawaii law firm wanted a woman. So she turned to private practice and service in the Legislature.
She won a seat in Congress in 1964 with a campaign demanding more federal aid for education. One night in Washington in 1972, the House Committee on Education and Labor was putting finishing touches on a mammoth bill. As Mink recalls it, the 30-plus members present said "There they go again" and didn't object when Mink and Rep. Edith Green of Oregon proposed a short amendment, saying in effect:
"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."
Some "excepts" were added for religious organizations and military services among others. The language was pages deep in the bill as "Title IX -- Prohibition of Sex Discrimination." It sailed through the committee, the House and the Senate and was signed by President Nixon on June 23, 1972.
Only afterward did college athletic directors realize (furiously) what a threat this was to their male-dominated sports programs. Mink and Green hadn't realized it either.
But Mink led a floor fight in 1975 to protect the language against an effort to repeal or soften its impact on athletics. At one point she left the floor in tears, having just learned her daughter (who is OK today) had been critically hurt in a car accident.
The Washington Post incorrectly reported the reason for her tears was that she saw her law facing a defeat which then followed. This error so disturbed Speaker Carl Albert that he personally took the floor to ask for a re-vote in which the 1972 language was saved.
EVEN the University of Hawaii today is short of full compliance with Title IX. However, some of its new women's teams are drawing big audiences, earning national kudos and have a university commitment to the equality goal.
Look what a Maui girl can do!
Look also at the Freedom of Information Act, vastly strengthened in 1976 after Mink mobilized a congressional group that won a U.S. Supreme Court decision, later cited in the Watergate case, to compel federal agencies to reveal to Congress position statements on underwater nuclear testing off Alaska they had wanted to keep secret.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.