“I hope we can elect enough women to pass the ERA”

As we develop our Election coverage with a feminist lens, we take a look back at this July 1990 story by Verna Pitts

 

She looked like someone’s grandmother.

With her gray hair pulled back in a no-nonsense bun at the nape of her neck, little gold earrings, a steel-blue knit dress and her tiny feet shod in cream-colored shoes with bows on them, she looked like she might have been waiting for someone to pick her up for church or a bridge game. 

Sensing my approach, she turned to face me, her blue eyes caught mine and she smiled and extended her hand. “Hello, I’m Molly Yard,” she said, firmly shaking my outstretched hand.

Yard, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), was in Monticello as the keynote speaker at the Minnesota NOW’s annual conference.

Yard’s career as an activist started at Swarthmore College in the 1930s, and has taken her through political campaigns, organizing, and finally to the helm of NOW. She has been active in NOW since 1974 and has been on the national staff since 1978.

Her leadership and contributions are significant in terms of fundraising and swelling the ranks of NOW membership. Her skills as a motivational and convincing speaker are becoming legendary, as are her lobbying skills.

Yard attributes her values and ideals to her upbringing. The child of Methodist missionaries, she was born in China, where she lived until she was 13.

Her mother wanted to attend college, but was sent instead to finishing school. Consequently Yard and her four sisters were raised with a high value placed on education and a low value placed on performing household chores.

“My mother hated housework. In China women weren’t valued at all, but in our household there were no prejudices of any kind toward people. There was no devaluation of me just because I happened to be female.”

She considered her father to be ahead of his time. He suggested to the mission that the work in China was done and it was time to turn it back to the Chinese people. He was rewarded for this idea by “literally being booted out mission,” Yard said, shaking her head in disbelief. 

She was married in 1938, her husband is labor arbitrator Sylvester Garrett. Was she fortunate enough to have married a true egalitarian, I asked.

“He wasn’t really — who could be? He wasn’t brought up that way.” She chuckled. “When we were about to be married, I said, ‘I hope you understand that I’m going to keep my own name.’ He looked a little surprised but said okay. I guess he couldn’t quite figure out why I was doing that.

“We moved all the time. I hated that because I wanted a political career, which is impossible if you are always moving. A few years ago he said, ‘It’s perfectly true I never thought about what you wanted.’ I think over a lifetime he’s learned quite a lot.”

Despite moving, Yard ran for the Pennsylvania state legislature in 1964. “I was at least 10 years ahead of my time. I don’t think people were ready to deal with a woman.” Her party did not endorse her, although she won the primary.

Motherhood was a role that came easily and joyfully to her. “I’ve never understood women who don’t have children, because there’s nothing like it, nothing that compares. It’s a miracle and why would you deny yourself that experience? That’s always baffled me.” She has three children and five grandchildren.

Eleanor Roosevelt was a mentor for Yard. Yard became involved in the student movement of the ’30s as national chair of the American Student Union, and it was there that she first met Mrs. Roosevelt.

“We were very critical of the New Deal. It totally ignored young people who were coming out of college with no jobs for them. Mrs. Roosevelt, who has to be one of the most remarkable people of the 20th century, decided she was going to find out what made us so unhappy. She simply picked up the phone and called to speak with us. Could you imagine a first lady doing that? I could imagine Betty Ford doing that. She was, I think, closer to being like Mrs. Roosevelt than anyone else.”

In reminiscing about events in her life that have given her a sense of pride and satisfaction, Yard recalled her first political campaign, “when we threw women’s fraternities out of Swarthmore College. We did such a good job they have never come back. It was a question of discrimination, because they wouldn’t take Jews.”

Some 30 years later Yard was an organizer for the 1963 civil rights march on Washington. “I’ll never forget walking down Constitution Avenue toward the Lincoln Memorial. On one side of me is this big hulking guy and on the other side of me is this tiny black woman from Alabama. She looked quite old and she was weeping, tears streaming down her face. She couldn’t believe it was happening. Then I look at this hulk of a guy next to me and tears were streaming down his face, too. It was something. It was absolutely one of the great days.” 

No conversation with Yard would be complete without a discussion about the current political climate. She has high hopes for some big changes in the 1990 and 1992 elections.

She was complimentary and enthusiastic about the pro-choice campaign that defeated a restrictive anti-abortion bill in Minnesota this year. She commented, however, that “We could stand some better representation from Minnesota in Washington.”

Retiring is out of the question. As she sees it there is no reason to stop and rest on her laurels. “Why would you stop? It’s not as if we’ve experienced triumph everywhere.”

I asked Yard what she wanted her legacy to be — how she wanted to be remembered when she passed from this world. “Good Grief! Well, I would like to have had it been to pass the ERA. I hope we can elect enough women to pass the ERA. That’s my legacy.”

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Mary Alexander “Molly” Yard was an American feminist and social activist who served as the eighth president of the National Organization for Women from 1987 to 1991 and was a link between first and second-wave feminism. She died in 2005. (There is still no national ERA, and Minnesota has not passed an Equal Rights Amendment.)

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