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With all the talk about Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and Michelle Obama in the news during this presidential election, issues of racism and sexism have risen to the top of the American consciousness. What better time than now to look back at an important moment in American feminist history?
The documentary film "Sisters of '77" tells the story of the 1977 National Women's Conference held in Houston, Texas. The weekend long meeting was attended by a wide range of prominent women including former First Ladies Rosalyn Carter, Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson, civil rights activist Coretta Scott King, writer Maya Angelou, and feminist activists Gloria Steinem and Betty Freidan.
Cynthia Salzman Mondell is the award winning producer and director of "Sisters of '77," and I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Cynthia about the film, her career, and the current presidential election.
First a little background. As Jo Freeman.com described it:
The primary job of the national conference was to formulate and pass a National Plan of Action, based on recommendations from the state meetings. The final Plan had 26 planks, ranging from better enforcement of existing laws to broad demands for a national health security system, full employment, peace and disarmament.
Originally, Cynthia Salzman Mondell was contracted to do a short film about the conference for the Women's Museum in Dallas. It was to focus on women who helped found the museum and who had also attended the 1977 conference.
After receiving additional funding from Ed Delaney of Circle R Group Studios, Cynthia and her husband Allen decided to do an expanded version of the film which included interviews of some of the organizers and attendees.
Doing a film of the conference was a natural for Cynthia because she actually attended as an observer and was also one of several torch bearers who ran from the first National Women's Conference site in Seneca Falls, New York, to Houston. That first conference was held in 1848. Cynthia had this to say about the film:
It comes from my heart and soul because I was actually at the conference in 1977. I wasn't a delegate but I went to the conference because I lived in Dallas. My sister flew down from Baltimore with her baby and I put my daughter in the car, and we drove to Houston. Then we stopped because I ran with the torch right outside of Houston.
It was a very empowering moment for my sister because I said, "you're going to have to follow me" and she said, "I don't know how to drive a stick shift."
I said, "well you're going to have to learn now. Just keep your foot on the clutch if you can't figure it out." I always say we weren't the same after that conference and neither was my car.
It was a contentious time and not everyone was pleased with the conference's goals. There were protesters outside who chanted about men being superior to women, and across town another conference was taking place, nicknamed "the Phyllis Schlafly conference" after the ultra conservative who founded the Eagle Forum. Among the Eagle Forum's positions
We oppose the feminist goals of stereotyping men as a constant danger to women, while at the same time pushing women into military combat against foreign enemies.
Eagle Forum successfully led the ten-year battle to defeat the misnamed Equal Rights Amendment with its hidden agenda of tax-funded abortions and same-sex marriages.
The film, which was completed in 2005 won a Cine Golden Eagle Award under the previous title "The Spirit of Women," and was later broadcast nationally on PBS. Cynthia says that after the national exposure she was gratified by the reaction from young women especially. There were subsequent screenings on college campuses and young women would often say afterwards that this was their first exposure to the history of the women's movement.
Jen Johans of Film Intuition recently reviewed "Sisters Of '77." Here's an excerpt:
Charting the conference with captivating archival footage as well as inserting both supplementary research and candid modern interviews in Sisters of ’77, we’re given a thorough insider’s perspective of a hugely significant yet highly under-publicized event. And given the results of this year political campaigns and some of the controversial media coverage which has provoked eye-opening discussions about discrimination and double standards regarding both gender and race, the Mondells’ film seems even
