all of my witnesses for patience and for attending this hearing and look forward to working with all of you. [ gavel sounds ] next representative schroder talks about politics. and then first lady pat nixon. this weekend head to the state capitol named in honor of thomas jefferson. st saturday at noon eastern, family

life inside the governor's mansion. from ancient mesthopotamia and on sunday on american history tv. >> at one time this was called the bloodiest 47 acres in america. >> a warden takes you through the state jail. once a month, we explore the life in cities across america. this weekend from jefferson city. on c-span 2 and 3. now former u.s. representative pat schroeder talks about women in politics in the 1970s.

she was one of 14 women in the u.s. house. she talks about the obstacles that women and other minorities faced in the 1970s. this is an hour. praus plaus [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you so much. so sweet of you. thank you, how wonderful. how nice to see so many of you. you're all marvelous, thank you. it is great to be here and i can't tell you how honored i am to be the inaugural history lecturer here. i'm glad it's not the natural history museum. i'm feeling a little bit like an artifact because exactly three weeks ago i got a pace maker put in. i'm feeling more like a historical artifact as it goes. it is marvelous to be here.

i must say, ed, i have retired from the book publishers, i should have updated you on that but it was a very nice thing. yeah, right, okay, so i finally have decided that i'm going to take life a little easier. but this is absolutely a delight to get to talk about life in the '70s, not my '70s which i'm but the 70s which we all went through. and to do that, i brought a spoon. because when i think of history in colorado, it has been fairly unique compared to a lot of other places. so often you think the things happen where you move the spoon a little bit and little bit and finally it falls off the table but it takes a very long time to change things. but i've always noticed in colorado, in our history,

sometimes these movements start somewhere else but we grab them by the horns and say, okay, let's go for it. we push the spoon off the table sometimes faster. colorado always fascinated me that way. i want to talk about the women's movement and in 19 -- 18 i'm sorry, i'm sorry in 1840, in london, there was the world anti-slavery meeting. and many quakers went from the united states. now, the quakershood had had a huge fight in philadelphia, very much involved in textile making and some said you can't use cotton because it is grown by slaves. and the others said, look, we're in business, we got to use what we can get. where the are we going to get cotton except from the south?

those got mad and moved north. they started to make a very fine wool and had something -- i remember my grandmother had it, made a fortune, because they created what they called finger shaws, so light, you could pull them through your ring, your ring finger. so they were very, very light. ring finger shaws were great, made them rich. a group of them from the northern new york area boarded the sailing ships and went to london, pretty amazing for this event. among that group happened to be la krish sa mott and several other activists in the quaker movement in the anti-slavery movement. they got there and the english told them they couldn't sit on the main floor, they were women for heaven's sakes, they would have to sit in the gallery.

well, after further along they tried to push some movements to say, can't women vote or can't we be participants and they all got thrown out. so going home on the ship, you can imagine these women are riled up and it takes a while to sail back. this is enough already. they put together an 1848 up in seneca falls, the first meeting in the history of the world and women got together and men too and came out with this declaration of sentiments, i'm sure many of you have seen it. you know how fast that moved. but that was a -- 1848. mean while, let's flip to 1876, when colorado comes into the union. we didn't do what wyoming did. they put if in when they came in the union and kind of cheated.

the understanding was they put it in because every time a new school alarm showed up, there was huge fights among the cowboys and they thought it would attract more women to wyoming. in colorado, in colorado what they did say when they came into the union was that women would be allowed to run and vote for school board. so that was kind of unique, other states weren't doing that. but the women weren't really happy here. so a group of women went to chicago where they were getting ready to celebrate the big bicentennial celebration. there was a whole separate women's area, that's a whole interesting story in and of itself because they kind of got thrown out. kept reminding the people this was to celebrate christopher columbus and kept reminding them, never mind, we don't need

any women's stuff here. they created and said to the women, could you come help us, we want to vote for equal rights and to be able to vote, sufferage in colorado. >> they said are you kidding? we're up to our ears in alligators here. the women got it on the ballot in 1877 it was voted down. sadly. that was only one year after they came into the statehood. the women didn't stop. the unions here then allowed women to vote and the union votes, which was very good and didn't happen a lot of places, and in 1893, boom, colorado passed it, marvelous. men voted, only men could vote and thank you, men, they voted to give women the vote. and colorado and new zealand were the only two places then on the planet because they both give women the right to vote that year which was quite unheard of. in 1894 a few women got into the legislature which was pretty

amazing. in 1912, maybe some of you have seen former senator pat pasco's book, she wrote a book about helen robinson, the second woman elected in the united states to a state senate, a very distinguished woman and part of a huge progressive movement that was sweeping colorado at that time. unfortunately, there was a little backlash that happened that many some of you have heard about, lud low and all of the labor violence up there and the governor would refuse to send out the national guard and finally president wilson had to call out the troops and all of this. helen robinson was very involved with that, involved with children's rights, equal pay and

minimum wage, with all of these good progressive issues. and she even got molly brown to donate $1,000, which in those days was a whole lot of money to help the lud low families that have been affected by this terrible event that went on. and after her four years in the senate, she said enough and gotten too crazy up there. i said to people when i was reading, senator pasco's book that we ought to send that book around to a lot of people who are currently in office because it was really pretty rugged back then too. it gives you a little context. she did live through it. in 1916, montana sent wonderful janet ran kin and she immediately went there and voted against the war. she got defeated and went back again right before world war ii, went back and voted against that war too. she was consistent.

but there is a marvelous picture in the national archives of her being sworn on on the house floor. there is not another male other than the ones that had to perform the ceremony on the floor. but the entire gallery is ringed in women in white dresses. really a very exciting time. four years later, finally the rest of america got to vote. those are all kind of exciting things, i think, that happened. but it also kind of shows that colorado would have these massive progressive spurts and then we would have a real swing back. there was a while as you know even the klan was very strong in colorado and parts. but throughout all of this, we always had that western thing of people being able to do what they could possibly -- what they wanted to do. we weren't nearly as sex grated shall i say or the class war. i was looking at a few things

that colorado had here for women that were first. mary long was the first woman to run an amusement park for ages. anna al ford, first women professional jockey. and actually, i was so proud when i got to congress because colorado had one of the few women statues in the hall, dr. sabin was there. all of us that -- that was very nice that not only she had done that but recognized it. dr. ford, an african-american woman got her medical degree in 1899. delivered 7,000 babies. and it wasn't until 1950 that

the denver medical society allowed her to join. but nevertheless she did her job. virginia neil blue was the state treasurer in 1966, ruth stockton was a republican and strong in the house. many of you remember secretary in river ridge. these were women who did incredible things, not to mention condyleeza rice, madeline albright, they all were here. i think there's something in the water. when you really start looking at the number of women who came through here, that really went on. it's really quite wonderful. we also know a third of our cowboys were african-american, which was great. we have had this, this in our history all along and in the west, i think we've always been kind of proud of that, it's been

more frontier where you can come and you were what you could do. we didn't really care about your pedigree. we get to world war ii and colorado until then had been a nice quiet place and a whole lot of people discovered colorado. post world war ii there was a huge influx of people coming in. and then the '60s hit which we all remember, fairly turbulent. we had the king and the assassination, the kennedy assassination, civil rights, the war on poverty and incredible musical changes with the rolling stones and everybody else coming out. the beatles. people are still playing that music. couldn't have been that bad i guess. jim and i moved here in the 60s.

we were quite offended. there was an awful article in the new yorker. that article said that people in colorado really, you know, they are very closed. they made their money out of the ground, they didn't make it with their brains and they are not preserving their history. it was really -- i don't know if anyone remembers the article, everyone was passing it around and it was like, we thought we didn't like new york and now we really don't like new york. but new york -- colorado looked very placid to the rest of the world at that time because it really was fairly settled and granted there were people moving in, but they hadn't made their real impact yet. waiting for that for the '70s, right? jim and i for example, met and you all know her, dana crawford,

wonderful woman like a force of nature, who decided by god, they were going to save lower downtown or she was going to die trying. we became early investors in larimar square with her and others and we started to meet about other issues. so still when you entered 1970, things look fairly calm on the sur fashion, really joe coor's was the citizen most people knew from colorado. everybody wanted to come here and get his beer. he was one of the great minds of the 13th century. [ applause ] >> everybody was like, that must be what the state is about.

and we had in congress or in the senate, we had peter dominic and byron rogers and wayne aspen dal who was considered this mega power house, never met a water dam he didn't like and on every kind of project you could think of. colorado river base sin, arkansas this, colorado that. he was considered one of the most powerful people there as the chairman of the interior committee. and we had done bratsman and frank abbotts. so that was 1970 and we were the second most conservative delegation voting in the house. but it fit with joe coors and that's how the world saw us. all of those young hopeaholics that moved in. there were so many of them, that the permanent settlers here didn't have time to encircle them and tell them to chill out.

they all came in and had selected colorado by choice. they thought it was the greatest place on the planet and they were going to make it. they were really going to make it a wonderful place to live and they were going to follow all of these things that people had talked about in the '60s. so the big rumble started in 1970 when craig barnes decided to run against buy biron rogers. he won by 30 votes out of 54,406. you forgot that, didn't you? 30 votes. he defeated this old time who had been there and everybody assumed would be there forever. that was like putting your finger in a like socket. craig didn't go on to win the final, mckof it but in the

meantime aspenal got challenged and nobody was supposed to challenge the chairman of the interior committee when he had so much power and doing so many wonderful things damming up every stream in colorado. how could they do that? well, that person didn't win but it was like, like you worn a bathing suit to church, don't do things like that. who are these new people coming in here? then in 1971, part of denver elected the first latna to the statehouse, so suddenly hispanics are feeling their oats and they are getting their way too.

fair housing became a huge issue. everybody was saying, we really can't have segregated housing and park hill became part of this wonderful example of how people could all live together and people were looking at it as a model. the anti-war things all started. and all of our delegation was voting for the war. so it was quite a shock to them to see all of this movement back here and they tried to say it was just the colleges but they were suddenly finding even oil men were out petitioning. the war wasn't going too well. common cause really had its roots here. wonderful craig barnes started the sunset and sunshine laws, imagine the idea of being able to see what the government does, you know.

this whole idea that wasn't a fungus, that you could bring it out from under the shade. and sometimes you should have a sunset on these things, didn't need them forever. that all went along. and then of course the environment. the environment became huge, remember the earth days, earth days were fabulous. everybody was out participating, dennis hayes became a local hero, the sierra club named a dirty dozen of the dirtiest members of congress and wayne as spenall led the list. horror, how can these dirty easterners be doing that? he had terrible names for them which i won't recite. but i remember the head of the club says this man has killed dream after dream of those of us who really want to preserve and conserve. so al of that started in 1972 comes -- then we had the era coming along and the liberalization of abortion, acts on that, all things that were quite amazing. and then comes 1972. well, wayne aspenall gets

another opponent, mersen, he's the person, what they used to say, endorsed from all sorts of people from "the new york times", to "readers digest." you get a view of how the world looked at the colorado delegation, they were out of touch. you didn't get the readers digest real often. he was in -- he did win but he then went on to lose to jim johnson. my dear husband was in a law firm that was quiet. floyd has cal was his partner and he started as the campaign manager for floyd has kel's sunset race against gordon allen on an anti-war thing. that was fun and i baked cookies and we went to the opening.

then as things developed, i ended up running against mccovet, so jim had to drop out -- it blew up the whole law firm, because the other law parltener was mr. tweedy and his wife had these damned horses that were winning. tweed why did say to me the difference between a horse race and political race was in a horse race the whole horse ran. he was a republican. yeah. so he had all of these partners that were democrats running out there. poor dear thing. i ended up running against mccovett, they had made the districts hopefully as safe as possible for them and ugly primary and stuff and never thought i would win. jim was on the committee looking for someone to run and everybody i went to said, are you kidding?

mcgovern is wearing a bikini, not wearing coattails, which was true. he kind of came and said, just do it. we'll tell the kids what you did when you get older -- well, the rest is history, we ended up winning but it was a wonderful movement and many of you were in. i can't thank you enough. i remember we -- who is your media team, we would say it's kitchen table media because literally we had friends like chuck and earny grossman trying to figure out what to say or do. and it really was put together with chewing gum and rubber bands and our average campaign contribution was $7.50. we had gone back to see the democratic national campaign and they are saying, you're it, you won the primary? i said yes.

i said, we're not putting anything in there. this is over. so we were very pure. we were total colorado, it was marvelous. also on the ballot was the olympics. and that no one could believe, there had never been any place before or since that turned down the olympics. and we didn't turn them down. we absolutely smashed them down, 59.4% we smashed them down. that's a huge landslide. so '7 2 was quite an amazing year, aspenall was defeated in a primary, immediately became a republican and started what he called the sage brush revolution, i don't know if you remember that, give all of the federal government back to the locals i'm done with all of you people. and i beat mccovett.

people are like, what is this rumble from the rockies, surely it must be a temporary thing. now, jim had a lot of fun. one of the things i remember most, the night that i got elected, he was in such shock he had to go down to the election commission at 2:00 to make sure it was right because he was just -- it was like, what have we done to our lives, you know. and he had a very good friend dick tucker who was a journalist from the rocky mountain news. they decided to sit down and write an article about jim, like you might write about the normal candidate's wife in that type -- the sparkling blue eyed brunette in his navy blue blazer and they thought they were so funny. and the rocky mountain news carried and our phone started ringing off the walls the next day.

we will not have them treat jim that way. we kept saying, think about what you just said, every single woman has had that story written about them. and actually when i announced, never forget the newspapers said, denver housewife announces for congress -- wouldn't even put my name, could have said housewife schroeder. i was a lawyer but i was a housewife. it was the whole campaign was really kind of an educational campaign of the press and everybody. well, then 1973 we got ari taylor, the first african-american woman in the legislature who was terrific and that was to build to 1974 when all of us came back and got elected again and dick lamb got elected governor and hart got to the senate and -- in any state

after the civil war. it's pretty amazing this state did all of that. when you think of that and that narrow little window of time, we were pushing the spoon off the edge. boom. the rumble from the rockies became a roar. and all sorts of people were coming down saying what is going on. and i always said that maybe people aren't good hokey pokey player, we put our whole self-in or don't bother. we want to do all these things. when i got to d.c. with this whole area of women and where we were, i got to d.c. and of course, they were more shocked than anybody that i was elected when we would go places, they would try to swear jim in. they would say, her, what's

wrong with you? and i remember one of the days that i shook my head and said why in the world am i here? they gave a committee dealing with commemorative days and holidays and moving into the bicentennial which was important. we had a whole lot of things we were passing out on bicentennial and nobody was paying any attention to me on this house floor. they were sure denver had hiccupped and i wouldn't be back. they voted it all through.