Vogel: ERA debate of long ago can still provoke passion
Editor’s note: “Mrs. America,” a streamed series on Hulu, has gotten rave reviews. Long before it aired, Steve Vogel of Bloomington interviewed the two women at its core. This column originally appeared April 27, 2013, in The Pantagraph.
Forty years after the fact, the fur still flies — though one of the debate participants has been dead seven years.
In one corner was Peoria native Betty Friedan. Her book, “The Feminine Mystique,” ignited the women’s liberation movement. A founder and the first president of the National Organization for Women, she died in 2006.
In the other corner was Phyllis Schlafly of Alton, the legendary conservative more responsible than anyone for the Equal Rights Amendment not becoming part of the U.S. Constitution, and for U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater securing the Republican Presidential nomination in 1964.
