Feminists and anti-feminists from across the United States descended on Houston, Texas in November 1977 to offer support or opposition to the National Women’s Conference.

“They should open some of the men’s restrooms to women, since there is hardly anyone here to use them,” suggested a National Women’s Conference delegate. A friend retorted, “Don’t you suggest it, some anti-ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] delegate will start hollering, ‘see I told you so; those ERA folks want unisex toilets!’” From 1977 to now, debates concerning women’s spaces, rights, and liberation have been contentious topics at the heart of American legislation. However, the National Women’s Conference of 1977 is decidedly the event that altered the fabric of American politics. Those present and those who have studied the conference’s outcome largely agree that those four days at the Sam Houston Coliseum were critical for America.

Feminists and anti-feminists from across the United States descended on Houston, Texas, to support or oppose the National Women’s Conference legislative goals that sought equality, equity, and liberation for American women. The conference intended to create and utilize an official platform that supported women’s rights and a progressive political agenda in the following decades. However, due to the multitude of caucuses that flooded the conference, a sea of demands stalled progress and created in-fighting amongst the various groups. From ethnic group caucuses to student-athletes to sex workers and members of Congress, everyone sought a seat at the table to address the institutional inequality of women in all corners of American society.

Feminist scholar Margorie J. Spruill has called the National Women’s Conference “the crest of the ‘second wave’ of American feminism.” The Sam Houston Coliseum hosted a “who’s who” of Democratic, leftist, and radical activists, including Gloria Steinem, Barbara Jordan, Betty Friedan, and Billie Jean King, to influence the advancement of women’s and feminist issues. At the same time, the conference also platformed the notable conservatives Phyllis Schlafly, Representative Bob Dornan, Nellie Gray, and Lottie Beth Hobbs. Schlafly’s impressive rise on the right, underscored by her successful anti-feminist campaigning efforts leading up to and during the conference, drew unexpectedly large crowds of Christian and conservative women. Universally remembered for her bravado and insistence on thanking her husband for “allowing” her to attend the conference, Schlafly became a conservative icon overnight. Like Schlafly, other conservative opponents of progressive women’s legislation surprisingly found their niche at an event previously hailed as one of the most important political conferences for women in the twentieth century. Unfortunately, propaganda ran amuck in the days leading to the conference.

In response to the calls to action, prominent Black journalist Carl T. Rowan denigrated conservatives' so-called “Pro-Family Coalition” rhetoric as divisive “hang-ups” about individuals’ orientation, religion, and political affiliation. Rather than bringing women together to seek a brighter future, the National Women’s Conference left Houston, Texas, awash with contentious politics, pitting women against women, Black against White, straight against gay, and liberal against conservative. The result of the conference, the National Plan of Action, initially determined to influence the trajectory of women’s politics well into the 1990s, fell flat in the face of conservatism. Yet, in a somewhat surprising turn of events, conservative political objectives found success after the conference. Responsible for the rise of anti-woman rhetoric that encapsulated the 1980s and the diminishment of the progress created during the 1960s and 70s, the National Women’s Conference helped birth the “pro-family” movement during the Regan administration. The conference inadvertently brought opposing forces together and cemented the watershed moment that irreparably fractured American politics.

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During the twentieth century, Minnie Fisher Cunningham (1882-1964) worked as a leading reformer on women’s issues, including voting rights and equal pay. Born near New Waverly, Texas in southern Walker County, Minnie was raised by her parents, Horatio and Sallie (Abercrombie) Fisher, to be an educated, politically-minded young woman. She earned her state teaching certificate at age sixteen, but chose to further her education at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. In 1901, she became the first woman in Texas to earn her Graduate of Pharmacy degree. She began and ultimately ended her pharmacy career in Huntsville’s downtown drug store, however, where she earned less than half of what her male counterparts made. It was this experience that she credited with “making a suffragette out of me,” and once she married B.J. Cunningham in 1902, her medical career came to an end.

Cunningham first became politically active in local volunteer organizations in Galveston, where she and her husband relocated in 1907. She began her speaking and lobbying career, while volunteering for the Women’s Health Protective Association (WHPA) and helped to found Galveston’s Equal Suffrage Association (GESA). As a delegate of GESA, she participated in the creation of the Texas Woman Suffrage Association (TWSA) and helped link it to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In 1915, she was elected president of TWSA, soon called the Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA), and it was in that role that she worked for the passage of a state bill that would allow women to vote in political primaries. Although the bill ultimately failed to pass in 1917, Cunningham and her organization used their considerable influence to help impeach the sitting governor of Texas, James E. Ferguson, for corruption. When Ferguson decided to run for governor again, despite being banned from doing so, Cunningham negotiated a deal with State Representative Charles Metcalfe and Governor William Hobby to allow women to vote in the state's primary, promising that the female vote would support Hobby in his bid to remain governor.

Despite her success during the election of 1918, Cunningham and her forces were unable to secure the passage of an amendment to the Texas Constitution that would have allowed women to vote in the state. Cunningham did not give in, however, but instead worked diligently for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. She was part of the team that convinced Woodrow Wilson to openly support it during World War I, and she actively lobbied the Texas Legislature for immediate ratification in 1919. Following the successful campaign to secure women’s voting rights through the Nineteenth Amendment, Cunningham became the first executive secretary of the League of Women Voters and became active in progressive political causes, joining the Democratic Women’s Advisory Committee at the suggestion of Eleanor Roosevelt. She later became the first woman to run for the Senate in Texas, and though she lost in the primary, she later became the first woman to run for governor as well. In that latter race, she came in second out of nine candidates having been defeated by the incumbent, Coke Stevenson in the primary. She worked tirelessly for the implementation of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and was late in life a supporter of John F. Kennedy. She died in her hometown in 1964 of heart failure.

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