Shaking It Up: The Life and Times of Liz Carpenter

[announcer] Major funding for this program was made possible by the Uhrig/Vournas Charitable Fund, The Summerlee Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, Joan Douglas Murray, Jeanne and Mickey Klein, The Nancy P & Richard K Robbins Family Foundation, and by Nancy Blachman, the MFI Foundation, Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

And also by Marci Rubin, Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, David Wallace Douglas, Edwina and Tom Johnson, Peggy and Matt Winkler, Linda and Howard McCollum, Louis Black.

A complete list of funders can be found at lizcarpenterfilm.com.

[Bella Abzug] Our next guest, we know her the most and love her the most.

She is co-chair of ERA America.

Here she is, Liz Carpenter.

[energetic music] - Her character was formed by the tall tales of Texas, by the frontier spirit.

[energetic music] - Liz Carpenter spent 34 years in Washington.

She earned the nickname, the P.T.

Barnum of the White House.

- I went off to Washington with my journalism degree in hand and my virtue intact.

I still have the journalism degree.

[laughing] [Brian Williams] Carpenter was a trailblazing journalist who was hired to work for Lyndon Johnson.

[Dan Rather] Liz Carpenter was the insider's insider throughout the Johnson presidency.

[male reporter] She served as Lady Bird's Press Secretary.

- Liz was devoted to mother and the rest of us just had to live with it.

[Liz] I love politics.

Fans, bunting, "Yellow Rose of Texas" playing, you know, it's fever to my blood.

[woman] What is the single most trenchant piece of advice that you always give?

- Answer all your phone calls before milking time.

- Liz's sense of humor was part of her power.

- Sex was rampant throughout the city.

Starting right here in this building where, in 1926, Calvin Coolidge laid the cornerstone [audience laughing] and didn't even know it.

[woman reporter] Liz Carpenter, former Press Secretary to Lady Bird Johnson, colorful speaker for the Equal Rights Amendment.

[energetic music] [Liz] When you have had a front row seat of the greatest show on Earth, if you don't think it's something special, you know, you must be just a piece of jello or something.

– Elizabeth Carpenter: irrepressible and irreplaceable, Liz Carpenter.

- Will you welcome Mrs. Liz Carpenter?

[audience applauds] [keys clacking] [keys clacking] [typewriter dings] [typewriter carriage return] - The time was World War II.

A young woman from a small Texas town came to Washington seeking fame and fortune.

She ends up paving the way for women in government and journalism.

Liz Carpenter did so well that she stayed in this town of transients for 34 years.

[big band music] [phone chimes] - I went to Washington when I was 22.

I'd never seen a Republican until I was 21 and it was a terrorizing experience.

[laughing] I came from the 10th Congressional District, Austin to be exact.

And for my graduation present from the University of Texas, got a trip to Washington.

[big band music] You didn't come to Washington in those days without calling on your congressman, but he was in the South Pacific.

There to meet you and shake hands with you was Lady Bird Johnson.

I'd beaten the paths around the National Press Building.

Really stood in awe of those doors that read Look Magazine and, and New York Herald-Tribune and a lot of publications that I was too intimidated to even go in.

- The obstacles to females in journalism were immense and that pattern pretty much was all over the United States.

[paper rustling] [Donald] The people who owned the newspapers and ran the newspapers and edited the newspapers and hired reporters were all men and they believed that the news was man's business.

They didn't see a role for women.

If women were going to do something, it would be society reporting.

- Rising young star who is now in Reno herself to divorce her second husband.

[Donald] Liz Carpenter was not about to cover social receptions.

That was not her interest.

She really wanted to be in the political mix.

She wanted to be out in the campaigns and in the thick of it, and she had a kind of personality that got her into things in some respects because she was determined to do that.

- One of the things to never forget about Liz is that when Liz was coming of age as a journalist, there were not Liz Carpenters before her in whose footsteps she could follow.

She was the footsteps.

- I was lucky.

I knocked on all the doors.

I had my scrapbook of all my clippings that I'd written for the Austin American Statesman and The Daily Texan and looking for a job and it was wartime, 1942, that summer, and I got a job, $25 a week, part secretary, part reporter, but I worked for a small news bureau and from that, I got that most wonderful passport to power and that was, or to watch power, and that was a press pass to cover Eleanor Roosevelt's press conferences and Franklin's.

[Donald] Starting in 1933, Mrs. Roosevelt holds a press conference and she decided that she would only invite women reporters.

All of a sudden, news bureaus like the United Press, which had a policy, don't hire women reporters, suddenly had to hire a woman reporter because that was the only way they could get a reporter into Mrs. Roosevelt's press conferences.

[gentle upbeat music] [Liz] I walked under those great elm trees and I thought, "Is this really me?"

And I walked up the stairs and we got to the second floor and Mrs. Roosevelt, tall and erect was standing there and she shook hands with each reporter, of which there were just about 26 newswomen.

She had enough faith in us to learn something about the sicknesses of the country then.

She was interested in causes.

[Bruce] How did you cover the Congress or did you cover just the Texas delegation?

- Well, primarily Texas and the Southwest, Arkansas and Oklahoma because I represented the Arkansas Gazette and the Tulsa Tribune.

By this time, I'd had two babies and my husband was a newsman.

It was the happiest of worlds for us.

[upbeat music] - Carpenter News Bureau, like a lot of big fancy bureaus like Newsweek and UPI, were in the National Press Building and Liz and Les were a formidable journalistic bear.

They were both topflight reporters.

They were doing individual stories often, but they did work as a team and that increased their reputation in their reporting ability.

[upbeat music] The few women that there were in journalism, most of 'em were single, but Liz, of course, married and by the time her second child, Christy, was born, she was calling congressmen from the obstetric ward.

That just sealed her reputation as a dogged, persistent, go-get-'em kind of reporter.

[upbeat music] - Having a full-time working mom was having a mom that was constantly distracted by her job and what she needed to do next.

And so she wasn't always attentive to detail.

And so one time, I'm about eight or nine years old, my mother had gone to the veterinarian to pick up our pet dachshund, Missy, and came home with the dog, opens the door, Missy spills out onto the lawn [dog barking] and my brother and I went, "Mommy, that's not Missy."

She had brought home the wrong dog.

[dog whimpering] [energetic music] [Liz] In 1954, I'd become president of the Women's National Press Club, which was a great thrill.

[Don] It was an important part for her because it established her rank among women journalists and it also identified her with a lot of the men who were government officials.

Of course being the president, being someone who was on the board, it raised her profile considerably in Washington, D.C. [upbeat music] [Announcer] Next Meet the Press, America's press conference of the air.

[Ned Brooks] And now, seated around the press table, ready to interview Governor Shivers, are Jack Bell of the Associated Press, Elizabeth Carpenter of the Houston Post, Sam Kinch of the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

- Governor Shivers, let's talk about 1956 and what Texas will do at the Democratic National Convention.

- We should be on a par with covering stories toe to toe with our male colleagues and then when it came time to go to a professional engagement at the Press Club, we couldn't go and Liz made the breakthrough for us.

She somehow negotiated with the National Press Club to allow women to sit in the balcony and that was in 1956 and that was our first foot in the door.

- Liz lobbied with visiting dignitaries to say you don't wanna speak in front of a segregated audience.

One of the people who did agree was Nikita Khrushchev.

[Liz] Khrushchev, who helped break some ice for us, because he wouldn't come and speak there unless they were men and women and it was a way of shaming the United States for having this bad policy.

- He was very proud that he would not speak to the Press Club unless the women were invited to come downstairs and they were, for that luncheon only.

[audience applauds] And it established Liz as an activist, as someone who was out there determined to get women full-time privileges of being a journalist.

[Liz] There is a thrill in watch somebody climb up the political ladder.

There's a great sense of being for that horse.

[people speaking indistinctly] - Shortly after the inauguration, she got a call from Johnson saying, "Liz, I'd like you to come join my vice presidential staff."

And she became highest ranking woman that had ever worked for a vice president.

She was a troubleshooter, she was a speech writer, a press wrangler, an event planner, an advance woman.

She did anything and everything that LBJ needed during those vice presidential years.

[plane engine slowing] - The Kennedy, Johnson trip to Texas in November 1963 was to be a, quote, routine political trip.

That's the way it was viewed at the networks.

No big deal.

Dallas was to be the last stop.

[crowd cheering] [gunshots popping] [male reporter] It appears as though something has happened.

- And I heard this rat-a-tat-tat of what we thought was somebody throwing a firecracker in the crowd.

Suddenly, you were at Parkland Hospital walking past the car and for the first time you saw the enormity.

[Judge Sarah Hughes] I do solemnly swear.

[Johnson] I do solemnly swear.

[man] Were you present at the swearing in?

[Liz] Yes.

Pressed against the back wall.

Somehow some spirit helps you know you've gotta do something.

And what I could do, because I was the only writer along, all my intuitions as a reporter was that he would be asked something when he got to Andrews Air Force base.

And so I started scribbling, I guess the most important 58 words I ever wrote.

[LBJ] This is a sad time for all people.

We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed.

For me, it is a deep personal tragedy.

I will do my best.

That is all I can do.

I ask for your help and God's.

[somber music] - As we got off of the helicopter on the lawn of the White House, the President said, "Go with Lady Bird and help her all you can."

[camera clicks] [Dan] In the minutes and hours and for that matter, days after the Kennedy assassination, Liz was a key to holding the Johnsons together and by extension, helping to hold the country together.

[Liz] Johnson said to us, "Think of where people can be used best."

[camera clicking] I said I wanted to be Press Secretary to the Lady Bird.

That was the part of the White House I'd covered the closest and no newswoman had ever been in that job.

I was made that and Chief of Staff for Lady Bird.

[Julia Sweig] Lady Bird Johnson is the first First Lady in the United States to put together a professional staff, to make the East Wing really part and parcel of the political operation of the entire White House.

What Liz did was build the bridge between the West Wing and the East Wing.

- Lady Bird really admired Liz's brains and her knowledge of Washington.

[Dan] Liz had a very good eye for the emerging television age.

Remember that Lyndon Johnson is elevated by an assassin's bullet to the presidency at the very moment when television and television news were becoming, for the first time, the main source where most Americans got most of their news.

- Liz was brash and earthy and Lady Bird was buttoned down, but she got a huge kick out of Liz and she knew that Liz gave her something that she didn't have on her own.

- Liz could be very strong.

Guess what.

Same thing was true about Lyndon Johnson.

- But it was a volatile relationship because Liz, she would speak up.

- I remember once when they got the two new dogs, Him and Her, oh, she spoke up and said they have a really nice doghouse and somebody asked her, "How do you know?"

She said, "Because I sleep there."

[laughed] [energetic music] - She pushed daddy, but she pushed everybody.

I was shy and shy was not a word in her lexicon.

- I don't think that Liz got the memo that I wasn't her child.

It was just easier to do that which she was instructing you to do than it was to figure out how come you had a justifiable excuse not to do it.

- For minor offenders, we're going to have a large guillotine erected on the mall punishable in that manner.

[Lynda] She was just right out front charging hell with a bucket of water.

- And that sort of mindset worked really well with Lyndon Johnson.

[gentle music] [cows moo] [Liz] My roots are deep in Texas and I know that it shaped me a lot.

Growing up in the small town of Salado, Texas, population about 150, in the house that was built by my great-grandfather in 1852.

- Her great-grandmother, who helped build the house, created the first literary society in the entire state of Texas in 1858.

These were women who could recite lengthy poems by heart.

All of this really gave Liz an appetite to become a writer.

In the early 1830s, women who came to settle in Texas were women of grit.

It's really not surprising at all that Liz spent a career being a trailblazer because she was directly descended by people that were literally trailblazers.

My mother was heavily influenced by stories of people like, like her great aunts, Luella and Birdie.

Luella was one of the first woman in the state of Texas to graduate from a school of higher learning, Salado College.

Birdie would dress up in white, get in a carriage and go up to Capitol Hill and lobby on behalf of the suffrage cause.

[Jessica] So what is it about Texas women?

Why so many amazing leaders come out of Texas?

Barbara Jordan, Dr. Clotilde Garcia, Martha Cotera, Sissy Farenthold, Ann Richards, Liz Carpenter.

So Liz's personality is not a surprise.

She's raised in a family that raises strong women.

That's what they do and they've been doing it for generations.

[gentle music] [Liz] My mother moved us down to Austin and we lived in various houses around the university.

You could go to the University of Texas for $12.50 a semester.

I ran for vice president of the student body and I was the first girl that hadn't just run for a secretary, and I won.

[Bill] How old were you when you first met Johnson?

- I think I was 23.

I was covering LBJ for the Austin American Statesman and so I went by his office every day and he was a congressman then.

He read my copy.

It meant a lot to him for the simple reason that it was the main paper in the district he was representing.

You were important to him too, and so it worked two ways.

- Liz and Daddy, they were both showmen and later I think he was a little jealous sometimes 'cause Liz could get better press for mother than anybody could get for him.

[Liz] I was a good cross between LBJ and Lady Bird.

I had known them both.

I had covered them both.

I understood the sort of demands on both.

- You weren't the President's favorite employee.

Why did you say that?

- I don't know.

I suspect there were times that me in my impetuous way, well he would call me and say, you know, "Liz, if you don't learn to keep your mouth shut, I am going to give you to the Johnson City Foundation" [both laughing] [audience applauds] - And this administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.

[Liz] Lady Bird wanted to help translate the President's program into people and one of the, kind of, glories of my job was to shape together what turned out to be about 47 trips around the country and bring flesh and blood to the war on poverty that Johnson had launched.

[lively music] [Julia] Liz had this trifecta of skills.

She did policy, she did the media, she did politics.

So every time Lady Bird traveled anywhere, Liz put together the itinerary knowing what it is her most important constituent wanted.

[energetic music] [Liz] She was the first person who went up into Appalachia and was shown around by the same superintendent of schools in that little county that had shown Eleanor Roosevelt around 25 years before.

And you had the feeling that they hadn't seen anybody much since Eleanor Roosevelt and not a great deal had happened.

By taking a newsworthy person to the scene of the good example and making it extremely easy for the press to cover the story, making it possible for the photographers to get close to make the picture that would move, you did help draw the curtain back a little bit wider on a problem and a possible solution.

She was telling the success story of the Great Society.

[man] What did you think about Vietnam?

Why did he pursue the war so consistently?

[Liz] It hurt terribly and he said to Mrs. Johnson, "I can't pull out and I can't stay in."

Vietnam was just a nightmare to him because that wasn't the war he wanted to pursue.

He wanted to pursue the war on poverty and to his eternal credit, he managed to keep the Job Corps and Vista and all of the programs going even though we were having to fight the war in Vietnam.

[people chanting indistinctly] [male reporter] The Democratic Convention began with a hassle between Negroes and Southern white supremacists.

But President Johnson was nominated by acclamation.

[country music] [Liz] The president asked me to come up with an idea for how to best campaign in the South.

- It was Harry Truman who said to him, "There are a lot of people in this country who don't know where the airport is, but they know where the depot is.

Go out and find 'em."

- The Whistle Stop Tour of October 1964 was another barrier-breaking display of political bravery by Lady Bird Johnson and Liz Carpenter.

The Civil Rights Act had passed in July of 1964, the South for Lady Bird Johnson, despite the Civil Rights Act and despite the Goldwater campaigns was very much in play.

She understood that it was possible that LBJ and the Democratic Party would lose some of the South, but she wanted to give it a try.

[Liz] The President wanted her to go on the Whistle Stop because he knew that Mrs. Johnson would be loved in the South.

He knew that he did not wanna default the South.

- Now Mrs. Carpenter, what's the main purpose of this trip as far as Mrs. Johnson's concerned?

- Well, Marlene, obviously there's an election on and she's helping carry the story of this administration and of her husband's record to eight states down 1,682 miles of railroad track.

Big cities, small towns, the byroads and the crossroads and a lot of places where the candidates don't always go.

[lively music] Hello, Lyndon Well hello, Lyndon It's just great to have you there where you belong.

[Liz] She was the perfect person to do this because she loved being from the South.

- Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning.

[crowd cheering] [lively music] [Liz] When you're in the towns of 50,000 or less, people come from hundreds of miles around.

You've got these fantastic telegrams from little towns along the way saying nobody important has been through here since Buffalo Bill.

Please have your train stop here.

[train whistling] [energetic music] The first two or three stops were so successful there were more people boarding than we've even counted on.

There's a train coming down the track Gotta move on and looking back There's a train [Liz] We had about 225 reporters who were on the train and I'd given them advice, if you get left behind, look for the advance man or take up residence and vote democratic.

[Julia] Liz was sharp when it came to understanding how to translate action into politically useful publicity, so she stuffed these two trains with journalists from around the country and from around the world.

[Luci] She had been a journalist, she had understood how hard it was sometimes to get a seat at the table, so she made sure that no matter how many dignitaries had to squeeze into that train, by God, the people were gonna be able to come in and get their story.

[camera clicks] And the coverage that the Whistle Stop Tour got as a result, both internationally and domestically, was universally positive.

Not just the civil rights message, but also this being something unique for a First Lady to be undertaking.

[Liz] For four days, you stayed on the big news shows, you had five minutes every night, time you can't buy in a campaign.

In some ways, I guess because there was controversy along the tracks.

- A happy-sounding Whistle Stop Tour and the saltwater taffy and the kind of fun campininess of it contrasted quite starkly to the danger and foreboding that they were going into.

[crowd cheering] [Liz] We wanted to go to the towns that nobody else could get into.

Anybody can get into Atlanta and out with their hide on, even if you're for Civil Rights Bill.

We took Savannah.

It's tougher.

[Julia] By the time they got into South Carolina, the hecklers were filled with racial slurs.

As the train moved south, they had to send secret service dogs and a dummy train ahead because Lady Bird Johnson had received death threats.

[tranquil music] [crowd cheering] Of the eight states that she campaigned in, they won three.

They won Florida, which they never thought that they would win.

They won Virginia and they won North Carolina, but the rest went to Goldwater.

[male reporter] The voice of the people was heard in the land.

Sixty-eight million citizens of the United States go to the polls to exercise their cherished franchise and an overwhelming mandate is handed to Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President of the United States.

[Julia] The United States had just invested hundreds of millions of dollars into American cities through urban renewal [explosions rumble] and into American highways through the interstate highway system.

All this big infrastructure money had huge environmental consequences, mostly negative.

- We were in a terrific hole in the 1960s.

Lady Bird realized there was an opportunity to make her big statement about cleaning up America.

- All her life, she had been interested in planting the roadsides, which are our largest national park.

And so this was a chance to hold that flag high from the White House and, my goodness, how we woke up sleeping beauty.

[energetic music] - Any other wife might tell her husband to clean up the backyard.

Mrs. Johnson told the president that he ought to do something about the nation's automobile junkyards.

Now her cleanup suggestion has blossomed forth into the president's nationwide beautification program.

[Liz] Suddenly, you had a host of telegrams, letters, phone calls, requests for meetings from what I would call the believers, conservationists.

It was like a great awakening.

Environmentalists everywhere suddenly had a voice in the White House.

One million daffodil bulbs were planted on the banks of the Potomac.

Then it was the biggest planting in the history of the world, I suppose since the Garden of Eden.

The President wanted to go through very much and let's get busy and get the bill passed.

This is a typical Johnson, called me one day and he said, "Liz, I want you to put on your best perfume and your tightest girdle and go up to the Hill and talk to those Texas congressmen and tell 'em I want their votes for this bill."

So I did just what he told me to.

And I was back in about an hour and a half and he said, "Well, what'd they say?"

So I said, "Well, I think we'll lose Omar Burleson, who's from Abilene, Texas.

And he said, "Go to that phone and you call Omar and you tell him Air Force bases can be given and they can be taken away."

[audience applauds] - Today, there's a great deal of real joy within me and within my family as we meet here in this historic East Room to sign the Highway Beautification Act of 1965.

[audience applauds] [Julia] Lady Bird talked always about being able to find herself and find peace in nature, and I think that really carried on into what she wound up doing in the White House on the environment with Stew Udall, who was the Secretary of Interior.

- Udall had talked to Mrs. Johnson when he accompanied us on that trip in August to the West.

He began to see that he had a very responsive First Lady to the wanders of nature.

- Lady Bird swooned over the Tetons.

Udall would later say that it was that trip that turned Lady Bird into an activist.

Liz really saved the day when it came to promoting environmentalism and particularly the National Park System.

Why do we want the first lady standing at the White House reading a report?

Let's get out there and enjoy these national parks.

[Lady Bird] What does it take to make a national park?

It takes a dream.

[audience applauds] - Wherever Lady Bird went, Liz was planning it as a kind of extravaganza and she understood the value of a big press gaggle.

And Liz brought them to remote places in America.

She convinced everybody that you're nobody in journalism if you're not on Lady Bird Johnson's big adventure to the Rocky Mountains.

[gentle music] And hence, it started getting the newspaper coverage and you see this massive uptick in visitation going on.

It elevated environmentalism as a national issue.

What was happening in California?

Ancient 2000-year-old redwood trees just being clear cut.

Ladybird came in into a huge redwood battle in the state and took a lead of making sure the coastal redwoods were saved near Eureka, California, in what is today Redwood National Park.

[people speaking indistinctly] There's never been, not only a First Lady like Lady Bird Johnson in the environmental realm, but she's one of the most important conservation environmentalist in American history.

The Great Society was an incredible moment of bringing a new conservation awareness to the American people, which became the environmentalism of today.

Anything you look at that Lady Bird Johnson accomplished in the environmental realm, Liz deserves a lot of credit.

Liz would promote these adventures which captivated the American public at a time when there wasn't a lot of good news due to urban unrest in the Vietnam War.

- I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.

- In 1969, Nixon is inaugurated President and the Johnsons head back home to the LBJ Ranch.

Liz stays in Washington, writes a bestselling book about her adventures in the White House and starts working very hard on behalf of the National Women's Political Caucus.

[upbeat music] [male reporter] Today, throughout the land, there is a growing demand by some women that society begin to treat them as men, different from men, but equal to them, both in jobs and in politics.

[male reporter] Liz Carpenter is active in the women's movement, not only in her native Texas.

- My plan today is to make this a hot pants speech, [audience laughs] long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be inspiring.

- She was a Texan, so you felt that warmth and friendliness as if there were no social strata whatsoever.

You know [laughs], she had a vision, a unified vision that was far beyond what most people in political life would have thought.

- And we gather here because we're determined that women have a stronger voice in the party structure where we are perfectly willing to trade that outmoded phony mantle of protectionism for some equal pay and equal right.

So, let me warn you, watch out.

Here we come.

[people speaking indistinctly] - In the very early '70s, everything was discriminatory.

It was blatant.

I meet Liz Carpenter first at the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971.

A lot of us were amateurs.

She was a person who had been inside in a very high position and she was an expert in getting press.

[Gloria] The purpose of the National Women's Political Caucus was to press on enunciate women's issues in a unified, bipartisan way.

That probably sounds impossible to the people who are listening right now, but it was possible then.

- In a historic decision, the Senate voted 84 to eight today to approve a constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights to women.

The proposal goes to the states for ratification.

- My people came here like many of the Texas families in the early 1800s.

It was very much a partnership between men and women.

They didn't stop to argue over who picked up the rifle if there was a massacre.

So, to think that equal rights are not deserved by people who are sharing equal jobs is ridiculous.

- Today there are 100 members of the U.S. Senate.

One is a woman.

There are 435 members of the House of Representatives.

Twelve are women.

There are no women in the Cabinet and none on the Supreme Court.

- The National Women's Political Caucus, which was born last July, it was kind of a raucous caucus, but there was a shock treatment in it and a lot of truth and it made people stop and listen.

These women do have something to say.

So I think it's beginning to change and more women are willing to run and there's a contagion to it, a fallout for everyone that runs, there are 10 more women who say, "Say, why don't I run?"

- Liz was an inclusive visionary who was willing to bring out any talent that she could find to be a part of the army of talent of women around the country.

- In 1963 or 1964, we didn't have many people registered in Mississippi.

But today we have 60% of the Black population registered in Mississippi.

We have 42 elected officials in the state of Mississippi.

And one day you'll be proud when you can say, Senator Fannie Lou Hamer, 'cause I'm on my way, baby.

[crowd cheering] - In 1971, the great civil rights icon, Fannie Lou Hamer, decided to run for state senate in Mississippi.

So she called Liz and asked her to come to Mississippi.

[upbeat country music] [woman] We sat in a small television studio in the Mississippi Delta and the interviewer said to me rather curtly, "What are you doing in Mississippi?"

But what he was really asking was, "What is an uppity, Southern white woman like you doing in Sunflower County campaigning for an uppity Black woman like Fannie Lou Hamer?"

I tried to answer the obvious, "I am here because I AM Southern, because I AM white, because I AM a woman, because hopefully, I am a thinking American, and because Fannie Lou Hamer, one of 20 children in a sharecropper family, knows more about the problems of Sunflower County than anyone else and she'll do something about them."

- Now, unfortunately, her campaign was not successful.

That was just the nature of the times, that the prejudice levels in Mississippi were so great that she didn't make it.

- Liz really takes this to heart and really supports women candidates pretty much for the rest of her life.

[man] Are you a feminist?

[Liz] Yes I am.

[man] You were an ERA supporter.

- I was rampant.

[chuckles] It's your thing, Do what you wanna do I can't tell ya Who to sock it to - What a real travesty of justice that here 200 years after this country was born, we're still standing outside of the Constitution of our own country, begging to be let in.

[male reporter] Liz Carpenter is a leader in the fight for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Phyllis Schlafly is a leader of those women organized to oppose it.

[upbeat music] - There is a threat because there is a massive campaign to prevent state ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, claiming godlessness and destruction of the family.

I'm not trying To run your life I know you wanna Do what's right - The women's movement was viewed as super radical.

We were throwing away our bras, we were all lesbians, as opposed to only some of us being lesbians.

[laughs] The opposition was saying kind of ridiculous things like there would be no more male and female restrooms.

- Abortion on demand and funded by the government.

- All the anti-gay and lesbian laws.

- Lesbian privileges to allow lesbians and homosexuals to adopt children, to teach in the schools.

[male reporter] By the end of 1976, with 34 states ratified, the movement had stalled with only four states short of victory.

- I would like to ask you, why a movement to ratify this amendment, which started out so explosively in 1972 and did so well in '73, now seems to have lost momentum.

- Well, I think this is true of every amendment that's ever come up.

For instance, even the original Constitution had some hard times and only squeaked through the New York legislature by three votes.

[gentle music] [Christy] In 1974, my father passed away very unexpectedly.

It was a big blow because he had been her life partner from high school on.

She started to feel Washington's just not the same without Les.

And so she picked up and moved back to Austin, Texas.

She wrote books, she wrote newspaper column for a time and she also go out and speak on behalf of many, many candidates and the women's movement.

- The National Women's Conference was part of a multi-year celebration of the international year of the women.

Gerald Ford was the president.

Each state was to develop a delegation that would come to a national convention to lay out an agenda for the advancement of women in this country.

[crowd cheering] - Every woman who ever had a wish of being involved civically or politically was in Houston.

[woman] The three first ladies were there, Betty Ford and Rosalyn Carter and Lady Bird Johnson.

- It was very exciting for me because you have these three first ladies and they're working together and they're across party lines.

You had Betty Ford who was a wonderful advocate.

You had Rosalyn Carter and to see those two women, particularly whose husbands had been against each other, to pull together on this issue that was so important.

[crowd cheering] [George] Across town, there was an even bigger gathering, about 11,000 men and women who opposed the beliefs of most of the delegates to the Women's conference.

Many are fundamentalist Christians and their rally had the flavor of a revival meeting.

- Miss Schlafly, you predicted that Houston would be the death of the women's movement.

What would that mean anyway?

- The people will realize if they study the plan of action proposed by the International Women's Year Commission, what the women's lib movement is all about, that they are for the killing of unborn babies.

[Liz] We were trying to write into the Constitution what was not there.

Equality of rights shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex.

- Giving homosexuals the right to teach in schools.

- But the Jesse Helms, the Phyllis Schlaflys just ran around scaring everybody to death.

The ERA has nothing to do with abortion, nothing to do with co-ed bathrooms, nothing to do with all of the horrors which she has spread across the country in speeches.

- Here she is, Liz Carpenter.

[audience applauds] - How many homemakers are out there in this room?

Hold up your hand.

All homemakers.

How many breadwinners are out there, people who earn a salary?

How many out there are under 30?

That's not me.

- She was inclusive.

Everybody was part of the community and that made her powerful and credible.

- Who else are we?

We're voters since 1920, and there was a whole lot of brouhaha about that.

- She was a heroine for us.

She was an undaunted person who had in mind a future vision of building a network of women leadership and nothing got in her way.

- Until the women of the United States are full, equal operating citizens, the cry for human rights around this globe will have a very hollow ring.

[crowd cheering] - The vast majority of people in the United States believe that the Equal Rights Amendment should be part of the Constitution.

If it were published in the Constitution, then the Equal Rights Amendment would be a signal to the world that we do believe in gender equality and sex equality.

We're not just saying that, but we actually have it in our Constitution.

We are one of very few developed nations that have a Constitution without sex equality guaranteed in the Constitution.

- It has been hard.

We were counted out from the Constitution on and we've just had to be fighting our way through to prove that we can have a voice and a policymaking voice in the government of our own country.

[upbeat music] - I rise on behalf of those few of us who are fortunate enough to be in the positions that we are in.

- Everybody has somebody who came before them.

Liz Carpenter forged a path that allowed people like Ann Richards to succeed.

[Liz] I'm very proud of the women in Texas.

There is that kind of zesty I can get it done and that's very much embedded in Ann Richards.

[female reporter] It was billed as a three-star birthday party.

Three ladies who have three things in common.

They are funny, they are born on the same day, and they are all Democrats with a serious mission.

- Throughout history, laughter is what is your salvation.

And there are a lot of funny things that happen in politics.

It's a natural stage for that.

- She was 27 points behind in the polls and so we had a uphill climb.

- All of a sudden, the returns came in.

She got the call from her opponent.

She just bolted up to the platform and there, her woman campaign manager, Mary Beth Rogers, said, "I now present the Governor of Texas."

Shouldn't be so hard for a woman to be elected Governor of Texas and it won't ever be that hard again.

I will also be seeing that Ann is standing there in the footsteps...

I'm sorry.

I've gotta do something about this.

What am I gonna do?

I've got to... take a stiff drink.

[laughing] [Christy] Liz didn't do anything quietly.

Hell no.

She was always stirring things up.

She was stirring things up in terms of her political activities, but she was also stirring things up at our house, where she was constantly throwing parties.

She'd like to cook up crazy ideas for parties.

[upbeat music] She would entertain often in her hot tub.

It was kind of a mixmaster of swirling water that mixed it up with writers, with politicos, the kind of people from whom Austin got the slogan, Keep Austin Weird.

Liz did her part to keep Austin weird.

- Doing something that breaks the mold gets more and more important as you get older, not to get in that narrow tunnel.

And so we get out when the moon is full and we all go woo woo woo and bay at it and you feel so much better.

And then one of the great satisfactions is it startles your children and startling your children is the real glory of age.

I have known more or less personally, 12 presidents... from FDR to George W. Bush.

[Bill] And here you are with LBJ still looking over your shoulder.

- I bet.

I can feel the hand print on my back.

[laughs] There's a little bit of Texas in everyone But a whole lot of Texas in me [Evan] One of the things we can't forget about Liz Carpenter is that Liz was joyful in the work that she did.

She never tried to get anybody.

She never tried to harm anybody.

She understood that her role was to be a force for good, to advance the cause of the public interest through her work to advance the cause of democracy through her work.

One of the many things that Liz Carpenter can teach us is to go back to a time when politics was not a blood sport, but it was about elevating people and elevating the public interest.

- Getting better all the time Getting better all the time Feeling like we're in our prime Getting better all the time [Liz] I plan to haunt this planet.

I want to swing from the chandeliers in the White House on a windy night and hopefully I'll be able to impart some golden knowledge back across the spaces between heaven and Earth.

[gentle music] [gentle upbeat music] [Announcer] Major funding for this program was made possible by the Uhrig/Vournas Charitable Fund, The Summerlee Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, Joan Douglas Murray, Jeanne and Mickey Klein, The Nancy P & Richard K Robbins Family Foundation, and by Nancy Blachman, the MFI Foundation, Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

And also by Marci Rubin, Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, David Wallace Douglas, Edwina and Tom Johnson, Peggy and Matt Winkler, Linda and Howard McCollum, Louis Black.

A complete list of funders can be found at lizcarpenterfilm.com.