Audio Recordings Transcripts
Exhibit Items
Barbara Jordan, Ethics in State Government talk, Senate Staff Development, February 16, 1989. Texas Senate recordings, Texas Legislature, Senate, 711601a
TRANSCRIPT
That’s the beauty of this whole this this whole country, is that the people create it, the people energize it, it’s the “We the people” and people didn’t like the way that was being handled and they said, you know, don’t do it! If you do it that way you won’t get back. And that’s the language that Congress understands better than any language in the world.
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“Handicapped,” 1919.
Broadside, Erminia Thompson Folsom Collection, Box 1985/119-2.
TRANSCRIPT
A person without a vote is handicapped becuase voters choose representatives to make laws for them.
Voteless persons cannot choose representatives to make laws for them.
Women without votes are handicapped before law and politically.
The vote is a modern labor-saving device like the telephone, the typewriter, the electric light, the trolley. If you don't have these modern advantages you are handicapped. So are women without a vote.
The voting class can make a mighty demand through their chosen representatives, while the voteless woman humbly presents a petition.
The vote is an instrument for getting the kind of government that you want.
The vote is a weapon; without it, woman is defenseless, exploited, handicapped.
Men found they needed the vote and they got it.
Women find they need the vote and are trying to get it.
Women are asking you to give them the vote.
WILL YOU REMOVE THEIR HANDICAP?
Vote and work for the Suffrage Amendment May 24
TEXAS EQUAL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION
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Floor Interviews Conducted at the Texas Women’s Meeting, June 24-26, 1977.
Program committee files, Texas International Women’s Year Coordinating Committee records, Box 1978/032-8
TRANSCRIPT
Interviewer: Okay, what kind of hopes did you have for the accomplishments of this conference affecting women all over the world?
(Woman aged 22, married, homemaker, has 8-month-old baby): I hope that it will help us to be able to keep our lives the way they are now. Those... I’m very happy being a wife and a mother and I don’t want it changed, and if this… these issues are passed, and if the ER Act is passed, I’m afraid it will change our lives. I know it will, and I don’t want them to be changed.
Interviewer: And what do you hope personally to gain from being here?
(Woman aged 58, assistant chief of cost, member of Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs): Well, I hope that the eventual ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment will certainly strengthen women’s positions in the career world, and I am a career woman. And I personally have been denied promotions in the past because of my sex, and I’ve been told it was because of my sex. And I am also facing the same thing next year, and I’ve already been told that it’s doubtful that a woman would ever be promoted to that particular position.
(Barbara Richardson, Dallas): But I think this is tragic, and when they say we have enough protection under the laws that exist, they’re wrong. And I, I want women to realize how little protection they actually have. I was fired from a job because I asked for the same pay. That the scale had been publicly announced for men makeup editors and copy editors, and I told them that if I didn’t get it, I was going to Wage and Hour [Wage and Hour Division, U.S. Department of Labor]. And one week later I was fired. And that was the Dallas Times-Herald (laugh).
Interviewer: And so, you’re experiencing these kinds of things on a daily...
(Richardson): Yes, and I have great pain over it, you know. And it’s not until you’re there that you really feel it, you know. And I feel sorry for these women who have come to the conference to fight the Equal Rights Amendment because I think their worlds have always been so secure, they have never needed this other.
(Susan Posey, 24, separated, formerly a professional in education and social work): We oppress ourselves because of our socialization. There was a woman in a workshop this morning that said that behind every successful man there were several women and that they make all the decisions in this world and it’s women who really run the world. But, just from her statement, these women are running the world for men. We... they’re... we’re being... I do this for my husband. I was ambitious for him rather than for myself. And so now, he has a very good job and can afford to give me (laugh) child support payments while I am working weird hours at a restaurant because I was ambitious for him rather than myself.
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“Ladies Ready to Wear and Millinery as a Vocation,” Juanita Morris, owner Juanita Morris Shop, May 1, 1939. Typescript, Austin Altrusa Club records, 2-23/599.
TRANSCRIPT
As an integral part of our country’s largest industry, that of retailing, my business of selling smart women’s clothes has undergone a great change since the beginning of the century.
Before the civil war, even, our grandmothers and great grandmothers often go their “party” dresses from Paris shops through traders, who contacted the individuals and then made purchases for them on the next trip “to the old country.”
At a later period, mail order houses were established in the North and East from which women’s clothes were ordered through a catalogue which was sent out twice a year. Then, general mercantile stores, sensing their loss in this line, started open stocks women’s clothes. For such goods they ordered, or bought for traveling men, anywhere from one to four times a year. So you see, in those days there was no demand for women operation or selling in this type of business. Men handled such matters almost exclusively. The owner tried to run the entire store alone. He was the buyer, advertising manager, window-display manager, bookkeeper, and personnel director.
Now, we find specialty shops operated almost entirely by women, handling read-to-wear, millinery and accessories, sending special buyers to New York fashion markets every four to six weeks. In the interim when they have no special buyer to glean the smartest, best style from market, they often hire resident buyers in that city to watch the market for their shop.
Along with this changing custom, we find an entirely different attitude on the part of today’s customer. She not longer enters a shop and buys the prettiest of dress of her means and then leaves the shop entirely satisfied. She wants to know what she is paying for, the grade of material, its durability, its practical values, its maker and numerous other considerations.
With these changes it is only natural, therefore, that we should find the personnel and managing of a shop to be greatly improved and of wider range.
One of the educational requirements for selling ready-to-wear today is a high school education and preferably a college education. By all mean, an open ready-to-learn mind is necessary.
As in all businesses the newcomer must serve her apprenticeship. Then she is ready to be a salesgirl. If she is interested, if her sales show improvement, if she really makes herself useful, the head of the firm sooner or later realizes this. From this realization it is only a step to finding a promotion for the girl who has made herself a valuable asset to the business. Such a promotion would be head a department.
If the business manager sees the girl is making her department pay, she gradually permits the girl to help buy for her department. Thus, she may work herself up to an assistant buyer for the shop. During this course of her work there will become a time, if she has shown that she can do the buying successfully, when she will be sent to New York to buy for the entire shop.
From such a position it is not impossible to progress to a New York buying office and from that to buying for some Fifth Avenue Store.
This is not an idle thing I am saying, for I have some friends who have so worked themselves up and are now drawing salaries of $10,000 a year as buyers in New York.
Also, if you have had any training in design in your years of schoolwork, and if you like this type of work, you might rise to an important position as a designer in American markets. If you are proficient, if you can create, there is always the possibility that you might advance from New York to Paris as many American women now hold important positions in Paris design offices.
In this day of unemployment and consternation over limited opportunities for the young, many people do not realize the chances ready-to-wear selling offers to youth. Unfortunately, our schools overlook this line as a vocation almost entirely. Consequently, we in ready-to-wear and millinery are faced with little choice in our employees. The competition is not as great as in other businesses, and, at the same time, we are handicapped in a manner of speaking, by having to teach our employees everything they know about the business.
I particularly stress to you young girls who have not decided upon your vocation in life, that you seriously consider the advantages in this business. I have had great advantages over the average girl in this respect, for my mother was my trainer and she has been in the ready to wear business forty years. I opened my first shop in 1919 and so, you see, I have been in the business twenty years. Thus, I feel I know what I am saying when I advise you.
With application any intelligent girl has great opportunities for advancement in this field.
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