southern conservative from Virginia and a sponsor of the ERA since 1945, introduced an amendment to
what he called “this iniquitous piece of legislation” that threw the liberal forces, particularly the women,
into turmoil.^31 With considerable jocularity and to much laughter, Smith proposed adding “sex” to Title
VII of the civil rights bill, making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex as well as on the basis of
race, ethnicity, religion, and national origin. Feminists divided on Smith’s proposal, falling into camps
that looked remarkably similar to those bedeviling the women’s movement since the 1920s.
For the NWP leaders who asked Smith to introduce the amendment, women’s rights were not a joke:
they favored the passage of legislation outlawing discrimination on the basis of sex. At the same time,
they remained divided over race and federal civil rights policy. Some in the NWP, including Alice Paul,
may have sympathized with the proposed civil rights legislation and hoped that the addition of the sex
amendment would not jeopardize the bill’s passage. Indeed, Paul characterized the maneuverings over the
sex amendment proposal as “sideshows” to the ERA.^32 Nevertheless, even for those like Paul who
generally favored civil rights, the defeat of the civil rights bill was a risk worth taking if the issue of
women’s rights could be advanced.
Others, however, including Nina Horton Avery and Butler Franklin, the two NWP lieutenants who
proposed the sex amendment to Smith, saw it not only as a way of advancing women’s rights but also as a
means to delay if not defeat civil rights legislation. They opposed the civil rights bill because it involved
government regulation; in addition, they favored maintaining the racial status quo. Avery, long active in
southern segregationist politics, wrote Smith in January 1964, explaining that adding the sex amendment
was “from the standpoint of the NWP . . . merely a tool of strategy to take the pressure off the passage of
any CRB [civil rights bill].” Thank God for members of Congress, she continued, “who will use their
brains and energies to prevent a mongrel race in the U.S. and who will fight for the rights of white citizens
in order that discrimination against them may be stopped.”^33
Esther Peterson and other social justice feminists were caught off guard by Smith’s proposal. They too
supported women’s rights and saw sex discrimination in employment as a problem needing legislative
intervention, but the question was how to balance that commitment with other concerns such as addressing
race and class injustices. The sex amendment, they feared, like the ERA, would jeopardize woman-only
labor laws. Moreover, adding the amendment might make it harder to pass the civil rights bill. Peterson
called the possible defeat of the civil rights bill her “primary fear,” and she did not initially support the
sex amendment. Neither did most other social justice feminists. Peterson later elaborated, “I for one was
not willing to risk advancing the rights of all women at the expense of the redress due black men and
women.”^34 For social justice feminists, lessening discrimination on the basis of sex did not always have
priority over lessening other injustices.
In the raucous debate on the House floor over the sex amendment, its proponents relied unashamedly
on race prejudice to boost their positions. Former NWP member and Democratic congresswoman from
Michigan Martha Griffiths argued that without it, “white women will be last at the hiring gate.” Her
speech closed with a final racial appeal: “A vote against this amendment today by a white man is a vote
against his wife, or his widow, or his daughter, or his sister.” Midway through the debate, Republican
congresswoman Catherine Dean May read a letter from NWP chair Emma Guffey Miller expressing alarm
that without “any reference to civil rights for women” in this bill, the “white native-born American
women of Christian religion” would be “discriminated against.” Male congressmen from Alabama, South
Carolina, and Arkansas now joined in, echoing the idea that the civil rights bill, if not amended, put white
women at a disadvantage.^35
The only congresswoman who spoke against the amendment was Edith Green, veteran Democrat from