- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Sutton talks about working with legislators (3:40)
- Creator:
- Sutton, Sherry (Sherry Shulman), 1941-
- Contributor to Resource:
- Paulk, Janet, 1932-
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 1998-11-08
1999-03-07 - Subject:
- Feminism
Social movements
Women's studies - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Fulton County, 33.79025, -84.46702
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Atlanta, 33.749, -84.38798 - Medium:
- audiocassettes
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- A native of Atlanta, Sherry Sutton was born in 1941 and received a B.A. in political science from Emory University in 1981. She has been active in Georgia politics since the 1970s when she became involved in the Equal Rights Amendment / Women's Rights movement. She served as legislative liaison for ERA Georgia, Inc. (1980-1981) and then served as the group's president (1981-1982). During this time she was also the chair of the DeKalb County Democratic Party (1980-1982) and served as the District 2 Commissioner of DeKalb County (1985-1992). While Commissioner, she helped lead the effort to block the construction of the Presidential Parkway. Currently Sutton works on staff at Georgia Shares, an organization that helps to raise funds for social aid organizations in Georgia primarily through workplace contributions.
Describing her childhood, Sutton says she acquired from her family a Depression-era mentality at an early age. In the mid 1960s, she became involved in political issues -- particularly the Vietnam War. She then became interested in women's issues -- in particular reproductive freedom, domestic violence, and equal pay, all of which, she describes as being interrelated. She talks about her fundraising work in the 1960s in an effort to assist women who had to go to New York to seek abortions. In the mid 1970s, Sutton became involved in the Democratic Party and in 1979, began her service as its chair. She was also selected as one of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention in New York City. Sutton describes her involvement in the Women's Movement, and states that one of her main objectives was to help get more women elected into office. To this end, she worked for a number of state senate campaigns. She recalls the reason for her political involvement: "The only way the difference was going to come about was through the political process." Sutton's interest in the Equal Rights Amandment campaign began when she saw that women were serious about building a state-wide coalition that could effectively lobby and ratify the amendment. She served as chair of ERA Georgia, Inc. and also worked on the national level with ERAmerica. Sutton recalls that ERAmerica did not consider Georgia as a key state when pushing the amendment: This caused a rift between Sutton and legislator, Cathey Steinberg, who sponsored the bill in Georgia. As Sutton explains, her plan was to connect ERA Georgia with ERAmerica, while Steinberg wanted to try and keep the Equal Rights Amendment as part of the legislative process in Georgia. Sutton goes on to discuss the rivalries between the different women's groups such as NOW and the Women's Political Caucus at both the state and national levels. She also provides detailed accounts of each group and their leading figures. Sutton contends that the defeat of the ERA came about because religious organizations convinced Georgia's legislators and the public that the ERA would be detrimental for women. In terms of the Women's Movement, Sutton suggests that some of its accomplishments include increased opportunities that are now offered to women, and she cites her own daughters' professional careers as evidence. She also discusses some of the obstacles that the women's movement faced such as the ideology of patriarchy, the politics of opposition and the religious community.
Transcript of this excerpt: SS: Of course, the main objective always was to work one by one by one by one on those votes in the legislature to try to get enough votes to ratify. Last night, when I was gathering everything to bring to you, I pulled out the headline story with the picture of Cathey Steinberg looking so somber. And I think we lost like 158 to 57, something like that. [laughs] But the other thing -- and the reason I say that everything was so focused on these individual legislators was obviously we had to get to them one by one by one, but in pulling together my papers to turn over to Georgia State [University], I also came across the little notebook that I had kept. It named each and every legislator and what district they represented and where they were from and what we initially thought their vote was going to be. And then as we dispatched people to talk to them, I had made notes on whether they were "yes" or "no" and why, and what they were saying. But one thing that struck me was, repeatedly, these legislators -- even a lot of them who were very conservative, were saying, "I don't think we necessarily need it, but I'm willing to look at the discriminatory laws." And, of course, this was 1980 and 1981, and if that's the one -- I mean, I think there are many legacies from our efforts with the ERA. But I think that one thing that did happen was that it was also cumulative, that that's what pushed some of the really discriminatory laws like the "head of household" thing out of the -- JP: Which was? SS: The "head of household" law in Georgia simply said, "The husband is head of the household, and the wife is subject there to him. Her legal and civil existence is merged into his." So we were able to overturn that at a later point, or almost during this time. So despite the fact that we knew on some of these guys, and the women, too, that we would never be able to get them to vote "Yes" on a national equal rights amendment, there opened up a bit of a willingness to say, "Well, yeah, I am willing to look at the Code and see if I can help you in any other way." That was basically what they were saying: "I am not going to vote for you on this, but I will look to see if you are right on some of these other things." JP: This is digressing, but that "head of household," did that mean that women did not have legal rights regarding their children in certain instances? SS: That's right, or even their property. Early on, it was interpreted to mean even their property. One of the major reasons that we were very concerned about repealing that was that in an instance of domestic violence, a woman was unable to sue her husband to recover civil damages. Like if her clothing, her possessions, or all of her furniture had been busted up by this guy; we were looking for more and more ways for her to have some recourse. And so it took getting -- because obviously, she couldn't sue him or she'd be suing herself was what that law said. And it was obviously designed that way. I mean, it was designed to -- it was the chattel law. It was designed to keep women as possessions. So it's clear that all the work that we did led toward some reconsideration of some of those really antiquated laws. I mean, they were really antiquated, even then. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2058
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2058/manifest.json
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Copyright to this item is owned by Georgia State University Library. Georgia State University Library has made this item available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
- Extent:
- 85 pages (three audio cassettes)
- Original Collection:
- Georgia Women's Movement Project Collection
Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
