- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Moye talks about debating the Equal Rights Amendment with a Baptist minister (4:19)
- Creator:
- Moye, Carrie Nelle
- Contributor to Resource:
- Paulk, Janet, 1932-
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 2001-09-01
- Subject:
- Feminism
Social movements
Women's studies - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Lamar County, 33.07654, -84.13946
United States, Georgia, Lamar County, Barnesville, 33.05457, -84.15575 - Medium:
- audiocassettes
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- Born in Barnesville, Georgia in 1939, Carrie Nelle Moye grew up in a traditional Southern household with traditional Southern values. Moye's mother was a homemaker and her father worked as a farmer and as the State Parks Director under Governor Herman Talmadge. Moye attended Emory University and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in history. She began her feminist efforts after joining the League of Women Voters and through this organization became involved with efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Moye also worked for UNICEF, which allowed her a good deal of public exposure. She began speaking on behalf of women's rights in 1976. In 1980, she was sent by UNICEF to the Middle East where she was able to attend graduate school at American University in Beirut, focusing on a combination of Arabic and women's studies. Moye has worked as a freelance writer for a number of publications including The Christian Science Monitor, The Atlanta Journal Constitution and other metro Atlanta newspapers. Now living in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, she continues to promote civil rights, women's rights and political equality.
Carrie Nelle Moye describes her childhood on a farm close to Barnesville, South Georgia. An insecure student, she excelled in school and was named valedictorian. She says that she disappointed her father by attending Emory University, an institution he considered to be a hotbed of communism. She recalls being nominated for a graduate scholarship, but turned it down, as she felt that graduate work was not appropriate for women -- especially married women. After Moye married and had children, she recalls that she was very unhappy as a homemaker, and with the urging and support of her husband and psychiatrist, realized that the quality of her time with her children was more important than the quantity. Moye says that she was thirty-one years old before realizing that a woman could indeed be a person in her own right. She joined the League of Women Voters, and considers her work with the League as a stepping-stone to her involvement with the Equal Rights Amendment. After being offered a job as Atlanta director for UNICEF, Moye recounts joining many different organizations for women, including the YWCA, and the Business and Professional Women. She says that it was because of her UNICEF job, that she began speaking publicly about the ERA and women's issues, and she describes a number of debates she participated in, including one with a Baptist minister, and one with Phyllis Schlafly. She also describes the contentious ERA Georgia election in which she ran against Joyce Parker. Through her work with UNICEF, Moye traveled to the Middle East. She discusses her experiences there, and the strength and autonomy of the women she met. She says that the reason the ERA failed was due to women's ignorance and fear: fear that their lives would be turned upside-down; that they would not be allowed to be homemakers; that gay marriage would be legalized. She contends that conservative religion has compounded this fear. She feels that women should understand that, in the Women's Movement [that she knows], a women does something because she chooses to do it, not because she has to do it.
Transcript of this excerpt: CNM: Anyway, there was a minister there [in Rome, Georgia] who was just rabidly against the ERA, and I was asked to debate him. And in the meantime, the League of Women Voters members there had sent me tapes of his sermons and I had listened to all of them. When I went up that night -- if it was at night, I would take my husband and my children with me whenever I could, to my talks. I thought "surely he would not say the same things he had been saying." But he got up and -- oh! In the meantime, there’s a school there. It was a Junior College or whatever -- and they had bussed down people from Chattanooga, that’s why I was asking where it was. It was close enough that they would bus people from Chattanooga. Just bus-loads of people from Chattanooga. I went in and I was carrying boxes of my material. We were late going because my husband had a patient that was late. We just got there right when it was time to start, and all the people were scared witless I was not coming. I know there was a woman who was walking [in] and she said, “Can I help you with this?” And I said, “You surely could, and I really appreciate it.” She helped me with it. And then when we got up to make our talk -- he started, he gave his introductory address and he said exactly the things he had been saying. Of course, I took my Bible with me. Having been reared in the Primitive Baptist Church and having, you know -- I remember reading the Bible from cover to cover in the 6th grade and it meant nothing -- I mean, you know, I couldn’t comprehend things. But anyway, of course, it had to be the King James Version. You know, anything else was taboo. It was like, God told them exactly what to say and that was what was written down, and if the King James Version says it, it is, Amen. But the auditorium was packed, and they were even having to have it broadcast outside. And I looked at my husband and I winked at him because he knew -- he had heard those tapes with me and he knew that I knew everything the man had said. When I got up to speak, I was as -- I tried to be as low key and as nice and as -- you know, as I could be. I knew my audience there. And having grown up with people just like that -- and I even mentioned -- I said, “Now there’s a lady in the audience named” -- I gave her first name, whatever it was -- I said, “I know she came from Chattanooga,” and I said, “I have no idea whether she’s for or against the ERA passage but I have a feeling she’s against it because she did come down from Chattanooga.” I said, “But the important thing is, she and I both are women and she, as a Southerner, and as we were taught to do, offered to help me and I accepted that.” And I said, “That has nothing to do with -- you know, just -- if I’m for it and she’s against it, that doesn’t change her and my relationship.” I took that kind of approach. Then everything that he had said, I could come back with a Bible verse, you know: “There’s neither Greek nor Jew nor whatever, for ye are all one in Christ.” Of course, this was a religious group and the whole thing was being taped and it had been really super-hyped, from what I had been told. And so, it just went so beautifully in this debate. I said, “I’m not for” -- remember now, this was back in the ‘70s -- I said, “I am not -- you know, passing the Equal Rights Amendment is not going to say that men can marry men and men can marry women.” I said, “What it will say [is], if there ever comes a time that men can marry men, women can also marry women.” I said, “So it has nothing to do with, you know, promoting homosexual marriages or whatever. It’s just saying that women shall have the same rights under the law as men.” Well, when we got through the minister said -- he stood in front of this huge congregation -- I mean audience, and he said, “Buh-buh-buh-but -- I agree with 99.9% of what Ms.” -- I was Thompson then, Carrie Nelle Moye Thompson, “-- of what Ms. Thompson had to say. But if there’s just one tenth of one percent that this will mean that homosexuals will marry, I’m against it.” But he really knew that -- JP: He had listened to you! CNM: He had listened to me! He had listened to me and like in a church, when we got through, everybody in that audience came up and shook our hands. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2067
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2067/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:
- 60 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:
-
