The action took place during the county board’s Sept. 18, 2013 meeting. The vote was 6-0, with three commissioners absent: Felicia Brabec (D-District 4), Rolland Sizemore Jr. (D-District 5) and Ronnie Peterson (D-District 6).

During public commentary on Sept. 4 – when an initial vote was taken – community activist Jim Toy and Jason Morgan, a board member of the Jim Toy Community Center, had spoken in support of the changes. No one from the public addressed the issue during the Sept. 18 meeting.

The resolution’s three resolved clauses state:

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners reaffirms its intent to prohibit discrimination in Washtenaw County against any person in recruitment, certification, appointment, retention, promotion, training and discipline on the basis of race, creed, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, handicap, veteran status, marital status, height, weight, religion and political belief.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners shall strive to promote a workforce that welcomes and honors all persons and that provides equal opportunity in employment.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners directs the Human Resources / Labor Relations Director to update the Affirmative Action Plan, as well as policies Prohibiting Discrimination in Employment, Sexual Harassment, and the County’s Statement of Equal Employment Opportunity to reflect the Boards commitment and reaffirmation described herein.

Yousef Rabhi (D-District 8) made a minor amendment, which was accepted as friendly, to add in the word “sex” in the list of categories that cannot be discriminated against. He said it had been inadvertently edited out in the initial resolution.

This brief was filed from the boardroom of the county administration building, located at 220 N. Main St. in Ann Arbor. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

During public commentary at the start of the meeting, community activist Jim Toy and Jason Morgan, a board member of the Jim Toy Community Center, spoke in support of the changes.

The resolution’s three resolved clauses state:

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners reaffirms its intent to prohibit discrimination in Washtenaw County against any person in recruitment, certification, appointment, retention, promotion, training and discipline on the basis of race, creed, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, handicap, veteran status, marital status, height, weight, religion and political belief.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners shall strive to promote a workforce that welcomes and honors all persons and that provides equal opportunity in employment.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners directs the Human Resources / Labor Relations Director to update the Affirmative Action Plan, as well as policies Prohibiting Discrimination in Employment, Sexual Harassment, and the County’s Statement of Equal Employment Opportunity to reflect the Boards commitment and reaffirmation described herein.

This brief was filed from the boardroom of the county administration building, located at 220 N. Main St. in Ann Arbor. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

John U. Bacon

This week, the University of Michigan celebrated the 40th anniversary of Title IX, with a host of speakers and panels discussing the historic legislation and its impact on girls, women and the United States itself.

It all started pretty quietly. Just a sentence buried in the back of the Education Amendments Act of 1972.

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

Just a sentence – one that seems pretty straightforward to us, even self-evident. But that little line stirred up our society in ways that few pieces of legislation ever have. We call it Title IX – and perhaps only the Civil Rights Acts changed our nation the past century more dramatically – or did more good.

But nowhere in that powerful paragraph do the authors say one word about sports. It’s not really about sports, but educational opportunities. It says a lot about Americans’ unequaled belief in the value of school sports, that we consider them essential to a comprehensive education.

Unlike the Civil Rights Acts, Title IX didn’t even register with most Americans when it passed. But the NCAA’s leaders recognized its potential immediately, and did everything they could to stop it. They were joined by congressmen, school presidents, principals, athletic directors and coaches coast to coast, all trying to limit it, or kill it altogether. But the durable Title IX has survived every attempt to cut it down.

Still, it seemed like just an arcane legal issue, until a year later, when a seemingly meaningless tennis match – just an exhibition between an old man and a woman 26 years his junior – made it very real, very fast.

The man happened to be a 55-year old guy named Bobby Riggs, a Hall of Fame player who had won six major championships, and swept Wimbledon’s singles, doubles, and mixed doubles titles – in 1939.

He was also an incorrigible hustler. When he first challenged Billie Jean King – who would win 39 major titles in her career – to an exhibition match, she declined. But after Riggs crushed top-ranked Margaret Court, half his age, to earn a Sports Illustrated cover story, King felt she had to accept. They would play the “Battle of the Sexes” for the biggest payday in the history of the sport – and bragging rights that would be shared by half the country’s population.

King had no illusions about the stakes. “I accepted the challenge,” she said, “so that girls and women could feel positive about participating in athletics.”

On Sept. 20, 1973, in front of 50 million Americans watching on TV, about a quarter of our population, and a Houston Astrodome packed with more than 30,000 spectators – both still American tennis records – King stayed strong and focused, and won emphatically. In the process, so did millions of American girls, most of whom had not been born yet.

“There should be nothing,” King said, “to stop them from pursuing and fulfilling their dreams.” Before Title IX and the Battle of the Sexes, one in 30 girls played high school sports. Today, more than half do.

Contrary to urban myth, Riggs wanted to win that match, and badly – but his theatrics were mostly promotional. He had been taught the game by a woman, won many mixed doubles titles, and fervently believed women should play sports. It was an act – but a hell of an act.

Over the years, Riggs and King became close friends, and talked often. The night before Riggs died of cancer, King called him to say, “I love you.”

It all started with a single sentence – and it ended with one, too.

In between, everything changed.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game,” which has been airing on various stations in Michigan and nationally.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

In 1894, Ann Arbor's Crescent Clasp Works at 39-41 North Main employed 13 women making corsets, waists, and hosiery. They included machine operators Clara and Lillie Scheffold, Minnie and Anna Schneider, Emma Tenfel, Kate Saunders, Eugenia Gauss, Ida Kuebler, Lilly Biermann, Ida Oesterlin, Dora Walz, Jennie Jacobus, and Anna Kuster, plus stenographers Clara Markham and Mary Pollock.

This time last year, census canvassers were going door-to-door, asking their 10 questions about each home’s residents, their individual sex, race, and age, and whether the property was mortgaged.

Imagine if they’d asked each woman about her style of underwear.

Thirteen thousand women were asked that question in 1892 by Michigan state officials.

The officials were male, but oddly enough it was women who were responsible for inserting the undergarment question into the state-funded survey.

The winding road to this naughty quiz began with an 1880s state governor who was concerned about the working class.

In his 1883 inaugural address, Michigan governor Josiah Begole proposed the creation of a state bureau to collect information about labor conditions. “Paupers and criminals,” he said, “the fish that swim in our rivers and lakes, and the cattle that graze in our fields, are cared for by commissioners appointed by the State. A large class of our citizens … have no one whose especial duty it is to investigate their condition … I refer to the laboring class.”

He had reason for concern. The following year’s report by the new Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics summarized data from 14 major manufacturing cities. It was found that the average workday was 10 hours long. Sawmill, salt mill, and shingle mill employees worked 11 to 15 hours per day, and streetcar drivers up to 17.

Worker accommodations at many job sites were deplorable. The 1884 report mentioned “the appalling poverty and squalidity of the poor [Wayne county] brickyard laborers. The destitution and wretchedness of life is rendered much more apparent … by reason of the filthy, dilapidated, little hovels into which the laborer is crowded. These usually consist of one room and a shed, and are built of ten-foot boards, standing on end, with the floor raised about two feet, making a room about eight feet high, by about ten feet square.” The average family, said the report, consisted of six people living in those 100 square feet.

The not unsympathetic report continued, “Unorganized, untaught, uncared for, seemingly unambitious, [immigrant] strangers in a strange land, with every waking hour devoted to satisfying the needs and desires of the physical man, these people seem scarcely to realize their humanity.”

The 1884 report took a cursory look at women in the workplace. It noted the daily wages of 502 women across the state. The average was 74 cents [$18 today], compared to $1.77 for men [$42 today]. The three women’s professions whose wage range offered a chance to earn up to $2 per day included clerks, dressmakers, and laundresses. The report also examined the wages of 500 domestics, or house servants. Most domestics earned between $2 and $3.50 per day (their pay included a stipend for personal expenses), but, if living at their employer’s home, were on call around the clock.

Despite low wages and a limited variety of “appropriate” jobs on the distaff side, women entered the workforce in ever greater numbers. In 1892, the state’s nine-year-old Bureau of Labor decided to focus on this growing trend, and devoted most of the yearly report to an analysis of women’s work.

Among the Bureau agents’ survey questions were two that had been included at the request of progressive women’s societies concerned about working women’s welfare.

In the working world, the well-meaning questions proved offensive. “A great many of whom the questions were asked thought no one had any right to receive any answer to them, not comprehending the statistical purposes in view,” groused the report’s writer.

One question asked which church the women attended (with the assumption that they were Christian) and whether they belonged to a ladies’ or community society. It seems probable that the forward-thinking women who’d campaigned to include this question viewed church and society membership as marks of a wholesome spiritual and moral condition. Of the 13,436 women surveyed, however, 10,729 didn’t respond.

The other question – pity the poor male Bureau official asking this of hundreds of female strangers – asked whether the lady wore a corset.

The report noted, “This question was requested to be asked of the women wage-workers by ladies interested in the welfare of their sex with a desire of ascertaining, if possible, the effect of the wearing of corsets upon women workers, and also to get an expression from the women themselves as to their effect upon health.”

The text continued, “An interesting feature of this report [is that] comparing the health of those who report not wearing corsets with the health of those [that] do, the percentage of good health we find largely in favor of those who report no.”

Taken in the context of the era’s Dress Reform Movement, which sought healthier, less restrictive clothing norms for women, and of a growing women’s rights movement in general, the question is less intrusive than radical. Progressive women sought greater freedom for their sex, and a safe place to begin reform was where it couldn’t be seen and jeered – namely, among the 19th century’s complicated and restrictive undergarments, hidden under outerwear.

Many working-class women agreed with dress reform. “I know from extensive observation that the wearing of corsets is very injurious to the health of women,” said one woman worker quoted in the Bureau’s survey. She continued, “[I] have been deeply interested in the ideas as promulgated by the Chautauqua dress reform ladies which this year [have] attracted more popular attention than ever before … the principal motive [of the movement is] to give greater freedom of motion to women, to dispense with the health-breaking corset, and to shift the weight of clothing from the waist … to the shoulders, where it ought to be. It is a serious matter, this dress reform idea … ”

“I advise no one to wear them. I think them injurious to working people,” said another working woman survey respondent. “In winter,” said another. “Sometimes when not working,” said one.

Echoing the sentiments of many, however, one woman snapped, “It is a personal affair.”

Of the 13,000 women surveyed, around 3,400 said they wore corsets; 232 said they didn’t. Nearly 10,000 did not respond. (No figures on the number who slapped the questioner’s face.)

After completing and turning in the report, Bureau officials likely felt relief to be free of the troublesome, embarrassing work and the indignant women.

But one final feminine sally blasted forth from the December 1892 issue of the Journal of the American Statistical Association. Statistician Laura Salmon had pored over the Bureau’s report.

“It is a matter of no small moment,” she began approvingly, “to stimulate among working women themselves a discussion concerning the sanitary conditions under which they work, the unhygienic features of women’s dress, the possibility of saving wages … ”

Salmon, however, took a dim view of the published report. After criticizing the Bureau’s ramshackle methodology, she excoriated its mangling of English.

Valuable information, she said, should be presented in a readable form for the public. “[I]nasmuch as the general public has yet to be educated to consider statistical reports interesting and valuable reading,” she said, “the presentation of statistical material in … [an] interesting manner is scarcely second in importance to [facts].”

“The majority of readers whose interest in statistics has yet to be won,” she said – perhaps with exasperation at the statistics-oblivious public – “are repelled by … ‘data’ used uniformly as a singular noun, the not infrequent use of a plural subject with a singular verb and the reverse, [the antique term] ‘widow lady,’ … and a score of inaccurate expressions too long to quote.”

“But far worse than this slovenly use of English – bad as it is,” she continued, building up a good head of steam, “is its undignified use. ‘Grass widow,’ ‘gents,’ ‘a hustling city,’ savor of the street corner rather than suggest the highest industrial authority in a great commonwealth.”

In closing, Laura blew the whistle. “Accuracy of mathematical work and grasp of statistical principles ought not to be incompatible with the presentation of a subject, if not in elegant, at least not in slovenly English.”

The gavel had fallen.

From that day to this, the State of Michigan has never again dared to question women about their undies.

Mystery Artifact

Last column’s Mystery Artifact seemed to suggest gruesome possibilities to more than one commenter … not without reason.

Mystery Artifact

The 1924 medical device is an amputation retractor for pulling back a severed section of, say, leg flesh so as to obtain access to the bone. This device’s use is illustrated in its stomach-roiling patent drawing.

This column we venture from the professions to the trades with this odd item from the Ypsilanti Historical Museum’s tool room. What might it be? Take your best guess and good luck!

Laura Bien is the author of “Tales from the Ypsilanti Archives” and the upcoming “Hidden Ypsilanti.” Contact her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

Jean Ledwith King at the March 26, 2011 dinner to rename the Women's Center of Southeastern Michigan in her honor. (Photo courtesy of Wayne Dabney)

On Saturday, about 300 people gathered to pay tribute to one of those women whose work broke ground for the rest of us: Jean Ledwith King. The event was hosted by the Women’s Center of Southeastern Michigan, which has been renamed in her honor.

As a former board member for the center, I expected to see some familiar faces – staff, volunteers and donors I’d known from my relatively short tenure there. But the turnout for Jean went far beyond that. Judges and attorneys, university administrators, elected officials from across the county and state, business leaders and many others came to say thanks for her years of dogged work on behalf of equal opportunity for women. She calls herself a bomb thrower, but on Saturday she was recognized more for the foundation she’s helped build, particularly through her work on Title IX issues related to high school and college athletics.

Jean’s life story is inspiring, as were reflections by the event’s keynote speaker, Olympian Micki King. (Though they aren’t related by blood, they certainly are in spirit.) Their stories made me think of other histories, too – we all have them, closer to home and less notable, perhaps, but also worth honoring as a reminder of how it’s possible to make dramatic societal changes within a lifetime.

Pressure to Conform

My maternal grandmother was born in the late 1800s, before women had the right to vote – a right granted by the U.S. Constitution’s Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, just four years before my mother was born. (Even as I type those words, the timeframe still strikes me as incredible – less than 100 years ago? How is that possible?)

Neither my mother nor her three sisters went to college. It wasn’t until my mother was in her 70s that she expressed regret about this to me. She told me that one of her older sisters had offered to pay for her education, but that her mother wouldn’t allow it – she was supposed to get a job until she found a husband and started having children, and there was no room for debate.

My mother did what was expected of her, and suffered bouts of depression and anxiety her entire life. Her insecurities over her lack of a college education must have been especially difficult to manage, given that she worked among educators – first as executive secretary for the president of Butler University in the 1950s, then as a secretary at the grade school that my sister and I attended. She was sensitive to even a hint of perceived condescension, and had no patience for people she thought were “too big for their britches.”

It took great force of will to combat society’s pressure to conform. That’s what makes Jean’s own story all the more remarkable. Her mother did go to college, and after Jean was born she went back to earn a Ph.D in psychology. That set the stage for Jean’s own experience – graduating in the 1940s from the University of Michigan, where she met her husband, John King. She then had three children before deciding at age 41 to enroll in law school – that was in 1965. Jean credits her mother with setting an example of how a woman could manage both a family and a profession, and she credits her husband for supporting her desire to pursue that goal.

On Saturday, Jean recalled how she was one of only 10 women attending UM’s law school at the time – today, nearly half of UM law students are women. And of course there were no female faculty members then. You could walk through the law quad for days – even weeks – without seeing another women, she said. It’s hard to imagine now, the isolation that must have permeated her experience.

Challenging the Status Quo

After graduation, Jean built a career out of challenging the status quo. (Many of her stories are described in a booklet by Stephanie Kadel Taras, based on interviews with Jean and distributed at Saturday’s event.) A political activist, Jean was a Democratic Party chair for Ann Arbor’s Fifth Ward, was elected to the Michigan Democratic Party’s state central committee, and co-founded the party’s state women’s caucus in 1970. She fought against the discrimination of women in Michigan’s delegate selection process to the Democratic National Convention – a fight that led to the party requiring that half its Michigan delegates be women. The national party adopted that same rule a few years later.

On the national level, in the early 1970s Jean was also among the founders of the National Women’s Political Caucus, which worked to promote female candidates. She was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1984, when Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman nominated for vice president on a major political party ticket. At Saturday’s dinner when the emcee, Carol Cain, announced the news that Ferraro had died earlier that day, an audible gasp rose from the crowd.

Jean was involved in litigation for women’s equality in many venues, but she’s perhaps best known for advocacy on behalf of female student athletes. Much of her work regarded compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments, which was passed by Congress in 1972. It’s a very simple statement, with far-reaching consequences:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance…

The same year that Title IX was enacted, Jean’s family had a breakthrough of their own, which eventually led to Jean’s involvement in gender equity issues related to athletics. Her daughter, Sally, decided to try out for Little League baseball that year. Though unusual, that decision wasn’t challenged by league organizers – Ann Arbor had an ordinance then that prohibited sex discrimination in public schools.

But it wasn’t the norm in the state or nationally, and Jean was contacted later that year and asked to help out in a gender equity lawsuit against the Little League in New Jersey. She got an affidavit from Sally’s doctor, attesting that playing baseball hadn’t harmed Sally physically. Word got out that Jean was sympathetic to these issues, and clients came calling.

Over the years, the cases that Jean litigated touched on dozens of sports, from track and wrestling to football and basketball. One of her highest profile cases was brought against Michigan State University, involving the unequal treatment of the women’s varsity basketball team. It took seven years before MSU finally settled the case out of court. The lead plaintiff – and a member of that women’s team – was Carol Hutchins, who’s been head coach of the UM women’s softball team since 1985.

Of course, these are just brief glimpses of Jean’s decades-long work. The Bentley Historical Library has archived 24 boxes of documents from her career, from 1964 through 2004 – it’s a formidable corpus, as formidable as Jean herself. (And I speak with some authority on this, having been on the receiving end of her formidable opinions when I was opinion editor at The Ann Arbor News.)

The stories about Jean’s work with female athletes in particular hit home for me. In the 1970s my own sister was a varsity athlete – in her senior year of high school, her basketball team won the citywide tournament in Indianapolis. If you’re a Hoosier, you know this was a very big deal. I asked her about it recently, and she reminded me that at the time, there was no statewide tournament for girls – even though basketball is nearly a religion in Indiana.

She also told me it never occurred to her to pursue sports in college. There were no role models for her, no one who encouraged her to do more with her athleticism. And I should note that we weren’t living in rural Indiana – my graduating class in high school had nearly 1,000 students. Even so, athletics just wasn’t something that most people took seriously for girls, regardless of their talents.

A Future Built on the Past

So as I listened to others on Saturday describe Jean’s impact, I thought about how the lives of my sister, mother and grandmother might have been so very different had they lived in different times. And how the girls born today will view those past experiences as quaint. Their challenges will be different, but I hope they don’t forget how far we’ve come.

In her remarks to the crowd on Saturday, Angela Costley Harris – chair of the Women’s Center board – described how her young son had asked why the Women’s Center isn’t called the People’s Center. Wasn’t that sexist? She told him that someday, she hoped, they could change the center’s name in that way. But for now, many women still face obstacles that places like the Women’s Center help them overcome. I would add that we need look no farther than the massive sex discrimination case against Wal-Mart – being heard this week in the U.S. Supreme Court – to see that there’s still work to be done.

In fact, it’s remarkable to me that we’re still living through so many firsts, even now. Debbie Stabenow, the first female U.S. senator from Michigan, was among those who sent a videotaped message of congratulations to Jean that was played at Saturday’s event. Hired nine years ago, Mary Sue Coleman was the University of Michigan’s first female president – and UM’s business school just hired its first female dean, Alison Davis-Blake, this year. Dave Brandon, UM’s athletic director, attended Saturday’s dinner – that job hasn’t yet been held by a woman.

Still, it was heartening to see so many women leaders on Saturday – female judges like Libby Hines and Melinda Morris, politicians like Ann Arbor city councilmember Sabra Briere and former state legislator Alma Wheeler Smith, entrepreneurs like Alicia Torres, business owners like Patricia Davenport, nonprofit leaders like Debra Polich, university executives like Cynthia Wilbanks.

In this context, it’s fitting that March is women’s history month. And though I’m generally more inclined to look ahead than to spend time thinking about the past, I was grateful to bear witness on Saturday to a deserved show of thanks for Jean – and, by extension, to all our foremothers who’ve waged this battle, often without accolades. We are deeply indebted to them for their vision of a better world.

Thanks, Jean.

About the writer: Mary Morgan is publisher and co-founder of The Ann Arbor Chronicle.