Sutton talks about conflicts when attending a national ERA meeting (5:27)
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 Amendment 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.
Transcript of this excerpt: SS: So anyway, I went up there to that meeting and we sat around the table and we talked about the various ways that they were going to try to ratify in the various states. And Cathey Steinberg came into the meeting and sat down. She had been up there for -- at that time, her little girls were still pretty small and I think she'd been up there for something like a Bluebird meeting. And she came in and sat down and stayed about ten minutes and somebody went over and said something to her, and she went outside with the woman. I think it was the AAUW woman. She was a very heavyset woman who was very opinionated and she always would knit during meetings. She would sit and knit. And so she and Cathey went outside for a few minutes. And Cathey came back in and slipped me a note and left. And the note said, and I wish I had kept it, and I may have somewhere. The note said, "I've been asked to leave this meeting. I'll talk to you back in Georgia." So I was at a loss. I didn't know what to do because, frankly, I felt intimidated by these national people, because at one point Eleanor Smeal was there. She was at that point president of NOW, and not friendly at all to me; I mean -- just felt like Georgia was a waste of time. And, of course, she was right, and of course, they were focusing where they felt like they had a chance. So she -- I remember her being very cold and not very -- but, you know, when I look back on it, I know why. I mean, women were so -- the Women's Movement was only about eight or nine years old at that point. I mean, we had only had Roe v Wade for, like, seven years at that point. And we're still having to fight at every level to hold on to Roe v Wade and to fight the states that were trying to pass state laws that would basically overturn Roe v Wade. So it was like, we were all stressed to the max, not knowing what -- not having any kind of blueprint to follow, not knowing anything except that we knew that we wanted to do it ourselves. There were no men at that meeting. I remember being very impressed that this was women doing women's work, and they were -- Some of the women who were there told me at various times during this meeting that the reason they didn't have any men in the room was because -- and I found this to be quite true in my political career -- was once you had a man in the room, the dynamics shifted. And, somehow, no matter who he was or how stupid he was or anything else, there was a certain bowing to his opinions, or there was a certain legitimacy given to his comments and his opinions that shifted everything else. So it had to be for women, by women, about women. But it also meant that it put us in conflict with each other because none of us knew how to handle what was power. When we look back on it now, we were in a historical situation that -- I don't think anybody appreciated the gravity of what we were doing. And we were all coming from our parochial viewpoints of what needed to be done, had to be done, should be done, how we were going to do it, who could do it, who couldn't do it. Who couldn't do it was a big topic all the time because it was clear no one could. And we never gave in to that. We always thought we could and, therefore, we had to handle all the details of how we were going to do it. So the meeting went on, and I remember feeling, "Oh, God, you know my fanny is really in a crack because the chief sponsor of the ERA in Georgia is now pissed off at me because I didn't walk out in solidarity with her." It didn't occur to me to do that because I didn't -- what do you do when your legislative leader is asked to leave a meeting? Do you stay and see what you can get for your state so you can try to accomplish your goal, or do you just say "You've been rude to the sponsor of the amendment in Georgia so, therefore, I'm not going to stay here and talk to you?" I knew they had money. I knew they had resources. I knew they had some things that I thought we could use. I don't know if that's true or not. But I felt like they had. And also, I have to be honest. I was, at that, I should have probably known more than I did at forty years old but I was kind of star struck at being involved in this, you know, upper echelon of these women who were going to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. It was heady, it was heady.