THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Pam Elam

“In whatever way we can, we work to make things better and to keep trying to make equality a reality for everybody.”

Interviewed by Judy Waxman, Oral Historian, February 2023

JW:  So, Pam, want to introduce yourself, please? Your full name and when and where you were born.

PE:  Pam Elam. I was born in Ashland, Kentucky, April 28, 1950.

JW:  Tell us a little about your childhood and your background before you got interested in women’s issues. Maybe what led you to get interested in women’s issues?

PE:  Well, actually, I made my first public speech about women’s rights when I was 13 years old. And I say public speech because it was in the Kentucky State Speech Festival. So, I started at a young age to protest the things I saw around me. I remember going to my school library trying to find anything about women, just a book, magazine article, anything. They had one book, and it had chapters on various women, and one of the chapters was on Susan B. Anthony. And I thought, yes, that’s what I want to do with my life. I want to organize for women’s rights. So, from 13, that was 1964, I started doing that.

JW:  What were the things you saw around you that were disturbing?

PE:  Well, I think for all of us, if I may be so bold as to say all of us, you look and see how women are treated around you starting with your mother. How society, of course you don’t know necessarily how to frame it in those terms, but how society treats her and the other women. So, I did, and I didn’t like it. Even as a girl, you learned very quickly. I mean, in grade school, my goodness, you learn, “You don’t get to go to Little League.” “You don’t get to play.” There are all kinds of, “Not you, you’re not welcome.” So, it wasn’t hard to figure out, but working to change it was the complicated part.

JW:  And did your family encourage this?

PE:  I have an identical twin sister, by the way, and Pat is a great writer and  feminist as well. So, our mother encouraged both of us just to be who we are, were, will be. Our father wasn’t really around much, so we didn’t really chat.

JW:  In high school, you organized groups there?

PE:  Well, there are all kinds of issue-oriented things. I mean, born and raised in Eastern Kentucky, you don’t find a lot of kindred spirits, I’m sorry that my sister is still in Kentucky and I’ve been trying to get her out of there for a long time. But it wasn’t until I went away to college in 1970, to the main campus of the University of Kentucky, that everything just exploded. Of course, what they called the second wave of the women’s movement was revving up, and it was just like lightning striking. It was organizing 24/7 at the University of Kentucky.

We organized the Council for Women’s Concerns, the Committee on Women’s Studies, the Kentucky Women’s Political Caucus. There were a gazillion groups. I organized the Women’s Center of Lexington, Kentucky. We started working on legislative changes for the Kentucky General Assembly to protect battered women and establish rape crisis centers, that sort of thing. I organized the Kentucky Women’s Agenda, comprised of all major Kentucky women’s groups. There were just so many things, and of course as the ‘70s went along, International Women’s Year in 1975, was such an important thing to organize around.

By then I was in law school, so I had organized a Women’s Law Caucus and the first ever conference on women in the law. We demanded they hire women professors, which of course they had none. So, it was a non-stop roller coaster ride. All kinds of things that I hadn’t thought about in years until I got your email, and then all these memories kept flashing back. Then of course, the big event came – the National Women’s Conference.

In 1977, we organized the Kentucky prelude to the National Women’s Conference  and that was a thrill. I was on the executive committee for that and organized the programs and then got elected to be a delegate to the National Women’s Conference in Houston in 1977. Which was just magical, just totally magical.

JW:  Before we get there, I want to stop you on your run and have you go back a little bit. During those years when you were in college, you said you led the effort to  organize the Women’s Center. What was that exactly?

PE:  Well, of course we had no money to have an actual center, so we would meet monthly to network, seek resources and volunteers with expertise on legal, medical and other issues – basic organizing things. We also created and distributed a printed Directory. We would appoint a committee, it would come back and report, then we’d urge elected officials to do X, Y and Z (what they should have already been doing in terms of funding programs for women), and then develop the whole legislative part of it.

When I was in law school, I also worked part time for the Kentucky Commission on Women and some of the legislative changes that came through that. That was of course when we were fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment and then got it, and then fighting attempts for them to rescind it. So, it was exciting and exhausting, as I think the best definition of the women’s movement can be.

JW:  What happened with the attempts to rescind it?

PE:  After we got it passed, the legislature voted to rescind it. And then, bless her heart, the Lieutenant Governor at the time, Thelma Stovall, one of the great women of Kentucky, was Lieutenant Governor. The governor of Kentucky had gone out of the state for a time and she was acting governor. So Thelma vetoed the rescission that came through and then of course there’s this whole thing, “Well no, it’s really still enacted, in effect.” “Oh no, it’s gone.” People are still arguing about that.

JW:  And this was the National ERA I assume. Not one to your own constitution, which some states have?

PE:  Yes, the National ERA. I know some day Kentucky will have one. I hope to live that long.

JW:  You said things are flashing in your mind. Give us a memory or two of what it was like doing your advocacy then.

PE:  There are obviously things that stand out in the whole lead-up to the National Women’s Conference when we had our Kentucky state meeting. Since I was in charge of programs and all the workshops, we had gotten Shirley Chisholm to come and give a keynote speech. I got to introduce Shirley Chisholm to a whole ballroom of people at the University of Kentucky. That stands out.

Back in 1971, when we organized the Council on Women’s Concerns at UK, we got Gloria Steinem and Flo Kennedy to come and speak, and had a reception for them. It was such a big deal in Kentucky to get those folks to come. Those things obviously stand out. And then, of course, I know in ’73 we also got Bella Abzug to come, and I got to interview her for a Kentucky Public Television Show.

I’d like to say that my memories also include people who weren’t famous. But when you’re young, if I may say, in your twenty’s and you meet folks that you’ve only read about or seen on TV – and when I organized the Women in Law Conference at the UK Law School, we got Liz Holtzman to come and give the keynote speech. To get a chance to talk to these folks, to actually connect with them in that way, it just was inspiring.

But with all of the other organizing work, which we know full well is not always inspiring, you just keep going. You deal with the basic organizational challenges as well as legislators and elected officials who, shall we say, are less than competent or less than sympathetic. It makes up for a lot of the frustrations. So, we all need inspiration. And then the Houston Conference happened, as I said.

JW:  I want to hear more. What was that like in Houston?

PE:  Well, I was so proud to be elected a delegate. We had a vote for delegates and we did it up right. We had voting machines, and hundreds of women voted. When they announced the Kentucky slate, I got more votes than anybody. I don’t mean to be boastful, but that meant more to me than I can tell you. All those things that you do, and you give your heart and soul to the work, there are very few times you can get actual impartial validation that you’re doing a good job, and that was it for me.

So, getting elected to go to Houston was wonderful. Actually being there, and being in that room with thousands of women. And on the stage, in addition to Bella, of course, there was Margaret Mead and Maya Angelou and Coretta Scott King. You just think, “Wow, I’m in the same room as them.” It’s still thrilling.

JW:  I’ll bet. And did you feel like the group coalesced around certain ideas or moving forward?

PE:  Yes. the frustrating thing, of course, is that we passed this program, the Pro Plan Caucus program, of all of these basic principles, the building blocks of a better society, and they all passed. And that dramatic moment when Betty Friedan spoke on the floor and in essence said, all right, I support the lesbian rights plank. It’s like, okay, all right, now everybody’s on board. And the Minority rights section that folks worked to make stronger. It was a unanimous kind of, “All right, now here’s our plan. Let’s march forward and get it enacted.”

But right after that, there was this breakthrough in the Middle East Peace Program. It’s something that wiped us off the coverage of front pages and the media. But when I said I formed the Kentucky Women’s Agenda, that came out of the National Women’s Conference because we formed our state group to work on those points on a local level. So, you do what you can, where you can.

JW:  What have you passed in Kentucky, maybe then and even later?

PE:  We did pass a few bills in terms of helping battered women, and at the time, putting together what they called the Displaced Homemakers Program, and of course, the ERA. I left Kentucky in 1978 to go to the master’s program in Women’s History at Sarah Lawrence College. It was the first of its kind in the nation.

So, I experienced all of this – the National Women’s Conference in ’77 and doing that work on a local level with our own Kentucky Women’s Agenda Coalition. By then it was ’78, and I found out that this Masters Program in Women’s History existed. So, I took out student loans, and I thought, “I have to be there.” Luckily, I got accepted and went to Sarah Lawrence, from Kentucky to Bronxville, New York, and studied with Dr. Gerda Lerner.

In 1979, we had a summer institute in Women’s History, which had leaders from all the major women’s organizations there. Gerda and Ruth Abram, you probably know Ruth Abram, she was then head of the Women’s Action Alliance. They put that together, and I was lucky enough to be a teaching assistant. And out of that came a resolution for National Women’s History Week. So, we started organizing for National Women’s History Week, which in 1980, Jimmy Carter issued a proclamation. And then, of course, over the years became National Women’s History Month. You know how it goes.

But also, when I was at Sarah Lawrence, I organized this group called the Congressional Union. My thesis was on the militant suffragists, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and the women of the original Congressional Union and National Women’s Party. I organized this group in tribute to them, also called the Congressional Union. And we were supporting a wide range of women’s issues, but focusing on the ERA because the ratification deadline was fast approaching.

We had all these nonviolent protests modeled on the activities of the Suffragists. For example, the Suffragists lit watch fires of freedom at the White House, so we lit watch fires of freedom. The suffragists burned Woodrow Wilson in effigy, so we burned Ronald Reagan in effigy. And that’s when I got arrested.

JW:  What happened when you got arrested?

PE:  Well, as I say, we were always nonviolent. We were always totally history based, and we would try to make it clear to people that we were continuing the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment that actually Alice Paul had started in 1923. A lot of that was lost on the media and people who were there, but some people got it. Some of our people did Pankhurst related things and chained themselves to the White House gates. So, we did a variety of things.

But your question about getting arrested and the DC police, this protest, on January 11, 1981, was in honor of Alice Paul’s birthday. At that time, the police were just waiting us out. They let us burn Reagan in effigy, and then firefighters put the fire out. And then we decided, okay, we’re going to block Pennsylvania Avenue. So, we stood in a line in front of the White House blocking Pennsylvania Avenue, and they just waited. It was freezing cold. Freezing, absolutely. And we thought, okay, they’re just waiting for us to get cold and leave. And then we thought, okay, they’re not going to do anything right now.

So, we marched to the nearest intersection, where they still had traffic going, and then they had to arrest us because we were interfering with traffic. It wasn’t life endangering in any way, but we were going outside the zone that they would permit us to occupy. So, then they called the vans and handcuffed us and took us to the station and put us in cells.

We already had this planned out in case we were arrested, so we were waiting for the woman to come with the bail money. You know how the processing goes. So, we got bailed out, and here’s the thing I like best. On the ticket that shows what you’re guilty of, it said “incommoding traffic”. And that was the same charge that many of  the National Women’s Party suffragists got when they blocked the sidewalks on Pennsylvania Avenue, in 1917 and later. That’s the icing on the cake.

JW:  They did you a favor.

PE:  People sometimes unknowingly make your day. And that made my day.

JW:  So, you had to pay a fine or what?

PE:  Yes, we had to pay a fine.

JW:  You didn’t have to go to trial or anything?

PE:  No, it was basically a traffic thing. They registered it as a traffic problem, and we’re totally nonviolent. We cooperate. It’s like we’re not doing anything that is beyond nonviolent protest, which should be allowed under the Constitution and sometimes is.

JW:  That’s so great. I love that story. Well, I’m sure you didn’t stop there.

PE:  No. Never stop is one of the things that I keep in mind. You’ve got to keep going. I mean all of us. In whatever way we can, we work to make things better and to keep trying to make equality a reality for everybody. Sometimes you find a path that’s clearer than others, and my path was actually very clear. When I graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 1980, I went to work for the New York City government because I had the law degree, I had a political science degree, I also had the women’s history Masters, but they mostly didn’t care about that.

But actually, I saw an ad in the New York Times that said, “Work for legislative official.” It didn’t say which legislative official, but I applied and got it. And it turned out that that councilwoman on the New York City Council was the one in charge of what was then a subcommittee on women. And it was like, “Well, by the way, I have a Masters in Women’s History, and I could help you out with that.”

So, I worked for the New York City Council, as a Legislative Aide, doing all kinds of work for almost nine years. I organized over 100 hearings in the New York City Council on Women’s History and women’s rights, and various aspects of what needed to be changed in New York City. It was just a clear path in that way.

The next thing I did was work as Deputy Campaign Manager for Liz Holtzman when she ran to be the first woman controller in NYC history. And when she won, I became Director of Community Relations and Assistant Controller. So that kept things going and going and going. Working in politics, depending on who gets elected and who doesn’t, it’s like surfing the waves, as we know. So, I managed to surf the waves for 25 years and then retired to just do what I did anyway all along the way – work pro bono for women’s rights and women’s organizations.

JW:  Which ones?

PE:  Well, there were a lot along the way. Right now, I am president of Monumental Women. And Monumental Women was formed in 2014 with a number of goals, which included establishing the first statue of real women in the 167 year history of NYC Central Park. It’s unbelievable to me, and I’m sure anybody who thinks about it, that New York, claiming to be so progressive, had never had a statue of a real woman in Central Park for the 167 years of its existence. And just think of how many people walked through that park and never even noticed. Yes, there was Alice in Wonderland, or yes, there was Mother Goose, and, Nymphs and Angels. But until Monumental Women came along, there wasn’t a statue of real women.

So, we worked for seven years. We raised $1.5 million dollars in private money, because the city didn’t help. The city just got in our way. It’s like, well, New York thinks it’s so progressive, you think you’d get a little help on something, that this is a no brainer. We’re doing your job for you. You should have done this already.

We’re a little nonprofit, all volunteer group. We went on this bureaucratic roller coaster ride that went through the New York City Parks Department, the Central Park Conservancy, the Public Design Commission, the Landmarks Preservation Commission, all community boards around Central Park, and then got the approvals after a lot of trauma and drama.

And on August 26, 2020, we unveiled the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park, honoring Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. And that, of course, was the 100th anniversary of the ratification and certification of the 19th Votes for Women Amendment. We did all this during a pandemic. We did it on our own, with private money and a lot of hard work.

But long story short, despite all of that, and despite going through all of the steps of creating a monument in a pandemic, the actual moment of unveiling was a heart warming, heart stopping moment, as you might well imagine. On monumentalwomen.org, our website, you can see the unveiling ceremony. Hillary Clinton was our guest speaker. That’s there, as well as every year on August 26, we do Moving History Forward Awards. So, you can also see the presentations from the last two years of our Moving History Forward Awards to people who’ve actually made a contribution in that regard.

But we’re doing a lot of other things. We want to help people all over the country  challenge their municipalities, or whatever particular governmental entity, to make their public spaces truly reflect and respect all women and people of color who made those communities great. So, we put together on our website a free Toolkit for Change, that talks about our experience, and offers some tips, to make hopefully your journey, trying to get a statue of diverse women in your community, a little less painful.

We also have a talking statues component as part of our Monument in Central Park, which has a lot of famous actors reading the words of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth. And we have it in English and Spanish. The English version has Meryl Streep as Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It has Viola Davis as Sojourner Truth, Jane Alexander as Susan B. Anthony and the Spanish version has Rita Moreno as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, America Ferrara as Susan B. Anthony and Zoe Saldana as Sojourner Truth.

We also have a little program for kids called, Put Her on a Pedestal. There’s a template and we give some information about a few women, just to serve as a launching pad, and let them draw the statue of the woman they think should be honored. So, we’re in there, pitching with an education campaign, as well as trying to encourage folks across the country to make their public spaces truly reflect and represent all of us.

JW:  I need to know what street in Central Park.

PE:  It’s on Literary Row. Big street. The mall that leads right to Bethesda Fountain. And we had to fight over that space, too. I’ll just say one more thing about it, which, in terms of the site, it’s a beautiful site. It’s where it should be. All of those statues of men on Literary Walk, and the one across from our Women’s Rights Pioneers is Fitz Green Halleck. Have you heard of Fitz Green Halleck? I don’t think people have, but it’s like, I’m sorry to anyone who likes Fitz Green Halleck, it’s insulting. It’s insulting that no women were there. So anyway, we fought hard for this beautiful space that does honor to the women.

But the thing is, that the parks department and the Central Park conservancy, tried at first to get us to say, all right, okay, you can have a statue, but it has to be outside the wall of Central Park. And it’s like, are you kidding me? They say, oh, no, it’s within the footprint of Central Park, but outside the walls. And we’re saying, do you know how many times and how many ways women have been told to stay outside the wall, to stay behind the barrier? And it’s like, no, we will not, absolutely not give in. And through the help of our good friend who was then Manhattan Borough president, Gale Brewer, we fought and we won.

Finally, here’s a requirement that the Parks Department made of us which no other advocates of any other Central Park statue ever had to meet:  They insisted that we find proof that Truth, Anthony, and Stanton had actually been in Central Park!  That’s outrageous, of course, but I found that information.

And now that statue is a go-to location. All the people who gave us grief and fought it and put up every bureaucratic hurdle, have to admit that it’s a highlight. People go and take selfies there. They listen to the talking statue’s part, and our wonderful sculptor Meredith Bergman has a part there if they want to know more about her design and why certain things, smaller things that you might not notice, are in the statute. Because we knew we’d have one shot, so we put everything in it.

Beside Anthony, there’s her traveling bag, and there are flyers in it that represent a lot of New York events and petitions. For Stanton, under her chair, there are books that represent the feminist thought that happened before 1848 and the Seneca Falls Convention. Like Mary Wollstonecraft, Sarah Grimke, Margaret Fuller, and in Sojourner Truth’s, lap, she’s knitting. And people might not know that in addition to the work she did in the Civil War for the Union, knitting was something in which she took great pride. So, there are little touches that people might miss on first view that we thought, we’re putting in as much as we can. I don’t care if it’s under a chair, or in a bag, or in someone’s lap.

JW:  The final question that I’m supposed to ask is how’s your involvement in the movement affected your later life, professionally and personally, and it seems like it’s been everything in your life.

PE:  Yes, I know when I started talking about it as a little kid, from then on, there’s nothing else. When you talk about women’s rights, that includes everything. You get people to try and understand that you’re not just focused on one thing, that within that category includes human existence, and all the ramifications of trying to make it fairer and better.

So, in my later life, I have to smile, because usually when you retire, people tell me, you can rest. But I don’t think any of us who work in the movement ever got that concept integrated. I’ve been lucky. I’ve had a few paying jobs where actually I could do women’s rights work as part of my job. I’ve searched out those jobs, and some not, I had to do the straight legislative aide kind of thing, but I’ll never stop. As long as we’re all here and breathing and have an ounce of energy, it never stops.

JW:  That’s great. Want to add anything else?

PE:  Well, I want to thank you, actually, for doing these interviews. I know you’re doing a lot of oral histories. As you know, as much as I love history, and I love honoring the women who we don’t know about and bringing more of the stories to light, the fact that you’re doing this means a lot because there are so many women whose names we’ll never know, who’ve gotten us to this point. And our work never stops, through your oral histories and my attempts to get more tributes to women, not just statues, but street signs, plaques, gardens, anything. If there’s a house where she lived, let’s honor all of that. But in some way to honor those women and make people understand the whole arc of history and the fact that it’s our jobs to complete their journeys.

JW:  Absolutely. And pass on the torch.

PE:  Exactly. But until we pass it on, it’s burning brightly in our own hands.