THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Sherrye Henry

“If you look back from when I came of age, back in the ’50s, we have come so far. We have just made so many changes. Yes, we haven’t yet broken the highest glass ceiling of a woman president, and I’m not sure we will in my lifetime, but we’ve broken so many glass ceilings, and I’m so proud of all that we have done.”

Interviewed by Muriel Fox, Chair of the Board, VFA, January 2025

MF:   I’m Muriel Fox and I am excited to be interviewing my good friend Sherrye Henry, a pioneer in feminist broadcasting. Our women’s revolution owes much of our success to communication. A number of our early feminists were professionals like me, who could explain why women’s equality was long overdue, and fair, and just. And we were fortunate to find friends in the media who understood our message and told the world about it. One of our most effective friends was Sherrye Henry.

In the New York area, Sherrye told our story on WCBS TV and on public television on Channel 13. Then she had a long running show on WOR Radio. We’ll talk later about Sherrye’s work in politics and government service, and she also published an outstanding feminist book. Sherrye, you were raised in a genteel Southern family, received a magna cum laude degree in History, married a man who became chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

How did you first become involved in the women’s movement?

SH:  Oh my goodness, it was a slow start! But first let me say Muriel, thank you for interviewing me. You, the icon of the women’s movement and my good friend. I’m really so grateful. But it was indeed a slow start. Muriel, you’ll remember back in the day, when I came out of college, a woman in the South could be a hairdresser, a secretary, a nurse, or a teacher. And so of course, I came out of Vanderbilt with a teacher certificate, and actually taught the 4th grade — until I was pregnant, and then of course, women weren’t allowed to show their pregnancy to children, so I was terminated.

And then I went to Washington and hit the Camelot days with my husband, Chairman of the FCC under Kennedy, and then Johnson. And you know, my daughter was in the White House with Caroline, and my son was in the nursery school with John-John, and I was just having a great time. No women’s movement for me until the family moved to New York. But then Muriel, did I learn!

Women in New York City in 1968, were considered too emotional to serve on juries due to our menstrual periods. Women couldn’t walk into certain bars and restaurants and clubs without a man. If a woman was raped in New York City, she had to have a witness to the crime before she could report it. And then, my divorce hit! And with that divorce, I really learned about the woman’s movement fast. I couldn’t get a credit card without a man to co-sign it. I couldn’t get a mortgage without a man to co-sign it. So yes, it was a slow start, but I learned fast.

MF:   What feminist organizations did you work for, Sherrye?

SH:   I was a card-carrying member of NOW, which you founded, Muriel, of course. But also, I was on the board of the Women’s Campaign Fund, which was all about electing women to political positions, both Republicans and Democrats. We were desperate then, just getting any women in. And also, I was a founding member – and you may have been one too – of the Woman’s Forum in New York that Ellie Guggenheimer started back in the late ’60s, if you’ll remember.

MF:  You were involved in politics yourself, and you ran for office at one time. Tell us about that, Sherrye.

SH:  Well, let me back up and talk to you about the jobs that I had in communications, because they all led to my running for office. Again, when I started working in the ’60s, I had seen, as the wife of the chairman of the FCC, that women weren’t doing anything. And I very naively thought, “They need us.” So, I went after a job in communications and I took one that nobody else wanted. Because at channel 13 there was a new show that was only going to be on for its last four months, then they had a new show coming in in September. The producer was desperate for somebody to help him produce the show and I said, “Ok, I’ll do it if you’ll let me be on air for a couple of times every week.” He was desperate, he made the deal. The show was at 10:00 o’clock at night.

I had this show with Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, on August 26th, 1970, when all the feminists – and I know you were there marching down 5th avenue, curb to curb, remember? Just celebrating the women’s movement. And then I had a really interesting show one night, because then women couldn’t go into certain bars and restaurants here. So I had 3 people on who owned such establishments—I had the owner of the Russian Tea Room, a woman, the head of the men’s bar at the Hilton Hotel, and the owner of McSorley’s Old Ale House down in Chelsea. None of them would let women come in without a man.

I asked each of the three sitting there before me, “Why?” And Faith Stewart Gordon, the owner of the Russian Tea Room said, “Oh, you know, my husband used to think if a woman was alone at the bar, it would upset the decorum of our restaurant.” And I said, Miss Gordon, let me give you a story that just happened.  “A friend of mine, Barbara Hower and I, were walking down 57th street last week. We were early for dinner so we decided to pop into the Russian Tea room, one of our favorite restaurants, to have a drink before dinner.

We got up to the bar, no one was there, but the bartender said, “I’m sorry, I can’t serve you.” We said, “Why?” And he said, “Because you’re women without a man.” And I said, “Well golly, there’s a homeless man in the gutter right outside. If I go get him and prop him up here at the bar, will you serve us please?” When Faith Stewart Gordon heard that she said, “Oh my God, I’m so embarrassed!” She said, “This just can’t go on.” And I said, “Then change it.” And she said, “I will. From now on, women can be served at the bar of The Russian Tea Room!” The next day, Muriel, there was a full-page picture on the cover of the New York Post of feminists going through the revolving door of the Russian Tea Room with the headline, “Russian Tea Room Liberated,” which was such fun.

After that, when the show was over in September, I had a few kind of ceiling-crashing jobs that I’m proud of. The first was at Channel 2, WCBS TV in New York. I was hired as the first woman in the country to broadcast editorials for the management of WCBS TV. And the first one I did was to support the abortion bill that was before the legislature in 1970. “And that’s the opinion of the management of WCBS-TV, I’m Sherrye Henry.”  I was so proud of that. And of course, we passed the bill.

I was at Channel 2 about a year later when the general manager came by and tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Sherrye, if you had to put on a show just for women on television, what would it look like?” And I wrote him a description, handed it over, he liked it, he said, “Do it.”

So, in 1972, we launched, Woman!  And we had every feminist issue you can think of on that show for a year. We were opposite Barbara Walters at 9:30 in the morning. She had a show called, Not for Women Only. You know, we had a show, for women, exclamation point, and we beat her in the ratings, which just delighted me.

About a year later, though, Bill Paley took us off the air. He said his glamorous socialite wife, Babe Paley, thought it was “too feminist for the audience.” So, we were through, but we had made our point. And then for my last ceiling to crack, WOR Radio was looking for a woman to broadcast just to working women, because women working was brand new. You know, in the ’60s and the early ’70s, women working was new. So, I started a show at 7:00 o’clock at night for working women who would come home and listen. I kept that show for 16 years. And you can imagine, you were on it, Muriel, every feminist I could find was on that show for 16 years. It was a great part of my life.

MF:  And tell us about running for office then.

SH:  Well, what happened to WOR was this. You’ll remember Muriel, at the time, back in the ’80s, there was something called the Fairness Doctrine. Remember that? That meant that every broadcaster on radio or television had to put on all sides of an issue. You couldn’t support just one side, and I was the Fairness Doctrine reporter for WOR. I became their political reporter.

I had the mayor on every month, the governor on every month. All the presidential candidates came through. I was the political junkie, which suited me fine. And the Fairness Doctrine reporter. Then Reagan got rid of the Fairness Doctrine, remember? He knocked it out. That’s why all of a sudden on AM radio you had the Rush Limbaughs screaming and yelling with their, whatever it was, hating “Femi-Nazis.” Remember all of that kind of ridiculous stuff?

Anyway, WOR then, in 1989, was bought by a right-wing broadcaster, and he came in and changed all the programming to the right-wing and got rid of me, of course. I was really glad to go because I could not have worked under those conditions. And so, I moved to my home in East Hampton, which I’d had for a number of years as a country weekend place, and wrote for a number of magazines.

And then, all of a sudden, it was 1990, and Governor Mario Cuomo decided it was the “Year of the Woman.” Because in the Legislature, the Republicans held the Senate by one member, and we were all afraid, all feminists were afraid, that Ronald Reagan, by one more appointment to the Supreme Court, we would lose our constitutional right to abortion. And Gov. Mario Cuomo was afraid we would lose it on the state level, so he asked Gerry Ferraro to recruit 14 women around the state, all to run for the Senate, just for that one seat we needed.

Fourteen women – we all ran a coordinated campaign, pitching ourselves to women about women’s issues. We all lost. It was a total wipeout. And 1990 was a wipeout nationally as well, because other women running for Congress lost. It was just a total wipeout for women. And the Women’s Campaign Fund – I was still on the board – was going to do a research project to find out why women weren’t voting for the women candidates who stood for their issues.

Then all of a sudden, we had really good candidates coming in. Remember Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein were going to run in ’92? We had a number of really good women running and the Campaign Fund decided to put all their resources there. So, I said to the group, “Why don’t I see if I can get a book publisher to fund the research – let’s do it that way.”

And indeed, I did. I wrote up a proposal, Macmillan bought it, and they funded focus groups that we held all over the country. Different age groups and different working groups and different ethnic groups. And we had a national poll, and we asked that question over and over again. “Why aren’t women voting for women?”

The book came out in ’94, it’s called, The Deep Divide: Why American Women Resist Equality. And Muriel, I have to tell you, something in that book, it still holds up and breaks my heart. I quoted, in that book, two major university projections about how long it would take women in America to have political equality, and both of those universities said it would be between 300 and 700 years! The United Nations did a study that year, same question, and said it would be 1000 years worldwide. And if you think about it, when the book came out in ’94, we had 16% of the Congress that was female. Now, more than 30 years later, we’re up to the grand total of 27% of Congress that is female. I mean, how long is it going to take? It’s just, you know, as far as we’ve come, we’ve still got a long way to go.

MF:  Now each of us in the women’s movement was especially interested in certain issues. What issues were most important to you, Sherrye?

SH:  Well, you know it’s obvious, as I said, it was electing women. Right now, we have lost the constitutional right to abortion. If we had more women in the Congress right now, we’d vote it into law in a minute. You know, we could  solve our problems by putting ourselves into power, and with 53% of the vote we should do it!

MF:  I agree with you, and the ending of my book says, it’s Politics. That’s what we have to concentrate on if we want to move to the next steps.

SH:  Agreed.

MF:  In the 1990s, President Clinton appointed you to head the women’s office. Tell us about that.

SH:   Well, he really gave me the best job in federal government, no question. I had such a kick in that office. When I went in, in ’96, the SBA had 22 women’s business centers around the country. They were places where women could go and, for free, get all the information they needed to start a business, to write a business plan, or how to get a loan at the bank. When I left in 2000 – and this is thanks to Hillary Clinton – she was the wind at our back on this – we had 100 women’s business centers around the country. There were two in every state.

And, we launched from the White House—Vice President Al Gore launched it in ’98 – the first-ever interactive website for women, where women could get interactive help about their specific concerns about starting a business. And then, in addition at SBA when I was there, we started the first-ever women’s venture capital fund. Imagine how much trouble it was for women to get VC money in those days, and still is.

And, we started – and this, thanks to Hillary Clinton, who used to say in speeches, “More women’s dreams die in bank parking lots,” when women would go to banks, they’d fill out the forms, which were going through just fine until they showed up at the window and then, all of a sudden, when they saw a female face, they’d cancel the loan. We started the first-ever pre-approved loan for women. So, the whole exercise for me for those years was just a delight.

MF:  Now, Sherrye, you have remained active politically. Tell us about your recent political activity.

SH:  Well, you know, at a certain point, if you think you have to do something, you go do it. So, since the year 2000, every four years I’ve been knocking on doors, but always with a big group of friends. We went to Youngstown, Pennsylvania in ’04, we went to Allentown, Pennsylvania in ’08, New Hampshire in ’16. We would go away and knock on doors.

Lately, I’ve also joined, in New York City and it’s got hundreds of members, The Buddy Group. It’s an organization where we research candidates, we decide which ones are the important ones to elect, we set up fundraising for them, and we set up postcard writing for them, door knocking for them. It’s an activist organization. You can do as much as you want, you can do this as little as you want. But for me it’s an outlet, and I just have to say that we simply, every single one of us, has to do something.

MF:  Right. And it’s absolutely politics is where it’s at if we want to make progress. Now Sherrye, you have three grown children, what are they doing, and are they feminists?

SH:  I have three grown children. I have five grown grandchildren and four great grandchildren. And I can tell you that all of my female descendants, all of them are feminists. And even more important, Muriel, than being feminists, they’re all, each one of them, doing something that I could never have imagined doing when I came of age. I mean the change is just enormous and it’s right before my eyes.

MF:  Well, how do you feel about communications today? Are you worried about all the misinformation? In other words, lies, and do you have any ideas on what can be done about it today?

SH:  We’re talking about a social media ecosystem that Democrats aren’t even involved in. Social media online – that’s where all the lies and misinformation is coming from. And there is no control over them from the government side. They are privately owned and therefore aren’t using the public airwaves, so the government says they can’t control the lies and misinformation, and God knows what that’s going to do.

I think it’s got to come from a lot of smarter people than me about how to deal with all of this misinformation. And young people coming into communications, I think they’re going to have to learn to write, that’s number one, right? And how to talk, yes. But they’re going to have to learn how to deal with miscommunication, and I’ve got to stand there and watch it. I have no idea what’s going to unfold.

MF:  You are right, and we do have to advise young people to understand all the media. It’s so much more complicated than it was when we were working in the old days. Now, what makes you especially proud, Sherrye, about the accomplishments of our women’s movement? Despite the setbacks, look at what we’ve done. What makes you happiest?

SH:  If you look back from where I came of age, back in the ’50s, we have come so far. We have just made so many changes. Yes, we haven’t yet broken the highest glass ceiling of a woman president, and I’m not sure we will in my lifetime, but we’ve broken so many glass ceilings, and I’m so proud of all that we have done. On the other hand, I have to say that right now, with this new hyper-masculine presidential administration coming in – remember when President Trump came out on the floor of the Republican National Convention?

He came out to the song, It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s, World, and now he’s producing a hyper-masculine administration where women are being denigrated, put down at every level. I think we all have to buckle our seat belts to go through four rocky years, and then we have to come out of it. And at the end of that, I’ll be able to tell you again, Muriel, how proud I am of all the women who have done it again. A feminine equal society. We will make it work. And my pride is in the fighting spirit that feminists have always had.

MF:  Well, Sherrye Henry, you are so inspiring, and encouraging, and thank you so much for telling us about the wonderful work that you have done for our women’s movement.

SH:  And thank you again, Muriel, for this. And can I just say really quickly, I am so proud of you, and those of you who have started Veteran Feminists of America online, because women today need to know their history. They need to know how it all began. And all of you who started this valuable website are putting together the way that anybody can learn easily how it all began, and whom we actually have to thank. People like you, Muriel. Thank you again.