THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Roxanne Barton Conlin
“In Order to Change Things, You Have to Have Power and the Way You Get Power in this Country is to Run for Office.”
Attorney, political activist and defender of civil rights for all. Assistant Attorney General for the state of Iowa. Appointed United States Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa by President Carter, 1977. First female president of The Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA). Co-founder of the Des Moines Chapter of the National Organization for Women. Served as president of NOW’s Legal Defense and Education Fund. Polk County Young Democrats. Founder and first chair of the Iowa Women’s Political Caucus. A Democrat, she was a candidate for Governor of Iowa in 1982 and for United States Senate in 2010. Veteran Feminists of America.
Interviewed by Mary Jean Collins, VFA Historian, February 2021
Photo 1. Roxanne in 1980. Photo 2. Roxanne with former Iowa governor and then U.S. Senator Harold Hughes in 1982. Photo 3. Roxanne during her 2010 Senate run. Photo 4. Unstoppable: The Nine Lives of Roxanne Barton Conlin, by William Friedricks.
More About Roxanne:
- Roxanne Conlin & Associates, P.C.
- Roxanne Conlin receives the Community Leader Award from Interfaith Alliance, September 2020
- Veteran Feminists of America
- “Sharing Our Stories” Duke University, NC March 31, 2017
- Panel : Law and Government
- Feminist activists: Roxanne Conlin, Holly Knox, Mary Anne Sedey
- Historians: Katherine Turk, Leandra Zarnow, Mary Ziegler
- Panel : Law and Government
- VFA honors Midwest Feminists, Chicago, IL 2004
- Salute to Feminist Lawyers, Harvard Club, NYC June 9, 2008
- VFA Fabulous Feminist Roxanne Conlin
- “Sharing Our Stories” Duke University, NC March 31, 2017
- Unstoppable: The Nine Lives of Roxanne Barton Conlin by William B. Friedricks
- Roxanne Conlin on C-SPAN
- Roxanne Barton Conlin papers, University of Iowa
- The Alice Barton Scholarship Program founded by Roxanne Conlin, her brother Raymond Barton, and her sister Rhoda Olsen, in honor of their mother Alice Barton, a survivor of domestic violence
- Animal Rescue League of Iowa
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America, page 92