(2 of 2)
Schlafly developed her organizational talents early. Raised in St. Louis, the daughter of a failed inventor, she put herself through Washington University ('44) by working 48 hours a week testing machine guns at a local arms plant. After earning an M.A. in political science from Radcliffe in 1945, she returned to St. Louis to edit a conservative newsletter.
After marriage in 1949, to Fred Schlafly, a wealthy corporation lawyer, she became increasingly involved in right-wing Republican politics. In addition to writing the bestselling book A Choice Not an Echo for Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, she started her own national newsletter, the Phyllis Schlafly Report. She was a delegate to three G.O.P. conventions and served as president of the Illinois Federation of Republican Women. When she ran for the presidency of the National Federation of Republican Women in 1967, she lost in a bitter campaign against a more moderate candidate. Schlafly's own next-door neighbor in Alton, a housewife and active Republican, accused her at the time of being "an exponent of an extreme right-wing philosophy—a propagandist who deals in emotion and personalities where it is not necessary to establish facts or prove charges."
Undaunted, Schlafly ran for Congress in 1970 (she lost). When her role as wife and mother became an issue, she retorted: "My husband Fred says a woman's place is in the house—the U.S. House of Representatives." A similar line was used that same year by another woman politician of considerably different views —Bella Abzug.
Schlafly started fighting ERA when she wrote an article denouncing the amendment in her newsletter in 1972. After that, she says, "it just snowballed." She began tireless rounds of debating feminists, making appearances on talk shows and speaking at rallies. Ahead lies a bitter fight against the feminists' drive to win an extension of the amendment's deadline. Vows Schlafly: "We will bury ERA on March 22, 1979." Her opponents claim that she is using the ERA issue to aid her own career, but she denies having further ambitions for political office. Still, given her record, she seems unlikely to retire to hearth and home.