ANNOUNCER: The following program contains the use
of racial epithets in historical context
and to recount personal experiences.
Viewer discretion is advised.
♪ ♪
CASEY GRANT: Stewardesses were glamorous.
They were beautiful.
They were poised.
It just looked like the world was theirs.
And I wanted that life.
I just can't wait to see all the places
I've heard so much about:
Paris, Rome, Bangkok, Buenos Aires...
♪ ♪
ANN HOOD: How many small town girls like me
looked at a flight attendant and thought,
"That's the best job in the world"?
MAN: Rosemary,
I'd like to talk to you about your coffee service.
You've been pouring from too high. Oh?
JULIA COOKE: No other job offered
as much freedom,
with such a high cost of conformity.
♪ ♪
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN: We were not expected to have opinions.
We were to serve
and look glamorous.
JOAN RIVERS: Where is the stewardess
where a woman wants her, huh? Huh?
Nowhere, busy with the men.
Coffee, tea, what you will, hello, hello, hello.
Hey, uh, how 'bout some coffee?
And make it hot.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN: Selling sex instead of safety.
(soft chuckle)
Oh, excuse us. Excuse us.
Remember what it was like before there was somebody else
up there who loved you?
Remember?
I hated that.
KATIE BARRY: Airlines hired these women who are independent and curious.
And it's amazing to me
that airlines would expect that they would be a docile group,
because why would they be?
(sign chimes)
TWA has been shut down for more than a month
by a strike of stewards and stewardesses.
♪ ♪
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES: I don't think we realized
what a revolutionary thing we were doing.
PATRICIA IRELAND: Stewardesses played a major role
in launching the women's movement.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE: They took up economic issues,
but they also focused
on issues having to do with appearance, grooming,
and control over women's bodies.
VICKI VANTOCH: How did these women go from
conforming to gender stereotypes
to fighting for gender equality in the workforce?
(protestors speaking indistinctly)
KATHLEEN HEENAN: I was a TWA flight attendant.
But I was an activist in the change.
I was there.
(crowd chanting)
♪ ♪
(car engine rumbling)
(plane engine buzzing in distance)
INMAN: One of my best friends,
she had a brother who bought this Corvette.
(car engine revving)
We would be out on the road
and she'd say,
"Well, where do you want to go?"
And I would say, "Let's go to the airport."
HOOD: When I was in high school,
I convinced my friend Nancy
that we should go on a trip when our junior year ended.
And that June, off we went.
I shopped for a week
for the outfit I was going to wear on the flight.
(indistinct chatter)
UNDRA MAYS: My first flight, I was about eight or nine.
We were all dressed up;
socks with the little lace
all around the edges of it.
I thought, "This is just like Easter."
♪ ♪
I'd been on boats before and I thought,
well, this was going to be similar to a boat.
♪ ♪
When we started to roll,
"Oh, this is more like a rollercoaster."
♪ ♪
HOOD: I remember the takeoff.
(ringing sound)
I remember playing with the air.
You know, I had my own little vent,
gently putting a breeze on my face.
♪ ♪
I couldn't believe when they gave me food.
They put my breakfast down and it was delicious.
Scrambled eggs, and those little sausages, and a fruit plate.
And I just was dazzled from the minute I stepped on that plane.
♪ ♪
MAYS: I thought,
"Oh, this has to be what heaven feels like.
♪ ♪
I've got to be close to heaven."
It was the most beautiful thing I had experienced,
just being in the air.
♪ ♪
(seagulls squawking)
♪ ♪
(indistinct talking)
COOKE: So many of our advances as humans come from travel.
Go! (propellers whirring)
COOKE: It is an incredibly human impulse,
and yet it was really restricted
for women until the 20th century.
♪ ♪
(crowd applauding)
These new technologies came around,
enabling humans to move around,
and women really wanted to be a part of it.
♪ ♪
HOOD: Ellen Church was a registered nurse,
but she got her pilot's license.
She knew that aviation was the future.
(propellers whirring)
TIEMEYER: But because airlines
refused to countenance that a woman could be a pilot,
Ellen's idea was,
"All right, if they're not going to let me be a pilot,
at least maybe they'd let me be a flight attendant."
(engine running)
KATIE BARRY: In the late 1920s, you see an experimental era,
where some airlines are trying out different models
of cabin service.
The most obvious model would be Pullman porters.
(train bell ringing)
MIA BAY: But there's a longstanding association
between technological know-how and white supremacy.
And they do not think that Black people
have the kind of authority to kind of help people
through the challenges of flying.
COBBLE: So the airlines thought,
"We probably want white men because this might be a position
where you would get promoted into management."
♪ ♪
HOOD: Ellen Church went to San Francisco
to the office of what would later become United Airlines.
And she went to an executive and she said,
"I think if there were nurses on airplanes,
"more people would fly.
"You're trying to attract passengers,
"but people think it's dangerous.
"People get sick.
"A nurse would be a calming person
and we'd be able to take care of passengers."
(engine whirring)
Planes weren't pressurized, so they flew under 10,000 feet.
And that means you feel every bump.
It was always turbulent.
VANTOCH: There were no circulation systems.
So you could smell hot oil,
and the disinfectant used to clean up
after airsick passengers.
(indistinct chatter)
To go from coast to coast, it took 28 hours at minimum.
Often planes would get grounded in the middle of nowhere,
passengers would have to wait for several days
until the weather cleared.
It was really a big adventure,
(chuckling): instead of a reliable way to travel.
TIEMEYER: It was a harrowing thing, to fly.
You couldn't get a life insurance policy to cover you
if you flew on airplanes
because the death rate was something
that no one wanted to insure.
♪ ♪
BARRY: The idea is that
if you're encouraging people to fly, especially men,
at a moment when flying can seem very scary... (laughs)
...if you put young white women on an airplane,
then they're going to think,
"Well, if these young white women are fine with flying,
I should be fine with flying too."
♪ ♪
COOKE: Ellen Church was convinced that women would want to do this,
and she was absolutely accurate.
They showed up in huge numbers.
♪ ♪
COBBLE: The focus on only hiring women
had a lot of advantages,
the airline executives thought.
TIEMEYER: The airlines started to realize the passengers
were more attracted to having a woman do the job
(chuckling): for the charm that she brought,
the attractiveness that she brought
to an otherwise exceptionally unpleasant experience.
♪ ♪
(ship whistle blaring)
(passengers cheering)
IRELAND: During World War II,
women had worked in all kinds
of non-traditional jobs.
(cheers and applause)
When the soldiers and sailors came home,
there was a concerted effort
to push women out of the workplace.
(band playing, crowd cheering) MAN: March of the troops!
Masses of manpower!
IRELAND: Women who were poor
or women of color ended up going back to lower-paying jobs.
Middle-class women were expected to go home.
♪ ♪
Margaret, I'm home!
MARGARET: We're in the kitchen.
IRELAND: Growing up in the 1950s, it was very clear to me
what women's roles were supposed to be.
FILM NARRATOR: The American home.
Today, it is perhaps the most important job in the world.
IRELAND: It was reflected in television,
and it was reflected in the books I read.
It was reflected in the examples used
in my school lessons.
SHOW ANNOUNCER: "Father Knows Best."
I absorbed that.
I didn't question it at all.
It was just the way things were.
(dog barking)
GRANT: As a child, I used to dream of being a nurse.
And then, of course, I wanted to be a mother.
We were a happy family.
So I thought, "Ooh, that would be a nice thing to do"--
have children, and have a husband,
and the picket fence and all that type of thing.
♪ ♪
FUENTES: There were all kinds of different expectations
for men and women.
They were basically considered
two different types of human beings.
♪ ♪
Men were supposed to be the leaders,
the presidents, the newspaper reporters,
people who took dangerous jobs,
people who took important jobs.
Women were expected to get married and raise a family.
But, before that,
it was expected that they would work
at a number of lower level jobs--
secretary...
(telephone ringing) clerk...
librarian, teacher--
they were not expected to have careers.
My parents were opposed to my going to college.
Their expectations for me were to get married
and have a family.
They felt that
the fact that I had been a good student,
was already going to make it
harder for me to find a husband.
♪ ♪
FILM NARRATOR: Hm, is it that late?
Dad will be here any minute.
Better tell Mother she's needed in the kitchen.
Brother is spending an hour before dinner
catching up on his homework.
BRODIGAN: My parents could only afford to send one child to college
and that was my brother.
FILM NARRATOR: Now, mother and daughter put the finishing touches on the dinner.
That was the way parents thought
at the time.
My brother would go to college.
I would go to secretarial school, get married,
and produce grandchildren.
♪ ♪
(engines rumbling)
VANTOCH: After World War II,
the airline industry introduced the DC-6
with a pressurized cabin,
so airplanes could now fly higher, smoother,
faster, and also carry more passengers.
TIEMEYER: The customer who's sitting in the seats
is going to experience flying
as pretty comfortable.
You have plush seats...
Would you like some dinner, sir?
TIEMEYER: You're going to be served cocktails.
How about you, miss?
Oh, this looks delicious.
TIEMEYER: They were marketing comfort,
which meant you don't need a nurse.
This is the moment when this profession becomes
heavily, heavily identified with women,
and almost exclusively populated by women.
(paper rustling)
HOOD: I remember in seventh grade I read this book,
"How to Become an Airline Stewardess,"
and the first line was,
"Would you like a boyfriend in every city in the world?"
(laughing): And I was like, "Yes, I would."
But I also was like, "I want to go to every city in the world."
♪ ♪
COOKE: Being a stewardess was the best possible job
for good girls who were craving something interesting,
out of the ordinary.
A woman could go to different places,
and see different things, and really stand out.
But at the same time, she was doing something
that was still very stereotypically feminine.
♪ ♪
TIEMEYER: If you were applying to be a stewardess,
you were going to be scrutinized,
first and foremost, for your looks.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: To qualify on most airlines, she must be healthy,
and of normal weight.
HOOD: You got this chart and you wouldn't even get an interview
if your height and weight
was more than listed on that chart.
TIEMEYER: If you make it physically,
then what they're looking for
is someone who's going to take orders well.
They need pliant employees.
(applause)
COOKE: The educational requirements for stewardesses
really varied very much by airline.
On Pan Am you had to
have gone to college and you had to speak two languages fluently.
HOOD: My dream flight attendant job was with Pan Am or TWA,
and I was as good as hired with Pan Am
but I flunked the French test.
With TWA I'd made it through that grueling interview process,
and when I got the acceptance letter,
it was beyond exciting.
♪ ♪
They flew us to Kansas City for six weeks.
I arrived in January, freezing cold, snow up to here,
the happiest girl in the world.
IRELAND: The training was held in Miami.
And the six weeks involved
learning the procedures for services.
How do you make coffee on the airplane?
How do you work the ovens?
How did you mix drinks?
Where did you mix them?
How did you pass them out?
COOKE: There were segments on understanding
the physics of flight.
TRAINING INSTRUCTOR: Should there be a sudden loss of cabin pressure,
oxygen masks will be released automatically.
COOKE: There were segments on safety.
Fasten them tightly,
then I'm going to show you the ready position.
♪ ♪
Part of our safety training was on mock-up planes.
(screaming)
They had recordings of people screaming.
They could put smoke coming through.
They could really make you feel like you were in a plane crash.
(screaming, shouting)
BRODIGAN: You have to be able to evacuate any aircraft within 90 seconds.
(mechanism hissing)
COOKE: The airline knew that for a huge number of their passengers,
this would be their first flight.
They would be in a metal tube at 35,000 feet,
and any fear that they felt was very justified,
and so they wanted stewardesses to be very knowledgeable
and specific in their ability to reassure a passenger.
Chins up.
Stand up straight.
Very good.
That's fine.
COOKE: When women were first hired on airplanes,
the sales pitch around them was that having a mere girl
willing to fly would help sell tickets.
By the '50s, the pitch had flipped.
Prices were fixed by the government,
the airlines had to compete based on image and perks.
BARRY: Airlines want to portray
a vision of luxury and domesticity.
Flight attendants really become the linchpin to that
as hostesses.
COOKE: They wanted someone who was
stereotypically very beautiful.
That was a way for an airline to distinguish itself
and appeal to a largely masculine customer base.
BARRY: The airlines really wanted
a visual standardization of what a lovely stewardess looked like.
♪ ♪
IRELAND: We all got our hair cut just the length
of our chin bone.
We were all supposed to look the same;
both our hair but also our makeup.
Red lipstick, mandatory.
♪ ♪
There was an idea, I think,
to make us into little machine parts
and not think of ourselves as individuals.
HEENAN: In our graduation photo,
we look like 20 mannequins sitting in two rows.
When I looked at it
I couldn't find myself.
(laughing): That was my...
my first thing was,
"Where am I in this photograph?"
♪ ♪
IRELAND: The grooming supervisors were former flight attendants.
Their whole job was to make sure that your high heels
were three inches tall,
that you had white gloves that were white,
no runs in your stockings,
your shoes were polished, not just the right heel height.
MONTAGUE: They'd look you over
and a gal would do like this
to your buttocks
to see if you had your girdle on.
♪ ♪
DUSTY ROADS: They had this big piece of paper with appearance, hair, nails.
You couldn't be too flashy.
♪ ♪
BARRY: You really need to have a good understanding
of middle class deportment, speech, manners--
poise, as the airlines would put it.
IRELAND: They told us
they wouldn't hesitate to kick us out of that class
if we didn't do the right things.
May I offer you a cigarette, sir?
Oh, no thanks, I have a fine cigar.
Well, may I put it out for you, then, sir?
Put it out? I just lit it!
TRAINING STEWARDESS: Some of the passengers get a little...
Well, you know how it is with people who don't smoke cigars.
IRELAND: And the right things included
always being friendly to everyone.
You see, you can handle just about any situation
if you'll just smile, and really mean it, inside.
BARRY: It's expected, it's part of the job
to act like your smile is genuine,
and everything you're doing
is because you like being a gracious hostess.
BRODIGAN: If they didn't care
for something you did, or said,
or reacted to, they would wait until everyone was in class,
and they'd tap you on your shoulder,
and they took you to your room, packed your bags,
and they sent you home.
♪ ♪
(airplane engine whirring)
(indistinct talking)
NARRATOR: The astonishing jet, at last, comes into its own in 1959.
New York to Paris: seven hours.
Here's America's Boeing 707.
♪ ♪
HOOD: All of a sudden you could be in Paris.
You didn't take a ship
that took weeks and weeks, it was hours.
(woman speaking over P.A. system)
VANTOCH: Jets were really symbolic of technological advance.
♪ ♪
This was a sign that Americans
were going to be able to take over the world.
PILOT: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.
We are now at cruising altitude, 35,000 feet.
TIEMEYER: Now you've got a jet that can travel
two times faster than propeller,
and can accommodate more people.
So this is imperative for the airline
to start expanding their customer base,
because they now have more seats to fill.
They start to cater not just exclusively
to the business traveler.
They start to go, "Well, what about bringing your wife?
What about bringing your kid?"
♪ ♪
VANTOCH: This is the moment where flying
is becoming mass transportation.
That's the vision.
PILOT: This is your captain again.
If you haven't already changed your watches
to conform to the time difference,
I suggest you do so now.
♪ ♪
TIEMEYER: The jet age is technological,
but it's also aspirational.
(crowd clamoring)
It's a yearning on the part of ordinary Americans
to participate in the glamorous lives of celebrities.
(crowd screaming)
So a factory worker celebrating retirement
after 30 years on the job,
you could be like Sinatra and fly down to Peru,
and have a glamorous vacation.
♪ ♪
(indistinct chatter)
VANTOCH: Stewardesses are at the center of jet age ad campaigns.
This is a new type of woman:
she's sophisticated, she's very fashionable.
Every airline rolls out new uniforms.
They call it the "jet age" look.
HOOD: You see a crew walking in their powder blue uniforms,
with their pillbox hats and their high heels,
and it was quite a sight to see.
I mean, it was the definition of glamor.
GRANT: "Oh, you're a stewardess?"
You were just on the same level as a celebrity, movie star.
It opened the doors to everything--
clubs, parties--
you could crash a wedding and say you were a stewardess.
(jet engine whirring)
♪ ♪
BRODIGAN: If I wanted to fly with my friend Lynn,
and she was junior to me,
I could adopt her seniority,
and then we both could fly together.
Or you could "trip trade."
If you knew you wanted to go to Paris
with your best friend, you would trade to be on that trip.
♪ ♪
HEENAN: I went to Paris, I went to Rome, I went to Athens.
I flew to London and to Frankfurt a lot.
There was so much to see and do.
You could go to Vidal Sassoon to get your hair cut
and then you could go out for a really nice meal.
It really changed me in terms of my palate.
♪ ♪
I used to go to
a favorite restaurant in London so that I could eat
the tandoori chicken. (laughs)
IRELAND: When we landed, I was in Mexico City,
and could go to dinner.
Wow.
Get back on the airplane and fly into Central America.
Oh, my gosh.
Pick up the newspaper from Guatemala
and see what's going on there.
HEENAN: I became quite independent.
I felt very comfortable moving around in these foreign cities.
♪ ♪
COOKE: In the '50s and '60s,
women very rarely traveled alone.
And working on a plane, especially internationally,
gave you an excuse to travel completely freely.
You were going to these foreign countries
and checking into a hotel with your other fellow stewardesses.
And then no one knew what you did
until you had to show up at the airplane next.
IRELAND: I had grown up in a very narrow, sheltered environment.
I went out there and I was confronted
with all the things that the world had to offer.
HEENAN: It gave me a lot of self-confidence
that I could just get on an airplane and go someplace,
on my own, and be quite happy.
That wasn't true of everybody that I went to college with
or I went to high school with,
that they could do that or wanted to do it.
But I wanted to do it, and I did do it.
COOKE: This job was asking women for their ambitions.
It was asking for a woman who wanted to see uncharted terrain.
A woman whose curiosity was enormous,
which no other feminized job in that era really wanted.
It was incredible.
PAT BANKS EDMISTON: I was kind of looking for something
a little different in my life.
I was looking at a fashion magazine.
And the magazine had an advertisement
for the Grace Downs Air Career School in Manhattan.
I applied and I was accepted in 1956.
Never had been on an airplane.
So this was a part of, you know,
I've never been on an airplane.
This is great. This is great.
VANTOCH: Women could pay the school
and learn how to become an airline stewardess.
The expectation,
if you did well at the school,
you would ultimately get hired,
and get a job as a stewardess.
INSTRUCTOR: Now, this is the main cabin door
where the passengers for first class will be...
EDMISTON: I was the only student of color in the school.
INSTRUCTOR: ...walking straight, they'd walk directly...
EDMISTON: There were no Black teachers,
no Black students.
(bell ringing)
I remember we had a makeup class
and someone made up my face.
(laughs)
I have to laugh now because I was white.
And when I looked in the mirror, I'm saying,
"Oh my God, how am I going to get home like this?"
They had no makeup, of course, for people of color.
(applause)
When you would graduate,
then airlines would come
to the Grace Downs Air Career School to interview you,
to put you into positions in their aircraft.
I was interviewed by Mohawk Airlines,
by Capital Airlines, which was one of the largest
southern airlines, and TWA.
Now, everyone was getting interviewed,
and people were getting hired,
but I was not even getting a response
from any of the instructors, or the airlines.
♪ ♪
Shortly after the interviews,
one of the chief stewardesses saw me outside,
and she said to me,
"Pat, I hate to see you go through this," she said,
"but the airlines do not hire Negroes."
♪ ♪
The South, it was open, clear
that white people had this advantage,
Black people had no advantage.
I'm in New York.
It's not as clear or vivid.
Subtle, yes, you just didn't know certain things.
And then when the airline situation occurred,
it just opened my eyes totally.
Yes, it exists here.
♪ ♪
KEISHA BLAIN: Traveling by air was very expensive
and not easily accessible,
to most Americans in general, let alone African Americans.
♪ ♪
It's not surprising that Pat Banks didn't have
a full understanding of what was taking place.
BAY: A lot of airports
in the 1950s were either segregated
or beginning to be segregated.
Airlines sometimes used a special code.
If people called from a Black neighborhood,
or if they sounded Black, then this special code
would be written down on their ticket to indicate
that they had to be seated apart from others.
BLAIN: In some instances, African Americans would be
bumped off of flights to make space for white passengers.
(indistinct chatter)
EDMISTON: I went home, and we had a neighbor,
and I called him as soon as I got home and I said,
"Pop, they're telling me that they don't hire Negroes."
He said, "We'll take care of this."
He introduced me to Adam Clayton Powell.
Adam Clayton Powell referred me and introduced me
to the New York State Commission Against Discrimination.
BLAIN: There were no federal laws
in place to protect against discrimination in the workplace.
So it was very important for Pat
to file her case in New York
because New York was the first state
in the United States to pass an anti-discrimination law.
EDMISTON: I filed a case against Mohawk, Capital, and TWA.
The statute of limitations
had expired with Mohawk and TWA,
but it held strong with Capital.
Discrimination is a very difficult thing to prove.
BARRY: Airlines don't specify that they're not going to hire
Black women, but they don't really need to,
because manuals will say things like,
"Oh, are your hands soft and white?"
BAY: They talk about how people
shouldn't have broad or flat noses.
People shouldn't have hook noses.
Coarse hair, overly full lips--
indicating certain kind of racial stereotypes
about Jews and Blacks.
They actually include enough details to make sure
that certain kinds of people really cannot get employed.
♪ ♪
MONTAGUE: When I was hired,
you couldn't be married, period.
We had a couple of gals that did it on the side...
(laughs)
but you couldn't be married then, couldn't have children.
BARRY: From the very beginning, most airlines
have an explicit ban on hiring married women.
Starting in 1953,
American Airlines impose a new rule
that stewardesses will leave the job when they turn 32.
(applause)
ELAINE ROCK: It took a little while,
but other airlines started adding the age rule too.
(applause)
♪ ♪
They wanted us to be hired,
do our job for a couple of years and leave.
COOKE: Airlines wanted women
who projected a degree of wholesomeness,
but also a little bit of sexual availability.
They wanted her to be young,
so that she would appear to be single
without having to say so.
BRODIGAN: United had
flights out of New York to Chicago
called executive flights.
Only men could buy a ticket on those planes.
HEENAN: When I went for my interview with TWA,
I signed a paper, which they presented to me,
and on it, it said
that I would be retired at the age of 35.
35 was a long ways away.
I thought I would be married with children.
That was the expectation--
you would meet Mr. Wonderful in first class,
and you'd be swept off your feet, etcetera,
and, and that would be happiness ever after.
TIEMEYER: The requirement to be unmarried,
the requirement to stay under a certain age, it's really about
making sure that flight attendants
are not getting paid top dollar,
that they're not gonna get a pension,
that they're not gonna accrue vacation benefits
that they would've gotten
if they're in year 15 or year 20 of their career.
ROADS: It was money, money, money.
What do you think it costs
to have an ace stewardess at age 32, top salary,
maximum vacation,
gonna fly until she's 60,
get a retirement?
If you're not married and having babies and happy to stay there,
tough luck, honey.
I didn't want to stop flying.
Flying was exciting.
God, it, it was that.
It still is, but then
it was really exciting.
(bus engine rumbling)
♪ ♪
BARRY: Flight attendants
start to organize in the late 1940s.
They're unhappy with their wages,
but they're also unhappy
with being patronized by the airlines.
COBBLE: Pretty quickly,
they begin to realize that they would have
greater bargaining leverage
if they joined with some of the other workers.
The pilots set up a division for stewards and stewardesses.
And some of the flight attendants went into
the Transport Workers Union.
BRODIGAN: Unions just weren't something I thought of.
When I was in training,
I failed the section on the contract.
I didn't understand it.
And I didn't understand it until I started flying,
and I realized how the company took advantage of stewardesses.
INMAN: Being from Pittsburgh,
I was quite familiar with unions.
And so, there would be a union meeting, and I would go to it.
♪ ♪
BRODIGAN: The grievance procedure
was an orderly settlement of a dispute.
I thought, "Hmm, this is interesting.
I kind of like that."
COBBLE: Flight attendants, pilots, and baggage handlers
wanted to be paid fairly.
They wanted more control over their hours, their flight time.
But flight attendants also had problems
that the men didn't face.
When American Airlines said,
we're gonna put it in the contract
that flight attendants can't work past the age of 32,
the union pushed back.
The rule still went in.
But what they did win was a compromise,
what they called a "grandmother clause,"
so that any flight attendant
who had been hired before 1953 could continue on.
It saved a lot of jobs.
ROCK: Dusty wasn't required to retire when the age rule came in.
She had nothing to lose.
She said, "I want to fight this. This is wrong."
And that was her motivation to join the union.
ROADS: My family was very Republican. (chuckles)
And unions were naughty, naughty, naughty, terrible.
Nobody in my family had ever belonged to a union.
That was just, "Oh my goodness,
we're college people, we don't join unions. Oh!"
ROCK: She became vice chair and would file grievances on behalf
of other stewardesses.
Dusty exuded this sense of confidence.
She always spoke to anybody who would speak to her,
and many men always did.
Because she was so attractive, they wanted to know,
"Who is this woman?"
♪ ♪
ROADS: I figured out that the Congress was in session on Tuesday,
Wednesday, and Thursday,
and then they went home on Friday.
So, I bid the Washington trip on Monday.
And I'd always have a bunch of congressmen on board,
And they got to know me.
"Dusty, how you doing?"
I said, "Oh, I'm really upset about this.
"My best friend's being fired
because she's 32."
They said, "What? They fire you?"
Here these guys are 60.
BARRY: Dusty, as she's flying,
she's working her connections.
She's leveraging the visibility
of stewardesses
to gain access, essentially,
to people who can pull levers of power
in policy-making circles.
♪ ♪
ROCK: In 1963,
Dusty decided to put on a press conference.
(indistinct chattering)
ROADS: To say the word "stewardess"
in those days was glamour.
Oh boy, oh boy.
ROCK: She got four stewardesses that were under 32,
and four stewardesses that were over 32.
ROADS: I said, "Now, they're firing us at age 32.
Can you tell me which ones are 32?"
And of course they said, "No, no, no, no."
But I did look pretty good.
♪ ♪
BARRY: The idea is, basically, "Hey, take a look at us.
"Don't we all look like lovely stewardesses?"
It's a kind of dare to the airlines' policy.
Can you really tell who's past the age limit?
♪ ♪
We hit every newspaper in the country.
♪ ♪
COOKE: These women were really trying to use the sexism
that was being wielded against them to get what they wanted,
which was to keep their jobs.
♪ ♪
ROCK: When the stewardesses went into negotiation
with the union and management,
American Airlines came into the room
with a stack of newspapers from all over the country
and just plopped it down on the desk, saying,
"That was an interesting stunt that you girls pulled.
We're not going to negotiate the age rule now."
It's terrible
to be fired because of age.
But I had hopes
because I knew how smart Dusty was.
ROADS: I believed in fair play.
Every club I ever was in, I became president.
I was president of the Women's Athletic Council
and president of my sorority.
I knew all the rules, and I went by them.
And if I didn't like a rule, we changed it.
ROCK: Dusty wasn't just fighting
airline management and an age rule;
she was fighting national gender discrimination.
♪ ♪
EDMISTON: Once things began to hit the newspapers,
I would get letters.
When I had threatening letters,
I had to report it to the police.
You kind of expect these things.
You knew you were gonna get focused on.
You knew that you were gonna get letters of negativity.
I mean, this is something, "Oh, here it comes."
(sighs)
Um...
I just couldn't deal with the racism anymore.
I couldn't deal with it. I didn't think it was fair.
Um...
I'm just as equal to you as you are to me.
We're one.
We're humans.
And you're not gonna treat us this way anymore.
VANTOCH: Pat's plans were put on hold
while her lawyers researched her case.
They had to look
at the supervisor notes
and see who met what criteria,
how did Pat compare to the other applicants.
They were trying to prove that she was
the typical all-American girl.
She played violin, she was respectable.
So, the element that excluded her from that image of
femininity and Americanness was her race.
I was determined
that somebody of African American heritage
was gonna get this job.
(bus engine rumbling)
VANTOCH: Finally,
in late February 1960,
Pat got her ruling.
♪ ♪
EDMISTON: I was working for Con Edison, going to college at night.
And there was a little candy store
on the corner where I used to get the bus
to go home.
When I got into the candy store,
the man in the store said, "Pat, Pat, you won the case!"
♪ ♪
I couldn't wait to get home.
My mother says,
"Patsy, the phone is ringing off the hook.
You won! You won! You won!" Oh, my God.
♪ ♪
The court ordered Capital Airlines to hire me,
or it would go to the Supreme Court.
The president of Capital Airlines called me.
I don't remember his name,
but he called to apologize and welcome me into training
in Alexandria, Virginia.
(laughs)
♪ ♪
You know, it was like, just, we did it.
They can't get away with this anymore.
I'm young now.
I like to hang out with friends and do things.
But I had to be this perfect human being.
And the only way I could do that
was to do my job,
go home, come back.
I wouldn't do anything that may have led to a mistake.
(engine rumbling)
I remember we were on a DC-3,
and DC-3s are kind of bumpy.
This man looked at me, and he said,
"When you finish doing your work,
would you please hold my hand?"
And I said, "Sure, sir, I'll sit down with you."
So he held my hand, and he asked me, he said,
"Have you ever been to Montana?"
I said, "No, sir."
He said, "The grass is so beautifully green,
the trees are so green."
He said, "No niggers and no winos."
(gasps)
I'm holding his hand.
Now, the word "nigger"
is something you never touch me with,
but by the power of God,
I was able to sit there and hold his hand and not respond.
I mean, I didn't respond until I got home that night.
But these are the kind of situations that occurred
that you had to really, really keep it together.
I worked for a year.
I wanted to go on with my life,
finish school.
I was planning on getting married,
so I decided to leave.
I felt it was accomplished.
The barrier was broken.
♪ ♪
GRANT: Any questions that any company may have had
as to whether a Negro
was capable of doing the job,
Pat set the record straight.
We could go above and beyond
doing this job.
♪ ♪
BLAIN: The floodgates do not open.
It really, at that time, is about
saving face.
It's about letting a few in
to avoid more lawsuits.
♪ ♪
Pat is very much part
of a group of activists at the grassroots level
who are pushing for changes,
certainly at the local level,
but even more significantly, at the federal level.
♪ ♪
(indistinct talking)
BAY: Pat's victory with the airlines
takes place just as the civil rights movement
is really heating up.
Change is in the air.
(protestors singing and clapping)
CROWD: ♪ Freedom, freedom ♪
(horn honking)
NEWS ANCHOR: Congress passes the most sweeping civil rights bill
ever to be written into the Law,
and thus reaffirms the conception of equality
for all men that began with Lincoln and the Civil War
100 years ago.
The Negro won his freedom then; he wins his dignity now.
Five hours after the House passes the measure,
the Civil Rights Act of 1964
is signed at the White House by President Johnson.
(indistinct conversation)
TIEMEYER: The Civil Rights Act
was designed to address
the race-based inequalities
that have been a part of the United States
since before the United States was founded.
Less known about the Civil Rights Act
is that the worker protections
to prevent discrimination also covered sex.
♪ ♪
FUENTES: Just before it was passed,
Howard Smith, a congressman from Virginia,
introduced an amendment
to include prohibition on gender discrimination.
It was then called
"sex discrimination."
♪ ♪
This stunned everybody there,
because this was a law that was supposed to help Black people.
What is your opinion, Mr. Chairman,
of the current civil rights bill?
Now, we've had trouble with
the so-called "civil rights" thing
for a good many years.
His motivations were not clear.
BARRY: One interpretation is that he did that
to add this laughable idea of sex discrimination
that would help tank the bill.
The other interpretation is that he wanted to ensure,
if this bill was gonna provide all these protections
for Black Americans,
that white women should get protection, as well.
If that's the ugliness of the sausage making,
I mean the sausage isn't that bad, right?
Because for the first time in the United States,
we now have employment protections
that are designed, really,
to promote women entering professions
that were otherwise reserved for men.
INMAN: Our eyes were like, oh,
that is gender. That includes gender.
Women have rights now.
IRELAND: The passage of the Civil Rights Act was a major step forward.
But the passing of a law is not enough.
It's nowhere near enough.
You comply with the law because you think
it's a good for the-- you know,
it's a good way to live.
You stop at a red light
so people don't crash into each other, good.
But if you pass a law
that people don't want to obey, they won't.
TIEMEYER: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was set up
to be the enforcement mechanism
to make sure that discrimination in employment
was not happening.
RECEPTIONIST: Good morning,
this is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
May I help you?
TIEMEYER: The expectation
at the EEOC, when they opened their doors,
was that they were gonna hear
from a bunch of African Americans
who had documented cases where
their rights as a worker had been ignored.
MONTAGUE: I was gonna be fired at age 32.
(airplane engine humming)
Dusty and I went to the EEOC
so I could file a complaint.
Dusty had heard they were opening that day,
so we planned our flight to be there.
And there were people putting
typewriters here and, you know, chairs there,
and getting it all straightened out.
They had just opened the doors.
They weren't really ready at all.
♪ ♪
ROADS: We were there the first day.
This Black woman looked at me, she said,
"You're free, white, and 21,
"what are you here for?
You have everything going for you."
So we said, "Sit down, honey.
I got a story to tell you."
And we told them, and they went,
"Ooh. Ooh." (typewriter keys clacking)
They couldn't believe it.
(phone ringing)
♪ ♪
FUENTES: I joined the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
October 4, 1965,
three months after the agency opened.
I was the first woman attorney
in the office of the general counsel,
which dealt with answering
the big legal questions that came up
administering the law.
(phone ringing)
We had tons of complaints filed by the stewardesses.
(keys clacking)
TIEMEYER: They had no idea
what was coming, this volcanic kind of expression
of a yearning for justice
of women keeping it bottled up for so long.
(keys clacking, phones ringing)
IRELAND: They challenged restrictions on age,
the ability to get married,
that you couldn't be pregnant and be a flight attendant.
They filed complaint after complaint after complaint.
Within a year, flight attendants had more than 100 cases on file.
COOKE: These were not women who were setting out
to break barriers for women.
They just wanted to keep their jobs.
But the EEOC was not taking these complaints
based on gender very seriously.
FUENTES: There were commissioners who were favorable
to women's rights.
But the executive director was opposed to women's rights,
the vice chair was opposed.
And on the staff level, I was the only woman speaking out.
From an early age, I was sensitized
to the second-class treatment of Blacks in this country.
But I was blind
to the second-class treatment of women in this country.
I had never done anything or given any thought
to women's rights, but I read the statute.
The law said you have to handle cases of sex discrimination.
You don't have a choice,
when a law says something has to be investigated,
to say, "I don't feel like doing that part of the law."
(TV show theme song playing)
This book has sold more than 50,000 copies
in the hardcover edition,
and 700,000 have been published in paperback.
♪ ♪
J. FRANK WILLIS: Betty Friedan,
a trained psychologist turned housewife, mother, and author...
BETTY FRIEDAN: "The Feminine Mystique" is the name
that I have given to the image of woman
that we have been living by in America,
and, in fact, in most of the Western world
for the last, uh, 15 or 20 years.
IRELAND: "The Feminine Mystique" put words
around the disquiet that a lot of women
of a certain class were experiencing.
It called to people's attention the reality that women
who were smart and educated and could do so much
were confined to one role
once they were married and had children,
and that was mom and wife.
WOMAN: Miss Friedan, do you think maybe society is,
right now, in an age of evolution...
Yes. ...and of change?
Oh, yes, and I think
no one's going to hand women anything.
I think women must begin to say "yes" to themselves,
and become who they could be,
and ask, for society, the real solutions that women still need.
FUENTES: Betty Friedan came to the EEOC
because she thought she was going to write a follow-up book
to "The Feminine Mystique" about all the progress
she thought women had made.
And she saw me there, a woman,
so she came over to me, and she said,
"What's really going on here? What's happening?"
I was feeling pretty down.
I had had a discussion with the executive director
who was opposed to women's rights.
I asked her to come into my office, and I leveled with her.
I said, "What this country needs
is an organization to fight for women
like the NAACP fights for its members."
♪ ♪
IRELAND: Halloween weekend, 1966,
19 women and two men
met in the basement of the "Washington Post"
to form NOW, the National Organization for Women,
which had been conceived in the summer.
FUENTES: All of us wanted women
to be accepted in educational institutions on an equal basis.
And we wanted women to be treated equally on the job.
♪ ♪
IRELAND: Sonia started feeding information
to two of the other NOW founders
about what the EEOC was not doing about women's equality.
FUENTES: Then we would draft a letter,
from NOW to the EEOC,
complaining about the EEOC's action
in various sectors.
♪ ♪
I knew that wasn't proper procedure,
but, um, I was so emotionally involved
that I, that I did it.
To my amazement, nobody ever raised the question
of how come these people know what the commission is doing
at its innermost meetings?
(protestors shouting)
IRELAND: NOW took many directions
to try to pressure the EEOC to enforce the law.
(chanting)
They used demonstrations.
WOMAN: We have a lawyer contacting...
IRELAND: They filed lawsuits.
They went into the legislature
to say, "Hey, they aren't enforcing your law."
(chanting)
CATHERINE MACKIN: Ida Phillips is a waitress in Florida.
She was refused a job at a defense plant
because she had a preschool-aged child.
The company felt the child, not yet in school,
would keep Mrs. Phillips home from work too often.
She took her case to court,
and the Supreme Court has agreed to review it.
The Supreme Court is involved
because of the 1964 Civil Rights Law.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE: One of the things
the EEOC did was to signal
how the courts were gonna think about things.
Of particular concern for the airlines,
was whether they were gonna have to change rules
about marriage and age.
♪ ♪
TIEMEYER: In Title VII of the Civil Rights Act,
there is mention of
a "Bona Fide Occupational Qualification."
FUENTES: That was a provision in the statute.
MAN: Hut!
FUENTES: And what it meant was, for some jobs,
you don't have to hire men and women equally.
(crowd cheering) MAN: Play ball!
FUENTES: For example, if you were hiring somebody as a wet nurse,
you don't have to interview men for that job.
(baby fussing)
COBBLE: The airlines thought it was absolutely necessary
for their business
that they have only women, and,
because they only had women,
they really weren't discriminating.
(chatting indistinctly)
TIEMEYER: Airlines were very confident
that the public liked having stewardesses on planes.
They actually did surveys
that showed that 80% of the flying public
preferred stewardesses over stewards.
♪ ♪
COBBLE: They pushed the EEOC to have hearings
so they could clarify the situation.
BARRY: They put on this whole elaborate defense.
"Men can carry trays, but they can't be charming.
"They can't create
"the liveliness and the,
the atmosphere that, that young women can create."
"And we argue that a man cannot do this
"in the same capacity whatsoever that a woman can.
And, therefore, being a woman is essential for the job."
BARRY: The Employment Opportunities Commission issues its opinion...
...and it says being female is absolutely not
a qualification for this job.
FUENTES: Then they had to issue the second decision,
which was, is it a violation of Title VII
for airlines to terminate or ground stewardesses
at the age of 32 or 35 or when they got married?
I drafted the decision of the commission
finding that it was unlawful.
TIEMEYER: One option for the airlines is to just give up
and to change their hiring and firing policies.
But if something is so dear to you, then you're gonna fight.
BRODIGAN: I was a doctor's assistant in Washington, D.C.
I did all the bookkeeping, I did all the secretarial work.
I met Richard Lansdale.
He was an attorney,
and I fell in love.
That was-- I just fell in love with him.
He said, "Why don't you get out of what you're doing now
and become a stewardess?"
I was working
60 hours a week and getting paid for 40
and no vacation, no sick leave.
So I had no benefits at all.
So, it seemed like a good thing to do.
♪ ♪
I went to United, and they hired me.
When I was hired, stewardesses could not be married.
I thought it was wrong.
Just, why can't you be married?
Pilots can be married.
Why is it okay for a pilot to be married and not a stewardess?
What... I don't understand, what's the difference?
I was secretly married for four years.
♪ ♪
We had observation reports called "check rides,"
and you were evaluated on everything.
♪ ♪
I remember there was a supervisor
who gave me a performance evaluation.
She said one of my problems was that I just was tenacious.
They wanted someone who complied.
You did what you were told to do,
and you didn't challenge them.
Um, I found it hard not to challenge them.
When they started giving me extra check rides, I thought,
"They have to know I'm married,
and they're trying to get rid of me."
(birds chirping, dog barking)
I was off of work for nine months.
I really never wanted to be a housewife.
I wanted to get back in the air.
And then one day I said, "To hell with this."
And I went to the "Miami Herald."
And I said, "Do you want a funny story?"
♪ ♪
DAVID BRINKLEY: This stewardess married secretly.
Then, when she admitted she was married,
the airline fired her.
She, the stewardess, said today,
"They certainly have a funny set of morals."
BRODIGAN: When it hit the news,
there was a group of stewardesses
in Miami, and they all wore wedding bands to work.
They kind of ganged up on the company.
It hit the fan in the executive offices in Chicago.
Fortunately, I had free legal services from my husband,
and I filed a lawsuit.
BARRY: Flight attendants are contesting age and marriage rules
on a variety of airlines.
COOKE: For the first couple of years, the judges who were hearing
these sex discrimination cases
really sided with the airlines, almost unilaterally.
TIEMEYER: Then there's a crucial court decision
where the judges determine
the essential work that an airline does
is safely transport people
from point A to point B.
If that's the essential work of an airline,
then the essential work of a flight attendant
is about safety.
It doesn't matter if you're a woman.
It doesn't matter if you're under age 32.
It doesn't matter if you're married.
BARRY: We start to see a kind of consensus among courts,
and they start to rule for flight attendants.
BRODIGAN: As it turned out,
they had to give me all of my back pay,
and they had to pay my lawyer's fees.
COBBLE: Flight attendants had achieved a lot
in terms of gaining certain workplace rights.
But there was a lot more to be done.
GRANT: In the earlier days, aircrafts were smaller,
so therefore it was very important
to have a weight limit.
You have to filter in fuel, baggage,
the weight of the passengers
and you also had to add in the stewardess's weight.
WOMAN: Remember to bend your knees.
FILM NARRATOR: The girls who fly come in various sizes.
The assortment is greater than most people think.
They can be as tall as 5'9".
One airline takes girls as short as 4'5".
BRODIGAN: They had a card, your appearance card.
They weighed you in every month and put your weight down.
HOOD: You would just get off a plane, a supervisor is waiting for you
with a clipboard.
There's a scale at the bottom of the stairs,
and if you were even one pound
over your hiring weight,
you were put on probation
and you had three chances
to lose that weight.
GRANT: I took water pills.
I took diet pills.
I starved.
Those were some of the tricks that all of us did,
all of us did.
We just passed the tricks around and said,
"Here, take this laxative, you'll lose three pounds."
"Oh, here,
take this Dexedrine Spansule.
You won't be hungry all day."
Just for one pound, you could be taken off of payroll.
TIEMEYER: No one else at the airline except women
were being held to this standard.
If you're thinking of it in terms
of a system of bodily control, this is pretty extreme.
(signal chimes)
BARRY: Airline executives had approached flight attendants
for so long in such a patronizing way.
Even though so much had changed around them,
airline executives don't seem to want to evolve with the times.
(commercial music playing)
COMMERCIAL NARRATOR: When a Braniff International hostess meets you
on the airplane...
...she'll be dressed like this.
VANTOCH: Airlines had this stodgy, old-fashioned image
that was dependable, reliable,
but not hip or cool.
COMMERCIAL NARRATOR: When she brings you your dinner,
she'll be dressed this way.
VANTOCH: Braniff hired Emilio Pucci to design stewardess uniforms.
NARRATOR: The "Air Strip" is brought to you by Braniff International,
who believes that even an airline hostess
should look like a girl.
(commercial music continues)
VANTOCH: This ad was not just appealing to male business travelers.
It's appealing to women
who want to be young and fashionable.
This was really
the beginning of an entirely new version of the stewardess.
♪ ♪
TIEMEYER: Airlines start to go,
"How high can we go with these skirt lines?"
Remember what it was like before Southwest Airlines?
You didn't have hostesses in hot pants.
Remember?
♪ ♪
COOKE: Prices were still fixed, so airlines wanted
to get market share in any way that they could.
♪ ♪
HEENAN: There was one uniform that was a problem
because if you bent over, cleavage would show.
We're going around... (laughs)
keeping our hand on...
on our chest.
VANTOCH: TWA introduced foreign-accent flights.
They had four different designs for the uniforms,
and they were all paper.
HEENAN: The paper dresses were either
an olde English wench,
a French cocktail,
an Italian toga,
or the Manhattan penthouse.
I was an olde English wench.
Maybe they... maybe they wanted us to speak like Chaucer
or something, I don't know.
You had to kind of be careful, first of all,
trying to get it on,
that you didn't rip, which did happen sometimes.
And you had to take off your other clothes
in a tiny bathroom.
And then parade around in them.
It was ridiculous.
I'm Diane.
I've got 747s to Miami. Fly me.
I'm Terry, I've got great connections in Miami,
all over the sunshine states of America.
Fly me.
I'm Marisa.
I've got nonstop flights to Miami every day.
Fly me.
"Fly Me."
Fly me how?
What are you going to do, get on top of me?
You can fly me morning, afternoon, or night.
Just say when.
I'm Judy, and I was born to fly.
Fly me. ANNOUNCER: Fly Judy.
HEENAN: It was pretty close
to "(muted) me."
And I, I hated that.
It was really an insult.
COBBLE: It wasn't just that the ads
were demeaning in some abstract way.
It concretely affected the women's day-to-day lives.
It made their job much harder.
We knew when people passed by us and felt our butts,
or they accidentally pretended they were reaching for something
to feel our breasts,
or trapped us, you know,
tried to squeeze past something so they could feel your body.
The pilots had a little habit, in particular,
one of them I remember, when I was going to my room
at the layover, and he ran his hand down my back and he said,
"Oh, I see you're a modern woman.
You don't wear a bra."
COOKE: Some women were busy
enjoying their new freedoms.
Freedoms which they felt
very happy about,
to exist as sexual beings
in a world that was now willing to acknowledge them as such.
But those campaigns in particular really did cause
a much wider swath of the women who were working
as stewardesses to stand up and say, "Hang on.
That's one step too far."
(helicopter whirring)
(explosions)
(munitions firing)
TIEMEYER: Just as stewardesses are becoming more sexualized,
the world is becoming more complicated.
This is the darkest hour in America's Cold War fight.
(engine roaring)
We'd like to welcome you aboard Flying Tiger line
flight number F2B3
to Bien Hoa, Vietnam.
TIEMEYER: By 1968, there are 500,000 troops on the ground
in Vietnam at any given moment.
To maintain those numbers,
the U.S. military can't do it alone.
So they contract with private airlines.
The arrangement is that they're leasing the jet,
fully staffed.
BRODIGAN: Flying in, it was very somber.
The soldiers knew where they were going.
INMAN: We usually landed in the middle of the night,
and got in and out of Vietnam
as quickly as possible-- men off, men on.
They were shooting rockets,
and that would've been a good score
if they could pull down a 747.
BRODIGAN: When we landed, if you heard gunshots
you had to evacuate the aircraft quickly.
You ran to the bunkers.
ANNOUNCER (over loudspeaker): May I have your attention in the terminal area.
BRODIGAN: Every time we left, going home,
there's this absolute huge roar.
(roaring cheers)
BRODIGAN: Some of the soldiers got hooked on drugs.
I remember one flight,
someone had not been weaned off of whatever they were on,
and he was just shaking all the way back.
I just put my arms around him and held him,
until we got to where we were going
and they got medical transport for him.
TIEMEYER: The flight attendant profession has always struggled
with the differences between
the intensity and seriousness of the work that must be done,
especially as safety professionals,
and then you've got
this public role of being
desirable, of being serene, of being charming.
The late '60s, early '70s
is this very precarious and completely confused moment.
(audience laughter)
Stewardess! I think my window's open!
(audience laughter)
"It's not my aisle."
(audience laughter)
They are so dumb.
Beautiful, but dumb.
TIEMEYER: You're being marketed, basically, as a Barbie doll,
and yet doing more and more complex work.
There's a fundamental incompatibility
between these two things.
(sirens blaring)
REPORTER: The scene was an all too familiar one
at LaGuardia Airport today,
as an early afternoon bomb threat
forced the evacuation of the airport.
IRELAND: In the late '60s, there were a lot of bomb threats.
And once you get a bomb threat for an airplane,
you evacuate it,
and you don't get back on until they've cleared it.
So we had a bomb threat, and we'd evacuated the airplane.
The pilot comes out of the cockpit and says to me,
"While we're here,
would you mind cooking me a steak and make it medium rare?"
Without even thinking, I went to the galley,
I turned on the oven.
And then all of a sudden it struck me.
There I was in the galley of an aircraft
that might explode at any minute,
cooking this guy a steak.
I had one of those clicks
where, "Wait a minute, why would I be doing this?"
I walked off the airplane
and I said, "You can cook your steak yourself.
I'm not staying there."
That moment was a turning point for me.
(beeping)
The men don't have to wear hats with their uniform, why do we?
The men don't have to wear girdles, why do we?
The men got single rooms, the women did not.
Once you open your eyes,
you can never wholly close them again.
♪ ♪
INMAN: When I was 30 years old,
I was the master executive chairman
with the union,
which entitled me to sign
a non-discriminatory contract with Northwest Airlines.
It included a provision for stewardesses to become pursers.
The purser handled
all of the paperwork on international flights.
They did not have weight check.
They were able to wear eyeglasses.
And they always had single rooms.
There was no reason why
a female could not be a purser.
MAN: Remove your jacket from its package
and place the jacket over your head.
TIEMEYER: If you were a woman that wanted to make a career out of flying,
your natural inclination
would be to move to the purser position
because of the better pay.
But certain airlines, like Northwest,
refused to hire women
for the purser position.
INMAN: In 1967,
Northwest hired five men off the street to be pursers.
I called the director of Labor Relations and I said,
"The contract requires you to post
these purser job positions to everyone,"
which he did.
The men made the stewardesses feel
that they were not entitled to the job,
and they could not handle the job of purser.
I realized as master executive chairman
that someone had to do it.
So I applied for the job.
I became the first and only female purser
with Northwest Airlines.
When I became a purser, I actually took a pay cut.
The male pursers were getting $250 more per month.
It was not fair at all.
Why should I be treated differently than the men?
My whole thought was, I am right and they are wrong.
And as long as I am right,
I will pursue this.
Michael Gottesman was an expert in labor law.
I made an appointment to see him.
Our expertise was labor law and employment law.
We were the logical people to call.
INMAN: I laid out the whole picture of the discrimination
and how we had no recourse.
GOTTESMAN: In the course of describing
her efforts to get the purser job,
she just said offhandedly,
"You know, it's particularly ridiculous
"because it's really the same job.
"If a man holds it, they call it a purser.
If a woman holds it, they call it a stewardess."
It would have been a good case, even if it was just the way
they had treated Mary Pat, but it was a much bigger case.
If they were paying a hundred men
a higher amount for doing the same work,
then every female flight attendant
would be entitled to the higher pay.
INMAN: We filed a class action lawsuit
on July 15, 1970.
We originally had 40 people to file the suit.
That guaranteed us a class action.
GOTTESMAN: You have to convince the judge
that this would be an appropriate class action,
that all of the people have the same grievance.
And Mary Pat led the effort.
She was fantastic at organizing.
INMAN: We had to educate people
that we were on the right side of the law,
and we're only trying
to force the company to obey the law.
♪ ♪
FILM NARRATOR: Eastern presents "The Losers."
MAN IN FILM: She's awkward.
Uh, not very friendly.
Aw, but she's too young.
Oh, she's... oh, she bites nails.
She wears glasses-- honey, no, the other...
Oh, now...
TIEMEYER: "Meet the Losers" relishes the fact
that they're turning away perfectly attractive,
perfectly articulate people.
MAN IN FILM: Well, uh...
TIEMEYER: And they're all white.
And that is not an accident.
FILM NARRATOR: They're probably good enough to get a job
anywhere they want,
but at Eastern we're very choosy
about whom we let serve you on a plane.
TIEMEYER: Eastern Airlines is stressing
we're still an exclusive form of transportation,
and the promise of exclusivity
is also a promise of racial exclusivity.
GRANT: The first Black flight attendant for Delta was hired in '66.
And then I was hired in 1971.
So we're saying
nearly a decade after Pat won her case.
Pat opened the doors,
but the doors weren't kicked open,
they were cracked.
MIA BAY: By the start of the 1970s,
there's only about a thousand Black women
working across all of the airlines,
but that's only three percent
of the total number
of flight attendants
in the country at that point.
Affirmative action was designed
to make sure that candidates of color,
if they're qualified, they get hired.
It replaces nepotism, where employers
hire people that they're most comfortable with,
which is usually people like themselves.
BLAIN: Airlines are forced to hire Black people.
It doesn't mean they want to.
UNDRA MAYS: I was hired in 1970.
Once I completed the training
and I started the job,
I realized that the company,
National Airlines, did not want me.
When I would see certain captains,
I knew scheduling was going to pull me off the flight
because they'd refuse to fly with me.
♪ ♪
When we traveled, you had to share a room.
We would pull up to the hotel.
The other three flight attendants,
they've already discussed it
among themselves.
One would run out into the hotel,
and sign up for the rooms.
By the time I'm getting into the hotel,
they, they already have the key and they're gone.
They would open the door,
but then tell me that
I have to go downstairs and get my own room.
I remember the front desk, not being able
to convince them to open the door,
not having any rooms available.
And on many occasions,
I would kind of settle in a corner.
You know, I'm still in uniform.
And I would sleep in the lobby.
(indistinct talking)
There was absolutely no one that I could discuss
a problem with.
The union, uh,
did not want me as well.
If I had a problem with my own supervisor,
who was I going to go to?
I ended up calling the Southern Poverty Law Center
and I told them, I explained to them, and they, of course,
they asked me for proof or paperwork or whatever,
and I said, "They won't give it to me."
And they said, "Well, we, we'll make a few phone calls."
I have no idea what was said.
I have no idea if they in fact made those calls.
But all of sudden things started to change.
My supervisor called me in,
and said,
"The director's asking, you know, to submit names
for the Fly Me ad."
And I thought about it.
MAN: Prepare for takeoff at this time. Thank you.
MAYS: Okay.
You don't want me here?
Watch this.
♪ ♪
You don't like me in the workforce?
Then how are you going to like me
with my picture pasted all over?
The sexual nature of the campaign ad, "Fly Me,"
really didn't bother me.
I did the ad because I, I wanted to show them.
♪ ♪
GRANT: When you looked at all the different advertisements,
you never saw a Black face.
You never were chosen to do any advertisement.
So, the sexism was secondary.
I'm not sitting here in a sexy position to advertise sex.
You were representing the Black stewardess,
and all that we could accomplish
and that we were capable of doing.
♪ ♪
We understand the burden of the doors that we possibly
could be opening up for anyone else to follow us.
Take your hands so that you've got them up out of the water.
Push the water away...
MAYS: A couple of times a year,
we used to go to recurrent training.
And this person stopped and said,
"There is a huge billboard
"with your, with your ad, the Fly Me ad,
"and when I saw you, I thought,
I didn't know they had Black stewardesses,"
and she went and applied.
(horns honking, whistling blaring)
WOMAN: Women's Rights Day, come join us in the march tomorrow!
FILM NARRATOR: For more than four years,
members of the National Organization for Women
have been campaigning throughout the nation
for more equality and better civil rights,
and today their movement is wider and stronger than ever.
(marchers chanting)
GLORIA STEINEM: This inhuman system
of exploitation will change,
but only if we force it to change, and force it together.
(cheers and applause)
I've never been captive.
No, I don't feel, you know, enslaved, or anything like that.
We love you, men, and you can be the boss.
CROWD: Women's liberation, now!
Equality-- you don't know what the hell you want!
(exertive exclamations)
BETTY FRIEDAN: We called this strike
to confront the unfinished business of our equality.
I'm a very happy housewife and a very happy mother.
CROWD (chanting): Go do the dishes! Go do the dishes!
(cheers and applause)
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM: We're not going to be able to do anything,
unless we begin to do it for ourselves.
(cheers and applause)
I've heard about it, thank you.
Will you come? Yes.
Good!
REPORTER: Women's liberation has reared its pretty head
in the friendly skies.
Leaflets for our first national convention.
REPORTER: These women are protesting what strikes them
as sexual discrimination on the airlines.
The question is whether or not a stewardess
is a flying waitress, a sex object, or a safety expert.
They seem to be a little bit of all three.
But some of them are so annoyed by that sex object business,
that they formed an organization to try and change their image.
I would like you to know that I am trained to open this door
in case of emergency, to take care of an epileptic attack,
take care of a heart attack, if you should have one.
I am there to help you with these things.
And, also, if none of these things should happen
on your flight, I will serve you a meal and offer you a cocktail.
If I were...
COOKE: In 1972,
a group of women founded Stewardesses for Women's Rights
and they were really trying to find
a place in the broader women's movement for stewardesses
who were invested in political change
as well as workplace change.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE: They wanted to professionalize the occupation,
raise the status and respect of the job.
They also wanted to make the airplane safer,
not just for the women who worked there
and for the employees, but also for the passengers.
There's really nothing wrong with being a stewardess.
What's wrong is the image
that has been portrayed to the public.
That we are empty-headed little fluffs
that serve you a meal
and take care of anything that you want taken care of
on the airplane without a complaint.
In fact, that we're not people.
COBBLE: They took up economic issues,
like promoting women into positions
that they had been excluded from,
but they also focused on issues
that had not been seen as labor issues,
issues having to do with appearance and grooming
and control over women's bodies.
I find it depletes me, I get so angry, I...
certain things can set me off, and I get in an irrational rage
and I have to hold it back.
HEENAN: I joined because
I've had a lot of frustrations and I felt that
the union was not the answer to a lot of this stuff.
The union reps were just a bunch
of 50-, 60-year-old guys that were oblivious
to the advertising, and to the sex discrimination.
I just don't think
they were capable of understanding it or something;
you know, it was like we're dealing with people
who were in a different generation.
♪ ♪
COOKE: I don't think that a lot of feminists thought
that these stewardesses who,
on the surface, looked so complacent
could be so effective.
I think the experience of standing up and speaking out
for one's rights and the rights of others is a contagious one,
and it's one that just,
that really does make waves and change lives.
It's like throwing a pebble into a pond,
the waves of reaction continue for a very long time.
COOKE: Gloria Steinem championed stewardesses' rights
from the beginning.
Gloria was so supportive.
She used to come to the offices.
She felt that flight attendants would make
a good case for changes that women were going through.
We could represent a new era.
She just had a lot of positive energy,
like, "We can do this.
We can just, you know, fight them."
♪ ♪
COBBLE: Stewardesses for Women's Rights were savvy
in terms of fighting fire with fire.
They distributed bumper stickers
and buttons,
and the buttons said, "Go fly yourself."
The bumper stickers said, "National, your fly is open."
(plane engine roaring)
And one of the things they did...
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: May I have your attention, please.
COBBLE: ...was what they called a "counter-commercial."
I don't think of myself as a sex object or a servant,
but as someone who is capable of opening the door of a 747
in the dark, upside down, and in the water.
Fantasies are fine in their place, but let's be honest,
the sexpot stewardess image is unsafe at any altitude.
Think about it.
We went to trial on December the 4th, 1972.
70 percent of Northwest Airlines stewardesses
were part of the lawsuit.
It was a six-week trial.
Executives of Northwest Airlines had to testify.
We were the plaintiffs, so we had to put our case on first.
♪ ♪
(gavel bangs)
INMAN: Northwest tried to make a point that
for safety reasons,
they thought that women would want to share rooms,
whereas men, they didn't...
they felt quite safe staying in their own room.
Why do you put women in double rooms
and allow men to have single rooms?
(indistinct talking)
INMAN: The company's witness said, "In restaurants,
"you see women going to the bathroom together.
They don't go to the ladies' room alone."
That was their explanation.
That this is what women want.
The whole staff in the court were like,
"Oh, what kind of logic is that?"
GOTTESMAN: And I remember the judge's reaction.
He just leaned back in his seat and roared.
He was looking up and he was laughing.
A federal judge today ordered Northwest Airlines
to do the following things: pay back salary and interest
to all stewardesses who were fired since 1965
for being overweight,
give stewardesses paid less than stewards since 1968
the difference in salary,
and reimburse stewardesses for the difference in room rent
since 1968 when they doubled up while stewards had single rooms.
INMAN: The judge made the decision in our favor
on all issues.
But then Northwest Airlines was able to appeal the case.
GOTTESMAN: Their strategy was
to take every opportunity that was legally available to them
to defer the final moment
when they were going to have to pay this money out.
♪ ♪
It took 11 years.
INMAN: My sister
was folding her laundry and she called me
and said, said, "Patty, you won."
I said, "What?"
The Supreme Court today upheld a big payoff
awarded to stewardesses who sued Northwest Airlines
for sex discrimination.
The women charged...
There is justice.
That was my thinking-- there is justice.
GOTTESMAN: It was a big win.
$60 million is a big chunk of money.
And for a flight attendant to be receiving,
in one fell swoop, $50,000 in back pay.
INMAN: Women could wear eyeglasses.
They would no longer be suspended for weight.
And we could have single rooms.
One flight attendant sent a note and said that
every time she walks around
in her single room, naked, she thinks of me.
(laughs)
♪ ♪
TIEMEYER: Mary Pat Laffey's victory
is definitive in saying
that under no circumstances shall a woman
doing this job be presented
with different and unequal standards
as a man doing this job.
This is what women's workplace civil rights are designed to do.
COBBLE: The Mary Pat Laffey case encouraged flight attendants
to push the boundaries,
and to move into those jobs that had been off limits.
INMAN: The women were finally allowed
to have the same benefits that the men had.
If you were capable, you could have a man's job.
♪ ♪
BRODIGAN: Now a flight attendant
can be male, can be older, can be married,
can be any race, ethnic origin.
We're different now, we kind of match the passengers.
(chuckles)
♪ ♪
ROADS: We weren't fighting for ourselves.
That's what made it so wonderful.
I wasn't fighting for me.
I was fighting for the girl next to me.
♪ ♪
ANNOUNCER: Next time...
The sun's energy is absorbed
and transformed into heat.
MAN: Mária Telkes was a solar evangelist.
WOMAN: She really imagined this as revolutionizing
the way that people lived.
WOMAN: Nothing else would even get close
to the Dover sun house.
WOMAN: She's laying the foundation
for pretty much everything now that we do with solar.
ANNOUNCER: "The Sun Queen,"
next time on "American Experience."
Made possible in part
by Liberty Mutual Insurance.
♪ ♪