By Maya Bouchebl
In the months leading up to the National Women’s Conference of November 1977, the staff of the International Women’s Year (IWY) Commission was working hard to prepare for America’s most diverse gathering of women. They had faced the formidable task of coordinating women’s meetings in every state and territory beforehand, where just under two thousand delegates were selected to join the national conference. Thousands of women from all kinds of backgrounds were heading to Houston to develop a plan of action to eliminate gender discrimination in federal law, and thousands more came to watch. While many of the people involved were preoccupied with controversial political issues before the conference, coordinators had their hands full with the logistics of such a massive undertaking.
After selecting Houston as the host city for the conference, the IWY Commission chose the Sam Houston Coliseum as the main location and decided to use the neighboring Albert Thomas Convention Center for public exhibits. They appointed a staff known as the Houston Committee for on-site coordination, but plans became alarmingly delayed due to a lack of coordination between the national commission and the local committee. The two groups disagreed on topics such as financing and distribution of observer passes, and the Houston Committee felt that the IWY Commission was not doing enough to prepare for such a large event. By July, the commission still had not produced a finalized conference agenda, and by September all they had done was reserve the venues and hotels. According to one staffer, “[T]he commission had people on staff who were supposed to move down here six months ahead of time and do all this on-site coordination, but had not done it….The convention center became very disturbed about how late everything was, that none of the pre-planning had been done.”
The commission responded to these concerns by hiring Frances “Poppy” Northcutt and Helen Cassidy as local coordinators. Active in the Houston women’s movement, the two had experience organizing feminist conferences for the National Women’s Political Caucus and the National Organization for Women. They had their work cut out for them, as the conference required an exhausting amount of preparation. Most events of this size were planned five years in advance, but Northcutt and Cassidy only had six weeks.
Their responsibilities included handling the physical setup of the convention center, arranging services such as first aid and childcare, coordinating with everyone involved, and training and managing volunteers. They also traveled back and forth from Washington, DC, to work with the national staff. Interactions with the East Coast feminists from the commission reminded Northcutt and Cassidy that people from other regions of the United States had a rather outdated view of Houston. Northcutt recalled that some participants “seemed to think that they were going to have to ride a stagecoach in from the airport.”
The organizers did their best despite numerous setbacks. For example, when they realized that the exhibit manager had absconded with the payment checks, the staff worked tirelessly and managed to salvage the exhibits. They also had to rush to prepare the convention floor in the early morning since a wrestling match had been booked in the Coliseum the night before. Three thousand volunteers worked alongside the organizers. Most were local women recruited from organizations such as the National Organization for Women, Young Women’s Christian Association, League of Women Voters, and many others. Prudence Mackintosh, a reporter for Texas Monthly, described the outpouring of community support with this statement: “I saw women acting as security guards, floor tellers, microphone facilitators; they ran first-aid stations and information booths; they acted as interpreters for foreign visitors and non-English-speaking delegates; they signed for the deaf, typed braille for the blind.” Their efforts made the conference possible despite the challenges. Years later, Northcutt looked back at the experience and recalled that “we were very compressed for time to get everything done for this so as we were setting up at the last minute, it was just non-stop work…. I was dead on my feet by the time the conference opened.”
To read the full story, click on Buy Magazines above to purchase a print copy or subscribe.
To learn more about the NWC, check out this overview from Sharing Stories 1977 or read this article from the Fall 2003 issue of Houston History.
Click here to see an interactive map of the NWC and related events.
Follow