Molly Yard
Encyclopedia
Mary Alexander "Molly" Yard (July 6, 1912 – September 21, 2005) was an American
feminist
of the late 20th century, who, through service as an assistant to Eleanor Roosevelt
in the middle of the century and later work as a U.S. administrator, social activist, and feminist who served as National Organization for Women
(NOW)'s eighth president from 1987 to 1991, connected first
with second-wave feminism
.
, Sichuan
province, China
, the daughter of Methodist
missionaries
. She graduated in 1933 from Swarthmore College
, a coeducation
al college that was also the alma mater
of Alice Paul
. While at Swarthmore, she led a successful drive to eliminate the sorority
system after a Jewish student was denied admission to the sorority to which Yard belonged, Kappa Alpha Theta
. In 1938, Yard married Sylvester Garrett, a union that lasted until his death in 1996.
politics and in the late 1940s and early 1950s worked with the Clark-Dilworth team to unseat the entrenched city machine in Philadelphia
. Two years later, Yard worked for the Helen Gahagan Douglas campaign for the U.S. Senate against Richard Nixon
in California
.
She moved to Pittsburgh
in 1953 and worked in the gubernatorial campaign of Mayor David L. Lawrence
in 1958. She also headed the Western Pennsylvania presidential campaigns of John F. Kennedy
in 1960 and George McGovern
in 1972; headed the unsuccessful campaign to get NAACP President Byrd Brown the Democratic nomination to Congress; and was co-chairman with Mayor Joseph M. Barr
of the unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of Jeanette Reibman
in 1976.
Yard made an unsuccessful run for the state legislature as a candidate from the city's 14th Ward in 1964.
In addition to her political work, she helped found Americans for Democratic Action
, America's oldest independent liberal lobbying organization, and the Pittsburgh's 14th Ward Independent Democratic Club. She was also the organization secretary and national chairwoman of the American Student Union
.
neighborhood of Pittsburgh in 1974, and she joined the national staff in 1978 during the campaign to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment
, serving as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C.
She raised more than $1 million in less than six months for that drive.
A prime architect of NOW's political and legislative agenda, she was a senior staff member of the NOW Political Action Committee from 1978 to 1984. As NOW's political director from 1985 to 1987, she was instrumental in the successful 1986 campaign to defeat pro-life
referendums in Arkansas
, Massachusetts
, Rhode Island
and Oregon
.
In April 1989, she helped to carry the banner for the March for Women's Equality/Women's Lives, which drew 600,000 marchers to Washington in support of abortion
rights and the ERA.
Ms. Yard defeated Noreen Connell
in the 1987 NOW election. Upon taking office she vowed to make the organization more visible and to work to defeat President Reagan
's nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court
. Bork's nomination was ultimately rejected by the U.S. Senate.
The membership of NOW grew by 110,000 during the years of her presidency and its annual budget increased 70 percent, to more than $10 million.
As NOW president, she opposed U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf War
, saying Americans should not be fighting for "clan-run monarchies" in Kuwait
and Saudi Arabia
that denied women's rights.
Also in 1991, Yard was honored in Paris by the French Alliance of Women for Democratization for her work on reproductive rights; she had been a leader in the effort to get Paris-based manufacturer Roussel Uclaf
to make the so-called "French abortion pill" available in the United States.
She received the Feminist Majority Foundation
's lifetime achievement award for "tireless work for women's rights, for women and girls in sports, for the Equal Rights Amendment for Women, for civil rights for all Americans, for her championing of the trade union
movement, and her devotion to world peace
and non-violence."
Yard died in her sleep at age 93 at a nursing home in suburban Pittsburgh on September 20, 2005.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
of the late 20th century, who, through service as an assistant to Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
in the middle of the century and later work as a U.S. administrator, social activist, and feminist who served as National Organization for Women
National Organization for Women
The National Organization for Women is the largest feminist organization in the United States. It was founded in 1966 and has a membership of 500,000 contributing members. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S...
(NOW)'s eighth president from 1987 to 1991, connected first
First-wave feminism
First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early twentieth century in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. It focused on de jure inequalities, primarily on gaining women's suffrage .The term first-wave was coined retroactively in the 1970s...
with second-wave feminism
Second-wave feminism
The Feminist Movement, or the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the early 1990s....
.
Early life
Yard was born in ChengduChengdu
Chengdu , formerly transliterated Chengtu, is the capital of Sichuan province in Southwest China. It holds sub-provincial administrative status...
, Sichuan
Sichuan
' , known formerly in the West by its postal map spellings of Szechwan or Szechuan is a province in Southwest China with its capital in Chengdu...
province, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, the daughter of Methodist
Methodism
Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...
missionaries
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
. She graduated in 1933 from Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....
, a coeducation
Coeducation
Mixed-sex education, also known as coeducation or co-education, is the integrated education of male and female persons in the same institution. It is the opposite of single-sex education...
al college that was also the alma mater
Alma mater
Alma mater , pronounced ), was used in ancient Rome as a title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele, and in Christianity for the Virgin Mary.-General term:...
of Alice Paul
Alice Paul
Alice Stokes Paul was an American suffragist and activist. Along with Lucy Burns and others, she led a successful campaign for women's suffrage that resulted in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.-Activism: Alice Paul received her undergraduate education from...
. While at Swarthmore, she led a successful drive to eliminate the sorority
Fraternities and sororities
Fraternities and sororities are fraternal social organizations for undergraduate students. In Latin, the term refers mainly to such organizations at colleges and universities in the United States, although it is also applied to analogous European groups also known as corporations...
system after a Jewish student was denied admission to the sorority to which Yard belonged, Kappa Alpha Theta
Kappa Alpha Theta
Kappa Alpha Theta , also known as Theta, is an international fraternity for women founded on January 27, 1870 at DePauw University, formerly Indiana Asbury...
. In 1938, Yard married Sylvester Garrett, a union that lasted until his death in 1996.
Early career and politics
She became active in Democratic PartyDemocratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
politics and in the late 1940s and early 1950s worked with the Clark-Dilworth team to unseat the entrenched city machine in Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
. Two years later, Yard worked for the Helen Gahagan Douglas campaign for the U.S. Senate against Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
She moved to Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
in 1953 and worked in the gubernatorial campaign of Mayor David L. Lawrence
David L. Lawrence
David Leo Lawrence was an American politician who served as the 37th Governor of Pennsylvania from 1959 to 1963. He is to date the only mayor of Pittsburgh to be elected Governor of Pennsylvania. Previously, he had been the mayor of Pittsburgh from 1946 through 1959...
in 1958. She also headed the Western Pennsylvania presidential campaigns of John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
in 1960 and George McGovern
George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern is an historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election....
in 1972; headed the unsuccessful campaign to get NAACP President Byrd Brown the Democratic nomination to Congress; and was co-chairman with Mayor Joseph M. Barr
Joseph M. Barr
Joseph M. Barr served as Mayor of Pittsburgh from 1959 to 1970.-Early life:Barr was born in Pittsburgh to a large family. He started his career as a salesman in the city. In 1940 he became the state's youngest state senator serving the region in Harrisburg. His career in Harrisburg roughly...
of the unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of Jeanette Reibman
Jeanette Reibman
Jeanette F. Reibman is a former Democratic member of the Pennsylvania State Senate. She also served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.-References:http://www.lafayette.edu/news.php/view/8440...
in 1976.
Yard made an unsuccessful run for the state legislature as a candidate from the city's 14th Ward in 1964.
In addition to her political work, she helped found Americans for Democratic Action
Americans for Democratic Action
Americans for Democratic Action is an American political organization advocating progressive policies. ADA works for social and economic justice through lobbying, grassroots organizing, research and supporting progressive candidates.-History:...
, America's oldest independent liberal lobbying organization, and the Pittsburgh's 14th Ward Independent Democratic Club. She was also the organization secretary and national chairwoman of the American Student Union
American Student Union
The American Student Union was a national left-wing organization of college students of the 1930s, best remembered for its protest activities against militarism. Founded by a 1935 merger of Communist and Socialist student organizations, the ASU was affiliated with the American Youth Congress...
.
Activities in the National Organization for Women
She became active in NOW while a resident of the Squirrel HillSquirrel Hill
Squirrel Hill is a residential neighborhood in the east end of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The city officially divides it into two neighborhoods, Squirrel Hill North and Squirrel Hill South, but it is almost universally treated as a single neighborhood...
neighborhood of Pittsburgh in 1974, and she joined the national staff in 1978 during the campaign to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution. The ERA was originally written by Alice Paul and, in 1923, it was introduced in the Congress for the first time...
, serving as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
She raised more than $1 million in less than six months for that drive.
A prime architect of NOW's political and legislative agenda, she was a senior staff member of the NOW Political Action Committee from 1978 to 1984. As NOW's political director from 1985 to 1987, she was instrumental in the successful 1986 campaign to defeat pro-life
Pro-life
Opposition to the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-life, or anti-abortion, movement, a social and political movement opposing elective abortion on moral grounds and supporting its legal prohibition or restriction...
referendums in Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
and Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
.
In April 1989, she helped to carry the banner for the March for Women's Equality/Women's Lives, which drew 600,000 marchers to Washington in support of abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
rights and the ERA.
Ms. Yard defeated Noreen Connell
Noreen Connell
Noreen Connell is an American feminist organizer and writer/editor, known for producing, with fellow New York Radical Feminists member Cassandra Wilson, the 1974 New American Library book Rape: A First Sourcebook for Women by New York Radical Feminists...
in the 1987 NOW election. Upon taking office she vowed to make the organization more visible and to work to defeat President Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
's nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
. Bork's nomination was ultimately rejected by the U.S. Senate.
The membership of NOW grew by 110,000 during the years of her presidency and its annual budget increased 70 percent, to more than $10 million.
As NOW president, she opposed U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
, saying Americans should not be fighting for "clan-run monarchies" in Kuwait
Kuwait
The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...
and Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
that denied women's rights.
Also in 1991, Yard was honored in Paris by the French Alliance of Women for Democratization for her work on reproductive rights; she had been a leader in the effort to get Paris-based manufacturer Roussel Uclaf
Roussel Uclaf
Roussel Uclaf S.A. was the second largest French pharmaceutical company before it was acquired by Hoechst AG of Frankfurt, Germany in 1997, with pharmaceutical operations combined into the Hoechst Marion Roussel division...
to make the so-called "French abortion pill" available in the United States.
She received the Feminist Majority Foundation
Feminist Majority Foundation
The Feminist Majority Foundation is a non-profit organization in the United States dedicated to Women's Equality, Reproductive Health and Non-Violence, headquartered in Arlington County, Virginia. The name Feminist Majority comes from a 1986 Newsweek/Gallup public opinion poll in which 56 percent...
's lifetime achievement award for "tireless work for women's rights, for women and girls in sports, for the Equal Rights Amendment for Women, for civil rights for all Americans, for her championing of the trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
movement, and her devotion to world peace
World peace
World Peace is an ideal of freedom, peace, and happiness among and within all nations and/or people. World peace is an idea of planetary non-violence by which nations willingly cooperate, either voluntarily or by virtue of a system of governance that prevents warfare. The term is sometimes used to...
and non-violence."
Yard died in her sleep at age 93 at a nursing home in suburban Pittsburgh on September 20, 2005.