Document 25: "The Minority Caucus: ‘It's Our Movement Now,’" from National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, The Spirit of Houston: The First National Women's Conference (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), pp. 156-57.
Introduction
The NWC provided a forum for minority women to meet and discuss discrimination that white women attending the conference did not experience. Minority group women agreed to solutions to end discrimination which were incorporated into the National Plan of Action in plank number 17. Women with a diverse range of heritages -- Asian and Pacific women, African American, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaskan Native women -- debated the plank in small caucuses in order to reach agreement on the plank's content.
p. 156
THE MINORITY CAUCUS:
‘It's Our Movement Now’
Of all delegates in Houston who were drawn together by double discrimination – by a condition of powerlessness that multiplied their problems as women – the largest number were those from groups usually designated as minorities. There were black women from almost every State and Territory; Hispanic women, including Chicanas, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and other Latinas; an Asian American caucus of Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Philippinas, and others; American Indians from many different tribes, as well as Alaskan natives; and Pacific Americans from Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, and other trust territories.
Together, they made up about a quarter of the delegates, a proportion greater than their percentage in the total population as counted by the U.S. Census, though it should be noted that these statistics have often been shown to undercount minority groups. In fact, its diversity was the most remarkable and distinguishing characteristic of the delegate body. In a country in which the majority group still dominates political and economic life, the unprecedented participation of minority women in the State meetings had turned the Houston Conference into a uniquely representative body: a nationwide, multiracial, multicultural town meeting of Americans.
Minority women in the State and Territorial meetings had voiced their concerns in a variety of ways. Some had included their needs and agendas in resolutions passed by the State meetings on a number of topics. Others had passed separate resolutions on minority issues. The National Plan of Action presented to the Houston Conference reflected these different approaches. A number of planks referred to minority needs; in addition, a separate three-paragraph plank on Minority Women was included in recognition of the distinctive importance of their concerns. In doing so, the National Commission had made clear that the minority delegates gathered in Houston were expected to present a more complete plank as a substitute if they wished.
Many minority delegates had been working long before Houston to do just that and to unite their own groups into much needed coalitions. The Government-funded Conference, like the preliminary State meetings, was regarded by many as an opportunity to meet their sisters and to form networks that could be crucial to their futures. Black delegates laid the groundwork, for instance, by polling their counterparts in other States by phone or doing research through their existing organizations. A coalition started by the National Council of Negro Women and headed by Dr. Elizabeth Stone of Howard University had even prepared a mimeographed booklet entitled "The Black Women's Plan of Action."
In California, with its enormous distances and large Chicana population, Gracia Molina-Pick, a former professor of Third World studies and a longtime Chicana activist, brought together women from the northern and southern parts of the State. She also traveled to Texas in advance of Houston to share ideas with the Texas "host" delegation, which included more Chicanas than any other State did and whose co-chairs were both minority women: State Representative Irma Rangel, the first Chicana ever to serve in the Texas legislature, and Owanah Anderson, an American Indian spokeswoman.
Esther Kee, a Chinese American delegate from New
York, canvassed her sisters by phone and helped to organize a meeting
just before the Conference's opening session. To bring together
members of all minority caucuses, Kogie Thomas, an American Indian
spokeswoman from California, helped to coordinate a coalition and
statement among her
p. 157
In spite of possibly dozens more of such energetic, goodwill efforts, many minority delegates were meeting in Houston for the first time and bringing with them the diverse and crucial concerns of their own communities. Among them, as among the white majority, were many who had never before been to a large meeting; experienced political leaders and members of Congress; radicals who favored action outside the Conference and outside the electoral system itself; single-issue representatives who had never identified as feminists before; and separatists who felt the integrity of their particular minority group should not be compromised by coalition with other minorities, much less with more powerful groups. The polar extremes of their views were the determination of some to declare minority women's concerns completely separate from the Conference or its National Plan of Action and the conviction of others that the National Plan must be retained intact lest anti-change forces exploit any division.
That was the complex, hope-filled situation when minority women began arriving in Houston. In the midst of hotel room mix-ups, registration, and caucusing by State and other interest groups, it seemed as if only a miracle could achieve communication, much less coalition.
By the time the Pro Plan Caucus had its first big meeting Friday night, however, black delegates had met in several caucuses, and an Hispanic Caucus had separated into Chicana and Puerto Rican components to discuss issues. American Indian women from several States were trying to link up with their California sisters to form an organizing core, and Pacific and Asian American delegates were identifying themselves as groups.
Once most minority delegates were reassured by their Pro Plan representatives that they could indeed rewrite and expand the Minority Women plank, drafting committees began to spring up: one from the Racial/Ethnic breakfast hosted by minority commissioners on Saturday morning, and one from additional delegates who met later that day. The Hispanic women inspired unity by coming up with an umbrella statement representing Chicana, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Latina delegates, the first time such a national coalition had ever been made.
By Saturday afternoon, a drafting committee of representatives of all minority caucuses was working together to coalesce each group's statements. Members ranged from Dorothy Height, a respected black leader of 30 years' standing, to Colleen Wong, a 16-year-old Chinese American activist from San Francisco; from Dr. Ethel Allen, a Republican city councilwoman from Philadelphia, to Carmela Lacayo, an official of the Democratic National Committee; from Tin Myaing Thien, a young academician, to Billie Nave Masters, a Cherokee Indian and university teacher. After including Gloria Steinem, a non-minority Commissioner whom they had invited to help with hammering out coalition language (and cheerfully referred to by them as "the token"), the dozen or so members met nonstop throughout the second and third plenary sessions.
As each group read its statement, it became clear that most issues were shared. A Chicana delegate emphasized her group's suffering from coerced sterilizations; then black representatives cited similar tragic experiences, among their sisters, and an American Indian delegate brought tears to everyone's eyes by asserting that 42 percent of that population's women have been sterilized, with or without informed consent. Asian American women explained that many of them suffer from monolingual education and health and social services just as Spanish-speaking women do. All agreed that culturally biased testing proceeds and the lack of statistics based on sex and race were root problems for all those suffering from double discrimination.
In this careful, caring, organic way, umbrella issues emerged and were listed in order to write a basic statement. The remaining, more special issues – removal of American Indian children from their communities, for instance, or the isolation of Asian American women who have come to this country as wives of servicemen – were not dismissed but were allotted to special, smaller sections, one for each major group, that were to be appended to the introductory umbrella statement. The meeting continued until midnight and reassembled early Sunday morning to agree on final phrasing.
When the resulting statement was finally read on the Conference floor by members of each major caucus (see narrative), many felt it to be the most significant event of Houston and of all that had preceded it. For the first time, minority women – many of whom had been in the leadership of the women's movement precisely because of their greater political understanding of discrimination – were present in such a critical mass that they were able to define their own needs as well as to declare their stake in each women's issue. They were also able to make the media aware of their importance and to forge their own internal networks and coalitions in a way that was far reaching, inclusive, and an historic "first" for their communities, for women and men.
"Let this message go forth from Houston," said Coretta Scott King, "and spread all over this land. There is a new force, a new understanding, a new sisterhood against all injustice that has been born here. We will not be divided and defeated again."
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