>> At North Mecklenburg Senior High School in Huntersville,
North Carolina in 1966, the year I graduated from North Meck High.
Girls had limited options to participate in competitive high school athletics.
Judy's sport was tennis.
She was not allowed to play on the high school's all male tennis team, nor
did she receive any coaching at the high school.
She played under the auspices of the Girls State Athletic Association,
which held its own tournament.
The year of my high school graduation,
North Carolina had no high schools team sports for girls.
Tennis, swimming, individual sports were the only options and
the girls had to go it alone.
The Girls State Athletic Association had zilch prestige,
quite unlike the state's umbrella organizations for boy's sports,
the North Carolina Athletic Association.
I know this personally.
I was a high school track athlete.
My senior year I won both the state cross country championship at Chapel Hill and
the state's 88 yard dash title at Raleigh.
Big deal, big hoopla.
Big man on campus.
Not so for Judy, who won the Girls State Athletic Association
tennis championship to no acclaim.
Six years later, the times were changing.
>> In 1972, the US Congress passed the education
amendments of 1972, a section of which was Title Nine.
Which spoke to what the historians David Tyack and
Lisbeth Haas called the hidden injuries of co-education.
Responding to feminist demands for equal rights for
women in public education Title Nine amended the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Regulations for Title Nine were slow to appear.
A strong women's lobby backed by black Congressmen fearful of losing
other Civil Right's regulations compelled President Gerald Ford's
administration to act.
As a general rule, the regulations prohibited separate sex classes in Health,
Physical Education and Vocational Education.
They required equal treatment of boys and girls by guidance counselors and
equal athletic programs and facilities with the exception of contact sports.
>> Compliance with Title Nine, however, was iffy.
And federal enforcement was laggard with compliance reviews almost
always tied up in red tape.
Many school districts in the South ignored the law with impunity and the government's
instrument of last resort, the withdrawal of federal funds, was never wielded.
By 1987, 12 states had enacted laws similar to Title Nine and
19 other states had passed less comprehensive laws.
Of the states with Title Nine style laws, six prohibited sex bias in textbooks.
Women's groups monitored compliance with state equity laws.
The point was mute in the South, which had no state equity laws.
Title Nine collided with the great tradition and
pageantry of Friday night football when high school stadiums across
the rule South switched on their Friday night lights.
And competing towns and
districts sent their young armor clad gladiators into these dangerous
arenas to win glory for themselves, their schools and their elders.
Simply put having to spend money on women's athletic facilities,
uniforms, equipment and the like.
Threatened to diminish the football budget and spoil all the fun.
>> Tyack and
Hansot offer the following appraisal of the first decade of Title Nine.
Quote, school districts responded in a variety of ways to Title Nine and
to the broader feminist campaign against institutional sexism.
Some sought to beat the spirit, as well as the letter of the law by addressing
the subtler, as well as more obvious forms of institutional sexism.
Most complied with at least the letter of the law, for example, by abolishing
the sex labeling of courses and expanding the sports programs for girls.
Some districts remained ignorant of the requirements of Title Nine or
openly defiant.
As we said, the times were changing, even in the South.
After a slow start, women did make progress towards sex equity and
beyond sports.
In the first decade of Title Nine, women achieved modest gains,
gains in obtaining the district and
school level administrative appointments above the elementary grades.
For example in 1972-73, they accounted for a mere one-tenth of 1%
of all school superintendents and 1.4% of all high school principles.
By 1983-84, they constituted 6.8% of the nations superintendents and
6.1% of the public high school principals.
Their claim on these positions has improved significantly in the past 30
years though, they still have not achieved anything like parity with men.
Today, 22% of all school superintendents are women and
30% of all public high school principals are women.
>> To return to where we started this episode,
today the North Carolina Athletic Association, an all-male institution
before Title Nine, supports women's teams in ten interscholastic sports.
The testament to Title Nine and a dramatic improvement over the situation
my friend Judy faced at North Bank High back in the mid-1960s.
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