Schlafly, Phyllis

Biographical Sketch

Phyllis Schlafly (born August 15, 1924, in St. Louis, Missouri)¹ is an American conservative political activist known for her best-selling A Choice, Not An Echo as well as her opposition to feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment. A Choice, Not An Echo was published in 1964 from Schalfly's home in Alton, Illinois, across the Mississippi River from her native St. Louis. From this self-publication, she formed her Pere Marquette Publishers company. A Choice, Not An Echo decries the power of the "Eastern Establishment" in the Republican Party once exercised by New York Governors Thomas E. Dewey and Nelson A. Rockefeller. A similar self-published book that year, A Texan Looks at Lyndon: An Exercise in Illegitimate Power by the Texas historian J. Evetts Haley questioned the rise to power of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Schlafly and Haley supported U.S. Senator Barry M. Goldwater in his unsuccessful race against Johnson.

Schlafly has co-authored several books on national defense, and was highly critical of arms-control agreements with the former Soviet Union.[2] In 1961 she wrote that arms control "will not stop Red aggression any more than disarming our local police will stop murder, theft, and rape."[3]

Schlafly also maintains an active presence on the lecture circuit. In 1972, she founded the Eagle Forum, and was the founder and president of a sister organization known as the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, which also operates in the Eagle Forum's St. Louis office. As of 2007, she is still the president of both organizations. Since 1967, she has published her own political newsletter, the Phyllis Schlafly Report.

She was married to attorney John Fred Schlafly, Jr., (1909–1993) for forty-four years until his death. They had six children: John, Bruce, Roger, Liza, Andrew, and Anne.

Phyllis Schlafly (born on August 15, 1924, in St. Louis, Missouri) was a prominent grassroots conservative activist who gained renown for her fight against the proposed ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) in the 1970s. Schlafly's biographer, Donald T. Critchlow, in his 2006 book Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism, makes this observation:

Schlafly is best known to those over the age of forty for her A Choice Not An Echo and her campaign to defeat ERA, which drew thousands of women into an antifeminist, pro-family crusade. Both these were catalysts that propelled a resurgent Right and made her a heroine of the Right. Since the 1960s she has been a regular radio and television commentator, beginning with her fifteen-minutes Daughters of the American Revolution "America Wake Up" radio program. This was followed by her CBS Spectrum radio commentaries and televised debates (1973-78), her syndicated three-minute daily commentaries (1983-present), and live interviews on hundreds of television and radio programs. Her one-hour weekly live-broadcast is heard regularly on Christian radio today. Her Phyllis Schlafly Report, begun in 1967, is read by 30,000 subscribers for its essays on politics, education, national defense, feminism, the judiciary, and immigration. Through these activities Schlafly tapped into the anxieties of traditional-minded Middle Americans concerned about changing social and cultural mores in America. Schlafly helped organize the grassroots movement in churches and local communities that eventually became a major player in the Republican Party. ²

Related Web Sites:
Eagle Forum

Critchlow, David. Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).