In my last post, I introduced Olympic track and field star Wilma Rudolph. In 1960, when she was reaching the peak of her athletic career, a political star was making her way to Washington, DC, where she would make history with the Title IX legislation.

            Patsy Matsu Takemoto Mink was born in 1927, a third generation Japanese American. Raised in Maui, she graduated high school as valedictorian of her class.

            “I lived my life as I felt inclined, never considering myself a lesser being because I was female,” she says.*

            She attended college at the University of Hawaii, and later at the University of Nebraska, where she first encountered racism. When she arrived, she found that even though she was an American student, she had been placed in the International House rather than a dormitory because of her color.

            “I was told that dormitories were for white kids,” she says. “I whipped up a huge storm on campus. Everybody got all riled up and within months the policy changed.”**

            However, ill health forced Mink to return to Hawaii to complete her education.

            Mink wanted to be a doctor but was rejected from all twelve medical schools she applied to because she was a woman. She opted instead to study law and was accepted at the University of Chicago Law School in 1948. When she graduated in 1951, though, she couldn’t find a job. She had so many strikes against her — not only was she a woman and Asian, but by this time she was married and after the birth of her daughter in 1952, she was a mother.

            Employers just didn’t want someone like her.

            Mink opened her own practice in 1953 and at the same time, joined the Democratic Party. She worked as an attorney for the Hawaiian legislature and in 1956, won a seat in the territorial House of Representatives. In so doing, she became the first Japanese-American woman to serve in the territorial House and two years later, the first woman to serve in the territorial Senate. 

            But Mink’s education in discrimination didn’t end. One year, Mink’s daughter, Gwendolyn, was elected president of her class. But a teacher overruled the student vote, and made her vice president, saying that only boys could be class president. In part, Mink says it was the experiences of her daughter that radicalized her.

            In 1964, Mink ran as a Democrat for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and won. She was the first woman of color and the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress, and also the first woman elected to Congress from the state of Hawaii.

            Here’s where Rep. Mink’s path crossed with that of Rep. Edith Green (D-OR), who we met in an earlier post. The two women teamed up to draft legislation to end gender discrimination in educational institutions, where they both had suffered from blighted ambitions.

            “We must be willing to cut the first furrow in the ground and stand alone if necessary,” she said.***

            But the two women weren’t standing entirely alone. A third woman joined their team, Bernice “Bunny” Sandler, a powerhouse who came to be known as “The Godmother of Title IX.” We’ll meet her in another post. This trio couldn’t be beat!  

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* Christina Looper Baker and Christina Baker Kline, The Conversation Begins: Mothers and Daughters Talk About Living Feminism (New York: Bantam Books, 1996), p. 49. This is a fantastic book that gives well-known mother and daughter duos a chance to talk about their experiences as women across two generations.

** The Conversation Begins, p. 58.

*** Veronica Chambers and the staff of the New York Times, Finish the Fight: The Brave and Revolutionary Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote (New York: Versify, 2020), p. 105.