It’s surprising how little attention Title IX got when it was signed into law in 1972. But a lot was happening that year — both good and bad — so the headlines were claimed by events that buried a seemingly insignificant piece of legislation whose impact wouldn’t be realized for years.
So, c’mon, hop in the way back machine with me and take a look at what was happening fifty years ago.
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January 5. NASA initiates the space shuttle program. We’re conquering space!
January 25. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black congresswoman, announces her candidacy for president. Her goal was a “union of the disenfranchised.”
February 21. President Nixon begins an eight-day trip to China to meet with Mao Zedong. He’s the first president to make an official visit to the Communist country.
March 22. Congress sends the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification. Activist Phyllis Schlafly wages war with her “STOP ERA” campaign.
March 24. “The Godfather” is released in theaters around the country. It’s a hit, to say the least!
April 16. The United States resumes its bombing campaign, targeting the North Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. The Vietnam War rages on.
April 17. Women run officially in the Boston Marathon for the first time. Nina Kuscsik of Huntington, New York, wins with a time of 3 hours, 10 minutes and 26 seconds.
May 15. Alabama Gov. George Wallace is shot and paralyzed at a rally in Maryland. An ardent racist, he had ordered police to shutter the state’s public schools rather than integrate them. On his orders, civil rights activists were attacked by state troopers.
May 26. Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT I treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, both of which limit weapons systems. We’re trying to get along!
June 14–23. Hurricane Agnes kills 128 people along the East Coast.
June 23. President Nixon signs Title IX, part of the Education Amendments of 1972, into law. This should be big news!
June 23. But also on this day, five men hired by White House officials are arrested for breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. A scandal is brewing!
July 8. Actress and activist Jane Fonda begins a two-week tour of North Vietnam to protest the war. In an epic optics fail, she sits astride a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun for photographers. She gains the nickname “Hanoi Jane.”
July 21. On “Bloody Friday,” nineteen Irish Republican Army bombs explode across Belfast, killing nine and seriously wounding 130 other people. “The Troubles” continue.
July 25. The U.S. admits that Black men were used as guinea pigs in the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” beginning in 1932. Consent was never sought and treatment was withheld.
August 1. Sen. Thomas Eagleton, the Democratic nominee for vice president, withdraws after his treatment and hospitalization for depression becomes known.
August 21. Nixon is nominated at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach for a second term, along with his running mate Spiro Agnew.
September 1. American chess player Bobby Fischer defeats Russian chess grandmaster Boris Spassky at a match held in Reykjavik, Iceland. He’s the first American chess champion.
September 5. Eleven athletes from the Israeli Olympic team are murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September during the Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany. Incredibly, Olympic Chairman Avery Brundage says the Games must go on.
October 16. Country singer Loretta Lynn becomes the first female to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award. Chalk it up to “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
November 7. Nixon defeats McGovern in a landslide election. But Watergate looms as Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein pound away at their typewriters.
November 14. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 1,003.16, the first time the stock index had topped 1,000. We’re in the money!
December 14. Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt become the last astronauts to walk on the moon.
December 25. Following the breakdown of peace talks, Nixon begins another bombing campaign against North Vietnam. “The Christmas Bombing” is widely criticized. The war drags on.
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Those of us who were following the news in the 1970s no doubt remember all of these events. We all wish we could go back in time and erase so much of what happened that year. But Title IX is one highlight of that eventful year that we would never wish to change!
PHOTO: Shirley Chisholm announcing her candidacy for president (Associated Press)
1972 was the big flood here. Agnes did her magic and the dam walls broke. Entire East section of Main Street was torn down. Corning Co said they might move to NYC but the grand Mrs Houghton told them to stay here. People died. The row of homes by the river were destroyed. The flood line for first street was up to the second floor in homes and there were mud crews shoveling mud all summer.
Yes, I remember! I used to have a hunk of uncut glass from the Corning factory that came from the flood. I guess there must of been all sorts of things floating in the flood waters.