OPEN
GRAPHIC: AMERICAN EXPERIENCE FILMS
GRAPHIC: FLY WITH ME
CASEY GRANT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Stewardesses were glamorous. They were beautiful. They were poised. It just looked like the world was theirs. And I wanted that life.
TRAINING FILM ACTRESS: I just can’t wait to see all the places I’ve heard so much about. Paris, Rome, Bangkok, Buenos Aires…
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
How many small town girls like me looked at a flight attendant and thought, "That's the best job in the world."
TRAINING FILM ACTOR: Rosemary, I’d like to talk to you about your coffee service. You’ve been pouring from too high.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
No other job offered as much freedom, with such a high cost of conformity.
MARY PAT LAFFEY
We were not expected to have opinions. We were to serve and look glamorous.
JOAN RIVERS: Where is the stewardess where a woman wants her, huh? Huh? Nowhere, busy with the men. Coffee, tea, what you will, hello, hello, hello.
ACTOR PLAYING PILOT: Heya, how ‘bout some coffee? And make it hot.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Selling sex instead of safety.
SUZANNA LEIGH: Oh, excuse us.
SOUTHWEST STEWARDESS 1: Remember what it was like before there was somebody else up there who loved you?
SOUTHWEST STEWARDESS 2: Remember?
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I hated that.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
Airlines hired these women who are independent and curious. And it's amazing to me that airlines would expect that they would be a docile group, because why would they be?
NEWSCASTER JOHN CHANCELLOR: TWA has been shut down for more than a month by a strike of stewards and stewardesses.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
I don't think we realized what a revolutionary thing we were doing.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Stewardesses played a major role in launching the women's movement.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
They took up economic issues, but they also focused on issues having to do with appearance, grooming and control over women's bodies.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
How did these women go from conforming to gender stereotypes to fighting for gender equality in the workforce?
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I was a TWA flight attendant. But I was an activist in the change. I was there.
ACT I
Scene 1: The Dream
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
One of my best friends, she had a brother who bought this Corvette. We would be out on the road and she would say, "Well, where do you want to go?" I would say, "Let's go to the airport."
When I was in high school, I convinced my friend Nancy that we should go on a trip when our junior year ended. And that June, off we went. I shopped for a week for the outfit I was going to wear on the flight.
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
My first flight, I was about eight or nine. We were all dressed up, socks with the little lace all around the edges of it. I thought, "This is just like Easter."
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I'd been on boats before and I thought, "Well, this was going to be similar to a boat." When we started to roll, "Oh, this is more like a rollercoaster."
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
I remember the takeoff. I remember playing with the air. You know, I had my own little vent, gently putting a breeze on my face. I couldn't believe when they gave me food, they put my breakfast down and it was delicious. Scrambled eggs and those little sausages and a fruit plate. And I just was dazzled from the minute I stepped on that plane.
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I thought, "Oh, this has to be what heaven feels like. I've got to be close to heaven." It was the most beautiful thing I had experienced, just being in the air.
Scene 2: Women’s Work - Stewardess Back Story
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
So many of our advances as humans come from travel. It is an incredibly human impulse and yet it was really restricted for women until the 20th century.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
These new technologies came around, enabling humans to move around, and women really wanted to be a part of it.
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Ellen Church was a registered nurse, but she got her pilot's license. She knew that aviation was the future.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
But because airlines refused to countenance that a woman could be a pilot, Ellen's idea was all right, if they're not going to let me be a pilot, at least maybe they'd let me be a flight attendant.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
In the late 1920s, you see an experimental era, where some airlines are trying out different models of cabin service. The most obvious model would be Pullman porters.
MIA BAY, HISTORIAN
But there's a longstanding association between technological know-how and white supremacy. And they do not think that Black people have the kind of authority to kind of help people through the challenges of flying.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
So the airlines thought, we probably want white men because this might be a position where you would get promoted into management.
GRAPHIC DATE: February 1930
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Ellen Church went to San Francisco to the office of what would later become United Airlines. And she went to an executive and she said, "I think if there were nurses on airplanes, more people would fly. You're trying to attract passengers, but people think it's dangerous. People get sick. A nurse would be a calming person and we'd be able to take care of passengers."
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Planes weren't pressurized, so they flew under 10,000 feet. And that means you feel every bump. It was always turbulent.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
There were no circulation systems. So you could smell hot oil, and the disinfectant used to clean up after airsick passengers.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
To go from coast to coast it took 28 hours at minimum. Often planes would get grounded in the middle of nowhere, passengers would have to wait for several days until the weather cleared. It was really a big adventure, instead of a reliable way to travel.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
It was a harrowing thing to fly. You couldn't get a life insurance policy to cover you if you flew on airplanes because the death rate was something that no one wanted to insure.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
The idea is that if you're encouraging people to fly, especially men, at a moment when flying can seem very scary, if you put young white women on an airplane, then they're going to think, "Well, if these young white women are fine with flying, I should be fine with flying too."
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
Ellen Church was convinced that women would want to do this, and she was absolutely accurate. They showed up in huge numbers.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
The focus on only hiring women had a lot of advantages, the airline executives thought.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
The airlines started to realize the passengers were more attracted to having a woman do the job for the charm that she brought, the attractiveness that she brought to an otherwise exceptionally unpleasant experience.
Scene 3: Girl Next Door
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
During World War II women had worked in all kinds of non-traditional jobs.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
When the soldiers and sailors came home, there was a concerted effort to push women out of the workplace.
ANNOUNCER: March of the troops! Masses of manpower! New York…
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Women who were poor or women of color ended up going back to lower paying jobs. Middle class women were expected to go home.
ROBERT YOUNG (FATHER): Margaret, I’m home!
JANE WYATT (MOTHER): We’re in the kitchen.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Growing up in the 1950s, it was very clear to me what women's roles were supposed to be.
NARRATOR: The American home. Today, it is perhaps the most important job in the world.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
It was reflected in television, it was reflected in the books I read. It was reflected in the examples used in my school lessons.
NARRATOR: Father Knows Best.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
I absorbed that. I didn't question it at all. It was just the way things were.
CASEY GRANT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
As a child, I used to dream of being a nurse. And then of course I wanted to be a mother. We were a happy family, so I thought that would be a nice thing to do, have children and have a husband and the picket fence and all that type of thing.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
There were all kinds of different expectations for men and women. They were basically considered two different types of human beings.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
Men were supposed to be the leaders, the presidents, the newspaper reporters, people who took dangerous jobs, people who took important jobs. Women were expected to get married and raise a family. But, before that, it was expected that they would work at a number of lower level jobs, secretary, clerk, librarian, teacher, they were not expected to have careers.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
My parents were opposed to my going to college. Their expectations for me were to get married, and have a family. They felt that the fact that I had been a good student, was already going to make it harder for me to find a husband.
NARRATOR: Hm, is it that late? Dad will be here any minute. Better tell mother she’s needed in the kitchen. Brother is spending an hour before dinner catching up on his homework.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
My parents could only afford to send one child to college and that was my brother.
NARRATOR: Now, mother and daughter put the finishing touches on the dinner.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
That was the way parents thought at the time. My brother would go to college. I would go to secretarial school, get married and produce grandchildren.
Scene 4: Becoming a Stewardess
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
After World War II, the airline industry introduced the DC-6 with a pressurized cabin, so airplanes could now fly higher, smoother, faster, and also carry more passengers.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
The customer is going to experience flying as pretty comfortable. You have plush seats.
STEWARDESS: Would you like some dinner, sir?
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
And you're going to be served cocktails.
STEWARDESS: How about you, miss?
FEMALE PASSENGER: Oh, this looks delicious.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
They were marketing comfort, which meant you don't need a nurse.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
This is the moment when this profession becomes heavily, heavily identified with women and almost exclusively populated by women.
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
I remember in seventh grade I read this book, How to Become an Airline Stewardess, and the first line was, "Would you like a boyfriend in every city in the world?" And I was like, "Yes, I would." But I also was like, "I want to go to every city in the world."
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
Being a stewardess was the best possible job for good girls who were craving something interesting, out of the ordinary.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
A woman could go to different places and see different things and really stand out. But at the same time, she was doing something that was still very stereotypically feminine.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
If you were applying to be a stewardess, you were going to be scrutinized, first and foremost, for your looks.
TRAINING FILM NARRATOR: To qualify on most airlines, she must be healthy, and of normal weight.
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
You got this chart and you wouldn't even get an interview if your height and weight was more than listed on that chart.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
If you make it physically, then what they're looking for is someone who's going to take orders well. They need pliant employees.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
The educational requirements for stewardesses really varied very much by airline. On Pan Am you had to have gone to college and you had to speak two languages fluently.
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
My dream flight attendant job was with Pan Am or TWA, and I was as good as hired with Pan Am, but I flunked the French test.
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
With TWA I made it through that grueling interview process, and when I got the acceptance letter it was beyond exciting.
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
They flew us to Kansas City for six weeks. I arrived in January, freezing cold, snow up to here, the happiest girl in the world.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
The training was held in Miami. And the six weeks involved learning the procedures for services. How do you make coffee on the airplane? How do you work the ovens? How did you mix drinks? Where did you mix them? How did you pass them out?
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
There were segments on understanding the physics of flight.
STEWARDESS TRAINING INSTRUCTOR: Should there be a sudden loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will be released automatically.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
There were segments on safety.
STEWARDESS TRAINING INSTRUCTOR: …Fastening and tightening, and I’m going to show you the brace position.
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Part of our safety training was on mock-up planes.
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
They had recordings of people screaming. They could put smoke coming through. They could really make you feel like you were in a plane crash.
STEWARDESS TRAINEES: (unintelligible yelling)
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
You have to be able to evacuate any aircraft within 90 seconds.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
The airline knew that for a huge number of their passengers, this would be their first flight. They would be in a metal tube at 35,000 feet, and any fear that they felt was very justified, and so they wanted stewardesses to be very knowledgeable and specific in their ability to reassure a passenger.
SCENE 5: Grooming
INSTRUCTOR: Chins up. Stand up straight. Very good…
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
When women were first hired on airplanes, the sales pitch around them was that having a mere girl willing to fly would help sell tickets. By the '50s, the pitch had flipped. Prices were fixed by the government, the airlines had to compete based on image and perks.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
Airlines want to portray a vision of luxury and domesticity. Flight attendants really become the linchpin to that as hostesses.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
They wanted someone who was stereotypically very beautiful. That was a way for an airline to distinguish itself and appeal to a largely masculine customer base.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
The airlines really wanted a visual standardization of what a lovely stewardess looked like.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
We all got our hair cut just the length of our chin bone. We were all supposed to look the same, both our hair, but also our makeup. Red lipstick, mandatory. There was an idea, I think, to make us into little machine parts and not think of ourselves as individuals.
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
In our graduation photo we look like 20 mannequins sitting in two rows. When I looked at it I couldn't find myself. That was my- My first thing was, “Where am I in this photograph?”
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
The grooming supervisors were former flight attendants. Their whole job was to make sure that your high heels were three inches tall, that you had white gloves that were white, no runs in your stockings, your shoes were polished, not just the right heel height.
JEAN MONTAGUE, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
They'd look you over and a gal would do like this to your buttocks to see if you had your girdle on.
DUSTY ROADS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
They had this big piece of paper with appearance, hair, nails. You couldn't be too flashy.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
You really need to have a good understanding of middle class deportment, speech, manners-- poise, as the airlines would put it.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
They told us they wouldn't hesitate to kick us out of that class if we didn't do the right things.
STEWARDESS TRAINEE ACTRESS: May I offer you a cigarette sir?
PASSENGER ACTOR: Oh, no thanks, I have a fine cigar.
STEWARDESS TRAINEE ACTRESS: Well may I put it out for you then sir?
PASSENGER ACTOR: Put it out? I just lit it!
STEWARDESS TRAINEE ACTRESS: Some of the passengers get a little… well you know how it is with people who don’t smoke cigars.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
And the right things included always being friendly to everyone.
STEWARDESS SCHOOL HOST: You see, you can handle just about any situation, if you’ll just smile, and really mean it, inside.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
It's expected, it’s part of the job to act like your smile is genuine, and everything you're doing is because you like being a gracious hostess.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
If they didn't care for something you did or said or reacted to, they would wait until everyone was in class and they'd tap you on your shoulder, and they took you to your room, packed your bags, and they sent you home.
Scene 6: The Jet Age
NARRATOR: The astonishing jet at last comes into its own in 1959. New York to Paris: seven hours. Here’s America’s Boeing 707.
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
All of a sudden you could be in Paris. You didn't take a ship that took weeks and weeks, it was hours.
VICKI VANTOCH
Jets were really symbolic of technological advance. This was a sign that Americans were going to be able to take over the world.
PAN AM PILOT: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are now at cruising altitude, 35,000 feet.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
Now you've got a jet that can travel two times faster than propeller, and can accommodate more people. So this is imperative for the airline to start expanding their customer base, because they now have more seats to fill.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
They start to cater not just exclusively to the business traveler. They start to go, "Well, what about bringing your wife? What about bringing your kids?"
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
This is the moment where flying is becoming mass transportation. That's the vision.
PILOT: This is your Captain again. If you haven’t already changed your watches to conform to the time difference, I suggest you do so now.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
The jet age is technological, but it's also aspirational. It's a yearning on the part of ordinary Americans to participate in the glamorous lives of celebrities.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
So a factory worker celebrating retirement after 30 years on the job, you could be like Sinatra and fly down to Peru, and have a glamorous vacation.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
Stewardesses are at the center of jet age ad campaigns.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
This is a new type of woman: she's sophisticated, she's very fashionable.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
Every airline rolls out new uniforms. They call it the “jet age” look.
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
You see a crew walking in their powder blue uniforms with their pillbox hats and their high heels, and it was quite a sight to see. I mean, it was the definition of glamor.
CASEY GRANT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
"Oh, you're a stewardess?" You were just on the same level as a celebrity, movie star. It opened the doors to everything -- clubs, parties, you could crash a wedding and say you were a stewardess.
Scene 7: On the Job and Loving It
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
If I wanted to fly with my friend Lynn and she was junior to me, I could adopt her seniority, and then we both could fly together.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Or you could “trip trade,” if you knew you wanted to go to Paris with your best friend, you would trade to be on that trip.
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I went to Paris, I went to Rome, I went to Athens. I flew to London and to Frankfurt a lot. There was so much to see and do. You could go to Vidal Sassoon to get your haircut and then you could go out for a really nice meal. It really changed me in terms of my palate. I used to go to a favorite restaurant in London so that I could eat the Tandoori chicken.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
When we landed, I was in Mexico City and could go to dinner. Wow. Get back on the airplane and fly into Central America. Oh my gosh. Pick up the newspaper from Guatemala and see what's going on there.
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I became quite independent. I felt very comfortable moving around in these foreign cities.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
In the '50s and '60s, women very rarely traveled alone. And working on a plane, especially internationally, gave you an excuse to travel completely freely. You were going to these foreign countries and checking into a hotel with your other fellow stewardesses, and then no one knew what you did until you had to show up at the airplane next.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
I had grown up in a very narrow, sheltered environment. I went out there and I was confronted with all the things that the world had to offer.
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
It gave me a lot of self-confidence that I could just get on an airplane and go someplace, on my own and be quite happy. That wasn't true of everybody that I went to college with or I went to high school with, that they could do that or wanted to do it, but I wanted to do it, and I did do it.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
This job was asking women for their ambitions. It was asking for a woman who wanted to see uncharted terrain. A woman whose curiosity was enormous, which no other feminized job in that era really wanted. It was incredible.
Act II
Scene 1: Integrating the Skies - Patricia Noisette Banks Edmiston
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I was kind of looking for something a little different in my life.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I was looking at a fashion magazine and the magazine had an advertisement for the Grace Downs Air Career School in Manhattan.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I applied and I was accepted in 1956. Never had been on an airplane. So this was a part of, you know, I've never been on an airplane. This is great. This is great.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
Women could pay the school and learn how to become an airline stewardess. The expectation, if you did well at the school, you would ultimately get hired, and get a job as a stewardess.
STEWARDESS TRAINING INSTRUCTOR: Now, this is the main cabin door where the passengers for first class will be…
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I was the only student of color in the school.
STEWARDESS TRAINING INSTRUCTOR: … walking straight, they’d walk directly…
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
There were no Black teachers, no Black students. I remember we had a makeup class and someone made up my face. I have to laugh now because I was white. And when I looked in the mirror, I'm saying, "Oh my God, how am I going to get home like this?" They had no makeup, of course, for people of color.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
When you would graduate, then airlines would come to the Grace Downs Air Career School to interview you, to put you into positions in their aircraft.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I was interviewed by Mohawk Airlines, by Capitol Airlines, which was one of the largest southern airlines and TWA. Now, everyone was getting interviewed and people were getting hired, but I was not even getting a response from any of the instructors, or the airlines.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Shortly after the interviews one of the chief stewardesses saw me outside and she said to me, "Pat, I hate to see you go through this," she said, "But the airlines do not hire Negroes."
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
The south, it was open, clear. That white people had this advantage, black people had no advantage. I’m in New York. It’s not as clear or vivid. Subtle, yes, you just didn’t know certain things. And then when the airline situation occurred, it just opened my eyes totally. Yes, it exists here.
KEISHA BLAIN, HISTORIAN
Traveling by air was very expensive and not easily accessible to most Americans in general, let alone African Americans.
KEISHA BLAIN, HISTORIAN
It's not surprising that Pat Banks didn't have a full understanding of what was taking place.
MIA BAY, HISTORIAN
A lot of airports in the 1950s were either segregated or beginning to be segregated. Airlines sometimes used a special code. If people called from a Black neighborhood or if they sounded Black, then this special code would be written down on their ticket to indicate that they had to be seated apart from others.
KEISHA BLAIN, HISTORIAN
In some instances African Americans would be bumped off of flights to make space for white passengers.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I went home and we had a neighbor, and I called him as soon as I got home and I said, "Pop, they're telling me that they don't hire Negroes." He said, "We'll take care of this." He introduced me to Adam Clayton Powell. Adam Clayton Powell referred me and introduced me to the The New York State Commission Against Discrimination.
KEISHA BLAIN, HISTORIAN
There were no federal laws in place to protect against discrimination in the workplace.
KEISHA BLAIN, HISTORIAN
So it was very important for Pat to file her case in New York because New York was the first state in the United States to pass an anti-discrimination law.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I filed a case against Mohawk, Capital and TWA. The statute of limitations had expired with Mohawk and TWA, but it held strong with Capital.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Discrimination is a very difficult thing to prove.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
Airlines don’t specify that they're not going to hire Black women, but they don't really need to, because manuals will say things like, "Oh, are your hands soft and white?"
MIA BAY, HISTORIAN
They talk about how people shouldn't have broader flat noses. People shouldn't have hook noses. Coarse hair overly full lips - indicating certain kinds of racial stereotypes about Jews and Blacks. They actually include enough details to make sure that certain kinds of people really cannot get employed.
Scene 2: The Age Rule
JEAN MONTAGUE, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
When I was hired, you couldn't be married, period. We had a couple of gals that did it on the side, but you couldn't be married then, couldn't have children.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
From the very beginning, most airlines have an explicit ban on hiring married women.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
Starting in 1953, American Airlines impose a new rule that stewardesses will leave the job when they turn 32.
ELAINE ROCK, WRITER
It took a little while, but other airlines started adding the age rule too.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
They wanted us to be hired, do our job for a couple of years and leave.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
Airlines wanted women who projected a degree of wholesomeness, but also a little bit of sexual availability. They wanted her to be young so that she would appear to be single without having to say so.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
United had flights out of New York to Chicago called executive flights. Only men could buy a ticket on those planes.
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
When I went for my interview with TWA I signed a paper, which they presented to me, and on it said that I would be retired at the age of 35.
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
35 was a long ways away. I thought I would be married with children. That was the expectation: You would meet Mr. Wonderful in first class and you'd be swept off your feet, et cetera, and that would be happiness ever after.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
The requirement to be unmarried, the requirement to stay under a certain age, it’s really about making sure that flight attendants are not getting paid top dollar. That they're not going to get a pension, they're not going to accrue vacation benefits that they would've gotten if they're in year 15 or year 20 of their career.
DUSTY ROADS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
It was money, money, money. What do you think it costs to have an ace stewardess at age 32 top salary, maximum vacation, going to fly until she's 60, get a retirement?
DUSTY ROADS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
If you're not married and having babies and happy to stay there, tough luck, honey.
DUSTY ROADS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I didn't want to stop flying. Flying was exciting. God, it was that. It still is. But then it was really exciting.
Scene 3: Unions
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
Flight attendants start to organize in the late 1940s. They're unhappy with their wages, but they're also unhappy with being patronized by the airlines.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
Pretty quickly they began to realize that they would have greater bargaining leverage if they joined with some of the other workers. The pilots set up a division for stewards and stewardesses and some of the flight attendants went into the Transport Workers Union.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Unions just weren't something I thought of. When I was in training, I failed the section on the contract. I didn't understand it and I didn't understand it until I started flying. And I realized how the company took advantage of stewardesses.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Being from Pittsburgh, I was quite familiar with unions. And so there would be a union
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
The grievance procedure was an orderly settlement of a dispute. I thought, “Hmm, this is interesting. I kind of like that.”
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
Flight attendants and pilots and baggage handlers wanted to be paid fairly, they wanted more control over their hours, their flight time. But flight attendants also had problems that the men didn't face.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
When American Airlines said, we're going to put it in the contract that flight attendants can't work past the age of 32, the union pushed back. The rules still went in. But what they did win was a compromise, what they called a grandmother clause, so that any flight attendant who had been hired before 1953 could continue on. It saved a lot of jobs.
ELAINE ROCK, WRITER
Dusty wasn't required to retire when the age rule came in. She had nothing to lose. She said, "I want to fight this. This is wrong." And that was her motivation to join the union.
DUSTY ROADS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
My family was very Republican and unions were naughty, naughty, naughty, terrible. Nobody in my family had ever belonged to a union. That was just, oh my goodness, we're college people, we don't join unions, oh!
ELAINE ROCK, WRITER
She became vice chair and would file grievances on behalf of other stewardesses.
ELAINE ROCK, WRITER
Dusty exuded this sense of confidence. She always spoke to anybody who would speak to her, and many men always did. Because she was so attractive, they wanted to know, "Who is this woman?"
DUSTY ROADS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I figured out that the Congress was in session on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and then they went home on Friday. So I bid the Washington trip on Monday, and I'd always have a bunch of congressmen on board and they got to know me. "Dusty, how you doing?" I said, "Oh, I'm really upset about this. My best friend's being fired because she’s 32". They said, "What? They fire you?" Here these guys are 60.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
Dusty, as she's flying, she's working her connections. She's leveraging the visibility of stewardesses to gain access to people who can pull levers of power in policy-making circles.
ACT III
Scene 1: Do I look like an Ol’ Bag to you?
ELAINE ROCK, WRITER
In 1963 Dusty decided to put on a press conference.
DUSTY ROADS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
To say the word “stewardess” in those days was glamor. Oh boy. Oh boy.
ELAINE ROCK, WRITER
She got four stewardesses that were under 32 and four stewardesses that were over 32.
DUSTY ROADS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I said “Now they're firing us at age 32. Can you tell me which ones are 32?" And of course they said, "No, no, no, no." But I did look pretty good.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
The idea is basically, “Hey, take a look at us. Don't we all look like lovely stewardesses?” It’s a kind of dare to the airlines' policy, can you really tell who's past the age limit?
DUSTY ROADS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
We hit every newspaper in the country.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
These women were really trying to use the sexism that was being wielded against them to get what they wanted, which was to keep their jobs.
ELAINE ROCK, WRITER
When the stewardesses went into negotiation with the union and management, American Airlines came into the room with a stack of newspapers from all over the country and just plopped it down on the desk saying, "That was an interesting stunt that you girls pulled. We're not going to negotiate the age rule now."
JEAN MONTAGUE, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
It's terrible to be fired because of age. But I had hopes because I knew how smart Dusty was.
DUSTY ROADS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I believed in fair play. Every club I ever was in, I became president. I was president of the women’s athletic council, and president of my sorority. I knew all the rules, and I went by them. And if I didn’t like a rule, we changed it.
ELAINE ROCK, WRITER
Dusty wasn't just fighting airline management in an age rule, she was fighting national gender discrimination.
Scene 2: Integration Part 2
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Once things began to hit the newspapers I would get letters. When I had threatening letters I had to report it to the police.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
You kind of expect these things. You knew you were going to get focused on. You knew you were going to get letters of negativity. This is something - “oh, here it comes.”
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I just couldn't deal with the racism anymore. I couldn't deal with it. I didn't think it was fair. I'm just as equal to you as you are to me. We're one, we're humans, and you're not going to treat us this way anymore.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
Pat’s plans were put on hold while her lawyers researched her case. They had to look at the supervisor notes and see who met what criteria, how did Pat compared to the other applicants.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
They were trying to prove that she was the typical all-American girl: She played violin, she was respectable. So, the element that excluded her from that image of femininity and Americanness was her race.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I was determined that somebody of African American heritage was going to get this job.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
Finally, in late February 1960, Pat got her ruling.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I was working for Con Edison, going to college at night. And there was a little candy store on the corner where I used to get the bus to go home. When I got into the candy store, the man in the store said, "Pat, Pat, you won the case, I couldn't wait to get home. My mother says, "Patsy, the phone is ringing off the hook. You won! You won! You won!" Oh my God.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
The court ordered Capital Airlines to hire me, or it would go to the Supreme Court.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
The president of Capital Airlines called me. I don't remember his name, but he called to apologize and welcome me into training in Alexandria, Virginia [laughs].
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
You know, it was like, "We did it. They can't get away with this anymore."
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I'm young now. I like to hang out with friends and do things. But I had to be this perfect human being. And the only way I could do that was to do my job, go home, come back. I wouldn't do anything that may have led to a mistake.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I remember we were on a DC3 and DC3s are kind of bumpy. This man looked at me and he said, "When you finish doing your work, would you please hold my hand?" And I said, "Sure sir, I'll sit down with you." So he held my hand and he asked me, he said, "Have you ever been to Montana?" I said, no, sir. He said, "The grass is so beautifully green, the trees are so green." He said, "No n****** and no winos." I'm holding his hand now. Now, the word n***** is something you never touch me with, but by the power of God I was able to sit there and hold his hand and not respond. I mean, I didn't respond until I got home that night. But these are the kind of situations that occurred that you had to really, really keep it together.
PAT NOISETTE BANKS EDMISTON, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I worked for a year. I wanted to go on with my life, finish school. I was planning on getting married, so I decided to leave. I felt it was accomplished, the barrier was broken.
CASEY GRANT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Any questions that any company may have had as to whether a negro was capable of doing the job, Pat set the record straight. We could go above and beyond doing this job.
KEISHA BLAIN, HISTORIAN
The floodgates do not open. It really at that time is about saving face. It's about letting a few in to avoid more lawsuits.
KEISHA BLAIN, HISTORIAN
Pat is very much part of a group of activists at the grassroots level who are pushing for changes, certainly at the local level but even more significantly at the federal level.
MIA BAY, HISTORIAN
Pat's victory with the airlines takes place just as the civil rights movement is really heating up. Change is in the air…
Scene 3: Title VII and Sex
GRAPHIC DATE: July 2, 1964
NEWSCASTER: Congress passes the most sweeping Civil Rights bill ever to be written into the Law, and thus reaffirms the conception of equality for all men that began with Lincoln and the Civil War 100 years ago. The Negro won his freedom then; he wins his dignity now. Five hours after the house passes the measure, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is signed at the White House by President Johnson.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
The Civil Rights Act was designed to address the race-based inequalities that have been a part of the United States since before the United States was founded.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
Less known about the Civil Rights Act is that the worker protections to prevent discrimination also covered sex.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
Just before it was passed, Howard Smith, a congressman from Virginia, introduced an amendment to include prohibition on gender discrimination -- it was then called sex discrimination. This stunned everybody there, because this was a law that was supposed to help Black people.
Reporter: What is your opinion Mr. Chairman of the current civil rights bill?
Howard Smith: Now, we've had trouble with the so-called civil rights thing for a good many years…
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
His motivations were not clear.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
One interpretation is that he did that to add this laughable idea of sex discrimination that would help tank the bill. The other interpretation is that he wanted to ensure if this bill was going to provide all these protections for Black Americans, that white women should get protection as well.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
If that's the ugliness of the sausage making, I mean the sausage isn't that bad, right, because for the first time in the United States, we now have employment protections that are designed, really, to promote women entering professions that were otherwise reserved for men.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Our eyes were like, oh, that is gender, that includes gender. Women have rights now.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
The passage of the Civil Rights Act was a major step forward. But the passing of a law is not enough. It's nowhere near enough. You comply with the law because you think it's a good way to live. You stop at a red light so people don't crash into each other, good. But if you pass a law that people don't want to obey, they won't.
Scene 4: The Battle Begins
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was set up to be the enforcement mechanism to make sure that discrimination in employment was not happening.
EEOC EMPLOYEE: Good morning, this is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. May I help you?
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
The expectation at the EEOC when they opened their doors was that they were going to hear from a bunch of African Americans who had documented cases where their rights as a worker had been ignored.
JEAN MONTAGUE, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I was going to be fired at age 32.
JEAN MONTAGUE, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Dusty and I went to the EEOC, so I could file a complaint. Dusty had heard they were opening that day, so we planned our flight to be there.
JEAN MONTAGUE, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
There were people putting typewriters here and chairs there and getting it all straightened out. They had just opened the doors. They weren't really ready at all.
DUSTY ROADS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
We were there the first day. This Black woman looked at me and she said, You’re free, white and 21, what are you here for? You have everything going for you.” So we said, "Sit down, honey. I got a story to tell you." And we told them and they went, "Ooh. Ooh." They couldn't believe it.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
I joined the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission October 4th, 1965, three months after the agency opened.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
I was the first woman attorney in the office of the General Counsel which dealt with answering the big legal questions that came up administering the law.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
We had tons of complaints filed by the stewardesses.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
They had no idea what was coming, this volcanic kind of expression of a yearning for justice, of women keeping it bottled up for so long.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
They challenged the restrictions on age, the ability to get married. That you couldn't be pregnant and be a flight attendant. They filed complaint, after complaint, after complaint.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
Within a year, flight attendants had more than a hundred cases on file.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
These were not women who were setting out to break barriers for women. They just wanted to keep their jobs. But the EEOC was not taking these complaints based on gender very seriously.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
There were commissioners who were favorable to women's rights. But, the Executive Director was opposed to women's rights, the Vice Chair was opposed. And on the staff level, I was the only woman speaking out.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
From an early age, I was sensitized to the second-class treatment of Blacks in this country. But I was blind to the second-class treatment of women in this country.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
I had never done anything or given any thought to women's rights, but I read the statute.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
The law said, you have to handle cases of sex discrimination. You don't have a choice, when a law says something has to be investigated, to say, "I don't feel like doing that part of the law".
Scene 5: NOW
J. FRANK WILLIS: This book has sold more than 50,000 copies in the hardcover edition, and 700,000 have been published in paperback.
J. FRANK WILLIS: Betty Friedan, a trained psychologist turned housewife, mother and author
BETTY FRIEDAN: The feminine mystique is the name that I have given to the image of woman that we have been living by in America and, in fact, in most of the Western world for the last fifteen or twenty years.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
The Feminine Mystique put words around the disquiet that a lot of women of a certain class were experiencing. It called to people's attention the reality that women who were smart and educated and could do so much were confined to one role once they were married and had children, and that was mom and wife.
REPORTER: Ms. Friedan, do you think maybe society is right now in an age of evolution and of change?
BETTY FRIEDAN: Oh yes, and I think-- no one’s going to hand women anything. I think women must begin to say yes to themselves, and become who they could be, and ask for society, the real solutions that women still need.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
Betty Friedan came to the EEOC because she thought she was going to write a follow-up book to The Feminine Mystique, about all the progress she thought women had made and she saw me there, a woman. So she came over to me, and she said, "What's really going on here? What's happening?"
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
I was feeling pretty down. I had had a discussion with the executive director who was opposed to women's rights. I asked her to come into my office and I leveled with her. I said, "What this country needs is an organization to fight for women like the NAACP fights for its members."
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Halloween weekend, 1966, 19 women and two men met in the basement of the Washington Post to form NOW: the National Organization for Women, which had been conceived in the summer.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
All of us wanted women to be accepted in educational institutions on an equal basis. And we wanted women to be treated equally on the job.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Sonia started feeding information to two of the other NOW founders about what the EEOC was not doing about women's equality.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
Then, we would draft a letter, from NOW, to the EEOC, complaining about the EEOC's action in various sectors. I knew that wasn't proper procedure but I was so emotionally involved that I did it.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
To my amazement, nobody ever raised the question of how come these people know what the commission is doing at its innermost meetings?
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
NOW took many directions to try to pressure the EEOC to enforce the law. They used demonstrations, they filed lawsuits. They went into the legislature to say, "Hey, they aren't enforcing your law."
Scene 6: BFOQ
REPORTER CATHERINE MACKIN: Ida Phillips is a waitress in Florida. She was refused a job at a defense plant because she had a preschool-aged child. The company felt the child, not yet in school, would keep Mrs. Phillips home from work too often. She took her case to court, and the Supreme Court has agreed to review it. The Supreme Court is involved because of the 1964 Civil Rights Law.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
One of the things the EEOC did was to signal how the courts were going to think about things. Of particular concern for the airlines was whether they were going to have to change rules about marriage and age.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
In Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, there is mention of a Bona Fide Occupational Qualification.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
That was a provision in the statute. And what it meant was for some jobs you don't have to hire men and women equally. For example, if you were hiring somebody as a wet nurse, you don't have to interview men for that job.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
The airlines thought it was absolutely necessary for their business that they have only women and because they only had women, they really weren't discriminating.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
Airlines were very confident that the public liked having stewardesses on planes. They actually did surveys that showed that 80% of the flying public preferred stewardesses over stewards.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
They pushed the EEOC to have hearings so they could clarify the situation.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
They put on this whole elaborate defense: "Men can carry trays, but they can't be charming. They can't create the liveliness and the atmosphere that young women can create."
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
And we argue that a man cannot do this in the same capacity whatsoever that a woman can. And therefore being a woman is essential for the job.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
The Employment Opportunities Commission issues its opinion and it says being female is absolutely not a qualification for this job.
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
Then they had to issue the second decision which was, is it a violation of Title VII for airlines to terminate or ground stewardesses at the age of 32 or 35, or when they got married?
SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES, LAWYER
I drafted the decision of the commission finding that it was unlawful.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
One option for the airlines is to just give up and to change their hiring and firing policies. But if something is so dear to you, then you're going to fight.
Scene 8: I’ll See You in Court - Celeste’s Story
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I was a doctor’s assistant in Washington, DC. I did all the bookkeeping. I did all the secretarial work.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I met Richard Lansdale. He was an attorney and I fell in love. That was-- I just fell in love with him. He said, “Why don't you get out of what you're doing now and become a stewardess?” I was working 60 hours a week and getting paid for 40 and no vacation, no sick leave. I had no benefits at all. So it seemed like a good thing to do.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I went to United and they hired me.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
When I was hired stewardesses could not be married.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I thought it was wrong. Why can't you be married? Pilots can be married. Why is it okay for a pilot to be married and not a stewardess? What-- I don't understand, what's the difference?
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I was secretly married for four years.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
We had observation reports called check rides, and you were evaluated on everything.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I remember there was a supervisor who gave me a performance evaluation. She said one of my problems was that I just was tenacious.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
They wanted someone who complied. You did what you were told to do and you didn't challenge them. I found it hard not to challenge them.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
When they started giving me extra check rides, I thought, “They have to know I'm married and they're trying to get rid of me.”
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I was off of work for nine months. I really never wanted to be a housewife. I wanted to get back in the air. Then one day, I said, "To hell with this." And I went to the Miami Herald. And I said, "Do you want a funny story?"
ANCHOR:This stewardess married secretly, then when she admitted she was married, the airline fired her. She, the stewardess, said today, “they certainly have a funny set of morals.”
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
When it hit the news, there was a group of stewardesses in Miami and they all wore wedding bands to work. They kind of ganged up on the company.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
It hit the fan in the executive offices in Chicago.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Fortunately, I had free legal services from my husband and I filed a lawsuit.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
Flight attendants are contesting age and marriage rules on a variety of airlines.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
For the first couple of years, the judges who were hearing these sex discrimination cases really sided with the airlines almost unilaterally.
PHIL TEIMEYER
Then there's a crucial court decision where the judges determine, the essential work that an airline does is safely transport people from point A to point B. If that's the essential work of an airline, then the essential work of a flight attendant is about safety. It doesn't matter if you're a woman, it doesn't matter if you're under age 32. It doesn't matter if you're married.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
We start to see a kind of consensus among courts and they start to rule for flight attendants.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
As it turned out, they had to give me all of my back pay and they had to pay my lawyer's fees.
ACT IV
Scene 1: Weight Rules
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
Flight attendants had achieved a lot in terms of gaining certain workplace rights. But, there was a lot more to be done.
CASEY GRANT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
In the earlier days aircrafts were smaller, so therefore it was very important to have a weight limit. You had to filter in fuel, baggage, the weight of the passengers and you also had to add in the stewardess's weight.
EXERCISE INSTRUCTOR: Remember to bend your knees.
NBC TV REPORTER - SANDER VANOCUR: The girls who fly come in various sizes. The assortment is greater than most people think. They can be as tall as 5’9”, one airline takes girls as short as 4’5”.
CELESTE LANDSALE BRODIGAN
They had a card, your appearance card. They weighed you in every month and put your weight down.
ANN HOOD, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
You would just get off a plane, a supervisor is waiting for you with a clipboard. There's a scale at the bottom of the stairs, and if you were even one pound over your hiring weight, you were put on probation and you had three chances to lose that weight.
CASEY GRANT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
I took water pills. I took diet pills. I starved. Those were some of the tricks that all of us did, all of us did.
CASEY GRANT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
We just passed the tricks around and said, "Here, take this laxative, you'll lose three pounds."
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
"Oh, here. Take this Dexedrine Spansule. You won't be hungry all day."
CASEY GRANT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Just for one pound, you could be taken off of payroll.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
No one else at the airline except women were being held to this standard. If you're thinking of it in terms of a system of bodily control, this is pretty extreme.
KATHLEEN BARRY, HISTORIAN
Airline executives had approached flight attendants for so long in such a patronizing way. Even though so much had changed around them, airline executives don't seem to want to evolve with the times.
Scene 2: Selling Sex
NARRATOR: When a Braniff International hostess meets you on the airplane, she’ll be dressed like this.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
Airlines had this stodgy, old-fashioned image that was dependable, reliable, but not hip or cool.
NARRATOR: When she brings you your dinner, she’ll be dressed this way.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
Braniff hired Emilio Pucci to design stewardess uniforms.
NARRATOR: The “Air Strip” is brought to you by Braniff International, who believes that even an airline hostess should look like a girl.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
This ad was not just appealing to male business travelers. It's appealing to women who want to be young and fashionable.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
This was really the beginning of an entirely new version of the stewardess.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
Airlines start to go, “how high can we go with these skirt lines?”
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES ACTRESS: Remember what it was like before Southwest Airlines, you didn’t have hostesses in hot pants. Remember?
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
Prices were still fixed, so airlines wanted to get market share in any way that they could.
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
There was one uniform that was a problem because if you bent over, cleavage would show. We're going around keeping our hand on our chest.
VICTORIA VANTOCH, WRITER
TWA introduced foreign-accent flights. They had four different designs for the uniforms, and they were all paper.
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
The paper dresses were either an Olde English Wench, a French Cocktail, an Italian Toga, or the Manhattan Penthouse. I was an Olde English Wench. Maybe they wanted us to speak like Chaucer or something, I don't know.
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
You had to kind of be careful, first of all, trying to get it on, that you didn't rip, which did happen sometimes. And you had to take off your other clothes in the tiny bathroom and then parade around in them. It was ridiculous.
NATIONAL AIRLINES ACTRESS 1: I’m Diane. I’ve got 747s to Miami. Fly me.
NATIONAL AIRLINES ACTRESS 2: I’m Terry. I’ve got great connections in Miami, all over the sunshine states of America. Fly me.
NATIONAL AIRLINES ACTRESS 3: I’m Marisa. I’ve got nonstop flights to Miami every day. Fly me.
CASEY GRANT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
“Fly Me.” Fly me how? What are you going to do, get on top of me?
NATIONAL AIRLINES ACTRESS 4: You can fly me morning, afternoon, or night. Just say when. I’m Judy, and I was born to fly. Fly me.
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
It was pretty close to “Fuck me.” I hated that. It was really an insult.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
It wasn't just that the ads were demeaning in some abstract way. It concretely affected the women's day-to-day lives. It made their job much harder.
CASEY GRANT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
We knew when people passed by us and felt our butts, or they accidentally pretended they were reaching for something to feel our breasts, or trapped us, you know, tried to squeeze past something so they could feel your body.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
The pilots had a little habit, in particular, one of them I remember, when I was going to my room at the layover, and he ran his hand down my back and he said, "Oh, I see you're a modern woman. You don't wear a bra."
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
Some women were busy enjoying their new freedoms. Freedoms which they felt very happy about, to exist as sexual beings in a world that was now willing to acknowledge them as such. But those campaigns in particular really did cause a much wider swath of the women who were working as stewardesses to stand up and say, "Hang on. That's one step too far."
Scene 3: On the Front Lines
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
Just as stewardesses are becoming more sexualized, the world is becoming more complicated. This is the darkest hour in America's Cold War fight.
CHARTER FLIGHT STEWARDESS: We’d like to welcome you aboard Flying Tiger line flight number F2B3 to Bien Hoa, Vietnam.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
By 1968, there are 500,000 troops on the ground in Vietnam at any given moment. To maintain those numbers, the US military can't do it alone. So they contract with private airlines.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
The arrangement is that they're leasing the jet, fully staffed.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Flying in, it was very somber. The soldiers knew where they were going.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
We usually landed in the middle of the night and got in and out of Vietnam as quickly as possible, men off, men on. They were shooting rockets, and that would've been a good score if they could pull down a 747.
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
When we landed, if you heard gunshots you had to evacuate the aircraft quickly. You ran to the bunkers.
AIRPORT ANNOUNCER: May I have your attention in the terminal area…
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Every time we left, going home, there's an absolute huge roar.
SOLDIERS: (cheering)
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Some of the soldiers got hooked on drugs. I remember one flight, someone had not been weaned off of whatever they were on and he was just shaking all the way back. I just put my arms around him and held him, until we got to where we were going and they got medical transport for him.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
The flight attendant profession has always struggled with the differences between the intensity and seriousness of the work that must be done, especially as safety professionals, and then you've got this public role of being desirable, of being serene, of being charming.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
The late sixties, early seventies is this very precarious and completely confused moment.
JOAN RIVERS: Stewardess! I think my window’s open! It’s not my aisle. (Laughs.) They are so dumb. Beautiful, but dumb.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
You're being marketed, basically, as a Barbie doll, and yet doing more and more complex work. There's a fundamental incompatibility between these two things.
Scene 4: That Click Moment
REPORTER: The scene was an all too familiar one at Laguardia Airport today, as an early afternoon bomb threat forced the evacuation of the airport.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
In the late 60s, there were a lot of bomb threats and once you get a bomb threat for an airplane, you evacuate it, and you don't get back on until they've cleared it. So we had a bomb threat, and we’d evacuated the airplane. The pilot comes out of the cockpit and says to me, "While we're here, would you mind cooking me a steak and make it medium rare?"
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Without even thinking, I went to the galley, I turned on the oven, and then all of a sudden it struck me. There I was in the galley of an aircraft that might explode at any minute, cooking this guy a steak. I had one of those clicks where, "Wait a minute, why would I be doing this?”
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
I walked off the airplane and I said, "You can cook your steak yourself. I'm not staying there."
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
That moment was a turning point for me.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
The men don't have to wear hats with their uniform, why do we? The men don't have to wear girdles, why do we? The men got single rooms, the women did not.
PATRICIA IRELAND, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
Once you open your eyes, you can never wholly close them again.
ACT V
Scene 1: Equal Pay for Equal Work
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
When I was 30 years old, I was the Master Executive Chairman with the union, which entitled me to sign a non-discriminatory contract with Northwest Airlines. It included a provision for stewardesses to become pursers.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
The purser handled all of the paperwork on international flights.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
They did not have weight check. They were able to wear eyeglasses. And they always had single rooms.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
There was no reason why a female could not be a purser.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
If you were a woman that wanted to make a career out of flying, your natural inclination would be to move to the purser position because of the better pay.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
But certain airlines, like Northwest, refused to hire women for the purser position.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
In 1967, Northwest hired 5 men off the street to be pursers. I called the Director of Labor Relations and I said, "The contract requires you to post these purser job positions to everyone," which he did.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
The men made the stewardesses feel that they were not entitled to the job, and they could not handle the job of purser.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I realized as Master Executive Chairman that someone had to do it.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
So I applied for the job. I became the first and only female purser with Northwest Airlines.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
When I became a purser, I actually took a pay cut. The male pursers were getting $250 more per month. It was not fair at all. Why should I be treated differently than the men?
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
My whole thought was, I am right and they are wrong. And as long as I am right, I will pursue this.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Michael Gottesman was an expert in labor law. I made an appointment to see him.
MICHAEL GOTTESMAN, LAWYER
Our expertise was labor law and employment law. We were the logical people to call.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I laid out the whole picture of the discrimination and how we had no recourse.
MICHAEL GOTTESMAN, LAWYER
In the course of describing her efforts to get the purser job, she just said offhandedly, "You know, it's particularly ridiculous because it's really the same job. If a man holds it, they call it a purser. If a woman holds it, they call it a stewardess.”
MICHAEL GOTTESMAN, LAWYER
It would have been a good case, even if it was just the way they had treated Mary Pat, but it was a much bigger case. If they were paying 100 men a higher amount for doing the same work, then every female flight attendant would be entitled to the higher pay.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
We filed a class action lawsuit on July 15th, 1970.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
We originally had 40 people to file the suit. That guaranteed us a class action.
MICHAEL GOTTESMAN, LAWYER
You have to convince the judge that this would be an appropriate class action, that all of the people have the same grievance. And Mary Pat led the effort. She was fantastic at organizing.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
We had to educate people that we were on the right side of the law and we're only trying to force the company to obey the law.
Scene 2: Integration Part 3
EASTERN AD NARRATOR 1: Eastern presents the losers.
EASTERN AD NARRATOR 2: She’s awkward… Uh, not very friendly… Aw, but she’s too young… Oh, she’s, oh she bites nails… She wears glasses. Honey, no, the other… Oh, now…
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
Meet the Losers relishes the fact that they're turning away perfectly attractive, perfectly articulate people.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
And they’re all white. And that is not an accident.
EASTERN AD NARRATOR 1: They’re probably good enough to get a job anywhere they want, but at Eastern we’re very choosy about whom we let serve you on a plane.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
Eastern Airlines is stressing -- we’re still an exclusive form of transportation, and the promise of exclusivity is also a promise of racial exclusivity.
CASEY GRANT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
The first Black flight attendant for Delta was hired in '66 and then I was hired in 1971. So we're saying nearly a decade after Pat won her case. Pat opened the doors but the doors weren't kicked open, they were cracked.
MIA BAY, HISTORIAN
By the start of the seventies, there's only about 1000 Black women working across all of the airlines but that's only 3% of the total number of flight attendants in the country at that point.
MIA BAY, HISTORIAN
Affirmative action was designed to make sure that candidates of color if they're qualified, they get hired.
MIA BAY, HISTORIAN
It replaces nepotism, where employers hire people that they're most comfortable with, which is usually people like themselves.
KEISHA BLAIN, HISTORIAN
Airlines are forced to hire Black people. It doesn't mean they want to.
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I was hired in 1970.
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Once I completed the training and I started the job, I realized that the company, National Airlines, did not want me.
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
When I would see certain captains, I knew scheduling was going to pull me off the flight because they’d refuse to fly with me.
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
When we traveled you had to share a room.
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
We would pull up to the hotel. The other three flight attendants, they've already discussed it among themselves. One would run out into the hotel, and sign up for the rooms. By the time I'm getting into the hotel, they already have the key and they're gone.
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
They would open the door, but then tell me that I have to go downstairs and get my own room. I remember the front desk not being able to convince them to open the door, not having any rooms available.
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
And on many occasions, I would kind of settle in a corner. I'm still in uniform. And I would sleep in the lobby.
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
There was absolutely no one that I could discuss a problem with. The union did not want me as well. If I had a problem with my own supervisor, who was I going to go to?
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I ended up calling the Southern Poverty Law Center and I told them, I explained to them, and they - of course they asked me for proof or paperwork or whatever, and I said, “They won’t give it to me.” And they said, “Well, we’ll make a few phone calls.”
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I have no idea what was said. I have no idea if they in fact made those calls. But, all of sudden things started to change.
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
My supervisor called me in and said “The director is asking to submit names for the “Fly Me” ad.”
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
And I thought about it. Okay, you don’t want me here? Watch this.
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
You don't like me in the workforce? Then how are you going to like me with my picture pasted all over? The sexual nature of the campaign ad “Fly Me” really didn't bother me. I did the ad because I wanted to show them.
CASEY GRANT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
When you looked at all the different advertisements, you never saw a Black face. You never were chosen to do any advertisement. So, the sexism was secondary. I'm not sitting here in a sexy position to advertise sex. You were representing the Black stewardess and all that we could accomplish and that we were capable of doing.
CASEY GRANT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT/WRITER
We understand the burden of the doors that we possibly could be opening up for anyone else to follow us.
TRAINING SCHOOL INSTRUCTOR: Take your hands so that you’ve got them up out of the water. Push the water away…
UNDRA MAYS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
A couple of times a year we used to go to recurrent training And this person stopped and said, "There is a huge billboard with your ad, the “Fly Me” ad, and when I saw you, I thought, "I didn't know they had Black stewardesses," and she went and applied.
Scene 3: SFWR
WOMAN PASSING OUT LEAFLETS: Women’s Rights Day, come join us in the march tomorrow.
NEWSCASTER: For more than four years, members of the National Organization for Women have been campaigning throughout the nation for more equality and better civil rights, and today their movement is wider and stronger than ever.
GLORIA STEINEM: This inhuman system of exploitation will change, but only if we force it to change, and force it together.
WOMAN ON STREET 1: I’ve never been captive.
WOMAN ON STREET 2: No, I don’t feel enslaved, or anything like that.
WOMAN ON STREET 1: We love you, men, and you can be the boss.
PROTESTING WOMEN: Women’s liberation, now!
MAN ON STREET: Equality?! You don’t know what the hell you want!
BETTY FRIEDAN: We called this strike to confront the unfinished business of our equality.
WOMAN WITH GROCERIES: I’m a very happy housewife and a very happy mother.
PROTESTING WOMEN: Go do the dishes! Go do the dishes!
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM: We’re not going to be able to do anything, unless we begin to do it for ourselves.
STEWARDESS: I’ve heard about it, thank you.
STEWARDESSES FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS MEMBER: Will you come?
STEWARDESS: Yes.
REPORTER: Women's liberation has reared its pretty head in the friendly skies.
STEWARDESSES FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS MEMBER: Leaflets for our first national convention.
HUGHES RUDD FOR CBS NEWS MIAMI: These women are protesting what strikes them as sexual discrimination on the airlines.
HUGHES RUDD FOR CBS NEWS MIAMI: The question is whether or not a stewardess is a flying waitress, a sex object, or a safety expert. They seem to be a little bit of all three. But some of them are so annoyed by that sex object business that they formed an organization to try and change their image.
STEWARDESS AT MEETING: I would like you to know that I am trained to open this door in case of emergency, to take care of an epileptic attack, take care of a heart attack, if you should have one. I am there to help you with these things. And, also, if none of these things should happen on your flight, I will serve you a meal and offer you a cocktail.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
In 1972, a group of women founded Stewardesses for Women's Rights and they were really trying to find a place in the broader women's movement for stewardesses who were invested in political change as well as workplace change.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
They wanted to professionalize the occupation, raise the status and respect of the job. They also wanted to make the airplane safer, not just for the women who worked there and for the employees, but also for the passengers.
SPEAKING
STEWARDESS 2 AT MEETING: There's really nothing wrong with being a stewardess. What's wrong is the image that has been portrayed to the public -- that we are empty-headed little fluffs that serve you a meal and take care of anything that you want taken care of on the airplane without a complaint. In fact, that we're not people.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
They took up economic issues like promoting women into positions that they had been excluded from, but they also focused on issues that had not been seen as labor issues, issues having to do with appearance and grooming and control over women's bodies.
STEWARDESS 3 AT MEETING: I find it depletes me, I get so angry I-- certain things can set me off and I get in an irrational rage and I have to hold it back.
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I joined because I had a lot of frustrations and I felt that the union was not the answer to a lot of this stuff. The union reps, they were just a bunch of 50, 60 year old guys that were oblivious to the advertising, and to the sex discrimination. I just don't think they were capable of understanding it or something, you know? It was like we're dealing with people who were in a different generation.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
I don't think that a lot of feminists thought that these stewardesses who, on the surface, looked so complacent could be so effective.
GLORIA STEINEM: I think the experience of standing up and speaking out for one’s rights and the rights of others is a contagious one, and it’s one that just - that really does make waves and change lives. It’s like throwing a pebble into a pond, the waves of reaction continue for a very long time.
JULIA COOKE, WRITER
Gloria Steinem championed stewardesses’ rights from the beginning.
KATHLEEN HEENAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Gloria was so supportive. She used to come to the offices. She felt that flight attendants would make a good case for changes that women were going through. We could represent a new era. She just had a lot of positive energy like, "We can do this. We can just, you know, fight them.”
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
Stewardesses for Women’s Rights were savvy in terms of fighting fire with fire. They distributed bumper stickers and buttons, and the buttons said, "Go fly yourself." The bumper stickers said, "National, your fly is open."
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
And one of the things that they did…
ACTRESS PLAYING STEWARDESS FROM SWFR COMMERCIAL: May I have your attention please.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
… was what they called a “counter-commercial.”
ACTRESS PLAYING STEWARDESS FROM SWFR COMMERCIAL: I don’t think of myself as a sex object or a servant, but as someone who is capable of opening the door of a 747 in the dark, upside down, and in the water. Fantasies are fine in their place, but let’s be honest, the sexpot stewardess image is unsafe at any altitude. Think about it.
Scene 4: Laffey v. Northwest
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
We went to trial on December the 4th, 1972. 70% of Northwest Airlines stewardesses were part of the lawsuit.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
It was a six-week trial. Executives of Northwest Airlines had to testify.
MICHAEL GOTTESMAN, LAWYER
We were the plaintiffs, so we had to put our case on first.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Northwest tried to make a point that for safety reasons they thought that women would want to share rooms, whereas men felt quite safe staying in their own room.
MICHAEL GOTTESMAN, LAWYER
Why do you put women in double rooms and allow men to have single rooms?
ANIMATED SEQUENCE: LAFFEY V. NORTHWEST COURTROOM SCENE
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
The company's witness said in restaurants, you see women going to the bathroom together. They don’t go to the ladies' room alone.
MICHAEL GOTTESMAN, LAWYER
That was their explanation. That this is what women want.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
The whole staff in the court were like, "Oh, what kind of logic is that?"
MICHAEL GOTTESMAN, LAWYER
And I remember the judge's reaction. He just leaned back in his seat and roared. He was looking up and he was laughing.
GRAPHIC DATE: APRIL 1974
HARRY REASONER, ANCHOR: A federal judge today ordered Northwest Airlines to do the following things: Pay back salary and interest to all stewardesses who were fired since 1965 for being overweight, give stewardesses paid less than stewards since 1968 the difference in salary, and reimburse stewardesses for the difference in room rent since 1968 when they doubled up while stewards had single rooms.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
The Judge made the decision in our favor on all issues. But then Northwest airlines was able to appeal the case.
MICHAEL GOTTESMAN, LAWYER
Their strategy was to take every opportunity that was legally available to them to defer the final moment when they were going to have to pay this money out.
MICHAEL GOTTESMAN, LAWYER
It took 11 years.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
My sister was folding her laundry and she called me and said, "Patty, you won." I said, "What?"
TOM BROKAW: The Supreme Court today upheld a big payoff awarded to stewardesses who sued Northwest Airlines for sex discrimination.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
There is justice. That was my thinking, there is justice.
MICHAEL GOTTESMAN, LAWYER
It was a big win. $60 million is a big chunk of money. And for a flight attendant to be receiving in one fell swoop, $50,000 in back pay.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Women could wear eyeglasses. They would no longer be suspended for weight. And we could have single rooms.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
One flight attendant sent a note and said that every time she walks around in her single room, naked, she thinks of me. [laughs]
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
Mary Pat Laffey's victory is definitive in saying that under no circumstances shall a woman doing this job be presented with different and unequal standards as a man doing this job.
PHIL TIEMEYER, HISTORIAN
This is what women's workplace civil rights are designed to do.
DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, HISTORIAN
The Mary Pat Laffey case encouraged flight attendants to push the boundaries and to move into those jobs that had been off limits.
MARY PAT LAFFEY INMAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
The women were finally allowed to have the same benefits that the men had. If you were capable, you could have a man's job.
Epilogue
CELESTE LANSDALE BRODIGAN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Now a flight attendant, can be male, can be older, can be married, can be any race, ethnic origin. We're different now, we kind of match the passengers.
CARD OVER STILL: Celeste Brodigan worked for United Airlines for 35 years.
She was recognized by the Air Force for her “Outstanding Achievement” flying military air charters during the Gulf War.
CARD OVER STILL: Ann Hood flew with TWA for 8 years.
She became a best-selling author and has written over a dozen books.
CARD OVER STILL: Patricia Ireland attended law school while working as a flight attendant. After seven years with Pan Am, she began her legal career.
In 1991, she became president of NOW, the National Organization for Women.
CARD OVER STILL: Kathleen Heenan left TWA after 12 years to raise her three children.
She later taught a birding program in New York city public schools.
CARD OVER STILL: Casey Grant worked for Delta for 35 years.
She hosts a radio show and writes books about African American pioneers in aviation.
CARD OVER STILL: Jean Montague retired from American Airlines after nearly 40 years as a flight attendant.
CARD OVER STILL: Undra Mays retired in 2020 after 50 years of flying.
CARD OVER STILL: Pat Noisette Banks Edmiston raised two children and worked for the New York State Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse for twenty five years.
She was inducted into the Black Aviation Hall of Fame in 2010.
DUSTY ROADS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
We weren't fighting for ourselves. That's what made it so wonderful. I wasn't fighting for me. I was fighting for the girl next to me.
CARD OVER STILL: In 1977, Dusty Roads co-founded the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which now represents over 26,000 flight attendants.
She worked for American Airlines for 44 years.
--END--
Fly With Me
