Phyllis Schlafly

On August 15, 1924, in St. Louis, Missouri, Phyllis Schlafly was born into a Catholic family whose economic strain and conservative values shaped her politics. She studied at Washington University and Radcliffe College, later earning a law degree while also building a Republican activist career. Anticommunism, motherhood, and organizational discipline defined her public identity before her most famous campaign.

Schlafly became nationally prominent through A Choice Not an Echo in 1964 and then through her campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment after Congress approved it in 1972. Using Stop ERA, newsletters, church networks, and grassroots mobilization, she made social conservatism a mass political force within the Republican coalition. Her activism helped connect anti-feminism, anti-elite rhetoric, and Cold War moral politics into a durable movement.

Schlafly's organizing helped shape the modern conservative base and influenced later fights over abortion, family policy, and the role of religion in politics. The failure of the ERA and the rise of the New Right remained inseparable from the coalition she helped build.