2021 Gumbo final - Book - Page 83
LSU Gumbo celebrates 100
years since the passing of
the 19th Amendment.
“It felt as though Harriet Tubman’s hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth’s hands
pushing me down on the other,” Colvin said. But Colvin was a young girl, a pregnant teenager. Activists felt as
though Rosa Parks, a local seamstress, would be a better fit for the face of their cause.
In 1960, the FDA approved the first commercially produced birth control pill in the world. Three years later,
President John F. Kennedy signed into law the Equal Pay Act, which in theory prohibited sex-based wage
discrimination in the workplace. We know today that this discrimination still very much takes place.
In 1964, Maxine Crump became the first black student to live in a residence hall at LSU.
“I had seen James Meredith beaten,” Crump said. “I had seen water hoses turned on people and I was prepared
for all of it. I didn’t prefer it to happen, but I was willing to do what I needed to do.”
Crump was part of a push for women to be allowed to wear pants on campus, too.
“We’re sitting in the dorm and one girl said why can’t we wear pants? And one said what are they going to do if
we all wear pants?” Crump said. “I thought, what would my parents think if I got kicked out of school for this. But I
went for it because it felt right, and that was the last time we weren’t allowed to wear pants.”
In 1971, Ginsburg argued the case Reed v. Reed in front of the Supreme Court, representing Sally Reed and
arguing that she should be the executor of her deceased son’s estate instead of her ex-husband. The Court majority
agreed with Ginsburg’s arguments, and for the first time since the passage of the 14th Amendment, struck down a
law on the basis that it violated the Equal Protection Clause, and that the sex-based discrimination of the Idaho law
was unconstitutional.
In 1972, President Nixon signed into law Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in publicly funded
educational institutions. In 1973, the landmark case Roe v. Wade is decided 7-2 in the US Supreme Court,
establishing a woman’s right to have an abortion. In 1983, Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in as the first woman
on the Supreme Court, 113 years after Ada Kepley was the first woman to graduate law school.
It wasn’t until 1980 that LSU had its first black Golden Girls, Paula Johnson and Saundra Mims. At first, the girls
didn’t make the team. But the Dean of Student Affairs questioned the scoring of the auditions, and sure enough.
The girls had scored high enough to be on the team but had been made alternates. After this was discovered, the
girls moved up to actually be on the team.
In 1991, LSU crowned its first black homecoming queen, Renee Boutte Myer. Myer was also the last queen
crowned without a king. Currently, Myer is the Director of Advocacy and Engagement for the LSU College of Human
Sciences and Education.
Page by: Gabe Henderson
Story by: Kimsey Stewart