The Good Girls Revolt (17 page)

The Famous Writers School:
Dick Boeth taught the first writer training program for women with Peter Goldman (1972).

“Female Writer Seligmann”:
Jeanie Seligmann was the first researcher to become a writer after the lawsuit (1973).

Victory at last:
Our second lawyer, Harriet Rabb, prevailed and later represented the women who sued the
Reader’s Digest
and the
New York Times
(1972).

Liberated:
Reporter Mariana Gosnell (here in 1967) wrote her first book at age 62.

The Critic:
Writer and editor Jack Kroll was brilliant, but recalcitrant (1976).

The boss and me:
Looking back, Oz was the first to say, “God, weren’t we awful?” (1975)

Learning the ropes:
Media reporter Betsy Carter went on to start
New York Woman
magazine and write novels (here with striking printers in 1974).

Tough call:
Diane Camper was one of the black researchers who decided not to join our suit (1977).

A star is born:
Eleanor Clift rose from Girl Friday to
Newsweek
’s White House correspondent (in 1976, with Vern Smith, left, and Joe Cumming, Jr., in the Atlanta bureau).

The boys’ club:
Integrating the story conference (clockwise from left, editor Ed Kosner, Larry Martz, Peter Kilborn, Russ Watson, Dwight Martin, and me, 1977).

Breaking the barrier:
My official photo as
Newsweek
’s first female senior editor, September 1, 1975.

Forty years later:
In March 2010, three young women (from left) Sarah Ball, Jesse Ellison, and Jessica Bennett wrote their story in
Newsweek
—and kept ours alive.

CHAPTER 8

The Steel Magnolia

H
ARRIET SCHAFFER RABB was the opposite of Eleanor—a petite Texan with a soft Southern accent and a steel-trap intellect. She was also four months pregnant. Harriet had grown up in Houston, the daughter of two physicians. Her parents practiced in the same building: her father, a general practitioner, at one end; her mother, a pediatrician, at the other. Her father’s practice and examining room were integrated, but he kept his waiting room segregated because he thought people would feel more comfortable that way. Her mother’s practice was mostly white. When her father was serving in World War II, Harriet’s mother took her on her nightly rounds or to the Jefferson Davis charity hospital where she trained nurses. “I admired her beyond description,” said Harriet. “When the phone rang at home and a patient would ask, ‘May I speak to Dr. Schaffer,’ I would always have to say, ‘Which one?’ She was Doc Helen and he was Doctor Jimmy. I thought they were amazing and wanted to be a doctor until I took biology in college and couldn’t stand the labs.”