Barbara Hines oral history
- Q: So it's Thursday, November 2. My name is Ella Pontier and I'm a linguistics major and
- Spanish minor at the University of Texas at Austin. I'm here in Austin, Texas interviewing
- Ms. Barbara Hines regarding her involvement in the women’s liberation movement, with
- Roe v. Wade and other women’s rights issues. So Ms. Hines, when were you born and where
- were you born? A: I was born in Chicago on October 29, 1947.
- Q: So what brought you to the state of Texas, if you were born in Chicago?
- A: My father was transferred to Brownsville, Texas, to the border. So I moved to Brownsville
- when I was nine. Q: Nine years old. So what brought you to
- the University of Texas, and in what year? A: So I came in the fall of 1965 and really
- I -- it was at a different time, so my parents couldn't pay to send me out-of-state. And
- so I applied to one school, which was UT. Q: And what was your focus of study or your
- major, minor? A: Latin American Studies and Spanish.
- Q: Latin American Studies and Spanish. A: Mm-hmm.
- Q: And what was your full attendance at the University of Texas, from what year to the
- end? A: I was here from 1965, I graduated in the
- spring of 1969. I spent -- during that time I spent a year and a half in Europe. I was
- studying abroad for a year in Spain and I took a semester off. And then I was in graduate
- school in Latin American studies in the fall of 1969 and the spring of 1970, I think. Yes.
- And I had a teaching assistantship in the Spanish department.
- Q: That's great. In our preliminary interview you mentioned that you were active in the
- WLM, also known as the women’s liberation movement. Could you please describe your specific
- involvement in this revolutionary movement? You had mentioned guerrilla theater --
- A: Yeah, no, I was just thinking about the word revolutionary movement. It was revolutionary.
- So I came back to school. As I said, I had taken a year and a half off. So I came back
- to school in the spring of 1969 and I took a philosophy class, which was something like
- Marxist philosophy, taught by Larry Caroline. And there were -- that was a time, you know,
- when all of us were I guess becoming radicalized, were becoming aware of what was going on.
- It was in the midst of the Vietnam War. I had become very politicized when I was in
- Europe for that year. And so there were many people in that class that worked on The Rag,
- which was at that point the underground newspaper. Now people would call it an alternative newspaper.
- And there I met several people that were involved in the women’s liberation movement, primarily
- Judy Smith, and she invited me to come to a women’s liberation movement and to start
- working on the The Rag. And that was how I got involved.
- Q: You also had mentioned in our phone interview about guerilla theater, about your place with
- birth control on campus, and things such as conscious raising and reactions of your peers.
- Could you go into some more depth maybe on the guerilla theater or the conscious raising?
- A: So when we first started getting together in the spring of 1969 it was kind of eye-opening
- for all of us because I think it was the first time that women really talked about their
- socialization, you know, and the objectification of women and the discrimination against women.
- And so that's kind of what the consciousness raising thing was, was to have women actually
- get together in small groups and talk about their experiences and to analyze them and
- to think about, I guess, the things that women were raised to think about and to think that
- they didn't actually have to be that way, that there were other models. So that's what
- the consciousness raising thing was, was trying to get women to talk to each other. There
- was a lot of discussion about competition between women and really how women mistrusted
- each other because everything was revolving around finding a husband, having the boyfriend,
- or whatever. So out of that we began to sort of look at institutions. And so, and to point
- out ways that we thought these institutions oppressed women, objectified women, led to
- disparate treatment. So there was this whole idea of guerilla theater and guerilla theater
- was not something that we in the women’s movement came up with.
- That was something that was going on across the country as sort of a -- and you know,
- I mean I think it's interesting like -- guerilla because this was the time when there were
- like, you know, wars of liberation around the world. So I think guerilla sounded good
- to us. So -- but I mean people had done guerilla theater in terms of antiwar movements and
- all sorts of other things. So we, for example, the one that stands out in my mind is that
- -- and one thing to keep in mind is that all of us initially in this group were connected
- with the university. We were either graduate students or people that had just graduated
- or in school, so a lot of our initial activities took place on the campus or near the campus.
- So the fraternities and sororities, the Greek system, in order to raise money every year
- -- and I actually have -- may have these photos, if I can find them -- would have women dress
- up as slaves and then on the west mall they would auction them off to raise money. And
- so we had someone who worked on The Rag, Bill Meacham, and he dressed up as a slave driver
- and we dressed up as slaves and we had our alternative, you know, we actually dressed
- up as slaves. We were all like covered in I don’t know what, blankets or whatever
- our crazy idea at that time of what like slaves from I don’t know where, the middle east
- or harem women, looked like. And so we did that. We got a lot of press, I think, about
- that. So we did that kind of guerilla theater. Another thing that we did, and I actually
- do have some photos of, is that we objected to fashion shows and so -- it was either fashion
- shows or was it like the -- we also -- so we protested, I think it was a fashion show.
- It was also, you know, they had like Playboy, the girl, the bunny tryouts. I know we protested
- there and we -- Q: In the city of Austin?
- A: On campus. Q: Oh, on campus.
- A: So all of this stuff was on campus. I think you could like try out to be a Playgirl [sic]
- bunny. This was either a Playgirl bunny, it may have been just a fashion show and so our
- position at that time was that, you know, once again this was all focused on the physical
- attractiveness of women. So we put -- we dressed up as kind of clowns. We had white faces and
- we had signs that said, you know, “Fashion objectifies women.” I don’t know, I can
- look because I do have some of those, I think. So we did those. We did things of that sort.
- There were other people -- I wasn't involved in this, but there was a thing -- I did do
- this a couple of times -- we also made -- we did do this -- something that was called -- I
- haven't thought about this in so long -- a cranky, which was kind of on-paper a depiction.
- And two women stood on the end and kind of turned that butcher paper and we had kind
- of the depiction of the oppression of women and we had these songs about women and private
- property. And so we performed that on campus. So I guess those are the kinds of sort of
- guerilla-like sort of -- I guess what would they be called now? Popup, whatever. But that's
- what we called it back then. Your other question was? So that was the guerilla theater we did.
- In the initial days, and you know, you should interrupt me if you have follow-up questions
- or whatever, but in the initial days, you know, nobody really knew anything about women’s
- liberation or no one thought about this and so one of the things we did is we went and
- talked to classes. And these were classes of friends of ours that were sympathetic that
- taught, that were either professors or were teaching assistants. So the class that I most
- remember is a friend of mine, Brian Owens, who was a teaching assistant in an English
- class. Maybe it wasn't an English class. He was -- it was a class on like youth culture
- or something.
- And so he invited three of us to go and talk about women’s liberation. And we went to
- these classes, I mean the reaction was very hostile from some sectors. You know, we recruited,
- we found students that were like, “When’s your next meeting? I'm coming.” But I just
- remember that in this class some male student got up and said, “You know, the reason you're
- into women’s liberation is because you're all so ugly, you're unattractive or whatever
- and that's the only reason you do this.” You know, it, you know, as I think about this,
- you know, we were making a statement so, you know, you weren't ever going to use makeup,
- we weren't going to shave our legs. You know, there were just many things that I would say
- over the years many of us have moderated, but (laughter) that's what was going on then.
- Q: So when you talk about hostile reactions would that example of that one student standing
- up and saying those things, was that normal when you made these classroom --
- A: It happened a lot and it must have made a big impression about me because here we
- are, you know, what is this, like 50, 40 years later, 50 years later? I still remember that.
- So I don’t know why, you know, how certain things in your memory stand out. Yes, people
- were very hostile, yeah. They were hostile. Q: Were there any particular experiences for
- you where you felt maybe attacked verbally or just people looked at you and you weren't
- what they wanted out of a woman just because of your activism on the UT campus?
- A: Yes. I mean, you know, so there was a couple things. You know, I mean, I think you need
- to look at the women’s movement in the context of what was going on. So you know, this was
- the rise of student radicalism, it was the rise of sort of the hippy, you know, free
- love, drug culture, and so we all dressed in a certain way, you know. I think the like
- not shaving your legs and, you know, not -- and thinking about what clothes you were wearing
- and things like that maybe was more to the women’s movement. But, you know, for example
- -- but yes, I think people were hostile. So, as I mentioned to you, because of my women’s
- liberation involvement I had this very long FBI file and there are some descriptions of
- people they interviewed saying things like, “She wore slouchy clothes.” What else
- was it? You know, she didn't do her hair right. So clearly, you know, these were challenging,
- you know, accepted established norms about what women were supposed to be like.
- Q: And then you also had talked about birth control
- on campus and how -- I was very surprised when you told me over the phone that you either
- had to be married or you had to have proof that you were being married within a certain
- period of time. I think you said three-to-six months, something like that?
- A: Yeah, yeah. Q: What exactly were you doing to try to push
- birth control rights for all women on campus? What did that involve?
- A: Well, we didn't really do it at -- I mean, and I was sort of thinking about this. Then,
- at that time, you know -- so, remember, you know, this is the beginning of the sexual
- revolution. It's when, you know, for your generation birth control is so, I mean it's
- just so acceptable. But you remember, birth control pills, you know, first came out in
- maybe the early ’60s. So the only other way I remember you could get birth control
- pills is that back at the health center because back then birth control pills had a really
- high dosage of progesterone, which was then taken off the market because it was dangerous,
- but it also cleared up your -- it cleared up skin problems like acne. So if you went
- and said you were having a lot of problems with your skin you could also get birth control
- pills from the dermatologist. But other than that you couldn't get it. So we decided that
- there were doctors in town who were more sympathetic to both birth control and reproductive choices
- and so we opened up a small room at the University Y.
- So the place where most of these activities happened, which was The Rag, which was the
- underground newspaper, a place called Middle Earth, which did counseling for drug overdoses,
- and the women’s liberation center or whatever was all housed in -- at the University Y,
- the YMCA. And it's not there anymore. It was first where the Scientology building is on
- Guadalupe and then it moved to -- where we spent most of our time was, I would say it
- was 23, 24? In the 2500 block of Guadalupe. The 23rd? Let me just think about this. It
- was south of the Varsity. So it's between the co-op and the Varsity Theater, which is
- now something else. Anyway, it's right across from the student union. So we had a small
- room there and we started staffing it for a couple of hours every day. And we would
- give out birth control information advice. So basically what we did is we told women
- which doctors they could go to who would prescribe birth control for them. I mean that's basically
- what we were doing. And then all of a sudden -- and so it was called the birth control
- information center. What I think is striking about it is that we didn't start out doing
- abortion counseling. We started out with the idea that we would give information about
- where women could get birth control as unmarried women. And all of a sudden women started asking
- us for information about birth control and that's really how our project morphed or transitioned
- into being an abortion referral service. Q: I still find it very interesting how -- so
- during this time also sexual revolution was happening. So in my opinion, just from growing
- up in the late ’90s and then early 2000s and going to school right now in 2017, it's
- interesting that the school wouldn't want to give birth control out to students if they
- weren't married because you would think, oh, we could avoid potential abortion issues,
- or we can avoid teen pregnancy while in college. That's why I find it so interesting that they
- were so strict on who they gave it to and that only certain doctors --
- A: Well, that's interesting that you say that, because you could say actually that nothing
- has changed, because I would say that in the era of Trump that's exactly what they're saying.
- You know, the idea that even employers shouldn't have to pay for birth control and the fight
- now is almost the same. And the same thing about what I would say the anti-reproductive
- choice abortion people are -- that's exactly what you would say. If you want to have less
- abortion and you want to have like less sexually transmitted diseases and all of those other
- things of course you would give birth control. I agree with you. Unfortunately it seems like
- those arguments have sort of -- we're back to where we were, in my opinion, in 1969.
- We're having the same fight in 2017. But yes, I agree with you. Logically you would think
- you would want to make birth control accessible, of course. But back then, remember, this is
- when the sexual revolution or whatever you want to call it is just starting. So for many
- people this was -- for the university or for, you know, certain people in authority, this
- was a moral issue. You know, a moral issue. I mean, it's interesting, I've never thought
- about it until you asked me this question to think about these are the same arguments
- that people are making today that people were making back then.
- Q: Did you ever have any backlash from any university administration or from any authority
- outside of the University of Texas regarding your birth control information sessions or
- post-birth control the abortion sessions that it turned into?
- A: I mean, we didn't -- I mean, I'll tell you, the backlash that we had is that we were
- all surveilled by the FBI. So all of this information is in my FBI file and many other
- people’s. So I think that's a significant backlash, that there was like widespread surveillance
- of women’s movement. Did anything personally happen to me other than I couldn't end up
- getting a -- I couldn't pass a security clearance because of all of that, later on in my law
- career. But I don’t think anything personally happened to me, but I would say government
- surveillance of this was a significant invasion of privacy.
- Q: And do you know exactly what they were trying to get out of the surveillance? Were
- they trying to find proof that you women were trying to go against the government by doing
- this women’s activism? A: So I think you have to contextualize this.
- This is in the era of Hoover and that there was widespread surveillance of all of the
- sort of social political movements of that time. From, you know, Martin Luther King and,
- you know, all the way to people like me in Austin, Texas saying that women have the right
- to birth control or that I thought the war was bad. So it was really pervasive. You know,
- the Black Panther Party, the Civil Rights Movement, the women’s movement, the antiwar
- movement. So I think they collected all this data for really disruption purposes because,
- as we found out later, not so much in the women’s movement but in other movements,
- you know, there were provocateurs encouraging people to commit violence and that's what
- they found out as a lot of this information was declassified over the years. But why they
- would be interested in women saying, you know, we have the right to equal pay and -- and
- then the only thing I would say is, you know, one needs to keep in mind, although this was
- surveillance by the Feds, I have no idea what the state was doing, but abortion was a felony
- in Texas at that time. So having an abortion in Texas was punishable by -- it was a felony.
- Q: It was a criminal -- A: It was a criminal offense.
- Q: I wrote a media paper recently for this class and it was about voluntary childless
- women in the postwar era. It's something that's always been very interesting to me and my
- mom loves that topic because she thinks that women who are able to say, “Even though
- I'm the only one [say out of?] my partner that's able to have a child I still have the
- right to say no.” And that was one thing on all of the medical articles I read was
- that there are three different types of abortion, one where the baby is hurting the mother,
- the mother is in some type of harm to the baby, and then criminal. And most of them
- were criminal just because it wasn't some medical excuse.
- A: Oh, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Q: And then I’d also like to know more about
- your involvement with The Rag on campus, since The Rag is very well known nationwide, and
- we’ve also been talking a lot about it in class. Did you get involved with The Rag right
- when it started? A: No. So we were kind of the -- so we were
- the second wave of The Rag. And there's a documentary out about it. So there were really
- kind of three waves. There were the original people that started it and that's Alice Embree
- who’s the person that asked me if I wanted to participate, Thorne Dreyer, they moved
- on and then this group of us took it over. And I would say that, you know, I did the
- -- I did very little writing for The Rag. I did the typing and the typesetting and I
- went to the meetings, but we were sort of the second group of people that worked on
- The Rag. And then our group moved on, and then there was the last group, which was a
- woman named Glenn Scott and some other people and that's when The Rag closed, I think in
- 1972 or ’4. So I was not in the -- we were sort of what I would say -- The Rag started
- in about 1966 or ’67 and I was involved in it from between 1969 and late 1970 for
- two years. Q: And when you did join The Rag did you have
- any initial goals? A: No.
- Q: Was it just -- A: That would be too like -- I don’t think
- we had any goals. I mean, we did have goals. We wanted to have an alternative view to the
- media. Because, remember, this is a time, it's way before the internet, you know. There
- are only like 100 alternative viewpoints that you can access at all times. So this was print
- media with antiwar, with, you know, everything that was going on. Sort of, you know, the
- black liberation civil rights, the farm workers’ movement in Texas, women’s rights, you know,
- whatever was going on at that time. And that was all, you know, and it was a, you know,
- it was like, I don’t know what it was. Ten pages. I mean it was very -- you would look
- at it now, you know, it was kind of, what would I say? Not crude, but it was kind of
- a basic thing. You know, we had to typeset it and type it out. We had to find a printer.
- It was hard to find a printer. There was a lot of pressure that printers didn't want
- to print this. You know, they didn't like the language, they didn't like the political
- views, and so we had to keep changing printers. And so when I was there we had a printer in
- San Marcos or something, out in the country, and we had to like -- to make the deadline
- on Friday night someone was driving at like 2:00 in the morning to get it printed so it
- would be ready I guess on Monday or Sunday when it came out.
- Q: And so the changing of printers happened just because they were -- were they nervous
- about -- A: I think they were nervous --
- Q: -- about the association with The Rag? A: Yeah. Yes, absolutely, yeah. So what was
- the goal? The goal was to be an alternative media voice because we didn't think that what
- was printed in the mainstream movement reflected what was actually happening in the United
- States. So I guess that's what the goal was. Q: And not just you as an individual but The
- Rag as a whole with everyone together, was any -- were you all trying to reach a specific
- crowd, maybe university administration? A: No. We were trying to -- we weren't -- no.
- Because, you know, we had total disdain for -- you know, it was like, question authority,
- don’t trust anyone over 30, all of those things, which I laugh at now. We were so naïve.
- But anyway, but we were very enthusiastic and very young. And so we probably would not
- want to have reached them. I mean we were trying to reach our peers, our audience, younger
- people, and things of that sort. We weren't really, you know, thinking that we were going
- to influence the administration. But we did influence the administration, but that was
- through litigation because they banned the sale of The Rag on campus.
- Q: And like you were saying with student protests and the guerilla theater with the slave auctions
- and whatnot and peers’ reactions, were there any hostile reactions to the sale of The Rag
- on campus? A: Well, yes. The most hostile reaction was
- that the board of regents prohibited it from being sold on campus. They said you couldn't
- sell it. And Dave Richards, a civil rights lawyer who was married, was the former spouse
- of Ann Richards, the governor, went to court, and he sued and got an injunction on first
- amendment free speech grounds that allowed us to sell The Rag on campus. So that was
- a very violent reaction to try to suppress free speech, to suppress the media. And the
- university lost. Q: And did any writers in The Rag use any
- pseudonyms because they were afraid -- A: No.
- Q: -- of peers’ reactions, like that someone would come up to them --
- A: No. Q: -- with violence or hatred?
- A: No, no. I mean, I'm actually trying to think about -- I'm sure we must have gotten
- hate mail. I don’t think our office was ever broken into. But to my knowledge, at
- least at the time I was there, nobody used a pseudonym.
- Q: And even though you weren't the initial -- one of the initial members of The Rag or
- one of the ending members of The Rag, what impact did it have on you as a person? Just
- an overall impact, whether big or small. A: Well, I would say that most -- the biggest
- impact of my life was the women’s movement. You know, for those two years I lived, breathed,
- it was all I did in terms of the women’s movement. So that was really my focus. Less
- than The Rag. But all of that, you know, I think laid the foundation for what I'm still
- doing today, which is social justice work. Q: And then I'm also curious, since you're
- not from Texas, were your parents born in Texas or were they also born in Illinois?
- A: No, my parents were born in Berlin, Germany. Q: Berlin, Germany? So what were their views
- on what you were doing while you were a student at the University of Texas?
- A: So my parents were very liberal. They were Europeans so they didn't have the hang-ups.
- So you know, many of my friends, during the sexual revolution, living with your boyfriend,
- getting birth control, meant your parents disowned you, they didn't talk to you. Remember,
- people that go to UT, many of them come from very provincial, conservative, small Texas
- towns. I didn't have any of that, because my parents were very liberal. But I went much
- farther to the left and I think at some point they thought, oh, she’s going to like run
- off and join, I don’t know what, the armed revolution. I say that as a joke. But I didn't,
- you know, I think sometimes they thought that my ideas were pretty far to the left, but
- I didn't ever have any trouble with any of that. I didn't have any problems with my parents,
- unlike many of my friends at that time. Q: That's why I was curious.
- A: Yeah, no. And in that sense I feel like I was really lucky. I didn't have to go through
- that conflict that everybody else did with their parents.
- Q: So you studying abroad, and then also your parents being from Germany and having a different
- viewpoint than many Americans during that time -- would you say that influenced you
- just in general? A: Yeah.
- Q: In the movement? A: You know, I really think -- I mean, so
- I had a much more liberal background. When I was 17 my mother was worried that I was
- going to become too provincial and so she sent me off to Mexico City when I was 17.
- She was the original gap-year mother. I left high school early. But I actually think what
- influenced me the most was the times. I mean, this was just what was going on. And now that
- I look back on it I realize that this was sort of my vocation, social justice, because
- I have a lot of friends that, you know, smoke marijuana, probably showed up for the antiwar
- protests but they didn't kind of make it their life, the central focus of their life. So
- in that sense I do think my experience at The Rag and in the women’s movement and
- some like Latino labor work really influenced me a lot. I didn't know it at the time. You
- only think about these things when you look back historically with the -- looking back
- at your life. Q: And you also had involvement with Roe v.
- Wade, that's correct? A: Yes.
- Q: How did you form a relationship with the attorney Sarah Weddington who worked on the
- case with Jane Roe? A: So when we were doing abortion counseling
- we sent -- are we doing okay for time? Q: I think so, yeah.
- A: I mean, I have time. I don’t know what your time is like. So I -- we sent women to
- a doctor -- there was a doctor in Texas who ended up being a plaintiff in the lawsuit,
- I can't remember his name, but we also sent women primarily to a Mexican doctor in Eagle
- Pass. Well, he was actually in Piedras Negras, across from Eagle Pass, on the border. We
- sent women to New York. In New York I think if you had mental health issues you could
- get an abortion. People that had a lot of money could go to Europe. But at some point
- we were worried that we were going to get charged as co-conspirators and what was our
- legal liability for actually providing information so that women could access an abortion, which
- was a felony in Texas. So we only knew two women lawyers, one of whom I ended up doing
- some work for before I went to law school, and Sarah. And Sarah was a friend of Jim Wheeler’s
- who was at that time the partner of Judy Smith who was probably the -- she was the most influential
- person in this whole Roe v. Wade struggle except for Sarah. And we knew Sarah through
- Jim because Jim was in law school at the time. And so a group of us approached Sarah. So
- one day we had a garage sale to raise money. By then we had rented a house, and we had
- like a women’s center, which was on something like 22nd and Longview. Someone had rented
- -- gave us an old house. And we then finally had an actual house as opposed to our little
- one-room closet at the university Y space.
- And so we were raising money to pay the rent or I don’t know what, and so we had a garage
- sale. And Sarah -- I always tell this story -- none of us lived in housing that even had
- a garage. Like we were -- she was married. We were, you know, in student housing, nobody
- had a garage. So she lived -- I don’t know where she lived but it seemed like she lived
- more in an established neighborhood than we students did. And so we decided we were going
- to have a garage sale there. And so we were sitting around in the morning saying, “Wow,
- I wonder if we could challenge the Texas abortion laws, how would that happen?” And so that
- was the genesis of this lawsuit. Now, there were other challenges around the country,
- so it wasn't as if, wow, we just sort of came up with this idea. But we were really talking
- to her about could it be challenged and what would our liability be. But really we approached
- her initially as like, “What's our liability? What could happen to us and is there any way
- to challenge this law?” And so that is how it began. I was not a lawyer then. None of
- us were lawyers except for Sarah. She was already a lawyer. And so then she took this
- and went off. But I went to law school because of all of this and then I worked for Sarah
- while I was in law school. So she then got elected to the legislature. She was a state
- legislator when we were trying to reform the Texas abortion laws. And so I worked for her
- for maybe three or four months while -- I didn't work on Roe v. Wade, but in her office
- when a lot of this was going on. Q: And what -- do you know the exact years
- you attended law school? A: Yes. I started at the University of Texas
- in the -- I can't -- yes, the summer of 1972 because the law school accepted a summer class.
- And then I thought the law school was too conservative for me, so I went to Northeastern
- in Boston, which was 50-percent women at that time. So I was in Boston for a year and a
- half and then I came back to UT and I graduated in the spring of 1975. So law school was basically
- three years, 1972 to 1975. Q: And going to a different school, going
- to Northeastern, did you learn anything different about yourself as a student or did it make
- you think of anything that you did in the women’s liberation movement? Since you said
- that the UT law school seemed a little too conservative for you.
- A: Well, there were 10 women and 190 men in my class. So going to Northeastern -- Northeastern
- had just reopened and it billed itself as a law school for -- law for social change.
- So the student body was very different. It was all activists. It was very many people
- like me. It was 50-percent women, which was shocking then. You know, I teach -- I taught
- for 16 years at the law school and when I went back and there were 50-percent women,
- and I tell my students that there were only 10 women in my class they're looking at me
- like I'm from the Dark Ages. It wasn't that long ago. So yeah, I mean when I -- and so
- it was, you know, being surrounded by a lot of women that were, you know, into many of
- these issues. So I guess that's what I learned. I also learned, you know, yeah, that's it,
- mostly. Q: And were there any particular cases of
- anyone you personally knew, or maybe a friend of a friend, regarding abortion? When you
- said that you were trying to help certain women find places to get abortions outside
- of Texas so it would technically be legal. A: You know, most of the -- we didn't really
- know many of the women. They would just -- they would call and we would tell them to come
- in because we didn't want to give the information. It was a pay phone that rang, which I'm sure
- was tapped. There were little clicks on it. So, as we learned about all the surveillance,
- they would be listening in to this telephone line. So we told women to come in. Of course,
- I think we were so naïve, because if you really wanted to know what we were doing all
- you would have to do is send in someone posing. You could just send in a cop or an undercover
- agent posing as a young woman, you know. But somehow we thought that it was better to do
- it in person than to do it on the telephone. So you know, I -- there were -- like I don’t
- know who all these people were. I just -- the only one I really remember was a high-school
- student and she was from Lockhart or from, you know, some little town and she had come
- all this way trying to figure out how to get an abortion. I don’t remember her name,
- I don’t remember what she looked like. I just remember thinking, wow, you know, she’s
- in high school and she found us and she lives in some little town. So I remember that case.
- Q: So the women that came in to the abortion center were they usually -- were they typically
- young women around high school, early college age?
- A: Yes. Q: Or was it a mix of everybody?
- A: No, it was young women and college age. Because, remember, to know about us, once
- again, no internet, no social media, you had to be reading The Rag or somebody had to have
- told you about it. Yeah. Q: And then not too long ago you just said
- that you weren't particularly working on Roe v. Wade but being in an office where they
- were working on it, talking about it. A: Yeah.
- Q: What types of feelings and emotions did you have regarding this case or just things
- related to it? A: So what I really remember is being so elated
- the day the decision came down. I was at Northeastern and I kind of remember I was on the street
- and I just couldn't believe it. And what I really think about it is that -- and I think
- Sarah would say this too -- is that we thought, okay, that case is done, now we're moving
- on to the next issue. And so I remember being so excited that we had won in the Supreme
- Court. Only to think that we're still fighting this, you know, 1973, what is that? Fifty?
- Whatever. In 2017. You can do the math. And so I remember that I was on the streets of
- Boston when it was decided and I was being -- I was so excited. It was incredible. And
- really -- and that's where I think sort of my naivete, and others’, to think well,
- that's done, now we have a Supreme Court case and now we'll move on to the next women’s
- rights issue. Q: Having those feelings of happiness and
- excitement when you found out about the case and, like you've said, how that time period
- correlates with this time period now with all that's going on with Trump’s election
- and whatnot, how does that make you feel? It must be frustrating.
- A: It's really depressing. It's really demoralizing. But you have to think about it as a long-term
- social struggle. Because otherwise, if you can't look at it sort of on the arc of history,
- you have to give up. But it's really bad. Q: And how -- again, how long did you work
- with Ms. Weddington? A: Weddington. So Northeastern had a co-op
- program where you came for three months, so I worked for her for three months, three or
- four months. And so it was when the legislature -- she had an office in the legislature and
- she had an office here. Because we were working on other issues. So you know, one of the issues
- that, you know, did I do this with her or with Bobby Nelson. For example, women had
- to take their husbands’ names when they got married. So at one of these two places
- we worked on that. Women -- there was all this issue about credit. You couldn't get
- credit, it had to be in your husband’s name. But it was three months. But Sarah was -- we
- were trying to liberalize the abortion laws. So this was before Roe v. Wade, it must have
- been, but I'm trying to think about this. Let me just think about this, ’72, ’73.
- Because we were trying to change the Texas law. So this must have been before the Roe
- v. Wade decision came down. Q: And you said that you worked on women’s
- last names and how once they got married they had to take their husband’s name.
- A: Yes. Q: What type of work were you doing?
- A: I was doing research. So I think this was actually -- so before I went to law school
- there was another lawyer whose name is Bobby Nelson. So I only knew two lawyers, women
- lawyers, and so she was either litigating this or trying to get it declared unconstitutional
- either in the state court -- you know. I wasn't a lawyer then and so I didn't -- probably
- I just was doing what she told me to do and I didn't really understand what the process
- was, so I can't really tell you whether she was doing this administratively. I know like
- you couldn't get your driver’s license in your maiden name, you couldn't keep your maiden
- name, but I don’t remember in what context she was doing this. But we were doing a lot
- of research on these discriminatory state laws.
- Q: And did you make any progress while working on it?
- A: Yeah. You don’t have to change your name anymore. You can get a driver’s license
- in your own name. I think we actually got that changed that year. Yeah. I mean I think
- many times young women really don’t understand and become very complacent, particularly about
- reproductive rights. Maybe when, you know, maybe when there is no more right to abortion
- given the, you know, the makeup of the supreme court. But I think that young women don’t
- really -- not you but young women in general don’t really understand. Because your, you
- know, generations of women have grown up thinking all of this stuff is normal. I mean, normal.
- That you have the -- that you should have equal access and the same treatment as men.
- It was very different then. Q: The whole taking the last name when you
- get married is interesting to me because my mom -- when my parents got married she didn't
- want to get rid of her maiden name and didn't want to make it her middle name so she decided
- to hyphenate it. And legally it's been the biggest mess for her ever. So she basically
- only uses her maiden name and it's funny that now in the twenty-first century people still
- get very confused, even me being a young adult, like --
- A: Do you have a hyphenated name? Q: I don’t. But whenever they -- she technically
- goes by her maiden name so whenever I write my name and then say I write an emergency
- contact I usually put my mother and I put her down and half of the time I get questioned,
- “Oh, is this really your mom? She doesn't have your last name.”
- A: That's crazy. Q: Yeah.
- A: That's amazing. Q: It's just really funny how that's still
- prevalent today because some people just don’t think about it.
- A: Right. Q: But then I know so many women who -- I
- have a little sister who’s a senior in high school and a lot of her friends’ parents,
- sadly, have gotten divorced. And the moms, all of them had taken the husband’s name
- and they get divorced and after they’d already changed their name once they didn't want to
- do it again and so they just keep this name. That's another thing that's also very interesting
- to me is that what happens in a scenario like that? Do you just, oh well, it's been my name
- for a while, I just give up or -- A: And that's what most people I know do,
- but that's the thing, don’t change your name in the first place. Makes it easier.
- Q: Were there any laws regarding divorce and name changes when it came to women’s last
- names? A: That's interesting. I don’t know. I mean
- now you can -- in the context of a divorce you can get an official name change, but if
- you take someone’s name then you have to actually include it in your divorce decree.
- So I don’t really know about whether you would have to go and get an official name
- change or whether you had to keep your husband’s name. I don’t know the answer to that.
- Q: And I'm also curious to know what the opposition was like during the release of the outcome
- of Roe v. Wade. A: Well --
- Q: And I'm sure that not everyone was as excited as you were.
- A: Yeah. I mean so, interestingly enough, I think the opposition was less organized,
- really it was. I mean, sort of the rise of the religious right and sort of the right-wing
- organizations was really in some ways a reaction to what happened in the ’60s and the early
- ’70s. So I remember some -- I mean I know that we had a demonstration
- at the capitol and there were probably people who were opposed to abortion sort of there
- counter-protesting, but there really -- like the right-to-life organizations and, you know,
- the people protesting the abortion clinics or murdering doctors and all those other things,
- that really came after Roe v. Wade as a reaction to Roe v. Wade. So clearly there were people
- that opposed it, because it was illegal in all of these states. And so one by one there
- were efforts to change and, you know, the law change in California, in the usual places,
- New York, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Colorado changed at some point. So yeah, there was
- like fervent -- there was a lot of opposition because state legislatures had outlawed abortion.
- Q: And then -- A: I mean ironically -- this is just an aside
- -- is that so when I had a private practice -- my office is on East 40th Street and that's
- where the -- there was a medical facility, it may have been the whole women’s health,
- but it was an abortion provider and it was right next to my office. I thought this is
- very ironic. Q: Yeah, what a coincidence.
- A: Because those people protested every single day and I never had a confrontation with them,
- but they were like right next to my office and I thought, this is ironic, right?
- Q: So they were anti-abortion? A: Yeah. So there was my office and right
- next door to it was an abortion and so every single day there were people out there --
- Q: Protesting the clinic? Okay. A: That's right. And there was only one time
- where we had a screaming match, but generally we never had any conversation. But I just
- thought, if they only knew. It's like right next to my office. But I didn't think it was
- worth having a conversation with them. Q: And while you were in law school, you first
- thought you were going to work on women’s rights law?
- A: Yes. Q: What specifically did you want to work
- on while you still were thinking you were going to do that?
- A: Well, I mean all of women’s rights law, you know, gender discrimination, equal pay,
- you know, you know, those sorts of things, fair pay, you know, Title IX? Title VII?
- Q: Title VII. A: Discrimination. Well, Title IX is also
- -- but I wasn't really into the sports stuff. You know, whatever came along, but mostly
- probably employment discrimination. Q: So when the -- was it equal opportunity
- or equal pay act with John F. Kennedy, we were learning that they had a committee and
- most of the people on the committee, it was for minorities and for women and for discrimination
- in the workplace, but they were mostly all focused on African American rights. Do you
- think -- I personally think it's very surprising that they didn't want to push more women’s
- rights because within African Americans you also have African American women and I know
- that I think when John F. Kennedy was still alive that the head of that committee was
- an African American man himself and he had said that he sympathized for the women’s
- cause because when he thought of his mother, his wife, he could feel the sympathy, but
- he still didn't work towards that. And do you have any experiences or maybe your own
- rationale to that? As to why they didn't want to make it a joint cause and they made it
- more separated? A: You know, because the women’s movement
- comes later, and believe me, there was so much sexism even into what was called the
- new left. Within The Rag in the early days the women did all the typing. By the time
- we got there, no, but like I think the women that worked on the early Rag will talk about
- this. So there was a lot of sexism every place. It just wasn't really -- and it didn't really
- kind of come really into the forefront, I would say, until the mid, you know, the late
- ’60s. So that's one thing I think about it. The other thing is I think, you know,
- people choose their issues, and for the African American community predominantly it really
- was race discrimination. And then second of all -- and then the last thing is that, you
- know, there was criticism about the women’s movement as being sort of a white primarily
- middle-class movement. It wasn't always, but I think there were divisions. So maybe for
- all of those reasons. But it is true, you know, the people who suffer the most discrimination
- are African American women. You know, when you look at pay scales. It's men, women, and
- then women of color. Q: Yeah, the whole idea of intersectionality.
- A: Exactly. Q: Is there anything that I've maybe missed
- in asking you or just maybe a story you’d want to tell?
- A: A story? It's hard to think about all the stories. I can't think of any right now. No.
- I mean I guess, no, I would just say that they were really exciting times. That is one
- thing I'll say. For all the many steps backward we make, they were very heady days. I think
- we really thought we were going to -- and I think, you know, one thing is to look at
- it thinking we did make some progress, as depressing as things look now. But they were
- very exciting times. Q: Do you still keep in contact with the women
- and the men that you worked with during your times at UT, whether it be The Rag or the
- movements you did with the WLM? A: I'm in touch with a few of them. You know,
- there's a few people in Austin that are still working on, you know, kind of progressive
- social issues. I mean, we had a reunion of The Rag 10 -- there was another -- I was unfortunately
- -- well, not unfortunately. My grandson was born the weekend of the last Rag reunion and
- so I missed this last one. But 10 years ago we had one and that was actually really amazing.
- And we kind of had a re-getting-together of our group in the women’s movement too. So
- I don’t stay in touch with a lot of people. Some, but not a lot. No. You know, people’s
- lives go different places, you lose touch, people move away.
- Q: Would you say that the basis of your career stems from what you did in college as far
- as activism, pushing for human rights, women’s rights?
- A: Yes. I feel like it just moved into another area, but clearly --
- Q: So while for some people it may have just been a movement in a specific time period
- and then they remembered it or maybe forgot about it and just continued on with their
- lives -- A: Yeah.
- Q: -- it was not that case for you? A: No. It was definitely -- it still definitely
- is not, no. And so I feel very lucky. That's kind of how I would look at it. I feel very
- lucky. Q: And then when did you decide that you weren't
- going to work on women’s rights and then move on to immigration?
- A: So I did one case at -- so I went to Legal Aid because I wanted to do something in sort
- of the public interest sector. So I was hired here at Legal Aid and I did one employment
- race and sex discrimination case at Legal Aid. And then really what happened is somebody
- said, “You speak Spanish,” and then handed me 30 immigration cases and I found my life’s
- work. So it really wasn't like I said I wasn't going to do it. It just didn't happen.
- Q: Something else was thrown your way and --
- A: Something else. It's like your coming to school here. That kind of was thrown my way
- and it turned out to be the perfect work for me.
- Q: That's great. A: Yeah.
- Q: Unless you have any last comments or remarks regarding this --
- A: No. Q: -- I think that I've asked you all that
- I wanted to ask you. A: Great. All right. And so are you writing
- a paper? What are you doing with this? Q: Yes, I will be writing a paper. I will
- be using your interview as almost a skeleton to the paper. So then, from here, I can look
- at secondary sources, look more into the women’s liberation movement and The Rag as well.
- A: So The Rag I think is on microfilm at maybe the Barker Center [editor’s note: The Barker
- Center was renamed the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History in 2008]. So, you know,
- we wrote stuff about -- so we wrote about women’s abortion and stuff in there. We
- -- you know, so I think that would be helpful. Sarah’s book is good. Yeah. There's a guy
- who wrote -- there's somebody else who wrote his whole -- what's his name? There's a person
- that wrote a whole thing on the history of reproductive rights. He’s a historian and
- I got interviewed for that book. Anyway if I -- I'll send you it. So there's some stuff
- about the women’s movement here too in that person’s book.
- Q: Great. Well, thank you so much, Ms. Hines, for your time. I appreciate it.
- A: Great. Yeah, no, it was great. Well, good luck. What year are you in school?