She's a Knockout!

by L. A. Jennings

  That the twentieth-century woman would play sports was a surety, but there were still significant problems facing female athletes. Many institutions, from high schools to professional organizations like state boxing commissions, restricted women from participating in sports. No amount of cajoling or changing social views could sway many of these institutions’ staunch positions against female athletes. Instead, it would take the courts and a number of plucky and determined female athletes to push for equal rights in the sports realm.

  Women Are Banned

  Historically, we have seen that most fights between women were stopped for two primary reasons: illegal prizefighting and social pressure. There were cases, as discussed in chapter 3, where events were discouraged, even by government officials; however, they were allowed to go on because there was no law in place to stop such practices. Fights were sometimes cancelled because the promoter or owner of a venue fell to the socially conservative pressures of the community. Other times, bouts were stopped in medias res by police officers enforcing laws against prizefighting. Nevertheless, plenty of women competed in fighting events through the guise of exhibition fights. Official sanctioning is not required for an exhibition fight, and many fighters worked in traveling circuses or carnivals to compete. Wrestling still occupied that strange line between sport and theater in the 1950s, when several women ruled the mat and the headlines.

  Wrestling may have functioned as entertainment in the 1940s and 1950s, but the action was typically nonscripted and still required skill and athleticism. The famed female wrestlers of the mid-century were also beautiful and sexy, as exemplified by the Amazing Mae Young and the “Fabulous Moolah,” also known as Lillian Ellison. Young, a statuesque blonde beauty à la Marilyn Monroe, began her professional wrestling career in 1939, but her athletic talents manifested in high school, where she regularly bested boys on the wrestling team and kicked field goals for the high school football team.[3] Young trained Lillian Ellison, who earned the nickname the “Fabulous Moolah” after explaining that she wrestled “for the money . . . for the moolah.”[4] The girls worked with a troupe of female wrestlers, including Ellison’s adopted daughter, Katie Glass, aka Diamond Lil, a little person who also wrestled professionally.

  They eventually teamed up with Vince McMahon Sr., the scion of the McMahon professional wrestling empire. At that point in time, wrestling was still transitioning into the theatrical and scripted professional wrestling that the McMahon family still runs today as the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). The women wore what was essentially a one-piece bathing suit, sometimes fabulously decorated with sequins or rhinestones, although the costumes were often simple and revealing. While their performances were more theatrical than sport, they still had to contend with gender biases to become accepted in the wrestling community. But Young and Ellison were respected for their strength and skill, and before their deaths, both women were inducted into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame.

  While these highly sexual and theatrical wrestlers became popular in the 1950s, appearing in pinup-style trading cards, women who wished to wrestle in a sanctioned event were restricted from competing. In 1955, the state of Oregon prosecuted Jerry Hunter, whom they describe as a “person of the feminine sex,” with the crime of “participating in wrestling competition and exhibition.”[5] Hunter appealed her conviction, claiming that the court had no jurisdiction because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law to all citizens; however, in Oregon, women were prohibited from receiving licenses for wrestling and boxing to promote “general welfare and good morals” to Oregon citizens.[6]

  The case against Hunter was upheld because, according to the Oregon Supreme Court, wrestling and boxing were not civil rights, but the domain of the governing bodies of those sports. In addition, the Supreme Court, which consisted entirely of men, decided that it needed to uphold laws protecting public health and morality, as well as the rights of men to stop the “ever-increasing feminine encroachment upon what for ages had been considered strictly as manly arts and privileges.”[7] Women infiltrated every aspect of American culture, but Oregon’s high court refused Hunter, and all other women in the state, the right to fight in these most masculine sports of wrestling and boxing.

  Not all states banned women from competing in boxing and wrestling. Barbara Buttrick famously fought in Florida, and, in 1952, four women entered the ring at the City Auditorium in Atlanta, Georgia, under the sanctioning force of the National Elks Athletic Committee, for a one-hour tag-team wrestling match.[8] Hailing from Australia, Babs Wigo and Betty White teamed up against Ethel Johnson and Kathleen Wimberly for what was predicted to be an “action-packed” grappling match.[9] These women headlined the event, which also featured male boxing, and the Atlanta Daily World excitedly promoted the event without any condemnation or suspicion of the female wrestlers.

  Other countries also banned women from participating in contact sports. The Canadian Boxing and Wrestling Commission refused to provide wrestling licenses to women, saying, “Ladies wrestling will add nothing to the general benefit or enjoyment of the citizens at large.”[10] Yet, at the same time that these institutions banned women from obtaining licenses to fight, Mrs. James D. Waldron was named head of the Louisiana State Athletic Commission.[11] Governor Earl K. Long appointed Waldron head of the boxing board after the death of her husband and announced, “Why not a woman? We have women in a lot of sports now—even wrestling.”[12] Governor Long’s pronouncement was significant in a state that still refused to sanction fights between men of different races. Meanwhile, Mrs. Margareta Sjoelin, an attractive twenty-five-year-old mother of three, became the first female boxing referee in Sweden in 1958.[13] Sjoelin was initially denied a referee’s license because boxing officials believed it would cause Sweden to “lose face” in the international boxing community. Instead, she refereed smaller amateur fights through the provincial Smaaland boxing section, which found her ready and more than able to perform the duties required of a boxing referee. Margareta’s husband Stig was a former boxer and part-time coach for the Swedish Amateur Boxing Federation.

  Sports and Television

  Sports became more deeply entrenched in popular culture once the television became a mainstay in homes in the 1940s and 1950s. Boxing commentator Russ Hodges explained in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that women were tuning in to watch boxing matches in increasing numbers, and he was delighted.[14] Hodges revealed that when boxing was initially offered in a primetime slot on Wednesday evenings, many naysayers claimed that women would never watch with their husbands, which would cause strife at home, but instead, women embraced the sport, recognizing that boxing was, according to Hodges, a “dramatic spectacle—that the combination of skill, grace, physical fitness, courage, and competitive spirit has no substitute as a spectator sport.”[15] Since women were used to sitting at home, where both the article and Hodges suggest they belong, they might as well watch boxing, since female admiration only heightened the sense of male superiority in the sport of boxing.

  Women admired fighters in the same way they admired any masculine man on television, Hodges says, because they viewed boxing the same way they viewed any other form of entertainment on television, and that was not a bad thing for boxing, television ratings, Russ Hodges, or twenty-eight-year-old Joyce Brothers, who won the top prize on The $64,000 Question in 1955, by correctly answering a series of questions on boxing.[16] Brothers studied psychology at Cornell and Columbia universities, and the art of boxing watching bouts on television alongside her husband and their infant daughter. Televised boxing matches not only provided the American public with entertainment and athletic skill, they provided Dr. Joyce Brothers and her family with $64,000.

  The Social Movement in the 1960s

  The 1960s began with a bang in the world of women’s boxing. Mr. William Smeeth, a cinema manager from the English midland county of Derbyshire, created a scandal when h
e attempted to organize a fight for a Parisian female boxer. He had previously staged a boxing match between two eleven-year-old girls, with some success.[17] Although the owners of the cinema seemed to accept the fight between the two young girls, Smeeth’s idea to bring the twenty-two-year-old Parisian boxing champion, Mademoiselle Odette Thierry, to box two English girls was not welcome. It seems odd by our modern-day standards to allow children to box rather than women, but the Derbyshire incident was not the only example of young girls boxing.

  In the United States in 1969, the career of twelve-year-old Laura Bloomberg ended when state officials, including the district attorney, decided that she could no longer compete in boxing competitions in Massachusetts.[18] The young boys she trained with at the local boxing club were allowed to compete at a local benefit show, but Bloomberg was banned from fighting. She retired undefeated, a fantastic feat for any fighter, let alone a twelve-year-old girl, and was honored during the event by a local heavyweight titleholder. Although the state condemned the idea of young girls boxing, the local community rallied around Bloomberg and celebrated her success in the ring, even as it was short-lived.

  In 1967, sports journalist Dick Beddoes published an article on the history of women acting as promoters or coaches for male fighters. In an interview with Beddoes, Jack Hurley, the famous boxing promoter and trainer, explains his perspective on women in the ring, commenting, “Ha! Dames in boxing are all batty as bedbugs! Look it up.”[19] Beddoes did some research and found exactly what Hurley wanted him to see: evidence of women meddling in the sport of boxing to no good end. In the majority of these cases, the women were not fighters, but promoters and coaches who had led men astray, leading to the conclusion that a female in a man’s corner was a pugilistic succubus. One example is Mrs. Cal Eaton, a fight promoter who was unable to raise the $75,000 needed to rent an event center for a fight between Cassius Clay and Floyd Patterson. Beddoes admits that Eaton’s failure to raise the money “suggests she [was] not as adroit at money grubbing as the majority of her sex,” but most of the examples in the article seem similar to claims that famous musicians are ruined by women.[20] Beddoes hunted for instances of female mismanagement of male fighters and found what he needed for his piece.

  These types of denouncements of women were common in certain arenas of the 1960s, where women’s rights movements were treated with disdain and disgust by men who felt that their patriarchal power was being threatened. People often misremember the past in ways that suit their own ideology, and many people in the mid-twentieth century believed (and people continue to think this way today) boxing and wrestling had always been exclusively male territory. Not only was this type of thinking incorrect, as demonstrated in the previous chapter, people managed to forget the recent past.

  Beddoes and Hurley believed that women infiltrating the boxing world was a result of the recent women’s rights movements of the 1960s. While these movements did indeed open doors for women and call for equal rights and protections for women according to the law, fighting sports already included female fighters, referees, coaches, promoters, and writers far prior to the second wave of feminism. The consternation of Beddoes, Hurley, and other men in the hegemonic center of the boxing community blamed the feminist movement because it was easy, and, unfortunately, these men of power used their influence to attempt to block women at every turn.

  Not all men agreed with Beddoes and Hurley’s take on women in the boxing industry; there were numerous male advocates ready to back female pugilists, trainers, and promoters. According to a 1965 Washington Post article, a British woman applied to be a trainer at the British Boxing Board of Control’s new gymnasium. The woman, whose name is not provided, regularly practiced with her husband, and she taught her son to box.[21] It is unclear if she obtained the position, but it is evident that, like many female boxers throughout history, she was supported by her husband. England has perhaps the longest history of organized boxing as a sport, so it makes sense that fighters would emerge from that country, along with the United States, in large numbers. But boxing greatly increased its international presence in the twentieth century. In 1966, Trinidad introduced competitive women’s boxing, with Barbados-born Eatrice Clarke, a former cycling champion, challenging all comers. Boxing promoter H. A. Clarke defended his decision to put on the bouts by reasoning that “women are taking part in almost every other sport, so why not boxing, too?”[22]

  In 1969, Abigail Van Buren, the author of the famous and nationally syndicated “Dear Abby” advice column, received a letter about women in fighting sports. The article is beyond delightful to a fighting historian who is also a fan of etiquette guides of all kinds. This installment of “Dear Abby” includes advice on fighting, as well as how to deal with rude dinner guests (the woman ate out of the serving dish . . . with her fingers!), apathetic parents (don’t complain if you do not attend PTA meetings), and child safety (kids should not put plastic bags over their heads when playing robot). The question, signed Milwaukee, is supposedly written by a group of women:

  DEAR ABBY: Our group is comprised of women who are interested in learning to wrestle and box for fun and amusement. We are not advocating bouts between men and women, but we wouldn’t refuse such encounters if they were to arise. The girls wear bathing suits and work out on the mats in the health studio. We want to know if there is any danger factor in this kind of sport for women? This is not a put-on. We are sincerely interested in a serious reply.

  Van Buren answers the question intelligently and briefly, somehow skipping the more interesting fact that the women work out in bathing suits, to advise them:

  DEAR MILWAUKEE: My medical authorities agree that repeated blows in the area of the breasts can be dangerous to women, so unless some kind of protective covering is worn, you’d better skip the boxing. As for wrestling, you can bend each other into pretzels if you like, but coed bouts are not recommended.[23]

  Abby’s response is surprisingly open-minded, considering her position as champion of polite society. Granted, Van Buren is famous for being unexpectedly liberal in the cause of gay rights, so why would she deny women the right to train? Her advice that women should practice boxing while wearing chest protection is standard in many fighting communities today, and her belief that coed bouts should not happen is shared by most people; however, it was still a delightful surprise to find a “Dear Abby” column supporting female fighters in 1969.

  Title IX: Official Recognition Begins

  In 1972, Title IX, the largest piece of gender equality legislation to date, was passed by Congress. The bill, which was part of the educational amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, protected students and employees from legal discrimination based on gender. The official document begins by stating, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any educational programs or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”[24]

  Many people point to Title IX as the reason female athletes are able to excel in sports today. Nevertheless, Professor Sarah Fields points out that it was not Title IX, but the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, that is often invoked when discussing equality for women in sports. The Fourteenth Amendment gave the newly freed male slave certain rights, although the practice of equality was limited. Fields explains that Title IX primarily addressed increasing the amount of sports opportunities for girls and decreasing the difference in funding between boys’ and girls’ sports. For certain sports, especially contact sports, to be available to girls, it was the Fourteenth Amendment, not Title IX, that was invoked in court cases.[25]

  The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare enforced the regulations of Title IX but also amended it by adding its own language, which essentially restricted gender equality in contact sports. Boxing and wrestling were obvious contact sports, but activities like soccer, basketball, football, and hockey, popular American sports, also excluded girls. Thus, wh
ile Title IX seemed to end sexual discrimination in schools, it still limited the sports that women could play. Instead, Title IX provided a language for court cases brought against schools and institutions regarding funding, but it did not name the sports that girls should be allowed access to play. Fields explains that the general public perceived Title IX as the end to gender discrimination,[26] but, in fact, it was the beginning of numerous lawsuits and cases for the women who sought to participate not just in sports in general, but in contact sports specifically.

  There were several boxing and wrestling programs created in the 1970s for young girls wishing to compete. One fifteen-year-old girl, Brenda Ducksworth, of Dallas, Texas, made headlines in 1973, as a champion boxer fighting against both male and female opponents. Her mother declared, “She ain’t much at keeping house, but she sure can box.”[27] The article points out that while some states banned little girls from playing baseball, in the great state of Texas, Ducksworth lost only two of her sometimes coed fights. She boxed at Missy, Inc, a program created by Doyle Weaver, who felt that it was not fair that girls were forced into such stereotypical sports as baton twirling. The program included regular boxing tournaments where the girls were treated the same as the boys. There was no extra padding, no special rules, and no differences between the competition and training. In fact, the boys and girls sparred together, making this program significantly different than many other boxing and wrestling clubs at the time. Weaver explains, “We want to disprove the myth that girls can’t compete against boys.”[28] As the title of the article succinctly puts it, “Kid Gloves Are Off for Girls in Dallas.” But not everyone was as forward thinking as the genial Doyle Weaver.