Let's Row Together
Troublemaker women. Women filling the frontlines of political and climate activism. And updates and insights about Locker Room Talk.
At 26, I shied away from the idea that I was a troublemaker.
Yes, I was fighting Major League Baseball in court for equal access to do my job. And that was making trouble, but if you read my book, “Locker Room Talk,” you will discover that while I raised my frustrations privately, for a long, long time I did all I could to avoid publicly stirring up trouble.
I was more of a Mother, May I? gal than I was a woman rabble-rouser.
Today, I’m honored to be called “troublemaker” by troublemaking women who are whipping up good trouble to fulfill their give-back mission at Trouble.1
“Speak up, speak out, get in the way,” the late-Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis urged the crowd gathered at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama bridge a few months before his death in 2020. He was back at this bridge to remember Bloody Sunday, the March day in 1965 when Alabama state troopers violently beat many Civil Rights marchers as were marching to Montgomery, Alabama’s capital.
“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America,” said Lewis, a man whose own skull was fractured on March 7, 1965.
On March 15, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson addressed Congress, embracing the cause these demonstrators were championing in Selma: “Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome,” he said.
On March 17, the President submitted voting rights legislation to Congress.
Determined to overcome, the demonstrators were submitting a plan to resume their march to federal district court judge Frank Johnson. Seated in 1956 on the Middle District Court in Alabama, Johnson had ruled that year in favor of Rosa Parks, in a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn Montgomery’s “blacks in the back of the bus” law.
In 1965, Judge Johnson enjoined Alabama Governor George Wallace and local law enforcement “from harassing or threatening [these] marchers.” Four days later, the Selma to Montgomery march was resumed with Alabama National Guardsmen and FBI agents protected the marchers. On its last day, 25,000 protesters walked the final miles into the state capital.
On August 6, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, citing “the outrage of Selma.” That day he called the right to vote “the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.”
Lewis’ lifelong commitment to making GOOD TROUBLE carried us to that day, and his words inspire us still.
Mural in Richmond, Virgina
And yes, even though President Johnson forgot to mention women when he signed the Voting Rights Act – as Abagail Adams could have predicted he’d do.
In our time, voting rights are under attack again as our Constitutional rights are in peril with our upcoming presidential election. As I look around, I people writing letters and knocking on doors, sending postcards and “manning” phone banks, and generally doing all it will take to get out the necessary vote to secure our democracy.
Mostly, I see WOMEN.
Women. Women. Women. Women acting on frontlines of political activism and girls voicing vital messages of urgent climate activism.2
Thankfully, I have no doubt that women will keep on making the GOOD TROUBLE that Lewis encouraged all of us to make.
Try to take our rights away, and you energize us as troublemakers.
Updates and Insights
My travel plans for upcoming book events
Hurricane Francine landed in New Orleans on Wednesday. Today, I arrive in the Big Easy for the annual JAWS (Journalism & Women’s Symposium) camp. There, on Saturday, JAWS holds its popular Books & Browse event. I’m delighted to be invited to speak on the JAWS panel happening before we sell and sign our books.
On Monday, Sept. 16th, the magnificent Gwen Thompkins joins me at Octavia Books in New Orleans to talk about Locker Room Talk. If you are in New Orleans, or know someone there, please spread news of this upcoming event.
Thank you, Tyler Bridges, for your terrific New Orleans’ Times Picayune story about my legal case and book, and a glimpse at the way things are for women writers who cover baseball today.
New York City friends ask if I’m bringing Locker Room Talk to the Big Apple. Indeed, I am! I’m honored to be appearing at the New York Historical Society on October 15th - reserve a seat here - presenting with my friend and equal rights fighter Lynn Povich, author of The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace. Povich chronicles the groundbreaking gender discrimination lawsuit that set off a chain of similar ones through major news media in the 1970s.
I’ll be in the Bay Area from October 23-26, and I recently learned that my book event with San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Ann Killion on October 24th at Mechanics Institute is part of the city’s 2024 October LitQuake Festival
Locker Room Talk’s College Week: What better place to launch my College Week than in Fenway Park’s press room. There, I will talk with Boston-area college students convened by Jeffrey Gerson, whose own students I’ve spoken with at UMass Lowell for several years.
Next up in Locker Room Talk’s College Week
Hope I’ll see you along the road. I’ll be in North Carolina — Asheville, Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro – in the first week of October. More on that trip, later.
Here’s my EVENTS calendar, so far.
If you want to buy Locker Room Talk, go to Rutgers University Press page for my book, and use the code RUSA30 to get a 30% discount plus free shipping.
If you’ve read Locker Room Talk, please take a moment to leave a review on Amazon.
Trouble donates 100% of all profits from its merchandise sales to organizations promoting equity for women and girls.
Yes, of course, men are politically active and some are fighting as hard as women and girls are on the frontlines of our climate crisis. But these days I think it’s hard to argue that a wondrous abundance of women show up as persistent activists in the fights of our lifetime.
I got my picture taken with John Lewis at a library conference 10 years ago. I still can't believe it.