[Liberty Ship]

I was looking at the Summer Reading List for the Fulton County Georgia School System, hoping to see at least one good classic. None, of course. But what I found was a list of "social engineering" books. I have posted the worst description above. It is a LIE.

The first woman police officer was Lola Baldwin, appointed in Portland in 1908.

Women's professional sports: All Girls Professional Baseball Team, 1943; Ladies Professional Golf, 1953; Professional Women's Bowling, 1959.

Women not allowed to fly a jet? The blurb itself admits that the candidates were pilots. However, for the record, in 1944, Ann Baumgartner was the first woman to fly an experimental jet plane; and in 1953, Jacqueline Cochran broke the sound barrier.

And I can't even begin to figure out how to address the claim that women could not rent cars in 1961. Does anyone know if this is true?

I am weary of the petty bureaucracy, staffed by morons, that we call the school system cramming agendas down the throats of children in the name of education. So I thought I would turn over this rock and post it here.

[chuck_the_tv_out]

Have you tried getting onto your local school board? Leftists do, that’s why the kids get that stuff

[cripplecreek]

The Chuck Yeager autobiography is one of my favorite books so Jackie Cochran was one of my first thoughts.

[esquirette]

In 1982 Maas Brothers wouldn’t give me a credit card in my own name. Ten years before I went to law school they did not accept women. There have been some changes.

[Amberdawn]

I think that the idea of women having these careers was largely derided at that time, though SOME did work professionally. I know that my mother was fired from her job in 1959 when she announced she was pregnant. There is a lot of politics involved in these stories and you are right to question their ‘facts’.

[Dr. Sivana]

In early 20th century P.G. Wodehouse, the thoughtless Bobbie Wickham was a professional ladies’ tennis player. Jeeves did not approve.

[calex59]

And I can't even begin to figure out how to address the claim that women could not rent cars in 1961. Does anyone know if this is true?

All of the claims are false but the above is the most outrageous. Certainly women could rent a car in 1961, and way before that. All they needed was a drivers license and the money to pay for it.

[a fool in paradise]

Revisionist history. It’s good enough for the Communist Party.

“Women’s Day” is an international Communist holiday.

[org.whodat]

And I can't even begin to figure out how to address the claim that women could not rent cars in 1961. Does anyone know if this is true?

Back in those days they only had rental business at large airports. Hell the first time I ever rented a car would have been in the mid seventies.

[detective]

The book sounds like politically correct disinformation. However, the program it refers to was organized by Jackie Cochran. She had been in charge of women pilots during WWII and had broken the sound barrier in 1953.

In the 1960s, Cochran was a sponsor of the Mercury 13 program, an early effort to test the ability of women to be astronauts. Thirteen women pilots passed the same preliminary tests as the male astronauts of the Mercury program before the program was canceled. It was never a NASA initiative, though it was spearheaded by two members of the NASA Life Sciences Committee, one of whom, Dr. W. Randolph Lovelace II, was a close friend of Cochran and her husband. Though Cochran initially supported the program, she was later responsible for delaying further phases of testing, and letters from her to members of the Navy and NASA expressing concern over whether or not the program was to be run properly and in accordance with NASA goals may have significantly contributed to the eventual cancellation of the program.

Congress held hearings to determine whether or not the exclusion of women from the astronaut program was discriminatory, during which John Glenn and Scott Carpenter testified against admitting women to the astronaut program. Cochran herself argued against bringing women into the space program, saying that time was of the essence, and moving forward as planned was the only way to beat the Soviets in the Space Race.

[mnehring]

I can't even begin to figure out how to address the claim that women could not rent cars in 1961.

I have a feeling this may be tough to verify but I have found some very old Hertz advertisements that actually catered to women. Based on the look of the car, this may be in the early 60s (old Mercury Monterey?).

I did find this old article from 1953 that describes a car accident in which the woman rented the car.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10712F83D5B107A93C6A8178DD85F478585F9

This old article describes a woman renting a car and driving to New York in 1941.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=QfcuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=s9sFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4963,607103&dq=first+woman+to+rent+a+car&hl=e

Finally, this ad from 1925 says any man or woman can rent a car from them and they'll teach them to drive in minutes.
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/access/449055432.html?dids=449055432:449055432&FMT=CITE&FMTS=CITE:AI&type=historic&date=Apr+25%2C+1925&author=&pub=Chicago+Tribune&desc=Display+Ad+5+--+No+Title&pqatl=google

[Oldpuppymax]

Yeah. And it was also the women’s vote that put Hussein in the White House. Maybe that’s why they call it “suffrage.” We’re sure as hell suffering for it now!

[astyanax]

I'm sure it's just a typo.
They meant 1861.
;)

[astyanax]

At the bottom of the list I did see Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings.
I'll give them some credit for including those.

[Nepeta]

These claims are all hogwash.

However, in 1961 (and for some years after) it was legal to pay women less than a man for exactly the same job; jobs were listed under "men" and "women"; and it was also perfectly legal to ask married women when they planned to have children. (Housing ads in newspapers were listed under "white" and "black".)

Different times, but it is important to remember the truth of those times, and not nonsense about women not flying jets or renting cars.

[Mears]

bfl

[x]

Most likely, she's talking about piloting commercial passenger jets, like 707s.

Nothing prevented a woman from getting a pilots license and flying a plane, but think back to those days. Pilots for the big commercial airlines were invariably men.

There were woman pilots in WWII, but Barbara Allen Rainey is given credit for being the first female pilot in the US military (1974) -- not even a footnote for those women thirty years before.

Similarly Emily Hanrahan Howell Warner gets credit for being the first woman hired as a pilot by a major airline (1973), even though she and other women had been flying planes for years before that.

Maybe it's not so much the political correctness that gets on people's nerves. It's the inaccuracy, the sloppy use of language and sloppy thinking, that so often goes with it.