photo © Laura Fuchs
“We need to make sure all women have a clear shot at success.”
—CAROL JENKINS, copresident and CEO of The ERA Coalition
Just opposite a prewar residential building in the Hamilton Heights section of New York City stands a huge iron plaque dedicated to Ralph Ellison (1914–1994). It reads: American Writer, Longtime Resident of 730 Riverside Drive. His pioneering novel, Invisible Man (1952), details the struggles of a young African American man in a hostile society.
Inside this building lives Carol Jenkins, another celebrated African American writer, and one of the first African Americans to serve as a television news anchor, a career for which she has won many honors, including an Emmy Award and a Lifetime Achievement and International Reporting Award from the National Association of Black Journalists, New York Chapter.
Today, she serves as the copresident and CEO of The ERA Coalition, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. “I hope I live long enough to see it,” Carol tells me.
I interviewed Carol just two days after she received promising news about the status of the ERA. Democrats in Virginia had taken control of the state’s legislative bodies, and they planned to endorse the ERA. This would make Virginia the thirty-eighth and final state needed to ratify the ERA, a measure that was first approved by Congress and sent to the states in 1972.
“I want to see the ERA passed,” Carol says, her eyes focusing intently on me. “It is a fundamental vehicle that we need to equalize women in this country.”
Born in Alabama seventy-five years ago, Carol says of her childhood home that it was “the poorest county in the country, and it is still the poorest in the country.” She continues, “My grandparents were farmers, and I credit my grandfather for being the feminist in the family. As the father of nine daughters, he would often say, ‘These girls need equal footing in the world.’” All nine of those girls went to college, and that family ethos has since filtered down to four generations. “We all have him to thank for that,” she says.
I was introduced to Carol over twenty years ago when she interviewed me on WNYW’s Fox Five Live. At the time I was the publisher of Divorce magazine, a regional publication originally launched in Toronto, though it had a US presence. I had been hired to head its newly launched New York edition, and appeared as a guest on Carol’s news show to discuss how divorced noncustodial parents could still stay in touch with their children on a daily basis by using the latest technology: fax machines.
Carol’s career spans thirty years as a broadcast journalist, which has included national political coverage, reporting from the floor of a number of Democratic and Republican conventions. She also covered the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa, and coproduced a television special on apartheid, which was nominated for an Emmy award. Sitting in her home, which also serves as her office, the history of her work and accomplishments are present everywhere I look.
On the floor in front of me is a framed image of the iconic NBC logo, a peacock sprouting its feathers in multicolor, with the words PROUD AS A PEACOCK printed just below it. Standing on a glass shelf in one of her living room display cabinets is her Telly, an award for excellence in video and television. Hanging on the opposite wall alongside her desk is a banner that reads: MEET THE WRITERS: CAROL JENKINS AND ELIZABETH GARDNER HINES DISCUSSION AND SIGNING: BLACK TITAN: A.G. GASTON AND THE MAKING OF A BLACK AMERICAN MILLIONAIRE. Carol’s coauthor is her daughter, Elizabeth Hines, and their book is a biography about Carol’s uncle, A.G. Gaston, the grandson of slaves born in 1892, who died a highly successful businessman with a fortune valued at over $130 million. He created a path for numerous other African American businessmen to follow, and Carol has both honored and embodied his legacy.
Just below that banner hangs a photo of Carol with novelist Toni Morrison, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. “That’s one of my favorite photos,” Carol says. A 1950s Oliver manual typewriter sits on a small wooden table in front of the window, and a sign with the word RETIRADO (Spanish for retired) stands upright on Carol’s desk. But she is doing nothing of the sort.
Carol is, in fact, preparing for a conference call to discuss the successful passage of the ERA in Virginia with a group of women who’ve worked with her to get it passed. A printed page with the headline, “Ten Ways The ERA Coalition Makes a Difference,” rests on her desk alongside her computer.
Now that the ERA has won its thirty-eighth state, Carol is concerned about whether they’ll be able to remove the deadline for approval, since it expired many years ago. “We are working with Congresswoman Jackie Speier and Congressman Jerry Nadler to get the deadline extended. And Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi already promised to give us a hearing on this issue,” Carol says, sounding confident. “It’s still so complicated,” Carol continues, betraying a bit of concern. “We are assuming this will go all the way to the Supreme Court, so we’re working hard to get all fifty states to unanimously approve the ERA by working every week with the unratified states to get their endorsements.”
Carol had informed me during our interview that she was planning for a conference call, and asked if I would stay and continue the interview after the call was over. I saw this as an opportunity to watch history in the making, and Carol put the call on speaker phone so I can listen in.
“Are you recovered?” one of the call participants asks all the others.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever recover,” someone on the call responds. The women continue to congratulate each other one by one about Virginia’s passage of the ERA. Carol is taking notes.
As I look around her living room, I am surrounded by row upon row of books adorning walls, tables, and desks. Some of them stand out to me more than others, many of them representing Carol’s work and legacy as an activist for civil rights and gender rights. I see titles like This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century; Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Around the World, which chronicles the Women’s March of January, 2017; The Civil Rights Movement: An Eyewitness History, which covers key years in the movement, from 1954 to 1965. And I notice one of my favorites, Mary Pipher’s Writing to Change the World, which supports the idea that writing enables people to be transformed.
As the call continues with logistics about next steps, I stand up from the couch and walk around the apartment to look at the photos that grace her home. There are photos of her daughter and grandchildren, six-year-old twins, Sophie and Sam, and ten-year-old Avery. She moved into this apartment one year earlier to be closer to them. They now live in the same building.
I see a framed banner from the first “Take Our Daughters to Work Day” event on April 28, 1993. It reads: “If all you’re told is to be a good girl, how do you grow up to be a great woman?” Next to these words are photos of such famous feminists as Gloria Steinem, Marie Wilson, Anita Roddick, Jessye Norman, and a nine-year-old Marlo Thomas alongside her celebrated father Danny Thomas.
As soon as the conference call ends, Carol looks up at me. “We scheduled these calls every week leading up to the vote in Virginia. We’re hoping that the momentum in Virginia will reach to other states, where we’ll be beefing up our efforts. Voters in other states need to learn what their state representatives can do for them.”
I tell Carol I wish I’d brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate the Virginia vote. She offers to open a bottle of wine instead. As she pours me a glass, she says, “People in Virginia understood what was at stake, the future of girls and women across the US. The fact that we got it passed is just tremendous.” And on that note, we toast.
I notice a record album lying on a table next to an old phonograph. It’s Aretha Franklin’s “A Brand New Me,” recorded with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
“That’s a favorite of mine,” I tell Carol. She takes it out of its sleeve and places it on the phonograph.
As Aretha sings in the background, Carol tells me that what women want most is peace in the world. She refers to the Women Media Center’s SheSource, an online database of women experts for journalists to connect with, of which I am a member. “We have women in this database who could build an atom bomb if they wanted to, but they wouldn’t do it. They want peace, not war,” she says. “If we have a woman president, we will have a safer world. And now that there are women, Latino, black, and gay candidates, I feel this is the first truly Democratic race for president.”
Carol then talks about the book she and her daughter wrote about Carol’s uncle, A.G. Gaston. “He owned the hotel where Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed, and he once bailed King out of jail.” His hotel is chronicled as an important part of the Birmingham Civil Rights monument and is now being restored. “The farm I was born on was also one of the stops in Selma during the civil rights march,” she continues, “and the Black Panther movement started in that neighborhood.” She tells me that she takes her grandchildren to Alabama every year for family reunions. “I even have a picture of Avery sitting on my grandmother’s bed,” she says, smiling proudly.
Carol looks around her living room, taking in some of the photos of her grandchildren that I’d been looking at toward the tail end of her call. “My next project is to put together a complete history of my family, from way back,” she says, “and then end world hunger.” She smiles at me. “As soon as the ERA is finally ratified.”