Phyllis Irwin and Lillian Faderman share the story of how a legal loophole allowed them to create the life they had always dreamed of. Then Max talks with Lilly Ledbetter about the amazing story behind the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, how a single moment in her 60s led her to become a prominent activist in her 70s and 80s and why her fight for equal pay is far from over.
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transcription
[PRE-ROLL]
[OPENING MONTAGE]
Madeleine Albright: I know this program is 70 Over 70, but I really wish I were younger. I wish I was 70…but, I am ready!
[THEME MUSIC STARTS]
William: I’m 72 years old.
Paula: I’m 75, miraculously enough.
Sandy: I am 83 years old.
Betty: I am 88 years old.
James: You know, I’m here at 92.
Lucia: I’ll be 94 in May.
Donalda: I’m 101 years old.
Phyllis Irwin: My name is Phyllis Irwin. I'm 92 years old.
Lillian Faderman: I'm Lillian Federman. I'm 81 and I live with Phyllis in La Jolla, California.
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
Phyllis: I'll begin because I saw her before she ever saw me. I saw her the first year she came to campus.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Phyllis: So in the fall of 1971, I began my new position as assistant vice president for academic affairs and the vice president asked me to get together with ‘that Lillian Federman over in the English department’, and put together a women's studies program.
Lillian: So Phyllis had invited me to lunch. I remember having this, wow, tremendous urge to put my arms around that woman and I thought, ‘this is ridiculous, I hardly know her. I'm not going to do that and embarrass myself’. I resisted for-for quite a while [laughs].
Phyllis: Well, you know, I just kept persisting and inviting to have to dinner or let's do this or that, you know--
Lillian: And it was a cold October night and we-we went to walk your dog. And we came back and I realized I couldn't keep resisting [laughs]. And I didn't. And that was 50 years ago.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
Phyllis: The big thing came when Lilian said that she wanted to have a child.
Lillian: And I was already 34 years old and it just felt like it's now or never.
Phyllis: So I thought about it. And I thought, you know, I think I'd be a good other parent.
Lillian: So our son was born in 1975. Uh, I-I was writing a lot and I was invited to a number of campuses to-to speak, and so I-I was gone often, and we suddenly panicked, realizing that if-if he got sick she had no relationship to him. We had a friend who was a lawyer and she said, in the state of California, if there's a 10 year difference between two people, you can have an adult adoption. So Phyllis is 11 years older than I am and she adopted me.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
Lillian: Of course, I-I was angry that we had to jump through these hoops in order to form a legal relationship.
Phyllis: But it didn't matter to me that I was now her mother legally [both laugh] because I have this young boy who loves me and I love him and I love his mother and she loves me. And so the rest of it, that's not important.
Lillian: In the state of California in 2008 for a period of about six months, same-sex couples could get married. And so we immediately got married. Um, didn’t occur to us to undo our adoption since that was a legal move for us. And then in, uh, 2015 same-sex marraige had became legal. And so we’ve had an adoption, we’ve had a domestic partnership, we had a marriage and that's not the end of our legal ties.
Phyllis: After I unadopted Lillian, our son Avram called up and he says, ‘Mama, Phyllis. Now you're going to have to adopt me. Otherwise I won't be your your son anymore.’ So we went to court, and I adopted him. That was very emotional because it was the final legal touch to the way we always felt about each other.
[MUSIC ENDS]
Lillian: On a personal level, nothing has changed [laughs]. On a larger level it -- it...I think if someone had told me in the 1950s that this would be possible, I would have thought they were smoking too much pot. You know, what it really felt like is we were determined to have a good life together. I'm just so happy for young people, that they don't have to look for ways around it. That they now have legal recognition that we would have loved from the beginning.
[THEME MUSIC FADES IN]
Lillian: But finally, finally, we have as well.
Phyllis: We’re married. We’re married and that does it.
Max Linsky: That was Phyllis Irwin and Lillian Faderman, and from Pineapple Street Studios, this is 70 Over 70, a show about making the most of the time we have left. I'm Max Linsky.
[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]
Max: My guest this week is Lilly Ledbetter.
Her name might be familiar — the first bill Barack Obama signed as president was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, but many people don’t know the story behind that bill, the story that took Lilly from Possum Trot, Alabama to the Supreme Court and completely changed her life in the process.
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
Max: So that's where this conversation starts, with Lilly telling the story of the day she got an anonymous note at work that would set her on an entirely different course, one that has seen her travel the world fighting for equal pay.
I wanted to hear Lilly tell that story for a couple of reasons.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Max: One, it’s about how pain or injustice we endure as young people — even if we don’t know about it at the time — can completely alter our later years. Two, I was curious about what it takes — emotionally and physically — to suddenly become an activist at an age when many people are settling into retirement. And finally, I wanted to know if all these years of fighting, when she’s won some battles and lost others, have been worth it.
Lilly Ledbetter is 83 years old.
INTERVIEW
Max: Lilly Ledbetter, I'm, uh, I'm so happy we're doing this, thanks for doing the show.
Lilly: Thank you. I enjoy the opportunity.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Lilly: Any time I get to tell my story and talk about my journey, I appreciate that.
Max: I know you've told the story lots of times, but could you tell it once more for people who are listening who maybe don't know exactly how you ended up where you’ve ended up?
Lilly: Yeah, this is an awesome story, it’s an awesome journey. And it's not only my case sometimes, but it's a lot of other people because what happened to me, I felt like I was coming into good jobs just as women had the doors opening for us a little bit, but it was still hard to get the right pay. And, uh, after being with Jacksonville State University and then H&R Block applied for Goodyear. I wanted a job in production area because I felt like that be where the money would really be to help me to send my two children to college, pay off the mortgage and save for the rest of my life. So I got a job there in 1979, but after 19 years, I found out that I was being paid 40 percent less than my male counterparts.
Max: Now there's two things I think people need to know. One is this was a tire factory.
Lilly: That's right.
Max: This is difficult work. This is not sitting in an office. It's making tires. And the second thing is how you found out. Can you-can you just tell me quickly how you learned about this pay discrepancy?
Lilly: We were working 12 hour shifts at this point, and I go in to work my evening shift from 7:00 at night to 7:00 in the morning. And the first thing I do is read the day night book for any information I might need for that shift and then I'll get my mail out of a little box. We, each one, had one at work. And I read my mail, and someone give me a fourth of a sheet of paper, torn, had three guys in my name and we four had the exact same job. And I was making 40 percent less than they was and that just hit me like a ton of bricks.
Max: Yeah, tell me about what that moment was like. I mean, I can't imagine.
Lilly: It was so devastating and humiliating. I could have crawled under a desk. And what I really would have enjoyed doing is going home, just leaving and go home. But see, I couldn't go home because I still had mortgage to pay. I still had car payments and I had two kids in college. I couldn't quit.
Max: You still needed the job.
Lilly: I had to work, but I didn't have a clue where that note came from. It just had those four names and our four basic pay. We were paid overtime. Like, for example, when my peer had a heart attack, I worked two months straight, 12 hour shifts, seven nights a week, and the work was exactly the same on all four shifts. And it was so devastating.
Max: So you get this note. This is 19 years you've been in this job. I imagine that in addition to being devastated, you are very angry.
Lilly: Well, not angry. I'm just disappointed. Hurt more like it.
Max: Huh, that's an interesting distinction.
Lilly: Well, I will tell you this. I grew up in one of the poorest counties of Alabama, and I was an only child. I didn't have anybody to fight with at home, so to speak. And one thing my mother taught me, she taught me that when that something happened to me, don't get angry and don't try to get even. Figure out how you're going to handle it, stay focused, and don't let anger eat up your energy.
Max: I guess that's right, but it also feels like such a human response to be mad in that moment.
Lilly: Well, if I had got mad, I never would have made it through that 12 hour shift [Max laughs]. But, see, what the problem was immediately, my mind goes into calculations and I'm thinking about all of those overtime hours, how many I had work. You take 12 hours every night, seven nights a week, you got a lot of overtime money coming. I thought about that and I'm thinking about, you know, how hard life had been for us. We were the average American middle class family trying to figure out how we’ll make ends meet. But halfway through that night, it hit me. My retirement is based on this. What I'm earning, my contributory retirement had been based on what our percentage from Goodyear. My 401k was 10 % of what I earned, matched with 6% stock, and my Social Security all would be based on what I'm earning.
Max: Hmm.
Lilly: At that point I was really two years away from retirement and I'm thinking, there's no way I can correct this. There's nothing I can do. But I thought about it during my shift and planned in my mind what I would do and so I told my husband when I got home, I said, ‘I do have to file a charge with the Equal Employment Commission unless you object.’ He said, ‘what time you want to leave?’
Max: [laughs] So you knew that night, this is what I'm going to do.
Lilly: I knew by time the end of the shift. And I knew what it would entail and I knew the repercussions. It would come back on me and they having in two more years to work. I knew what a mess I would be and what I would have to face. I knew that, but I was willing to do it because look, here I have worked all these years and all of this grease and let black and climbing ladders and throwing tires out of conveyors when they get locked up and doing exactly what the men were doing. And I was doing it better than some of them and at least as good as all of them. Now I don't mean I should have been paid if this guy got 6000 a lot. I should not have maybe gotten exactly 6000, but I should've been at least 5500. I should have been in the ballpark.
Max: But you weren't making 500 bucks less. You were making 40 percent less.
Lilly: Yeah. I was making 3700 a month. That was my base pay. When I Iearned how much difference they were making than me and I had already played around with a few numbers on a scratch card in my pocket during the night when I have a break or something--figuring out how much money I lost lies night than the month before, I just couldn't let it go. I'm just the type of person, if it's wrong, it's wrong. Let's make it right. Let's fight. Let's do what we have to do.
Max: You know, I know they're making a movie about your life, and I want to talk about what that's like, but that feels like a movie scene you doing in the math on a scratch card and realizing how much money had been taken from you.
Lilly: Yeah. One half of the month. I had lost four thousand $4000 in overtime.
Max: Wow.
Lilly: What you earn today will carry you own for the rest of your life. Uh, when we take jobs and go to work, our retirements starts right then. For young people, it establishes who they are and their status in life, how they live, what they eat, what I wear, and the communities they live in, their families, and the education they're able to provide, their savings for retirement and any recreation through the years. It determines all of that.
Max: Right, it's not just what wasn't in the pay stub, it's all the things that are taken away from you at this point in your life.
Lilly: That's true,
Max: Well, I want to talk more about this stage of your life, but can we zoom through what happened next?
Lilly: When my husband said, what time do you want to leave? So I took a shower, got fresh clothes on, he drove me to Birmingham because it was, like, almost a hundred miles to their office. And at that time I didn't have an appointment, of course, I just-- this is just off the cuff, I got to go. So investigator interviewer who called me back, her name was Ali Crum, and she interviewed me for over three hours.
Max: Wow.
Lilly: She never took a break. She didn't offer a break or nothing. And when I stood up to leave, she said, Mrs. Ledbetter, these people have been messing with you for a long time.
Max: So you talked to her for three hours--
Lilly: Yes.
Max: And then you take them to court and you win. And then Goodyear appeals, and the case goes all the way to the Supreme Court--
Lilly: Right.
Max: And not only does this decision have this massive impact on your personal finances, on your family's life, but it also has this huge precedent for equal pay across the country.
Lilly: Yeah. ‘Round the world.
Max: ‘Round the world and the case loses.
Lilly: We did. I filed a charge in ‘98, got the lawyer in ‘99, we got to federal court in 2003. It was before a federal jury, five men, two women. It lasted a week and I testified and they brought in every male manager at Goodyear to testify against me. I brought in two of the women. I mean, it was so obvious that I had been discriminated against simply because I was a woman.
Max: Can you tell me about that moment in the Supreme Court when the decision came down?
Lilly: Well, the attorneys called me and, uh, it was the second chair who called me, he said, ‘Lilly, don't worry about the media will handle them. Just refer them to us’. Well, NBC called and I said, ‘Sure, I'm Lilly Ledbetter. I live at 1206. Come on up.’ So they came up here and did an interview that afternoon. The next day, CNN called. I told them, I said, ‘Sure, I'm Lilly Ledbetter. Come right on up’. I invited them in. Uh, Norman Lear called and sent a crew in out of Washington, the American Way, and we worked all day long.
Max: It's so interesting to me that your answer to how did it feel when you lost is about how much attention came to you in the wake of that and how much you were able to start talking about this issue on a national scale, because that's basically what I was so curious about. You didn't win. You didn't get this money. You won't get it, right?
Lilly: No. It’s gone.
Max: It's gone. It's never coming [mhmm]. And yet the case completely changed the course of your life. You became a household name in your 70s. [Yes.] You've got Obama's first bill named for you.
Lilly: Yes. Yes!
Max: You've had this massive impact on not just the way that pay is administered in this country, but the way that it's thought about.
Lilly: Yes.
Max: What is it like to not get the money, but to have this incredible impact? Are you good with that? Would you rather have it the reversed?
Lilly: I have gotten more than what I would have had because had I won in Washington,at the Supreme Court--remember my verdict by then was only 360,000? The law firm would have gotten half and I had been told that I would be paying federal and state taxes only because it was in lieu of wages. I wouldn’t have had much money. I might have had 40,000 left. I might have broke even.
Max: Right. So it's like it wouldn't have ended up being that much money anyway.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Lilly: Yeah.
Max: And if you hadn't lost, probably none of this happens.
Lilly: No.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[[ MIDROLL]]
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Max: Do you feel like they're like almost two different versions of you, like, the before Lily and the after Lily?
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Lilly: Well, when I went to work for Goodyear, the University of Alabama gave us--I don't know what kind of test they called it. It was one of those at the end they told me I should’ve been a public speaker or a politician. And I thought that was the two funniest things I'd ever heard [Max laughs]. Looking back, I should have done it.
Max: You wish you had run for office?
Lilly: Yeah, I do, because I was, uh, 39 then. I was the perfect age. That would have been a wonderful time, but I had no idea. No idea that I had this in me. No idea.
Max: Has it changed how you see yourself this time in your life?
Lilly: Yes.
Max: How so?
Lilly: When they signed the bill at the White House, I had three checks handed to me to try to run for the representative in my area now. And I though-- I gave you a lot of thought because I would like to have done it. But I'm the type I don't like to lose, and if I do lose, I go to figure out a way to make myself look better, so, um, I finally decided I could do better telling my story.
Max: Do you ever think about what it would have been like if you'd run for office?
Lilly: Yes, it would have been tougher than it's really been on-on my family because my husband had cancer and after the-the verdict came out, I travelled solid those two years. I went to Denver, spoke at the Democratic convention that year.
Max: Yeah.
Lilly: And I came home and he had baked some sweet potatoes--fresh ones--and cooked me some cornbread because I knew I didn't get that in Denver [Max laughs]. So, you know, he was really nice to me, he always took care of the home base and, uh, took care of himself. And he got 34 radiation chemo treatments too. And I sacrificed him a lot and he knew it. But I offered. When he got so worried, when the going got pretty tough to sell him my half of the house. I said, I just leave you my half of the house. And that way, if Goodyear comes after me, I don't own nothing, so they can't get anything. And, um, he said, ‘Don't worry about it. We started in the beginning with nothing, we’ll start again, if we have to’.
Max: Sounds like an incredible guy.
Lilly: Yeah, he was. He was real--he really was. And he supported me and I worked a lot of those shifts at Goodyear, those 7 nights, 7 days a week, where he would drive me over there and I'd sleep another 30 minutes in the car and he'd be out there and pick me up. Otherwise I'd be cleaning out ditches on the way home.
Max: What has it been like for the people in your life, like the people in Possum Trot for you to have this incredible experience? Has it changed your relationships with the people you've known your whole life?
Lilly: Yes, it did. You know how your friends-- you really find out who your friends are. Now, my family, they love it. Everybody has just been really incredible. The people who live right around me, they don't quite understand. I have my pictures in the--my den-- of me and Ted Kennedy, of me and Barack Obama, me and Hillary, and me and George Miller from California, the one who started the Ledbetter bill.
Max: Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, do your friends from Possum Trot ever come over for dinner and they're like, ‘All right, Lilly, enough with-- enough with all these photos of you and Obama’ [Lilly laughs]
Lilly: Oh, I got a better--I had all my cousins on my dad's side of the family here for dinner once and I tried to show them. I had the book and all of the pictures and talk a little about my trip. Well everybody was just-- they didn’t want to talk about it. They wasn’t even looking at the pictures of describing where I was and I was telling all this stuff. Well, they never just say nothing. And as soon as they ate, they all just got up and left. But what I found out later? They're all Republicans.
Max: Oh!
Lilly: And what I talked about, it don't mean if you're a Democrat or you're a Republican. What I'm talking about on equal pay, equal work--this is an American right. It has nothing to do with either party.
Max: So their politics were more important than, uh, being proud of their cousin?
Lilly: Yeah, yeah.
Max: What was that like for you?
Lilly: You know, that's what you know about wisdom. That's one thing you learn when you get older in life. I was very fortunate I had a boss once at Goodyear that I learned a lot from him. You've got to make your mind up and do what's important to you. And life is too short. I don't care if you do live to be 83, like I have been so fortunate. Life is still short and I do not mix with places and people that they don't want me there.
Max: Was it hard to figure out what you wanted?
Lilly: No. No, because I have people I dearly love, I think the world of them, they would give me anything they've got and they helped give me that.
Max: You were saying before that you had a manager at Goodyear who taught you a lot about what it means to live a good life.
Lilly: Mm-Hmm.
Max: What has this part of your life taught you about what it means to live well?
Lilly: If it’s right is right and if it's supposed to work out, it will. Now, I didn't get the 300,00. But I go to Washington and testify for paycheck fairness, I try to get things done and changed. I try to campaign for people. I believe in and, uh, it's been my journey
Max: You've made all this progress. Do you feel like there's still a long way to go?
Lilly: Oh yes. Long way to go, because I don't know what it will ever take for, um, men to always respect women and their positions. It's better now. I've heard some lecturers say that it would require mothers and fathers to raise their sons from the very get-go to be respectful. And that may be.
Max: Are you optimistic that we'll get there?
Lilly: Yeah. Yes. Yes. You know, we've already achieved a lot more in my life than I thought we might. Most every state, like New Jersey and New Mexico, California--all those states have passed equal pay laws. And they are very, very good. We're going to continue. We've got to get people back on the track of working together. But we'll-we're going to get there. I don't know why we can't get ERA. I've never figured that one out yet. But the women in the Constitution, I can't figure that one out. I'm not sure I'll see that one in my life, but I like what's happened because if a good person wants to work, they can find a place in this country to get the pay and to get their fair treatment.
Max: You've lived this amazing life, do you think about your legacy? What are you going to leave behind in this world?
Lilly: They're going to say, she made a difference. That's what I've told my pastor. I said, ‘ When you do my funeral,’ I said, ‘I want you to say she made a difference. Very last thing’. Because one thing you have to have to be on this journey I've been on, you've got to be a very, very strong person and then you can't take things personally. And that's what I'll tell people going into management. I don't care what--you don't take it personal. You don't wear chips on your shoulder. You just let it slide off and work it out and move on.
Max: Is that something you can learn to do, not take it personally?
Lilly: I did because somebody gave me that advice. A really good friend of mine told me that when I started in management. He said, ‘Now Lily, what you do, you just let it slide off your back.’ And I grew up going to westerns. And he said ‘That white hat cowboy got knocked down, lost the girl, lost his money, lost his hat, but he always came out the winner in the end.’ And that was a good thing to think about. It put everything in perspective, and it made it easier for me. And that's the way I look at it.
Max: It's like, uh, getting that note slipped to you and deciding there's no point in getting mad about this...
Lilly: Mhmm, that’s right.
Max: I'm just going to do something.
Lilly: That’s right. Do something about it. I'm going to do all I can.
Max: It sounds like you really enjoy this life.
Lilly: I do. It's good, it's good, it's good. My house looks like a hoarders house right now because I'm going through things and trying to clean out and get things ready, but I'm 83. I don't know how long I’ll live.
Max: Are you packing up your house because you're moving out?
Lilly: I would like to see more house, I got an acre lot. It’s uh..I need to get something smaller and cheaper.
Max: Where would you want to go?
Lilly: Um, toward Birmingham because my daughter's family, my grandsons, live there. But here I've got good neighbors and good friends, and, uh, they look out after me. If they don't see me come out, they come and check on me because, um, I might be dead in here. And one--my neighbor across the street kept worrying because he didn't know where a key was [Max laughs]. I said, “Well, let me show you.” So I showed him where the keys hid. And, um, so it-it-it’s good.
Max: You seem so casual about, um, your neighbors maybe discovering you’re dead.
Lilly: Yeah.
Max: Do you think about dying? Are you scared of it?
Lilly: No, I talk about it a lot because, uh, I'm ready to go. I'm ready.
Max: Lily, I've talked to all these people on the show and I've asked most of them a version of that question--kind of, are you scared of dying? I think you're the first person to say that you are ready. If you feel ready, does that mean that there's not more that you want to do?
Lilly: Let me rephrase that. I could go, but I really--I really like to hang around a while. I've still got more things to do. I have a strong faith. I really do. I have a strong faith that God--somebody up there is looking out after me. It’s been...I mean, I know it. I have to believe that there's a God in heaven and looks out after me. The doors that have opened and the things that have occurred. I've met so many wonderful--and you, young people--you're the ones that's gonna keep the world going and help make a difference because it's important.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Max: You got faith in us?
Lilly: I do. I do. That’s something else you’ve got to have. You’ve got to have faith, hope and you never give up. You never give up.
CREDITS
Max: 70 Over 70 is a production of Pineapple Street Studios, and it’s produced by Jess Hackel.
Our associate producer is Janelle Anderson. Our editors are Maddy Sprung-Keyser and Joel Lovell. Research and additional reporting by Charley Locke.
Our mixer is Elliott Adler, and Jenna Weiss-Berman and I are the executive producers.
Our theme song is Like a Dream by Francis and the Lights. And the music you’re listening to now is by Beverly Glenn Copeland, who’s 77. Original music by Terence Bernardo. Additional music by Noble Kids, and music licensing by Dan Knishkowy.
Our cover art is by Maira Kalman who is 72, and our episode art is by Lynn Staley. She's 74, and she’s also my mom.
Thank you, Phyllis Irwin. Thank you, Lillian Faderman. And thank you, Lilly Ledbetter.
I'm Max Linsky. Thanks for listening.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]