Carol Lynn Pearson has kept a diary since 1956, when she was a senior in high school. She graciously shared a collection of excerpts with Rachel Rueckert that refer to Exponent II’s history. The following are a few selections from her diary, unedited to honor the primary source.
January 6, 1972
Toward the first part of December I called KBYU and suggested they have a panel discussion on the Equal Rights Amendment, because there’s so much confusion about it. They set up the program. On the pro side: Virginia Cutler, former head of the College of Family Living, State Senator Robert O. Bowen, and Carol Lynn Pearson. On the con side: BYU Professors Rodney Turner and Carlton Marlowe. For the first time in my life I came face to face with and shook hands with Rodney Turner. First Virginia spoke, declaring her endorsement of the amendment. Then Senator Bowen spoke, from a plane of democratic philosophy. I then spoke, mostly giving a perspective for the woman’s movement in Utah by rehearsing some of my significant finds in the early Woman’s Exponent. Just that day I had received in the mail from Leonard Arrington a copy of the “Utah Woman Suffrage Songbook.” I selected one of the songs, words written by Louise Lula Green Richards, to be sung to the tune “Hope of Israel.” I slipped a copy of it to Virginia just before we went on, and I had her join me in singing it on the broadcast:
Woman, Arise
Freedom’s daughter, rouse from slumber;
See the curtains are withdrawn
Which for long thy mind have clouded;
Lo! Thy day begins to dawn.
Woman, rise, thy penance o’er;
Sit thou in the dust no more;
Seize the scepter, hold the van,
Equal with thy brother, man.
I was told the camera flipped to Rodney Turner while we were singing, and he had his head down, scowling. Dr. Turner came across as a very belligerent man. He kept saying, “This amendment will strip women of the rights they hold most dear — to be protected, to raise a family, to be provided for, etc.”
August 26, 1972
I’ve spent a number of hours in the special collections room at the BYU library reading the very earliest issues of the Woman’s Exponent, the forerunner of the Relief Society Magazine. Wow! They are in the forefront of the women’s movement of today. These ladies are really something — Eliza R. Snow, Susa Young Gates, and others. Eliza has some essays in the Exponent that are very outspoken about developing a larger sphere for women. I intend to put together excerpts or an article which I hope the Ensign will use, or maybe the New Era. If they dare.
Yesterday I spoke for an hour with Leonard Arrington on the subject. I knew we were kindred spirits. He said, “I’m so happy to hear you say all these things, and see you doing these things. And you’re a good Latter-day Saint for doing it.” He said that since he came to the Church Historian’s office, they are giving much greater emphasis to the role women have played in Church history. I am ever so grateful for him.
September 23, 1972
What a wonderful thing I have to report! The article1 I wrote from my research into the first year of the Woman’s Exponent and sent to the Ensign — Jay Todd, editor, bought it the day he received it, and it will appear in January or February. I have received a check for $100. I’m just delighted they’re going to use it. I was afraid it might be considered rather too controversial a subject to get into. Ran into Leonard Arrington on campus yesterday and told him. He was very pleased.
April 25,1973
I am reading the Woman’s Exponents that Aunt Mamie and I brought down from Idaho months ago, wrapped in an old white curtain and with the names of my grandmother Sarah Oakey Sirrine and my great-grandmother Mary Oakey written on them. There are several years’ worth. Right now I’m in 1880. What an adventure. Brilliant essays on the sphere of woman. Emmeline B. Wells, after whom my mother was named, has already won my devoted admiration. They were so much in advance of us. What has happened?
November 12, 1973
Of course I did not keep up with my diary while I was back East, so here I am having to do it. I met many great women back there. Stephanie Goodson was elected editor of the Woman’s Exponent II that they have decided to publish. She and I talked a lot about it and I gave her my best words of caution and balance. Stephanie is planning a “Dear Abby” type column, hoping Laurel Ulrich will write it. The general climate back there is rather different from here. Stephanie said a girl in her branch asked the Branch President if she could bless her baby; the Branch president said no.
Thursday night they all met for a pot-luck dinner and conversation. They are an impressive bunch. They told me they had solved the housework problem some time ago by deciding it simply wasn’t as important as they had previously thought.
. . . I myself am sick to death of [discussing women’s issues]. I wish to solve it in some reasonable way and move on. Sitting around talking about it is like studying your bicycle for days and days and never getting on it and going anywhere. I want to go somewhere. Except that some study and work in the area will always be pertinent, for there are such a lot of women who don’t even know they have bicycles.
November 10, 1974
I know I have mentioned Exponent II, the woman’s paper put out by Claudia Bushman and the other Boston women, and I believe it will be a very good thing. Two issues now have appeared. The first carried my narrative poem “The Steward,” and the second “Millie’s Mother’s Red Dress.” Both have had a lot of impact.
December 12, 1974
We met at Jan’s last Tuesday. Everyone was there except M., who came with me the first time and decided she couldn’t continue. She had feelings, which she has had for years, and which she has to suppress in order to survive. Her husband has a very traditional picture of what women are supposed to be, canners, quilters, docile, home-bound. She was afraid that if she came to our group, brought up all the feelings she has locked away, that it would be risking too much, risking perhaps even her marriage.
She called me the other night, however, and said that she had had a great talk with her husband, they had stayed up late after she’d gotten home, past midnight. She had described to him all the women that were present that night, their positions in life, their intellectual and spiritual qualifications, and he was very impressed. The next morning he said to her, “You don’t have to do any canning, and quilting, anything you don’t want to do. All you have to do is be your own person.”
November 4, 1975
My meeting with Wendell Ashton, director of Church Public Communications, was somewhat as I had expected. He does not realize the real dilemma that Mormon women are in when asked the questions the world is asking. I told him that I could not give out the pat little answers that usually are forthcoming when people of the Church are interviewed — as when Belle Spafford was asked how it felt to be a second-class citizen in the Mormon Church. She responded that there’s no way in the world anyone could accuse the Church of that.
. . . Then we went down to visit Robert Hales, Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve. Brother Hales is an Easterner, rather unlike your Utah breed of Mormon. He told me he loved me as much as the law allowed, and that he was determined to get my poem “The Cast” in the New Era and not let Exponent II have it. In fact, I learned that the poem raised questions that made them set up a whole new department under Correlation — interpretation of doctrine. He said that after reading “Millie’s Mother’s Red Dress” he’s never been the same man. And he said, “I want to get some of your poems into the Melchizedek Priesthood manuals. The brethren need to be reading those things more than the sisters do.” A highly encouraging encounter.
November 8, 1993
I write from Boston, in the home of Carrel Sheldon, who called me in the first place about performing Mother Wove the Morning here.
She told me of the meeting of the Exponent II staff a few weeks ago to talk about how to deal with the excommunications as far as their paper went. Some women were very frightened and sure they should not touch it at all. Some felt they must address it strongly. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich was there and said that a part of her just wanted to go about her life and totally ignore everything the Brethren did, and another part of her wanted to “blast them with everything I’ve got.”
Carol Lynn is an author, activist, and contributor to Exponent II. She is devoted to transforming patriarchy into partnership.
Walnut Creek, California
