36 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY school career. Schlafly said she left City House “sure of her family, her religion, her teachers, her friends—and, most of all, sure of herself.”33 In 1941, she graduated valedictorian of her class and went to Maryville College in St. Louis. After the first semester, Schlafly rescinded her scholarship and moved across town to Washington University, where she worked the night shift as a gunner to pay for her education.34 After graduation, she left St. Louis for Radcliffe College, the all-girls sister college of Harvard, to study for a master’s degree in political science. She ended her formal education in 1978 with a law degree from Washington University Law School.35 Many childhood friends noted that Schlafly was a liberated woman long before the 1960s-1970s Women’s Liberation Movement. She knew what she wanted from life and worked hard to achieve those goals.36 Though she was content in her single life, her marriage to Fred Schlafly, a lawyer fifteen years her senior, gave her the political and intellectual influence she needed. Schlafly’s husband admired her intellectual astuteness, and she credited him for “adding depth to her understanding of how communism, internationalism, and liberalism were intrinsically linked.”37 Twenty years later, this conservative “education” guided her as she started the Eagle Forum organization and led the STOP ERA campaign. The Eagle Forum Central to Schlafly’s STOP ERA campaign’s success was the Eagle Forum.38 In 1966, Betty Friedan formed the National Organization for Women (NOW) to ensure women had protection under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.39 However, by 1975, conservatives labeled NOW members as championing the liberal feminist agenda and supporting abortion, anti-family policies, and the ERA. The National Organization for Women organized pro-ERA activists, consisting of young, highly educated women who worked outside the home. The Eagle Forum’s STOP ERA activists were also young, highly educated women, but with one distinct difference. According to Donald Critchlow, “98 percent of anti-ERA supporters claimed church membership, while only 31 to 48 percent of pro-ERA supporters did.”40 Drawing on her conservative family values, Schlafly marketed the Eagle Forum to evangelical women
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