Let Me Play

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Make sure to check out this Detroit Free Press column on Title IX, and new book on the law’s history.
Wall Street Journal editor and reporter Karen Blumenthal, author of Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX, says that when she grew up in the early 70s, “boys were the crossing guards…they ran the movie projectors in class; they got the best playing fields. But with Title IX, all that began to change.”
I knew the “official” background on Title IX, but the real-life story behind the law was news to me:
According to Blumenthal’s book, Ann Arbor activist and mother Marcia Federbush was first to file a Title IX complaint. It was against the University of Michigan, which in the early 1970s spent $2.6 million annually on men’s sports — and $0 for women’s.
A female nurse once told Federbush that girls shouldn’t play sports because of their vulnerable internal organs.
“I wondered whether it was bad for boys to play contact sports because of their delicate external organs,” said Federbush.
Priceless. I need this book.

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