I didn’t love the dress code… anathema to a girl who’d had to buy a dress for high school graduation because she didn’t own one,A Federal Case,I didn’t love the dress code… anathema to a girl who’d had to buy a dress for high school graduation because she didn’t own one
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If your parents were anything like mine they probably told you at some point not to “make a federal case” out of something. But back when I was ten making a federal case was exactly what I did.
As a ten-year-old gung ho athlete I wanted to play baseball. Not just backyard sandlot pickup games — real baseball games. To do that I decided to join Little League. But in those years of busing and civil rights and desegregation Little League was strictly all male. Girls were welcome at games of course but as family and fans only. Undaunted two friends and I showed up early one Saturday morning money and registration forms in hand. We were told that not only could we not play we couldn’t even register as we were (obviously) girls.
I arrived home fuming. “Sue them!”
My parents did just that.
In a case that landed me on the front page of the Boston Globe for weeks (and more embarrassingly on the bulletin board of my fifth-grade classroom) and made me and several other like-minded girls around the nation the talk of the radio talk shows we took Little League to federal court.
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