Bella Abzug, feminist and civil rights advocate, embodied
many Americans’ discontent with the political establishment
in the tumultuous Vietnam War era. She gained notoriety as
one of the most colorful and controversial House Members
during the 1970s. Once quoted as saying “women have
been trained to talk softly and carry a lipstick”—a play on
Theodore Roosevelt’s famous declaration that on foreign
policy, America “should speak softly and carry a big stick”—the determined New York Congresswoman spent much of
her life refuting the notion that women should remain on the
political sidelines.1 Despite serving in Congress for only three
terms, Abzug’s political flair and unwavering determination
helped inspire an entire generation of women and created
a new model for future Congresswomen. “She was such a
trailblazer,” a former aide noted after Abzug’s death in 1998.
“It wasn’t that she was the first woman in Congress. It was
that she was the first woman to get in Congress and lead the
way toward creating a feminist presence.”2
The daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants Emmanuel
and Esther Tanklefsky Savitzky, Bella Abzug was born
Bella Savitzky in the Bronx, New York, on July 24, 1920.
She received an AB from Hunter College in Manhattan in
1942 and immediately entered Columbia University Law
School. In 1944 Bella Savitzky married Martin Abzug. As a
stockbroker and novelist, her husband had little inclination
toward politics. Nevertheless, Bella Abzug counted him as
her closest confidant and supporter: “one of the few unneurotic
people left in society.”3 The Abzugs raised two
children: Eve and Liz. After interrupting her studies to work
in a shipyard during World War II, Bella Abzug served as
editor of the Columbia Law Review, and graduated with an
LLB in 1947. For the next two decades Abzug practiced
law on behalf of people whom the existing legal and social
structures bypassed, citizens she once described as being
“on the outside of power.”4 She defended Willie McGee, an
African-American man convicted and sentenced to death in
Mississippi for raping a white woman. She also represented
individuals whom Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy’s
investigatory committee tarred as communist agents. In
1961 Abzug cofounded Women Strike for Peace, a group
that protested the nuclear arms race and, later, the American
military commitment in Vietnam. She served as a leader
in the “Dump Johnson” movement to remove embattled
President Lyndon B. Johnson from the 1968 Democratic
ticket. Reflecting on this long record, Abzug later conceded
that she was at heart an activist rather than a politician.5
In 1970, at the age of 50, Abzug made her first attempt
at elected office, when she decided to enter the race for a
U.S. House of Representatives seat in Manhattan’s wealthy,
liberal Upper West Side. Employing the campaign slogan
“This woman’s place is in the House … the House of
Representatives!” Abzug ran on an antiwar and pro-feminist
platform. Her insistence that she would have a stronger voice
and more active presence on Capitol Hill than her opponent
helped Abzug earn 55 percent of the vote in the Democratic
primary and unseat the seven-term incumbent, Leonard
Farbstein.6 In the general election, Abzug defeated Republican-Liberal Barry Farber, a radio talk show host, in a three-way
election, with 52 percent to Farber’s 43 percent.7 Throughout
the campaign, Abzug benefited from the support of celebrity
entertainers and New York City Mayor John Vliet Lindsay.
The national media focused on her effort, foreshadowing
the publicity she would attract as a sitting Representative.8
After taking the official oath of office for the 92nd
Congress (1971–1973) on January 3, 1971, Abzug took a
“people’s oath” on the House steps administered by her New
York colleague Shirley Chisholm. Onlookers cheered, “Give
’em hella, Bella!” By seeking a seat on the coveted Armed
Services Committee, Abzug also flaunted House decorum,
which expected freshman to accept lower-level committee
assignments. The request was denied (she eventually accepted
positions on the Government Operations and Public Works
committees). Undeterred, she worked on devising methods
to dismantle the entrenched House seniority system that
prevented most newly elected Representatives from receiving
influential assignments. Despite her freshman status,
Abzug made waves in Congress by supporting a variety of
controversial causes. On the first day of the session, she
introduced legislation demanding the withdrawal of U.S.
forces from Vietnam. She authored a bill to end the draft,
an institution she likened to “slavery” motivated by “insane
priorities,” and she asked for an investigation into the
competence of widely feared Federal Bureau of Investigation
Director J. Edgar Hoover.9 “I spend all day figuring out how
to beat the machine and knock the crap out of the political
power structure,” Abzug wrote in her journal, published in
1972.10 “Battling Bella,” a nickname she earned because of
her tenacity and confrontational demeanor, also had the
distinction of being one of the first politicians to publicly call
for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon, even
before the 1973 congressional outcry about his Vietnam
policy in early 1972.11
Writer Norman Mailer once described Abzug’s voice
as an instrument that “could boil the fat off a taxicab
driver’s neck.”12 Cognizant that her personality often
prompted discussion and, at times, dismay from onlookers,
Abzug retorted, “There are those who say I’m impatient,
impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash and overbearing.
Whether I’m any of these things or all of them, you can
decide for yourself. But whatever I am—and this ought
to be made clear from the outset—I am a very serious
woman.”13 Easy to spot in her trademark wide-brimmed hat
(which she began wearing as a young female professional
because she believed it was the only way men “would take
you seriously”), Abzug waged a highly publicized battle
to protect her right to wear it on the House Floor. Her
colorful style attracted as many dedicated opponents as
it did admirers and allies. A 1972 report by Ralph Nader
estimated that Abzug’s sponsorship of a bill often cost it
as many as 30 votes.14 Nevertheless, she inspired young
women, many of whom became prominent politicians.
“Let’s be honest about it: She did not knock politely on the
door,” New York Representative Geraldine Ferraro said.
“She took the hinges off of it.” The 1984 Democratic vice
presidential candidate conceded, “If there never had been a
Bella Abzug, there never would have been a Gerry Ferraro.”15
In 1972, when Abzug’s district was merged with a
neighboring one, she decided to run against popular reform
Democrat William Fitts Ryan in a newly created district
which extended her former west Manhattan district’s
boundaries farther south and east. The primary was a bitter
contest, even by New York City’s standards. Ryan defeated
Abzug but died two months before the general election. The
Democratic committee appointed Abzug as its replacement
candidate. She defeated Ryan’s widow, Priscilla, who ran
on the Liberal Party ticket in another divisive campaign.
Abzug took 56 percent of the vote to Ryan’s 28 percent in
a five-way race. In 1974 Abzug easily defeated her GOP
opponent, Stephen Posner, with 79 percent of the vote.16
Abzug’s sustained clash with the conventions of Congress
and her party’s political machine mitigated her ability to fulfill
her ambitious political agenda, but she did achieve some solid
results. Her most noteworthy contributions, particularly the
“sunshine” laws under the Freedom of Information Act, came
as a member of the Government Operations Committee.
She worked to make government, particularly national
security policies, more transparent. The “sunshine law,” which
required government hearings to be held in public, came
out of the Subcommittee on Government Information and
Individual Rights, which she chaired.17 During her first term,
she coauthored the Child Development Act with Brooklyn
Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. When promoting the
legislation on the floor of the House, she emphasized that
the bill concerned women as much as children, commenting,
“Without adequate, low-cost day care facilities, women are
doomed to occupy low-paying, low-prestige jobs; without
day care, women must remain economic serfs.”18 Abzug also
introduced groundbreaking legislation aimed at increasing
the rights of gay Americans. The bill called for amending the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 “to prohibit discrimination on the
basis of sexual or affectional preference.”19
In 1976 Abzug chose not to run for a fourth House
term, instead waging a close but unsuccessful campaign
against Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Democratic primary
for an open Senate seat. In 1977 she also failed in her bid
for the New York City Democratic mayoral nomination.
When the winner of the mayor’s race, Edward Irving Koch,
resigned from Congress, Abzug tried but failed to win his
vacant seat on New York’s Upper East Side. President Jimmy
Carter named her the co-chair of the National Advisory
Committee on Women in 1978, though Abzug later was
replaced when she criticized the administration’s economic
policies. In 1986 Abzug made another bid for the House of
Representatives, this time in Westchester County, New York.
After winning the Democratic primary, however, she lost in
the general election to the Republican incumbent, Joseph J.
DioGuardi.20 Her last attempt to regain a place in Congress
came six years later when Abzug announced her intention to
run for the open seat in her old district on the Upper West
Side of Manhattan, following the death of Congressman
Ted Weiss. Abzug’s desire to return to politics was cut short
when party leaders failed to back her candidacy.21
In her two-decade, post-political career, Abzug remained
a respected and visible figure in the feminist movement.
She addressed international women’s conferences in
Beijing, Nairobi, and Copenhagen. She also established
the Women USA Fund and the Women’s Environment
and Development Organization, both nonprofit advocacy
groups that worked to give women’s issues more prominence
on the United Nations’ agenda. New York Mayor David
Dinkins appointed her to chair his commission on the
status of women and she served from 1993 to 1995. Her
health declined as she battled breast cancer and heart
disease. Abzug died in New York City on March 31, 1998.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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