Roxcy Bolton
Campaigner for gender equality – even in the naming of storms
ROXCY BOLTON, who has died aged 90, was a crusading figure in America’s early feminist movement, campaigning on issues ranging from the treatment of rape victims to the naming of tropical storms after women.
Taking inspiration from Eleanor Roosevelt, who had praised women’s wartime contributions at the inaugural meeting of the UN General Assembly, Roxcy Bolton lobbied vigorously for the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have made discrimination on the grounds of gender unconstitutional.
Though the amendment was never ratified, the campaign generated considerable debate and opened the way to more concrete success. Roxcy Bolton helped convince Richard Nixon to designate August 26 – the anniversary of universal female suffrage in America – Women’s Equality Day.
In 1974 she opened America’s first rape treatment centre (later renamed the Roxcy Bolton Rape Treatment Center) in Miami. That same year she set up the Citizens’ Crime Watch of Miami Dade, also the first of its kind, following a series of sexual assaults on women in her local area.
Other campaigns focused on more insidious forms of sexism. In 1969 Miami’s store managers found themselves under fire for the men-only dining sections in their restaurants. When they resisted her calls for reform, Roxcy Bolton threatened to picket the stores. “Men and women sleep together”, she reasoned. “Why can’t they eat together?” The managers gave in.
The next recipient of her typed letters of protest was the National Weather Service. Living in America’s most hurricane-prone state, Roxcy Bolton had become unhappy at reports of the damage inflicted by Betsy (1965) or Gladys (1968). Women, she claimed, “deeply resent being arbitrarily associated with disaster”. After her initial appeal in 1970 got nowhere, she suggested that US senators should be honoured instead, since “senators delight in having things named after them.”
In 1978 the National Weather Service and the World Meteorological Association announced that they would start alternating between genders, and Hurricane Bob hit Louisiana a few months later.
Roxcy O’neal was born at Duck Hill, Mississippi, on June 3 1926. Her father was a farmer and her mother a schoolteacher. Roxcy, however, had loftier ambitions, declaring her intention to become a congressman at the age of eight. Her determination hardened when, aged 10, she witnessed the lynching of two black men. Later she would take part in the broader civil rights movement as well as in early feminist marches.
In 1966 Roxcy Bolton joined 12 other women to launch the Miami-dade County chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which backed electoral candidates in favour of equal pay and employment rights. She cut her ties with NOW 10 years later over the creation of a lesbian caucus, having served as the organisation’s national vice-president.
Along the way she had engaged in several highprofile skirmishes, including with the manager of the Playboy Plaza Hotel, to whom she posed the question: “How would you like to walk around with a wad of cotton on your rear end?”
Despite suffering two strokes and two heart attacks in her later years, she continued to write and attend meetings – to the occasional displeasure of local mayors and police officers. “They yell at me, ‘Sit down Ms Bolton!’” she told the Miami Herald in 2010. “I’m not a wimp.”
Her first marriage, to William Hart, ended in divorce, and a son from that marriage died in 2000. In 1960 she married Commander David Bolton, who later served as president of Men for the Equal Rights Amendment. They had three children and he predeceased her in 2004.
Roxcy Bolton, born June 3 1926, died May 17 2017