On the morning of March 28, 1977, hundreds of Baylor students settled into their theater seats spread across Waco Hall, likely having marked themselves ‘present’ for another Chapel attendance credit. Often the young men and women would expect to hear a sermon in the historic hall, but this week was the annual University Forum.
A woman in her 40s, crowned with soft, long caramel hair, took to the stage, the glare of the spotlights shining from the thick lenses of her eyeglasses. She introduced herself: Gloria Steinem. Many would have recognized her face and name from the newspapers.
She began to speak, her measured voice forming the words ‘inequality,’ ‘revolution,’ and even ‘abortion,’ which hung in the air oft reserved for Baptist sermons.
“As long as women feel they need men for identity more than men need women for identity, there will be inequality, anger, Uncle Tom-ming, resentment and no mutual respect,” Steinem said, as quoted in the next day’s issue of The Lariat.
STUDENTS SEND AN INVITATION
Gloria Steinem, 92, died in her New York City home on Sept. 2, 2026. Steinem, whom Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013, laid crucial groundwork for the modern feminist movement in America. Her activism was kindled during her career as a reporter in the 1960s, serving as a founding editor at New York magazine, and as founder of Ms. magazine, continuing through the end of her life. A political organizer who co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, Steinem traveled all across the United States for speaking engagements (hosted often at universities) which promoted the women’s liberation movement.
One week after conservative commentator and former governor (and future president) Ronald Reagan had spoken on campus in 1977, Gloria Steinem had the stage. Both Reagan and Steinem were at Baylor as part of the school’s University Forum series, which invited guest speakers to address students on a wide variety of topics.
Steinem had not been invited to Baylor by the administration, however. She was on campus thanks to a letter penned by a group of mostly young women, students with the Mortar Board honor society — a chaptered organization chartered at Baylor in 1970 with special emphasis on advancing women receiving higher education. According to The Lariat, Mortar Board students had asked the political activist to speak in honor of Baylor’s 16th annual Women’s Day as the college’s Frances B. McCall lecturer.
Steinem spoke first at Chapel on the morning of March 28, then attended a luncheon with students, and hosted a Q&A session at Bennett Auditorium in the Draper Academic Building.
NO CUSSIN’, NO FIGHTIN’, JUST FEMINISM
Wanda McKee Fowler (‘78) is an appellate lawyer working out of Houston. She’s practiced law for 45 years, spending just under 14 years in office as a justice on Texas’ 14th Court of Appeals. But in 1977, Fowler (at the time just Wanda McKee) was a Baylor undergraduate studying economics. She was also president of Baylor’s Mortar Board chapter, the group that would summon Steinem. Fowler recalled standing before a committee of Baylor’s leadership, explaining her chapter’s plans for Steinem.
“There was concern that she might cuss when she was speaking,” Fowler said. “And so I had to do a lot of research — and of course back then we didn’t have the internet. So I remember doing a lot of research, but I couldn’t find anything indicating that she ever cussed in any of her speeches.”
Baylor’s administration was skeptical.
“They asked a lot of questions,” Fowler continued. “They wanted a comfort level that, you know, it wouldn’t degenerate into chaos when she came… I did actually have to write her a letter and ask her not to swear. I know we were a little embarrassed about that.”
But eventually, the University approved Steinem to speak at several events on campus.
“She was just so gracious and so kind to us,” Fowler said. “We all got to meet with her in private and she was very generous with her time… I think she was proud of us for asking her to come speak. You know, we apologized for having to ask her not to swear when she spoke. And she said, ‘don’t be worried about that at all.’”
GLORIA GIVES A SERMON
“The women’s movement is a revolution and worldwide movement, not just a reform movement,” Steinem said at Waco Hall, as quoted by The Lariat. “As part of the human rights movement, it is alive in every country and is most vital and deepest against the caste system.”
Steinem spent time discussing how women have been branded ‘less than human’ for thousands of years. She said the work women have been historically given is only that which men don’t want to do, and they have been underpaid for that work. But the women’s liberation movement, she said, was not just one of intellectual jousting and philosophical debate — it was born from the needs of everyday people.
Steinem explained that she didn’t want the women’s movement to integrate women into the existing societal structures, but to transform that structure entirely.
The Lariat also reported on Steinem’s time speaking at the Bennett Auditorium, where she was able to engage in active discussion with students. She raised Title IX concerns about universities favoring men’s athletics over women’s teams in attention and resources.
“It seems terribly unfair, especially at a Christian school like Baylor, that the ‘money changers at the temple’ are not willing to share their 50 cents with those who only earn 20 cents,” said Steinem, as quoted in The Lariat.
CAMPUS REACTS
Dr. Robert Donahoo (‘78) recently retired from teaching English at Sam Houston State University after 34 years. In 1977, however, he was an English major at Baylor, and a member of The Lariat newspaper staff. He recalls accompanying his girlfriend at the time to Steinem’s speaking engagement in Bennett Auditorium.
Steinem asked those in attendance to participate in a thought experiment, Donahoo said. She asked everyone to imagine what they would be doing as professionals in the next 10 to 20 years.
“I immediately saw myself writing F. Scott Fitzgerald-esque novels and being a famous writer on the road,” Donahoo said. “And then she said, ‘Now I want you to think about what your partner, your spouse, will be doing.’ And at the time, I had been reading Tolstoy and was really aware of his relationship with his wife and how she copied, by hand, all of his manuscripts. And so in my head, I had this little immediate image of my unknown wife copying my manuscripts for me, doing my grunt work that I’m too important to do.”
Following a brief moment of silence, Steinem asked the students to imagine themselves with the roles reversed.
“She said, ‘Now I want you to think that that’s what your life is limited to,’” Donahoo recalled. “And sitting in my little seat, I said the Baylor version of ‘heck, no!’ I’d never do that… And to be honest, I had never thought about what it would be like, how I pictured women and the roles that I put them in.”
Steinem’s words made an impact on Donahoo that day.
“It was a great little thought experiment,” Donahoo said. “And everything else she said went out the window because all I suddenly realized is what a jerk I am.”
Today, both Donahoo and Fowler remember the collective response to Steinem on campus being entirely civil. While dissenters asked pressing questions and challenged Steinem during her Q&A sessions, neither of the alumni remember any heckling or rude treatment of Steinem.
History reveals that resentment from some students was palpable, however.
Two days following Steinem’s speeches, a young Donahoo had penned a letter to the editor in The Lariat.
“Gloria Steinem, a leader of the feminist movement, a self-labeled democrat socialist, was allowed to communicate her ‘wide-eyed liberal’ ideas at Baylor, where legal adults are still locked in their dormitories at night,” Donahoo wrote in 1977.
In his letter, Donahoo relayed that students had booed and hissed at Steinem when she talked. Another letter to the editor, penned by students Julie Smith and Lisbeth McDonald, confirmed this crowd behavior. Additionally, The Lariat reported, with photographic evidence, that someone vandalized Bennett Auditorium prior to Steinem’s speech by spray painting a wall of the auditorium with the female gender symbol topped with Playboy bunny ears.
Baylor’s 1977 Round Up yearbook called Steinem’s speeches a major success for Mortar Board, however. Donahoo wrote that he was just happy to have someone like Steinem speaking at Baylor.
“But nothing she said could have had the importance and, hopefully, long-term value as her single action of being here,” Donahoo wrote in The Lariat. “Too often, we at Baylor are only willing to listen to only those who will mouth our beliefs. Face it, Ronald Reagan was asked to speak here, not Senator George McGovern.”
ORDINARY PEOPLE, EXTRAORDINARY CHANGE
Steinem told NPR in 2022 that real change can be compared to the growth of a tree:
“Too often we think the tree grows from the top, from Congress. Trees grow from the bottom,” she said, adding that the work done by everyday people and communities mattered most, according to NPR.
Wanda McKee Fowler was propped up by her family in Orange, and she followed in the steps of her mother in pursuing an education at Baylor. She was then inspired by women like Dr. Patricia Ward Wallace, Fowler’s history professor who was also a faculty sponsor of Mortar Board. Fowler’s two adult daughters followed in their mother’s footsteps, as both women work in the fields of law and politics.
Steinem’s presence on campus left a positive impression on Fowler, though the alumna said it was the support of her family and a wider community of female academics populating her life which led her to where she is today — they might be considered the roots of her tree, one could say.
For Donahoo, feminist ideas became a recurring theme in his professional life after Baylor, as he ultimately decided to devote his doctoral dissertation to female author Flannery O’Connor.
“Part of what my work became — and certainly I presented a number of articles that work this way — sort of dealt with O’Connor’s feminist side,” Donahoo said. “And, you know, I never thought to trace it back to Gloria Steinem convincing me I didn’t have to have a wife who copied out all my work.”
Fowler and Donahoo said they aren’t sure how the Baylor community would react if Steinem were alive and giving a speech on campus today.
“She kind of became a symbol,” Donahoo said. “People always react to symbols, especially in our heightened political environment of today. But I also think there would still be people there who were interested and willing to listen to her.”
Fowler said she thought Steinem at Baylor today would actually be unremarkable — not because Steinem wasn’t an impactful icon, but because the ideals of women’s advancement are incredibly natural.
“Her goal was to win people over,” Fowler said. “It wasn’t to alienate people. And certainly I think her goal coming to Baylor was to be an excellent representative of what the women’s movement meant and to convey that, you know, it was not a wild movement. It made all the sense in the world for women to work in the workforce and be treated equally and be politicians.”
