Legislative Conference, Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), (16 September 1977) Washington, D.C.

“Legislative Conference, Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW)” delivered September 16, 1977, Meany, George (1894-1980)

The text of George Meany’s September 16, 1977, speech (=A) before the CLUW was found in the George Meany Memorial AFL-CIO Archive in the Special Collections and University Archives at Hornbake Library. This collection is at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. His speech is located in RG1-038, Office of the President, George Meany Files, 1940-1980, Series 6, Speeches 1961-1979. Within this collection, the text of the speech is in Box 85, Folder 57, titled, “Legislative Conference. Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), 1977 Sep 16.”

There are no audio or video recordings of the address in the collection or that I could locate online, but the typed transcript was preserved in the George Meany Memorial AFL-CIO Archive. The “closet feminist” quote has been published in news articles from 1977 but to my knowledge, the full speech is only available in the Special Collections and University Archives. The full text was published on official letterhead from the News from the AFL-CIO Department of Public Relations for release at 11:00 A.M., Friday, September 16, 1977.

This transcript has been proofread for accuracy. I have retained the paragraph structure and punctuation of the document and paragraph numbers were added in brackets. I have fixed one typo because the fix was obvious and allows the speech to be more readable. The number corresponds to the speech paragraph where the error occurred:

23: “its” became “it’s”