Bella Abzug Dies at 77

Abzug first won election to the House of Representatives in 1970. She had been a leader of both the feminist and anti-Vietnam War movements and campaigned on a platform advocating for the rights of women, Gays, and other minorities and for an end to the Vietnam War. Her district on Manhattan's West Side, which included Greenwich Village, had a high concentration of Gay residents, and large numbers of Gays supported Abzug in 1970 and in each of the years she ran for public office. Many Gays also backed her unsuccessful bid for the New York Senate seat held by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D) in 1976. In all of her races, Abzug campaigned actively in the Gay community.

Abzug drew reactions of amazement and praise from many New York Gays in 1970 when she made a campaign visit to a Manhattan Gay bathhouse. According to New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney, Abzug recounted later how surprised she was when she found herself in the midst of a crowd of men clothed only in white towels.

In 1973 and early 1974, Abzug lobbied for passage of a Gay civil rights bill pending in the New York City Council. She became one of the first members of Congress to appear at Gay community events and made regular appearances at New York City's annual Gay Pride parade and rally. In 1975, Abzug and then Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) became the first two members of Congress to hire openly Gay people on their congressional staffs.

On May 14, 1974, after consultation with officials of what was then called the National Gay Task Force, Abzug introduced the first federal Gay civil rights bill, a development hailed by Gay leaders as an important breakthrough in the Gay movement. Abzug's bill called for amending the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 by adding the category of sexual orientation as a protected class. The bill sought to make it illegal to discriminate against Gay people in the areas of employment, housing, public accommodations, and certain federally funded programs.

House Democratic leaders sent Abzug's bill to the House Judiciary Committee at a time when the committee was holding hearings on the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. The committee took no action on the Abzug bill that year or in subsequent years.

Upon reintroducing the bill in March 1975, Abzug stated, "Equal protection of the laws and respect for the rights of individuals are fundamental principles of our Constitution." She added that right of Gay people to acknowledge their sexual orientation "without being denied other basic rights is a principle which I firmly support."

Abzug served as chief House co-sponsor the Gay civil rights bill each year until she left the House in 1977. After losing her bid for Moynihan's seat in 1976, Abzug lost a race for New York City mayor in 1977 and lost two more bids for House seats. Abzug continued to speak out for Gay civil rights during the years following her tenure in Congress.

A forceful personality who had blunt and strongly worded criticism for her conservative opponents, Abzug often became the subject of criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter dismissed Abzug as co-chair of Carter's National Advisory Committee on Women after Abzug criticized Carter during the committee's first meeting, which Carter attended. Carter's decision to dismiss Abzug offended feminists and Gay activists and prompted Jean O'Leary, then co-director of the National Gay Task Force and a member of the National Advisory Committee on Women, to resign from the committee in protest. O'Leary called Abzug an "able and dedicated" member of the committee and expressed "shock" that Carter would dismiss her.

Craig Gibson, whom Abzug hired in 1975 as her first openly Gay staff member, said Abzug never considered his sexual orientation and his public advocacy for Gay civil rights to be an issue, even though his role as an openly Gay Capitol Hill staffer raised eyebrows in other congressional offices. Gibson said the belief by some that Abzug was abrasive and difficult to work with was based, in part, on perceptions by some of her colleagues who had trouble working with an assertive woman.

"She was no more difficult to work with than many of the other men up there," Gibson said. "If she were a man, no one would have made an issue of it." Added Gibson, "She was always warm to me." Gibson said he remained on Abzug's staff until 1977, when she left Congress after her unsuccessful bid for a Senate seat.

Bella Abzug, pictured here at a rally in the 1980s, was one of the first members of Congress to hire openly Gay people to her staff. (Photo by JEB)

Gibson said Abzug sometimes talked about how she grew up in the Bronx, N.Y., as the daughter of a butcher shop owner.

"She told us that her father named his shop the Live and Let Live Meat Market," Gibson said, adding that Abzug made a point of how her parents taught her to be open-minded and opposed to prejudice and discrimination.

Abzug, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia, was born July 24, 1920. She graduated from New York's Hunter College and from Columbia University Law School. Her role as a champion of those deemed unpopular by society began in the 1950s, when, as a lawyer, she represented clients accused of involvement in Communist related causes. In the 1960s, Abzug became active in the anti-war movement. She became a founder of the group Women's Strike for Peace and became a leader in efforts to oust President Lyndon Johnson from office. She also became active in the feminist movement, where she worked on projects with feminist leaders Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan.

In the 1990s, Abzug continued her work on feminist causes and founded an international group called the Women's Environment and Development Organization. She was received as a hero to the cause of the rights of women and Gays when she attended the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Abzug's relationship with some of New York's Gay leaders became strained in 1991 when her daughter, Liz Abzug, who is openly Gay, challenged Gay Democratic activist Tom Duane for a seat on the New York City Council. Duane, who had been active for many years in Democratic Party and in the movements for equal rights for Gays and women, had long been considered the Gay community's choice for a Council seat. Liz Abzug, according to activists familiar with the race, had not been as politically active as Duane in either Gay civil rights causes or other issues of concern to residents of the district. When Liz Abzug challenged Duane in the Democratic primary, nearly all Gay leaders backed Duane, and feminist leaders split their support between Duane and Liz Abzug. With Bella Abzug campaigning actively for her daughter, Gay activists said, the race pitted longtime friends and allies against each other. Duane won the primary by lopsided margin.

Duane, who is preparing to run for a New York State Senate seat, said this week that he worked as a volunteer on several of Bella Abzug's campaigns in the 1970s and considers her "a champion for the rights of all those who have not been part of the establishment." Added Duane, "She is one of the reasons that I got involved in politics. I have agreed with her on just about every issue."

Virginia Apuzzo, President Clinton's White House Assistant for Management and Administration and a longtime Gay civil rights leader from New York, called Abzug an inspiration to women as well as Gay men and Lesbians who sought to become involved in government and politics. Apuzzo said Abzug campaigned for her and gave money to her campaign when Apuzzo ran, unsuccessfully, in 1978 for a seat on the New York State Assembly from Brooklyn.

"It's hard to be a woman of my age and not see how Bella crossed barriers and made it possible for others to cross barriers," Apuzzo said. "She saw it as her fierce responsibility to target oppression and to speak out against it."

Apuzzo said the White House has selected her and White House communications director Ann Lewis to serve as the official White House delegation to Abzug's funeral, which was last night, April 2.

Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest Gay political group, called Abzug a "brave and dedicated advocate of fairness for Lesbian and Gay Americans." In a statement released Tuesday, Birch said, "We all owe her an enormous debt as the pioneer who tried against enormous odds to extend civil rights protections on the basis of sexual orientation. We will carry on that work in her name."

Abzug is survived by her daughters, Liz and Eve Abzug of New York City, and her sister, Helene Alexander of Great Neck, N.Y. Martin Abzug, her husband of 42 years, died in 1986.

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