Pamela Horowitz ’67, a former lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), returned to Mac for a public conversation with students, faculty, staff and alumni in Mairs Concert Hall on Thursday, March 26. Conversation topics ranged from reflections on Pamela Horowitz’s time at Macalester, her most prominent civil rights cases and the legacy of her late husband, SPLC co-founder and former Georgia state Sen. Julian Bond.
The event, hosted by American Studies Professor Karín Aguilar- San Juan, American Studies Events Coordinator Alexander Horowitz ’29 (no relation), Lucy Selly ’28 and Eleanor Lind ’29, was planned following discussions and coursework in Aguilar-San Juan’s American Studies course “Make Love Not War: Vietnam Anti-War Activism to Pleasure Activism.”
Two students in the class, Selly and Lind, have been working on organizing the event throughout the semester.
“We’ve been prepping for the event [throughout] the entire class, but especially the last few weeks leading up to spring break, Selly said. “We made the program and then designed the zine and what we wanted to ask [Pamela Horowitz].”
The event’s opening speaker, Professor Duchess Harris, history department chair and American studies professor, kicked off the conversation with an anecdote of how Pamela Horowitz and Bond’s relationship and marriage sit at the intersection of anti-war activism and Macalester’s history. On Oct. 15, 1969, the first Moratorium Day to end the Vietnam War, Pamela Horowitz returned to Macalester for a dinner conversation featuring Bond.
“That night, Pamela Horowitz and Julian Bond met for the first time,” Harris said. “Their meeting at Macalester is a part of this institution’s history, but more importantly, it is a part of a larger story about partnership purpose and the ways in which personal and political lives become intertwined in the pursuit of justice.”
The conversation began with Pamela Horowitz’s time as a Macalester student, before she met Bond. Though she held a passion for philosophy, Pamela Horowitz majored in economics and shared that she experienced gender discrimination at Macalester.
“The only advice my advisor ever gave me was ‘when you interview for a job, don’t tell them that you’re going to get married and have children,’” Pamela Horowitz said. “My consciousness level was at a point where I thought ‘Oh, well, that’s probably a good idea,’ instead of being furious and storming out of the office in feminist rage.”
She went on to law school at Boston University, where her class year boasted the largest percentage of female students at the time of her enrollment, according to Pamela Horowitz. After graduating, she joined Bond in his work at SPLC.
Pamela Horowitz recalled some of her most impactful cases at SPLC, namely, the 1976 Supreme Court case “Dothard v. Rawlinson,” in which she successfully argued that height and weight requirements were not tied to job law enforcement job responsibilities. These requirements also served to discriminate against women. In her book, “Because of Sex: One Law, Ten Cases, and Fifty Years That Changed American Women’s Lives at Work,” author Gillian Thomas argues that “Dothard v. Rawlinson” is one of the ten most significant cases for women’s rights, and it might not have happened without Pamela Horowitz.
“I always get a kick out of the fact that I got to the Supreme Court from the hair salon,” Pamela Horowitz said, referring to how she met plaintiff Dianne Kimberly Rawlinson, who was working as a hairdresser after being denied a job as a correctional officer in an Alabama prison due to not meeting the weight requirement.
After discussing some of Pamela Horowitz’s other lasting impressions on the American legal system and her thoughts on the future of it, the conversation turned to remembering Bond’s impact.
Alexander Horowitz designed a slideshow commemorating Bond, which was shown to the audience and featured music, pictures of the civil rights leader and facts about his legacy on American society.
In the early 1960s, Bond helped establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and later co-founded the SPLC, where Pamela Horowitz would eventually find herself as a staff attorney.
In 1965, Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives. The next year, the Georgia House of Representatives voted 184–12 to not seat Bond after the election, given his opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
Pamela Horowitz was asked about how Bond would react to President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota.
“Julian would say, ‘Don’t agonize, organize.’ And that would have been his position from the outset,” Pamela Horowitz said. “He was part of the most successful, nonviolent movement that the country’s ever seen, and that’s what we just saw in Minnesota.”
Aguilar-San Juan felt the reflective nature of the event and its audience, which featured many alumni from the 1960s and 70s, provided an opportunity to learn about past and present movements.
“Many of our elders are reflecting on their lives and on the historical moments of countercultural rebellion and change,” Aguilar-San Juan wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly. “It’s worthwhile for [younger people] to investigate these moments too because it can deepen and broaden the understanding of subtle things like the price of social inclusion (as BIPOC communities become assimilated) or the trauma of being called traitors (as many antiwar activists were called).”
Reflecting on the event, Selly spoke about how hopeful she found Pamela Horowitz’s regards, Aguilar-San Juan’s course and the number of alumni who attended.
“I think the biggest thing about this class is just the idea of hope,” Selly said. “It’s also just cool to see that everybody still has communities, and they still care about each other and want to learn from each other, even if they’re retired, widowed, whatever else.”
