The conservative political activist Phyllis Schlafly died on September 5, 2016, at the age of 92, according to The New York Times (September 5, 2016). Her "grass-roots campaigns against Communism, abortion[,] and the Equal Rights Amendment galvanized conservatives for almost two generations and helped reshape American politics," commented the Times. She is perhaps most notable for her campaign against ratification of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution: as the obituary in the Guardian (September 6, 2016) remarked, "Although she did not quite defeat the ERA 'single-handedly', as her supporters liked to claim, defeated it was."
The teaching of evolution was among Schlafly's targets. The Alabama chapter of the Eagle Forum — the activist organization founded, as Stop ERA, by Schlafly in 1972 — successfully lobbied for the inclusion of evolution warning disclaimers in the state's textbooks in 1995; a version of the disclaimer is still required. Through the Eagle Forum's newsletter Education Reporter, Schlafly regularly promoted creationist material (such as Jonathan Wells's Icons of Evolution, its book of the month for January 2001) and causes. In 2004, Schlafly declared in her syndicated column, "The worst censors are those prohibiting criticism of the theory of evolution in the classroom," and praised school boards such as that of Cobb County, Georgia, which then required a disclaimer about evolution to be affixed to its biology textbooks, for "allowing criticism of Darwin's theory." In 2006, she decried Judge John E. Jones III, a George W. Bush appointee, after he "stuck the knife in the backs of those who brought him to the dance in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District." There are signs that the teaching of climate change was increasingly of concern to Schlafly as well; in 2013, for example, Education Reporter claimed, "Climate change is accepted as manmade in the [Next Generation Science Standards] and children must accept this notion."
Schlafly was born Phyllis McAlpin Stewart in St. Louis on August 15, 1924. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 1944, earned a master's degree from Radcliffe College in 1945, and married Fred Schlafly Jr. in 1949. She became active in Republican politics, running for Congress herself in 1952 and 1970, with a focus on opposing international communism. In the early 1970s, her focus shifted to opposing feminism with her campaign to block the ERA. She earned a law degree from Washington University in St. Louis, in 1978. A prolific writer, she was the author of over twenty books, including A Choice Not an Echo (1964), supporting Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign.