The story of Lilly Ledbetter’s fight for equal pay comes to the big screen
Lilly Ledbetter and Lanier Isom with Isom’s biography about Ledbetter.
Lilly Ledbetter is an icon in the fight for equal pay. Ledbetter was a manager at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden. Once she learned she was earning less than her male colleagues – she sued the plant. Ledbetter’s story is being turned into a movie, which comes out Friday.
Lanier Isom is a reporter from Birmingham who has covered Ledbetter extensively. Isom took the unofficial role as Ledbetter’s historian on the movie’s set. She sat down with WBHM’s Kelsey Shelton to explain why Ledbetter’s story needs to be told today.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Lanier, if you could please just tell us about Lilly’s story – introduce us to Lilly.
Lilly Ledbetter grew up in Possum Trot, Alabama, which is in North Alabama, a tiny town, and she grew up without any running water or electricity. She grew up picking cotton to earn extra money. At one point her clothes were sewn out of feed sacks, so she grew up in abject poverty and only had a high school education. But she was full of determination for a better life, and ambition.
And how did Lilly find her way at the Goodyear in Gadsden?
In 1979, she saw an ad in Businessweek for the new radial plant. And at the time she was working at H&R Block and she was like the manager over a huge area. She was really good with numbers and math. She saw the ad and they were hiring women and Backs in management for the very first time. This is 1979 in North Alabama. The Goodyear Plant, which is the way out for a better life for the majority of people in the community, the Goodyear plant always signified in Lilly’s growing up the families that got to go to the beach over spring break, that had the nice clothes. So she knew that there would be a good paycheck in management and her kids were about college age at that time. So, she wanted to do the right thing for her family. She always put her family first.
What was Lilly going through at the Goodyear?
You can’t even imagine the level and consistency of harassment that she experienced. It went from her supervisor telling her that she’d get a promotion if she went to the Ramada Inn with him, to her brakes being cut, to her windshield being also cut out, to tobacco juice all over her car, to being followed home at night. It was constant. So she faced real physical harm and danger from the men who did not want her there.
And then all that on top of being paid less than them.
Exactly. So she sues in 1999, and John Goldfarb is her attorney, and she wins in the Northern District Court over $3 million, but of course that’s reduced to $360,000, I think. Goodyear appeals, the circuit court rules against her saying she should have sued within 180 days of working at Goodyear when she started. And then she takes it all the way to the Supreme Court. And that’s when Ruth Bader Ginsburg stood up in her dissent and said, ‘Lilly, you have to change the law back to its original intent.’ And in 2009, President Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act.
You wrote one of the goals of reporting on Lilly was to answer the question, ‘Why Lilly?’ So what is it about her life and journey that you think makes her story one that needs to be told?
I think it needs to be told now more than ever because of the times we live in and the rollback of women’s rights and workers’ rights in the workplace. Lilly never ever gave up. Most women are underpaid. In fact, the pay gap is greater than it’s ever been in the past 20 years. Why Lilly, who has the law named after her, when the majority of us have been underpaid in the workplace. But Lilly just had this determination and she refused to accept defeat, so to speak. She had a lot of losses and she never saw a penny of anything. What she did was for the good of American families. And she used to always say, this is not a women’s issue. This is a family issue; this is important from Walmart to Wall Street. Lilly just had the grit.
Birmingham Museum of Art’s silver exhibit tells a dazzling global story
Silver and Ceremony is made up of more than 150 suites of silver, sourced from India, and some of their designs.
Mentally ill people are stuck in jail because they can’t get treatment. Here’s what’s to know
Hundreds of people across Alabama await a spot in the state’s increasingly limited facilities, despite a consent decree requiring the state to address delays in providing care for people who are charged with crimes but deemed too mentally ill to stand trial. But seven years since the federal agreement, the problem has only worsened.
Ivey appoints Will Parker to Alabama Supreme Court
Parker fills the court seat vacated by Bill Lewis who was tapped by President Donald Trump for a federal judgeship. The U.S. Senate last month confirmed Lewis as a U.S. district judge.
How Alabama Power kept bills up and opposition out to become one of the most powerful utilities in the country
In one of the poorest states in America, the local utility earns massive profits producing dirty energy with almost no pushback from state regulators.
No more Elmo? APT could cut ties with PBS
The board that oversees Alabama Public Television is considering disaffiliating from PBS, ending a 55-year relationship.
Nonprofit erases millions in medical debt across Gulf South, says it’s ‘Band-Aid’ for real issue
Undue Medical Debt has paid off more than $299 million in medical debts in Alabama. Now, the nonprofit warns that the issue could soon get worse.
