Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.), makes her point with emphasis as she calls for a halt to further moves toward the purchase of B-1 bombers, March 16, 1976, during a Washington news conference. The news conferences was held by "FISCAL '77, the National Conference to Stop the B-1 Bomber, Cut Military Spending and Meet Human Needs." Man at left is Robert Brammer, who heads the campaign to stop the B-1. (AP Photo)

When former U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder died, I was working an unusual evening shift and read out loud a portion of the story the Associated Press published.

“She was the first woman on the House Armed Services Committee but was forced to share a chair with U.S. Rep. Ron Dellums, D-Calif., the first African American, when committee chairman F. Edward Hebert, D-La., organized the panel. Schroeder said Hebert thought the committee was no place for a woman or an African American and they were each worth only half a seat,” the story read.

One of our younger employees gasped. But there was confusion, too. When did such a thing happen?

That would have been 1973 — a mere 50 years ago, rather than the Jim Crow era when she might have been expecting a person would feel free to openly act upon such racist and misogynistic nonsense. In fact, Hebert was still a member of Congress until 1977. U.S. Reps. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ed Markey, D-Mass., would have served alongside him. President Joe Biden had been a U.S. Senator for four years when Hebert retired.

Many of the people who terrorized Ruby Bridges are still alive, and have passed along their fear and hatred to their children and grandchildren. In fact, the children and grandchildren of those who donned hoods, burned crosses, and hunted and lynched Black people are still alive.

FILE - U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, D-Colo., sits on the porch outside her Capitol Hill headquarters in Denver on July 18, 1994. Schroeder, a pioneer for women’s and family rights in Congress, has died at the age of 82. Schroeder's former press secretary, Andrea Camp, said Schroeder suffered a stroke recently and died March 13 at a hospital in Florida, the state where she had been residing. (AP Photo)

What am I saying? The last lynching in the U.S. took place in Alabama in 1981. Yeah.

Today there are groups — many made up of white men and far too many of them calling themselves Christians, too — who are giving themselves the kind of “cool” names a middle schooler might come up with: Blood Tribe, Stormfront, Proud Boys, and an unsettlingly long list of others. (Check out the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups for the tip of the iceberg).

Meanwhile, too many girls are still being taught that they are less than a person, that they have a very narrow, prescribed role to play and nothing more, that they don’t belong on the trails women like Schroeder blazed. The push back against women is as strong as it ever was by a certain faction.

Schroeder was a member of Congress from 1973-97. At one point, she was asked by a male member of Congress how she could be a mother of two young children and a member of Congress at the same time. (One wonders whether that man realized how much he revealed about his own share of the workload involving his children, when he asked such a ridiculous question. Though perhaps I’m being unfair. I don’t know who it was. Maybe he didn’t have kids.)

Schroeder replied “I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both.”

No matter whether you agreed with her politics, you have to be impressed that she was able to so succinctly deliver what should have been an obvious point. Sadly, there are too many who still don’t understand.

Because we are not nearly as far away as it seems we should be from the days during which such troglodytic thinking and behavior was expected. Some days it feels as though we’re inching backward and CLOSER.

It might do some good for those who are a little younger — the employee who was surprised by the story had not yet been born when Schroeder left Congress — to have a more accurate picture of the past 50, rather than ending their public school history and social studies lessons in about 1968.

(Yes, I know. The last half century is particularly thorny when it comes to avoiding any telling of fact that comes across as having an “agenda.” I don’t envy teachers, on that front.)

In the meantime, as some of the pioneering figures of those decades begin to fade away, at least we’ll have their obituaries to teach younger generations what they did. I have to wonder how many of them are going to be disappointed in us as they go.

Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com