About this Event
Books Inc. Berkeley proudly welcomes reporter Melissa Ludtke to the shop for a celebration of her gripping account of Ludtke v. Kuhn, her 1978 groundbreaking case for equal rights in sports media, detailed in her book Locker Room Talk!
Melissa will be joined in conversation with writer Constance Hale.
While sportswriters rushed into Major League Baseball locker rooms to talk with players, MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn barred the lone woman from entering along with them. That reporter, 26-year-old Sports Illustrated reporter Melissa Ludtke, charged Kuhn with gender discrimination, and after the lawyers argued Ludtke v. Kuhn in federal court, she won. Her 1978 groundbreaking case affirmed her equal rights, and the judge’s order opened the doors for several generations of women to be hired in sports media.
Locker Room Talk is Ludtke’s gripping account of being at the core of this globally covered case that churned up ugly prejudices about the place of women in sports. Kuhn claimed that allowing women into locker rooms would violate his players’ “sexual privacy.” Late-night television comedy sketches mocked her, as newspaper cartoonists portrayed her as a sexy, buxom looker who wanted to ogle the naked athletes’ bodies. She weaves these public perspectives throughout her vivid depiction of the court drama overseen by Judge Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to serve on the federal bench. She recounts how her lawyer, F.A.O. “Fritz” Schwarz, employed an ingenious legal strategy that persuaded Judge Motley to invoke the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause in giving Ludtke access identical to that of her male counterparts. Locker Room Talk is both an inspiring story of one woman’s determination to do a job dominated by men and an illuminating portrait of a defining moment for women’s rights.
A vivid account of how one female reporter sued the commissioner of Major League Baseball for gender discrimination - and won.
“Locker Room Talk gives us a front-row seat at Melissa Ludtke's celebrated courtroom battle when she went up against Major League Baseball and emerged with an enduring win for women's equal rights. I also admire her gutsy decision to share reflective insights on how the plentiful societal backlash against her buffeted her personal life as a 26-year-old woman. Hers wasn't an easy struggle, but she persevered, and we are the better for it.”
-Hillary Rodham Clinton / former US secretary of state
“When I read about her 1978 court victory while still in college, I knew two things: Melissa was my hero, and women like me now would have the opportunity to do the jobs we loved. In Locker Room Talk, Melissa takes us into Judge Constance Baker Motley’s courtroom as the lawyers argue about her rights, then brings us to the ballpark, where she shone, often as the only woman working the baseball beat.”
-Christine Brennan / USA Today sports columnist and TV and NPR commentator
“Melissa Ludtke’s trailblazing career in sports media is a lesson in moral courage, perseverance, and equality. Her deeply personal reflections underscore the challenges she faced and the progress she championed.”
-Adam Silver / NBA commissioner
“I grew up recounting baseball games to my father, so I loved discovering in Locker Room Talk how Melissa Ludtke’s mother passed down her love of the game to her daughter. For this daughter to now tell us the story of how, as a young woman, she went to court to revolutionize our nation’s most tradition-laden sport provides a splendid resource for historians and a cherished gift for baseball fans.”
-Doris Kearns Goodwin / historian and author of Wait Till Next Year
“In the early 1980s, I interviewed baseball players in locker rooms due to the courageous court fight that Melissa Ludtke had waged for equal access against Major League Baseball in 1978. To read her book, Locker Room Talk, is to relive our challenges as pioneering women sportswriters. She reminds us of the emotional strain that discrimination imposes on those who experience it and then shows us how she overcame it. Brava!”
-Claire Smith / the only woman to be saluted in Cooperstown as the Baseball Writers of America’s Career Excellence
"This book by Ludtke focuses, in meticulous detail, on the landmark 1978 Ludtke vs. Kuhn case, the impact of the 14th Amendment, and the back-and-forth legal battles for equal rights across history. This shines a light on a court case (litigated well before the "MeToo" era) that opened doors for women in sports media, and is a good reminder for younger generations of the legal battles that helped women get the rights we have today."
-Brenda Berrera / Booklist
MELISSA LUDTKE was a reporter for Sports Illustrated, a correspondent for Time, and editor of Nieman Reports at Harvard University. Her books include On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood in America and Touching Home in China: In Search of Missing Girlhoods. She received the Yankee Quill Award and Mary Garber Pioneer Award and was a Nieman Fellow and a Prudential Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
CONSTANCE HALE is a Hawaii-born, San Francisco-based journalist who has been writing about Hawaiian culture for more than twenty-five years. Her award-winning features on slack-key guitar, the sovereignty movement, the Hawaiian language, Big Island cowboys, and Spam sushi have appeared in the Atlantic, National Geographic Adventure, Afar, Smithsonian, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and Honolulu. She has also worked as a staff reporter and editor at the Oakland Tribune, the San Francisco Examiner, Wired, and Health magazines. She has written three books on language and literary style, including the best-selling Sin and Syntax, and her eight-part series on writing a sentence is on the New York Times "Opinionator." Hale started dancing the hula at seven and performed each year in May Day festivals at Hale'iwa Elementary School, switching to ballet and jazz dance while at Punahou School and Princeton University. She holds a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a master's degree from UC Berkeley. She has studied hula with Patrick Makuakāne for twenty years and edits the hālau's annual newsletter, Kaholo'ana.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Books Inc., 1491 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, United States
USD 0.00
