Whereas: Stories from the People’s House

Edition for Educators—Patsy Mink

Fifty years ago, the final version of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 passed the U.S. House of Representatives largely without controversy, though its journey to the floor included multiple hearings and lengthy meetings between House and Senate negotiators. Enacted on June 23, 1972, the law declared, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” One of the women at the center of this landmark legislative effort was Representative Patsy Takemoto Mink of Hawaii, who was first elected in 1964, becoming the first woman of color to serve in Congress. After its initial passage, Mink spent the balance of her political career defending Title IX. This month’s Edition for Educators highlights Representative Mink and the statute which eventually bore her name.

Born in the Hawaii Territory in 1927, Mink graduated at the top of her class from Maui High School. She attended college in Pennsylvania and Nebraska before graduating from the University of Hawai'i in 1948. Mink hoped to become a doctor, but after three medical schools rejected her applications, she applied, and was accepted, to the University of Chicago Law School. After graduating in 1951, Mink faced significant discrimination from top law firms due to her interracial marriage. Undeterred, she went into private practice in Hawaii before winning election to the territorial legislature in 1955, where she eventually served in the house and senate. When Hawaii gained statehood in 1959, Mink defied Democratic Party bosses to seek the lone At-Large seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. She lost the primary to Daniel Inouye, but she returned to the state senate three years later. In 1964, reapportionment created a second Hawaiian congressional district. Mink again ran for Congress without party backing, but this time she won.

As a Member of Congress, Mink’s signature issue was education. Early in her tenure, Mink pushed for a bill that would have created a national daycare program for low-income families. The bill was included in the Economic Opportunity Act of 1971, which passed both chambers but faced a presidential veto that Congress failed to override. Mink also sponsored legislation for special education, student loans, bilingual education, and the Head Start program for early childhood development.

Mink’s memories of discrimination applying for graduate schools and entering the workforce lingered, however. During the 92nd Congress (1971–1973), Mink partnered with Edith Green of Oregon and Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana to secure the votes to pass Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. As the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare began administering the law, many patrons of men’s higher education athletics complained their funding was being cut to institute new programs for women’s sports. When Title IX’s opponents in Congress attempted to roll back the provision in a 1975 appropriation bill, Mink successfully blocked those efforts while navigating personal difficulties; Title IX survived.

After a nearly 14-year hiatus from Congress following a failed bid for the Senate in 1976, Mink returned to the House in 1990 to continue the pursuit of equal opportunity in education. During her second stint on Capitol Hill, Mink defended the social welfare programs from the 1960s which later administrations had scaled back. She advocated a universal health care plan and cosponsored the Gender Equity Act to establish an Office of Women’s Equity at the Department of Education, though the bill never made it out of committee. Mink argued, “We must assure that schools all across this country implement and integrate into their curriculum, policies, goals, programs, activities, and initiatives to achieve educational equity for women and girls.” After Mink died in 2002, Title IX was renamed in her honor, as the Patsy Takemoto Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. Today, a half century after Title IX was first implemented, more than 40 percent of college student athletes are women, with a similar percentage participating in high school sports.

Featured People

Patsy Takemoto Mink of Hawaii
The first woman of color elected to Congress, Mink’s trailblazing career is further explored in her biographical profile. Beyond Mink’s influence on education and gender equality, she also was recognized nationally for her opposition to the Vietnam War and support for the Lyndon B. Johnson administration’s Great Society legislation. When she returned to the House in the 1990s, Mink left her mark on organizations within the institution, co-founding the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus in 1994 and co-chairing the Democratic Women’s Group a year later.

Edith Starrett Green of Oregon
Mink’s partner in the passage of Title IX was Edith Green of Oregon, a former teacher who left her mark on almost every education bill enacted during her 10 terms in the House. Green led the hearings in the House of Representatives advocating passage of Title IX. Though Representative Green originally supported federal aid to education and the antipoverty programs, she grew disillusioned with what she perceived as an inefficient federal bureaucracy. Her increased frustration with “big government” contributed to her eventual drift from the Democratic Party’s agenda.

Featured Objects from the House Collection

Featured Content

Women in Congress and Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Congress
These exhibits feature essays tracing the history of women and Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Congress and the institutional and national events that shaped successive generations. They also feature biographical profiles of former Members of Congress, rare digitized House Collection objects and photographs, and historical data.

The Life of Representative Patsy Mink of Hawaii
On September 28, 2002, Representative Mink, Democrat from Hawaii and the first Asian-American woman in Congress, died in the city of Honolulu. During her time in the House, Mink had the reputation for being fiercely independent, but her decision to work outside the party’s strictures back home freed her to pursue a legislative agenda that was often national as much as it was regional in scope. “You were not elected to Congress, in my interpretation of things, to represent your district, period,” she once said. “You are national legislators.”

Featured Oral Histories

Gwendolyn Mink
In her oral history, Representative Mink’s daughter Gwendolyn, a political scientist, discusses her mother’s life and career.

Featured Blogs

Members Only
On the afternoon of February 6, 1967, Representatives Mink, Catherine May, and Charlotte Reid derailed Herb Botts’ day. Botts managed the men’s gym in the basement of the Rayburn House Office Building, but he never expected the three Congresswomen to show up for his 4:45 p.m. calisthenics class. After all, women Members of Congress had their own gym just steps away.

Integrating Dick and Jane
In 1966, a subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee held a series of hearings on the portrayal of minorities in schoolbooks. New York Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. chaired the full committee, as well as its ad hoc Subcommittee on De Facto School Segregation. Powell was joined by other Members, including Mink and California Representatives Phillip Burton and Augustus Hawkins. The subcommittee investigated the depiction of minorities in schoolbooks, why school districts selected certain books, and how publishers distributed texts.

This is part of a series of blog posts for educators highlighting the resources available on History, Art & Archives of the U.S. House of Representatives. For lesson plans, fact sheets, glossaries, and other materials for the classroom, see the website's Education section.

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