Page 1 of 7 
 
Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Eleanor Josephine Danner Bilimoria 
May 13, 1985 
Cassette 6, Side 1 
 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  00:00 
--this up to chance.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  00:03 
Let's see. Oh, this is May 13, 1985. This is the second tape of the third interview. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  00:17 
So Jessie had contacts with lots of church women and she invited them to-- we sent out a notice 
and invited them to a meeting. And so the-- at what we called at that time the Coalition Task 
Force on Women and Religion was founded. We were interested in getting equality for women 
in all religious institutions and at all levels, and we haven't achieved it yet, but we've made 
progress [laughs]. And as far as I know or I've ever heard, we were the first organization in the 
United States to begin working in this area. Jessie got us space in the Church Council where we 
could have a desk and keep our things, and they were helping us out a great deal. They moved 
out here to the University District on 15th Avenue Northeast and gave us space there. And so in 
February of '73, we sent out 1,100 copies of the ERA argument that I had written with a covering 
letter to clergy and church women in the State of Washington. And the Church Council paid the 
$50 for mailing, and we urged them in the letter to contact their own representative. So I think 
we had a great part to play in passing the ERA in this state. And then we got them to send-- we 
got the state council of churches to send letters to the other states urging ratification. But that 
didn't come off so well. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  02:28 
Well, we had lots of interesting meetings that year. And in 1973, I had heard about The Woman's 
Bible written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton through Mary Jane Oakley, who wrote a biography of 
Stanton. So I suggested we use it as a study guide or as a study item for some of our meetings. 
And Jessie Kinnear said, "Well, we should print it so that everybody has copies. We can begin 
chapter at a time." And then Shirley says, "If we're going to print it, we ought to publish it, 
because it has historical self significance and we need to raise some money," because we had 
nothing to go on. We were getting handout from NOW and a handout from the Church Council 
and coughing up out of our own pockets. So we presented it to a large group. As it happened, at 
that particular meeting, there were only the three of us there, and we we decided this was what 
we wanted to do. So it took us several, several meetings. Shirley discovered Jane Walker in 
Page 2 of 7 
 
Tacoma, who had an original copy with Stanton's autograph, and she convinced her to loan us 
that copy. I'm sure we destroyed the value of it by taking it apart to recopy it, but she was a good 
sport. And then on Vashon Island is Maggie Johns, a wonderful English woman who was a 
feminist printer, the owner and manager of Island Industries. Maggie-- well at the first meeting, 
where we had 20 women or so and presented this idea, they were scared to death because Shirley 
had figured out that it would cost us $2,000 to print it, first printing. And in 1974, 7-- that 
sounded like a horrendous sum of money to women. So we couldn't get a vote on it. So we asked 
Maggie Johns to come to the next meeting, and bless her heart, she said, "I will not take any pay 
for my work or the neighbor until you are able to pay for it, until you get money coming in." So 
we decided in March of '74 that we would publish it, and 11 women volunteered to loan $100 
each. And the local women at the campus ministry caucus loaned us $500 on an interest-free 
loan, and we set up bookkeeping and marketing and handling and all of the advertising, and we 
would pay for those services as well. The national NOW conference was to be held in Houston 
the end of May or the first of June, and we wanted to get it down there to sell. So it came off the 
press, and on May 29th, we had a press conference, and Earl Hansen of the PI gave us a half-
page write-up. Have you seen that?  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  06:32 
Oh, no. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  06:33 
And Ray Collins did that famous cartoon of the naked woman sitting on the ball and chain 
reading the Bible. Oh, it was wonderful. And we-- it came out, I believe, on a Friday. No, it must 
have been a Thursday. By noon of the next day, the Church Council had received 200 calls for 
orders. [Laughs] The poor Church Council wasn't set up to handle this, and none of us were 
there. And then Shirley and Earl Hansen appeared on The Today Show, and the Arno Press was 
doing a whole series of books on women at that point, and they had also published it. So we 
exchanged copies with them, and I think they quit publishing it. By the end of the first month, we 
had paid the printing bill in full, and by June of '74, we went into the second printing, 2,500 
copies. And then July 4th, we all went to Vashon Island with KING-TV news and did a news 
story and photographed Maggie Johns's press. And then our women were going out to speak at 
workshops, Methodist Annual Conference. We promoted Mary Daly speaking when she came 
out to Spokane. We protested to Mayor Uhlman the use of civil agents by the Seattle Police to 
arrest prostitutes. We had a table at Bumbershoot. We endorsed the ordination of Episcopal 
women as priests. And by September 3rd, we'd paid the first four loans and $1,000 to the printer. 
And then we had people on Seattle Today. We had a Yale Divinity student, Marie Fortune, came 
out to do her intern work in Seattle for a year, and she was assigned to between two and four 
hours a week with the Coalition.Then we were asked to participate in the elimination of sexist 
language in the Revised Standard Edition of the Bible, but the man who had originally been 
appointed to the committee managed to keep us out of that. We never got to do anything. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  09:32 
The next year, we had a representative, Sister Diana Bader, on the Church Council board, and 
she got up one day and made a resolution that the Church Council should take an active role in 
the observance of International Women's Year. So the Coalition picked up on this when she 
came back and reported, and we wrote out a long paper called a matter of social justice, listing 
Page 3 of 7 
 
the things that the Church Council should be doing. And two most important were proportionate 
representation on governing boards and that they keep a task force on women and religion. And 
then we got into the need for the shelter for battered women, and we set up the meetings, which 
resulted in the first shelter being established other than the Salvation Army. We wrote a peace 
paper, and we brought in women from-- who were not Coalition members to work on that. And 
then we took it to Mexico City to the first conference of International Women's Year and got 
signatures on it. And then [?Jan Kate?], one of our members, took it to the Berlin conference that 
was held that year. We had four people at the Mexican conference, and that was really an historic 
occasion, the first time in the history of the world, when women from all over got together to 
discuss their own problems, and it was a very, very exciting experience. And Dr. and [?Jan 
Kate?] went down and Grace Van Horn and myself. Then, of course, after that, we had many 
speaking engagements on International Women's Year, and we published a study guide for The 
Woman's Bible. The next year, I was a Mayor-- Mayor Uhlman appointment to the Seattle 
Women's Commission. I was Membership Chair, and then, later, Chair of the Education 
Committee, and the Shelter for Battered Women came into being. And Shirley Kaplan worked at 
the shelter when it was first in Bellevue.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  12:19 
And then there was a conference in Ellensburg, and that was an experience, too. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  12:35 
I heard. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  12:44 
I was working with [?Mildred Kirsch?] on an education workshop at the Ellensburg conference, 
and as I went in the building that morning and down the hall, here was a Mormon man with a 
list. And as the women came up to him, he'd say, "You go to this workshop. You go to that 
workshop. You go to that workshop." Imagine being told what to do like that. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  13:20 
By a man at a women's conference?  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  13:22 
Yes.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  13:23 
So he was just a ploy. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  13:26 
Infiltrate each one.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  13:28 
Yeah. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  13:32 
Page 4 of 7 
 
Anytime anyone said "Title IX," up they went. "Affirmative action." "Oh!" But [?Mildred 
Kirsch?] was very, very clever. She avoided these words. She got them to come to a conclusion. 
She finally got the resolution we wanted endorsed. Passed. Oh, she was smart. Was the neatest 
thing. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  14:20 
I'm going to capsulize some things here. I'm taking a lot of your time. On the Seattle Women's 
Commission, probably the most important thing I did was to work on vocational education and 
bring in people from the Labor Council and the technical institutes and the Seattle Public 
Schools to find out what they were doing for women and encourage more sex equity in their 
programs. I was a charter member of the Sex Equity Commission for the Seattle Public Schools 
and Co-chair one term with Patria Robinson-Martin. Did a lot of work on-- critical work on the 
grievance procedure. I don't think I made much impact, because I don't think they ever changed 
the parts that I was opposed to. And critical of affirmative action plans. Did succeed in getting a 
change in policy on the equalization of awarding scholarships in high school for college. When I 
retired in '74, as Shirley Kaplan says, I went public at that point, but I'd been so tied up in the 
classroom for so many years, and my friends would say, "Oh, we're having a luncheon. Come 
on." Well, I couldn't get away to go to a luncheon. So I just sort of got into everything [laughs]. 
NOW and the Women's Political Caucus. I was in on the first meetings of that at Mary Jane 
Oakley's-- Mary Ann Oakley. I said "Mary Jane"; it's Mary Ann. The first meeting at Mary Ann 
Oakley's house in 1971 to form the King County Women's Political Caucus. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  17:18 
I had dropped the League of Women Voters in opposition to their ignoring the women's 
programs, but they've come around since then. They're very influential. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  17:42 
While I was still at Bellevue, I was in on the formation of the Bellevue Affirmative Action 
Committee. It was called by one of the administrators, Assistant Superintendent. And most of the 
people on that committee were either from the community, public participants, or they were 
administrators. There was one secretary of the school, one minority male and myself. The 
minority male and myself were the only two teachers on that committee. Then the next year, 
when the affirmative action plan for the Bellevue Schools was adopted, it became a committee 
of-- largely of teachers and community members without the preponderance of administrators. 
And I worked with them for several years, even after I'd retired, taking part in training 
workshops and giving workshops, that is, participating in the workshops that we gave. The NOW 
Educational Task Force, which I chaired for several years, put on the first all-day workshop for 
high school women in Seattle on sex equity and education. That was a big success. A few boys 
came, but they didn't come for the sex equity. They came for the girls and they left [laughs]. 
[Inaudible.] 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  19:42 
In 1972, I believe I began working on Anna Ella Carroll's life, and I made several trips back -- 
three or four -- to Maryland and Washington, D.C. The Maryland Historical Society has a cache 
of it. The original cache had 500 pieces of her work in it, manuscripts and letters and scraps of 
writing. And then they were given another set of papers. I don't know how many are in that. 
Page 5 of 7 
 
Then there's some of her things in the archives, National Archives, in Washington, D.C.; some of 
her letters in the Smithsonian; some are in the War Department files out at Suitland, Maryland; 
and there are letters all over the States. I don't have all of them, I'm sure. I have all I know about, 
but I'm sure there are others that I haven't found yet. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  20:46 
Who was she [inaudible]? 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  20:50 
She lived during the Civil War. She was a Southern belle of a very famous Maryland family, the 
Carrolls. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who was the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of 
Independence, and another, Daniel Carroll, was a member of the Constitutional Congress. He 
gave the land for Washington, D.C., that is, the land which came from Maryland. He was on the 
committee with Lafayette to work out the plan for Washington, D.C. And his home became 
Alice Paul Center for the women's party, Equal Rights Party? Was that what she called it? I tried 
to see that when I was there, when-- we went out one Sunday, but no one was permitted to go in 
on Sunday, unfortunately. I wanted very much to see her. She was still living there at that time, 
but I didn't get see her, either.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  22:11 
In 1982, I decided if I was going to remodel this house, it was time to get started. And that was 
horrendous experience. So after I'd fired the contractor, I filed my complaint with the 
Department of Labor and Industries, and they sent it to the Fraud Division of the prosecutor's 
office, who decided that they couldn't prove fraud, and so they didn't do anything. So then I had 
to sue. So I spent two years on that. 1984 of June, I won my appeal. I won the arbitration, not the 
appeal. I won the arbitration, and that was the first time I'd ever been a witness in a trial or been 
cross-examined. And it's one thing to do it, and one thing to have a new experience when you're 
75 and that was it [they laugh]. But I went on my meticulous records I'd kept. And then I fell 
down and took my ribs away from my soft tissue, so I was handicapped for five weeks, and the 
defendant appealed, and on October 1st, I won in superior court because he didn't show up. And 
then I bought a computer to hopefully get the book on Anna Ella Carroll finished, and 1985, I've 
been learning to use it, and that's my new experience for this year. And we've come up to date 
with my reception for my sister in law's 85th birthday last Sunday. That was a success, too, I 
think.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  24:25 
And her name is...?  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  24:27 
Margaret Cristman Danner. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  24:28 
What kind of computer did you get?  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  24:35 
I got a Kaypro IV.  
Page 6 of 7 
 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  24:37 
You did?  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  24:38 
Mm-hmm. I'll take you and show you.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  24:40 
Oh, wonderful. It has a printer roll. [Tape cuts.] 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  24:45 
This is Liz. Eleanor, I was-- obviously from your story, it's quite clear that you're committed to 
many issues, one being an integral part of you, that is the women's issue and women's lives, and 
obviously you're very, very committed and see this as an important social issue. Do you identify 
yourself as a feminist, and how so? And how does that affect the people that you've had in your 
life for a long time? 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  25:23 
Probably the first instance that I remember of having this feeling of inequality -- I think I 
mentioned it to you before -- was when I went to New York in '38 and wanted to get a job in 
motion picture production, and this man said, "We can't have a woman riding down Fifth Avenue 
on a truck running a camera." "Well, why not?" Only I wasn't aggressive-- assertive enough to 
see anything to him. He said it and I took it. But it rankled. And in the case in India where I 
wanted to do the film production and I couldn't because I was an American; well, undoubtedly, 
because I was a woman, too, had something to do with it. Then there was an incident with Kathy. 
Now, let's see if I can remember that. Well, there were two. Kathy and a male cousin graduated 
from high school the same year. He went to MIT and she went to Smith. And the next year, or at 
least one summer while they were-- the two of them were in college, the only job Kathy could 
get here was to babysit at $100 a month. She had two children, one an infant and one a little girl, 
a toddler. The family would go off in their yacht for the weekend and leave her with the kids, full 
responsibility, from Friday afternoon to Sunday night, and sometimes it was Monday morning 
early hours before they got back. The male cousin got a job on a fishing boat as the cook. He 
didn't know how to cook, but he could cook [they laugh]. $2,000 he made. Well, she made $200. 
Then, there was an incident where-- Kathy had worked-- oh, dear. The man had-- the college 
student, male, had done painting during the summer months, house painting, and he was able to 
use that on his resume. And I don't know whether it was Kathy's League of Women Voters work 
that she wanted to use or whether it was selling in the gift shop at the college, but it was not 
acceptable. I don't have this story quite right, but the two of them where Kathy's work was much 
more applicable to the job in question. Because she had been a volunteer-- so it couldn't have 
been the bookstore, because she got paid for that. The gift shop, she got paid for that. Because 
she had been a volunteer, she didn't get the credit, and he got paid for labor which was not 
intellectual or fitting to the position, and he got the credit. And so then I saw Anne working very 
hard to make a living. And when you have obstruction put in your way and then you see it in the 
way of first one daughter and then of the other, you're bound to become a feminist. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  29:48 
Page 7 of 7 
 
But your-- did your daughters become a feminist-- become feminists?  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  29:53 
Anne died in '69 and the feminist movement hadn't started out here then. Kathy is, to a certain 
extent; not as much as I am. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  30:07 
Kathy's a very successful woman 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  30:10 
Yes, but she works too hard. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  30:15 
Why do you think she overworks or works too hard? 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  30:19 
Because she gets a trial and she's very conscientious, and she wants all of the facts there so she 
can prove them and win her case. And she does. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  30:29 
When you saw your daughters, when it-- at that point, it sounds like, just from explaining it that 
that point, it was a more abrupt. You saw your daughters being hindered from--  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  30:40 
Yes. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  30:41 
--free mobility and opportunities to make money, to survive well, and also to do what they want. 
And did you feel that as much in your life? Obviously, you have a very independent background, 
very motivated and ambitious and inspired by your own desires and dreams. Did you feel that as 
much as you saw your daughter's experience, or did it come more through seeing your 
daughters? 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  31:14 
More through seeing my daughters, I think. Particularly being in the teaching field, there was no 
place to go but administration, and at that point, there weren't any women administrators, and 
didn't look to me like it would be very much fun. 
 