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IT'S BARBARA RINGER DAY! But for the first time I started celebrating in 2014, I won't be honoring Barbara with a tweet-thread. Instead, I'll be tweeting from tonight's Barbara Ringer event with @CopyrightOffice + @GtownTechLaw, which you can still attend: https://copyright.gov/events/barbara-ringer/
And as is my Barbara Ringer Day tradition, I'll borrow from Register Perlmutter's opening remarks, as well as my own research, to share her legacy as a thread. 1/11
As Register Perlmutter stated, Barbara Ringer's career was shaped by watching her mother struggle to make it a woman lawyer. (Her mother was the only woman in the @umichlaw Class of 1923!) 2/11
Ringer was one of only a few women at @ColumbiaLaw, where she graduated in 1949. She went on to join the @CopyrightOffice as an Examiner, and she worked her way up through the ranks, holding nearly ever job along the way. Except one: Register of Copyright. 3/11
Her male colleague got the job with an application that amounted to "The Librarian knows my qualifications." But Ringer wasn't deterred, and she filed a lawsuit for sex and race discrimination, Ringer v. Mumford, 355 F.Supp. 749 (1973). 4/11
Ringer's sex discrimination claim was obvious: she was a woman. But she was also inclined "to speak-out openly on . . . [racial] problems and [to] seek to enforce the published policies of the Library of Congress with respect to equal opportunity." 5/11
Ringer was installed as the first woman Register of Copyrights on this date in 1973. Of her battle for the role, she said, “I pressed my case to be Register of Copyrights and got the job. . . . I had it in mind to help the Library." 6/11
As Register, Ringer fought for women in the workplace by advocating for part-time work schedules, women’s programs, and a childcare center. 7/11
Ringer was also another first: the first woman adjunct professor at @GeorgetownLaw. 8/11
While she was breaking gender barriers, Ringer was also a lead architect of the Copyright Act of 1976, which was one of the first laws to include dual-gender pronouns. That change was made at her insistence. 9/11
Ringer's legacy of inclusion lives on in the work of our three inaugural Barbara Ringer Day speakers, the incredible Professors Deirdre Keller, @MadhaviSunder, and Vicki Phillips. It also lives on in on the @CopyrightOffice of today. 10/11
If you're hungry to learn more about Ringer, which I hope you are, you can learn more from @librarycongress ( https://blogs.loc.gov/copyright/2019/11/barbara-ringer-anniversary/) and me ( https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-lost-and-found-legacy-of-a-copyright-hero/373948/). 11/11
