Space Is Power

Rosalynn Carter’s East Wing and the office that changed everything.

First Lady Rosalynn Carter with her personal assistant, Madeline McBean, in 1977 in the White House East Wing office. (Photo: National Archives and Records Administration)

Think of the symbolism of this statement.

“In 1976, Rosalynn Carter came to town … She arrived with a battered, brown, old briefcase … in one hand and a sewing machine in the other.” 

Those were the nostalgic words of Mary Finch Hoyt, press secretary to former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, spoken during a discussion of her memoir “East Wing: Politics, the Press, and a First Lady” at the Women’s National Democratic Club in Washington, D.C. in 2002. 

It has been some 20 years since Hoyt made the quip to an audience that included Carter, who introduced her now deceased friend at the event. And, at the time, it had been about 25 years since that conjured-up image took place. It’s an image that captures the pulse of a nation caught in a fierce debate over the Equal Rights Amendment, legislation Carter supported along with othe…