SXSW: Shaking It Up: The Life & TImes of Liz Carpenter

You most likely would not be reading these words dripping from my fingertips had it not been for one of  most formidable, outspoken journalists who ever dropped a byline – Liz Carpenter. From the JFK assassination to campaigning for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, Carpenter experienced and helped shape some of the most vivid moments and movements of the 20th century.

A proud Texan, this is a women who blazed a trail becoming the first woman to serve as Press Secretary for Lady Bird Johnson.  She has worked with every President from Johnson to Clinton and has served as a inspiration for decades that have run far past her earthly existence.  Coming from a legacy of women in Salado like her great-grandmother, who started the first literary society in Texas to eventually having her name adorn buildings in the state capitol and the University of Texas’ most prestigious lecture series.  Carpenters’s life isn’t just a life of accomplishment, but one filled with the energy of one that’s been well-lived.  Her enduring legacy carries on in times where her example is more needed than ever in American journalism.

With Shaking It Up: The Life and Times of Liz Carpenter, Directors Christy Carpenter(Liz’s daughter) and Abby Ginzberg weave candid modern-day interviews featuring Dan Rather, Bill Moyers, Gloria Steinem, Luci Johnson, and more, with archival footage revealing Liz’s eternal passion for shaking things up in the battle for equal rights and human progress. Her energy and tenacity are captured going as far back to attending a press conference in Washington by then First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt with 20 more women journalists (first of its kind for an administration).

Colorful, comedic and committed to ensuring that women’s voices were always heard in one way or another, Carpenter never backed down from a challenge and spent her life in politics solidifying that women would be seen and treated as equals in a space not meant for us to navigate and thrive in. We shall be forever grateful that deep in the heart of Texas a wise-cracking, steely eyed reporter hit the masses in the form of Liz Carpenter ensuring that newsrooms and American journalism would never again be business as usual.