Phyllis Schlafly, the US conservative icon and grass-roots activist for traditional family roles who led the successful campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment, died on Monday. She was 92. "Today, Phyllis Schlafly passed away in the presence of her family at her home in St. Louis, Missouri," the Eagle Forum, the conservative interest group she founded, said in a statement posted on its website.
A deeply polarising figure for decades, the constitutional lawyer campaigned against communism, abortion rights and, most famously, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which died after it was already passed by both houses of Congress in 1972 and ratified by 35 of the required 38 states.
"Phyllis Schlafly is a conservative icon who led millions to action, reshaped the conservative movement, and fearlessly battled globalise and the 'kingmakers' on behalf of America's workers and families," Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump - whom she had endorsed - said in a statement Monday night. The Eagle Forum called Schlafly an "iconic American leader whose love for America was surpassed only by her love of God and her family " whose focus "from her earliest days until her final ones was protecting the family, which she understood as the building block of life."
Schlafly's critics liked to point out that being editor of a monthly newsletter, author of more than 20 books and a regular public speaker didn't exactly fit the self-described housewife's stated view that women's roles were as full-time mothers and wives. The Radcliffe graduate who married a member of a wealthy Illinois family came to prominence in the 1960s with her self-published book "A Choice, Not an Echo," supporting the presidential campaign of senator Barry Goldwater, who helped lay the future foundations of an increasingly hard-line Republican Party. She is survived by six children, 16 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.