Ladies' Night.(The Talk of the Town)(women's rights)

A few weeks ago at McSorley's, the tavern in the East Village, a party of a dozen or so came in and settled at a pocked oak table. They exchanged pleasantries and business cards. Soon, ale appeared. After a few minutes, a woman with thick gray hair and long, ringless fingers lifted a mug.

"To Lilly Ledbetter!" she said.

"Yes!"

"To equal pay!"

Someone whispered, "Should we wait until after we order our food to say anything?"

The members of the group were mostly women, and mostly lawyers, as was their guest of honor, Karen DeCrow, who had proposed the toast. Twenty-nine years ago, DeCrow, along with Faith Seidenberg, a fellow board member of the National Organization for Women, sued McSorley's--which for more than a century had greeted female visitors with the clanging of a fight bell and swift expulsion--under the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Now DeCrow, who practices civil-rights law in Onondaga County, was revisiting McSorley's for the first time. The outing was merry, but tinged with uncertainty. As the incognito closing of a historical loop, it was akin to Franklin McCain's casually popping into the Greensboro Woolworth's for a slice of toast. "What I remember was a huge bar," DeCrow said, surveying the room. "Of course, that's because I was frightened. It's not huge."

By 1969, a public accommodation such as McSorley's could not deny a person entry based on his religion or his race. The point of DeCrow and Seidenberg's lawsuit was to add gender to the list of protected categories. Initially, they had targeted the Hotel Syracuse, upstate, which barred unescorted women from its Rainbow Lounge. "They sold lottery tickets, so I went in and the bartender wouldn't sell one to me," DeCrow recalled. "An assistant to the state Attorney General said, 'Darling, you want a lottery ticket? I'll buy you one.' "