Norton to Revisit Old Rival and Make Appearance on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Tomorrow Night

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will make a special appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” tomorrow night, Friday, October 21, 2016. Norton will appear with actor Joy Bryant, who is playing Norton as a young lawyer in the upcoming TV series “Good Girls Revolt.” The show is inspired by the real-life story of a group of women researchers at Newsweek, who were represented by Norton in the late 1960s and demanded equality in the workplace. As the Assistant Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Norton filed a class action lawsuit charging Newsweek with discriminatory hiring policies, perhaps the first-ever class action lawsuit alleging sex discrimination in the workplace. The Newsweek women, despite having equally high-quality education as their male colleagues, were hired only as researchers, while men were hired as reporters and paid significantly more. Norton went on to be appointed as the first woman to chair the New York City Commission on Human Rights and the first woman to chair the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“At last I get to see my old ‘nemesis,’ Stephen Colbert, on his new show, despite having left his old persona at Comedy Central, where we got to be good frenemies,” Norton said. “Colbert brought unparalleled attention to the District’s struggle for equality, and I look forward to reminding him that our fight for statehood and full voting rights goes on today, even without his old character. The ‘Good Girls Revolt’ story of the courageous young Newsweek women who exposed discrimination will give Colbert and his TV audience something to cheer about.”