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Barbara “Dusty” Roads (born 1928) is a former flight attendant and union activist who advocated against sex discrimination in the airline industry. Working as a congressional representative for the Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association, she was the first person to file a discrimination complaint with the newly-created Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1965.

Early Life & Education
Barbara Roads was born in 1928 in Cleveland, Ohio. Roads grew up wanting to be a pilot but decided to become a flight attendant instead after her father told her airlines “don’t hire ladies” to be pilots. Roads attended the Flora Stone Mather College for Women (now Case Western Reserve University) and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature in 1950. The same year, Roads got a job as a stewardess for American Airlines.

Marriage & Family Life
While Roads initially considered being a stewardess a transition to married life rather than a career, she said she enjoyed her job so much that she “kept postponing Mr. Right” until she decided to “put it off forever” and never marry. Roads has said she was engaged “a couple times,” but that she had “no regrets at all” about her life.