'Peanuts,' one of the world's most popular cartoons, pushed for Title IX in the 1970s
Peanuts was a place where female athletes saw their presence on the playing field explicitly supported.
Title IX was not tremendously popular with everyone when it first passed in 1972. The legislation, which bans sex-based discrimination in schools and sports funded by the federal government, was originally , which lobbied against it. It was ignored or minimized by athletic departments at many state-funded schools and universities. But
