Elizabeth Ray (born Betty Lou Ray on May 14, 1943, in Marshall, North Carolina ) was the central figure in a much publicized sex scandal in 1976 that ended the career of U.S. Rep. Wayne Hays (D-Ohio).
The Washington Post reported that Ray had been on the payroll of a committee run by Hays for two years as a clerk-secretary. During that time, she admitted, her actual job duties were providing Congressman Hays sexual favors: "I can't type, I can't file, I can't even answer the phone." Ray, who had won the title of Miss Virginia 1975 in a beauty contest, says she worked briefly as a stewardess, waitress and car rental clerk before beginning work on the Hill in the summer of 1972. After making unsuccessful attempts at being an actress and stand-up comedienne, Elizabeth Ray faded back into obscurity.
After the scandal broke, a book appeared in her name, entitled “The Washington Fringe Benefit”; she posed for Playboy several times, and tried acting and stand-up comedy.
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“A great many will find fault in the resolution that the negro shall be free and equal, because our equal not every human being can be; but free every human being has a right to be. He can only be equal in his rights.”
—Mrs. Chalkstone, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2, ch. 16, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage (1882)
“It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them.”
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