- Few members of the United States Congress have had a more lasting impact on the lives we live today than Indiana's own Senator Birch Bayh.

Here's just one example.

(tense music) International tennis star, Billie Jean King, can't forget how scholarship money was divided up between male and female college athletes back when she was a female college athlete.

- I went to college in the '60s, so I understood the differences.

I worked two jobs at LA state and 20 miles away, Arthur Ashe had a full scholarship to UCLA and Stan Smith had a full scholarship to USC.

And it was just because of my gender.

- Universities receiving federal taxpayer funding were actually unapologetically limiting female admissions, limiting female athletics, and limiting female opportunities for a future.

That kind of sexual discrimination did not sit well with Senator Bayh.

And in 1972, he authored and introduced to Congress, in conjunction with Representative Patsy Mink, Title IX: an Amendment to the Higher Education Act of 1965.

Senator Bayh's Title IX said a lot in just 37 words.

"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

- Any public or private high school, college, or university that receives federal funding for the first time, they had to spend it equally on boys and girls, and that had never been done before.

- Title IX, best known perhaps for the doors that opened up to female student athletes, but its biggest bang, as we celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2022 is its far-reaching power to promote equality by prohibiting gender-based discrimination of any kind and any venue of publicly funded education.