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AGENDADELEGATE
Illustration · An imagined room at a New York hotel in April 1952, the night before the Conference: a delegate’s suitcase open on the bed, with the agenda, a delegate’s ribbon and a railroad ticket beside it. Not drawn from a photograph.

New York · 1950–1952

Panel Two

AA’s groups learned to choose delegates by written ballot and a two-thirds vote, and in 1952 a second panel filled the Conference, with its first two women.

“I really went to the Conference a little afraid the men would resent me, but I couldn’t have been more mistaken.”

N. D., of Atlanta, one of the two women delegates of 1952 · AA Grapevine, August 1960

Two panels

In 1950 AA’s trustees agreed to try a General Service Conference. (A standing vote, in Rule 62, tells how the trustees came round.) Bill drew up the plan with Helen B. of the office staff. The delegates would come from the United States and Canada, one from each state and province and more where AA was big. They would be split into two panels, Panel One elected for 1951 and Panel Two the year after, so that only half of them would leave at a time.

The worry was politics. Bill and his helpers were veterans, he wrote, “of many a group hassle and Intergroup brawl.” Their answer is in the feature below: written ballots with no nominations, and a delegate needed two-thirds of the vote. With that many behind a winner, Bill reasoned, “the minority could not kick very much.” If nobody got there, names went into a hat and one was drawn.

The office mailed out 50,000 copies of the plan, and Bill traveled to watch assemblies choose their delegates in more than two dozen states and provinces. The first Conference met in April 1951 with 37 delegates, Panel One (Pass It On counts 35). (Legacy, in Rule 62, tells of it, and of the delegate drawn from a hat in Boston.) Over the next year the rest of the states and provinces chose Panel Two.

On April 23, 1952, the Conference met again at the Commodore Hotel, full for the first time: 37 delegates back for a second year and 38 new ones. “For the first time in all A.A. history there is now a broad, complete and reliable cross-section of A.A. opinion …,” Bill told them. At the delegates’ own request, every session opened with the Serenity Prayer and closed with the Lord’s Prayer.

Two of the new delegates were women, the Conference’s first: one from Vermont, and one from Georgia or North Dakota, depending on the account. (Go deeper sets them out.)

Rotation was the point. In a vote from the floor, the delegates asked that it be “preserved and strengthened” at every level of AA, and that nothing change the two-year term. A trustee, Dr. John L. Norris, remembered a proposal that year for three-year terms, voted down; the Grapevine said no delegate suggested keeping the present panel on longer. In 1953, for the first time, no delegate from the first Conference was left.

Listen Panel Two About 1 minute

From the group to New York

Two-thirds, or the hat

How the plan of 1950 had the groups choose their delegates, step by step, with what each job is called today.

The steps follow Bill W.’s account of 1957. The quarter of the vote and the order of the officers come from Arthur S.’s summary of the office’s first guidelines; the books don’t give them.

  1. The group

    Each group may send a group representative to the assembly to vote.

    Today: general service representative (GSR)

  2. The assembly

    The representatives of a state or province meet in its biggest city. A place with many members may send more than one delegate.

    Today: the area assembly

  3. Committeemen

    One for each district, by written ballot and with no nominations. A name is in once it has a quarter of the vote, and the first three elected become chairman, treasurer and secretary.

    Today: district committee members (DCMs) and area officers

  4. The delegate

    Needs two-thirds of the votes cast.

    Today: the same

  5. The hat

    If nobody reaches two-thirds, names go into a hat and one is drawn. Whose names went in changed over the years.

    Today: the top two, after up to five ballots

  6. New York

    Two years at the Conference, in two panels, so that half the delegates are new each spring.

    Today: the same, with the Conference each spring, in April or May

Half new every year

In 1952 the Conference was full for the first time, 37 delegates in their second year and 38 in their first. By 1953 the first panel had gone home, and the Conference has turned over by halves ever since.

For a closer look

Go deeper

Where the first women delegates came from; how long a delegate should serve; and whose names went into the hat.

Two women, from where?

The two accounts that name both states agree on Vermont. In the order the accounts were set down:

  • 1952. The delegates were men “and two women (one from Vermont and one from Georgia).” The Grapevine’s report of the Conference.
  • 1955. “Not until the Second Panel came in the next year did we get our first lady delegate.” Al S., in the Grapevine.
  • 1960. Two women were among the delegates of 1952, one of them N. D. of Atlanta, Georgia. R. B., the delegate from Mississippi that year, in the Grapevine; eight of the 83 delegates of 1960 were women, “the largest number to date.”
  • 2009. The first women delegates, in Panel Two, were Lois A. of Barre, Vermont, and Fay B. of Bismarck, North Dakota. Arthur S.’s timeline.
Two years or three

Two years has been the rule from the start, though not for lack of asking. In the order the accounts were set down:

  • 1952, at the Conference. A vote from the floor: “No action be taken that would alter present provisions of two-year terms for Conference delegates.” A motion putting the Conference on record for two years was tabled before a vote, so as not to tell the areas what to do. The Conference’s advisory actions.
  • 1952, after it. The two-year term was discussed, and “No delegate even remotely suggested that the term of office of the present panel should be extended.” The Grapevine.
  • 1985. Bob P.’s history gives two memories. Dr. John L. Norris remembered several delegates proposing a third year in 1952, and the Conference voting it down: “a third term would deprive other members of the opportunity.” And when a third year came up again in 1965 and the Conference kept two, a delegate from Oklahoma, Mike R., remembered wanting it “more than anything in the world,” and voting against it: “and it just killed me.”
Who went in the hat

The hat was for a close race, but whose names went into it changed:

  • The plan. As Bill first thought of it, “the lead man and one or two of his runners-up” might put their names in.
  • The guidelines. In the pamphlet sent to the groups, by Arthur S.’s summary, the lot was drawn from all the committeemen, whether they had stood for delegate or not.
  • Boston. At the first tryout, when nobody reached two-thirds, “the names of the whole committee” went into the hat, as the guidelines said.
  • Today. The top two after the ballots, by the Third Legacy Procedure.

The Conference used the hat on itself, too. In 1953 it agreed that when a debate stuck, the chair should draw a committee of second-year delegates from the hat to talk it over in another room. In 1965 it agreed to keep drawing its own committees from the hat.

Sources
  • Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “Service: The Third Legacy” (the plan; Helen B.; the two panels; the ballot and the hat; Boston; 50,000 copies).
  • Arthur S., A Narrative Timeline of AA History, 2009 (the guidelines of 1950; the Conference of 1952; the first women delegates).
  • Bob P., “The General Service Conferences,” chapter 11 of his manuscript history of AA, 1985, unpublished, at silkworth.net (Panel One; the Conference of 1952; Dr. Norris and the third year; 1953; 1965).
  • “AA General Service Conference: Progress, Humility, Unity, Mark Sessions of Delegates,” AA Grapevine, June 1952, scan at silkworth.net.
  • Al S., “The Conference—Then: Memories of AA’s ‘First Panel’,” AA Grapevine, August 1955, scan at silkworth.net.
  • R. B., “8 in 83,” AA Grapevine, August 1960, scan at silkworth.net.
  • AA World Services, Advisory Actions of the General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous, 1951–2022 (M-39) (rotation and the two-year term, 1952; committees from the hat, 1953 and 1965).
  • AA World Services, The A.A. Service Manual, appendix “Third Legacy Procedure.”
  • “The 76th General Service Conference: ‘Humility in Action’,” Box 4-5-9, Summer 2026.