It had no constitution or bylaws, no parliamentary procedure to guide the meetings, and no option for motions from the floor; its officers were appointed rather than elected.
[2] Membership of the Minute Women was restricted to American citizens, though the group's founder had been born in Belgium and was the sister of the Belgian Ambassador, Baron Robert Silvercruys.
[3] The Minute Women sought to apply political pressure through letter-writing campaigns, heckling speakers and swamping their opponents with telephone calls.
[3][4] Their tactics were highly effective; as the Houston Post noted, "Many public officials… who might… defy a lone organization… would be loath to go against the wishes of 500 individuals."
At one point, the Minute Women circulated a report that "troops flying the United Nations flag once took over several American cities in a surprise move, throwing the mayors in jail and locking up the police chiefs."
"[3] There was an overt element of racism in the Minute Women's activities, which included distributing anti-semitic literature and opposing proponents of integrated schools, which they regarded as Communist-inspired advocates of "race mongrelization.
O'Leary's reports were widely praised, with Time magazine describing the Post's coverage as "a model of how a newspaper can effectively expose irresponsible vigilantism.