Women in Journalism

Photo Credit: New Pittsburgh Courier Online

IN THIS ISSUE

Hazel Garland, first African-American to serve as editor-in-chief of a nationally circulated newspaper

Museum Happenings...........................3 Feature: Women in Journalism........6 Biographies.........................................11 Contemporary Perspective................15 2015 NWHM Annual Report..............17 #WeHearYou.......................................18

VOLUME 22

Women in Journalism

A Message From NWHM President Joan Wages

Dear Friends, I am delighted to share this issue with you. In addition to our rich content on women’s history, we have also combined our Annual Report. And I can’t wait for you to read about all the wonderful things that you, as a Charter Member, helped us achieve.

In 2015, we looked for ways to increase awareness about the Museum and to encourage more individuals to engage with us, either in person or via social media. This effort is reaping its rewards. Our social media presence continues to grow by leaps and bounds. We continue to be listed among the Top 5 museums for social media engagement. In addition, we have an active group of followers who attend our events in the DC-metro area, including our movie screenings, walking tours and book discussions. We have discussed and are making plans to expand these offerings.

In 2015, we also held two discussion forums in partnership with The George Washington University. They spotlighted women in higher education and women in peace and conflict.

Of course some of our core programs continue. We are adding to our comprehensive biographies on the NWHM website and launched two new exhibits in 2015. As one of the most comprehensive sites for exploring women’s history, we are committed to bringing the breadth and scope of women’s contributions to the public.

As we head into spring, I want to thank you for all your support in 2015 and ask for your continued support in 2016. This is an exciting year as we prepare for the Congressional Commission’s report. Be sure to let your member of Congress know that you support our efforts.

Gratefully,

Joan Bradley Wages

STANDING UP FOR CHANGE: AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN & THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT nwhm.org/online-exhibits/civilrights/index.html

The exhibit was unveiled in commemoration of Black History Month as part of the Google Cultural Institute special Black History Arts and Culture Collection.

NWHM was one of only two museums highlighting women. It adds to the 24 other exhibits currently available to the Museum’s online visitors.

NWHM Welcomes Two New Board Members Mari Snyder Johnson and Joan H. Walker are the two newest members of the National Women’s History Museum Board of Directors. The two women bring a wealth of experience to the Museum’s board, including extensive knowledge of leadership development, corporate and strategic communications and marketing as well as business acumen and board development.

Civil War Walking Tours to Launch As part of its public programs, the National Women’s History Museum has been offering walking tours in the DC-metro area.

This spring, the Museum will add Civil War themed Walking Tours to its cadre. The tours will highlight Old Town Alexandria and its pivotal role during the war housing Union and Confederate soldiers. It will feature women who worked in various roles during the war, including as nurses, business women and spies. To learn more about the tours and to register for one if you plan to visit Washington, DC, visit www.nwhm.org.

NWHM Hosts Chicago Event to Raise Awareness about the Need for a Women’s History Museum An enthusiastic group of women and men came together at the Chicago Club in downtown Chicago to discuss the importance of women’s history and to lend their support to establishing a national women’s history museum. The group enjoyed a presentation by NWHM President and CEO Joan Wages followed by small discussion groups.

Susan Whiting, Chair of the NWHM Board of Directors and a longtime C-suite executive summarized the meeting’s importance.

“Now more than ever we need to recognize women’s history so that young girls and boys learn about the many successful women who helped build our nation and those women who continue to shatter the glass ceiling,” Whiting said.

Many participants expressed interest in starting a Chicago Regional Council to support the establishment of a bricks and mortar museum.

Attentive group learns about the National Women’s History Museum.

NWHM Chair Susan Whiting (second from left) and Chicago attendees.

Attendees at NWHM event in Chicago

New African-American Exhibit Launched in Partnership with Google Cultural Institute A new online exhibit has been added to the National Women’s History Museum through its partnership with the Google Cultural Institute. The exhibit titled, “Standing Up for Change: African American Women and the Civil Rights Movement” spotlights the rich and vibrant voice of black women leaders in the movement.

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Women in Journalism By: Tracy Lucht, Ph.D.

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

— Ida B. Wells-Barnett y 1892, Ida B. Wells (1862–1931) had already fought many battles. Born into slavery, she had put herself through college and kept her family afloat after her parents died of yellow fever. During the era of racial segregation, she sued a railroad company in Tennessee after it forcibly removed her from the seat she had purchased. As a schoolteacher and co-owner of the Free Speech and Headlight in Memphis, she wrote scathing essays about the state of public education for black children—and lost her teaching contract as a result. Her last stand in Ida B. Wells Memphis in 1892 was different. She dared to take on the issue of lynching, using her newspaper to expose horrific truths about the recent murder of three black businessmen and encouraging blacks to leave the city in protest. Shortly after, the newspaper’s offices were ransacked, its printing press was destroyed, and Wells received death threats. She joined the roughly 6,000 black residents who left Memphis but continued to crusade for racial justice and gender equality throughout her life as a writer, editor, and founding member of the NAACP. Although American women battled incredible odds to achieve successful journalism careers, we would do our formidable foremothers a disservice if we did not recognize this important fact: The history of women and the print media is a complicated story of individual empowerment as well as a story of prejudice and discrimination.

Women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries found several key strategies to claim a place for themselves on newspapers and magazines. Sometimes they fought their way into men’s professional circles; other times they presented a separate perspective, providing content keyed to their gender, race, or religion. These women used a variety of methods to establish careers in journalism, which can be broadly characterized using the following themes: femininity, advocacy, novelty, and equality.

B Social Media Campaign Launched during National Women’s History Month Social media has become one of the most popular tools used by nonprofits to spread their message. With an active fan base of 366,000 plus likes on Facebook and 14,000 plus followers on Twitter, the National Women’s History Museum launched its first social media campaign to raise awareness about the need for a women’s history museum.

NWHM invited women and men from across the country to share why a women’s history museum is important to them. Followers were also invited to donate at least $5 towards building the museum. To learn more, visit www.helpusbuildit.org.

Museum Partners with Strathmore Arts Center The Music Center at Strathmore Music and Arts Center partnered with the Museum as a beneficiary of its show “I Am Harvey Milk/I Am Anne Hutchinson.”

The theatrical performance, Broadway-styled show premiered at the Strathmore in Bethesda, Maryland on April 23 and April 24 and featured Tony-award winner and singer Kristen Chenoweth and Broadway composer Andrew Lippa. A portion of proceeds from the show were dedicated to the Museum.

The show tells the story of San Francisco activist and Board Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay individual to serve in elected office in California and Anne Hutchinson, considered a pioneer of women’s rights and religious tolerance in America. Strathmore is a multi-disciplinary arts center with a 2,000-seat concert hall based in Bethesda, Maryland.

The intimate arts space center is based in an historic mansion right outside of Washington DC.

1638

Elizabeth Glover owned America’s first printing business.

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1696

Dinah Nuthead earns grant from Maryland to become the first licensed female printer in the colonies.

1738

Elizabeth Timothy became the first female newspaper publisher and editor in America.

Femininity

Women in the nineteenth century who wished (or needed) to make a living through their writing were constrained by conventional gender norms that insisted on separate spheres for men and women. The historian Barbara Welter called this dominant ideology of the antebellum period the “cult of true womanhood,” which consisted of four primary attributes 1700s

Women edit approximately 16 of the 78 newspapers circulating the colonies.

1777

Mary Katherine Goddard prints the first copy of the Declaration of Independence with each signers’ name.

1831

Maria Stewart’s abolitionist writings, first by an African American woman, are published by William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator.

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believed to come naturally to “the better sex”: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. White women of the middle and upper classes were expected to demonstrate their religiosity, morality, and deference to the white patriarchy if they hoped to have any standing within their communities. They also were expected to assume primary responsibility for their homes and families in roles that were carefully segregated from the public duties of men.

These expectations created a need for magazine and newspaper content that would instruct middleclass women on how best to fulfill their special and important duties, a demand met by influential women who used their femininity as a source of their authority. Sarah Josepha Hale (1788–1879) was the most prominent women’s magazine editor of her time and used her position at Godey’s Lady’s Book to advance women’s education and discuss appropriate employment for women. From 1828 to 1877, Hale led various iterations of the monthly publication, (Above) eventually reaching the highest Sarah Josepha Hale circulation of any periodical before the Civil War. At its (Right) Godey’s Lady’s Book, peak, about 150,000 families June 1867 subscribed to Godey’s for the latest home and dress fashions, but also to read the work of American authors, whom Hale promoted in her pages. One such writer was Sara Jane Lippincott (1823–1904), who wrote stories, poetry, non-fiction, and correspondence under the pen name “Grace Greenwood.” A versatile and prolific journalist, Lippincott opposed slavery and supported women’s rights. Many of her articles appeared in The New York Times, and she is credited as being the first woman on the payroll there.

In contrast to Lippincott’s outspoken views on suffrage and abolition, newspaper columnist Jane Cunningham Croly (1829–1901), better known as “Jennie June,” appealed to women primarily as consumers. In her work for newspapers, she emphasized the four F’s of conventional women’s content: food, family, fashion, and furnishings. Steeped in tradition, this content—pejoratively labeled “soft” news—included discussions of important social issues and sought to improve women’s lives. Croly, who opposed suffrage for women, used her column to highlight the domestic concerns of women and pioneered the use of syndication to publish in Mid-Atlantic and Southern newspapers. Croly also encouraged women to collaborate and support one another in their efforts to improve their communities. She organized women journalists in New

York City after the male press club refused her access to a dinner with visiting author Charles Dickens. That group became the New York Women’s Press Club in 1889. The following year, she founded the General Federation of Women’s Clubs to provide centralized support for the women’s club movement nationwide.

Advocacy

Advocacy proved to be another way women journalists empowered themselves through their work. Examples of reformminded journalism could be found at the turn of the twentieth century in magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Ladies’ Home Journal. The latter, owned by Cyrus and Louisa Knapp Curtis, exposed fraud in patent medicine advertisements and denied itself this large source of revenue as a matter of principle. The magazine’s popularity more than made up for it, as Ladies’ Home Journal became the first U.S. publication to reach a circulation of 1 million in 1904. However, traditional women’s content was not the only path taken by women journalists who wished to make their voices heard. Women around the country published newspapers that carried their views on issues such as suffrage, temperance, and abolition.

When Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815– 1884) took over the St. Cloud Visiter in Minnesota in 1858, she warned the newspaper’s Democratic backers that she would not compromise her abolitionist beliefs. When a conflict arose between Swisshelm and a powerful politician, leading to a mob destroying her press, she raised the money to start over with a new title: the St. Cloud Democrat. Swisshelm began her newspaper career in Pittsburgh and was the first woman to report from the Senate press gallery in Washington, D.C., providing correspondence to Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. She also Jane Grey Swisshelm helped secure the right of married women to own property in Pennsylvania and advocated for women’s employment rights throughout her career.

Similarly, Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818–1894) used the power of the press to push for social change. As the founding editor of The Lily, a newspaper for women, Bloomer initially focused on supporting the temperance movement but soon pivoted to address women’s rights, including suffrage, property rights, and dress reform. Her promotion of pantaloons worn under a shorter skirt—which she argued was a safer option for women than the heavy Amelia Jenks Bloomer

1836

Sara Josepha Hale is the first American woman named editor in chief of a major magazine.

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1848

Margaret Fuller becomes U.S. first female foreign correspondent covering the Italian Revolution.

1850

Jane Grey Swisshelm becomes first woman to sit in the press gallery in the U.S. Senate.

1853

Pauline Kellog Wright launches Una, first publication devoted to women’s rights.

1853

Mary Ann Shadd Cary publishes the Provincial Freeman, becoming the first black female newspaper publisher in North America.

1870

Lucy Stone establishes Woman’s Journal to advance the woman suffrage movement and other women’s issues of the day.

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skirts and petticoats then en vogue— gave rise to the term “bloomers,” used by critics who accused activists of trying to destroy women’s femininity.

The controversy was a boon for The Lily, whose circulation rose as a result, making it more profitable than other suffrage newspapers.

Novelty

No overview of women in journalism would be complete without mentioning Elizabeth Cochrane (1864– 1922), or “Nellie Bly,” the intrepid girl reporter who pioneered a career path for women as stunt journalists.

She got her first job on a Pittsburgh newspaper after writing a letter to the editor describing women’s right to be employed, a necessity if they lost a male provider or suffered abuse within their marriages. In 1884, Bly convinced John Cockerill, managing editor for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, to hire her.

One of her first assignments was to fake her way into the notorious Blackwell’s Island asylum for insane women and write a sensational exposé of the disturbing conditions she found there.

Cochrane’s first-person articles both illustrated and influenced the trend of white women reporters putting themselves in surprising or dangerous situations to attract readers.

Editors did not trust women to provide dispassionate accounts of public affairs, but they could not ignore the commercial value of these sensational stories, which they advertised with great flair.

The literary scholar Jean-Marie Lutes noted the paradox of this genre: Women’s

bodies, objectified as a spectacle, also served as a source of agency. Indeed, “Nellie Bly” became a celebrity, her likeness appearing on toys and games, as she raced to beat the fictitious record set by Phineas Fogg in Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in Eighty Days.

Novelty was also evident in the careers of women journalists who reported in historically masculine Elizabeth contexts but Meriwether Gilmer either wrote stories dripping with drama, in the style of so-called “sob sisters,” or simply received special attention because of their gender. Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer (1870– 1951), or “Dorothy Dix,” has been described as the nation’s first advice columnist.

She began her career on the New Orleans Picayune and died a millionaire, having achieved national prominence. As one of four women who covered the riveting murder trial of Harry Thaw in 1907, Gilmer was among the original “sob sisters,” so named because of the perceived emotionality of their articles.

Although male reporters also used sensational language in covering the trial, the gendered label stuck and influenced the roles later given to women journalists. For example,

Dorothy Ashby (1895–1979), a young reporter hired by the Des Moines Capital in 1917, described her role as that of a sob sister, embodying the expectation that she would provide human-interest stories to accompany her male colleagues’ straight reporting.

Equality

Women journalists at the start of the twentieth century might have viewed their careers through an explicitly gendered lens, but this would change over the next several decades.

“The brain has no sex,” insisted Sylvia Porter (1913–1991), the country’s first personal finance columnist, as she demonstrated her ability to write about money at the New York Post beginning in 1935. Women’s determination to be treated as professional equals could be seen in the variety of roles they assumed, including war correspondent, editorial writer, and photographer.

These efforts gained sharp momentum with feminist activism of the 1960s and 1970s as more people resisted the notion that men and women should be given separate functions within professional organizations. In addition, feminist groups made media representations of women a key focus of their criticism, and women of color challenged white feminists to consider how race and ethnicity historically had intersected with gender to shape their experiences.

Women of color played important roles in providing news for their communities while fighting discrimination on the basis of race and gender. In 1939, Lucile Bluford (1911–2003), then managing editor of the Kansas City Call, was denied admission to the University of Missouri’s graduate program in journalism because of her race. She sued the university, testing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling the previous year that required the state to provide the same educational opportunities

to black students that it did to white students.

She refused to attend the inferior journalism school the state hastily put together at its black university and Lucile Bluford continued, without success, to apply to the University of Missouri’s prestigious graduate program. Bluford finally accepted an honorary doctorate from the university in 1989 after decades spent fighting for civil rights as a distinguished publisher and member of the black press. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, created another legal channel through which women and people of color asserted their right to be treated equally on the job.

Women at major print organizations, including Newsweek and The New York Times, filed class-action lawsuits protesting their history of being hired and kept in lower-ranking, lower-paying jobs than similarly qualified male colleagues. Their collective actions were part of a long battle to achieve parity in American newsrooms. It is worth remembering these women’s individual stories, just as it is worth asking whether their work will ever be finished.

Tracy Lucht is an assitant professor in the GrenLee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University.

Photo by Matt Wettengel

Elizabeth Cochrane

1872

Mary Clemmer becomes highest paid female journalist of the day, earning $5,000 annual salary from Brooklyn Daily Union.

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1879

Women comprised 12% of the journalists credentialed for admittance to the press galleries in the United States Capitol building.

1883

Ladies Home Journal, the first women’s magazine to reach 1 million subscribers, is established.

1887

Nellie Bly pioneers investigative journalism with her expose based on her time posing as a mentally ill patient.

1892

Ida B. Wells becomes part-owner of The Memphis Free Speech.

1895

Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer is hired by the New Orleans Daily Picayune, launching the “Dorothy Dix Talks,” a forerunner of today’s advice columns.

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traditional conceptions of gender roles put her at odds with the suffragist movement of the era.

Her book, The History of the Standard Oil Company was placed No. 5 on a list of the top 100 works of 20th‑century American journalism by New York University.

Ida Tarbell An early pioneer of investigative reporting, Ida Minerva Tarbell knew well the power of the pen. Born November 5, 1857, in Erie County, Pennsylvania, she was the only woman in her 1880 graduating class at Allegheny College. She is best known for her work with McClure’s Magazine exposing unfair practices of the Standard Oil Company, leading to a U.S. Supreme Court decision to break its monopoly. She also helped to give rise to a new style of investigative journalism.

With her inquisitive mind and sharp research skills, she was drawn to writing.

She was hired by a small teaching publication following graduation. There she honed her writing skills before moving to Paris to pursue graduate studies at the Sorbonne and the College de France and to write a biography on Madame Roland, an influential salon owner during the French Revolution.

To support herself overseas, she wrote numerous articles about the city for the popular magazines of the day.

Through this work, Tarbell came to the attention of Samuel McClure, founder of the illustrated monthly McClure’s Magazine, which featured both political articles and serialized printings of literary works. Tarbell was hired as an editor in 1894 and thrived at McClure’s.

1902

Investigative journalist Ida M. Tarbell writes scathing groundbreaking series on Standard Oil Company monopoly that leads to an investigation and court decision that found the company in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

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She authored numerous successful pieces, including popular biographies of Napoleon Bonaparte and Abraham Lincoln. Her 20-part series on Lincoln doubled McClure’s circulation and made Tarbell a leading authority on the early life of the former president, and landed her a book deal.

Although she never considered herself a talented writer, Tarbell believed her diligent research and commitment “ought to count for something. And perhaps I could learn to write,” she once said. She spent years examining hundreds of thousands of documents across the country, revealing strongarm tactics, espionage and collusion for her 19-part series on the Standard Oil Company. Her work was motivated by what she had seen as a young teenager when her father’s oil business was crushed as part of unfair buying practices of the South Improvement Company, a corporation widely viewed, at the time, under the control of a young John D. Rockefeller.

Tarbell’s exhaustive study not only gave rise to a new style of investigative journalism sometimes referred to as ‘muckraking’ but also was instrumental in the 1911 dismantling of the Standard Oil Company behemoth, which was determined by the U.S. Supreme Court, to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Tarbell left McClure’s in 1906 and for the next nine years wrote for American Magazine, of which she was also a coowner and co-editor. She joined with several other muckraking journalists to launch the magazine, and co-edited it until 1915, when she left her career in journalism to travel the country as a public speaker. She authored numerous longer works as well, including The Business of Being a Woman (1912) and The Ways of Women (1915), whose 1906

Mary Church Terrell publishes “What it Means to Be Colored in the Capital of the United States,” in The Independent, a widely read magazine aimed at whites.

1919

National Women’s Press Club is established.

SOURCES: http://www.biography.com/people/ida-tarbell9502126#profile http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/ features/biography/rockefellers-tarbell/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ the-woman-who-took-on-the-tycoon651396/#HJL7OI3x8Kt2ERrj.99 https://web.archive.org/web/20050209150123/http:// www.in.gov/icw/archives/ruffin.html http://www.blackpast.org/aah/ruffin-josephine-stpierre-1842-1924

Rachel Foster Avery Born December 30, 1858, Rachel Foster Avery was born into a family of advocates. Her father was the editor of the Pittsburgh Dispatch and her mother was the first vice-president of the suffrage society formed in New York.

Her parents hosted meetings in their home and were friends with Susan B. Anthony, who was also Foster Avery’s Sunday School teacher.

At 17 years old, Foster Avery began to write for newspapers, furnishing weekly letters from California, and afterwards from Europe, to the Pittsburgh Leader.

As the corresponding secretary for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Foster Avery played a critical role in the planning and communication 1971

Women are admitted into the National Press Club.

of the organization. She often was essential in recording strategies for adding women’s suffrage amendments to the constitution of various states, the problems of winning converts to the cause, and raising money.

Introduced to the suffrage movement as a young girl, Foster Avery’s interest peaked in the winter of 1879 when she attended the 11th convention of the National Women’s Association. With characteristic promptitude she began to plan the series of conventions to be held in the West during the summer of 1880, and in the spring of 1881 she planned the series of 10 conventions in different states, beginning in Boston.

Perhaps the act which best illustrated her ability to propagate the cause was when she engaged Governor John W. Hoyt of Wyoming to give a lecture in Philadelphia on “The Good Results of Thirteen Years’ Experience of Women’s Voting in Wyoming.” She then had the lecture stenographically reported, collected the money to publish 20,000 copies, and scattered them broadcast over the state of Pennsylvania.

In February, 1883, she sailed for Europe with Susan B. Anthony, traveling through France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany.

Her superior linguistic attainments served them well as she dispatched several letters and communiques on their travels.

She is also noted for her successful planning of the International Council of Women held in Washington, DC in February 1888. It was the first gathering of women from across the globe. Called by Susan B. Anthony, May Wright Sewall and other suffragists, the aim of the conference was to form a National Council of Women in each self-governing country of the world. The councils would bring women from many countries together to work for women, not only in the cause of suffrage, but on many fronts.

Foster Avery was also a well-known philanthropist of the day and supported many reform issues and charities.

SOURCES:

http://www.ahgp.org/women/rachel_foster_ avery_1858_1919.html http://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/781

2011

Jill Abramson appointed as first woman executive editor of the New York Times.

2015

Women’s Media Center found that men generated 62.1 percent of news while women generated 37.3 percent.

All Photos Courtesy: Library of Congress

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Josephine St. Pierre-Ruffin A writer, publisher, suffragist and civil rights activist, Josephine St. Pierre-Ruffin used her talents and resources to support and raise awareness about the causes that she believed in. Born in Boston to a middle class family, Ruffin became involved with social causes early. She attended public schools in Charlestown and Salem, and a private school in New York City because of her parents’ objections to the segregated schools in Boston.

She was a vocal leader in the abolition and women’s suffrage movements. Ruffin was also active in the temperance movement. She was a member of the Massachusetts School Suffrage Association and the Massachusetts Moral Education Association. Through these organizations, Ruffin became acquainted with Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone.

In 1869, she joined with Howe and Stone to form the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in Boston.

She also helped found the Women’s New Era Club for black women and edited its newspaper, Woman’s Era from 1890 through 1897. Woman’s Era was the country’s first newspaper published by and for African American women.

Financed by St. Pierre‑Ruffin and edited by her and her daughter Florida, this monthly, illustrated magazine (which lasted seven years) urged its readers– mostly middle class black women– to become informed and actively involved in public issues such as suffrage and civil rights. While promoting interracial activities, the Woman’s Era called on black women to demand increased rights for their race.

St. Pierre-Ruffin also served as editorin-chief and writer for The Courant, a small weekly newspaper for African Americans. The newspaper covered a number of issues affecting the black community and published works from some of the great activist writers like Frederick Douglass. Through her work with The Courant, she became a member

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of the New England Woman’s Press Association.

Her philanthropic work brought her in contact with many eminent white and black leaders and her close friends included William Lloyd Garrison, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Booker T. Washington.

In 1894, she formed the Women’s New Era Club of Boston and served as its first president. She also brought together several African-American women’s groups for the First National Conference of Colored Women in 1895. The following year, the National Federation of AfroAmerican Women, the Woman’s Era Clubs of Boston and the Colored Women’s League of Washington, D.C., merged to become the National Association of Colored Women.

Her husband, George was the first African-American man to graduate from Harvard Law School and became the first African-American municipal judge. St. Pierre-Ruffin raised four children and was also actively involved in the Civil War. SOURCES:

http://www.blackpast.org/aah/ruffin-josephine-stpierre-1842-1924#sthash.PSn3K9lO.dpuf http://www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/newbios/ nwsppr/Biogrphs/josephruff/joseph.html https://web.archive.org/web/20050209150123/ http://www.in.gov/icw/archives/ruffin.html http://www.biography.com/people/josephine-stpierre-ruffin-9466659#early-life (citation info: Article Title: Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin Author: Biography.com Editors; Website Name: The Biography.com website Afrocentricity and the Academy: Essays on Theory and Practice. Edited by James L. Conyers, Jr.

Martha Ellis Gellhorn Born in St. Louis, Missouri November 8, 1908 Martha Gellhorn found a love for writing and through that skill shared with the world the human and social impact of war as the first female war correspondent.

She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career. She is considered one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century.

A novelist, travel writer, and journalist, Gellhorn began her career as a crime writer in the late 1920s. She attended a progressive private school her parents founded before enrolling at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia. At Bryn Mawr, Gellhorn changed her major from English to French, which became useful for her journalistic work in Europe. In 1934, she was among a group of American students invited to tour Nazi Germany, and she never forgot her first encounter with fascism.

She left Bryn Mawr in 1927 to pursue journalism. Her first position was with New Republic before moving on to become a crime writer with a local newspaper. She worked there for a few years before earning a trip to Europe from writing a brochure for the Holland American Line that allowed her to travel the continent. Overseas, with a base in Paris, she was determined to become a foreign correspondent. She worked for various publications and eventually joined the United Press Bureau. While in Europe, she became active in the pacifist movement, writing about her experiences in her book What Mad Pursuit (1934).

When Gellhorn returned to the United States, she was hired as an investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. In this position, she traveled across the country to document the impact of the Depression. Her reports caught the eye of Eleanor Roosevelt and the two women became friends for life. She married poet and writer Ernest Hemmingway in 1940.

Writing for Colliers Weekly, she covered the Spanish Civil War and travelled deeper into Western Europe to cover World War II. In 1944, she allegedly stowed away on a hospital ship to report on the D-Day landings. She was the only woman journalist to cover the arrival of the Allies. During World War II, she got British pilots to let her ride along on night bombing raids over Germany.

The next year, she entered Dachau with American troops for the liberation of the infamous concentration camp.

She covered Russia’s war against Finland in 1939, trekked across China with Hemingway in 1940 and became increasingly critical of the United States, which she saw as a “colonial power.’’

In 1966, she covered the war in Vietnam; in the 1980s she continued to travel extensively, writing about the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua and the U.S. invasion of Panama. In the mid-1990s she went to Brazil to write about street children there. It was only when war came to Bosnia that she gave it a pass.

She eventually settled abroad for good. The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism is named after her. The award recognizes a writer that gives ‘a view from the ground,’ essentially a human story that penetrates the established version of events and illuminates an urgent issue buried by prevailing fashions of what makes news.

Gellhorn died in 1998 and was described

by The New York Times as a champion of ordinary people trapped in conflicts created by the rich and powerful.

SOURCES:

http://www.biography.com/people/marthagellhorn-20903335 http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/ Supplement-Fl-Ka/Gellhorn-Martha.html http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/17/arts/ martha-gellhorn-daring-writer-dies-at-89. html?pagewanted=all

DONOR SPOTLIGHT Dorothy Baldwin Wicker, a NWHM Charter Member for over ten years and a new member of the NWHM President’s Council, is a trail blazer in her own right.

She was the only female physics major at Hartwick College in the early 1960’s, and she was the only female in her master’s in physics program at Kent State University.

She went on to earn a Ph. D in applied management and decision sciences from Walden University, where her employer Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems, funded her studies. Despite being the first woman in many settings, she says, “I was never alone or on my own.”

Support came from her two husbands (now deceased) as well as her four siblings and three step children, as well as her extended family in Taiwan, which “adopted” her and her husband, when she was working for General Dynamics in the late 1980s.

Now in retirement, Wicker continues to be engaged with the National Women’s History Museum, and is also a member of the Board of Directors and immediate past president of the Friendship Force of the National Capital Area Club. Most recently, Dorothy participated in the NWHM Congressional Commission’s Scholars Forum.

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Contemporary Perspective From Past to Present: Women Journalists Telling their Own Story

“ Even with this spirit of collaboration and industry, for many decades women were relegated to social, domestic arts, food and fashion reporting, and kept out of the current events, investigative, photographic, and columnist writing as those spots were reserved for male writers.”

By Beth Dugan

When journalism emerged as a profession in the 1700s with the advent of the printing press, custom and law restricted access to journalism occupations for women.

Regardless, some intrepid women still operated as journalists, editors and sports analysts and writers before the 20th century.

Women in Europe like the Baroness Frederika Charlotte Riedesel were pushing boundaries.

Her account of the American Revolution and the capture of the German troops at Saratoga is thought to be the first womenauthored, first-person account of war. In addition, American newspapers gave a new generation of females a chance to be journalists and to bring their point of view to the reporting of news and the written word.

Though still rare in the maledominated profession, intrepid writers and journalists emerged from the ranks of women. Though New York City and Chicago were hotbeds of female journalist activity, giving life to the careers of wellknown female journalists like Ida B. Wells, the whole country was watching the field of journalism get blown open by women.

But female journalists were looking for a group of like-minded professional women for support, encouragement, and networking.

It was still a man’s profession and women knew the best way to get 15

ahead was to support each other.

Archival records reveal that in 1884, at the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans, southern women met a continuum of women journalists from the North, East, and Western states, and the Pacific territories for the first time.

Marion McBride, of the Boston Post, is credited with organizing a National Women’s Press Association independent of the Exposition.

Women journalists agreed to meet McBride with the purpose of organizing a permanent association for newspaperwomen across the country modeled after the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The idea of the league was that each state would be represented so they could offer, “mutual help, information and encouragement.” Among those present at the assembly were Dr. Julia Holmes Smith and newspaper writer Frances A. Conant, both residents of Chicago. By the end of the Centennial, the national organization had named officers and female journalists rushed to join. More importantly, the sparks of progressive inspiration and mutual support had been ignited.

Even with this spirit of collaboration and industry, for many decades women were relegated to social, domestic arts, food and fashion reporting, and kept out of the current events, investigative, photographic, and columnist writing

Barbara Walters

Ina Young Kelley

as those spots were reserved for male writers. Despite these constrictions, many women broke through these barriers to have outstanding careers.

One such was Ina Eloise Young (later Ina Young Kelley) who was the only female “sporting” editor in 1907. She worked in Colorado for the Trinidad Chronicle-News, and covered the 1908 World Series; the only woman of her time to do so. Even today, female sports contributors are far outnumbered by their male peers.

As women increased their presence in media, broadcast and print, as well as other avenues of journalism, more female journalists rose to the top of the field. Barbara Walters, Gloria Steinem, Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, Katherine Graham and many other contemporary women journalists have come to symbolize and demonstrate the tenants of hard-hitting reporting, risk-taking, and journalistic ethics. Indeed, the journalism organization that

was founded in 1885 after the New Orleans World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, and has become the National Federation of Press Women is still motivated by a keen sense of values and justice, and deeply concerned with journalistic ethics, professional dignity, and with the undying belief that all women have the right to be heard in all forms of communication.

WORKS CITED Wolf-Astrauskas, Marianne “Emerging Influence: The History of the Illinois Woman’s Press Association – Part I: The Founding.” iwpa.org. Illinois Women’s Press Association, February 14, 2015 Halper, Donna L. “A Lady Sporting Editor: How Ina Eloise Young Covered Baseball and Made History.” http://www.academia.edu/14277595

Beth Dugan is a freelance writer and the Mate E Palmer Contest Chair for the Illinois Women’s Press Association.

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2015 Annual Report 2015 was another successful year for the National Women’s History Museum. We started the year with a bang celebrating successful passage of legislation that created the congressional commission to study the Museum and recommend a permanent site. Members of the Commission were officially confirmed in May – initiating a key stage in our efforts to gain support for a Museum on or near the National Mall.

While the Commission began its work, we continued ours. In our 2015 Annual Report, we provide a highlight of our key accomplishments.

#We

R A E H You

Vision 2020: Equality in Sight shared National Women’s History Museum’s photo.

February 2

MUSEUM ON THE WEB The National Women’s History Museum remains a popular resource for educators and students. Our website, www.nwhm.org, had more than 2.7 million page views and 1.4 million visitors. Our most popular pages are our biographies, from which visitors can peruse more than 300. Visitor demographics suggest that a combined 35 percent of our visitors are 18-24 (15%) and 25-34 (20%).

In 2015, we launched two new online exhibits that discussed immigration and STEM: Breaking In: Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics and New Beginnings: Immigrant Women and the American Experience.

What a great tool for #YouthEducation‬, especially in honor of #BlackHistoryMonth‬!

A Mighty Girl January 31

“Architect Julia Morgan is often remembered as one of the first great American female architects. She was the first woman to be licensed as an architect in California and designed over 700 buildings in 50 years. She was also one of the first women to study civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1897, Morgan became the first woman admitted to Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, a prestigious architecture school. Some of her most notable works are the Hearst Castle, Asilomar YWCA, and the St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. In 2014, Morgan became the first woman to receive The American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal.” -via the National Women’s History Museum

Check out #Vision2020 Ally, The National Women’s History Museum, to learn more about the amazing contributions of African American Women to US history!

In addition, we launched phase one of our Suffrage Resource Center, a comprehensive online toolkit for educators, students and history enthusiasts on American woman suffrage.

The Center includes a timeline of major activities leading to passage of the 19th Amendment, primary documents and biographies of key figures involved in the crusade for the vote by American women.

OUR PROGRAMS In 2015, the Museum launched a collection of new programs for individuals living in the DC metro area. The live programs included walking tours, movie screenings, and book discussions.

Throughout 2015, a total of 32 in-person programs were hosted that attracted almost 200 individuals and helped to increase awareness about the Museum and its mission.

NWHM HONORS HISTORY-MAKING WOMEN IN LA AND DC Each year, the National Women’s History Museum celebrates the noted accomplishments of women serving as living legends to a new generation. In DC, the Museum marked the seventh year of hosting Women Making History, previously called the DePizan Awards. We also marked a milestone with the LA-version of the event that celebrated its fourth year. Each event drew more than 300 guests.

Honored at the DC event were Dr. France A. Córdova, director of the National Science Foundation; Chief Cathy Lanier, Chief of Police for Washington, D.C.; and Dr. Ellen Ochoa, director at NASA Johnson Space Center.

The women were recognized for their groundbreaking achievements in the fields of science, engineering, and law enforcement.

On the West Coast, the 2015 honorees were critically acclaimed actress and philanthropist Viola Davis, accomplished Grammy winning songwriter Diane Warren, and award-winning producer Gale Anne Hurd. The honoree trio was recognized for their outstanding accomplishments in film and the arts.

This year’s LA event was particularly significant as Viola Davis went on the next night to awarded an Emmy for best actress in a drama, making history as the first African American woman to win that award.

February 1

Celebrate the contributions of African Americans to the United States by visiting the National Women’s History Museum new online exhibit, “Standing Up for Change...

Fern Sophia Feb 3

Thank you for bringing the memory of Ms. Gibson’s story forward.

See More Chief Cathy Lanier, Dr. France Córdov Dr. Ellen Ochoa, a

The Women Making History events are a highlight of Museum programs and offer an up close and personal ees, from left, History LA Honor acknowledgement of contemporary women breaking Women Making la Davis and Gale Anne Hurd.

Vio n, rre Wa barriers and expanding opportunities for other women Diane in their respective fields. Through their philanthropic and professional endeavors, each of these women are considered outstanding examples of what women can accomplish.

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National Women’s History Museum

Dr. Kimberly McGeorge, ND @serenewellness

One of the finest Non-Profit pages I have ever seen...

Tearsa Smith

@TearsaSmith‬ Feb 5

Just discovered ‪@womenshistory Twitter page and WOW....

Great stuff. This is my ‪#ff recommendation!

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Editorial Staff Editor: Melissa Williams, NWHM Communications Manager Art Director: Brandon Scott, Envision Marketing

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