Women in Sports

Winter 2012 | Volume XII

THIS MONTH’S FEATURE WOMEN IN SPORTS

In This Edition De Pizan Gala 2 letter from the president 3 NWHM unveils new online exhibit 4 nwhm legislation update 4 birthday biographies 6 feature: women in sports 8 NWHM’s Fall Lecture Series: A Big Success 11 give the gift of membership 13 Special Holiday ARticle 14 A Star-studded event 15

NWHM’s 2012 de Pizan Honors A Night of Inspiration, Education, and Fun

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t was a celebration of historic and contemporary American women at NWHM’s 2nd annual de Pizan Honors Awards ceremony on Nov. 14th, as Dr. Maya Angelou, Senator Elizabeth Dole and Annie Leibovitz accepted this year’s Living Legacy Awards. Three hundred guests attended the gala at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC to honor the achievements of these remarkable women and to help the Museum pay homage to the roles of American women in building our nation.

This year’s Award-winners were former U.S. Annie Leibovitz and Joan Wages Senator and former President of the American Red Cross, Elizabeth Hanford Dole; legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz; and renowned poet, author and playwright Dr. Maya Angelou. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes was honored with the Henry Blackwell Award. The comedy duo, Frangela, returned to emcee the event and were a major highlight of the show.

The de Pizan Awards were established to bring women’s history to light, with the goal of educating people about the key role women have had throughout history and about the need to build a women’s history museum on the National Mall.

Dr. Angelou received the Gwendolyn Brooks Living Legacy Award, named after one of the best-known American poets in history. Dole received the Clara Barton Living Legacy Award, named after the founder of the American Red Cross. Dole served as President of the American Red Cross from 1991 to 1999, becoming the first female head of the Red Cross since its founder, Clara Barton. In addition to serving as President of the Red Cross, Dole was elected to the U.S. Senate and held Cabinet level positions as U.S. Secretary of Transportation and U.S. Secretary of Labor.

She made humorous note of how she had to break through the glass ceiling at various points in her career, recalling a time when she was at Harvard law school that a then fellow (male) law student, who is now a well-known lawyer, chastised her for taking a spot at the law school that should have gone to a man. Dole also praised the NWHM’s leadership for their “tireless efforts” to build a museum that will showcase the role of American women.

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Dr. Maya Angelou

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Leibovitz, one of the most acclaimed photographers in the world today, received the Dorothea Lange Living Legacy Award, named after Lange, an influential American photojournalist best known for her work for the Farm Security Administration when her images helped humanize the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary

photography. Pulitzer Prize‑winning author Richard Rhodes was the recipient of the Henry Blackwell Living Legend Award, given in honor of Blackwell, a 19th Century advocate for social and economic reform who was one of the founders of the American Women Suffrage Association and who published the Woman’s Journal, starting in 1870.

Rhodes’ book, Hedy’s Folly, about actress Hedy Lamarr, chronicles the life of the famous actress and her role in developing Richard Rhodes, Elizabeth Dole, Annie Leibovitz & Joan Wages a radio anti-jamming device that would prove crucial during the Cold War. Her research is now recognized as fundamental to today’s wireless technology. In his remarks, Rhodes paid tribute to his wife and to all women. “Women hold the world together,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes, Dole and Leibovitz accepted their Awards in person, while Dr. Angelou’s poignant remarks were shown on screen, along with those of actress Meryl Streep, a long-time supporter of the NWHM. Both were unfortunately unable to attend.

Did you know corner Historical Women Who Rocked: Myers-Briggs

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id you ever take the Myers-Briggs (MBTI) personality test? Did you know that the researchers who gave the world the MBTI (which happens to be one of the most popular personality tests in the world), were not only women but also mother and daughter? There are interesting facts like this you don’t learn in history textbooks!

The three original pairs of preferences in Jung’s typology are Extraversion and Introversion, Sensing and Intuition and Thinking and Feeling. After studying them, Myers-Briggs added a fourth pair, Judging and Perceiving.

Extraversion or Introversion: refers to where and how one places his or her efforts in the world — with others in the outer world or alone in the inner world Sensing or Intuition: refers to how one takes in information — through five senses or through patterns Thinking or Feeling: refers to decision making — objectively or personally Judging or Perceiving: refers to how one lives and interacts with outer world — structured or flexible Do you know which type you belong to?

Find out here: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp

A different point of view

Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katharine Cook Briggs worked together to create the system to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. The mother-daughter duo based much of their research on psychologist Carl Jung’s typological theories published in his book, Psychological Types in 1921.

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Letter from the President Recently, one of our interns brought a caterpillar into our offices. It was in a jar covered by a secured screen and filled with leaves for food.

We watched it gorge on the leaves for several days and eventually crawl up and attach itself to the mesh cover. Each day, everyone on staff would swing by to check on what the caterpillar was doing – all of us marveled at the miracle we were observing. Within days, it began to curl up and spin the cocoon.

For weeks it looked like nothing was happening. On weekends, staff who lived close by would check on our friend, not wanting the transformed creature to be confined to the jar for too long.

The call came on a weekend – the butterfly had emerged – a most exquisite monarch. We rushed into the office to set it free.

It is our belief that learning about women’s history will bring about its own kind of transformation.

Learning about women’s many contributions, roles and experiences brings greater respect . . . that results in a new way of seeing women. With greater value comes greater esteem and empowerment. This transformation is every bit as stark a change as the caterpillar to the butterfly.

In our last newsletter, there was a survey for us to learn more about our Charter Members. The number of responses was overwhelming. We so greatly appreciate those that took the time to tell us about yourselves and what you want to see from this Museum. We have noted every comment and tallied all preferences. While we may not be able to implement everything right now, know that we heard you and are working hard to put as much into action as possible. Thank you to NWHM Charter Members for supporting this vision to transform our world.

With gratitude,

Joan Wages

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NWHM Unveils A New Face for its Online Exhibits

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WHM has a new content management system that streamlines the Museum’s Online Exhibits and Biography Library.

Incorporated into this program is a biography database, which allows the Museum to attach biographies to any screens in an Exhibit. It will take a while to transfer previous Exhibits into the new format but once accomplished,

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visitors will be able to search across Exhibits, as well as link across Exhibits by subjects.

NWHM’s latest Online Exhibit, Early Jewish American Women, launched in early October, is the first Exhibit to be developed with this new framework. Future Exhibits will be developed using the new program.

Early Jewish American Women explores

the experiences of Jewish women and their communities during the first waves of immigration to the U.S. The new Exhibit marks the Museum’s first in its collection of 22 Online Exhibits that celebrates and chronicles the legacies of Jewish American women and their lasting and far-reaching influences in the building of our nation. From activist women like Ernestine Rose, an intellectual force behind the women’s rights movement in Nineteenth Century, to Rebecca Gratz, a founder of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society, Jewish American women diligently worked to create a public voice for themselves as well as to preserve their traditions and identities within the American Jewish community.

NWHM Legislation Update

Jewish settlers in the United States discovered

Children in Child Labor Demonstration, New York c. 1909

A different point of view

greater freedom, tolerance, and prosperity than they had known in Europe prior to immigrating. Women increasingly took on responsibility for preserving Jewish traditions and educating children in the Jewish faith, all the while creating vibrant Jewish communities throughout the nation. While adapting and even challenging tradition, women played a critical role in sustaining the Jewish identity within the context of American society and culture.

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Birthday Biographies Celebrate These Women

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Billie Jean King

illie Jean King was born November 22, 1943 in Long Beach, California. She was raised in a conservative Methodist family and at a young age displayed a talent for sports. As a young girl, she learned to play tennis on the public courts near her home. In 1962, at 19 years old, she won critical acclaim after winning the women’s doubles tennis title at Wimbledon. It was her first attempt. She would go on to win twenty Wimbledon titles and fight for equal pay for the women’s title. She also won 13 US titles (including four singles), four French titles (one singles), and two Australian titles (one singles).

Off the court, King fought assiduously for men and women to be paid equal prize money and in 1971, she became the first female athlete to win over $100,000.

Her campaign for equality culminated in the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” match against 55-year-old tennis champ, Bobby Riggs, who claimed that the women’s game was inferior. The match garnered worldwide attention and a television audience of some 50 million people.

King became the first president of the Women’s Tennis Association in 1974 and led the first professional women’s tour, the Virginia Slims, in the 1970s. She was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987 and served as captain of the United States Fed Cup team in the 1990s.

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On August 12, 2009 King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. The first female athlete to be honored with the Medal of Freedom, King was presented the Award by President Obama in ceremonies at the White House.

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Annie Smith Peck orld-renowned mountain climber, teacher and lecturer, Annie Smith Peck was born on October 19, 1850 in Providence, RI. She was

the youngest of five children and the only surviving daughter of George Bachelor Peck, a lawyer and dealer in anthracite coal, and Ann Power (Smith) Peck. Her family was affluent, which made it possible for her to receive a quality education. She attended the Rhode Island Normal School, graduating in 1872.

She then enrolled at the University of Michigan, which offered women an education on an equal basis with men. She graduated in 1878 with a major in Greek and Classical Languages.

From 1881 to 1892 she was taught in the fields of archaeology and Latin at Purdue and Smith College. She started to make a career as a lecturer, and by 1892 she gave up teaching and made her living by lecturing and writing about archeology, mountaineering and her travels. By her own account, Peck’s enthusiasm for mountain climbing began in 1885, when she first saw the “frowning walls” of the Matterhorn. After climbing several moderate-sized mountains in Europe and in the United States, she made her first important climb of Mount Shasta (14,380 feet) in 1888. In 1895, she ascended the Matterhorn, a feat that instantly catapulted her into fame. Almost as daring as her climb was her climbing outfit which consisted of knickerboots, hip-length tunic, stout boots and woolen hose and a soft felt hat with a veil.

She climbed Mount Orizaba and Mount Popocatepetl in Mexico in 1897. Although Peck was over fifty years old by the end of the Nineteenth Century, she wanted to make a very special climb and traveled to South America in 1903. Her mission was to find a mountain taller than Aconcagua in Argentina. She was successful. In 1904, she climbed Mount Sorata in Bolivia and in 1908 she was the first person to climb Mount Nevado Huascarán in Peru.

In 1929-30, Peck traveled by air around South America in order to show how easy and safe it was for tourists to fly.

Her journey was the longest by air by a North American traveler at the time.

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Sally Louisa Tompkins onfederate hospital worker, Sally Louisa Tompkins, was born on November 9, 1833 at Poplar Grove, Mathews County, VA. She was the third daughter and youngest of the four children of Colonel Christopher Tompkins and his second wife, Maria Boothe Patterson.

Tompkins spent her early years at Poplar Grove, which had passed to Colonel Tompkins after Patterson’s death. It was there that Sally Louis Tompkins became wellknown for her skill in caring for the ill. Following her father’s death, shortly before the start of the Civil War, the family relocated to Richmond.

Soon after the war commenced in 1861, numerous military hospitals—both public and private—were established in Richmond, the Confederate capital.

Among the first private institutions to open was the Robertson Hospital, operated by Miss Tompkins. The hospital was improvised in a residence donated by its owner, Judge John Robertson. It had a capacity of twenty-five beds and Miss Tompkins organized a group of socially prominent women, known as the “Ladies of Robertson Hospital,” as nurses.

Robertson Hospital received its first patient on August 1, 1861 and discharged its last patient on June 13, 1865. Of the 1,333 admissions at the hospital during this period, only seventy-three deaths were reported—an incredibly low figure.

As hospital administrator, Tompkins was described as having a rather rigid discipline tempered with a deep concern for the souls as well as the lives of her patients.

Following the Civil War, Tompkins did occasional nursing and engaged in “quiet charities” as a faithful member of Richmond’s St. James Episcopal Church.

She died in 1916 of chronic interstitial nephritis.

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Shirley Chisholm hirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was born on November 30, 1924. She was a woman who was known for her moral character and her relentless ability to stand up for

her community and what she believed. A child to immigrant parents, she learned from an early age the importance of an education and the value of hard work, both of which she applied to her political career and her accomplishments while serving as a US Congresswoman.

Chisholm attended Brooklyn College where a blind political science professor, Louis Warsoff, encouraged Chisholm to consider politics based on her “quick mind and debating skills.” She reminded him that she had a “double handicap” when it came to politics—she was black and a woman. Chisholm joined the debate team and after African-American students were denied admittance to a social club at the college, she started her own club called Ipothia—In Pursuit of the Highest In All. Chisholm graduated with honors in 1946 and worked as a nursery school aide and teacher while she attended evening classes at Columbia University’s Teachers College. She received her master’s degree in early childhood education in 1951.

She served in the New York State legislature from 1964 until 1968 when she decided to run for a seat in the U.S. Congress. The 12th Congressional District was created after the Westberry v. Sanders decision stated that election districts must be roughly equal in population. Chisholm won the seat with the use of her “independent spirit” and her campaign slogan, “Unbought and Unbossed.” Chisholm’s win made her the first African American woman in Congress.

It was during her second term in the House that Chisholm ran for the US Presidency. She became the first black woman to run for President, but this is not what she wanted people to focus on during her campaign. The fact that her campaign was seen primarily as “symbolic” by many really hurt her. She did not run on the mere basis of being a “first,” but because she wanted to be seen as “a real, viable candidate.” Her bid for the Presidency was referred to as the “Chisholm Trail,” and she won a lot of support from students, women and minority groups.

Chisholm served a total of 14 years in the Congress and made numerous contributions before she made the decision to retire in 1982. She died on January 1, 2005.

A different point of view

She published her fourth and last book after her return. It was entitled, Flying Over South America: Twenty Thousand Miles by Air. Peck died in July 1935 in New York City.

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FEATURE A Heritage of Mixed Messages: Women’s Sports History Bonnie Morris, PhD [I am delighted to offer this sample mini-lecture from my women’s sports history class, which I’ve taught every year at both Georgetown and George Washington University since 1996.]

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ineteenth Century America idealized white woman’s modesty, frowning on sports as a threat to elite females’ fertility. This double standard persisted long after slavery was abolished: elite women did not exert themselves; their [female] servants did. Yet there were few sporting outlets for poor women who had athletic gifts and aspirations. Instead, the elite women’s colleges and the country clubs associated with the wealth and leisure of the Gilded Age made certain sports acceptable for aristocratic ladies: tennis, croquet, archery, and bathing-beauty swimming at racially restricted lakes or beaches. In Coming on Strong, historian Susan Cahn notes that these endeavors were also more socially

acceptable because they required elaborate outfits, stamping an assurance of femininity onto competitors in costume. Healthful beauty, not aggression or the personal/political desire to triumph over competitors, remained the watchword for active women—with the interesting exception of field hockey, an often bruising sport legitimized as girlish because of its association with boarding schools for daughters of the elite.

Medical authorities dating back to Aristotle declared that women were basically ruled by their reproductive systems, with a limited amount of “energy” flowing through the body that monthly hormonal expenditure used up in dangerous quantities to begin with. Too much study or, heaven forbid, bicycle riding and other unladylike sports would render nice women infertile; Nineteenth Century campaigns against higher education for women sounded very much like campaigns to prevent women from taking part in active sports. Anti-college campaigns also had clear racial and class overtones: women who graduated from the Seven Sisters colleges were indeed less likely to reproduce, but this had more to do with the lure of professional service careers [such as teaching and nursing] which required women to remain unmarried. Still, the popular connection between higher education and spinsterhood led to notions that learning, like sport, “desexed” women; even President Theodore Roosevelt [not incidentally an advocate of sports and warfarebased manliness] believed that America’s oldest white families were conspiring to commit “race suicide” by sending their next generation of daughters to college.

As Nineteenth Century America honed white masculinity through warfare and capitalism, baseball and basketball, it also restricted women’s competition in public spheres of sports and politics by retaining inconsistent ideals about

Most women had to be tough to survive—to survive as mothers, child brides, farm wives, sharecroppers, factory girls, millhands, pioneers.

But where physical endurance was a highly sought-after quality in farmwives, strength on the home front was separate from an athletic identity. No one denied the muscular effort involved in carrying a child and giving birth; it was public athletic performance by women and girls that was condemned as immodest, selfish, and attention-seeking, the trinity of bad-girl behaviors. And athletic risks undertaken in prime childbearing years were seen as foolhardy.

Physical stress was common for rural homemakers who ran a household or family farm with few laborsaving devices or hired hands.

Their daily workload rivaled the bricklaying or haybaling assigned to the strongest men; but rural and smalltown wives rarely had their femininity impugned,

as long as their “athletic” chores entailed proper domestic duties: scrubbing floors, wringing laundry, ironing, lifting children, tending animals, hauling water, gardening, canning, even splitting wood and dressing freshly slaughtered game.

From this Midwestern demographic of bulging female arm muscles came the first female softball players and, ultimately, the All‑American Girls Baseball League of World War II. Our collective national memory is slowly erasing images of those American women, black and white, who grew up farming or going out to work at age six. (My grandmother Mia could split an apple in two with her bare hands, a casual act of kitchen athletic power that delighted me as a kid.)

Who were the first female athletes embraced

by Americans? What allowed them to break through restrictive cautions and conditions?

When the modern Olympics were brought back in 1896, women were not allowed to compete until 1920 [with a special “Women’s Olympics” convening in 1922 and well into the 1930s.]

Scholar Susan Cahn suggests that country club sports like tennis and swimming, with their leisure-class and feminine-fashion associations, allowed white heroines like Helen Wills and Gertrude Ederle to capitalize on the Flapper Era’s love affair with sophisticated outdoorswomen: “They helped fashion a new ideal of womanhood by modeling an athletic, energetic femininity with an undertone of explicit, joyful sexuality.”

With American racism at extraordinary levels— despite the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s saw the Century’s highest levels of Ku Klux Klan

A different point of view

females’ innate ability to endure pain, injury, and manual labor. In textile mills and factories, women and children worked unregulated hours in life-threatening conditions; the sacred role of “mother” was violated every time a female slave suffered the sale of her children for someone else’s profit; in 1885 the “age of consent” for a girl child to be pushed into sexual union with an adult male was ten years old in 36 states, and seven years old in Delaware. It was legally permissible for any man to beat his wife and kids.

Clearly, socially sanctioned ideals of protecting women and children from harm have always had some gaps.

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FEATURE A Heritage of Mixed Messages (Continued)

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membership, with ongoing lynchings—few if any tennis courts or park pools were open to black athletes, male or female. Thus as white swimmers brought home Olympic gold, and white tennis beauty queens made headlines, African-American “race girls” brought pride to their own communities by defeating white teams at track and basketball meets. This pattern of white celebrity athletes vs. grassroots local heroines heralded only by their own [minority] communities remained in place for decades, further obscuring how many women and girls were, in fact, committed to sports.

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The association of sport with “rough” girls also continued through the Depression and the 1940s, due to industrial factory softball leagues and the segregated track world of black female athletes. But after the U.S. entry into World War II, gender codes changed to permit and reward muscular competence in war factories’ “Rosie the Riveter” workers (and WAC recruits.) Wartime America embraced an unlikely symbol of victory: the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Though all-white, and requiring strict obedience to absurd standards of femininity in dress, curfews and hairstyles, the League is now praised as radical for its day. Penny Marshall’s 1992 blockbuster “A League of Their Own” and Janis Taylor’s less famous but more authentic documentary “When Diamonds Were A Girl’s Best Friend” make plain the League’s selling point, conceived by Chicago Cubs owner

Philip K. Wrigley—that his “girls” would play like men but look like ladies. The contrast, and the presentation of strong-armed women as a wartime emergency resource not unlike the Navy’s WAVES, made escapist entertainment profitable. Since the League continued until 1954—an eleven-year run—it would be inaccurate to say it ended soon after the men returned from war and women were urged out of factories and ballparks and back to the home. But that social shift certainly influenced the League’s postwar wane, along with other factors such as boys-only Little League, the advent of television, and Cold War dramatization of American femininity versus Soviet women’s mannishness in the 1950s Olympics.

I regularly bring in my parents’ high school yearbooks from Fairfax and Los Angeles High of the mid-1950s; while my parents’ soon-tobe celebrity classmates Dustin Hoffman and Jack Kemp were lettering in track and football, respectively, girls had exactly two choices: join the Neptunettes [be like Esther Williams!] or the Bowlerinas [and meet boys at the malt shop later!]. Most importantly, the 1950s introduced television, which would soon broadcast ballgames, sports-themed commercials, and

images of a race and gender-stratified America no patriot of the McCarthy era was supposed to question. Television made possible a national rejoicing in U.S. sports heroes once only glimpsed in movie shorts (or at actual games).

This rapid-fire social history of attitudes towards women’s domestic duties and reproductive health in the years before Title IX are a must for my students—many of whom had no idea that, for instance, ballparks and beaches—the very waves of America’s oceanfronts—were off-limits to black men and women, or that as late as 1967 Boston Marathon officials could declare all women physiologically incapable of running 26 miles. What I teach in my sports history class is how national history shapes physical standards for us all. In such countless ways, America wasted its real athletic potential. And then, in

1972, buoyed by the successes of the Civil Rights and Feminist movements and political mandates to end segregation, women stepped up to the plate. And Title IX became law.

Dr. Morris is Adjunct Professor of Women’s Studies at George Washington University.

NWHM fall lecture series A Big Success!

Crossing paths with Ethel Barrymore, Boris Karloff, Oscar Hammerstein, Teddy Roosevelt, Consuelo Vanderbilt, and the Prince of Wales, May Yohe was a foul-mouthed, sweet-voiced showgirl who drew

A different point of view

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he Museum kicked off the Fall season of its “Past, Present, and Future of US Women’s History” lecture series at the Woodrow Wilson Center on September 19th. Dr. Richard Kurin, Smithsonian Under Secretary for History, Art and Culture, gave a rousing talk based on his new book MadCap May: Mistress of Myth, Men and Hope, which was released on September 4. The book explores the life of the outrageous May Yohe (1866-1938), a popular entertainer Eleanor Clift, Dr. Richard Kurin and Joan Wages from humble American origins who married and then abandoned a wealthy English Lord, an owner of the fabled Hope diamond–one of the most valuable objects in the world and now exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. May was a romantic who had numerous lovers and at least three husbands–though the tabloids rumored twelve. One included the playboy son of the Mayor of New York. May separated from him–twice–and cared for her next husband, a South African war hero and invalid whom she later shot.

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NWHM fall lecture series A Big Success! (Continued) both the praise and rebuke of Nobel Laureate George Bernard Shaw. Nicknamed “Madcap May,” she was a favorite of the press. In later years she faced several maternity claims and a law suit which she won.

She was hospitalized in an insane asylum and escaped. She ran a rubber plantation in Singapore, a hotel in New Hampshire, and a chicken farm in Los Angeles. When all else failed, she washed floors in a Seattle shipyard and during the Depression held a job as a government clerk. Shortly before her death, she fought, successfully, to regain her lost U.S. citizenship.

The Museum was pleased to have Eleanor Clift, contributing editor at Newsweek and The DailyBeast, join us for the lecture and interview Dr. Kurin on his book. The lecture is available to view at: http:// www.nwhm.org/about-nwhm/press/featured-press/richard-kurin On Oct. 24, distinguished women’s historian Dr. Nancy Cott continued the lecture series with a fascinating examination of the Marriage Crisis in the Jazz Age. Dr. Cott is the Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University.

She has been Director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University from 2010 through 2012 and she was the Cornille Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Wellesley College in the fall of 2012. Her work in U.S. history focuses on gender issues.

Dr. Nancy Cott, Joan Wages, Dr. Sonya Michel

On Nov. 7, Dr. Kathy Peiss of the University of Pennsylvania provided an in-depth look at the WomanMade Women: American Designers, Taste, and Mid-Century Culture. The lecture explored the work and perspectives of the women who created modern clothing and household goods, sought to redefine femininity and advocated a “classless” taste for an emerging mass middle class. Dr. Peiss examined how beginning in the 1930s, an array of women designers, retailers, editors and tastemakers began to reimagine everyday life in America. Responding to the grip of the Great Depression and World War II, they envisioned new “designs for living” driven less by the vagaries of fashion than by how ordinary people, especially women, actually lived. Among them were Lord & Taylor executive Dorothy Shaver, fashion designers Elizabeth Hawes and Claire McCardell, and housewares consultant Freda Diamond. Dr. Peiss is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania.

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All NWHM lectures were free and open to the public and took place at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Flom Auditorium, Sixth Floor, from 4:00-5:30 p.m. The Woodrow Wilson International Center is located at 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, in Washington, DC. A reception follows immediately after each lecture.

Information on NWHM’s 2013 Lecture series will be available on the (www.nwhm.org) soon.

Joan Wages, Dr. Kathy Peiss and Dr. Sonya Michel

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GIVE THE GIFT OF MEMBERSHIP

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hether it’s the holidays or not, it is always a good time to give a gift that keeps on giving — a gift membership to the National Women’s History Museum. By giving a gift of membership to NWHM, you provide a wealth of benefits to your recipient, while providing invaluable support to the Museum.

For $35 or more your recipient will receive: A personalized Certificate of Appreciation certificate suitable for framing A 2013 NWHM Membership Card with special access code to NWHM “Members Only” section on NWHM’s website Pre-announcements of upcoming events and benefit functions Discounts on tickets to all NWHM galas and events

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Volume Xii

Special invitations when Speakers who are part of NWHM’s National Speakers Bureau are giving a speech in their area Free subscription to NWHM’s quarterly newsletter

WOMEN IN SPORTS

In ThIs EdITIon De Pizan Gala 2 letter from the PresiDent 3 nWhm unVeils neW online eXhibit 4 nWhm leGislation uPDate 4 birthDay bioGraPhies 6 feature: Women in sPorts 8 nWhm’s fall lecture series: a biG success GiVe the Gift of membershiP 13 sPecial hoiDay article 14 A StAr-Studded event 15

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WE ARE VOLCANOES. WHEN WE WOMEN OFFER OUR EXPERIENCE AS OUR TRUTH, AS HUMAN TRUTH, ALL THE MAPS CHANGE. THERE ARE NEW MOUNTAINS.

nual Rep

A different point of view

A personalized announcement card and gift packet containing all their gift membership benefits will be sent to each name and address you provide for every $35+ taxdeductible gift donation. Log on to http://www.nwhm. org/support-nwhm/membership/membership-form.

NWHM An

In addition to all the above, for gift memberships of $100 or more, your recipient will receive a beautiful NWHM lapel pin so that NWHM Ambassadors and NWHM staff can easily identify them as they travel across the country. $100 gift memberships also are enrolled for one year in NWHM’s Cornerstone Club.

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In addition to all the above, for gift memberships of $50 or more, your recipient will receive a “Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History” button.

— Ursula LeGuin

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I’m Dreaming of a white christmas How Women Have Shaped our Holiday Traditions

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t’s the most wonderful time of the year! The holiday season has officially ushered itself in. Wreaths of lush green pine and red bows hang from the front doors of neighbors houses, candles are lit, frenzied crowds of parents vie to pick out that last coveted toy on the gift list, and families in excited anticipation, eagerly await the happy reunion of sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends.

Indeed, the holidays are here and they bring with them the age-old and beloved traditions of tree decorating, caroling, hanging a stocking Women do their Christmas Shopping c. 1900 for Santa, and most of all, candles and lights that cheer us as we reach the shortest days and the longest nights of the year. In the darkness of December more than anything, we crave light and its promise that the sun will return with the Spring. Our ancient ancestors throughout the world based many traditions on the winter solstice, but in modern America, Christmas receives the most attention.

But just how age-old are our Christmas traditions? And how were many of them influenced and preserved by women?

Christmas, as we know it today, did not always exist. In fact, our Puritan foremothers and fathers considered Christmas so sacred a holiday that any joyous expression of December 25th in song, decoration and merriment diminished it. In 1659, the general court of Massachusetts issued an edict rendering any observance of Christmas, other than church-going of course, a punishable offense.

People were fined during this time for hanging decorations! The ban existed for decades and it wasn’t until the Nineteenth Century that this austere attitude towards Christmas was replaced with a more festive one.

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Queen Victoria became monarch of the British Empire in 1837 and reigned until 1901 and during that time, had much influence on American’s domestic scene. Popular magazines often featured articles on the latest fashions espoused by Victoria and her daughters. Her popularization of Christmas began in 1846, when she and her German husband, Prince Albert, were sketched with her children standing around a large decorated Christmas tree in the Illustrated London News. Christmas tree decorating was a German tradition and Queen Victoria exported it to the English-speaking world.

“Christmas Tree at Windsor Castle”

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The famous illustration of Christmas Tree at Windsor Castle became an instant phenomenon and was printed in Godey’s Lady’s Book for the American market. The tradition of Christmas tree decorating became increasingly popular in the 1800s. Most decorations were home-made and it was women who were largely responsible for making them. Chains of colorful paper were popular on trees, as well as strings of popcorn and cranberries. From handcrafting ornaments and sewing Christmas stockings to hang from mantles

to making fresh eggnog and warm Christmas cookies, women were the ones who preserved traditions and brought joy to Christmas.

Celebrations gained more popularity because of the Civil War, especially in the North. The sentimental values of family, goodwill and peace were especially welcomed in a time of death and loss. The Christmas depicted in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, for example, showed the emotional strength of a mother, who created a happy day for her children despite her worry over a husband gone to war.

Christmas is a holiday that women world‑over have influenced, even before Queen Victoria and Louisa May Alcott. Much more than our forefathers, our foremothers created the fond Christmas memories that live in our hearts and minds. Let this holiday season be one in which we also celebrate the many women who throughout our nation’s history, and our own histories, have helped to preserve the spirit of this very special time of year.

A very happy holidays to all from the National Women’s History Museum!

N

WHM and its Los Angeles Regional Council hosted their first event at Creative Artists Agency on the evening of Thursday, October 25, 2012. The private reception celebrated the work of Dolores Huerta, Co-founder of the United Farm Workers and President of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, who was recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor bestowed on a citizen, and Jennifer Siebel Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Kate Walsh and Dolores Huerta Newsom, writer, director and producer of the critically‑acclaimed documentary Miss Representation and Founder and CEO of MissRepresentation.org and Girls Club Entertainment.

The evening was emceed by acclaimed actress Sharon Lawrence and also featured new musical artist Sheléa and NWHM President and CEO Joan Wages. A public service announcement (PSA) for NWHM, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, was presented to the audience and received great enthusiasm. It is now available on the NWHM website and YouTube channel. The short program was incredibly successful and everybody left inspired and fired up to help the Museum. Dolores Huerta ended her speech to attendees saying, “Yes, we can!”

There were over 250 VIP guests in attendance, including Kate Walsh, Amy Brenneman, Marie Royce, Ford Roosevelt and Frances Fisher. The evening was made possible by Title Sponsor QVC; Presenting Sponsors Claremont Graduate University and Dermalogica; Gold Sponsors Southern California Gas Company and Rainbow Light; and Silver Sponsor, The Beverly Hilton Hotel and Variety Magazine.

A different point of view

A Star-Studded Affair at NWHM’s LA Event

A Woman Poses under the Mistletoe c. 1898

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National Women’s History Museum | Administrative Offices | 205 S. Whiting Street, Suite 254 | Alexandria, Virginia 22304 t: 703.461.1920 | f: 703.636.2668 | www.nwhm.org