Women of Vision: Their Psychology, Circumstances, and Success (Focus on Women)

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Author: Eileen Gavin | Aphrodite Clamar | Mary Anne Siderits

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Women of Vision Their Psychology, Circumstances, and Success

Editors Eileen A. Gavin, PhD Aphrodite Clamar, PhD Mary Anne Siderits, PhD

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Eileen A. Gavin, PhD, taught undergraduate women for 40 years and served four consecutive terms as psychology department chair at the College of St. Catherine, where she is now professor emerita of psychology. Her published work has appeared primarily in encyclopedias, reference books, specialized anthologies, magazines, and journals. She designed numerous symposia for professional organizations and served as an officer in three divisions (24, 26, and 36) of the American Psychological Association (APA). The professional service that she most enjoyed was that of program chair for the inaugural APA program of Division 36 (now known as Psychology of Religion). She is currently editing letters that eminent American women of psychology sent to students in one of her classes in history and systems of psychology. Aphrodite Clamar, PhD, is a seasoned senior executive in local, national, and international public relations and advertising. Her background in economics and psychology, extensive experience in developing and managing political/election campaigns, and effective interpersonal skills are an asset in all aspects of her work. Dr. Clamar is the founder and former president of Richard Cohen Associates, a Manhattan-based publicity firm with an advertising affiliate. The agency worked on a variety of political campaigns, including presidential, senatorial, state, and local. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an active member of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Clamar is published extensively in the general and professional media and has contributed articles to a number of books and journals. Mary Anne Siderits, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, full-time faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Marquette University, and adjunct clinical professor at the Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology. She teaches courses in psychology of gender, psychology of religion, developmental psychology, and professional ethics. She has held office in municipal and state psychological associations and in various divisions of the American Psychological Association; she has also served on the national board of representatives of the American Association of University Professors. A founding member of the group that launched the women’s studies program at Marquette, she was the first female chair of Marquette’s Committee on Faculty.

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WOMEN OF VISION

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C 2007 Springer Publishing Company, LLC Copyright

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Springer Publishing Company, LLC. Springer Publishing Company, LLC 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor New York, NY 10036–8002 Acquisitions Editor: Sheri W. Sussman Managing Editor: Mary Ann McLaughlin Production Editor: Peggy M. Rote Cover Designer: Mimi Flow Composition: Techbooks Lillian Cartwright’s “The Dancer” is a wall size acrylic assemblage that depicts Martha Graham, the legendary choreographer and pioneer of modern dance. The pose, from Graham’s Letter to the World (1940), was a tribute to Emily Dickinson. Barbara Morgan’s photo of Martha Graham inspired Cartwright’s assemblage. Permission to reprint “The Dancer” has been granted by Lillian Cartwright, artist. 07

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ISBN-13: 978-0-8261-0253-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Women of vision : their psychology, circumstances, and success / editors, Eileen A. Gavin, Aphrodite Clamar, and Mary Anne Siderits. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8261-0253-0 (hardback) 1. Women—United States—Biography. I. Gavin, Eileen A. II. Clamar, Aphrodite J. III. Siderits, Mary Anne. HQ1412.W665 2007 920.720973—dc22 [B] 2006101372

Printed in the United States of America by Bang Printing.

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Dedication To retired U.S. Army major, Victoria Pavlowski Dragoiu, who served as a flight nurse during World War II and as a nurse to underserved immigrants, for her initiative, munificence, and valor, and to those women whose stories may never be written, who led us in new directions.

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Contents

Contributors

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Foreword Agnes N. O’Connell, PhD

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Acknowledgments

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Introduction

PART I. WOMEN WHOSE LIVES SPANNED TWO CENTURIES 1

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Dancing Women’s Freedom: The Story of Isadora Duncan Miriam Roskin Berger, Ilene A. Serlin, and Mary Anne Siderits

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Anne Sullivan Macy and Helen Adams Keller: Expressing “Vision” With Fluttering Fingers Hendrika Vande Kemp

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Lillian Evelyn Moller Gilbreth: The Woman Who “Had It All” Melba J. T. Vasquez

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Alice Paul: Constitutional Amendment Mover and ERA Author Carole A. Rayburn

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Georgia O’Keeffe: American Modernist Lillian Cartwright

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Contents

Mary McLeod Bethune: Voice of Change, Life of Service Karen Fraser Wyche and Lisa Abern

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Anna Eleanor Roosevelt: The Evolution of an Extraordinary Leader Agnes N. O’Connell

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PART II. WOMEN WHO MATURED DURING THE “ROARING TWENTIES” 8

Rachel Carson: The Strength of Wonder Ravenna Helson

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“Be-Going”: The Story of Dorothy Day Mary Anne Siderits

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Sister Annette Walters’s Unfinished Dream: “To Make the Universe a Home” Eileen A. Gavin

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Evelyn Gentry Hooker: The “Hopelessly Heterosexual” Psychologist Who Normalized Homosexuality Joanne Quarfoth Floyd and Lynda Anne Szymanski

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Athlete of the Century: “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias Lee Joyce Richmond

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Lucille Ball: Visions of Trauma, Crisis, and Comedy Calvin Saxton

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Grace Brewster Murray Hopper: A Woman Who Dared and Did Debra Sue Pate

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PART III. WOMEN WHO BECAME ADULTS IN THE 1940s 15

Ella Fitzgerald: The Singer’s Singer Beverly Greene

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Shirley Chisholm: A Catalyst for Change Barbara L. Biales

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The Case of the Purloined Picture: Rosalind Franklin and the Keystone of the Double Helix Michael Wertheimer

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PART IV. A SECOND LOOK AT OUR WOMEN OF VISION 18

A Second Look at Our Women of Vision

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Appendix: Study Questions and Activities for Chapters 1 to 17

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Index

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Contributors

Miriam Roskin Berger, ADTR, Doctor of Arts, is an early pioneer of dance therapy. She performed with the Jean Erdman Theatre of Dance, teaches dance therapy at New York University, and was director of the Dance Education Program from 1993 to 2002. She teaches in many countries, including Sweden, Korea, The Netherlands, Greece, and the Czech Republic. She has been past president of the American Dance Therapy Association, past chair of the National Coalition of Creative Arts Therapies Associations, and director of the creative arts therapies departments at Bronx Psychiatric Center since the mid-1980s. Barbara L. Biales received her MA in experimental psychology from Columbia University and performed her doctoral course work at the Child Development Institute at the University of Minnesota. She was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the University of Louvain in Belgium from 1957 to 1958. An associate professor of psychology at The College of St. Catherine for many years, her favorite areas of teaching were in life span development and psychology of adulthood and aging. She participated in an all-college interdisciplinary course entitled “The Reflective Woman.” Biales also served as psychology department chair from 1979 to 1988. Lillian Cartwright received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her major research has focused on a group of women physicians who entered medical school before the women’s movement. She has followed their careers since the mid-1970s and has written many articles and book chapters on the course of their lives. In addition, she has been a clinician, a program consultant for nonprofit organizations, an administrator, and a teacher. Since 1997, she has been engaged in creating art full time

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in San Francisco and Mendocino. Her paintings have been shown widely, and her work is held in many private collections nationwide. Joanne Quarfoth Floyd received her BA in child psychology at the University of Minnesota with summa cum laude honors, and her MA (1977) and PhD (1981) in developmental psychology at the University of Michigan. She is presently an associate professor at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she has taught since 1983. Floyd’s research interests have focused on nonparental influences on children’s development. She wrote her MA thesis on peer influences on social behaviors among grade school children and her PhD thesis on young children’s understanding of the nature of television characters. Her recent research program melds her interest in media influences with her background in the psychology of gender. Her research focuses on media portrayals of gender and involves analyzing messages about gender in various forms of media (e.g., television programming and advertising, news and entertainment magazines, children’s books, video games). She is particularly interested in continuities/discontinuities in messages about the status of women across the various forms of media. Eileen A. Gavin, PhD, taught undergraduate women for 40 years and served four consecutive terms as psychology chair at the College of St. Catherine, where she is now professor emerita of psychology. Her published work has appeared primarily in encyclopedias, reference books, specialized anthologies, magazines, and journals. She designed numerous symposia for professional organizations and served as an officer in three divisions (24, 26, and 36) of the American Psychological Association (APA). The professional service that she most enjoyed was that of program chair for the inaugural APA program of Division 36 (now known as Psychology of Religion). She is currently editing letters that eminent American women of psychology sent to students in one of her classes in history and systems of psychology. Beverly Greene, ABPP, received her PhD from Adelphi University. After a decade of work in public mental health, she joined the faculty of St. John’s University, where she is a professor of psychology. She is also a practicing clinical psychologist in New York City. A fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and seven of its divisions (9, 12, 29, 35, 42, 44, and 45), she is a diplomate in clinical psychology on the American Board of Professional Psychology, a fellow of the Academy of Clinical Psychology, and has served many leadership roles in the APA. She is the recipient of nine national awards for publications deemed outstanding contributions to the psychological literature. These publications focus on women of color, lesbians, African Americans, the interactions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and other identities in relation to development and the psychotherapy process. She has also received a variety of

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leadership awards, largely from the APA. She is currently completing an edited book, Phenomenal Women: Psychological Vulnerability and Resilience in High-Achieving Black Women. Ravenna Helson, PhD, is a research psychologist and an adjunct professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley. Joining the staff of the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research in 1957, she conducted studies of creativity in college women and studies of creative styles in male and female mathematicians and authors of imaginative literature for children. Dr. Helson was also the founding director of the Mills Longitudinal Study of Women’s Adult Development, which has followed 120 women from college through middle age and produced more than 100 publications. Sample articles are “Creative Potential, Creative Achievement, and Personality Growth” (Journal of Personality, 2000; with Jennifer Pals) and “Personality and Patterns of Adherence and Non-Adherence to the Social Clock” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1984; with Valory Mitchell and Geraldine Moane). Agnes N. O’Connell, PhD, a pioneer researcher on achieving women and an expert in the history of women in psychology, is a psychology professor emerita at Montclair State University (MSU). Her major publications are Models of Achievement: Reflections of Eminent Women in Psychology, Volumes 1, 2, and 3 (1983, 1988, 2001); Women in Psychology: A BioBibliographic Sourcebook (1990); and Women’s Heritage in Psychology: Origins, Development, and Future Directions (1991). Her professional journal articles, book chapters, national and international paper presentations, invited addresses, symposia, workshops, roundtables, and exhibits number in the hundreds. Among her awards and honors are the Distinguished Publication Award of the Association for Women in Psychology for Eminent Women in Psychology (1980/1981), the American Psychological Association (APA) Heritage Publication Award of the Society for the Psychology of Women (1993) for her substantial and outstanding books, the Distinguished Publication Award of the Association of the Psychology of Women for Models of Achievement, fellow status in five APA divisions (1, 9, 26, 29, and 35), charter fellow status in the Association for Psychological Science (formerly the American Psychological Society), the Psi Chi Certificate of Recognition (recipient for 11 consecutive years), and the MSU Distinguished Scholar Award. Debra Sue Pate, PhD, is an associate professor of psychology at Jackson State University. She received her PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of California at San Diego in 1982. She was president of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology in 2005–2006; she also is active in the Southeastern Psychological Association and in the Society for the History of Psychology (Division 26 of the American Psychological Association). Her research interests include the history of women in

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psychology and other sciences, psycholinguistics, and cognitive neuropsychology. Carole A. Rayburn, PhD, MDiv, is a clinical, consulting, and research psychologist who has long been an advocate for constitutional passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), participating in marches and visiting states that had not ratified the ERA. Dr. Rayburn developed psychological inventories on attitudes toward children (for early childhood workers), clergy stress, state-trait morality, spirituality, religiousness, body awareness and sensitivity to intimacy comfort, agentic and communal life choices, leadership, mentoring, attitudes toward the Supreme and work, peacefulness, well-being, traumatic experiences and health, intuition, and the creative personality. She introduced a new theory and field, theobiology, the interface of theology, religiousness, and spirituality with the sciences. She chairs the Maryland Association of Measurement and Evaluation, a division of the Maryland Association of Counseling and Development. Dr. Rayburn is a fellow of the American Psychological Association Divisions of General Psychology, Clinical Psychology (also a past president of the Section on the Clinical Psychology of Women), Consulting Psychology, Psychotherapy, State Psychological Affairs, Psychology of Women, Psychology of Religion (also a past president), Family Psychology, Media Psychology, and International Psychology. She has received several mentoring and research awards. Lee Joyce Richmond, PhD, received her doctorate from the University of Maryland. She is a licensed psychologist and a professor of education at Loyola College in Maryland, where she teaches graduate courses in counseling. Active in several professional organizations, she has served as president of the American Counseling Association and of the National Career Development Association. Richmond has coauthored three books and coedited two. She has authored several book chapters related to multicultural counseling and career development and is a frequent contributor to scholarly journals. Currently, she serves on the editorial boards of three refereed journals. The focus of Richmond’s current research relates to the spiritual aspects of career development and career choice, particularly in girls and women. Calvin Saxton received his MA in counseling psychology from Assumption College and his PhD from the University of Connecticut. He has been an adjunct lecturer at the University of Connecticut and in the Connecticut State University system since 1997. He worked as a research assistant for Helen Swick Perry on her Pulitzer-nominated biography, Psychiatrist of America (1982), and spent a decade providing inpatient and outpatient psychological services in central and eastern Massachusetts. The history of 20th-century American comedians and comediennes is also among his interests.

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Ilene A. Serlin, PhD, ADTR, is a psychologist and dance/movement therapist in practice in San Francisco and Sonoma County. A fellow of the American Psychological Association, she is on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Dance Therapy, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, and PsyCritiques. She has taught at Saybrook Graduate School, University of California, Los Angeles; Lesley University; and around the country and abroad. She has published works in humanistic psychology and in dance. Mary Anne Siderits, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, full-time faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Marquette University, and adjunct clinical professor at the Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology. She teaches courses in psychology of gender, psychology of religion, developmental psychology, and professional ethics. She has held office in municipal and state psychological associations and in various divisions of the American Psychological Association; she has also served on the national board of representatives of the American Association of University Professors. A founding member of the group that launched the women’s studies program at Marquette, she was the first female chair of Marquette’s Committee on Faculty. Lynda Anne Szymanski, PhD, LP, is an associate professor of psychology at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota. She received her BA from Connecticut College, and her MA and PhD in clinical psychology with a specialization in behavioral medicine from West Virginia University. She completed her predoctoral internship in Health Psychology at Brown University and her postdoctoral fellowship in medical rehabilitation at Rush-Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago. Her research interests focus on women’s health issues, including weight management, body image, smoking, and exercise. Hendrika Vande Kemp earned her BA from Hope College (1971) and her MS (1974) and PhD (1977) in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. From 1976 to 2001, she was on the faculty of the Graduate School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary, where she taught courses on family psychology and family therapy, interpersonal psychology, the history of psychology, the integration of psychology and theology, grief and mourning, dream interpretation, and theological and psychological aspects of disability. She is the coauthor with Barbara Eurich-Rascoe of Femininity and Shame: Women and Men Giving Voice to the Feminine (1997) Her previous writings on disability include The Patient–Philosopher Evaluates the Scientist–Practitioner: A Case Study (2001), in which she describes her own head injury experience, and ADA Accommodation of Therapists With Disabilities in Clinical Training (2003). She is currently in private practice as a clinical psychologist and family therapist in Annandale, Virginia.

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Melba J. T. Vasquez, PhD, ABPP, is a psychologist in a full-time independent practice in Austin, Texas. She has published extensively in the areas of professional ethics, ethnic minority psychology, psychology of women, and supervision and training. She is the coauthor, with Ken Pope, of Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling: A Practical Guide (1998) and How to Survive and Thrive as a Therapist: Information, Ideas and Resources for Psychologists in Practice (2005). She is a former president of the Texas Psychological Association and of American Psychological Association (APA) Divisions 35 (Society of Psychology of Women) and 17 (Society of Counseling Psychology). Her awards include the James M. Jones Lifetime Achievement Award, APA (2004); Psychologist of the Year, Texas Psychological Association (2003); Senior Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest, APA (2002); and the Distinguished Leader for Women in Psychology Award, Committee of Women in Psychology, APA (2000). Michael Wertheimer received his BA from Swarthmore College, his MA from The Johns Hopkins University, and his PhD in experimental psychology from Harvard University. He taught at Wesleyan University for 3 years before joining the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1955, where he is now a professor emeritus of psychology. He is a former president of the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association, Psi Chi, and four divisions of the American Psychological Association (General Psychology, Teaching of Psychology, Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, and History of Psychology). Among his latest books are the fourth edition of his A Brief History of Psychology, 2000, a sixth volume in the series Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology, 2006, and a biography of his father, Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory, 2005. Karen Fraser Wyche received her MSW from the University of Maryland and her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Missouri– Columbia. She is a professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and coinvestigator of the Terrorism and Disaster Center at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She is a fellow in Divisions 35 and 12 of the American Psychological Association and a member of the Committee on Psychology of Women. She is an associate editor of The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry and is on the editorial boards of Sex Roles and Journal of Moral Education. Dr. Wyche’s research focuses on the understanding of the role of sociocultural and socioeconomic factors in health and mental health and on interventions for building community resilience. Lisa Abern, BA, a former student of Dr. Wyche, coauthored the chapter about Mary McLeod Bethune that appears in this book.

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Foreword

The awareness of women’s substantial contributions to the shaping of the various avenues of society was heightened during the last third of the 20th century with the second wave of the feminist movement. This heightened awareness was accomplished through considerable struggle in my own discipline, psychology, and throughout society. As late as the mid-1970s, the paucity of information about the lives and contributions of distinguished women in psychology was disturbing. Despite their strong partnership in the development of the field of psychology, women constituted a mere 4.5% of biographical and autobiographical references in books and journal articles. Preserving women’s lives and contributions for posterity through the written word was, and continues to be, essential. Much of my work since the early 1970s has been motivated by the importance of correcting the record, recognizing the undervalued, obscured, minimized, and misattributed contributions of women to psychology and their developmental paths, struggles, and coping strategies. My work has focused on the substantial need for a strong knowledge base consisting of profiles and developmental patterns of achievement in the lives and careers of eminent women in psychology, along with analyses of transhistoric and timespecific trends and factors. The editors of Women of Vision: Their Psychology, Circumstances, and Success provide a fascinating book of preservation and perceptiveness that is differentiated from its predecessors in its range of disciplines and emphasis. The psychological emphasis on life span development and motivation of transformational leaders in a wide variety of disciplines and activities, including the arts, athletics, entertainment, mathematics, politics, public service, science, and social activism, serves to illuminate

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the struggles and accomplishments of a cross-section of extraordinary American women. This informative book contains 17 biographies of the lives and milieus of a selection of outstanding women of vision written by notable psychologists. Introductory and concluding chapters by the editors set the scene for, and provide reflections on, this useful and welcome book. Most of the women had long, varied lives marked by courage and tenacity in the face of obstacles and difficulties. These complex women were sometimes conflict laden, frustrated, and vulnerable, yet their lives and contributions were remarkable, astounding, and inspirational. They overcame the limitations of difficult childhoods, life circumstances, and societal prescriptions; conquered foibles and frailties; and triumphed over bias and discrimination to forge a path for themselves and others. Despite difference in backgrounds and the paths they forged, there is a striking similarity in their dedication to a purposeful life and their persistence and resilience amidst adversity. These amazing women were prominent and powerful in promoting equality or benefiting others through their scholarship, creativity, talents, or abilities. This book furnishes insights into how the social-economic-political milieu and the attitudes and values of the time play a significant role not only in the lives of these women, but also in all our lives. In this 21st century, much in society has changed and considerable progress has been made, but much remains to be done. Women come closer and closer to equality with men and to being recognized for their achievements. However, equality with men and complete integration of women’s lives and contributions into the history and contemporary life of national and international society has yet to be achieved. This book is a valuable addition to that long process. I am grateful to the editors and the biographers for the wisdom contained in this book and for the forum and information that makes the development and contributions of these astonishing women available to us. Women of Vision: Their Psychology, Circumstances, and Success makes excellent reading for anyone interested in understanding the development and landscape of the lives and achievements of extraordinary people. It is especially recommended for college courses in women’s studies, developmental psychology, psychology of women, personality, and adulthood and aging, among others, as well as to a more general audience of women and men. Agnes N. O’Connell, PhD

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Acknowledgments

To Drs. Violet Franks and Carole Rayburn, Focus on Women Series editors, and Sheri W. Sussman, Senior Vice President, Editorial, Springer Publishing Company, who showed immediate enthusiasm for the work and made helpful suggestions at various points as the work progressed. To the chapter contributors, who generously and skillfully prepared the substantive chapters and discussion questions for this book. To Agnes N. O’Connell, for preparing the Foreword and for offering sage counsel at various times during this project. To Carol Rose, for valuable assistance in reading and correcting proofs. To members of our respective psychology departments, and to colleagues, friends, relatives, students, and well-wishers too numerous to name, who helped see the project to its completion. To Mary Byrne, for her valuable and perceptive comments on the final chapter. To professionals who helped this project along, especially to librarians, Anika Fajardo, Jayne Gereats, Belinda E. Lawrence, Jim Newsome, and Kathleen Rickert; and to computer specialists, Robert Craft and Darcelle Hannaman. To interviewees, readers, and resource persons, Thelma Boeder; Dorothy (Cliz) Claesgens; Marie Diehl, CSJ; Marilyn Gausman; John M. Ginsterblum, SJ; Mary Virginia Micka, CSJ; Janet Mock, CSJ; Laura Morlock; Darra Mulderry; Mary L. O’Hara, CSJ; Thomas Thieman; Shirley Walters Singer; Katie DesLauriers Sullivan; David Walters; and Mary Wicklund. To archivists, Mary Kraft, CSJ; Philip Runkel; and Margery Smith, CSJ, who made themselves available to guide the exploration of the

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Acknowledgments

Dorothy Day and Sister Annette Walters collections at the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, Marquette University, and College of St. Catherine, and most especially to Saundra Huntley, Trish Johnson, Lynne Linder, and Linda Schultz, for the unfailing zest and efficiency with which they rose to 11th-hour challenges in preparing the manuscript for publication.

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WOMEN OF VISION

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Introduction1

In any retrospective of images related to the history of women in the 20th century, these two icons might well appear: from the 1940s, “Rosie the Riveter” and, beginning in the late 1950s, the Barbie doll. At first blush, they appear in stark contrast with each other. Rosie, the symbol of female involvement in supplying armaments for World War II, seems the epitome of achievement in work previously considered outside the female sphere. Barbie, despite subsequent modifications over the years in the direction of increasing occupational competence, remains the quintessential stereotype of woman as an object to be prized first and foremost for her physical appearance. The sequence in which these images reached public consciousness has occasioned some puzzlement: How could the real life Rosies of one era have so effectively challenged restrictive female stereotypes, only to be succeeded in ensuing years by a market for seemingly retrogressive female imagery? This apparent irony becomes more comprehensible if one borrows from Lerner’s (1979) trenchant suggestion that—whether in stereotypic roles or in departures therefrom—women have been viewed chiefly as contributors to men’s history. What Lerner asserted of historians was no less true of the general public: They were psychologically prepared to accept new images of women when the women concerned stepped into stereotypically male roles only insofar as the male world required it—and then gracefully (by all means, gracefully) resumed their accustomed place when the temporary exigencies had disappeared. If we look more closely, then, Rosie’s deficiencies as a feminist symbol come to light. Let’s take what is perhaps the most widely reprinted facsimile of Rosie, the poster for wartime ordnance workers, with Rosie in bandana and coveralls, flexing an arm with a preposterously enlarged elbow in the direction of the viewer. Note that she was not only a woman empowered by the appropriation of an element of male physique, but she also had well made-up facial features and a few well-sculpted curls 1

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peeping from the bandana. Yes, there was a show of female power here, but with enough hint of caricature to suggest that women would only appear in this role for the duration of the national crisis. Barbie, despite her somewhat lurid pedigree (Felder, 1999), would simply be one representation of a return to what the public could accept as normal.

ANOTHER KIND OF MODEL Yet, were there not 20th-century women who embodied less transitory extensions of female capacity than our Rosies? Certainly, there were women who may have received attention for striking out on unfamiliar paths and pursuing those paths consistently, but they and their achievements were often regarded as exceptional or even aberrant. In other words, they did not become general models of achievement. Like Dickinson’s (1890/1891/1896/1982) celebrated speaker, they wrote their “letter to the world that never wrote [to them]” (p. 73) (i.e., a world not prepared either to invite or to welcome their activities as fully befitting a woman). These women were able to persevere despite ignorance or belittlement of their contributions. Of course, to do so, they had to engage their world with spirit and with the blend of courage and wholesome audacity that is popularly called “gumption.” Women of this stripe are the subjects of this book. They are persons who could most easily be characterized as transformational leaders (Bass, 1985; Burns, 1978; Northouse, 2004), persons ready to innovate even when the status quo was less disturbing to the majority of their peers than were those individuals who attempted change. Although psychologists have earlier been involved in similar tasks, this is, to our knowledge, the first of such works to look beyond the lives of women in a particular occupational group. Our work not only expands the roster of occupations described, but it also does so with explicit reference to developmental concepts. The only publication that approaches it in the latter regard is O’Connell’s (2001) contribution in the third volume of an excellent series on female models of achievement; but the explicit developmental considerations were briefer than they are here, and they were applied only to women in the psychological profession.

HOW WE SELECTED OUR SUBJECTS In keeping with our focus on transformational leaders, we developed a provisional description of the women whose stories we hoped to tell— women whose lives enlarged the public perception of women’s powers.

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It should be understood that in speaking of women’s powers, we were not intending to distinguish some sphere of female potential generically different from that of men. We were, rather, referring to the expansion of popular attributions of what was possible for women—something that might actually level the playing fields of the two genders. For that reason we were particularly, but not exclusively, interested in women occupied in fields in which women were hitherto infrequently represented. (Didrikson Zaharias, Hopper, and Gilbreth are outstanding examples in this respect.) Early in our deliberations, we decided to restrict our considerations to women, no longer alive, who had passed the majority of their lives in the 20th century. (Isadora Duncan just barely met the latter criterion; in view of her enormous impact, we were glad that we could include her.) There is an obvious advantage in being able to view a completed script; there would be no room for later reversals of action or experience that might seriously alter what would seem in our analysis a coherent interpretation of life pattern. As for the concentration on the 20th century, it was only partly because of the dramatic changes that make that period especially notable in the eyes of some other writers (O’Connell, 2001). Referring again to Dickinson’s poem, inasmuch as ours were the hands these women would never see but to which the message sent by them was, in effect, committed, it was important that we have whatever clarity in reading that might be facilitated by proximity in time. For similar reasons, most of our choices were of American subjects. Stewart (1994) nicely pointed to the need for considering the influence of one’s own demographics on such observations; it is a continual danger in undertaking an analysis of the lives of others. We believed that some of the attendant difficulties could conceivably be reduced by looking at women who were generationally close to ourselves and who, for the most part, spent their lives in a country with whose recent history and customs we were familiar. We did make one notable exception in the matter of national similarity, namely Rosalind Franklin. Her life is inherently so interesting and illustrative of points vital to our work (in particular, the vagaries of collaboration with men) that the exception seemed justified. Franklin was also an exception to a second characteristic of our subject group. As in the case of Didrikson Zaharias, her life was relatively brief; she died before she had reached what we today consider middle age, while Didrikson Zaharias had barely crossed the line into her middle years. Again, making an exception seemed justified by the unusual accomplishments of each of the women in their respective fields. Our other subjects lived at least half a century, and the majority of them lived to be “elderly.” It seemed important to have a fair number of long-lived individuals in our sample because from the beginning we were

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intent on examining the lives of our subjects from the perspective of life span developmental psychology. Indeed, we believe that our work is unusual in its use of the developmentalist’s tools in probing the intersection of individual life history with national and international historical events. (For example, experiencing the San Francisco earthquake as a child— as Dorothy Day did—may have consequences potentially different from what might ensue for persons at a later point in their development.)

TIMING OF INFLUENCES Because historical and cultural events as well as societal trends over which the trailblazers had little control had consequences for their life stories, it was important to organize these women’s stories chronologically. Changes in technology, and major events that affected opportunities and expectations for women, brought about unanticipated alterations and opportunities in the course of the lives of some of our women. Most of the women in each section of this book experienced some of the same social upheavals, such as the Great Depression and successive world wars, but at different times in their lives. They were all at different ages when those events occurred and so were at different stages of readiness to appreciate and respond to the events. Each woman, in her unique circumstances and with her unique personality, experienced a historical event from a different angle and, therefore, appraised the same event idiosyncratically. These differences in response support the old aphorism, that “the same fire that melts the butter hardens the egg.” Thus, the book is organized into three sections, each of which corresponds to the somewhat different times that our selected women experienced. The women whose life stories appear in the first section include those who were young adults at the turn of the 20th century. The world that these women experienced differed considerably from the world of those in the second section of the book who became adults during “the Roaring Twenties.” The shorter third section includes women who became young adults during the 1940s. The women who entered adulthood around 1900 probably knew people who had experienced the Civil War. Mary McLeod Bethune was the first in her family of 17 children to be born free, and she experienced the freedom of her sharecropper parents to at last be able to buy a plot of land. Her childhood experiences made her well prepared to respond to the needs of newly freed slaves, especially through improving their educational opportunities during the Reconstruction Period that followed the Civil War.

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Women who matured around 1900 also knew first-hand the effects of the Industrial Revolution on workers and their families. Lillian Gilbreth’s work was sparked by her sensitivity to the needs of workers and their families. The women who became young adults in the 1920s, like many women in other industrialized societies of that time, tended to show initiative in bettering their lot in life. They generally did not stand by passively, just waiting to respond to external events (Soland, 2000). American women of that time had the opportunity to vote. Changes in social mores, along with more and better educational opportunities for women not born into economically privileged families, became part of the everyday society of the women in that era. The Great Depression, caused by the economic crash of 1929, and the drought of the 1930s plunged millions of people into poverty in the United States. During that period, Eleanor Roosevelt worked in partnership with her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to mitigate the plight of those who faced misfortune. Among those millions were Lucille Ball, Evelyn Hooker, and Ella Fitzgerald, who grew up in the poverty that was the lot of so many. Lucille Ball’s memory of not even having a pencil to take to school is a poignant reflection of the impact of the Great Depression on her life. Women who entered early adulthood in the 1940s experienced life in a nation at war, as well as a society enriched by vast changes in technology and science. They found different opportunities and faced expectations and demands dramatically different from those their mothers and grandmothers had known. With the foregoing guidelines, and using both our own reflections and our consultations with a variety of other people, the three editors of this book, Eileen A. Gavin, Aphrodite Clamar, and Mary Anne Siderits, evolved a list of nominees for inclusion in the work. Our prospects exceeded the number that a volume of this size could possibly accommodate. We proceeded to trim the list by rank ordering the pool of nominees and scrutinizing the evolving roster for balance (i.e., diversity of background and accomplishments). Although the majority of our women will be found in various listings of notable historical figures (e.g., Felder, 2001), name recognition was not in itself a criterion for selection. In fact, we particularly wanted to include examples of transformational leaders in areas that have been neglected by historians. Sister Annette Walters is perhaps the most prominent example in the latter category. An educator and leader in the Sister Formation movement, she beautifully exemplifies what Lerner (1979) noted is an overlooked aspect of history but one of paramount

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importance—the building of communities. Twenty-five years after the appearance of Lerner’s now classic work, it is still true that Historical interpretation of the community-building work of women is urgently needed. The voluminous national and local records that document the network of community institutions founded and maintained by women are available. They should be studied against the traditional record of institution building, which focuses on the activities of men. (p. 165)

In our consideration of Walters and certain others among our subjects (e.g., Bethune, Day, Duncan), we attempt to adopt this “new approach to women’s history.”

HOW THIS BOOK MAY BE READ The accounts in this volume should be of substantial significance for readers interested in gender issues. However, we expect them to appeal to an even wider audience. The stories of our selected women, regardless of gender, are in themselves fascinating, and we suppose that many of our readers, both male and female, will enjoy the book on these grounds. Persons hoping to move in new directions in their own lives (e.g., women looking wistfully at new academic and occupational paths after years in stereotypic niches) can surely also find inspiration in the various accounts. Although our protagonists may be exclusively female, their gender may be less important to potential readers than something of even more fundamental interest, namely, how individuals can do battle against societal odds. That said, we must not discount the possibility that two aspects of the experience of gender may be poignantly highlighted, even for male readers, by the details of these lives: (a) The female predicament in a society that practices gender discrimination may thereby become more comprehensible to those who have not personally experienced it. (b) Readers may be struck by the difficulties and rewards of intergender operation in several accounts, most particularly where such cooperative efforts were an integral part of the individual’s accomplishments (e.g., Ball, Day, Franklin, Gilbreth). When possible, we have considered how those intergender efforts exemplify “the dialectic, the tensions between the two cultures, male and female”—yet another of Lerner’s (1979, p. 159) challenges. This book may find a home not only in courses on gender, but also in a variety of other undergraduate courses that in one or another fashion concern socialization processes, life span development, and historical change. If readers in any of the courses want to capitalize on the

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developmental focus that undergirds our presentation, they might choose to read the respective accounts while bearing in mind the concepts of life span psychology that are most crucial to the story at hand. Complementary study questions and activities that the chapter authors have prepared are conveniently located in the Appendix of this book. For some readers, the questions and activities may spark further thought, curiosity, and insight about the psychology of circumstance and success. For others, especially readers in book clubs or college courses, the study questions and activities will stimulate discussion. Readers with other interests may scan the questions and activities that pertain to chapters of particular interest. This “stand-alone” or “use when desired” feature enhances the usefulness and flexibility of this book. The women of vision whose life stories appear in this book may be regarded as masterpieces of vocational achievement. Like masterpieces in the world of art, they have attained their distinctive status both because of their internal merits and because of qualities of the environment in which they eventually flourished. Fellow travelers in the journeys of great artists—patrons, mentors, or exhibitors—may have played necessary roles in bringing the works to the attention of the world. Finally, even the greatest work of art could languish for want of an audience prepared to accept it. That preparation depends importantly on historical factors over which the artist has no control. So it is with our women. To follow their stories, readers must grasp their complexity, looking not only at the women themselves, but also at the environment in which they developed. The authors of the following chapters have made that their goal.

NOTE 1. Dickinson’s poem is also linked to the cover of this book because it inspired a piece of choreography by Martha Graham. Graham struck a pose in that connection that was captured on camera. That photograph, in turn, was the impetus for the acrylic painting by one of our chapter authors, Lillian Cartwright, which is reproduced on the cover of this book.

REFERENCES Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: Free Press. Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row. Dickinson, E. (1982). This is my letter to the world. In Collected poems of Emily Dickinson. New York: Gramercy. (Original work published 1890/1891/ 1896)

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Felder, D. G. (1999). A century of women: The most influential events in twentieth-century women’s history. Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group. Felder, D. G. (2001). The 100 most influential women of all time: A ranking past and present (2nd ed.). New York: Citadel Press. Lerner, G. (1979). The majority finds its past: Placing women in history. New York: Oxford University Press. Northouse, P. G. (2004). Leadership: Theory and practice (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. O’Connell, A. N. (2001). Profiles and patterns of achievement for 53 eminent women: Synthesis and resynthesis 3. In A. N. O’Connell (Ed.), Models of achievement: Reflections of eminent women in psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 345– 420). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Soland, B. (2000). Becoming modern: Young women and the reconstruction of womanhood in the 1920s. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stewart, A. J. (1994). Toward a feminist strategy for studying women’s lives. In C. E. Franz & A. J. Stewart (Eds.), Women creating lives: Identities, resilience and resistance (pp. 11–35). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

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P A R T

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Women Whose Lives Spanned Two Centuries

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C H A P T E R

O N E

Dancing Women’s Freedom The Story of Isadora Duncan Miriam Roskin Berger, Ilene A. Serlin, and Mary Anne Siderits∗

Reprinted with permission of the Milstein Division of United States History, Local History & Genealogy, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. ∗

Contributors to this chapter are listed alphabetically. The writing of the chapter is the work of the third-named author; the other contributors lent their professional expertise in the development and review of the original draft and assisted significantly in the collection of references for the chapter.

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Any faithful portrait of Isadora cannot be a simple one. She was too easily dubbed a “barefoot dancer” in the mass media of her day, but what seemed singularly important in her art was the upper part of her body, including the expressive arms to which choreographer de Mille’s encomium draws our attention. She was renowned as a dancer, but she was contemptuous of some applications of that term, indicating on at least one occasion that she would prefer to be called an expressioniste (Kurth, 2001). She studied, admired, and was influenced by what she knew of the ancient Greeks, yet she took issue with too facile a description of her art as “Greek,” pointing also to its transfusion by the American pioneer spirit, as evinced in her Irish grandmother’s version of the jig. She described herself as an avowed enemy of ballet, but she eventually had an impact on two of the greatest figures in 20th-century ballet, the impresario, Diaghilev, and the choreographer, Folkine. Her San Francisco roots may well have provided the initial setting for the free expression that was to characterize her dancing; however, in an attempt to further acceptance of her work, she was continually to set her sights eastward (Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg). She led what is widely characterized as a “sensational life,” as the subtitle of a recent and monumental biography (Kurth, 2001) attests, but what one reviewer of that book characterized as the “purity and seriousness” of her work has often escaped attention. It is the seriousness of her pursuits, rather than the attendant sensationalism, that we emphasize in this chapter. In the course of our account, some of the apparent contradictions in Isadora’s life and work may become more comprehensible. Several biographical works have been consulted as background for this chapter, but the preponderance of our material on Isadora’s life comes from Kurth’s (2001) exhaustive and highly reputed work and Isadora’s autobiography (Duncan, 1927/1995). Unless otherwise indicated, it may be assumed that biographical detail came from one of the latter sources. Some feminists might prefer the use of a surname in referring to a celebrated woman, as is the general practice with celebrated men. However, Isadora was that unusual person, regardless of gender, who at the height of her fame was widely known by only her first name. It is that uncommon degree of name recognition—and the associated attainment— that we honor in our references to her.

THE TRAIL SHE BLAZED Suppose that we use Isadora’s own account of her early experiences to select one self-defining memory in Singer and Salovey’s (1993) sense, or

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even what Schultz (2003) considers a prototypical scene—a recollection that would encapsulate the subsequent life story. We can hardly do better than to contemplate 6-year-old Dora having “collected half a dozen babies of the neighborhood, all of them too young to walk,” and lining them up in a row on the floor, where she taught them to “wave their arms.” She subsequently explained to her mother that this was her “school of the dance” (Duncan, 1927/1995, p. 16). Viewed retrospectively, this episode captures more than one facet of her future career: (a) Note that she does not recall herself performing. Instead, she is teaching the very young how to experience their bodies. From her perspective, Isadora’s mission was not primarily that of a dancer but closer to that of an educator or even what we now call a dance therapist. (b) It is the upper body—specifically, the arms—of these tender recruits on which the young Dora was concentrating. Critics would later comment on the distinctive use of her body in her performances. A New York Times review of her performance shortly after her first solo appearance on the New York stage in 1898 described her movements as more of the body and arms than of the legs. Similarly, a review by Shebuyev, a Russian theatre critic, in 1905 notes, “Actually the legs play the least important role in these dances. Here everything dances” (cited in Kurth, 2001, p. 153). The young Dora may already have been acting in the service of body memories of which, even as an artistically precocious child, she could have had only a dim intuition. That such body memories may persevere was noted by Berger (1992) in her renewed exposure to Duncan exercises many years after studying in middle childhood with Julia Levien, a prominent exponent of the Duncan technique. Randomly picked in a workshop demonstration to be a partner for guest artist Levien (who did not immediately recognize her former pupil), Berger found that her “arms automatically floated into position . . . although it was a truly unconscious body memory which I had. I went through the rest of the day’s work with tears streaming down my face. . . . This deeply emotional experience gave me direct, concrete validation of the power of the unconscious memories we hold in our bodies” (p. 97). Isadora has often been described as the founder of modern dance, insofar as by example and exhortation she encouraged greater freedom in the movements of the dancer, in the interaction between dancer and dancing surface, and in the elimination of elaborate or confining costuming and set design. It is worth looking at what Isadora brought to the “new dance.”

Presence Reading about Isadora, one soon realizes that the somewhat ineffable dimension called “presence” was a significant element in her communication of her art. By her very presence, she may well have succeeded in

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orienting her audiences to the “new” in her dance, whereas a less dynamic dancer would simply have left them completely puzzled and confused. One wishes in vain for a cinematic record of her programs, but all that is available is a brief clip of her appearance at a garden party—so brief as to leave the viewer completely at a loss in comprehending the fascination that Isadora could generate (Loewenthal, 1993). There are some still photographs and paintings, drawings, and sculpture by Isadora’s contemporaries that do give us a glimpse of the woman and her art. Let us first consider her face as it appears in some of her youthful photographs. Her features are very regular—striking eyes with sometimes the faintest hint of the exophthalmic, a straight and wellproportioned nose, a winsome mouth—but despite this regularity, she falls short of what would have been beautiful by the conventions of her day. Perhaps it is the suggestion of a receding chin or the compact distribution of features in the facial oval that detracts slightly from her frontal view. Certainly, she has a beautiful profile, where the soft jaw of the frontal view appears mysteriously strong. She was described as beautiful in some of the reviews of her work, which may be a tribute to the impression she created in her performances. The effect on members of her audience may have been intimated best by Genthe’s series of still portraits, where the play of shadow and light on Isadora’s features may have been similar to what was seen from the stage. (Genthe’s rendering of Isadora is available in Duncan, Pratl, & Splatt, 1993.) Isadora was taller and apparently not so spare in build as some of the dancers of her day. She is described as being about 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighing just less than 130 pounds in her younger days—good proportions but not really sylph like. Photographs of Isadora taken early in her performing career show her still wearing toe shoes. What we see of her is garbed in a dress made from her mother’s lace curtains, with only the slender lower portion of her legs visible. When her later costuming revealed more of her lower extremities, one could view what were really sturdy legs and equally sturdy thighs. Hers was apparently a physique much like that in the sculptures of Greek women that she was to see in the celebrated museums of Europe. For that matter, it also resembled the figures in Botticelli’s “La Primavera,” the painting that from childhood exercised such a hold on her imagination. Isadora’s own figure thus seems to correspond with what she describes as the typical American build: “The real American type can never be a ballet dancer. The legs are too long, the body too supple, and the spirit too free for this school of affected grace and toe-walking. It is noteworthy that all great ballet dancers have been very short women with small frames” (Duncan, cited in Kurth, 2001, p. 22). What she saw as the incompatibility between the American build and what was favored in ballet was only one of her quarrels with the latter form of dance.

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Technique When Isadora first took to the stage, the most popular forms of dancing included the ballet of the time, ballroom dancing of several kinds, and something called “skirt dancing” that involved the shaking of elaborate costumes. Isadora’s training and her earliest appearances, in San Francisco in her teens, bore the stamp of some of those contemporary trends, but, according to her brother, Augustin, she managed to intrude some of her original thinking about the dance even into these early performances. It would be several years before she could give free rein to her artistic vision. In 1898, she embarked on her career as a solo dancer. That in itself was a novelty—a performer without an ensemble and with simplicity of costume and austerity of stage setting. Most revolutionary of Isadora’s innovations was her technique, which she was inclined to attribute to her discovery of the solar plexus as the wellspring of emotion. Daly (1995) gave us an inkling of the translation of this discovery into the movements of the dancer: “Instead of starting with her feet, the Duncan dancer lifts up her body onto half-toe. She leads up and forward with her chest . . . lengthening upward like a stretched bow,” explains Duncan dancer Lori Belilove, “until the weight of her entire body is pulled forward, and the feet must move ahead under the force of momentum” (pp. 74–75). Berger (1992) also emphasized the relationship to gravity in the Duncan style of dance. She maintains that “dance rhythms are created by the pull of gravity and the body’s response to that magnetism . . . ” and that “[t]rained dancers, even Duncan trained dancers, may find Isadora’s ‘simple’ movements difficult to execute unless they allow themselves to respond to gravity” (p. 101). The opposition to ballet in Isadora’s work becomes clear. To Isadora’s eye, ballet was centered on the lower spine, and the lower part of the body, rather than the torso, had become its focal point. Moreover, with its use of specially constructed shoes that allowed the dancer to perform on point, ballet seemed to be defying both gravity and the natural position of the foot. Isadora’s dance got off on another foot entirely: The dancer used half point, emphasizing the ball of the foot, and her movements used gravity as an impetus. In modern dance, the issue of gravity is basic and crucial and stems from Isadora’s innovations in her break with ballet. In ballet, the illusion of lightness and lifting off the ground are paramount, whereas in modern dance what is important is the relationship to the ground, to the weight of the body, to strength.

Choreography Because of the new elements she brought to the presentation of the dance and her eagerness to share the notion of bodily expression on which they

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were based, Isadora was called a “choreographic philosopher” during the period of her early performances. However, her embodiment of choreography gave high priority to spontaneity over the prescription of details of movement. This does not mean that her dancing was sheer improvisation. Indeed, Isadora proved to be quite unhappy with one of her dances that was entirely improvised, her performance of “The Blue Danube” (Duncan et al., 1993). Apparently intended only as an encore and as something of a sop to audiences who might find it hard to follow her more abstract creations, “The Blue Danube” became an audience favorite and one for which her viewers clamored, although its creator found it embarrassingly banal. What Isadora advocated was “movement expressive of thought” (Kurth, 2001, p. 45), and the movement, like the thought (or emotion) it expressed, had to arise largely from the dancer’s body rather than being imposed upon it. Thus, Isadora might give choreographic directions regarding the execution of a dance, but there had to be room for the dancer to express her own emotions. Although Isadora’s choreography has been labeled Greek, and she was the first to acknowledge that it was importantly inspired by Greek art, it neither was, nor could it be, a reconstruction of Greek dancing. Instead, the movements depicted in that art—for example, in the friezes on a vase—had simply suggested a naturalness of movement and a fluency of sequence that became imbedded in Isadora’s vision of a “new dance” incorporating age-old principles.

Music Although Isadora could imagine a dancer performing without music, and did so on occasion, her “new dance” was carefully integrated with musical compositions. Central to that integration was the choreographing of the dancer’s emotional reactions to the music, so the sequence in the development of the dance became music → emotion → choreography. This translation of music-inspired emotion into the movements of the dancer leads Daly (1995) to comment: “. . . Duncan pioneered a new mode of representation in American dance at the turn of the century: the drama of the kinesthetic” (p. 139). Isadora was also a pioneer in using classical music for her performances—an innovation that some musical diehards considered a significant violation of a composer’s intentions. However, among the enthusiastic proponents of such innovation was Walter Damrosch, the German-American composer and conductor of the New York Symphony, who invited collaboration by Isadora. One of Damrosch’s comments is instructive: “I have never felt the real joy of life in an almost primitive

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innocence and glory as in her dance of the Scherzo” [in Beethoven’s “Seventh Symphony”] (Loewenthal, 1993, p. 29).

Costumes and Setting Isadora may have danced naked on the California shore as a child, but there is little evidence that she disdained clothing or that she used costumes in her performances solely to respect convention. The free-flowing and sometimes diaphanous costumes that she eventually favored obviously reflected her admiration for the clothing she had encountered in Greek art and in her beloved Botticelli “Primavera,” as well as her desire for the freedom of movement such costuming permitted. Simplicity of costuming was paralleled by even greater simplicity of stage furnishing—typically, only a blue curtained backdrop.

BACKGROUND Zeitgeist Agnes de Mille (1993) described Isadora as alone, changing her entire art. Certainly, this was true to the extent that Isadora’s innovations appeared in sudden contrast to the forms of dance to which her contemporaries were accustomed. But to what extent was the contemporary scene prepared for the emergence of Isadora’s “new dance”? Several aspects of the environment into which she was born seem noteworthy: Foremost among them was the Romantic perspective on classical antiquity that had prevailed for more than a century before Isadora’s birth, influencing American art, architecture, and leisure activities. An emphasis on freedom and naturalness was part of this Hellenism (or pseudo-Hellenism). Freedom and naturalness were also emphasized in the movement sometimes designated as “physical culture,” which at the end of the 19th century gave rise to a vogue for gymnastics and other sports activities for women that necessarily contributed to dress reform. Freedom and flexibility of movement, as well as the costuming that allowed them, were to figure importantly in Isadora’s art.

Family Influences and Values Isadora’s parents were invested in the aesthetic dimensions of human life. Her father was known as the “admitted authority on all matters pertaining to art on the Pacific coast” (Kurth, 2001, p. 10). His livelihood seems to have depended on his economic interests—he was at various points an art

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dealer, a journalist, a speculator, and founder of a bank whose collapse was, at the very least, a function of his mismanagement. However, he was also a sometime littérateur and poet. Isadora’s mother was an educated woman of some musical talent. She had also been a practicing Roman Catholic until shortly after Isadora’s birth, when, with her marriage ended by divorce associated with economic scandal and her husband’s philandering, she left the Catholic Church and became a disciple of Robert Ingersoll, the “Great Agnostic.” For followers of Ingersoll like Isadora’s mother, art could come to replace religion as a central value—one which Isadora’s mother transmitted to her several children.

Other Interpersonal Influences As her earliest memory, Isadora recounts an event that commentators have been tempted to connect with some of the later tragedies in her life. The recollection includes the flames and screams associated with a fire during which little Isadora, age 2 or 3, was thrown from a burning building. That is not the entire substance of that early memory, however. Significantly, it ends with the comfort provided by the fireman’s arms that received her and, thus, seems to prefigure an expectation of rescue. Indeed, over the course of her life, Isadora was fortunate in the people that would come to her assistance at critical points. Not the least of these was her mother, who, along with the rest of “Clan Duncan,” acceded to Isadora’s plans for the launching of her career and, when circumstances required, subsisted on a diet of tomatoes, improvised costumes from curtains, and turned her hand to cooking on a merchant ship. Other persons who assisted Isadora are so numerous that we can offer only a few of the more outstanding examples: her poet mentor, a stranger who allowed her to take costume material on credit, the lover who financed one of her schools, and the friend who showed up sporadically in her life and provided psychological support during the trying period just before Isadora’s untimely death. The drama of Isadora’s life had a large cast of characters. That life is itself worth a closer look.

ISADORA’S DEVELOPMENT Isadora In Utero Mrs. Duncan’s pregnancy with Isadora was particularly stressful. The collapse of the bank founded by Mr. Duncan cast doubt on his financial integrity; and, although he was later exonerated, living in the glare of

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public suspicion was undoubtedly trying for his wife. At the same time, Mrs. Duncan discovered evidence of her husband’s womanizing. According to family legend, Isadora’s mother survived the public and private ordeals on a diet of oysters and champagne. Today, this might arouse concern for the possible effects on fetal development. Indeed, because of the stressfulness of this period, Mrs. Duncan was said to have wondered whether she would give birth to a monster. However, there is no reason to think that Isadora suffered from any of the fetal alcohol spectrum disorders; certainly, neither her intelligence nor her physical appearance bore the stamp of any such difficulty. Of course, the high level of activity that Isadora apparently exhibited in her early infancy would be consistent with research reports (Mick, Biederman, Faraone, Sayer, & Kleinman, 2002; Relier, 2001; Susman, Schmeelk, Ponirakis, & Gariepy, 2001) of one of the possible effects of stress or alcohol on the developing fetus. Equally important, what in Isadora’s youth may well have been the frequent repetition of the story of her pregnant mother’s dietary predilections could have left Isadora with a casual attitude toward the consumption of alcohol and a placid acceptance of its use in relieving stress. Certainly, that was an attitude evident in Clan Duncan many years after Isadora’s birth.

Childhood The Duncans’ youngest child was born on May 26, 1877, and christened Angela Isadora Duncan not long before her mother bolted from Catholicism. The acronym formed by the initials of that name was not lost on the mother, who is said to have predicted that Isadora would be an aid to her family. Such an expectation obviously reverses the usual roles of parent and child, and it would seem that Isadora happily fulfilled it. Indeed, what stands out in the portrait of her childhood is the degree to which she was “parentified”—either expected or allowed to assume some of the privileges and responsibilities ordinarily reserved to parents. This may have been reinforced by her mother’s alleged preference for the company of children over that of adults. Her mother’s unwitting permissiveness also played a part in Isadora’s parentification. Isadora speaks of her divorced mother’s occasional selfabsorption: “I think my mother quite forgot about us, lost in her music or declaiming poetry” (Duncan, 1995, p. 20). Not only her investment in the arts, but also the long days she spent in teaching, kept Mrs. Duncan from the close supervision of her children. Isadora came to think of the resulting permissiveness as a virtue: “Fortunately, she was blissfully unconscious. I say fortunately for me, for it is certainly to this wild, untrammeled life of my childhood that I owe the inspiration of the dance

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I created, which was but the expression of freedom” (p. 14). As we know from her later description of life in one of her dancing schools, what she prized in her early home life was reflected in her educational philosophy. On the basis of Baumrind’s (1971, 1980) research on parenting strategies, we might expect the permissiveness of the Duncan household to lead to impulsiveness and dependence. Impulsivity would, indeed, mark much of Isadora’s adult behavior. There may have been some dependence as well—particularly in her turning to others for economic rescue at various points in her life. However, Isadora’s parentification had a dimension that seems to have been associated not with dependence but with its opposite— a precocious independence that is worth some examination. The household poverty that Isadora recalled as breeding a certain permissiveness also stimulated Isadora’s resourcefulness. Mrs. Duncan was the sole provider for the family when the children were younger: She turned her musical talent to the giving of piano lessons, and her busy fingers were also occupied in producing hand-knit items. However, she was not always equal to the demands of marketing the knitted goods she produced, so Isadora set out wearing samples of her mother’s crafts and sold them from door to door. Although the youngest in the family, Isadora was also frequently called on to negotiate outstanding accounts with the butcher or the baker. Mrs. Duncan’s work may have been taxing, but it was scarcely sufficient to meet the household bills. Moreover, Isadora’s mother was not a model of frugality during the few periods of temporary solvency. Isadora recalled frequent moves from one home to another when the family could not settle their debt to the landlord. The weight of Isadora’s composure versus her mother’s was also clearly evident when, after some years’ absence, Isadora’s father unexpectedly appeared on their doorstep, to the consternation of everyone in the household but his youngest child. According to her own account, it was 7-year-old Isadora who answered the door and responded with an aplomb beyond her years, while the rest of the family retreated. Isadora’s ready self-confidence and her maternal indoctrination in agnosticism put her on the offensive when a teacher expected the children in her class to subscribe to the fantasy of a candy-bearing Santa Claus. This became the occasion for a confrontation with authority that Isadora later labeled as the first of her famous speeches—one in which she railed against belief in the holiday figure. We may infer how vehement the young Isadora could be from her description of her resistance when the teacher attempted to discipline her: “At this the teacher caught hold of me and endeavored to sit me down on the floor, but I stiffened my legs and held on to her, and she only succeeded in hitting my heels against the parquet” (Duncan, 1995, p. 15).

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Exchanges of this kind, disaffection with the prevalent emphasis on rote learning, and often having to go to school with “wet shoes and an empty stomach” may all have played a part in what she recounts as her independent decision to quit school around the age of 10 or 11. However, Isadora was not without educational resources; there was a continuation of what we might consider the informal equivalent of home schooling. She described the home environment as one in which reading and the arts flourished. Moreover, Dora had evidently learned early the pleasures of reading, and she treasured the time she spent in a local library under the wing of Ina Coolbrith (who was to become the first of California’s poet laureates). Isadora describes herself as putting up her hair and setting off to work not long after she left school. Perhaps because her mother was a pianist for a dancing teacher, the Duncan youngsters were able to obtain what was the current training in the dance. Eventually, while still a preadolescent, Isadora would join her brothers and sisters in contributing to the family coffers by introducing other children to the dances of the day.

Adolescence Two of the principal tasks of adolescence, it is often said, are emancipating oneself from the family of origin and beginning to establish what will be one’s meaning for the larger world. Moving beyond the family allows an individual to establish a sense of self-direction that is necessary for full adulthood and the achievement of the second goal. However, we have seen that Isadora had already, in early childhood, acquired a quasi-adulthood in some respects. At the same time, economic pursuits kept her bonded to Clan Duncan. From the time she left school until she prodded her family to leave San Francisco for Chicago—from preadolescence until the cusp of adulthood—Isadora and her siblings were involved in teaching and performing. Nevertheless, it was clearly Isadora who was the central figure in the enterprise. Her mother—and indeed the whole family—seemed to follow Isadora’s cues. Wherever Isadora moved, Clan Duncan would follow, at least for some years. In a sense, the family became accessories to a line of occupational development from which Isadora never swerved and to which she seemed to be committed from some early point in childhood. For many persons, adolescence also marks the appearance of romantic attachments, if only from a distance—the beginning of an experimentation with the idea of intimacy. From what we find in the record of her life, we might wonder whether the career-focused Isadora had much time to indulge in the romantic fantasies that occupy the thoughts of many young girls. Isadora tells us of an early adolescent resolution never to marry, a

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commitment to the single life reportedly fired by what she saw as the repression of women within the confines of marriage. Interestingly, even at this point, she did not view the avoidance of marriage as incompatible with motherhood.

Young Adulthood and Precocious Signs of Generativity Isadora reached celebrity in only a little more than 10 years after she left California for a part of the country that she hoped would be more hospitable to her vision of the dance. However, her first years in Chicago, and after that in New York City, did not allow her to test that vision. Those were years in which she performed in dancing companies and incidentally had additional training in dance. It was not until 1898, at the age of 21, that she started a career as a solo dancer and almost immediately attracted the attention of audiences, critics, and a coterie of bluestockings who arranged for her to appear in a variety of prominent venues, including their lavish homes. Exposure did not necessarily bring financial solvency; Isadora evidently often performed gratis, and she and her family continued to teach dancing while living a hand-to-mouth existence. A raging fire in the Windsor Hotel found the Duncans engaged in giving a lesson on the first floor when bodies of victims began to hurtle past the windows. The fire spared the family and also spared them having to meet accumulated bills for hotel expenses. Bereft of funds and lodging, they were soon headed for Europe aboard a merchant steamer, where Mrs. Duncan became a ship’s cook for the duration of the voyage. Europe eventually became the forum for Isadora’s experiments in dance and for the consolidation of her choreographic philosophy. A burgeoning sensation on the European stage, she was also a serious student who devoured everything pertinent to the dance that she found in the libraries and museums of London and Paris. It will be remembered that from early childhood Isadora aspired to bring a free form of dancing to the young, and this dream was not eclipsed by her growing success on the stage. Indeed, throughout her life, she viewed her performances as a way of raising money for her schools. In 1904, when she was still in her 20s, she established the first of her schools of the dance; the second in 1914, was with the help of Paris Singer. She was unwavering in her strong convictions regarding not only what would constitute the “new dance” taught there, but also what should be the composition of the student body and the environment the children would be offered. Her facilities were primarily to be offered not to the children of the wealthy, but rather to children from impoverished, broken, and dysfunctional homes. From her early pupils in the German school

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would be recruited a half dozen who ultimately would perform with her and who were labeled the “Isadorables” by one enchanted critic. It should be emphasized that from the beginning Isadora’s ventures in education were not primarily intended to create performers, but rather to give substance to her mission. Her aim was to promote awareness of what the full experience of one’s body could contribute to the development of humans generally. Considering that goal (and the career that gave full expression to that desire), it becomes evident that Isadora was strongly motivated by what Erikson (1963) called generativity, “primarily the concern in establishing and guiding the next generation” (p. 267). Erikson believed that generativity came to the fore in middle age and beyond, but McAdams, de St. Aubin, and Logan (1993) found evidence that in some persons it may peak even in the early part of adulthood. However, de St. Aubin (personal communication, February 12, 2005) indicated that thus far there is virtually no evidence of generativity in childhood or adolescence and that too early an appearance of such motivation might compete undesirably with the establishment of a sense of personal identity. A consideration of the perils of precocious generativity brings to mind Anna Freud’s (1966) description of the defense she labeled “altruistic surrender”—a renunciation of personal achievement in favor of a vicarious investment in the achievements of others. Although Isadora may have exemplified uncommonly early generativity—its seeds already evident in childhood—she never was in danger of altruistic surrender. On the contrary, her pursuit of her distinctive sense of self and mission was the necessary foundation for her commitment to the liberation of others through the dance.

The Turning Point Isadora’s dedication to her dream of the dancing children of the future was paralleled by her emotional investment in her biological children, Deirdre, her child by Edward Craig, and Patrick, her child by Paris Singer. Tragically, both were lost in a single accident. They were drowned in the Seine with their nurse, when the car carrying them suddenly and inexplicably broke away from the chauffeur (who was restarting it with a crank) and was catapulted across an embankment. Years later, Isadora’s brief seduction of the sculptor, Romanelli, apparently for the explicit purpose of conceiving a child, led to the birth of her third child, who lived only a few hours. There is evidence that Isadora bore the mark of these losses for the rest of her life. Just a few days before her own accidental death some years later, Isadora lost control at the sight of a small child who reminded her of Patrick, explaining later to her close friend that she could no longer live in a world holding golden-haired 3-year-olds.

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Despite the depth of her grief over the loss of her children, Isadora soldiered on with her career, performing widely and, in 1921, accepting the invitation of the Russian government to found yet another school of the dance. Isadora’s grief was expressed sporadically in the motifs of her dance, which reflected her somber mood. Whether it was grief that affected her properly cultivating the appropriate physique for a dancer or simply the inroads of age and possible heredity, Isadora seems to have become increasingly heavier as she approached middle age. She was actually labeled “fat” by some of those who saw her. (This is difficult to judge from the draped clothing in the remaining photographs of Isadora in her 30s, but it may have been more evident as she moved about the stage.) Her grief may have played some part in Isadora’s increasing dependence on alcohol and in the promiscuity that continued until the end of her life, although these tendencies had earlier roots.

Another Side of Isadora Isadora’s sexual licentiousness, beginning long before the deaths of her children, was hardly the exclusive product of grief. Although she made more than one attempt at a sustained relationship, including those with the fathers of the first two of her children, the circumstances of her life and her own impulsiveness doomed those relationships. Isadora’s promiscuity has often been attributed to the absence of her father in her early life and the attendant absence of any domestic model of a wholesome relationship between a man and a woman. The impulsiveness bred of fetal vicissitudes and permissive parenting may have also come to the fore in her sexual indiscretions. However, there is yet another factor that must not be overlooked: Isadora’s romantic contacts in adolescence, when she was under her mother’s chaperonage, were actually quite limited. Therefore, the socialization of her sexuality occurred chiefly in her young adulthood, when she was immersed in the environment peculiar to those with careers in the theatre. Like the adolescent who looks to her peers for benchmarks for her behavior, Isadora may have unconsciously patterned her sexual behavior after the lives of those around her. Her record of casual sexual relationships was easily matched by many men in the arts, but, because of the double standard, it may have seemed more flamboyant in a woman. That would not have concerned Isadora. Although she may never have viewed herself in explicitly feminist terms, neither did she ever give evidence of considering herself constrained by her gender. When she was a young woman, Isadora’s sexual excesses had the trappings of fame and glamour, but in her middle age, they could more

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readily be viewed, even by her friends, as desperate and pathetic. It was not a pretty picture that Isadora presented in the last years of her life. The Paris in which she spent a large part of those years was the “moveable feast” of Hemingway’s epithet, a feast unfortunately accompanied by an excess of drinking and debauchery. The stories of Isadora’s encounters with the ultrafamous are numerous, adding to the legend of a life out of control. (Just two examples: She fought with Jean Cocteau over the favors of a young sailor. She attempted to cultivate Scott Fitzgerald, whose notoriously unstable wife, Zelda, responded by throwing herself down a set of stairs.) Even the end of Isadora’s life, by which time she had moved to the south of France, bore the stamp of her relentless sexual pursuits. In an apparent attempt at the seduction of a younger man who had caught her fancy, Isadora expressed an interest in a drive in his car. Wrapping herself in a large and favorite shawl—2 yards long, 5 feet wide—she seated herself without noticing that the end of the shawl hung over the car. The fringes of the shawl caught in the wheels as the car moved forward, and Isadora was instantly strangled. She was 50 years old.

ISADORA’S LEGACY Isadora’s sense of movement and the originality of her vision revealed new possibilities for those in dance and theatre. People once spoke of her in superlatives. The writer and editor, Max Eastman, noting Isadora’s place in the revolt against puritanism, likened her to Walt Whitman and labeled her “an event not only in art, but in the history of life” (cited in Kurth, 2001, p. 255). Rodin is reputed to have called her the greatest woman he had ever known and possibly the greatest woman the world had ever known. One might have thought that an artistic life of that consequence would have assured her continuing prominence. Why was that not the case? There appear to have been several factors in the reversal of her eminence: Isadora fell behind the Zeitgeist toward the end of her life. Her use of music had never been quite so daring as the other aspects of her artistic experiment; she had never moved even into impressionistic music. Thus, it is probably not surprising that she was repelled by the growing interest in jazz—unfortunately, so repelled that she made what we would now view as disturbingly racist remarks about its origins. Her associations with communism in the wake of her 1921 visit to Russia and an ill-fated marriage to a Russian poet led to public rejection during her subsequent tour of the United States. She managed to discipline herself sufficiently to continue performing sporadically, but her reputation, even as an artist, had begun to decline before her untimely death.

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Although there have been several generations of Duncan disciples— with Isadorables prominent in their early ranks—and they have importantly influenced their peers and their successors, none has achieved Isadora’s international prestige. Isadora’s own name has often been strangely absent from the artistic lexicon. Audiences may appreciate the beauty of the balletic dying swan, be moved by the expressiveness of modern dance, or appreciate the stunning simplicity of a theatrical backdrop without realizing the extent to which Isadora contributed to those aspects of their current artistic experience. And yet the ghost of Isadora is in the wings. Quite aside from questions of theatrical performance, Isadora’s central mission has never been achieved. The widespread education in the dance that she envisioned at a tender age simply has not occurred. Unlike education in literature, music, and the visual arts, education in dance has not become part of the public school curriculum. Yet, there is one area in which Isadora’s educational hopes have been realized and her innovations have found expression—dance therapy. Dance therapy began some years after Isadora’s death—in the late 1930s and early 1940s. One of its principal sources was modern dance, especially as taught in the colleges, where teachers recognized that through their modern dance training, students were developing not only as dancers, but also as humans. The development of dance therapy was spurred by the plight of persons sustaining combat trauma during World War II; groups of returning soldiers with psychiatric illnesses responded well to the introduction of dance therapy into treatment programs. Miriam Chace’s work with veterans at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, DC, demonstrated that it was possible to reach even the psychotic patient. Chace’s work was described by Thomas (1994) as allowing modern dance to “break through invisible walls with which all psychotics surround themselves to keep people away and to do so by using primitive means of communication that go deeper than words—rhythm, movement and touch” (p. 130). Dance therapy’s indebtedness to Isadora has been widely acknowledged. Smallwood (1974) simply asserted that “all dance therapists have roots in ‘Isadora’s revolution’” (p. 79). As Berger (1992) noted, three things belong to dance therapists—and ultimately to the persons with whom they work—as a legacy from Isadora: (a) the experience of new movement patterns as a means to experience new feelings, (b) the necessity of listening to one’s inner sense as a means of finding and experiencing one’s authentic movement, and (c) the balance between spontaneity and control. All three are proper therapeutic goals, and all three were emphatically among Isadora’s goals as an artist and educator. How she might have loved their reincarnation in the bodily experience of therapeutic dance!

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Bodily experience is at the core of what Duncan et al. labeled the manifesto of modern dance and a feminist classic, Isadora’s The Dance of the Future, from which the following fragments still may resonate with us: “There will always be moments which are the perfect expression of [the] individual body and [the] individual soul. . . . The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the body. . . . She shall dance the freedom of women . . . ” (Duncan, cited in Duncan et al., 1993, pp. 47, 49).

REFERENCES Baumrind, D. (1971). Current patterns of parental authority. Developmental Psychology Monographs, 4(1, Part 2), 1–103. Baumrind, D. (1980). New directions in socialization research. American Psychologist, 35, 639–652. Berger, M. R. (1992). Isadora Duncan and the creative source of dance therapy. American Journal of Dance Therapy, 14(2), 95–111. Daly, A. (1995). Done into dance: Isadora Duncan in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. de Mille, A. (1993). Foreword. In D. Duncan, C. Pratl, & C. Splatt (Eds.), Life into art: Isadora Duncan and her world (pp. 7–13). New York: Norton. Duncan, D., Pratl, C., & Splatt, C. (1993). Life into art: Isadora Duncan and her world. New York: Norton. Duncan, I. (1995). My life. London: Liveright. (Original work published 1927) Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). New York: Norton. Freud, A. (1966). The ego and the mechanisms of defense (Rev. ed.). New York: International Universities Press. Kurth, P. (2001). Isadora: A sensational life. Boston: Little, Brown. Loewenthal, L. (1993). The search for Isadora: The legend & legacy of Isadora Duncan. Pennington, NJ: Princeton Book Company. McAdams, D. P., de St. Aubin, E., & Logan, R. L. (1993). Generativity among young, midlife, and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 8(2), 221–230. Mick, E., Biederman, J., Faraone, S. V., Sayer, J., & Kleinman, S. (2002). Casecontrol study of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and maternal smoking, alcohol use, and drug use during pregnancy. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 41, 378–385. Relier, J. P. (2001). Influence of maternal stress on fetal behavior and brain development. Biology of the Neonate, 79(3–4), 168–171. Schultz, W. T. (2003). The prototypical scene: A method for generating psychobiographical hypotheses. In R. Josselson, A. Lieblich, & D. P. McAdams (Eds.), Up close and personal: The teaching and learning of narrative research (pp. 151–177). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Singer, J., & Salovey, P. (1993). The remembered self: Emotion and memory in personality. New York: Free Press.

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Smallwood, J. (1974, December). Dance-movement therapy. In P. Bernstein (Ed.), Ninth Annual Conference Proceedings: Therapeutic Process, Movement as Integration. 9th Annual Conference of the ADTA, New York City. St. Aubin, personal communication, 2005. Susman, E. J., Schmeelk, K. H., Ponirakis, A., & Gariepy, J. L. (2001). Maternal prenatal, postpartum, and concurrent stressors and temperament in 3-yearolds: A person and variable analysis. Development and Psychopathology, 13(3), 629–652. Thomas, D. (1994). Foundations of dance/movement therapy: The life and work of Marian Chace. American Journal of Dance Therapy, 16(2), 127–133.

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Anne Sullivan Macy and Helen Adams Keller Expressing “Vision” With Fluttering Fingers Hendrika Vande Kemp

Reproduced from the Collections of the Library of Congress, #7140 LC-05262244. 29

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Three urns containing the ashes of Anne Sullivan Macy (1866–1936), Polly Thompson (1885–1960), and Helen Keller (1880–1968) rest in a niche in the columbarium of the Chapel of St. Joseph of Arimathea at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. The chapel is a popular tourist site and a favorite destination of curious school children who typically “rub their fingers across a bronze plaque that informs them in Braille that ‘Helen Keller and her beloved companion Anne Sullivan Macy are interred in the columbarium behind this chapel.’ So many children have touched and worn away the Braille dots that the plaque has been replaced twice” (Herrmann, 1998, p. 336). Macy was the first woman offered “the privilege of sepulchre at the cathedral” based on her own achievements (p. 259). Her 1936 funeral was held at Marble Collegiate Church, with the eulogy delivered by Riverside Church’s Harry Emerson Fosdick. Trailing the coffin, Helen Keller’s hands fluttered, bird-like, spelling words of comfort into the hands of her tearful companion, Polly Thompson, in the manual alphabet that Macy—to whom Helen always referred as “Teacher”— taught her half a century ago. A service of commitment for Thompson’s ashes was held at the National Cathedral in 1960, after her funeral in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In 1968, Keller’s funeral service was held at the National Cathedral, with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Mrs. Earl Warren leading the 1,200 mourners. The dramatic story of how the nearly blind 20-year-old Annie Sullivan, the valedictorian of the 1886 class at the Perkins Institution for the Blind, brought the gift of language to the blind, deaf, and mute 6-year-old Helen Keller was immortalized in William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker, broadcast on CBS’s Playhouse 90 in 1957. Gibson covers the period from March 3 to April 5, 1887, ending with that miraculous moment at the water pump when Helen suddenly grasped the communicative function of the manual alphabet. Gibson expanded his script for a play that opened on Broadway in 1959 at the Playhouse Theatre. Despite mixed reviews, it rarely failed to fill the 1,000 available seats during its first run of nearly 700 performances in about 2 years. Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, playing the roles of Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller, moved readily from their Broadway roles to the United Artists movie version, for which both received 1962 Academy Awards.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT: VENEREAL EYE INFECTIONS, UNCONTROLLED FEVERS, AND BLINDNESS Neither Annie nor Helen would be blind in 21st-century America, and each witnessed—before her death—the advent of drugs that might have prevented her blindness.

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Annie Annie Sullivan was about 5 years old when she “developed trachoma, a chronic, contagious conjunctivitis marked by inflammatory granulations on the lid and cornea” (Herrmann, 1998, p. 28). Caused by chlamydia trachomatis, trachoma remains the world’s largest single cause of blindness; it can be effectively treated with antibiotics (usually tetracycline drugs or sulfonamides) and was completely eliminated from the United States several years after the 1935 discovery of sulfa drugs. In the late 1870s, Annie had several operations on her eyes. An 1877 operation provided “some relief from pain and the shooting lights in her eyes,” but her vision remained blurred and public records listed her as blind (Lash, 1980, p. 9). Annie entered the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind in Boston in October 1880, where she learned to spell and read Braille and mastered the manual alphabet to communicate with Laura Bridgman, the famous deaf mute residing there. Later operations on Annie’s eyes permitted her “to see well enough to read normally for restricted periods of time” but not to attend regular schools (Herrmann, p. 35). Annie’s life was plagued with attacks of granular conjunctivitis and other eye disorders, yet she read constantly to Helen. “In middle age her eyesight deteriorated to the point where flickering candles, unshaded lamps, even the expanse of a white tablecloth caused excruciating pain. She could read only by wearing double-lensed telescoping glasses that weighed heavily on her face” (p. 231). She developed cataracts, and her painful left eye was removed in 1929. By the end of her life, “she could perceive only gray shadows” (p. 231).

Helen In February 1882, 19-month-old Helen Keller developed a condition that doctors diagnosed as “acute congestion of the stomach and brain” (Lash, 1980, p. 43) or “brain fever” (Herrmann, 1998, p. 9). Modern doctors speculate that she had scarlet fever, caused by a hemolytic streptococcus, or meningitis, “an inflammation of the delicate membranes that cover the spinal cord and brain” (p. 9). When the fever subsided, Helen awoke to a “dark and still” world (p. 11). Aspirin, the fever reducer that became universally available in the 20th century, did not appear until 1899 in powdered prescription form. Tablets followed in 1900 and became available over the counter in 1915 (Bayer, 2005, p. 1). Helen, with a protruding and obviously blind left eye, was typically photographed only in right profile. Around 1910, both eyes were removed and replaced with “big, wide, open blue” glass ones (Herrmann, p. 181).

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Keller was a founding member in 1906 of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. Concerned with work opportunities for the blind, the commission conducted a census that demonstrated that blindness “was concentrated in the lower class. Men who were poor might be blinded in industrial accidents or by inadequate medical care; poor women who became prostitutes faced the additional danger of syphilitic blindness” (Loewen, 1995, p. 11). One third of the cases of blindness resulted from “disease[s] which can be averted by timely treatment” (Lash, 1980, p. 364). In 1907, Keller wrote a groundbreaking article, published in The Ladies’ Home Journal and the Kansas City Star, attempting to convince the medical establishment routinely to treat infants’ eyes at birth with a solution of nitrate of silver in order to prevent blindness from gonococcal and chlamydial ophthalmia neonatorum, infections transmitted by maternal venereal disease. Helen brashly declared that “[p]rudery, ignorance, negligence alone stood in the way of the use of this simple preventive measure” (Lash, 1980, p. 364). Today, all 50 states require eye treatment at birth to prevent gonorrheal eye infections; 150,000 infants are still born annually in the United States to mothers with chlamydial infections (National Eye Institute, 1999, p. 1).

ANNIE SULLIVAN: A TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD, A TURBULENT MARRIAGE, AND AN ENDURING LEGACY AS “THE MIRACLE WORKER” Johanna Sullivan was born April 14, 1866, in Feeding Hill, Massachusetts. She was the first of five children born to her illiterate parents, who emigrated from Limerick, Ireland, after the 1847 potato famine. Her mother, Alice Chloesy, suffered from tuberculosis and, during Annie’s childhood, was crippled in a fall that crushed her legs and hip. She died in 1874 and was buried in Potter’s Field. Annie’s father Thomas, a farmhand, was an alcoholic drinker and brawler who abused her. Later, he committed suicide—a fact that Annie learned only in her old age. Two siblings, John and Nellie, died early in life. Annie’s little brother Jimmie was born with a tubercular hip. After Alice’s death, Annie kept house for her father in a rundown shack on her uncle’s tobacco farm. When Tom abandoned the family within 2 years of Alice’s death, Annie briefly stayed at her uncle’s, but on February 22, 1876, Annie and Jimmie were delivered to the state poorhouse in Tewskbury. Throughout her life, Annie was haunted with vivid memories of her mother’s funeral (Henney, 1933). Her unresolved grief intensified when Jimmie died of tuberculosis in May 1876 and was buried in the poorhouse cemetery.

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The poorhouse shaped Annie in numerous ways. She played with Jimmie in the “‘dead house’ where corpses were prepared for burial” (Lash, 1980, p. 7). Mosquitoes and flies invaded the buildings, which “swarmed with rats, mice, and cockroaches” (Herrmann, 1998, p. 30); the heating often broke down; men and women were inadequately segregated; many of the women were pregnant; and numerous residents were “deformed, legless, some with faces distorted by cancer or goiters” (Lash, p. 7). Living “among unwed mothers and men who tried to molest her,” Annie developed a “queer fascinated antagonism for men” (Herrmann, p. 32). She frequently played with children who “were covered with syphilitic sores” (Herrmann, p. 32), and her older friends included prostitutes, of whom many were crippled and diseased. She also befriended a Jesuit priest, Father Barbara, who arranged for her first successful eye surgery at a charity hospital in Lowell. Jimmie’s death estranged Annie from the Catholic Church, and she found herself unable to believe in immortality. She bitterly opposed Helen’s ardent devotion to Swedenborgianism (Keller, 1929/2000a). Annie was ashamed of her chaotic, impoverished background, and during the Perkins years she gave herself the aristocratic-sounding middle name Mansfield (Herrmann, 1998, p. 35). Even Helen knew nothing of Annie’s background until 1930, when Nella Braddy Henney was writing Annie’s biography. Helen described Teacher “pouring out a tale of a tragic childhood spent among human beings sunk in misery, degradation, and disease” (Keller, 1955, p. 113). Helen believed that her own study of “the problems of primary poverty” inspired Teacher’s trust (Keller, p. 113), and her deep empathy engendered a sleepless night “dwelling on Teacher’s love for her brother until I felt it as my own” (Keller, p. 114). For Helen, Annie’s revelations demystified moments when she felt alone, bewildered by Annie’s peculiarities and strangeness. Finally, Helen understood why Annie burned her diaries shortly after her 1905 marriage to John Macy, a Harvard instructor who first entered their life as Helen’s editor and literary agent. Despite the fact that Annie was a brilliant teacher, she was neither logical nor systematic; she suffered from periodic deep depressions and suicidal urges; she persisted in the unsafe habit of riding unruly horses; she had extravagant and vulgar tastes; as a young adult, she still played secretly with dolls; she risked her own vision, and Helen’s health, by insisting on too strenuous a course of study; she demanded that Helen retype her letters until they were stylistically and grammatically correct; and she smothered and mothered John Macy, with whom she argued violently. In later life, Helen was able to paint a fairly accurate, if incomplete, picture of Annie (Keller, 1955), but she “tried to explain away Annie’s wild mood swings, blaming her pessimism, restlessness, and immoderate behavior on her

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unhappy childhood” (Herrmann, 1998, p. 86). Less sympathetic was Herrmann’s judgment regarding the breakup of the Sullivan-Macy marriage, which was essentially over by 1914 and proved to be neither intimate nor generative: “For a brilliant, unstable woman, a faithful deaf-blind female companion was a far more compatible ‘mate’ than a bright, challenging male” (Herrmann, p. 149). Ironically, John Macy—who was by then an alcoholic—lived for the next 5 years with a lovely deaf-mute sculptress, Myla, who bore him a daughter before her untimely death and, thus, dealt an emotional blow to Annie, who was unable to give John a child. Annie displayed many characteristics of the personality disorders that haunt abused and bereaved children. She was “hot-tempered like her father,” responding “to the miseries within and about her by lashing out, childishly, throwing things, going into tantrums” (Lash, 1980, p. 4). Michael Anagnos, the director of Perkins—with whom she had a love–hate relationship—nicknamed her “Miss Spitfire” (Lash, p. 32), a term equally applicable to young Helen. Helen and Annie’s alliance was often stormy and, on occasion, both physically and emotionally abusive. Annie resented always being a shadow in Helen’s light. People said that she was “not a ‘miracle worker’ but a ‘liar’” (Herrmann, 1998, p. 78), or “a ‘born schemer,’ who could not brook the slightest criticism or interference and a ‘publicity monger’ as well” (Herrmann, p. 118). Later, “Helen’s dreams were often filled with rage and aggressions against Annie,” indicating that the adult Helen “continued to resent Annie’s control and dominance” (Herrmann, p. 165). Here, too, the two women blazed a trail, because both exhibited extreme levels of loyalty and tolerated extensive ambiguity in their relationship. Annie proved that the value of a person’s work is not a function of her mental health. Helen’s productive later life proved that she was not a dupe or a mere mouthpiece for Annie.

HELEN KELLER: HEROINE AND ROLE MODEL FOR CHILDREN Helen’s Family Helen Adams Keller was born a healthy child in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, in the white, frame cottage called “Ivy Green” that was home to Captain Arthur Keller, his two sons by his deceased first wife, his young second wife Kate Adams, and later to two more children. Captain Keller, the editor of a newspaper—the North Alabamian—and a Marshal of North Alabama, had a strong interest in public life and was an influential community leader who aroused Helen’s lively interest in politics. Kate was a witty and intelligent woman who later supported

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women’s suffrage. In 1954, Ivy Green became a permanent local shrine and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Helen’s Emergence From Darkness Helen, in The World I Live In (Keller, 1908), described herself in terms associated with autism (Lash, 1980). In Teacher, Keller (1955) remembers her child-like self as “Phantom,” who “acted like a demon, kicking, screaming, pinching her would-be deliverer” (p. 38). After Annie arrived in 1887, Helen quickly mastered the alphabet, both manual and in raised print, and gained facility in reading, writing, and lip reading. Helen studied at Perkins and at the Wright-Humason School in New York City. She took her first speech lessons in 1890.

The Plagiarism Scandal The 11-year-old Helen faced a catastrophic crisis that arose from the interaction of her prodigious memory, her keen imagination, and her brilliant mastery of language. On November 4, 1891, Helen sent Michael Anagnos a birthday present, a story she entitled “The Frost King” (Herrmann, 1998, p. 79). Charmed with the story, Anagnos printed it in Perkins’s alumni magazine, The Mentor; it was reprinted in The Goodson Gazette, published by the Virginia Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb and Blind. The editors soon discovered that Helen’s enchanting tale closely resembled Margaret T. Canby’s (1874) “The Frost Fairies,” a story in her children’s book Birdie and His Fairy Friends: A Book for Little Children, which apparently was read to Helen in 1888 at the home of Mrs. Hopkins, Annie’s mentor and friend. Helen was subjected to “a court of investigation” and “charged with plagiarism and deliberate falsehood” (Herrmann, p. 82), although the inquiry likely was aimed primarily at Annie. Anagnos cast the tie-breaking vote that cleared Helen, but he eventually “began a whispering campaign” against Helen and Annie, “impugning their integrity” (Herrmann, p. 84). Lash (1980) believed that Annie was intimately acquainted with Canby’s work, quoting it frequently and feeding Helen’s store of romanticized language. VilleyDesmeserets (1930) argued that verbalism or word-mindedness was the root of Helen’s problems. He also argued that Helen was a “dupe of words, and her aesthetic enjoyment of most of the arts is a matter of auto-suggestion rather than perception” (cited in Lash, p. 571) and that “[w]ordiness, unreal emotion and, in the worst sense of the term, literature occupy a disconcerting place in her writing” (cited in Herrmann, p. 85). Whether Helen truly experienced the world that she described or whether

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she was merely an artist in verbal expression appears to matter little to the readers of the ever-popular The Story of My Life. The deeply traumatic plagiarism incident started Helen’s thoughts about “the problems of composition” (Keller, 1903/2003, p. 56). She acknowledged that “I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read becomes the very substance and texture of my mind” (Keller, p. 55). Neither Helen nor Teacher understood “the meaning of plagiarism” (Lash, 1980, p. 150), but Teacher—whose Perkins education did not include the writing of papers and methods of citation— thereafter tried to limit Helen’s “habit of imitation” (Keller, 1903/2003, p. 305). Mark Twain expressed his bemused anger at the charges in a letter to Helen: “the soul . . . the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism” (cited in Lash, p. 146). Alexander Graham Bell wrote to Annie that “our most original compositions are composed exclusively of expressions derived from others” (cited in Lash, p. 290), an argument that sounds dangerously like contemporary defenses of plagiarism. Later, John Macy wrote that “all use of language is imitative, and one’s style is made up of all other styles that one has met” (Lash, p. 304). Canby admired Helen’s “astonishing tactile memory and ‘phenomenal’ power of concentration” (Herrmann, 1998, p. 84). Throughout her life, Helen remained self-conscious, questioning the originality of her ideas. Helen was forced to acknowledge her derivation from others, and her life illustrates that “[g]iving, we permit others to be derived from us; receiving, we accept derivation from them. Gratitude is the acknowledgment of derivation; courtesy an expression of it” (Shideler, 1962, pp. 48, 68). Helen’s memory served her well when a fire burned her home at Arcan Ridge in 1946, destroying all of her papers and her draft manuscript of Teacher. Helen resolutely started over.

Helen at Radcliffe After 2 years at the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, Helen enrolled at Radcliffe in the fall of 1900, the first deaf-blind woman to attend college. Annie was always by Helen’s side, laboriously spelling all the lectures and books—including texts in German, French, and Latin—into Helen’s hand. Annie obviously received an education, but she was not officially a student, did not participate in the specially proctored examinations, and was not awarded a degree. Helen graduated cum laude in 1904 and was made an alumna member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1933. Radcliffe College granted Helen its Alumnae Achievement Award in 1954, dedicated the Helen Keller Garden in her honor, and named a garden fountain for Anne Sullivan Macy.

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Helen’s Financial Challenges When Captain Keller lost his position as U.S. Marshal in 1888, he stopped paying Annie’s salary and was tempted to exhibit Helen for money on the vaudeville circuit. Kate Keller prevented Helen’s exhibition as a circus sensation, but Helen and Annie relied first on the charity of Anagnos, and later on the gifts of benefactors, who included “John S. Spaulding; Mrs. John Pierpont Morgan; Alexander Graham Bell and his wife, Mabel; William Wade; and Annette P. Rogers” (Herrmann, 1998, p. 94). After Helen’s graduation, she moved with Annie to a farm in Wrentham, Massachusetts, purchased with shares of Spaulding stock. Until her death, Helen worried about how to support herself and her household. In 1910, she took additional voice lessons to strengthen her vocal cords so her voice was more audible in lecture halls. Helen and Annie began public lecturing on the Chautauqua tour in 1913, but Annie’s illness in 1914 forced a reluctant Helen to accept a pension from Andrew Carnegie. The demand for their presentations dwindled quickly because the wartime economy reduced community funding for Chautauqua and Helen’s increasingly radical ideas alienated her supporters. In 1918, Helen starred in the autobiographical Hollywood docudrama, Deliverance; it combined “actual footage of Helen, symbolism, and a fanciful plot” (Herrmann, p. 216). It was a box office failure, and in 1919 Annie and Helen began a series of appearances on the vaudeville circuit: Their 20-minute act was briefly popular, but by 1923 they were actively looking for other means of support. “Helen’s voice—tinny, robotic, and grotesque—was always her nemesis” (Herrmann, p. 180).

Helen’s Generativity: Advocacy for the Blind In 1924, Helen began officially working for the American Foundation for the Blind. She started her advocacy for the blind when she served on the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind and wrote articles on the prevention of blindness, the education of children who are blind, and the need for the state to implement private philanthropy and provide manual training and jobs for the blind. She also made the public aware of the plight of adults who are blind, which she believed was almost hopeless because many had lost their vision when they were past the age of being educated and lacked a job or resources of any kind. The most vital needs, Helen believed, were for a central clearinghouse and improvement in the devices used by the blind. Not only were embossed books expensive, but there was also no unified system of embossed printing because various educators of the blind supported their own theory as to which type of print was best and the blind themselves

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were not consulted. To read everything that had been printed for the blind, she herself had to master five different prints—New York Point, American Braille, European Braille, Moon type, and Boston Line Letter (Herrmann, 1998, p. 177). Helen is best known for her achievements during her years with the foundation. In 1924, she began raising the Helen Keller Endowment Fund, an effort she continued until her retirement. She lobbied tirelessly for efforts to aid the blind, including their inclusion in Title X of the 1935 Social Security Act and for services included in the 1931 Act to Provide Books for the Adult Blind (Lash, 1980). Helen was also deeply concerned about the blind in underdeveloped and war-ravaged countries. In 1915, she was a member of the founding board of directors of the Permanent Blind War Relief Fund (later the American Braille Press, the American Foundation for Overseas Blind, and Helen Keller International). In 1946, Helen was appointed counselor on international relations and began her famous globe-circling tours on behalf of the blind. From 1946 to 1957, she took seven trips, visiting 35 countries on five continents. In honor of these and other achievements, Helen was made a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor during the Louis Braille Centennial Commemoration in 1952. In 1961, she received the Lions Humanitarian Award “for her lifetime of service to humanity and for providing the inspiration for the adoption by Lions International of their sight conservation and aid to blind programs” (Lash, p. 8). Lyndon Johnson bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Helen in 1964, and she received honorary doctoral degrees from six universities. Her numerous awards occupy “an entire room . . . at the American Foundation for the Blind in New York City” (American Foundation for the Blind, 2005, p. 4).

Helen’s Interpersonal and Psychosocial World In Erikson’s (1982) model of psychosocial development, an individual is challenged to achieve trust, autonomy, initiative, industry, identity, intimacy, generativity, and integrity. Helen’s sensory deficits left her with serious psychosocial challenges after her initial achievement of trust. Because both her physical and interpersonal worlds were mediated almost entirely by those who spelled for her, it was impossible for her to achieve true autonomy. Annie constantly challenged her initiative, and Helen valiantly asserted herself politically and spiritually. She often despised the one-dimensional identity imposed on her by the media, her adoring public, and her financial benefactors. Fortunately, Helen’s work eventually helped her achieve industry, generativity, and integrity. Helen did not achieve true affirmative intimacy in her personal relationships, which primarily involved the unequal reciprocal roles of nurturance and succorance

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(Kantor & Lehr, 1975; Murray, 1938). The small “island of joy” in her life was her affair in 1916 (at the age of 36) with Peter Fagan, her 29year-old secretary, who was also a “‘violent’ socialist and a firm advocate of disarmament” (Herrmann, 1998, p. 194). Helen and Peter planned an abduction that was foiled by Helen’s mother, and then applied for a marriage license and scheduled an elopement that was also thwarted by the family. Helen—perhaps unaware of the adolescent flavor of her plans— blamed herself for being foolish enough to fall in love and resubmitted herself to her cloistered dependent lifestyle. Helen’s sensory deficits deeply affected her interpersonal self. Harry Stack Sullivan (1953) argued that the self develops primarily “on the basis of reflected appraisals from others” (p. 17). Blind Helen never saw herself reflected in others’ faces. As the actress Georgette Leblanc astutely observed: Many times I have asked myself what Helen lacks; the mirror tells me: it has not instructed her; it has never told her charms and her defects; it has never revealed her image to her. . . . [But] it is not in the glass of the docile and faithful mirror that we really know ourselves. It is by the looks of others; for the eyes of others seem to pour out the beauty that fills them. (cited in Herrmann, 1998, p. 186)

Helen often felt that she was not really “known” by her family and her loyal public. Her own writings reveal only superficial self-reflective skills and minimal psychological insight—giving her biographers only minor glimpses into her soul. Yet, she touched and inspired millions, and was for a time one of the best-known women in the world.

Helen in Children’s Books The Miracle Worker ends essentially where Helen’s meaningful life with Annie began, and Helen would rejoice in a perspective that does not freeze her in the miraculous moment of language discovery or limit her role to that of advocate for the blind and deaf. In January 2005, the online WorldCat, a worldwide union catalog indexing the collections of more than 9,000 member libraries, listed more than 24,000 copies of children’s books about Helen, published as early as 1957 (Tibble & Tibble, 1957) and as late as 2005 (Lynch, 2005), and including roughly 500 Braille, large print, and audio books. At least 64 different English titles, some in multiple editions, are available for children and adolescents. Such books have also been published in Germany, Spain, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, and India. Libraries carry approximately 1,870 copies of six titles focused on Annie.

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Many of the titles of the children’s books about Helen focus on her courage, perseverance, and determination; her movement from tragedy to triumph; the power of overcoming, or the facing of, challenges in a life of adventure; the movement from darkness to light, as a conquest over darkness; and her humanitarian efforts on behalf of the blind. They present her as a symbol of achievement, a woman of vision. With those qualities in mind, Alabama’s schoolchildren nominated Helen to be featured on the Alabama quarter. Minted in 2003, it “features an image of Helen Keller with her name in English, and in a reduced-size version of braille . . . a ‘Spirit of Courage’ banner underlines the central image”; it is “the first U.S. circulating coin to feature Braille” (The United States Mint, U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2005). Book titles including Annie focus on her magic (Hickok, 1961) or the collaborative miracle worked by Annie and Helen (Zonderman & Harston, 1994). Helen’s spirit was honored in the 1954 film biography, The Unconquered, released in Birmingham, Alabama. Retitled Helen Keller in Her Story, the film won an Academy Award in 1955. In 1980, in honor of the centenary of Keller’s birth, a photo of Keller and Sullivan appeared on commemorative postage stamps in the United States, Brazil, and the Republic of Maldives; Keller and Polly Thompson were featured on a Liberian stamp; and Keller was pictured on stamps in Spain, Guyana, India, Mauritius, Japan, and Nicaragua (Atlas of Ophthalmic Philately, n.d.). In 1965, she was 1 of 20 women elected to the Women’s Hall of Fame.

Helen Keller Beyond the Myths: Social Reformer and Socialist Only one recent juvenile author (Lawlor, 2001) focused on the rebellious spirit that inspired Helen’s work in adulthood and that permeates her midlife autobiography, Midstream: My Later Life (Keller, 1929), where “she wrote about visiting mill towns, mining towns, and packing towns where workers were on strike” (Loewen, 1995, p. 24). She stated: “I had once believed that we were all masters of our fate. . . . I forgot that I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment. . . . Now, however, I have learned that the power to rise in the world is not within the reach of everyone” (cited in Loewen, p. 24). The revolutionary side of Helen’s life has interested professionals who regret that “the fact that Keller could speak and write at all has somewhat overshadowed the subjects of her speeches and writings, which are largely radical and controversial” (Brown, 2005, p. 1). Helen became a suffragist and socialist in 1909; publicly supported Margaret Sanger’s work on birth control in 1910; demonstrated with the Woman’s Peace Party in 1914, called for peace in Europe, and then made “an impassioned speech

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for pacifism and socialism in crowded Carnegie Hall” (Shagoury Hubbard, 2002, p. 6); wrote articles denouncing Rockefeller as a “monster of Capitalism,” responsible for the massacre at his coal mine in Ludlow, Colorado, “where men, women, and children were killed in a bloody confrontation between strikers and the militia” (Shagoury Hubbard, p. 6); openly embraced the Industrial Workers of the World in 1916; donated money to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and wrote an article in the NAACP Journal in 1917; was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1918; supported the Actors Equity Union’s strike by refusing to cross the picket line to attend the opening of Deliverance in 1919; and campaigned for Robert LaFollette, a Progressive third-party presidential candidate in 1924. She was a pacifist in World War I, supported the allies in World War II, and in 1948 recommitted herself to pacifism after visiting “the black silent hole” that had once been Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a file on Helen in the 1950s (Helen Keller Reference Archive, n.d.) but did not launch a complete investigation. With John Macy’s help and encouragement, Helen first compiled a collection of her previously published essays on social issues under the title Out of the Dark (Keller, 1913). P. S. Foner (1967) compiled a volume of Keller’s socialist writings and speeches. Many of these essays are now posted at the Helen Keller Reference Archive (n.d.) or included in a new anthology (Keller, 2000b). Davis (2003) compiled a volume of Keller’s speeches, correspondence, and articles “on class and disability, socialism, war, and women’s liberation” (reviewed by Brown, 2005, p. 1). Helen’s books were “among those burned in a square on Unter den Linden opposite the University of Berlin on May 10, 1933” (Herrmann, 1998, p. 176).

The Politics and Culture of Disability The contemporary disability movement has critiqued Helen for her refusal to extend her work to advocacy for the deaf, a decision that was based primarily on time considerations (Herrmann, 1998). Nielsen (2004) asserted that Helen’s “disability politics . . . were frequently conservative, consistently patronizing, and occasionally repugnant” (p. 9). She “framed disability as a problem to be conquered; and once conquered, a problem left behind” (Nielsen, p. 9). Throughout her life, Helen “avoided contact with other people with disabilities,” turning down “requests to speak to groups of deaf people or other groups of self-organized disabled people” (Nielsen, p. 10). Her only friend with a disability was the Japanese educator Takeo Iwahashi. She made no effort to learn about professionals, trades people, or other independent persons with disabilities. She did not experience herself “as part of a minority or oppressed group”

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(Nielsen, p. 11). She retained an oralist stance, opposing the deaf community’s defense of American Sign Language. She “supported eugenic and euthanasia policies to prevent the birth and sustenance of children with significant impairments” (Nielsen, p. 11). She “depoliticized disability by relegating it to the realm of coping and personal character” (Nielsen, p. 12). Helen’s entire public persona, as well as her financial welfare, depended on defining herself as unique. Such a stance is increasingly problematic for scholars such as Nielsen (2004) and Fine and Asch (1988), who emphasize the social construction of disability and the importance of “giving due weight to the environment—physical, structural, social, economic, psychological, and political—of the person with the disability” (Nielsen, p. 7).

FINAL COMMENTS Helen Keller was transformed through the gift of language from “Phantom” to an international inspirational figure, the best-known blind and deaf woman in the world. Annie Sullivan, the miracle worker, dedicated her life to Helen at the cost of a family life of her own. Helen was a radical social reformer whose advocacy brought persons with disabilities into the safety net of social services and helped reduce unnecessary blindness. She proved that persons with disabilities are not voiceless, raising her voice on behalf of oppressed persons around the world. Finally, through her failure to recognize the social construction of disability, she opened the way for a new generation of activists.

REFERENCES American Foundation for the Blind. (2005). Helen Keller. Retrieved January 17, 2005, from http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=1. Atlas of Ophthalmic Philately. (n.d.). Thematic stamps. Retrieved September 18, 2006, from http://www.mrcophth.com/ophthalmologyonstamps/mainpage. html. Bayer. (2005). Over 100 years of aspirin. Aspirin history. Who invented aspirin? Retrieved October 19, 2006, from http://www.bayeraspirin.com/pain/asp history.htm. Brown, J. (2005). Book reviews: Rebel lives: Helen Keller. Retrieved September 18, 2006, from http://internationalistbooks.org/books/reviews/davis-rebellives-helen-keller.html. Canby, M. T. (1874). Birdie and his fairy friends: A book for little children. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger. Davis, J. (Ed.). (2003). Rebel lives: Helen Keller. New York: Ocean Press.

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Erikson, E. H. (1982). The life cycle completed: A review. New York: Norton. Fine, M., & Asch, A. (1988). Disability beyond stigma: Social interaction, discrimination, and activism. Journal of Social Issues, 44(1), 3–21. Foner, P. S. (Ed.). (1967). Helen Keller, her socialist years: Writings and speeches. New York: International Publishers. Helen Keller Reference Archive. (n.d.). Retrieved September 18, 2006, from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/ Henney, N. B. (1933). Anne Sullivan Macy: The story behind Helen Keller. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Herrmann, D. (1998). Helen Keller: A life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Hickok, L. (1961). The touch of magic: The story of Helen Keller’s great teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy. New York: Dodd & Mead. Kantor, D., & Lehr, W. (1975). Inside the family: Toward a theory of family process. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Keller, H. (1908). The world I live in. New York: Century. Keller, H. (1913). Out of the dark: Essays, letters, and addresses on physical and social vision. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page. Keller, H. (1929). Midstream: My later life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran. Keller, H. (1955). Teacher. Anne Sullivan Macy. A tribute by the foster child of her mind. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Keller, H. (2000a). Light in my darkness (2nd ed.; R. Silverman, Ed.). Westchester, PA: Chrysalis Books. (Original work published 1927) Keller, H. (2000b). To love this life: Quotations from Helen Keller (E. Bilofsky, Ed.). New York: American Foundation for the Blind Press. Keller, H. (2003). The story of my life. The restored edition. With her letters (1887–1901), and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letter of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy (J. Berger, Ed.). New York: Modern Library. (Original work published 1903) Lash, J. P. (1980). Helen and teacher: The story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy. Radcliffe Biography Series. New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence. Lawlor, L. (2001). Helen Keller: Rebellious spirit. New York: Holiday House. Loewen, J. W. (1995). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: New Press. Lynch, E. (2005). Helen Keller. Chicago: Heinemann Library. Murray, H. A. (and collaborators). (1938). Explorations in personality. New York: Oxford University Press. National Eye Institute. (1999, September 23). Clinical trial of eye prophylaxis in the newborn. Retrieved September 18, 2006, from http://www.nei.nih.gov/ neitrials/viewStudyWeb.aspx?id=19. Nielsen, K. (2004). The radical lives of Helen Keller. New York: New York University Press. Shagoury Hubbard, R. (2002). The truth about Helen Keller: Children’s books about Helen Keller distort her life. Rethinking Schools Online, 17(1), 1– 7. Retrieved September 18, 2006, from http://www.rethinkingschools.org/ archive/17 01/Kell171.shtml.

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Shideler, M. M. (1962). The theology of romantic love: A study in the writings of Charles Williams. New York: Harper & Brothers. Sullivan, H. S. (1953). The interpersonal theory of psychiatry (H. Swick Perry & M. Ladd Gawell, Eds.). New York: Norton. Tibble, J. W., & Tibble, A. N. (1957). Helen Keller (E. H. Johnson, Illus.). London: A & C Black. The United States Mint, U.S. Department of the Treasury. (2005, December 28). Alabama. Retrieved September 18, 2006, from http://www.usmint.gov/ mint programs/50sq program/states/index.cfm?flash=yes&state=AL Villey-Desmeserets, P. (1930). The world of the blind (a psychological study) (A. Hallard [pseud.], Trans.). New York: Macmillan. Zonderman, J., & Harston, J. (1994). Helen Keller & Annie Sullivan, working miracles together. Woodbridge, CT: Blackbirch Press.

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T H R E E

Lillian Evelyn Moller Gilbreth The Woman Who “Had It All” Melba J. T. Vasquez

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WHO SHE WAS Biographer Jane Lancaster (2004) described Lillian Gilbreth (1878–1972) as “fiercely intelligent, innovative, and professional and [having] extraordinary stamina. She was regarded by friends and children alike as a delightful, if sometimes exhausting, person” (p. 3). Her accomplishments are replete with “firsts.” She has been called the First Lady of Management and the “mother of industrial psychology.” In 1966, she was the first woman to receive the Hoover Medal for distinguished public service by an engineer (Kelly & Kelly, 1990). She received many awards and honors during the 60 years of her professional career. She was a fellow of the American Psychological Association; she received 20 honorary degrees and was the first woman to receive an honorary membership in the Society of Industrial Engineers. In 1976, she received the first Gilbreth Medal for distinguished contributions to management from that society. In a 1952 journal article, she is identified as “the world’s greatest woman engineer” (McKenny, 1952, as cited in Lancaster, 2004, p. 1). She is the only psychologist to have had a commemorative postage stamp issued in her honor (Koppes, 2000)! This remarkable pioneer had multiple interests and was accomplished in various fields. She obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature, and a doctorate in psychology. In her later life, she obtained a master’s in engineering, as well as doctorates in engineering and science. She was an inventor, industrial psychologist, industrial engineer, author, and mother of 12 children (Kelly & Kelly, 1990; Koppes, 2000; Lancaster, 2004). Her significant accomplishments are even more amazing, given the reality that many of her choices and opportunities were influenced and limited by societal role restrictions and family members. She lived at a time when women did not typically attend college. Various family members, while encouraging her in some ways, also served as restrictive influences in her life. One has the impression that she simply found ways to get around the obstacles that she encountered. When she met with restrictions, she seemed to take alternative paths with gusto. Lancaster (2004) described Lillian Gilbreth as both an agent and a representative of one of the most important social changes of the 20th century; that is, the movement of married women into the labor force. Lillian Gilbreth was one of the first of the “superwomen” to combine an outstanding career with a good marriage and large family of 12 children. Her children wrote the popular books, Cheaper by the Dozen (Gilbreth & Carey, 1948) and the sequel, Belles on Their Toes (Gilbreth & Carey, 1954), about their experiences in the family. The books were made into movies, and Lillian was clearly honored for her motherhood. However, the book and movie are products of the period, and Cheaper by the

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Dozen, in particular, incorrectly portrayed Lillian as a nonworking, domesticated wife and mother. Lancaster (2004) described how the movie “Cheaper by the Dozen did Lillian an injustice; she disliked it and was embarrassed by it. Although she was undoubtedly a mother on a grand scale, she was more importantly a working mother” (p. 2). Her ability to combine a career and family was acknowledged in 1944 when The California Monthly described her as “a genius in the art of living” (cited in San Diego Supercomputer Center, 1997). What shaped this amazing woman who was born into a period that discouraged woman from working, much less accomplishing and achieving at the levels that she did? Lillian Gilbreth’s story is that of a woman who tried to “have it all” and largely succeeded (Lancaster, 2004). The social and historical context influences the development of all men and women, and Russo (1983) suggested that barriers for women of achievement were often overcome with motivation, enthusiasm, and creativity.

FIRST BORN Lillian Evelyn Moller Gilbreth was born on May 24, 1878, to a wealthy family in Oakland, California, and her family enjoyed a privileged lifestyle. Her parents were William and Ann Delger Moller. Her father was a successful businessman. He managed his father-in-law’s hardware store but later became the prosperous owner of several shoe stores in San Francisco and Sacramento. Her mother is described as a “typical nineteenth-century housewife and mother” (Koppes, 2000, p. 498). Annie Moller managed her household, including servants, and cared for the large family (Kelly & Kelly, 1990). As the first born, and because of her mother’s health problems, Lillian Evelyn Moller took on responsibility for helping with her five sisters and three brothers. Empirical research on birth order suggests that early-born children have an adaptive advantage if they build and maintain strong parental and family ties (later-born children will be more successful if they have rebellious tendencies; Sulloway, 1996). Birth order theories have been challenged (Rodgers, 2000), and effects are small and subtle, but Lillian’s role in her family certainly seemed to have influenced her sense of responsibility and other aspects of her personality. Her parents taught their children that girls should accept responsibilities for home and family; however, they also taught that women would not attend college (Kelly & Kelly, 1990; Koppes, 2000). Lancaster (2004) noted that Lillie was in high school in the midst of a major economic crisis; it was one of the longest and worst depressions in American history.

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This crisis gave rise to some changes in society, including the beginning of encouragement of women’s academic ambitions. Her father, however, indicated clearly that college was necessary only for women who had to make their living. He considered it offensive that any daughter of his would have to do that.

FIRST WOMAN COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER AT BERKELEY Lillian is described as an extremely shy, timid, and introverted child. She was terrified by the experience of entering school, so she was home schooled by her parents and private tutors for 3 years, until the age of 9. She learned German, French, and piano at home. After she entered public school, she did well academically but had problems making friends. It may not have helped that the principal insisted that she start in first grade (Lancaster, 2004). She became an official teacher’s aide but reported being humiliated to be in with children who were so much younger. High school was better than elementary school; she was elected vice president of her class. She graduated with all As; however, on graduation day her “friends” told her they were wearing flowered dimity dresses for commencement, but they all turned up in the traditional white, and she was the only color in a sea of white. Lancaster (2004) reported that Lillian remembered the pain of this incident nearly 50 years later. It also appears that Lillian thought of herself as plain and assumed that no one would want to marry her (Kelly & Kelly, 1990; Lancaster, 2004). Perhaps this explains in part why she decided that a teaching career was her goal, despite the fact that her parents, especially her father, deemed it more appropriate for a girl of her social standing to marry a rich man and assume responsibility for managing his household. These messages typically led to role restrictions for women. Yet, Lillian read a lot, and her father engaged in long, serious conversations with her. So, despite his discouragement of advanced formal education, he most likely gave her subtle but distinct respectful messages that she was intellectually gifted. Lillian was also influenced by a favorite aunt, Lillian Delger Powell, a psychiatrist who had studied psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud (Kelly & Kelly, 1990; Lancaster, 2004). This aunt encouraged Lillian Moller, her niece and namesake, to attend a university and have a career, and likely influenced Lillian’s interest in psychology. Her parents allowed her to attend college because her cousin, Ann Florence, was already a student at the University of California at Berkeley.

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Her parents did require that she continue to live at home and take care of her responsibilities. She commuted to school by streetcar. Lancaster (2004) suggested that Lillian’s attendance at the University of California was part of a new trend of attending college. That is, in a 20-year period, the proportion of women attending college rose by about 75%. Some male students, and even the university’s president, were not entirely supportive of women’s presence; Lillian’s role seemed to have been to attempt not to threaten gender assumptions in various choices (her choice of subjects, her continuing to help at home, etc.). One of her professors, who played billiards with her father, told her father that Lillian’s was one of the best minds in the freshman class. This likely influenced William Moller to allow his daughter to continue, and he eventually became proud that Lillian was a successful student at the university (Lancaster, 2004). Lillian had excellent grades, and became the first woman to be selected as a commencement speaker at her graduation in 1900. Her speech was titled “Life—A Means or an End?” (Kelly & Kelly, 1990). In her commencement address, Lillian presented her philosophy of life; she conveyed the belief that individuals should live in the present and not focus so much on the future (Koppes, 2000). Her remarks, considered by Lancaster (2004) to be one of the few contemporary examples of her thought, were influenced by philosopher and psychologist William James and by then vice-president, Theodore Roosevelt. Her accomplishments in college and her philosophy as conveyed in this chapter give the impression that she had a tremendous amount of energy and enthusiasm for learning, and that she engaged fully in whatever she did. She insisted, as did Roosevelt, that life was about acting and doing. The local paper reported that hers was the most interesting speech of the day.

CHALLENGES AND CELEBRATIONS IN GRADUATE SCHOOL Because close relatives lived in New York City, Lillian’s parents allowed her to attend graduate school at Barnard College, a woman’s college affiliated with Columbia University. Lillian’s plan was to study with Brander Mathews, a professor and well-known critic of English literature. However, he refused to allow women to attend his lectures. She negotiated this obstacle by shifting her focus; instead, she studied with psychologist A. H. Thorndike during this period (Kelly & Kelly, 1990). This brief period is important because she was likely influenced by her study in Thorndike’s genetic psychology class; Thorndike was influential in the development

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of eugenics in the United States. These beliefs were instrumental in Frank and Lillian Gilbreth’s later decision to have 12 children (Lancaster, 2004). While at Barnard, Lillian became seriously ill, was very homesick, and returned to California to recuperate. She stayed there, returning to the University of California at Berkeley, where she obtained a master’s degree in English literature in 1902. Lillian continued her studies by entering the University of California at Berkeley doctoral program in English with a minor in psychology. The following summer, she toured Europe with a chaperoned group of young women. She met her future husband, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr., en route to Europe, in Boston; he was the cousin of the chaperone, Minnie Bunker, and is described as a “handsome, wealthy, owner of a successful construction company” (Kelly & Kelly, 1990, p. 118). He was 35 years old, 10 years older than Lillian at the time; he took the women sightseeing in his new car, and it is reported that Frank and Lillian were “smitten” with each other (Browne, Browne, Browne, & Straub, 2000). Lillian noted that family ties for Frank were strong, and he was the center of his mother’s life (Lancaster, 2004). Frank courted Lillian upon her return from Europe, and they became engaged only a few weeks later (Lancaster, 2004). He traveled often to Oakland to visit her, and they were married in October 1904.

THE MARRIAGE: FURTHER SUPPORT FOR EDUCATION AND CAREER Frank Bunker Gilbreth was apparently a tremendously encouraging partner for Lillian in many ways. He had two older sisters; so, when his father died when he was 3.5 years old, he spent his childhood surrounded by a group of strong, accomplished women (Lancaster, 2004). He is partly responsible for encouraging Lillian to become a psychologist. Even before they were married, he suggested that she change her doctoral focus to psychology because he foresaw the value of psychology to management, and he wanted her to join him in his business (Kelly & Kelly, 1990).

Frank Bunker Gilbreth Frank had been accepted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but he instead chose, at the age of 17, to help his widowed mother by working in construction (Kelly & Kelly, 1990). He was successful in his construction work and acquired such skills as mastering 50 separate construction crafts within 3 years (Kelly & Kelly, 1990; Lancaster, 2004).

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He was quickly promoted from apprenticeship to assistant foreman to foreman to site manager. He then started his own construction company. When he met Lillian Moller, in 1903, he was running one of the largest construction companies in the United States, but he was less wealthy and his business less stable than he would have had others believe (Lancaster, 2004). He is described as being fanatic about efficiency and productivity, developing methods and strategies that reflected the best way to perform any task. For example, as a bricklayer, he began to document each worker’s unique way of bricklaying; no two used the same method. He specifically noted the use of motions in the course of their work. Then he chose the “easiest” and least time-consuming way to accomplish the task at hand. These observations led to developing his patented bricklaying scaffold that enabled bricklayers to lay brick faster with less effort and fatigue. The scaffold permitted quick adjustment of the working platform so the worker would be at the most convenient level at all times. He also added a shelf for the bricks and mortar, thereby saving the effort required by the bricklayers to bend down and pick up each brick. He had nonskilled, low-paid laborers stack the bricks on wooden frames with the best side and end of each brick always in the same position so the skilled bricklayer no longer had to turn the brick around and over to look for the best side to face outward. His new way was labeled “Work Simplification” and drastically reduced time and effort. This first project launched his lifelong search for the “one best way” for doing any of the tasks of life (Graham, 1998; International Work Simplification Institute, Inc., 1968). He wrote a seminal manual in 1902 called Field System in which he described a systematic method of construction management. Gilbreth’s manual is said to have been pirated and used by his competitors in the construction business to manage work crews most frequently (Kelly & Kelly, 1990). Gilbreth (1911) and Taylor (1911) are credited in the Handbook of Psychology (Morgeson & Campion, 2003) for the first systematic attempts to document the principles involved in scientific management through their respective publications in 1911. Apparently, many of these principles still underlie modern work design.

The Dual Career Couple Social science research reports that in the 21st century the majority of families in the United States consist of dual wage earners (American Psychological Association, 2004). This was not the case approximately 100 years ago, when Frank and Lillian Gilbreth were married. Yet, from the beginning of their marriage, Lillian became her husband’s apprentice and

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partner in their construction business. By all accounts, they became large supporters of each other’s work. He recognized her intelligence and other gifts, and she saw his brilliance as well. The newsletter of the International Work Simplification Institute, Inc., described Frank and Lillian Gilbreth as one of the “great husband-and-wife teams of science and engineering” (1968, p. 37). The Gilbreths are compared to other outstanding partnerships (e.g., Pierre and Marie Curie, Charles and Mary Beard, Sidney and Maurice Webb, Elizabeth and Robert Browning). Why did Lillian Gilbreth, once she was married, choose to be so involved in work and career? Lott (1987) suggested that women work at jobs outside the home for the same reasons that men do. Employment offers financial resources, independence, and greater control of one’s environment and future, and allows one to contribute meaningfully to the needs of society, interact with other adults engaged in productive work, develop and use skills and talents, and experience growth, change, and personal fulfillment. Astin (1978), who studied a group of college-educated women, found that those who had been employed continuously since graduation were motivated to achieve recognition, become authorities in their field, be financially well off, and be successful in their own businesses. These were all most likely part of Lillian Gilbreth’s motivation. One of her daughters, in a publication, “A Large Family Is Fun” (1936) wrote, “For years I believed that my mother worked only because she had to. I now know that I was wrong. She did have to work, but she loved her work” (Gilbreth, cited in Lancaster, 2004, p. 9). In addition, Lillian and Frank Gilbreth found an immediate compatibility in their work interests. They were apparently true partners from the start. Lillian joined Frank in his passion to find the “one best way” to perform any task in order to increase efficiency and productivity in industry, a quest on which Frank had previously embarked. They are also reported to have visited building sites, walked across girders, and climbed ladders together (Kelly & Kelly, 1990). These activities most likely promoted confidence and fearlessness in Lillian, and they continued to desensitize the timidity she experienced as a child. Lillian’s primary role early in their partnership was writing about Frank’s business innovations (Lancaster, 2004), resulting in the publication of his seminal articles in the early 1900s. Lillian was not initially listed as an author because publishers feared that a woman author would undermine the credibility of the work.

Family Life Over a span of 17 years, the Gilbreths had 12 children. Lillian was pregnant within 6 weeks of her marriage, the first of 13 pregnancies; she was

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pregnant approximately every 15 months in the first 20 years of their marriage (one daughter died of diphtheria at age 5; one was stillborn). In an interview with the New York Post in 1941, Lillian Gilbreth said that Frank wanted six sons and six daughters. When she asked him how on earth anyone could have that many children and continue a career, he responded that they taught management so they had to practice it (Lancaster, 2004). Lillian and Frank had many children for complex reasons, including eugenics, women’s rights, and sheer love of babies, combined with a reluctance to discuss birth control (Lancaster, 2004). The Gilbreths believed in “positive eugenics,” like many of their contemporaries. At the time, the influence in the United States included Social Darwinism, and the concern that well-meaning humanitarian reforms were interfering with the laws of natural selection. The Gilbreths applied their positive eugenics theories to themselves and produced their own large family. They also wanted to prove that it was possible to rear and educate many healthy children, while leaving time for the mother to be professionally active (Lancaster, 2004). Frank was a fanatic about efficiency and applied his efficiency principles to make his household run as smoothly as possible. He applied his scientific management techniques to his own family, which led to what are now considered amusing accounts of daily life in the Gilbreth house (Browne et al., 2000). For example, he took moving pictures of his children at work to analyze their motions and find ways to help them perform their chores more efficiently and productively. He even had the children record, on charts, when they brushed their teeth, took baths, combed their hair, made their beds, and did their homework. He had the children record their weight and plot it on a graph. A variety of family committees met to deal with the budget, shopping duties, assign chores, track birthdays and other special occasions, purchase gifts, and monitor water and electricity usage (fines were levied on those who left a light on or a faucet running). The children could earn extra money by submitting sealed bids for special jobs.

Integration of Work and Family for Lillian Lillian Gilbreth enthusiastically joined with Frank’s interest in efficiency in the workplace. She left her doctoral program at Berkeley and moved with him to the East Coast. Frank’s mother played an important role in helping with the household and the raising of the children. Lillian was reportedly not always happy about this, but it freed her to continue her work outside the home (Lancaster, 2004). She obtained her doctorate in psychology at Brown University in 1915; Berkeley had not allowed her to obtain a doctorate degree because they refused to waive the rule that the

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last year of a doctoral program be spent on campus. Brown offered Lillian credit for earlier work and permitted her to study the latest theories in education and psychology, write a new dissertation, and prepare for her oral examinations. Her previous doctoral dissertation, “Psychology of Management: The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and Installing Methods of Least Waste,” was the first to integrate psychology into concepts of industrial management (Kelly & Kelly, 1990; Lancaster, 2004). It provided a logical, systematic explanation and defense of the new practices and principles of management. She contributed to the notion and importance of human dignity and relations, and recognized individual differences among workers and their needs. Because of this contribution, she is considered a pioneer in industrial-organizational psychology. The publisher of her dissertation was reluctant to have a woman named as author, so the publication was ambiguously identified as L. M. Gilbreth. Nonetheless, she began to develop a reputation as a significant player in the field of industrial psychology (Lancaster, 2004). Her second dissertation was also about teaching and scientific management. It applied scientific management techniques to schools. In it, she described what became known as the Hawthorne effect, an improvement in performance that results from being singled out for special treatment. In June 1915, Gilbreth became the first of the scientific management pioneers to earn a doctorate (Lancaster, 2004).

THE CONTRIBUTIONS Lillian Gilbreth encouraged Frank to publish his ideas. Through an ongoing dialogue between equals, she critiqued, refined, and ultimately improved his management system (Kelly & Kelly, 1990). Frank and Lillian wrote several books together about management style, but none named Lillian as coauthor. Publishers believed that the credibility of the books would be threatened if readers knew that a woman had had a part in writing them. Lillian assisted Frank in writing the following publications: Concrete System (Gilbreth, 1908); Bricklaying System (Gilbreth, 1909); and Motion Study (Gilbreth, 1911), the major contribution that describes his original experiments in scientific management. Frank was primarily interested in the technical aspects of worker efficiency, whereas Lillian was interested in the human aspects of time management. She observed that workers are not only motivated by indirect incentives, including money, but also by job satisfaction. These observations and research helped create job standardization, incentive wage plans, and job simplification. She was described as among the first to recognize the effects of fatigue and stress on time management (Kelly & Kelly,

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1990; San Diego Supercomputer Center, 1997). For both Frank and Lillian, the scientific management principles had as their core the individual and the individual’s comfort, happiness, service, and dignity (International Work Simplification Institute, Inc., 1968). Frank and Lillian pioneered the use of motion pictures for studying work and workers. They developed a breakdown of work into fundamental elements, called “therbligs” (derived from Gilbreth spelled backward). These elements were studied by use of a motion-picture camera and a timing device that indicated the time intervals on the film as it was exposed. Lillian and Frank eventually sold their construction business, at Lillian’s urging, so they could develop his original ideas and apply them in new management situations as consultants. Frank reportedly agreed to this, but only if Lillian would continue to be his partner and colleague in their new consulting business. They moved from Boston to Providence, Rhode Island, to spend their time developing their methods of scientific management. They applied what they knew to many areas outside industry, such as developing more efficient surgical techniques and methods of rehabilitating people with physical disabilities (Kelly & Kelly, 1990). Lillian and Frank traveled to businesses in order to observe and improve the operations in various settings. They also provided workshops, usually out of their home, in which they trained managers to apply their techniques. One of the most valuable contributions by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth was the emphasis on adapting the tools and the workplace to fit the needs of the workers, not vice versa. They truly believed (and often proved) that in the long run this increased productivity. This was in contrast to F. W. Taylor, whose work overlapped theirs, but who ignored principles of psychology. He believed, for example, that only lazy workers needed to join labor unions, which he believed impeded the progress that could be made with his management system (Kelly & Kelly, 1990; Lancaster, 2004). Many workers were offended and intimidated by Taylor’s mechanistic time study methods. A number of strikes were held in plants where the Taylor method had been implemented (e.g., use of stopwatches to time workers’ performance), and Congress actually passed legislation prohibiting the use of some of those inhumane methods in industrial work financed by federal contracts (Kelly & Kelly, 1990). Lillian Gilbreth was highly critical of Taylor’s lack of concern for the workers’ individual needs and rights. She consistently articulated the intrinsic value of human life, and the goal of human life as fulfillment and happiness. She and Frank purveyed a humanistic and psychological analysis of individual and group behavior. Lillian, in particular, emphasized the importance of human relationships, as well as communication and cooperation among workers and management. The Gilbreths insisted

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on an improvement of workers’ environment, including clean bathrooms and lunchrooms as well as regular rest periods. “Industrial betterment” also involved education for the workers, such as provision of libraries and lectures (Kelly & Kelly, 1990, Lancaster, 2004). Unlike Taylor, the Gilbreths believed that the additional profits made from increased efficiency should be equitably distributed among workers, managers, and owners. Lillian also believed that the workers were the best sources of understanding how the operation could be improved. Her psychological research background informed her that workers should be encouraged to make suggestions for improvement. The Gilbreths thus not only promoted principles of management to improve efficiency in all kinds of work settings, but also included principles that benefited the worker.

THE END OF THE PARTNERSHIP Frank Gilbreth died suddenly of a heart attack in 1924 at the age of 55; Lillian was 45. Lillian knew that she wanted and, in fact, had to continue with the industrial engineering work she and Frank had been doing for the last dozen years. Frank had not left much money because the income from the business went toward keeping the house and family, and had continuously been put back into the business. Lillian also wanted the Gilbreth work in motion study analysis to continue under her name rather than under other branches of industrial engineering. She did not want their unique contributions to disappear. In fact, she wanted to expand her and Frank’s research into “fatigue elimination,” later known as ergonomics. Ergonomics is essentially fitting the workplace to the worker. It involves the application of knowledge about human capacities and limitations to the design of workplaces, jobs, tasks, tools, equipment, and the environment, to prevent injuries and illnesses. Lillian knew that she had to move quickly, so 4 days after Frank’s death she sailed to a conference in Europe that she and Frank had planned to attend. In doing so, she informed the engineering profession that she intended to continue the Gilbreth work. She also wanted to communicate to the international community that she was competent to represent the work that she and Frank had developed. She decided, in consultation with her four oldest children, that she had to do this for her continued financial success, and for the children’s well-being (Lancaster, 2004). Lancaster reported that in her interviews with eight of the Gilbreth children, all supported this decision, although it meant that they would be alone (with relatives and two housekeepers, looked in upon by a network of friends) for most of the summer. Lillian Gilbreth found herself having the sole responsibility for providing for her children. She was determined to continue Gilbreth, Inc., the

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consulting company that she and Frank formed to apply the principles of the “one best way” to do everything. Despite the encouragement of some colleagues, she soon found that many of the companies that she and Frank had worked with for years were unwilling to continue or renew their contracts with a woman (Kelly & Kelly, 1990; Lancaster, 2004). Once again, Lillian found her way around this obstacle by reinstating the training workshops and recruiting international students. She gained a reputation as a successful and effective teacher of industrial management and worked successfully for the next 45 years. Lillian obtained a master’s degree in engineering, and then doctorates in engineering and science. In gaining these credentials, she seemed determined to do everything necessary to gain and continue her credibility (Lancaster, 2004). She contracted with General Electric and other appliance manufacturing companies to apply efficiency techniques and began designing kitchens and household appliances to save time and energy for homemakers. She created key inventions, including shelves inside refrigerator doors, the foot-pedal trashcan, and an electric mixer. She also designed an ideal kitchen layout for the person afflicted with heart disease (International Work Simplification Institute, Inc., 1968). She was a pioneer in making the environment easier for persons with physical disabilities. She was one of the first scientists to recognize the effects of stress and lack of sleep on the worker; she was motivated to reduce or eliminate worker exposure to occupational hazards (Lancaster, 2004). While working for General Electric, she interviewed more than 4,000 women to design the proper height for stoves, sinks, and other kitchen fixtures. Lillian published two books, The Homemaker and Her Job (Gilbreth, 1927) and Living with Our Children (Gilbreth, 1928), which conveyed her belief that individual needs, fulfillment, and happiness needed to be integrated with management principles. She united her philosophical views with the principles of psychology and management, including her belief that wives and mothers are entitled to share in a degree of freedom and fulfillment. Lillian Gilbreth was hired by a variety of businesses such as Macy’s and Sears, Roebuck to improve their operations and to increase productivity. Moreover, she was asked to train others in the management techniques at various universities. At age 57, she was appointed full professor at Purdue in 1935, the first woman appointed to serve as professor of management. She retired from that post at age 70. She was appointed residential lecturer at MIT in 1964 at age 86 (Koppes, 2000). Lillian provided public service by serving on various governmental committees, appointed by Presidents Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Appointed by President Hoover to the President’s Emergency Committee for Employment, for example, she

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created a nationwide program called “Share the Work” in order to try to create new jobs. She mobilized nearly 3 million middle-class women to generate both data and jobs (Lancaster, 2004). She served on Truman’s Civil Defense Advisory Council. After World War II, she continued to advise the Women’s Army Corps and the Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service, or WAVES. She also worked to integrate Girl Scouts with disabilities into regular troops. Lillian traveled the world until she was well into her eighties, and continued the application of humanized version of scientific management in several fields, including personnel management, home economics, physical therapy, and agriculture until she was 90 years old (Kelly & Kelly, 1990). She died in 1972, at the age of 93.

FINAL THOUGHTS Lillian Moller Gilbreth is described by some as a true pioneer in the women’s movement (Lancaster, 2004). Yet, she was a modest woman who was reluctant to claim her prominence. Her “non-threatening persona combined with her obvious competence helps explain why numerous men were willing to help her professionally” at a time when women were discriminated against in engineering (Lancaster, 2004, p. 230). Lancaster suggested that her concentration on “women’s work” after Frank’s death was not entirely due to her exclusion from male engineering circles. She used her gender to advantage when it meant visibility as the only woman, or suggesting that her insight was somehow dependent on her lived experience, yet she performed in other circumstances as a male industrial engineer might. Lancaster (2004) also suggested that her relationship to women was complex. Although she had worked almost entirely with men, she worked to develop networks and alliances with women’s groups. Some of her most successful financial contracts were with women and/or for women (e.g., appliance companies such as General Electric, Macy’s, Johnson & Johnson). All her life, Lillian tended to downplay her own contributions. After Frank’s death, even as she modified her adherence to Frank’s desires, she nevertheless disclaimed any personal ambition, perhaps because she was socialized to believe that it would be offensive for a woman to express ambition or need for achievement (Lancaster, 2004). In her 50s, she became increasingly active in a number of women’s groups, serving as research chair for the Business Clubs Division of Problems of Industry and the American Association of University Women. Lancaster (2004) suggested that although she claimed occasionally that she was not a feminist, her actions suggested the opposite. She criticized

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employers who discriminated against women and was particularly concerned about the practice of firing women workers older than 40 to make way for younger, cheaper labor. This was wasting human potential. She initiated a research project on age discrimination. She also became more outspoken about the need for men’s contributions to the home and challenged the 24-hour day for women. Lillian Gilbreth spent her life trying to help people find work that satisfied them and to help many different work contexts be more productive without dehumanizing the worker. She was driven as much by her socialized modesty as she was by her passionate belief and ability to sell her vision of work and family. She continues to be a role model of a woman who succeeded in “having it all.” REFERENCES American Psychological Association. (2004). Public policy, work and families: The report of the APA Presidential Initiative on work and families. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved September 19, 2006, from http://www.apa.org/work%2Dfamily/ Astin, H. S. (1978, March). Women and achievement: Occupational entry and persistence. Paper presented at the meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Washington, DC. Browne, R. B., Browne, G. J., Browne, K. O., & Straub, D. G. (2000). Contemporary heroes and heroines, Book IV. Farmington Hills, MI: The Gale Group. Gilbreth, F. (1902). A field system. Unpublished manuscript. Gilbreth, F. (1911). Motion study: A method for increasing the efficiency of the workman. New York: D. Van Nostrand. Gilbreth, F. (with Gilbreth, L. M.) (1908). Concrete system. Unpublished manuscript. Gilbreth, F. (with Gilbreth, L. M.) (1909). Bricklaying system. Unpublished manuscript. Gilbreth, F., Jr., & Carey, E. G. (1948). Cheaper by the dozen. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. Gilbreth, F., Jr., & Carey, E. G. (1954). Belles on their toes. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. Gilbreth, L. M. (1914). The psychology of management. New York: Stugis & Walton. Gilbreth, L. M. (1927). The homemaker and her job. New York: AppletonCentury. Gilbreth, L. M. (1928). Living with our children. New York: W. W. Norton. Gilbreth, L. M. (1966). Management in the home (Rev. ed.). New York: Dodd. Gilbreth, M. (1936). A large family is fun, 171–173. As cited in J. Lancaster (2004). Making time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth—A life beyond “Cheaper by the Dozen.” Boston: Northeastern University Press.

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Graham, B. S. (1998, September). Work simplification: From bricklayer to microcomputer. Retrieved November 2, 2006, from http://www.worksimp.com/ version7/trial.htm International Work Simplification Institute, Inc. (1968). Pioneers in improvement and our modern standard of living (Vol. 16, pp. 37–38). Retrieved September 19, 2006, from http://gilbrethnetwork.tripod.com/bio.html Kelly, R. M., & Kelly, V. P. (1990). Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878–1972). In A. N. O’Connell & N. F. Russo (Eds.), Women in psychology: A bio-bibliographic sourcebook (pp. 117–124). New York: Greenwood Press. Koppes, L. I. (2000). Lillian Gilbreth. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 498–500). Washington, DC: Oxford University Press. Lancaster, J. (2004). Making time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth—A life beyond “Cheaper by the Dozen.” Boston: Northeastern University Press. Lott, B. (1987). Women’s lives: Themes and variations in gender learning. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole. McKenny, J. W. (1952). The world’s greatest woman engineer. CTA Journal, 9– 10, 20ff. Morgeson, F. P., & Campion, M. A. (2003). Work design. In W. C. Borman, D. R. Ilgen, & R. J. Klimosky (Eds.), I. R. Weiner (Editor-in-Chief), Handbook of psychology: Volume 12, Industrial and organizational psychology (pp. 423– 452). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Rodgers, J. L. (2000). Birth order. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology: (Vol. 1, pp. 430–433). Washington, DC: Oxford University Press. Russo, N. F. (1983). Psychology’s foremothers: Their achievements in context. In A. N. O’Connell & N. F. Russo (Eds.), Models of achievement: Reflections of eminent women in psychology. New York: Columbia University Press. San Diego Supercomputer Center. (1997). Lillian Moller Gilbreth: Mother of modern management. In Women in science: A selection of 16 different contributors. Retrieved September 19, 2006, from www.sdsc.edu/ ScienceWomen/gilbreth.html Sulloway, F. J. (1996). Born to rebel: Birth order, family dynamics and creative lives. New York: Vintage. Taylor, F. W. (1911). The principles of scientific management. New York: W. W. Norton.

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Alice Paul Constitutional Amendment Mover and ERA Author Carole A. Rayburn

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Sitting in a jail cell after a suffragist protest for women’s right to vote, Quaker Alice Paul must have reflected on the ironies in her life that brought her to the near-death punishment she suffered for her stand for women’s rights. Quiet and even introverted for most of her life, she put aside the traditional images of reticence that were common in her faith and became a passionate, obsessed writer and banner carrier for getting the vote for women and broadening women’s opportunities on many new fronts. Highly intelligent and dedicated, she earned several degrees, enabling her to fight more successfully in the battle for women’s rights. Dedicated, spiritual, and self-sacrificing on the altar of principle of equal rights for all, she lived a life in the vein of St. Paul, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”

BACKGROUND OF THE TIMES The fight for women’s suffrage, or the right to vote, started in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. At a Women’s Rights Convention, feminists expressed their desire for women to have equal opportunities as men to attend college, own land, and enter any profession or vocation. Getting the vote would mean having the chance to obtain such opportunities for women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, leaders of the women’s rights movement, presented the women’s suffrage amendment to Congress in 1878. However, Congress denied permission for any vote on the amendment. Reintroduction of the amendment for many years afterward failed to get a vote on the issue. The focus then was on securing the vote, not on a federal basis, but with a state-by-state approach. The suffrage amendment was not brought to a vote in the House of Representatives and, until 1887, was not voted on in the Senate. Political interest in, or support of, women’s suffrage was nonexistent, and presidential antagonism, or at least ignoring of the issue, was evident over several decades. The demoralization of the American movement for women’s suffrage was so sorely felt that the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) put its hope and trust in each state enfranchising its own women. Between 1890 and 1911, only six western states—Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, and California— had granted women the right to vote. The women’s suffrage movement in America was almost drawing its last breath (Gornick, 1976).

CHILDHOOD YEARS OF ALICE PAUL Alice Paul was born on January 11, 1885, in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. Although her birthplace has at times been given as Moorestown, New

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Jersey, even by Alice Paul herself, Moorestown was the site of her school and the local post office (L. Beard, personal communication, November 23, 2004). She was born in Paulsdale, the family home with three working farms that her father had brought together, in a small Quaker community (Lunardini, 1986). She was the oldest child born to William Mickle Paul and Tacie Parry. Her family had many ties with early American history. William Paul was born in Paulsboro, Indiana, a town named after the 1600s settlement of the Paul family. The family had early ties to Earlham College, a Quaker school. William was the youngest of eight children, who were orphaned when their parents died early of disease. In her paternal family tree were the Winthrops of Massachusetts. William Paul was a bank president, a board director for several local companies, a real estate investor, and owner of a large working farm. On her mother’s side was William Penn. Tacie Parry Paul was the youngest of seven children and the only daughter among six sons of Judge William Parry and Alice Parry. Tacie’s father was a founder of Swarthmore College, a Quaker institution, a board chair of Rutgers College, leader in the state legislature and the New Republican (reform) Party and developer of new species of berries and other fruits. In founding Swarthmore College, Judge Parry was a close friend and associate of Quaker committee coworker Lucretia Mott (a lifelong ideal of Alice Paul). Tacie was in her senior year at Swarthmore when she left to marry William Paul (Lunardini, 1986). Questioning of authority went deep into the Paul family history, the first Paul to settle in New Jersey having left England after long and arduous political and religious disagreements with the Crown (Lunardini, 1986). Such genealogy was important to Quakers in establishing their religious and spiritual roots. It assured that Alice Paul not only came from a good family background but that she could further connect with people of great influence (L. Beard, personal communication, November 23, 2004). This would have been important to her as a Quaker in the mission of maximally benefiting others and accomplishing egalitarian goals. Coming from a prominent family, noted for its religious fervor and its devotion to believing in and defending just causes, and being the oldest child in such a family, Alice Paul had a lot of pressure on her to be a highly productive, socially concerned citizen. She bore this burden with grave seriousness and intensity, as with a magnificent obsession. Apparently not having much of a carefree childhood, she was quite serious and selfdriven in pursuing intellectual, scholarly paths. Although many saw her as having a good sense of humor and being amusing, she was most often pictured by classmates and other peers as playing or engaging in other activities with her parents or siblings rather than with friends or peers. She did not seem to be very socially adept. Her siblings were her sister Helen and brothers Will and Parry (the only sibling who married). Will had no

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social skills, was eccentric, ran the farm, and raised beagles for his passion, hunting. Helen, regarded as a “scatterbrain,” amusing, and silly, became a vice president of the League of Women Voters, obtained a degree from Wellesley College, and had an emotional breakdown a year after she began teaching. Alice was closest to Helen and Parry. Alice’s siblings looked up to her as the accomplished one (she eventually attained six college degrees). Identifying herself throughout her life as a Quaker, Alice became upset when both Helen and Parry became Christian Scientists (L. Beard, personal communication, November 23, 2004). Born to Hicksite Quaker parents, the family believed in suffrage for both men and women, equality of the genders, progressive activism, and nonviolent change. These beliefs contrasted with those of the Orthodox Quakers, whom the Hicksites considered too worldly. The Orthodox Quakers were centered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and worked on the Underground Railroad to oppose slavery. The Quaker values instilled in Alice—honesty, service, discipline, and equality between men and women—were very important in her development. Important to remember, too, is the Quaker indecisiveness or inconclusiveness: Quakers come to a decision by consensus and the group does everything by committee, tabling any issue for which there is not sufficient agreement (L. Beard, personal communication, November 23, 2004). Alice’s personality was complex. Within her, both willfulness and shyness were constantly evident. In some ways, she was socially inept, particularly when her obsessiveness with a specific issue so absorbed her interest that she tended to be rather insensitive to the personal needs of others. In such instances, she would think that her intense desire to finish a task was equally and totally compelling to others. In other ways, she was more outgoing like her father. Her father was a taskmaster who knew that he could count on Alice whenever there was a tough and disagreeable job to do (Lunardini, 1986). Although she fully agreed with the Quaker disapproval of self-aggrandizement, excitement, elation, or boisterousness even at social events, she played tennis on the grounds of her home and became an avid tennis player (Fry, n.d.). Not involving herself in dancing in agreement with Quaker teachings, she did not take dancing classes or attend school dances until she was in college. Yet, she was also like her mother in seriousness and shyness. Both Alice and her brother Will were shyer than Helen and Parry. She entertained herself by singing, reciting poetry, and reading. A voracious reader, particularly of the classics, she devoured every line of Charles Dickens and reread his social commentaries repeatedly, helping to form her strong sense of justice. Her parents taught Alice that she could make a difference in the world and that, indeed, she had a duty to make the world a better place (Raum, 2004). Alice had a meditative stillness about her, as though she were living out the biblical command, “Be still and know that I am God.” She also had very large and

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penetrating eyes, often staring at others and unnerving them—as though she could see into their very souls. Some of Alice Paul’s earliest childhood memories are of her mother taking her to suffrage meetings in Moorestown, New Jersey (Woman Suffrage at Moorestown, 1910). Deeply ingrained in her young mind were values vital to formation of her single-mindedness and charisma, particularly devotion to righteous beliefs and principles and gender equality (Harness, 2003). Quakers associated the religious with the political when striving for gender equality. Such beliefs later sustained Alice on in the fearsome suffrage battles when she endured hunger strikes, forced feedings, and physical and emotional attacks.

THE ADOLESCENT YEARS Alice Paul attended coeducational classes at Moorestown Friends High School from childhood and adolescence. In her teen years, she played sports, especially field hockey and tennis. She chose to ride her horse to school rather than to ride in the wagon with others. Funny and not really quiet, she was able to communicate with others on the telephone that had been in her house since 1903. She was quite frugal, as were most Quakers. She did not like to cook but preferred working with the contemporary horticultural methods and ways of growing crops in which her father and maternal grandfather took so much pride. She also liked feeding the farm animals and loading the wagons with produce to sell at the market (Fry, n.d.). Undoubtedly, such interests had an influence on her later seeking a degree in economics. Because she did not look like a powerful and overwhelming leader, she may have been particularly disarming and convincing. What she did have were charismatic eyes and staunch, principled determination, and she always spoke and wrote with greatest conviction that her cause was righteous and just. To Alice Paul, a woman had a choice: She could marry or she could have a full, rewarding life, but not both (L. Beard, personal communication, November 23, 2004). She did not believe in the moral superiority of women, the idea that women should have the right to vote because they were more moral than men. Rather, she held it was for reasons of equality and justice that women should be able to vote. She viewed suffrage as a step in women’s attaining equal rights (Equal Rights Amendment) rather than viewing voting as being an end in itself (L. Beard, personal communication, November 23, 2004). Philosophically, Paul focused in the present, not liking to discuss or overanalyze the past. She considered thinking of past events as a waste of effort and time. She disliked talking about herself, preferring instead to

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focus on the important work of getting the suffrage for women. Responding to an inquiry as to what drew her into the women’s suffrage movement, she said that she could not remember when she did not believe in it and that Quakers always believed in women’s suffrage (Irwin, 1921). At age 16, Paul lost her father to fatal pneumonia. Her father’s brother, Donald Paul, took over the financial affairs of his late brother’s family. This was the custom of the times, even though the family was well off and secure. When her husband died suddenly, Tacie Paul, limited in experience and confidence, was unprepared to manage family finances and run the large farm. Alice Paul had left for college, and thus she was not directly or immediately affected. Nonetheless, Alice was indelibly determined thereafter to be prepared and able to exert her self-sufficiency and independence. This also had a definite effect on her intense interest in economics. Indeed, she eventually received a degree in economics and wanted to be a professor in that field. Donald Paul disapproved of Alice’s involvement in the suffrage movement. Her mother did not publicly disagree with him but supported Alice financially so she could continue full time in her suffrage work (Lunardini, 1986). Strongly identifying herself as a feminist throughout her life, she related that these convictions came from her home, her religion, and her entire young life in which she held to the equality of men and women. Only when she went into the world outside her own rather insulated Quaker community did she realize that the entire country—not to mention the world at large—did not share her egalitarian views and actions. So shocking and visceral, so upsetting to her, was this realization that she experienced a gigantic clash with all that she held near and dear, all that her faith and parents had instilled in her. Most probably she was then struck with sudden, overwhelming feelings of being invisible, painfully vulnerable, and worthless as a woman, instead of being the strong, capable woman created equal to man. Retreating to the political side of her being, she saw the women’s suffrage movement as an immense political struggle to enfranchise women. She would never again view the situation otherwise.

COLLEGE DAYS Tacie Paul had extracted a promise from her children that each of them would attend Swarthmore College for at least a year. Alice was a true seeker of knowledge, although she honed what she learned toward her goal of getting women the vote. At Swarthmore, she reasoned that she would major in biology because she knew nothing about this subject. Early in her childhood, she developed a principle that guided her throughout her life: Little would be gained from redoing something already done. Because

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she knew nothing about biology, which was a new challenge, she could progress in this way. However, she had no desire to have a career in science, so her commitment to biology was at most superficial. She took many classes in Latin for a similar intuitive reason: Latin might be of some help to her important mission in life. When she entered Swarthmore, she had no athletic skills, but in her typical determination to conquer the unknown, she was on the girls’ varsity basketball team, on her own class’s hockey team, and took third place in the women’s tennis tournament, appearing to classmates as a healthy, energetic, well-rounded person (Irwin, 1921). In her senior year at college, she became interested in economics and politics. She did so well in these subjects that her professor recommended her for a College Settlement Association fellowship at the New York School of Philanthropy (now the Columbia University School of Social Work). In 1905, she graduated from Swarthmore with a BS in biology and what would become a lifelong interest in economics and political science. In 1906, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Gamma Mu in recognition of her academic excellence (Gornick, 1976, p. 101; Biography Resource Center, n.d., p. 1). In 1907, she earned an MA in sociology, with minors in political science and economics, from the University of Pennsylvania. Her doctoral dissertation, “Towards Equality,” examined the inferior legal status of women in Pennsylvania. Interrupting her doctoral program in 1907 to take a second fellowship in social work in Woodbridge, England, a major training center for Quakers, she realized that her commitment, here too, was superficial. She did not regard social work as being a major agent of change in getting the vote for women (Lunardini, 1986). Seeing social work as helping only one family at a time, she preferred doing something to improve the way that everybody lived (Raum, 2004). She earned a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1912, a law degree from Washington College of Law in 1922, and a second PhD in law from American University in 1928. Increasingly, she was molding her life around her goal of women’s suffrage: The women’s suffrage movement was defining her very being. It was what she did, the reason for her existence, and the eternal goal for which she strived and for which she deeply used her charisma to influence others to fight for this cause. Paul’s determination was evident in her staunch belief, “When you put your hand to the plow, you can’t put it down until you get to the end of the row” (Harness, 2003, p. 42).

MOLDING EXPERIENCE IN ENGLAND In 1907, after winning a scholarship to study social work at Woodbridge, England, Paul shifted her attention from social work to law and

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increasingly became more politically aware of women’s rights issues. Her Quaker training seems to have been one of the vital constants in her life in instilling the principle and defended ideal (for her, a reality in Quaker circles) of equality of the genders. At first, the work that Paul did for women’s rights was of a more passive nature, involving attending meetings and ushering (Irwin, 1921). Then, at the University of Birmingham, Paul met a young lawyer, Christabel Pankhurst, daughter of the famous English suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst. When Christabel Pankhurst was prevented from addressing a university audience by the yelling and shouting of a hostile crowd, Paul was shocked and angered at witnessing such opposition to women’s suffrage. This must have been a terrible affront to her Quaker upbringing and quiet personality. She had seen no such opposition to women’s rights at the suffrage meeting that she attended as a child with her mother. The event left Paul truly radicalized (Biography Resource Center, n.d.). The seeds of militancy were becoming well rooted in the soil of her outrage. Reflecting on what she considered as the ill-informed and intolerant resistance of those at the Pankhurst gathering, Paul responded that the suffragettes “had anyway one heart and soul convert . . . that was myself” (Lunardini, 1986, p. 14). In the working-class district of Dalston, the Charity Organization Society of London invited her to become a caseworker. She participated in her first suffrage parade in Dalston in 1908, becoming completely knowledgeable in the tactics and strategies of militant suffragism. Working closely with the Women’s Social and Political Union for the next 2 years, she took part in militant strategies, with demonstrations, hunger strikes, and imprisonment (Biography Resource Center, n.d.). With other English suffragettes, she protested the English government’s treatment of suffrage prisoners by going on hunger strikes. Commenting later in her life on the hunger strikes and forced feedings, Paul stated that the liquids were poured “through the nose. . . . And they didn’t use the soft tubing that is available today.” Asked about the shocking situation of being force-fed, Paul responded, “To me, it was shocking that a government of men could look with such extreme contempt on a movement that was asking nothing except such a simple little thing as the right to vote. Seems almost unthinkable now . . . ” (Gallagher, 1974, pp. 18–19). Paul seemed to suppress some of her past physical discomfort (Fry, 1976); denial of the abuse that she experienced in the suffrage effort may have overridden her personal feelings and past events. Such denial contributed to her desire to focus on the later women’s rights events, and to her maximizing her psychic and physical energy for the women’s movement. Before this deeply formative period in her political education, Paul had shown little interest in political activism and had not joined any suffrage organization in America (Lunardini, 1986). She had bought passage

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to return to America when she was invited by the Pankhursts (Christabel, Emmeline, and Christabel’s sister Sylvia) to join a deputation in Parliament, involving more than 100 women and led by Emmeline Pankhurst. The women were arrested at the entrance of Parliament and detained by the police (Irwin, 1921). Paul was arrested 10 times and imprisoned 3 times when she was in England, charged with other suffragists for disturbing the peace. Media coverage of these arrests had the desired effect of drawing a lot of attention to the fight for voting rights (Raum, 2004). Another significant encounter was her meeting with Lucy Burns, an American suffragette, in an English police station when both were arrested for demonstrating. Burns became Paul’s alter ego in the suffrage campaign. Burns had a sturdy build, healthy appearance, quick wit, sense of humor, and diplomacy, whereas Paul was fragile, frail looking, ill much of the time (mainly from the painful force feedings she had endured), timid looking, shy, and businesslike. Despite her wraith-like physical appearance, Paul was no martyr. Rather, she was determined and single minded in wanting the cause of suffrage to succeed at almost any cost. She was pragmatic enough to cautiously weigh risky circumstances with realistic fear of the consequences (Lunardini, 1986).

BACK HOME IN AMERICA In 1910, Paul returned home to America, where news of her experiences in England had reached the members of the American National Association of Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). At a regular meeting of the Moorestown Young Friends’ Association in 1910, Paul spoke of the “Militant Suffrage Movement in England,” pointing out the false press reports of any violent actions on the part of suffragists. She indicated that the press, controlled by open enemies of woman’s rights, distorted what had been occurring. Oppression of the suffragettes was viewed as a sign that the movement was accomplishing something, Paul reported. Indeed, rebellion against injustice was seen as proof that the soul and spirit of English women were still alive; their quotation on the prison walls, Paul reported, was “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God” (“Woman suffrage at Moorestown,” 1910, p. 121). A few months later in 1910, at the Haverford Summer School, Paul presented “The Church and Social Problems,” pointing out the gulf between the church and the working class. Religious organizations were often perceived as the stronghold of oppression and hypocrisy because their leaders lacked sympathy with the amelioration of working people and had little care for those “that labor and are heavy laden” (Gallagher, 1974, p. 21). Paul presented to Quakers others’ perception of them as

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having an alive individual conscience, but an atrophied social conscience, and so introspective in perfecting themselves that they had little time for social movements that would improve the development of all people. Paul saw the simplicity in speech and dress as deceptive: “I think that we have forgotten the spirit of democracy of which that speech and dress were but the token” (The Church and Social Problems, 1914, p. 514). Paul chided her Quaker coreligionists for being, to a great extent, unaware of the social conditions around them. She hoped for inspiration “helping us to be worthy of the great traditions which we have inherited, making us more valiant soldiers in humanity’s cause than ever before—a central fire enkindling anew the life in our Society” (The Church and Social Problems, 1914, p. 515). Paul accepted an invitation to join NAWSA upon her return to America. Resuming graduate studies in 1912, Paul completed her PhD in sociology and wrote a dissertation, “The Legal Position of Women in Pennsylvania.” In 1913, Paul and Burns founded the Congressional Union for Women’s Suffrage, after disagreeing with Carrie Chapman Catt and other NAWSA leaders on strategy. Paul’s vision had always been inclusive in that she saw suffrage and protective laws as composing an integrated picture: American women’s lives as concerned with work, marriage, property, place of domicile, and citizenship obligations were all part of outgrowths of the whole of suffrage and full citizenship for women. Paul’s continual slogan was, “Equality and not protection.” She argued with Catt and her followers that assuming suffrage would ensure getting all of the other women’s rights would instead require a separate, piecemeal fight for each of them (Gornick, 1976). In the new organization, the “New Suffragettes” adapted the more strident tactics of the English feminists. Once again, Paul’s Quaker background set the course in ensuring that the methods of fighting were nonviolent. Shifting focus from a states’ rights, state-by-state battle for women’s voting, Paul led the movement in using western states women’s votes to focus on a constitutional amendment and to declare war on President Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats. Jane Addams, on the NAWSA national board, made the motion for Paul and Burns to be appointed to cochair the Congressional Committee of NAWSA but insisted that anything they did would be totally financially independent (Gallagher, 1974). Paul had a tremendous arduous challenge before her: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had pushed for the passage of such an amendment in 1878, but securing a federal amendment had been so unsuccessful that any such hope had all but died by the early 1900s. Holding the political party that was in power responsible for the disenfranchisement of women, Paul chose March 3, 1913, the day before Wilson’s inauguration for a huge suffrage parade on Pennsylvania

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Avenue in Washington, DC. This tactic embarrassed the president, encouraged him to be more sensitive to and supportive of women’s voting, and brought national publicity to the movement. The parade drew more than 8,000 marchers and more than a half million spectators, bringing more people to the parade and leaving hardly anyone to greet the president who was arriving by train. Although Paul had carefully organized an orderly, peaceful march, police were neglectful of securing a safe situation, and a near-riot broke out among the unruly, assaulting elements in the crowd. Days later, a congressional committee delegation met with the president at the White House, but the president politely asked for more time to consider the issues. Thus, Paul achieved limited success with the parade, but she was experiencing increasing resistance from the NAWSA (Biography Resource Center, n.d.).

NATIONAL WOMAN’S PARTY Fearing that Paul’s political strategy of holding the party in power responsible for the status of women’s voting rights would threaten any tentative gains they had made on a state level, NAWSA members rejected Paul’s efforts to gain a constitutional amendment. In 1914, a divisive struggle within NAWSA resulted in Paul and Burns forming an independent Congressional Union for Woman’s Suffrage (CU), renamed the National Woman’s Party (NWP). Paul formed the NWP solely to push forward the Susan B. Anthony Amendment (Biography Resource Center, n.d.). The CU was expelled, in effect, from NAWSA when NAWSA’s constitution was changed in many ways and excluded the CU if it failed to resign from association with NAWSA. CU was required to reclassify itself and thus to get a reduction in dues, and Paul reported that “we did what they told us, and then when we applied for the new classification, they refused to accept us, and we were out” (Gallagher, 1974, p. 21). Alice Paul, speaking of the reason for the division of NASWA and CU, explained that NASWA wanted to substitute the Shafroth-Palmer Amendment, in which each state would hold a referendum on woman suffrage if more than eight per cent of the legal voters in the last preceding election—males, of course—signed a petition for it. This tactic had been tried without much success before, and with all the time and money such campaigns involve, I don’t think many women would have ever become voters. (Gallagher, 1974, p. 21)

The CU wanted to continue with the original amendment, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. When NASWA suddenly switched to the

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Shafroth-Palmer Amendment, Paul and her colleagues feared that the entire movement would go off on a side track. “That is the reason we later formed the National Woman’s Party, because if we hadn’t continued, there would have been nobody in Washington speaking up for the original amendment,” Paul explained (Gallagher, 1974, p. 21). Brilliantly keeping the suffrage movement alive and constantly in the media, Paul refused to change her strategy and tactics of using suffragettes’ fighters in the West. Flying in the face of her political advisors and backlash from some conservative feminists, Paul stood firmly and explained, “If we withdraw our speakers from the campaign, we withdraw the issue from the campaign. We must make this such an important thing in national elections that the Democrats will not want to meet it again” (Biography Resource Center, n.d., p. 2). Under Paul’s leadership, suffragette women sent valentines to congressmen to remind them of their cause (Raum, 2004). With Jane Addams, Paul formed the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Paul, reflecting on the war going on in Europe, told President Wilson that women would vote for peace if they were allowed to vote (Raum, 2004). In 1916, with the shift in focus to the federal level and more militant tactics, Paul led mass meetings, demonstrations, vigils, parades, weekly publication of the Suffragist, and picketing the White House. In the election of 1916, Paul and the NWP campaigned against the continued stonewalling by President Wilson and the other incumbent Democrats. Paul led the movement by enlisting strong and active political support of the suffrage amendment. Along with mostly White, middle-class, enfranchised women, Paul and other NWP members risked their respectability, comfort, and freedom, and were often harassed, imprisoned, force-fed, and threatened in their dogged determination to extend the franchise to women throughout the country (Biography Resource Center, n.d.). Media coverage of the forced feedings of the suffragettes angered many Americans, gaining more support for the suffrage amendment.

CONGRESSIONAL UNION The CU was finally being heard. On January 12, 1915, the House had debated the Susan B. Anthony Amendment for more than 6 hours before it failed by 78 votes to reach the two-thirds majority needed for passage (Biography Resource Center, n.d.). Nonetheless, the CU and Paul had definitely made a decisive mark on the road to woman’s suffrage. Paul had written in 1915, “We want to have Congress open in the midst of a veritable Suffrage cyclone” (p. 2). Even after the CU had gone across the United States to gather a petition of a half million signatures to present

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to the president, Wilson said that he supported suffrage but continued to see the issue as a state matter.

PICKETING THE WHITE HOUSE AND GETTING ARRESTED Under Paul’s leadership, 12 women began to picket the White House on January 10, 1917. They carried banners of gold and purple and signs reading, “Mr. President, what will you do for woman suffrage?” On a daily basis, defying terrible weather, hostile crowds, poor police protection, violence, and harassment, for 18 months, the unflinching suffragettes were led by Paul to embarrass Wilson at his home in the White House, while he was championing democracy and liberty throughout the world. Paul and the suffragists thus took full advantage of the irony and the hypocrisy of the poor support of women’s rights by politicians. The NWP’s picketers, the “Silent Sentinels,” staged the first picketing of the White House and seemed to have waged the first nonviolent civil disobedience campaign in North America (Wikipedia, 2006). By October 1, 1917, Paul had been arrested, tried, and sentenced to 7 months in jail. She and other suffragettes were charged with disturbing the peace, obstructing traffic, and unlawful assembly. Responding to the judge, Paul spoke eloquently, “We do not wish to make a plea before this court. We do not consider ourselves subject to this court since, as an unenfranchised class, we have nothing to do with the making of the laws which have put us in this position” (Biography Resource Center, n.d., p. 3) Sent to prison on October 20, isolated and prevented from communicating with the NWP, Paul was placed in solitary confinement for 2 weeks with nothing but bread and water to sustain her. Taken to a prison hospital when she grew weak and unable to walk, she led a hunger strike. She later commented that the hunger strike was “the strongest weapon left with which to continue . . . our battle” (Stand Up for Your Rights, n.d., p. 1). Prison officials fought her hunger strike tactics by sending Paul to a psychiatric ward and then threatened to transfer her to an insane asylum. She still would not eat and was then force-fed by physicians three times daily for 3 weeks. Although in great pain and sickness, caused by the forcing of food and liquid through hard tubing inserted into her nose, she refused to end the hunger strike or her battle for suffrage. After this tremendous fight on the part of the suffragettes, the president appeared to reconsider his opposition to women voting. Paul and the other suffrage prisoners were released on November 28, 1917. Here, then, was this small and thin, even fragile and unassuming looking woman, who never drew attention to herself but rather was true to her Quaker roots in reflecting calmness, quiet, and strength. Quiet and

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determined, she would typically display much patience in listening to others who disagreed with her and then explain why suffrage needed to succeed. To Alice Paul, suffrage was a holy word, and that conviction enabled her to use her charisma to appeal to others and to swell the membership of the Woman’s Party to 50,000 loyal supporters in a relatively short time (Gornick, 1976). Paul was responsible for such political pressure and sound reasoning on behalf of suffrage that the desired impact was felt throughout the United States of America. In one leaflet written and distributed outside the White House by Paul, she strongly criticized Wilson’s statement that America must win the war so democracy might survive. Cogently, Paul wrote, “We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote. President Wilson is the chief opponent of their enfranchisement. Help us make this nation really free. Tell our government that it must liberate its people . . . ” (Spartacus, n.d., p. 1). In private, President Wilson urged Congress to pass a suffrage bill. Wilson announced support of the amendment on January 9, 1918, and the next day the amendment was narrowly passed in the House of Representatives. The Senate passed the amendment by one vote on June 4, 1919. The Susan B. Anthony Amendment, on which Paul had labored, passed Congress in 1919, going through the states for ratification. On August 26, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, which became the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution and gave suffrage to all women citizens of America. Critics of Alice Paul were numerous. Residents of her hometown often viewed her methods as so militant, compared to the ultrapacifist stance of Quakers, that many would hardly mention her name. Paul’s detractors in Washington, DC, sometimes saw her as “The Terrible Meek,” and her purple and gold headquarters were branded as “The Yellow Peril” (Herendeen, 1919). Just after the suffrage campaign, Alice Paul became a vegetarian. “I didn’t have much time to think about such things until then. It occurred to me that I just didn’t see how I could go ahead and continue to eat meat. It just seemed so—cannibalistic to me. And so I’m a vegetarian and have been ever since . . . . Food simply isn’t important to me” (Fry, 1976, p. 10). She maintained a diet largely consisting of health foods (Fry, 1976).

EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT Alice Paul did not stop her efforts on behalf of women’s rights with suffrage. She also led in the battle for an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution. The ERA would guarantee women the protection from discrimination in all areas of life. Although many feminists were

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concerned that the ERA would invalidate labor laws that would protect women in the workplace, Paul forged ahead with her Quaker principle of equality. Paul wrote the ERA in 1923 and witnessed its first introduction in Congress later that year. She and the Woman’s Party wrote in the ERA that “[e]quality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex” (Raum, 2004, p. 27). The ERA was the other side of the coin of enfranchising women. Only the single-minded determination and steady plodding of Alice Paul and her Women’s Party managed to keep the ERA alive. Even after World War II submerged the issues of the ERA, Paul kept her hand firmly on the plow to finish the row. She did not look to the past but kept her gaze steadily on the present and the future, always with a vision of equality that would not let her stop short of victory.

DEGREES AND PEACE WORK With a small income from her father’s estate, she was able to devote all of her time, energy, and legal expertise to women’s rights. She had earlier reasoned that she would need to become quite knowledgeable in law to most effectively win the fight for women’s rights. To this end, she had earned three law degrees: an LLB from Washington College of Law in 1922, and an LLM in 1927 and DCL in 1928 from American University. During the 1920s, Paul also traveled to Europe and Latin America to work for peace and women’s rights (Raum, 2004).

INTERNATIONAL WORK ON BEHALF OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS Chairing the Inter-American Commission on Women’s Nationality Committee in the 1930s, Paul represented the Women’s Consultative Committee on Nationality of the League of Nations. Serving on the Equal Rights International executive committee, she and other members sought to get an international rights treaty. Paul founded the World Party for Equal Rights for Women (the World Women’s Party [WWP]), headquartered in Switzerland, in 1938.

WORLD WOMEN’S PARTY AND UNITED NATIONS CHARTER She returned to the United States in 1941, after serving as chair of the WWP in Geneva for 2 years. Elected national chair of the NWP in 1942,

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Paul experienced marked disagreement with NWP members. Such arguments were due not only to internal politics and personality conflicts, but also, to some extent, to a perception that Paul sought visibility for personal glory. This impression was erroneous because, although Paul was a perfectionist and demanded loyalty and dedication from others, she asked for no more than she was willing to give (Layton, 1995). Criticized for not thanking a volunteer in the women’s movement, she was astonished because she perceived that the women should have thought of herself as engaged in the work for the sake of the cause and not because of any perceived obligation to Paul. Paul’s own psychological blinders led her to measure others by the extreme devotion and single-mindedness to the women’s movement that she herself had always had.

THRUST FOR THE ERA In 1945, Paul had been successful in lobbying for the inclusion of gender equality in the preamble to the United Nations Charter. During the 1950s and 1960s, Paul gave speeches, wrote letters, and worked with women’s organizations to advance the ERA. She did not consider herself a particularly good speaker; she reported in an interview, “Some people enjoyed getting up in public . . . but I didn’t. I did it, though” (Gallagher, 1974, p. 18). Comparing herself with Lucy Burns, Paul reflected, “Lucy Burns was a very good speaker . . . and she was extremely courageous, a thousand times more courageous than I was. I was the timid type, and she was just naturally valiant” (Gallagher, 1974, p. 18).

EQUALITY IN THE 1964 CIVIL RIGHTS ACT AND CONTINUATION OF THE ERA STRUGGLE Paul led a coalition that was successful in adding equal gender rights to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act protected the rights of all Americans, without regard to race or color, and Paul made certain that women’s rights were included (Raum, 2004). Paul’s rank in the NWP and her ever determined push for women’s rights would not allow the ERA to die. She saw to it that the ERA was repeatedly introduced in Congress until it passed in 1972 and was sent to the states for ratification. Still very much on the front lines, Paul protested in 1969 for women’s equality and against the Vietnam War. As was her usual tactic, she was nonviolent in her approach to righting the wrongs of society and life.

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PAUL’S DEVOTION TO THE CAUSE Alice Paul gave such devotion of time and energy to women’s suffrage and equality that she had little time for intimate, long-term relationships. There was little to suggest that she ever considered marriage. Living with her sister Helen until Helen died, Paul then shared a home with her closest feminist friend and colleague, Elsie Hill, until Hill died in the late 1960s (Layton, 1995). Hill had been elected in 1921 to chair the NWP, and she had worked on the ERA (Gallagher, 1974).

AT THE CLOSE OF FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT Alice Paul continued to lobby for the ERA until a stroke disabled her in 1974. On July 9, 1977, she died in Moorestown, New Jersey, at the age of 92. With only three additional states needed to ratify the ERA, she erroneously believed that it would soon become a reality (Biography Resource Center, 2004). Sadly, in the early 1980s’ conservative political climate, the ERA failed to get the last three states’ ratification and thus failed to be adopted. However, thanks to Paul’s lifelong efforts on behalf of women, there is universal discussion of the need for women to have equal rights and opportunities. Alice Paul had fought the good fight and could declare a victory for God, country, and womankind. During an interview by Vivian Gornick, Alice Paul, at the age of 91, had attempted to recruit Gornick for political office: “My dear, do you think that you could get yourself elected to the New York State legislature? We need someone there” (Gornick, 1976, p. 102). Gornick summed up Alice Paul’s life well in seeing her as the very embodiment of the revolution, whose “narrow intensity and burning energy for ‘the cause’” (Gornick, p. 102) made her a symbol of the cause of women’s rights itself. “If she had not lived, and been exactly what she is, we, the women of America, would not be today exactly what we are” (Gornick, 1976, p. 102).

CONCLUSION How did Alice Paul develop as a leader of such tremendous proportion? From the outset, with her strong Quaker background and its emphasis on gender equality, she had strong religious and spiritual fervor. A seeker of goodness and truth, she had the keen intelligence, as well as the highly principled and dogged determination, to enable her to walk along the path of devoted caring for improving others’ lives. Her indomitable spirit would not stop her efforts until she achieved victory. With powerful

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conviction that she could help to right the wrongs of life, she led with single-mindedness to get her just cause of gender equality and women’s rights carried out. Given her background—heritage and Quaker principles—and great personal skills and talents, it would have been surprising had she not achieved such significant leadership. Alice Paul’s magnificent obsession became salvific for all women in America and throughout the world. From her efforts, all girls and women have a greater opportunity to experience equality with boys and men in myriad areas of life. Alice Paul was in every respect—and remains, in the legacy of equality that continues beyond the individual victories that she achieved—truly a trailblazing woman.

REFERENCES The American Experience. Stand Up for Your Rights. (n.d.). Women and the vote: Alice Paul’s fight for suffrage. Retrieved August 23, 2003, from http://www. pbs.org/wgbh/amex/kids/civilrights/features suffrage.html. Biography Resource Center. (n.d.). Alice Paul. American Decades [CD-ROM]. Retrieved May 25, 2004, from http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC?vrsh= 149&OP=contains&locID=rock21695&search. The Church and Social Problems (1914). Friends’ Intelligencer, 513–515. Fry, A. R. (n.d.). The house on Hooton Road. Unpublished essay, The Alice Paul Institute, Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. Fry, A. R. (1976). The interviewer’s impressions of Alice Paul. Online Archive of California, Conversations with Alice Paul. Retrieved August 13, 2004, from http://texts.cdlib.org/dynaxml/servlet/dynaXML?docId = kt6f59n89c&doc. view=entire text. Gallagher, R. S. (1974). “I was arrested, of course . . . ” American Heritage, 25(2), 17–101. Gornick, V. (1976). Women for women: Alice Paul. Life Magazine, Life Special Reports, 100–102. Harness, C. (2003). Rabble rousers: 20 women who made a difference. New York: Dutton Children’s Books. Herendeen, A. (1919). What the home town thinks of Alice Paul. Everybody’s Magazine, 41, 5. Irwin, I. H. (1921). The story of Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party. Fairfax, VA: Denlinger’s Publications. Lunardini, C. A. (1986). From equal suffrage to equal rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, 1910–1928. New York: New York University Press. Raum, E. (2004). American lives: Alice Paul. Chicago: Heinemann Library. Spartacus. (n.d.). Alice Paul. Retrieved May 18, 2004, from http://www.spartacus. schoolnet.co.uk/USApaul.htm. Wikipedia. (2004). Alice Paul. Retrieved May 18, 2004, from http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Alice Paul. Woman suffrage at Moorestown. (1910). Friends’ Intelligencer, 67(34), 121–122.

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F I V E

Georgia O’Keeffe American Modernist Lillian Cartwright

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Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the best-known and widely appreciated American painters. Her creative life spanned nearly the entire century—she was born in 1887 and died at age 98 in 1986. She achieved recognition early in her career and had the good fortune to win international acclaim during her lifetime: Major solo exhibitions of her work were held in outstanding American museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1977, President Gerald Ford awarded her the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor bestowed on civilians, and, in 1985, President Ronald Reagan presented her with the National Medal of Arts. In 1989, the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation was formed to perpetuate her artistic legacy. The Foundation, with the National Gallery of Art, published Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (CR; Lynes, 1999). These two mammoth volumes present more than 2,000 works in chronological order, and I use the CR notations to identify her paintings throughout this chapter. The genius of Georgia O’Keeffe reflects her creativity (i.e., her authentic artistic vision) and her agency (i.e., her determination, ambition, resolve, and business acumen). She compelled us to enter the world as she saw it. Her status as an American modernist is secured. Another achievement is less visible but not less salient. She provided a role model for female artists, permitting them to pursue their visions with confidence.

THE LEGACY: HER PAINTINGS It is the flowers that Americans love the most—the calla lilies, the black iris, the camellias, the poppies, the white rose, the jack-in-the-pulpit. Picture this and zoom in: On a canvas 16 by 12 inches, there are three big calla lilies positioned one behind another in a gentle diagonal formation (CR 459, Lynes, 1999). Their creamy white, waxy petals not only fill the canvas, but also spill over at five junctures. Three yellow stamens create a virtual triangle and, unbeknownst to us, we are ensnared. Quickly, we are lured into the center and find ourselves in a space that is both strange and familiar. The canvas is clean, simple, and elegant. The brush strokes are precise and refined. The graphic clarity of the image is gripping. The form of the flowers is reduced to an immediately accessible image. These flower paintings, most executed in the mid-1920s and early 1930s, caused quite a stir when exhibited because of their alleged sexual allusions and symbolism. This rhetoric was astutely contrived for promotional purposes by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, with O’Keeffe’s silent complicity. However, throughout her life, O’Keeffe distinguished between what was projected onto her work and what she intended. In her words

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(O’Keeffe, 1976): “I made you take the time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower—And I don’t.” At the same time, these botanical studies created sensation and controversy and established her celebrity status. They still decorate our posters and engagement books, yet these images are but one aspect of her oeuvre. Early in her career, from 1915 to 1918, O’Keeffe produced marvelous charcoal and watercolor abstractions (e.g., CR 45–121, Lynes, 1999) that were unique for their day and remain among her most important productions. These early works established her as America’s first major woman modernist. This series, like the flowers, was interpreted sexually by the critics, leading the painter to discard abstractions and turn to painting recognizable objects instead. Although dormant for awhile, abstractions appear later in stunning forms such as the “Black Place” series done in the early 1940s (CR 1080–1083, Lynes, 1999) and “Winter Road” painted in 1963 (CR 1477, Lynes, 1999), where in one sweeping calligraphic stroke she defined the road seen from her window. The Manhattan skyscrapers were another major subject of her art during the mid-1920s. Living on the 30th floor of the Shelton Hotel for much of the year, she captured the verticality of the cityscape with audacity. A favorite painting, “Shelton with Sunspots” (CR 527, Lynes, 1999) is daring, quirky, and abstract. Unexpectedly, she introduced sunspots—a series of zigzagging yellow circles—on the surface of the hotel, demonstrating the sly humor O’Keeffe could bring to otherwise controlled work. I like to think that the joke went something like this: Stieglitz had discouraged her from painting the cityscapes because “even” the male painters were not able to “get it right.” The implicit message was “Who was she to think she could do it?” When Stieglitz threw down the gauntlet, she accepted the challenge and made some blindingly spectacular cityscapes. About these paintings, she said: “I don’t start until I’m almost clear. . . . I started at one corner and went right across and came off the other corner, and I didn’t go back” (Lynes, 1989, p.128). The major portion of O’Keeffe’s life work involved her explorations of the Southwest. For many decades, beginning in 1917 when she first visited New Mexico, she was drawn to its infinite space, stark terrain, and visionary imagery (e.g., skulls, pelvic bones, shelter shapes). The landscapes are immediately recognizable as “O’Keeffe’s.” Her visual inventiveness and reverence for the terrain transformed what most of us would see as barren into the sublime. Later in this chapter, we discuss the skulls in the context of a life crisis, which triggered a shift to this imagery. When the painter was in her 70s, a period when few expand their horizons, she began traveling around the world and was captivated by

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the aerial landscapes. Typical of this period was “Sky with Flat White Clouds” (CR 1473, Lynes, 1999), where a flat color field divided into three color bands—creamy white, blue moving into green—conveyed her feelings when flying above the clouds. Her central vision was destroyed by macular degeneration of her retina when O’Keeffe was in her mid-80s. She continued to paint with assistance and made pottery despite physical limitations. Figurative work and formal portraiture never interested her, although what little remains of this genre is excellent (e.g., CR 1041–1045, Lynes, 1999). She expressed her feelings about people in symbolic ways so that two leaves might stand for her husband and herself. Using abstraction in this personal way came so naturally to O’Keeffe that she found it hard to believe that others would not quickly decode her work. Plainspoken and without verbal artifice, O’Keeffe’s powers of perception and visual analysis were exceptional. Her major artistic quest was to represent the patchworked, disparate, and diverse landscape we call America. She was a quintessential American product—and, in fact, did not visit Europe until her mid-60s. She was proud of that distinction. Her passion for visually corralling America ran deep, and she believed she knew America more intimately than the “city men” back East. She lived in the Midwest, the South, the cattle country of Amarillo, and the Southwest, as well as in New York City. She was excited about America and thought that if anyone could paint the “Great American Thing” (cf. Corn, 1999), it was she. In her words: “I think what I have done is something rather unique in my time and that I am one of few who give our country any voice of its own” (Merrill & Bradbury, 1992, p. 31). O’Keeffe saw herself as an American artist who happened to be a woman rather than a “woman artist.” She was active in the first wave of feminism and belonged to the National Woman’s Party for 30 years. In one speech to the party, O’Keeffe encouraged women to develop their talents, become self-reliant through work, and take responsibility for their lives. The second wave of feminism (during the 1970s and 1980s) was less interesting to her, and she repudiated feminist rhetoric even though women artists elevated her to goddess and high priestess status (Broude & Garrard, 1994). Many biographers have written about O’Keeffe (e.g., DrohojowskaPhilp, 2004; Lisle, 1980). Specific issues have been fully discussed, particularly her relationship to Stieglitz, who was instrumental in shaping an American vision of art and championing photography as fine art (e.g., Richter, 2001). Cultural critics and art historians have analyzed her work and grappled with her place in American art (e.g., Dijkstra, 1998; Eldredge, 1993; Lynes, 1989). In 2006, Yale University made the archive

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of the Stieglitz-O’Keeffe letters available; the “definitive” work is yet to be written. In the remainder of this chapter, I identify the traits, dispositions, narrative themes, and turning points that enabled her to achieve pioneer status. How can we better understand the psychology of this woman who is beloved by the American public and who still generates controversy in the art world? I focus primarily on the first 30 years of her life. Few historians paid much attention to these years, particularly from ages 18 to 29, because her schooling was discontinuous and her job history checkered owing to economic hardship and illness. For a short time, she even gave up her desire to be an artist. Yet, these are the critical years in the life cycle when experimentation peaks, achievement needs surge, and the development and consolidation of identity takes place (Erikson, 1963). Her later years, when circumstance put earlier adaptations in jeopardy, are selectively discussed.

THE EARLY YEARS IN SUN PRAIRIE, WISCONSIN: 1887–1901 O’Keeffe was the second of seven children, two sons and five daughters, born to Francis and Ida O’Keeffe in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. The early years spent on the 600-acre farm provided the artist with the conception of place integral to comprehending her work. Nature, the rhythm of farm life, the hills, the short growing season, and the vagaries of the weather— the lightning, the blizzards, the scorching summer sun—configured her visual sensibility and grounded her experience and love of space (Dijkstra, 1998). The artist’s vivid early memories offer a framework for building a life narrative (cf. Singer, 2004). In her first memory, she is sitting on a quilt in the bright sunlight. Her mother, dark complected with straight black hair, sits on a bench with her back to the infant. Another woman, Aunt Winnie, stands in profile facing Georgia. She was dressed in a thin white material with little blue flowers and sprigs of green patterned over it. Aunt Winnie, a special bright presence, had gold hair piled high and a lot of curly bangs. She was the first blond woman O’Keeffe had ever seen (O’Keeffe, 1976). Most art historians emphasize “light” and its importance to O’Keeffe’s work. At the same time, there is a psychological theme embedded in this nuclear, probably screen memory (i.e., a memory concealing anxiety-provoking experiences), which gives coherence to a central dynamic of the painter’s life. This theme involves an internal conversation, not necessarily conscious, between being “special” (bright and unusual)

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and being “ordinary” (dark, plain, mundane). This dynamic thesis is not polarized, but nuanced, so there are times when being ordinary is transcendent and being special is superficial. In contrast, her subject matter might be viewed as mundane—skulls, bones, shells, and stones—but her visual understanding of these objects was extraordinary. These inanimate objects are vibrant, reflecting her ability to observe what might cause others to flinch. In the 1920s, when the critical establishment depicted O’Keeffe as a “divine woman,” one critic, Waldo Frank, disagreed, calling her instead an “American peasant,” who understood nature instinctively. She was grateful for his “kindness” and agreed with his interpretation (Lynes, 1989). Here, being perceived as “ordinary” was special and surpassed hyperbolic attributions she knew were untrue. In O’Keeffe’s second memory, she is about 2 years old and intent on exploring her surroundings. Seeing something pleasurable in the distance, she sets out to discover more about it. The soft warm dust is attractive to her and, retrospectively, reminded her of the delicious feeling she got when putting fresh paint on her palette. The memory is more complicated; attracted to the dust, she was unaware that she was in danger of being trampled by a passing horse or vehicle. Her mother, realizing the peril, snatched her up and took her out of harm’s way. The urge to explore and go beyond the confines of home is immense—it is delicious. Of course, danger lurks, but she trusts that she will be rescued. She will survive. Indeed, she did at many junctures of her life when others would have lost courage. Economic hardships, illnesses, disillusionment with marriage, and blindness as she aged would have felled the less hardy. Among the reasons O’Keeffe snubbed the radical feminist artists of the 1970s and 1980s was that she saw them as “complainers,” lacking her stoicism and grit. She was stoical and immensely hardworking, but at critical times people did come to her rescue—her mother’s siblings, her friend Anita Pollitzer who brought her work to Stieglitz, Stieglitz himself, as well as numerous friends, lovers, and people in her employ. The impact of O’Keeffe’s mother on the artist’s development needs further investigation. She described her ambitious mother as follows: “Our mother had a very good opinion of herself, and wanted all of us to be the same way” (Berry, 1988, p. 22). Ida was a striving, self-assured, serious, stoical, and progressive woman who as a youngster thought of being a physician. However, her marriage at age 20, followed by seven pregnancies and births within a period of less than a decade, put such dreams to rest. Instead, these ambitions were projected onto her children. She made sure her daughters were educated and provided them with private drawing lessons followed by painting instruction. In Sun Prairie, she was seen as “higher born” and the more intellectually gifted parent. She had

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more “cultural capital” than her husband, who even had occasional minor skirmishes with the law. Although her mother spurred her achievement needs, their relationship was strained. Ida preferred her firstborn son, Francis, Jr., to Georgia. She saw him as “beautiful” and Georgia as “plain”: The young girl wistfully wondered why other people did not see her as beautiful. Looking back at her childhood, which she deemed “ordinary,” she noted that she did not mind at all that she was not a favorite child. This assertion might be questioned, given her lifelong quest for recognition. However, although Francis, Jr., had poor vision and was not athletic, her “vision” was formidable, and all her life she was an agile hiker and explorer—well into her 80s. Perhaps she did not mind because her competitive drive and “counterpunch” were so powerful. Her desire to be in first place, cloaked in good deportment, was intense throughout her life. O’Keeffe identified with her mother’s self-confidence and superiority. Over her life span, and even more intensively in the last half of life, the painter was reported to be dismissive, ungrateful, and arrogant to those close to her. She rationalized her lack of empathic responsiveness in a variety of ways: “I’ve always known what I’ve wanted—and most people don’t” (Lisle, 1980, p. 341). “When so few people think at all, isn’t it alright [sic] for me to think for them and them to do what I want?” (p. 28). Ironically, she formed a trusting, deep intimacy with the landscape that she never achieved with people. Self-confidence bordering on extreme narcissism is not rare in the very creative and has been explained in multiple ways: Martindale (2001) proposed that contempt serves a protective function for the creative, a shield from the public’s rejection of their novel ideas. Taking another approach, Gardner (1993) said that the innovator makes a Faustian bargain that disallows normal, well-rounded relationships. To develop and preserve their talent, the extremely gifted sacrifice others’ needs as well as their own nonwork-related needs. According to Storr (1988), geniuses such as Einstein, Picasso, and Martha Graham required intense, long periods of solitude that ruled out the emotional demands of intimacy. Amabile (1996), taking still another position, emphasized that creativity involves not only talent, but also nontalent elements—persistence, perfectionism, and the ability to focus intensely for long periods of time are crucial to achieve creativity. These nontalent traits can foreclose interpersonal concerns. The recognized characteristics of the very creative person were apparent in the artist’s early development. She knew how to play alone, and she enjoyed herself. She was an independent, active, constructive, internally motivated, imaginative, and agentic child (cf. O’Keeffe, 1976). Although she loved playing with dolls, she went much further in her play—building

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a portable house for them. A total play environment was established when she situated her doll family in the field: A pan of water represented a lake and trees, and walkways were fashioned with scissors. She made not just a room but a place of her own. When she couldn’t change a female doll into a male, she made an imaginary husband for her favorite doll, documenting the psychological androgyny of her fantasy life that allowed her “double the repertoire” of the ordinary person (cf. Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). Her talent for drawing was notable and recognized early. Her desire to become an artist was strong and virtually unwavering. By the eighth grade, she knew she would be an artist. To be an artist was to create beauty, and she maintained this allegiance to filling a space in a beautiful way throughout her life. Later, being an artist also meant being autonomous. She resented the correction of her work by teachers or fellow students and quickly disposed of such “insults.” She was always loyal to her unique creativity. A crucial clue—and perhaps the essential clue—to her trailblazing powers resided in her passion to be authentically herself and to decisively reject the derivative and imitative. What was the status of the woman artist in the early 20th century? There have always been women artists—women who painted, as well as women in the so-called low arts who embroidered, produced tapestries, made pottery, and quilted. A few women from aristocratic families or families of professional painters received patronage and recognition (cf. Harris & Nochlin, 1976). However, the fine arts were largely a male preserve until the late 19th century, when women entered art schools in significant numbers and higher education became open to those previously excluded. When O’Keeffe decided to become an artist, teaching art was an appropriate female occupation. There were only a handful of women fine artists at that time, for example, Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) and Berthe Morisot (1841–1895). Both of these women’s achievements reflected privileged backgrounds. Despite Cassatt’s advantages, O’Keeffe felt a debt of gratitude to her.

THE MIGRATION SOUTH: WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA (1901–1905) When O’Keeffe was about 13, the family moved. Her father’s brothers had died of tuberculosis, and Francis was so worried about his own health that he moved the family to Williamsburg, Virginia, to find a better climate. Ida maintained her commitment to education and sent Georgia to a private girl’s seminary, Chatham Episcopal Institute. The Southern girls she met had a different style and felt more entitled than did O’Keeffe.

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By comparison, O’Keeffe was more self-reliant, austere, and minimalist in dress and attitude. Her androgynous self was recorded by a classmate in the yearbook: “A girl who would be different in habit, style, and dress; a girl who doesn’t give a cent for men—and boys less” (Lisle, 1980, p. 30). The move to Virginia represented a major disruption and could have led to identity diffusion or stereotypical conformity. O’Keeffe held to the values she believed authentic—prairie values. She impressed her classmates by drawing their portraits. The artist identity gave her freedom. She also taught them how to play poker. In teaching them how to “deal,” she revealed the precursors of her alleged secretiveness and game-playing talents, as well as the early roots of the marketing strategies she and Stieglitz later employed to further interest in her art: For example, a bogus sale was transacted and then the details “leaked” to the media. O’Keeffe purchased her own work at auction in order to drive up the value of future paintings. The systematic way her work and her husband’s entered institutions and museums also bears the stamp of the poker player. The multimilliondollar estate upon her death revealed O’Keeffe to be both a consummate businesswoman and an outstanding artist. She knew how to deal.

FINDING HER VOICE: 1905–1916 A serious artist must find a mode of expression that matches her worldview and perceptual talents. The period from 1905 to 1916 (late adolescence to the end of early adulthood) involved art education, commercial work as an artist, and teaching. Her artistic gifts were recognized at Chatham by her teacher Elizabeth May Willis, who encouraged the family to support O’Keeffe’s formal art education. In 1905, O’Keeffe moved in with her mother’s siblings, Charles and Alleta Totto, and attended the Art Institute in Chicago. There she was exposed to the western canon of art instruction modeled after the French Academies. She did well there and quickly rose to the first rank in her class. Serious illness, typhoid, in 1906 forced her to drop out and return home. After recuperating, she went to New York to attend the Art Students League in 1907. In her figure drawing class, women viewed the nude model in a room separate from the men. The legendary interaction between O’Keeffe and Eugene Speicher, a male classmate, is telling. O’Keeffe had become a striking young woman, with dark hair and eyes, thin, with classic austere features, and pale complexion. The students wanted her to pose as a model, and she needed the money. However, she refused because in posing she would miss class. Speicher did not take no for an answer and said: “It doesn’t matter what you do. I’m going to be a great painter, and

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you will probably end up teaching painting in some girls’ school” (Lisle, 1980, p. 39). Speicher’s prediction was only half right. He did become a portrait painter of note and she did teach art. However, his long-term prognostication missed the mark. As at the Art Institute, she again demonstrated excellence as an artist and, in 1907, won the William Merritt Chase Scholarship for an oil painting of a dead hare lying in front of a copper pot—a “masculine” subject. She demonstrated that she had grasped the elements of chiaroscuro, perspective, and a painterly technique favored by the academy. Yet, the style and the subject matter did not resonate with her personal aesthetic, and the painting meant little to her. At one point, she said: “Rather than spend my life on imitations, I would not paint at all” (Lisle, 1980, p. 43). Economic hardship disrupted her formal art education for several years. A series of Francis’ failed businesses forced Ida to open a boardinghouse. Ironically, it was she, not her husband, who caught tuberculosis. She had an important secret to keep—having tuberculosis and running a boardinghouse was illegal. Ida’s stoicism joined to dissimulation forecasts some of the artist’s strategies in coping with life’s traumas. O’Keeffe moved back to Chicago to live once again with her mother’s family and worked for 2 years as a freelance illustrator, drawing lace, household products, and women’s fashions. The fast pace of commercial art had adverse effects on her health, so she turned to teaching. Her experience at Canyon State Normal School near Amarillo was formative. The vast and vacant Texas terrain impressed her and resonated with earlier prairie experience. Both places telegraphed her later love affair with the New Mexico arroyos and desert landscape, similar to the Panhandle terrain. Udall (1998) vividly recorded the deep impression Texas had on her sensibility. For O’Keeffe the place itself—its vastness, the gusty wind, and the isolation—excited her. During this period of trying to make ends meet, a critical turning point occurred in O’Keeffe’s life: Her vision found a structure in the American Arts and Crafts Movement, allowing her to rise above circumstance and once more be rescued. In 1912, on a summer break from teaching, she met Alon Bement, who encouraged her to study with Alfred Wesley Dow at Teacher’s College, Columbia University. Who was Dow? An American by birth, he was trained in the French academic tradition, which he found stifling, sharing O’Keeffe’s disaffection. His was an aesthetic populism where boundary and status distinctions between high and low art were refuted. Art was not “gendered.” If the quest was defined by beauty and authentic personal expression, craftsperson and fine artist were alike. The Dow philosophy was complex, and at least three strands explain why O’Keeffe had a “crystallizing experience” (cf. Walters & Gardner, 1986).

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First, Dow transmitted the British Arts and Crafts movement to America. The movement, instigated by the artist, designer, and socialist William Morris, saw handwork and the power of a simple decorative approach as antidotes to the social ills of industrialization. Francis O’Keeffe’s ability to build and do things with his hands—his coarseness and “do-ityourself” mentality—took on “higher meaning,” permitting O’Keeffe to identify with both parents despite their class differences. Second, Dow was attracted to Asian art, particularly Japanese. He saw great beauty in Japanese wood blocks and found their flat, decorative character inspiring, as did James Whistler and Mary Cassatt before him. He also appropriated Japanese brush techniques into his practice. Rather than focusing on imitative drawing, representation, and threedimensional modeling, he posited that line, notan (the interaction between light and dark space), and color were the basic elements of composition. We know from O’Keeffe’s library at Abiquiu that she had many books on Asian art and continued her interest in the East until her death (Fine, Glassman, & Hamilton, 1997). The substitution of an Eastern sensibility for the Western canon of art gave her new strength. Third, like O’Keeffe, Dow was primarily concerned with the self-expression of beauty—to paint from the heart and to fill space in a beautiful way. Pure artistic emotion trumped all schools of art and style. O’Keeffe purged her portfolio of what she judged to be imitative and “drew things in my head that are not what anyone has taught me” (Eldredge, 1993, p. 161). Should we say Dow helped her find her voice? Or did she find that she was not a minority of one but had a lofty tradition behind her— practical, homespun, and, at the same time, exotic and spiritual? Ordinary transformed into special. At Teachers College, the artist, older and more worldly than the other women students, made friends with Anita Pollitzer. Through Pollitzer, a fighter for woman’s suffrage and an initiator of the Equal Rights Amendment in later life, O’Keeffe joined the National Women’s Party (Pollitzer, 1988). After a year at Teachers College, O’Keeffe was forced to leave New York, her friends, and the stimulating art community because she was again insolvent. She went back to teaching, this time in South Carolina. There one of her emotionally distant but intriguing male suitors triggered a series of work referred to as her “specials”—works that defined her as one of the earliest American abstractionists. Although fearing she would be seen as a “raving lunatic,” O’Keeffe sent her drawings to Pollitzer who recalled that O’Keeffe once wrote, “I would rather have Stieglitz like something—anything I had done—than anyone else I know of” (Mulligan, 2000, p. 23). Pollitzer took the drawings to Stieglitz on January 1, 1916. Stieglitz, astounded by their beauty, announced, or so the story went: “At last, a woman on paper.”

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On May 23, 1916, Stieglitz exhibited 10 O’Keeffe charcoal drawings in a group show. There was great enthusiasm for her work in the Stieglitz circle: Arthur Dove raved when viewing her pieces: “Stieglitz, this girl is doing naturally what many of us fellows are trying to do, and failing” (Richter, 2001, p. 50). In 1917, Stieglitz held the first solo O’Keeffe show. He convinced her to join him in New York and offered her a year to do nothing but paint. She grabbed the opportunity. She met Stieglitz when she was 29 and he 58. Many maintain that this is when her life as an artist began. We see that she was formed by then. He did not create her but discovered and promoted her. With her consent and cooperation, they fashioned her iconic status and forged one of the most exciting collaborations in modern art. His great gift to her was the time to develop her then considerable talent and unique perspective. She, in turn, gave his work new life and direction, and upon his death in 1946 at 82 years old, she vigorously and systematically protected his legacy in American photography (cf. Mulligan, 2000).

LIFE WITH STIEGLITZ: 1917–1946 Her desire to be seen as special was granted early in her relationship to Stieglitz, who proclaimed her work an expression of the “eternal feminine.” Stieglitz had a “gendered” view of art, seeing male and female natures as different and irreconcilable. Trapped in a loveless marriage, he was enamored with O’Keeffe’s genius and person, and took hundreds of photos of her—deconstructing her body, showing her torso, her breasts, her hands, and her face. These photos, taken over several years, incidentally reveal an evolution in his perception of her from girlish innocence to androgynous siren to a steely modern presence (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1978). O’Keeffe was enchanted by seeing herself through his eyes. In a letter to Paul Strand, a fellow photographer, Stieglitz wrote in 1918: “Whenever she looks at the proofs, (she) falls in love with herself—or rather her selves—there are very many” (Wagner, 1996, p. 81). At the same time, she must have been amused to be the “pin-up girl” for the eternally feminine when, just months before, she wore pants, ate red meat, and smoked cigars in the Panhandle. After his divorce, they married because he wanted marriage. She maintained her name. They never had children, although some maintain she wanted them. Others point out that her mother’s many pregnancies discouraged her from having children. He said children would interfere with her art. We don’t know what she missed by not having children, but we do know she was free of the role strain and conflict that other creative and productive women experienced when juggling home, family,

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and career. Her “generativity script” (McAdams, 1988) involved a legacy of more than 2,000 pieces of art. Several years into their relationship and after their marriage, O’Keeffe became severely depressed. She had already achieved considerable recognition and was financially secure, yet her life unraveled. This major disruption or turning point provoked by Stieglitz’s attention to a young, wealthy, and beautiful woman, who even had children, was unbearable. Schultz (2001) asked what “turns” at such a turning point? I love this question because it moves beyond trauma to change. In O’Keeffe’s life, several things “turned”: First, her imagery shifted to skulls and bones (horses, mules, and cows), as well as to crosses and bleeding hearts. Something withered and died—not the least was the “special” devotion she had come to expect from her husband. She looked squarely at her loss, at the bare bones, the “remains,” and, in typical O’Keeffe fashion, could even manage dark humor by placing a rose in a horse’s skull. Second, she revised her public image and increasingly emphasized her pioneer background, her self-sufficiency, and her loner status. Last, O’Keeffe, who was never a compassionate person, moved further in the direction of agency and power as she emerged from her depression. Over time, she became more dismissive of those in her employ and to friends. Perhaps her disparaging, hostile attitude toward young women artists who “worshipped” her in the 1970s can be traced to this shift toward more ruthless agency. Her dependency on Stieglitz lessened significantly; she knew the worst side of him as well as his genius for encouragement. She survived once again and stayed in the marriage until his death. Spending significantly more time away from New York, she found a second home in New Mexico and regained her ability to work. She enjoyed solitude, but had the company of independent women, artists, writers, architects, and photographers when she chose to entertain the company of others. After her husband’s death, she established permanent residence in New Mexico in 1949, having homes in both Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu. O’Keeffe made art a living influence at Abiquiu. Her simple clothes, her studied and minimal furnishings, and her organic vegetable gardens welded her pioneer background to an Eastern sensibility. O’Keeffe was a woman of images not words. Yet, a few words from her now in closing throw further light on her path of choice: “Success doesn’t come from painting one painting. It results from taking a certain definite line of action and staying with it” (Lynes, 1989, p. 288). She showed remarkable dedication to her personal vision of America and left a legacy that continues to intrigue and inspire the viewer. O’Keeffe was an alchemist: She was able to transform and reinvent herself many times, and she transformed a landscape, once seen as the “badlands” of America, into something we

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look at with new eyes, with her eyes. She made us look. What more can we ask of an artist?

REFERENCES Amabile, T. M. (1996). Creativity in context. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Berry, M. (1988). American women of achievement: Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: Chelsea House. Broude, N., & Garrard, M. D. (Eds.). (1994). The power of feminist art: The American movement of the 1970’s, history and impact. New York: Henry N. Abrams. Corn, W. M. (1999). The great American thing: Modern art and national identity, 1915–1935. Berkeley: University of California Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: HarperCollins. Dijkstra, B. (1998). Georgia O’Keeffe and the eros of place. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Drohojowska-Philp, H. (2004). Full bloom: The art and life of Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: W. W. Norton. Eldredge, C. C. (1993). Georgia O’Keeffe: American and modern. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). New York: W. W. Norton. Fine, R. E., Glassman, E., & Hamilton, J. (1997). The book room: Georgia O’Keeffe’s library in Abiquiu. New York: The Grolier Club. Gardner, H. (1993). Creating minds. New York: Basic Books. Harris, A. H., & Nochlin, L. (1976). Women artists: 1550–1950. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Lisle, L. (1980). Portrait of an artist: A biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: Washington Square Press. Lynes, B. B. (1989). O’Keeffe, Stieglitz and the critics, 1916–1929. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press. Lynes, B. B. (1999). Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné. 2 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, Abiquiu, NM. Martindale, C. (2001). Oscillations & analogies: Thomas Young, MD, FRS, genius. American Psychologist, 56, 342–345. McAdams, D. P. (1988). Power, intimacy, and the life story: Personological inquiries into identity. New York: Guilford Press. Merrill, C., & Bradbury, E. (Eds.). (1992). From the faraway nearby: Georgia O’Keeffe as icon. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Metropolitan Museum of Art. (1978). Georgia O’Keeffe: A portrait by Alfred Stieglitz. New York: Viking Press. Mulligan, T. (Ed.). (2000). The photography of Alfred Stieglitz: Georgia O’Keeffe’s enduring legacy. Rochester, NY: George Eastman House. O’Keeffe, G. (1976). Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: Viking Press.

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Pollitzer, A. (1988). A woman on paper: Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: Simon & Schuster. Richter, C. (2001). Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Munich, Germany: Prestel Verlag. Schultz, W. T. (2001). De Profundis: Prison as a turning point in Oscar Wilde’s life story. In D. P. McAdams, R. Josselson, & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Turns in the road: Narrative studies of lives in transition (pp. 67–89). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Singer, J. A. (2004). Narrative identity and meaning making across the adult lifespan: An introduction. Journal of Personality, 72, 437–459. Storr, A. (1988). Solitude: A return to the self. New York: Free Press. Udall, S. R. (1998). O’Keeffe and Texas. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Wagner, A. M. (1996). Three artists (three women): Modernism and the art of Hesse, Krasner, and O’Keeffe. Berkeley: University of California Press. Walters, J., & Gardner, H. (1986). The crystallizing experience. Discovering an intellectual gift. In R. Sternberg & J. Davidson (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness (pp. 306–331). New York: Cambridge University Press.

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C H A P T E R

S I X

Mary McLeod Bethune Voice of Change, Life of Service Karen Fraser Wyche and Lisa Abern

Reprinted with permission from the Florida Department of State’s Library and Archives of Florida. 95

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Although at one time Mary McLeod Bethune was perhaps the most influential African-American woman in the United States (Clark, 1986), her name is not a household word as is that of Martin Luther King. As with other important African-American women, she has not received the historical legacy bestowed on some African-American men. However, one must also note that her death in 1955 at the age of 79 was prior to the major activities of the civil rights movement, where African-American civil rights activists became known to the greater public through media coverage. Mary McLeod Bethune’s accomplishments as a civil rights activist are great. They span the years of the post-Reconstruction South, to World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the New Deal, and the Great Society. She lived in the South and was a product of the South. Born in Maysville, South Carolina, she eventually moved to Florida to establish the school that became Bethune-Cookman College and to Washington, DC, to pursue governmental and women’s organizational jobs in the later part of her career. She returned to her beloved college for retirement and died there, interred on the college grounds (see Bethune-Cookman College Web site at http://www.cookman.edu). All states and towns where she lived and worked were segregated with rigid race and social class boundaries. These places, the jobs she held, and the historical events during her lifetime shaped her world view. Clark (1986) described her as a pivotal figure in 20th-century black women’s history because she epitomized the struggle for education, political rights, and the liberation of black people, especially women. As is evident in her actions, her writing, and her accomplishments, she was a politically astute activist. This assertion is supported by writings about her in books and journal articles; on Web sites devoted to historical figures; and by her own writings, speeches, and correspondence (e.g., the letters from and to Eleanor Roosevelt and letters to the Board of Trustees at Bethune-Cookman College). Scholars of Mary McLeod Bethune’s life who did not know her in person have to rely on these documents for a picture of the developmental trajectory of her life as she moved from childhood into adulthood. We briefly review the thrust of this literature because it provides the framework for the focus of this chapter, which concentrates on the psychosocial aspects of her life within a developmental framework.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION ABOUT MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE The life of Mary McLeod Bethune is described primarily in literature for children or for popular adult consumption as opposed to scholarly

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analysis. In either case, these works portray a uniformly positive view of Mrs. Bethune, the title always used to describe her, that she used for herself, and that is used in this chapter. It is reported that she insisted on being called “Mrs. Bethune,” probably to protect her son whom she reared after separating from her husband around 1908 (Hanson, 2003). The fact that she is never referred to as “Bethune” in documents and other writings, but rather as “Mrs. Bethune,” is both respectful and of historical importance. During this time in our history, adult African-American women and men in the South were called by their first names, regardless of their marital status, by both children and adult Euro-Americans across all social class groups. The children’s literature is either factual, fictional, or a combination of both and based primarily on her early life. Recounted are the circumstances of her birth, the 15th child of 17, and the first to be born free. Her parents gained their freedom after Emancipation and bought a plot of land to farm. On that farm, she spent her early years. The children’s stories emphasize Mrs. Bethune’s strong desire to get an education. Most of the books include descriptions of her family life; her experiences with racism; her educational accomplishments; and her religious faith, determination, and hard work. The family taught her to have a “loving heart, kind thoughts, and willing hands” (Greene, 1993, p. 10). The children’s literature is replete with the messages of hard work and faith and is written in a simple fashion that is to be expected in this type of literature. These messages of strength are reflected in the stories about the establishment of her school in Daytona, Florida (the forerunner of Bethune-Cookman College), by the phrase “a college built on a prayer from simple beginnings with $1.50, faith in God, and five little girls” (Hamilton, 2004; see also Bethune-Cookman College Web site at http://www.cookman.edu). This is a message of uplift for a race and is often accompanied by photographs (usually of her as an older woman) and drawings to accompany the text (Burt, 1970; Greene, 1993; McKissack, 1985). Few books draw on her later years (McKissack & McKissack, 1992). For the young reader, the theme is that with hard work and courage one can succeed and fulfill their goals. The adult literature is of historical accounts (Bush, 2001; Clark, 1986; Hanson, 2003; McCluskey, 1997) or brief biographies that provide a chronology, rather than an interpretation, of her life, and can be found in LexisNexis searches or by other sources (e.g., Cullen-Dupont, 1996; U.S. Department of the Interior, 2001). Core themes are repeated often, and the historical versus the anecdotal are at times difficult to distinguish. For example, Mrs. Bethune’s desire to learn to read as a child is often recounted by describing the incident when, as a young girl, a white girl told her to stop holding a book because she couldn’t read; when her mother told her she would be a special person and that great things were

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going to happen in her life; when she was denied the opportunity to become a missionary in Africa when enrolled at the Moody Bible School in Chicago because she was told that only white students were sent to Africa; when she was called “auntie” by a male conductor (in some sources, it is an usher at the White House who makes this remark) rather than “Mrs.” and that her reply was to inquire “which of my sister’s children are you?” (Hanson, 2003); or the time in 1920 when the Ku Klux Klan came to the college to frighten her into stopping a voters’ rights drive to register blacks. She responded by having her students turn out the lights and sing hymns to chase away the KKK Night Riders (Bush, 2001). For the reader unfamiliar with her accomplishments as an educator and activist, we briefly summarize a few. Mrs. Bethune was a teacher in several states before going to Daytona to establish the school in 1904. The students were five little local girls and her son. The school was called the Daytona Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls. Over time, it became a junior college and, in 1923, merged with Cookman Institute of Jacksonville, Florida, to become the coeducational Bethune-Cookman College. Mrs. Bethune was the first president (1914– 1942, 1946–1947). Since then, there have been three male presidents and, since 2004, a female president (Dr. Trudie Kibble Reed). The college celebrated its centennial year in 2004 (see Bethune-Cookman College Web site at http://www.cookman.edu). Mrs. Bethune served in several capacities in professional educational organizations within the state of Florida. In 1924, she was elected president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. In 1935, she cofounded the National Council of Negro Women and became its president. She was appointed to advisory positions by Presidents Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, and Truman. In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her director of African American Affairs in the National Youth Administration and a special advisor on minority affairs, appointments that she held for 8 years, making her the highest-ranking AfricanAmerican woman in the federal government at that time. She wrote syndicated newspaper columns for African-American newspapers (The Chicago Defender and The Pittsburgh Currier); was involved in business activities relating to life insurance, recreation, and housing for African Americans; and was the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards for her contributions (Biography Resource Center, 2001; McCluskey, 1999).

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS McCluskey and Smith (1999) argued that “Black women in history demand expansive paradigms to accommodate their multilayered identities

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and complexity” (p. 15). Bethune’s complexities included political acumen, patriotism, and self-confidence at a time when African-American women, especially those with very dark skin, were devalued in society (McCluskey & Smith, 1999). How did she manage to accomplish all that she did during her lifetime? One way to answer this question is to look for psychosocial and developmental aspects of Mary McLeod Bethune’s life that may have supported her journey. What shaped her life’s journey? What were the challenges that she overcame to move to the next level of accomplishment? How did her zeal for equality and activism translate into educational and institutional structures that would advance her agenda? A conceptual framework that encompasses historical, political, and social context factors seems appropriate to analyze these questions. Torres-Gil (1992) provided an interesting framework to look at the evolution of thoughts, attitudes, and expectations shaped from the historical events in life, from the social roles we enact, and from our relationships and attitudes. Although his focus has been aging, this is a helpful perspective from which to discuss Mrs. Bethune’s life. Torres-Gill distinguished among different time points to analyze the influences on a person’s life. For those born prior to the 1930s, the historical periods were the end of slavery and the post-Reconstruction period, World War I, and the Great Depression. The values and attitudes of individuals in this age cohort were that life expectancy was low; appropriate roles for women were marriage and motherhood (in that order); the family, church, and community were the focus of relationships; and attitudes of respect for elders and hierarchical relationships predominated. How did Mrs. Bethune’s life fit within this paradigm in a society that was rigidly segregated? In some ways, she did not adhere to the norms of this group. For example, the traditional role of wife and mother was somewhat different for her. She married Albertus Bethune in 1898 and had one son, Albert. Little is written about this marriage except to report that she never divorced, although she and her husband were separated 10 years before his death from tuberculosis in 1918. Discussed rarely is Albertus Bethune’s disapproval of her activism in starting a school, doing community work, raising money to support these endeavors, and her rising visibility in the AfricanAmerican and Euro-American communities in Florida (Hanson, 2003). She broke from the role of a traditional wife whose husband has power over her. This was not unlike the fate of her mother, Patsy, and grandmother, Sophie. They raised their children when their husbands were not available to them because as slaves they were separated (Smith, 1996). She listened to their stories of resistance against the use of their sexuality, the brutality of slavery, and their survival. These women were models of positive female strength and courage. They were protective mothers who

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under dire circumstances kept the families together when the fathers, sold to other plantations, were not available either physically or emotionally. How empowering her mother and grandmother must have been to Mary McLeod Bethune when her marriage was crumbling and the support of a husband was eroding! Mrs. Bethune understood that the role of mother does not stop with a biological child. She became “mother” to her students who called her “mother Bethune.” This is a common form of “other mothers” in AfricanAmerican culture and moves beyond the biological family to embrace non-kin. She had multiple “families,” including her students and her community “families” in Daytona, Florida; Maysville, South Carolina; and Washington, DC. Wherever she worked, she developed a focus of community and respect for elders that is congruent with what she expected from the Bethune-Cookman students. Mrs. Bethune was also influenced by the historical events from the 1930s, World War II, and the New Deal to the time of her death at age 79 in 1955. These events provided her an opportunity to advance her goal of greater equality for blacks through her work at the federal level (e.g., consulting with the Secretary of War to select African-American women for the U.S. Women’s Army Corps, Administrator of the National Youth Administration under President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Biography Resource Center, 2001). She was able to push through governmental programs that related to entitlements and public benefits for African Americans. This was a time of productivity and modernism that she embraced with her view of education for African-American women, with an emphasis on race uplift and on instilling in her students the example of hard work and responsibility. The motto of Bethune-Cookman College tells the story: “Enter to learn; depart to serve.” An alternative conceptual framework from which to analyze Mary McLeod Bethune’s life is a woman-centered approach that views women’s turning points in midlife. Based on interviews with women, Leonard and Burns (1999) hypothesized that turning points in the lives of women are primarily role transitions facilitated by life experiences, lifestyle changes, and self-evaluation. For Mrs. Bethune, several life experiences can be hypothesized as providing transitional points from which she developed new insights into how to achieve her dreams. We conceptualize these turning points as not originating in midlife as is argued by Leonard and Burns, but as being ignited by experiences that evolve developmentally from childhood to adulthood, where they become organized into behaviors and opinions. Racism was one such experience. Throughout her life, racism was embedded within the fabric of the United States, and segregation was the

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law of the land. Nevertheless, she continued to push for the elimination of racism and for integration in American society. There are several examples of her encounters with racism at different developmental points in her life that we view as pivotal to shaping her life’s work as an activist and an educator. As a 12-year-old girl in 1887, she saw a mob trying to hang a former slave who had refused the request of a white man. A more powerful white man came along and stopped the hanging (Hanson, 2003). As the only African-American student enrolled at Moody Bible School in Chicago, she was refused her hope of becoming a missionary in Africa and was told instead to proselytize in the slums of black Chicago (Hanson, 2003; U.S. Department of the Interior, 2001). Of course, there must be hundreds of other racist experiences she encountered, but these two are cited frequently as providing her an opportunity to study the behavior of whites. In the first experience, she learned that white men of high status with power, prestige, and money could become allies to her cause. Later, this was extended to powerful white women such as Eleanor Roosevelt, whom she befriended during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. She sought out whites whose opposition to slavery was based on religious ideology, who were the dominant capitalist class, and who left the North to winter in Daytona, Florida. It has been suggested that she chose Daytona particularly because of this group of wealthy individuals (Hanson, 2003). Perhaps she also realized that these Northerners had a different ideology from the rich Southern whites of Florida. We speculate as to whether another location in segregated Florida without these ideological “snowbirds” would have met with failure. With charismatic leadership, she attracted these donors throughout the various stages of the growth of her school that progressed from a high school, to a junior college, and then to Bethune-Cookman College. She was constantly fund-raising among this group of benefactors to keep the doors open. With political awareness, she knew that state funding for black education made white philanthropy essential to the survival of the college. Her experiences with wealthy white donors was not without tension because at times she was treated with condescension, but she kept foremost in her mind the goal of the advancement of her students (Hanson, 2003). She had race pride but was not too proud to ask for money for the college. This is strategic behavior. She showcased her students who performed in the choir, read poetry, and recited scripture during the famous Sunday Community meetings of an integrated audience—the only place in Daytona at the time that had whites and blacks sitting side by side (McCluskey, 1997). The Board of Directors was also integrated by race and gender, setting another example for both blacks and whites that interracial alliances could function cooperatively (McCluskey, 1997).

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Mrs. Bethune’s own experiences with integration became transformative opportunities. Leaving home for the first time to attend Scotia Seminary in 1894 was her first experience with white teachers. The faculty was integrated, and she had White teachers who were nurturing and encouraging of black students’ potential. She also had African-American teachers who were “cultured,” providing her a view of what could be achieved by women of her race (Hanson, 2003). Her notions of racial and gender equality began to take shape (Clark, 1986), and she began to see that interracial cooperation was necessary for the maintenance of black-controlled institutions and organizations (McCluskey & Smith, 1999). She believed that African-American people should have self-determination, but that integration was also necessary for equality (Smith, 1996). When she was president of Bethune-Cookman College, she made sure the faculty was integrated. For Mary McLeod Bethune, these educational experiences as a student must have been formative and transformative, giving her direction and the goal to give back to her people through education. Female role models provided another type of transformative experience. The importance of her mother and grandmother has already been mentioned. The others were educators. From Emma Wilson at Scotia Seminary, she learned to fight for state accreditation for her school (Hanson, 2003) and the importance of educating girls for service and race uplift (McCluskey & Smith, 1999). From Lucy Craft Laney, she observed educational leadership. Mrs. Laney was the founder, director, and principal of Haines Normal and Industrial School in Georgia during the year (1896–1897) that Mary McLeod Bethune taught there (U.S. Department of the Interior, 2001). They both shared the vision of women, Christianity, and race uplift (McCluskey & Smith, 1999). From these women, Mrs. Bethune both saw and experienced the importance of a female educational institution for African-American girls.

WOMEN, RACE, AND EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY Mary McLeod Bethune’s own education at Scotia Seminary convinced her that women should have both a liberal and a practical education. She believed that educating Black women was a way to strengthen the black family. Certainly, this was her experience. She, along with women of her generation, espoused racial responsibility. Education should be for the greater good and for social responsibility to others (Hanson, 2003). Leading male educators at the time also believed in these virtues but expressed them differently. Booker T. Washington emphasized the importance of hard work, emphasizing vocational, not liberal arts, education as leading to economic self-sufficiency. W. E. B. DuBois wanted education to liberate

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African Americans in social, economic, and political arenas (Hanson, 2003). DuBois was a social critic and scholar compared to Mrs. Bethune, the activist educator. She was astute in realizing that a curriculum embedded in morality and work themes would appeal to northern wealthy whites in her fund-raising efforts. However, her educational philosophy of liberal arts and a practical education caused an ongoing struggle with her Methodist overseers who only wanted practical training for AfricanAmerican students (McCluskey, 1997).

WOMEN’S ORGANIZATIONS AND GOVERNMENT WORK Mrs. Bethune’s involvement in women’s organizations was a natural extension of her work with girls and young women. In Florida, she held leadership positions in the Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs and was the president of the Association of Teachers of Colored Schools (1923–1924), representing institutions that were mostly in the South. In 1924, she was elected president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs in Washington, DC, and was able to get this organization (the only one with black membership) into the National Council of Women. In 1935, along with other women, she established the National Council of Negro Women in Washington, DC (U.S. Department of the Interior, 2001). The move to Washington provided a larger arena for her activism and a visibility beyond the state of Florida. She could become a social commentator, and she did just that by “walking the walk and talking the talk.” For example, under her leadership in the National Council for Negro Women (NCNW) battled racism and sexism and joined with other like-minded people and organizations to form an interracial Coordination Committee for Building Better Race Relations to push this agenda (Cullen-Dupont, 1996). When Mrs. Bethune was appointed to the National Youth Administration, her friendship with Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt provided further examples of her belief in interracial cooperation aimed at advocacy issues because they shared similar humanistic and political concerns (U.S. Department of the Interior, 2001). The role of the women’s club movement for African-American women during her time involved activism, education, community building, and socialization opportunities for middle-class women. In a society that was segregated, these women’s organizations provided an outlet for African-American women’s aspirations. For Mrs. Bethune, the NCNW and the organizations that preceded it were a logical outgrowth of her work in Florida. There was opportunity for using her race consciousness and political know-how to forge a civil rights agenda. She recognized

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that African-American women needed different strategies for political activism compared to Euro-American women who had a privileged position in the system of racial stratification. African-American women needed to be aware of race differences and to deal with issues of racism and sexism in pushing along an agenda of equality. Mrs. Bethune was able to use her race and gender as an advocate, aware of her position in the racial hierarchy, but sensitive to the issue of her political capital as she became a spokeswoman for social change. Was she able to do this because she did not have white beauty standards? She had dark skin and ordinary looks, dressed plainly, and carried herself in a dignified manner—characteristics visible or inferred from the many pictures of her. McCluskey (1999) described her voice and large physical presence as imposing. We would argue that her presentation as a self-made person made others take notice. These personality attributes, together with her hard work in all that she did, gave her credibility for her strategic race and gender work. She exemplified the feminist value that the personal is political.

CONCLUSION Mary McLeod Bethune represented a model of hard work, honesty, advocacy, strength of character, spirituality, and a lifetime of service and giving back to one’s people and the community. She had personality characteristics that appealed to both African Americans and Euro-Americans who wanted to invest in the projects and ideas of a woman who embodied these qualities. She had a collectivist cultural orientation that was shaped by actions, deeds, and thoughts. People in collectivist cultures establish long-term and intimate relationships, engage in joint activities, use community codes of behavior, and have a hierarchical approach to culture (Triandis & Shu, 2002). She had long-standing friendships with women with whom she worked and was influenced by and became powerful allies with women such as Eleanor Roosevelt. She modeled and expected codes of behavior for the communities to which she belonged. For women in the organizations she led, this meant commitment and working toward improving social relationships. For the students in her college, it meant giving back and conforming to standards of what a Bethune-Cookman student should be (e.g., there were dress codes for Sunday Community meetings and strict codes of conduct). Belonging meant group commitment and success for the group as opposed to the individual alone—a cherished value in a collectivist culture. As a legacy to her people, Mrs. Bethune left a “Last Will and Testament” that was published in Ebony magazine in 1995 (Smith, 1996). In summary, it is a love for all mankind; a hope that race and economic

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conditions would turn toward making a better world; the challenge of developing confidence in one another; a thirst for education, respect for power, and faith to move forward in life by remembering the suffering of our ancestors; racial dignity; harmonious living among people based on our commonalities that can be used in united ways to solve problems; and a personal responsibility for making the world better. The reader can evaluate whether these goals have been achieved since her death in 1955. REFERENCES Bethune-Cookman College Web site. Available at http://www.bethune.cookman. edu/ Biography Resource Center. (2001). Mary McLeod Bethune: 1875–1955. Gale Group, Inc. Retrieved September 22, 2006, from http://www.africawithin. com/bios/mary bethune.htm Burt, O. (1970). Mary McLeod Bethune. Girl devoted to her people. New York: Bobs-Merrill. Bush, P. (2001). Problematizing the race consciousness of women of color. Signs, 27(1), 171–198. Clark, D. (1986). Lifting the veil, shattering the silence: Black women’s history in slavery and freedom. The state of Afro-American history: Past, present and future. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University. Cullen-Dupont, K. (1996). The encyclopedia of women’s history in America. National Council of Negro Women. New York: Facts on File. Greene, C. (1993). Mary McLeod Bethune. Champion for education. Chicago: Children’s Press. Hamilton, K. (2004). Keepers of the dream. Black Issues in Higher Education, November 18, 12–13. Hanson, J. (2003). Mary McLeod Bethune and black women’s political activism. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Leonard, R., & Burns, A. (1999). Turning points in the lives of midlife and older women. Australian Psychologist, 34(2), 87–93. McCluskey, A. (1997). “We specialize in the wholly impossible.” Black women school founders and their mission. Signs, 22(2), 403–426. McCluskey, A. (1999). Representing the race: Mary McLeod Bethune and the press in Jim Crow era. Western Journal of Black Studies, 23(4), 236–245. McCluskey, A., & Smith, E. (Eds.). (1999). Representing the race: Mary McLeod Bethune. Building a better world: Essays and selected documents. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. McKissack, P. (1985). Mary McLeod Bethune: A great American educator. Chicago: Children’s Press. McKissack, P., & McKissack, F. (1992). Mary McLeod Bethune. Chicago: Children’s Press. Smith, E. M. (1996). Mary McLeod Bethune’s “Last will and testament”; A legacy for race vindication. Journal of Negro History, 81(1/4), 105–123.

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Torres-Gil, F. M. (1992). The new aging. Political change in America. New York: Auburn House. Triandis, H., & Shu, E. (2002). Cultural influences on personality. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 133–160. U.S. Department of the Interior. (2001, June). Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site. Washington, DC: National Park Service.

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Anna Eleanor Roosevelt The Evolution of an Extraordinary Leader Agnes N. O’Connell

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At the time of her birth and for many years thereafter, no one would have predicted that Eleanor Roosevelt, as she was known, would become one of the most admired American women of the 20th century. From a shy, fearful child, she gradually grew into a courageous, influential leader and advocate. She overcame pervasive self-doubts, devastating personal tragedies, and severely restrictive societal prescriptions to become a powerful humanitarian force in the world.

HERITAGE AND FAMILY OF ORIGIN Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born to Anna Livingston Ludlow Hall and Elliott Roosevelt on October 11, 1884, in New York City. Her handsome, cultured, and energetic parents were descendants of socially and politically prominent families. Eleanor believed her mother to be the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. Anna Hall Roosevelt, an aristocrat by wealth and birth, was disappointed that her daughter had not inherited the Hall beauty. Believing Eleanor too old fashioned and serious, she called her “Granny.” Although Eleanor felt a sense of reproach from her bemused mother, she received understanding and love from her admiring father. Elliott Roosevelt viewed the birth of his first-born as “a miracle from Heaven.”1 He called her “Little Nell” after the compassionate little girl in Dickens’ Old Curiosity Shop. She was his “little golden hair.” Eleanor never doubted that she was first in his heart (Roosevelt, 1992, p. 6). Elliott Roosevelt encouraged her to excel and to be courageous, bold, and self-reliant. He wanted her to grow up to be a woman of whom he could be proud. In her 1937 autobiography, she credits her father with firing her imagination; his love and early encouragement provided motivation for her lifelong achievements. Eleanor adored her father. She was perfectly happy with him; he dominated and was the love of her life as long as he lived and for years thereafter (Roosevelt, 1992). Unfortunately, when Eleanor was about 5 years old, her father broke his leg while riding—a complicated, painful, long-lasting injury—and began to drink excessively. As a consequence of his dissolution, they affectionately corresponded but shared little time. Like most children of alcoholics, Eleanor believed that she could never do enough to protect him. Over the years, Eleanor came to idealize her father, re-creating him, and magnifying her warm memories of him.

CHILDHOOD, SADNESS, AND LOSS Eleanor’s early years were marked by sadness and loss. In 1892, when she was 8 years old, she lost her mother to diphtheria. She went with her

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brothers, Elliott and Hall, to live with her stern maternal grandmother, Mary Ludlow Hall, her aunts and uncles. Sadly, she endured another loss when her 3-year-old brother, Elliott, died soon after. She became an orphan before she was 10 years old when her beloved father died of alcoholism in August 1894. A study of eminent women (O’Connell, 2001) found that parental loss prior to adulthood was an important factor in the lives of many extraordinary women; the incidence of parental loss was much higher than in the general population. Eleanor’s losses exposed her to diversifying and challenging experiences that may have ultimately contributed to her amazing stamina; her exceptional leadership, achievement, and creativity; and strengthened her ability to persevere in the face of substantial obstacles. At the time, however, her father’s death deepened Eleanor’s feeling that she was an outsider. She was insecure, tall for her age, badly dressed, wore a steel back brace for 2 years to correct curvature of her spine, and did not make friends easily (Lash, 1971). Feeling herself an outsider, Eleanor, a gentle, shy, fearful, awkward child, exhibited a sense of inferiority (Roosevelt, 1937, 1992). Nonetheless, she was strongly motivated to seek attention, affection, and approval; she also was determined to prove herself courageous, caring, and worthy (Roosevelt, 1937).

ADOLESCENCE AND YOUNG ADULTHOOD A life-changing developmental period began in 1899 when Eleanor was 15 years of age. She was enrolled at Mlle. Souvestre’s distinguished Allenswood School near London, England. In this warm, friendly environment of peers, mentored and encouraged by Mlle. Souvestre, she developed self-confidence and independence; improved her French; and learned German, Italian, and Latin. She traveled to France, Germany, Italy, and other countries with this maternal mentor (Roosevelt, 1937), learning about various cultures and about how a strong, independent woman can function in a male-dominated world (Gardner, 1995). The years abroad were among her happiest; they gave the resilient Eleanor her first taste of being carefree, and resulted in a worldliness and spirit that would serve her well. In 1902 at age 18, a graceful, energetic Eleanor returned to New York City from Allenswood. She was on the threshold of a most productive future in the United States. She valued service to others, loyalty, and friendship; she believed that ambition was essential for any kind of success. Building on these values and her childhood charitable activities with her father, grandmother, aunts, and uncles, she became involved in social services of her choosing, joining and working for organizations such as

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the National Consumers’ League and the Junior League of New York. She wrote that in New York City society it was expected that “you were kind to the poor. . . did not neglect your philanthropic duties . . . assisted the hospitals, and did something for the needy” (Roosevelt, 1992, p. 4). Her life had meaning and purpose. She worked for better conditions for city dwellers, particularly those in the slums, and investigated working conditions in the garment districts. She taught immigrant children calisthenics and dancing in the Rivington Street Settlement House.

SOCIETAL EXPECTATIONS: MARRIAGE, CHILDBEARING, AND CHILDREARING As was expected among her social circle, Eleanor had her society debut at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. In 1903, at 19 years of age, she became engaged to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Harvard undergraduate and her fifth cousin once removed. Two years later on March 17, 1905, the “beautiful,” “regal,” “magnificent” Eleanor married Franklin in New York (see Cook, 1992, p. 162). Her uncle, President Teddy Roosevelt, the 25th president of the United States, gave her away. The 5 years between leaving Allenswood and her marriage were continuing years of progression in the world—years of self-definition in terms of individuality and strength for Eleanor. When she married, her temporary dependence on her husband and mother-in-law brought a reassuring sense of security, love, and approval (Lash, 1971). For the 10-year period from 1906 to 1916, Eleanor was either pregnant, giving birth, or recovering from childbirth. Ten months after her marriage, she gave birth to her and Franklin’s first child, Anna, and in the succeeding years, she gave birth to five more children: James, 1907; Franklin, Jr., 1909, who died of influenza in infancy; Elliott, 1910; the second Franklin, Jr., 1914; and John, 1916 (Roosevelt, 1937). She devotedly nurtured her marriage and children. This focus on marriage, childbearing, and childrearing responsibilities was expected of women in her time and circumstances. More idiosyncratically, Eleanor maintained her considerable intellectual curiosity and was a significant political asset to her husband.

MARITAL AND POLITICAL CHALLENGES Eleanor started her long career as political partner in earnest when Franklin served in the New York Senate in Albany from 1910 to 1913. She

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slowly resumed the public service interests of premarital days. She was convinced that the emergencies of domestic and family life were extremely good training for public service and that what must be done usually can be done. The Albany years were the beginning of Eleanor’s “political sagacity and co-operation” (Black, 1996, p. 8). During this period and continuing throughout her life, she synthesized in various forms and contexts the nurturing of others and the effecting of innovative social and political change. In 1912, Eleanor attended her first Democratic Party convention. She gained knowledge of the Washington political scene when Franklin became Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1913. Eleanor’s dedication to public service during World War I included work at the Red Cross canteen, organizing the Navy Red Cross, supervising knitting at the Navy Department work rooms, and encouraging strict food-saving in her home and in the nation. She had gained assurance in her “ability to run things, and the knowledge that there is joy in accomplishing good” (Roosevelt, 1937, pp. 258–260). In 1918, at age 34, approximately 2 years after the birth of their sixth child, Eleanor made a heartbreaking personal discovery that left her feeling that the bottom had dropped out of her world. She learned of the romance between her flirtatious husband and Lucy Mercer, her social secretary. Considering the cost to his career, the loss of his inheritance from his wealthy mother, and the disruption to the lives of his and Eleanor’s children, Franklin agreed to end his relationship with Lucy. Eleanor agreed not to seek a divorce, and their marriage survived this difficult period. In her comprehensive re-evaluation, Eleanor looked honestly at herself, her surroundings, and the world. Eleanor believed that doing so contributed to her growth and to the realization that she needed to develop her own goals and build a life based more on her own interests and purposes. Beginning in her early years, Eleanor revealed a resilience and psychological hardiness that enabled her to turn adverse circumstances into challenges and opportunities. Despite apprehensions, she repeatedly exhibited the courage to move forward, and now she would do so again. In the year that the Treaty of Versailles ended World War I, Eleanor and Franklin redefined their marriage and forged a new relationship. She believed that the lessons learned from her marriage included adaptability, adjustment, self-reliance, and the need to become an individual in her own right (Roosevelt, 1937). Well documented was her devotion to family, friends, and the social good.2 She joined organizations “dedicated to the abolition of child labor, the establishment of a minimum wage and the passage of legislation to protect workers” (Goodwin, 1998, p. 2), continued volunteer work, and furthered Franklin’s career. She volunteered at St. Elizabeth Hospital to

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visit World War I veterans and at the International Congress of Working Women in Washington; she served as vice chair of the League of Women Voters; and traveled with Franklin during his vice presidency campaign. She believed that her wartime experiences made her a more tolerant, understanding, and charitable person.

DUTY AND RESPONSIBILITY Duty and a sense of responsibility were strong motivating forces for Eleanor both in her private life and in her public life. She was devoted to Franklin’s care when he became paralyzed from polio in 1921 and during the long years of his recovery. Moreover, she kept his name and interests alive in political domains. Her participation in public affairs advanced Franklin’s career. A recurring theme in Eleanor’s life was the capacity to develop essential qualities to accomplish what was necessary in a wide range of circumstances. She struggled to overcome her fearfulness and shyness so that she would be more effective on her husband’s behalf. The more she was accepted, the less shy she became (Roosevelt, J., 1976). Her political voice was evolving from her diverse experiences and their contexts. In the 1920s, Eleanor “mastered the domain of public service” (Gardner, 1995, p. 189). She became her husband’s eyes and ears, a trusted and tireless reporter, at this time and throughout his political career. Eleanor’s political contributions and organizational judiciousness made her one of New York’s leading political figures during Franklin’s 7-year convalescence. Her many activities included advising and mentoring “women’s and other reform groups to set realistic goals, prioritize their tasks, and delegate assignments” (Black, 1996, p. 10). She saw politics as an opportunity to “right wrongs, to be of use” (Roosevelt, J., 1976, p. 79).

HER OWN INTERESTS AND PURPOSES Eleanor had written and spoken often of the privilege of being useful (e.g., Roosevelt, 1933, 1958, 1992). She exercised this privilege extensively. Her personal interests and purposes evolved from her choosing and blending of useful activities. In 1922, Eleanor became a member of the Women’s Trade Union League and the Women’s Division of the Democratic New York State Committee. In 1925, she helped found Val-Kill Industries in Hyde Park, New York, a nonprofit furniture factory for the training and employment of people in the area. In 1926, Eleanor, Marion Dickerman, and Nancy Cook purchased Todhunter School, a girls’ seminary in New York, where she was the

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school’s associate principal and taught history, English literature, and government. She wrote that it was the nation’s responsibility to educate healthy, socially engaged children (Cook, 1999; Roosevelt, 1933). “Teacher” was an important part of her self-definition. She very much enjoyed educating not only in schools, but elsewhere as well. She educated by communicating her knowledge, experiences, and values through writing for magazines and newspapers, authoring books, lecturing, and debating on radio. Although Eleanor often donated her earnings to charity, her teaching, writing, lecturing, and debating activities helped her become financially independent (Roosevelt, 1949). She believed that her struggle for independence was a microcosm of all women’s struggle for economic and political power. She held that this power must come from coalition building—a position of strength and unity built on networks of friendship and support. She believed women should organize and was a strong supporter of women’s participation in government. A parallel she saw between politics and her life was that one did things “that needed to be done because they were good, and right, and decent” (Cook, 1992, p. 337). During Franklin’s initial and subsequent terms (1933–1945) as president, Eleanor shattered historic and social precedent in the White House by holding the first press conferences by a president’s wife. The more than 300 press conferences were independent of her husband’s. These innovative conferences were restricted to women to promote the nationwide employment of newspaperwomen and to encourage women to become active in the programs of the New Deal. A leader who believed in empowerment and collaborative power, Eleanor believed that politics must include women in significant roles. When women were on the 1936 Democratic Platform Committee, the New York Times called it “the biggest coup for women in years” (HoffWilson & Lightman, 1984, p. 10). For the first time, women were granted parity with men on the platform committee, a measure of how far they had traveled since 1920 when Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote and since 1924 when Eleanor and other women sat outside the locked door of the Resolutions Committee. At the 1936 Democratic convention, the number of women delegates and alternates was 219 compared to 60 at the Republican convention, and women made eight of the seconding speeches for Franklin Roosevelt. “I know that many women in this country [who] vote in November for Franklin Roosevelt will be thinking . . . of Eleanor Roosevelt” (Lash, 1971, p. 442). It was Eleanor’s perception that “women were in the forefront of the revolution in thinking that was behind the New Deal” (Lash, p. 390).

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LEADERSHIP As first lady, Eleanor created a leadership role that had not existed before and redefined the parameters of the existing role of women in general. Eleanor’s self-reliance and extraordinary accomplishments dramatically forged a new role for her as the president’s wife and set the standard for all future presidential wives. She had the combination of interests, motivation, energy, and skills that made her a formidable leader. She did not recognize fully her own “range of abilities . . . remarkable organizing skills, superb judgment, practical insight, and astonishing endurance” (Goodwin, 1994, p. 44). Her husband and contemporaries did. Eleanor’s groundbreaking role as political partner had many manifestations. Shortly after Franklin took office, Eleanor traveled a pre-jet 40,000 miles in 3 months and countless thousands of additional pre-jet miles later as his “ambassador.” Her travels during the darkest period of the Great Depression revealed that wide-reaching economic reforms were essential for the Depression-ridden country. She influenced and promoted his New Deal programs of relief, recovery, and reform that were passed beginning in 1933. She was an informal but important adviser who did not hesitate to disagree with him. Eleanor was the first wife of a U.S. president to give an impromptu address at a national political convention, the first and only to help her husband win an unprecedented third term in office, and the first wife to persuade convention delegates that the interests of the country must outweigh the personal. Although not an elected leader, Eleanor possessed “legitimate power” as an outcome of her position. She had “referent power” based on her ability to elicit positive feelings and inspire others to identify with her values (French & Raven, 1959). Her credibility, interpersonal skills, and vision made her a leader who could motivate action. Linguistically astute, she was sought after as a lecturer, writer, and leader, thereby communicating her knowledge and insights in a variety of venues. Her syndicated daily column, “My Day,” expressing her views on public affairs, ran for 26 years and appeared in 136 newspapers, yielding more than 2,500 columns. She wrote more than 550 articles, numerous political and personal books and monographs, four autobiographies, and delivered more than 50 speeches a year for more than 30 years (Black, 1999; Gardner, 1995; Lash, quoted in Goodwin, 1994). She made numerous radio broadcasts, sometimes on a weekly basis (Kearney, 1968). She persuasively lobbied politicians and reformers; met with Democratic leaders; and traveled the country and world as her husband’s representative bringing her warmth, perceptiveness, and diplomacy. For example, during the World War II years, Eleanor traveled on a variety of information-gathering and good will missions, toured factories, and boosted solders’ morale in hospitals and military bases. Among her many

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destinations were Great Britain; New Zealand and Australia; the South Pacific, including Guadalcanal and Christmas Island; the Caribbean; Venezuela; Colombia; Panama; and Ecuador. She willingly accepted challenges and opportunities. She did not succumb to the events of her childhood but transcended them by becoming a leader and advocate. Her ability to listen, observe, and learn increased her knowledge and wisdom and facilitated her growth. Her rich experiences and abilities made her an accomplished, widely known and admired public figure whose influence was both national and international.

ADVOCATE AND SOCIAL ACTIVIST Eleanor’s undertakings as advocate and social activist far exceeded the noblesse oblige of her family heritage, the marginality of her difficult childhood, and the role of woman or president’s wife. Her sensitizing experiences and her empathy for others led her to advocacy. She was a remarkable, progressive advocate for the disenfranchised, the dispossessed, and the marginal, including women, Blacks, the young, the poor, and people of the Third World. She fought against discrimination, prejudice, segregation, exploitation, and waste. Her empathy for those in distress was enormous. Her achievements are too numerous to detail here, but her intervention on the part of the poor and hungry serves as one example. In 1933, Eleanor’s strong objections to the destruction of food in the midst of hunger under the Agricultural Adjustment Act3 led to surplus farm products being given to the hungry instead of being destroyed (Lash, 1971). In a 1939 Time cover story, “Oracle” (pp. 21–22), Eleanor Roosevelt was hailed as “the world’s foremost female political force” and also as “a woman of unequaled influence in the world” (cited in Kearney, 1968, p. 216). Her courage, insight, and incredible stamina were fired by strong democratic and humanitarian principles that fostered a belief in equality, social justice, civil rights, civil liberties, and peace for all people. Long an advocate for world peace, she did everything she possibly could “to prevent a repetition of the stupidity called war” (Roosevelt, 1992, p. 251). Eleanor Roosevelt’s democratic and egalitarian principles were evident in 1939 when she exercised the power of symbolic protest—resigning from the Daughters of the American Revolution when they inflexibly barred the Black classical vocalist Marian Anderson from singing at Constitution Hall. Eleanor’s stand against such racist policies and the “public furor” prompted Secretary of Interior Ickes to schedule a free Anderson concert at the Lincoln Memorial that was attended by 75,000 people (Scharf, 1987, p. 109). In 1945, Eleanor influenced the Army Nurse Corps

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to open its membership to Black women and joined the NAACP board, reaffirming her enduring advocacy for this minority. Eleanor was a controversial figure who did not conform to conventional expectations and who was not exempt from occasional errors in judgment. As a consequence, she encountered intense personal and political criticism for some of her beliefs, statements, or behaviors. An experienced and principled leader, she refused to be intimidated or allow mudslinging to deter her or criticism to silence her.

WIDOWHOOD: ON HER OWN Like many widows, Eleanor believed “the story was over” when Franklin, her husband of 40 years, died on April 12, 1945, during his fourth term as president. She recognized that from that day forward, she would be on her own and would need to make a series of adjustments in her new life. She also recognized that keeping herself well occupied would help make the intense, pervasive loneliness less acute, although nothing, “not even the passage of years,” would fill the “big vacuum” in her life (Roosevelt, 1958, p. 1). What she did not recognize was how singular she was in past accomplishments and leadership and in what was yet to come in the last 17 years of her life. It was “an end and a beginning” (Roosevelt, 1992, p. 283). In December 1945, following the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman asked Eleanor to be a member of the organizing group of the United Nations. When they met in London in January 1946, she became one of the founders of this international organization and the only woman on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Assembly. With her strong sense of responsibility, she believed that it was essential to be a “useful member” because failure to do so would reflect poorly on all women, “and there would be little chance for others to serve in the near future” (Roosevelt, 1992, p. 305). Clearly, she succeeded. She was elected head of the United Nations Human Rights Commission the same year. During the United Nations years, she considered her tireless efforts as chair of this commission most important (Roosevelt, 1958). She was the driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a groundbreaking international articulation of the fundamental and inalienable rights and freedoms of all humans.4,5 She was, in fact, the world’s foremost humanitarian (Scharf, 1987). Eleanor’s extensive travels had deepened her understanding of universal concerns, underscoring her commitment to worldwide justice. On December 10, 1948, the Human Rights Declaration was passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations. “The delegates rose in unison to give Eleanor Roosevelt a standing ovation” (Scharf, 1987, p. 148). Her

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leadership of the Commission on Human Rights led to a Declaration that became a cornerstone of international law and an accepted standard for all nations. Her wide-ranging travels on behalf of human rights and social justice did not cease during widowhood. In 1948, she visited England at the invitation of the King and Queen. As a member of the United Nations, she traveled to London, Paris, Geneva, and New York with the American delegation. Her travels to visit heads of state and to explore political and human situations continued primarily in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia (e.g., Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Pakistan, Israel, India, Japan, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Hong Kong, China, Turkey, and Greece). In 1952 and 1956, she addressed the Democratic National Convention. She had resigned as a delegate of the United Nations at the end of 1952; thereafter, she worked as “a volunteer in charge of organization work for the American Association of the United Nations” (Roosevelt, 1992, p. 290). In the 1950s, Eleanor saw progress in some of her favorite causes. In 1953, the Women’s Division of the Democratic National Committee was integrated into the Democratic Party structure. In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed segregation in public schools. In 1957, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. In 1961, John F. Kennedy reappointed Eleanor to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations and appointed her to the National Advisory Committee of the Peace Corps and as Chair of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women. She served as a knowledgeable, but informal, adviser to Presidents Truman and Kennedy and was a respected leader of the Democratic Party. She died in New York on November 7, 1962, at the age of 78. She lived through eras of major change in the 20th century. Her life radiated with commitment, transformation, growth, social responsibility, notable leadership, and distinguished contributions. Jim Farley, chairman of the Democratic Party, believed that “[h]er devotion to duty was truly unselfish” (Scharf, 1987, p. 175). The New York Times mourned that “[w]e shall not soon see her like again” (cited in Scharf, p. 175).

LIFE SPAN PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT In search of further understanding into the amazing life and leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, examples of diverse psychological perspectives may be valuable and useful. However, each perspective illuminates limited and debatable insights into the uniqueness, complexity, and essence of this remarkable leader.

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From the perspective of Alfred Adler’s (1927, 1964) individual personality theory and in Adlerian terms (inferiority complex, overcompensation, creative self, and social interest), Eleanor Roosevelt overcompensated for the sense of inferiority and marginality of her childhood years in an exceptionally productive social and humanitarian way. She turned her felt inferiority, shyness, and awkwardness into strength and focus in pursuit of her goal of achieving and perfecting a universal and just community. In her strivings, she used her “creative self,” the interplay of her abilities, her wide range of experiences around the globe, and her interpretation and impressions of these to become a stellar leader and advocate of the underrepresented and needy, thereby expressing the highest levels of social interest. Abraham Maslow (1971) identified Eleanor Roosevelt as that rare being, a self-actualized person. Within the parameters of his humanistic personality theory, she had satisfied physiological, safety, belongingness, love, and esteem survival needs of his hierarchy and proceeded to grow, develop, and use her capabilities to the fullest. Led by her intrinsic values, she moved beyond self-actualization to the pursuit of actualization of the rights and potential of others. Guided by a higher order of needs, what Maslow calls “metaneeds” or “B-values” (e.g., truth, goodness, and justice), she pursued the ideal of a fair and just humanitarian world and strove to see this ideal become a reality for all people. From Erik Erikson’s (1985) perspective, Eleanor Roosevelt navigated and successfully resolved the psychosocial stages of ego development of his psychoanalytic ego theory. Despite difficulties and losses, she exhibited, and her life clearly demonstrated, what Erikson called the virtues acquired in his eight stages of ego development. These virtues are (1) hope, (2) will, (3) purpose, (4) competence, (5) fidelity, (6) love, (7) care, and (8) wisdom. It was to the world’s advantage that she made use of these virtues in her leadership and advocacy for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind around the globe. In the final analysis, Eleanor Roosevelt’s life exemplified transformation and growth that overcame the restrictive sociocultural milieu and personal heartbreak. She channeled her incredible energy in constructive domains to lead a heroically productive “useful” life marked with global accomplishments and leadership. She is a courageous, astonishingly inspiring, trailblazing woman of the 20th century and an extraordinary humanitarian for all time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author thanks Sandra Chanin, Mary Anne Hone, and Brian O’Connell for their comments on earlier versions of this chapter.

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NOTES 1. Shortly after his marriage, Elliott Roosevelt’s mother and sister-in-law died within a few days of each other. 2. According to Gardner (1995), speculation that Eleanor was physically involved with anyone other than Franklin during her lifetime lacks documentation. 3. This Agricultural Adjustment Act was an important part of the New Deal. 4. Eleanor Roosevelt’s contributions to the United Nations included helping found the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). 5. According to “Leaders and Revolutionaries: Eleanor Roosevelt” (1952), her work with the United Nations was highly effective because, in part, of her linguistic ability to broadcast in French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

REFERENCES Adler, A. (1927). Understanding human nature. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett. Adler, A. (1964). Social interest: A challenge to mankind. New York: Putnam. Black, A. M. (1996). Casting her own shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt and the shaping of postwar liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Black, A. M. (Ed.). (1999). Courage in a dangerous world: The political writings of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Columbia University Press. Cook, B. W. (1992). Eleanor Roosevelt, volume 1, 1884–1933. New York: Viking. Cook, B. W. (1999). Eleanor Roosevelt, volume 2, 1933–1938. New York: Viking. Erikson, E. H. (1985). The life cycle completed. New York: Norton. French, J., & Raven, B. (1959). The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in social power (pp. 150–157). Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research. Gardner, H. (with Laskin, E.) (1995). Leading minds: An anatomy of leadership. New York: Basic. Goodwin, D. K. (1994). No ordinary time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt—The home front in World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster. Goodwin, D. K. (1998, April 13). Eleanor Roosevelt: America’s most influential first lady blazed paths for women and led the battle for social justice everywhere. Time Archive. Retrieved September 22, 2006, from http://www.time. com/time/time100/leaders/profile/eleanor.html Hoff-Wilson, J., & Lightman, M. (Eds.). (1984). Without precedent: The life and career of Eleanor Roosevelt. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kearney, J. R. (1968). Anna Eleanor Roosevelt: The evolution of a reformer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Lash, J. P. (1971). Eleanor and Franklin. New York: Norton. Leaders and revolutionaries: Eleanor Roosevelt. (1952, April 7). Time, 6. Retrieved September 25, 2006, from http://www.time.com/time/time100/ leaders/profile/eleanor˙related7.html Maslow, A. H. (1971). The farthest reaches of human nature. New York: Viking. O’Connell, A. N. (2001). Profiles and patterns of achievement of 53 eminent women: Synthesis and resynthesis 3. In A. N. O’Connell (Ed.), Models of

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achievement: Vol. 3. Reflections of eminent women in psychology (pp. 343– 420). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Roosevelt, E. (1933). It’s up to the women. New York: Stokes. Roosevelt, E. (1937). This is my story. New York: Harper. Roosevelt, E. (1949). This I remember. New York: Harper. Roosevelt, E. (1958). On my own. New York: Harper. Roosevelt, E. (1992). The autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: DeCapo Press. Roosevelt, J. (with Libby, B.) (1976). My parents: A differing view. Chicago: Playboy Press Book. Scharf, L. (1987). Eleanor Roosevelt: First lady of American liberalism. Boston: Twayne.

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Women Who Matured During the “Roaring Twenties”

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Rachel Carson The Strength of Wonder Ravenna Helson

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It is said that as a child Rachel Carson found a fossilized fish near her home in Pennsylvania and learned that the ocean had once covered the whole area where she lived. She did not see the ocean for many years, but the idea of it became active in her mind and was associated with a sense of wonder and awe. During an era in which women were not welcomed in science, she became a marine zoologist for the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife. She also wrote three excellent books about the ocean, its creatures, and its shores. Then, when the natural world she loved was threatened by the reckless use of pesticides after World War II, this modest, introverted woman opposed powerful vested interests to arouse Americans to the danger. In Silent Spring (Carson, 1962b), she used her ecological knowledge to challenge the assumption that progress requires damage to nature and created a worldwide awareness of issues from which the environmental movement developed. Like many other creative individuals, she had a strong commitment to her life work, which in her case was to make the world of nature as real for others as for herself, to protect it, and to enable others to feel its vastness, complexity, and philosophical and spiritual meanings. I have read a number of books about Carson and her work (e.g., Gartner, 1983; Graham, 1970; Kudlinski, 1988; McCay, 1993; Quaratiello, 2004; Sterling, 1970; Waddell, 2000) and writings by nature writers whom she particularly admired (e.g., Beston, 1924/1956; Williamson, 1928). Here I draw primarily from three excellent sources: the biographies by Linda Lear (1997) and Paul Brooks (1972/1989) and the volume of letters edited by Martha Freeman (1995). I examine the main phases of Carson’s life—her childhood, when her interests and ambitions became clear; her development and shifts of focus in college and graduate school; the years of economic adversity and role-juggling as she began to find her way; the continuation of distinguished achievement, despite heavy responsibilities at work and at home; and the years of greatest challenge, joy, and physical pain before her early death at age 56. It is an unusually integrated life story, influenced but not blurred by the Great Depression, prejudice against women, and illness. This chapter shows how personality characteristics, close relationships, and the social world all contributed to Carson’s creative accomplishments.

CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE Rachel Carson was born in 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania, in the lower Allegheny Valley. She was the third and last child of Robert Warden Carson, son of Irish immigrants (his father a successful carpenter) and Maria (McLean) Carson, daughter of a Presbyterian minister who died when

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Maria was 11. Robert was a well-meaning but ineffectual man who sold insurance, dealt in real estate, and sometimes held miscellaneous jobs; Maria was a woman of artistic and intellectual tastes, a talented pianist and singer, a believer in self-development, and a lover of nature. She had been a teacher before marrying Robert. Now she exerted a strong parental influence, as had her own mother, after whom Rachel was named. Maria believed in the sanctity of life. She took spiders out of the house rather than kill them and only grudgingly cooked the rabbits that her son sometimes shot in the woods. The Carsons lived in a four-room farmhouse on the outskirts of Springdale. Rachel’s sister, 10 years older, and brother, 8 years older, had not been receptive to the mother’s values. However, Rachel did respond, and she became the center of her mother’s life. The two spent much time together on long walks through the woods, and the mother tutored her special child at home for extended periods. Rachel liked to read, especially stories about animals, such as Peter Rabbit and later, The Wind in the Willows, and she also drew animals in human postures. She liked to explore the woods and creeks near the Carsons’ house with her dog. She could find and identify many kinds of bird nests, and it was on one of these trips (if not earlier with her mother) that she discovered the fossilized fish and learned of the ancient ocean that had once covered the land around her. Gifted children are quite commonly the focus of parental attention, as Rachel was, and this attention plays an important role in the development of the child’s talent (Albert, 1983; Bloom, 1985; Goertzel, Goertzel, & Goertzel, 1978; Winner, 1996). The child’s sense of self-importance may be destructive, unless it becomes part of a larger pattern of creative interests and aspirations (Rank, see MacKinnon, 1965). As the youngest child so favored by an unhappy mother, Rachel could have had many problems. For example, her siblings could have resented her, and developing independence from her mother could have been associated with anxiety and guilt. However, sharing her mother’s love of reading and nature, as well as aspiring to be a writer, gave her a constructive life plan. At age 10, she wrote the first of several stories that were published in St. Nicholas Magazine, where a number of well-known authors began. Already as a child, she kept a log of the dates of submission of manuscripts and replies received. The family lived on a 64-acre plot and had a few farm animals, but the land was an investment rather than being actively cultivated. Because the father’s investments were unprofitable, the family became increasingly impecunious. Maria Carson was not able to entertain or buy Rachel new clothes. Rachel’s sister and brother never finished high school and had a variety of problems making a place in adult life. At times, both of them and their spouses or children lived in the crowded Carson farmhouse or

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in a tent in the backyard. The family had pride and did not discuss their problems with outsiders. However, Rachel’s introversion was probably reinforced by these conditions of life. She had friends at school but no close relations with anyone outside the family. She was an excellent student, and self-development was important to her (Lear, 1997, pp. 21–26).

THE COLLEGE YEARS (1925–1929) Rachel received a tuition fellowship to Pennsylvania College for Women, which had been selected by her mother as a good elite school only 16 miles from Springdale. To pay other expenses, her mother gave piano lessons and sold apples, chickens, and the family china, and her father tried to sell parcels of land and borrowed money from the bank. Their efforts were worthwhile because the college years were among the most important of Rachel’s life. As a freshman, she was described as having acne and oily hair and as keeping to herself, visited every other weekend by her mother, with whom she took long walks in the woods near the college. But gradually Rachel made friends with other young women who shared her intellectual interests. She liked sports. She believed that she would major in English, and an able English professor encouraged her in her writing. She was published often in the college newspaper and literary supplement. But a required course in biology, taught by a brilliant teacher, Mary Scott Skinker, offered her a new way to study nature. She loved science and feared that she might not be imaginative enough to be a writer. It was a hard decision, supported by an intensely emotional experience during a storm in which a line from Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall” dominated her consciousness: “For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go” (Brooks, 1972/1989, p.18). It seemed to tell her that her own destiny was linked to the sea. Her choice of science disappointed the college president because she considered Rachel a gifted writer and believed there was little future for women in science.

GRADUATE SCHOOL (1929–1934) Rachel graduated magna cum laude in 1929, at age 22. With Skinker’s help, she was admitted to graduate school at The Johns Hopkins University, receiving a full tuition scholarship. She studied under distinguished faculty at the university (in Baltimore), but the most important experience was getting to do summer research at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where she first saw the ocean. She spent

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blissful days and nights studying creatures in the sea and on the shore. Rachel learned a lot in graduate school, but she made only one good friend during these years (an older woman graduate student with whom she taught a summer biology course several times). Her failure to make close friends may have been in part because she lived with her family, who with her encouragement had moved to the Baltimore area, her mother wanting to see her more often and give her a home, her father and later her brother hoping to find better economic opportunities than they had in Pennsylvania. The first MA thesis topic that had been suggested to Rachel did not work out, and progress on the second was slow. Even though she earned money as a research assistant and in part-time teaching at Johns Hopkins in the summer and during the school year at the Dental School of the University of Maryland, she was under pressure to repay her college loans. After receiving her MA in Marine Zoology in 1932, at age 25, she began to look for a full-time job, intending to undertake doctoral work after paying off her loans. But these were Depression years, and there was prejudice against women in science. She formally withdrew from the doctoral program in 1934.

FINDING A PLACE IN THE ADULT WORLD (1935–1937) Rachel’s need for money became more urgent when her father died in 1935 and still more urgent a year later when her sister died, leaving 11and 12-year-old daughters to be brought up by Rachel and her mother. Her brother, who repaired radios, was not helpful. Rachel had taken civil service exams, scored high on them, and now made renewed efforts to get a job in the government. Skinker, her college mentor who was now working in the Washington, DC, area, had introduced her to Elmer Higgins at the Bureau of Fisheries. At this time Higgins had no permanent position to offer, but he hired Rachel on a temporary basis to research and write radio scripts. Rachel did quite well at this task, also using the research to write feature stories for The Baltimore Sunday Sun. She was excited by the use of her scientific knowledge in writing, and when Higgins asked her to produce a brochure for the bureau, she came up with a grand essay, much more than the task called for. “It won’t do for us; try again,” he told her, “but send this to the Atlantic Monthly.” After an unsuccessful attempt to win $1,000 for it in a Reader’s Digest contest, she did send it to the Atlantic. It was published there as “Undersea” (Carson, 1937). The following mix of direct quotation, shortened paraphrase, and description is intended to give a sense of Carson’s ambitious scope,

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versatility of approach (appealing to imagination, feeling, scientific thinking, and philosophic reflection), effective images, and elegance of style: Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses, know the foam and surge of the tide that beats over the crab hiding under the seaweed of his tide-pool home; or the lilt of the long, slow swells of mid-ocean, where shoals of wandering fish prey and are preyed upon. . . . Nor can we know the vicissitudes of life upon the ocean floor. . . . To sense this world . . . known to creatures of the sea we must . . . enter vicariously into a universe of all-pervading water. . . . It is water that they breathe; water that brings them food; water through which they see . . . ; water through which they sense vibrations equivalent to sound. And indeed it is nothing more or less than sea water, in all its varying conditions of temperature, saltiness, and pressure, that forms the invisible barriers that confine each marine type within a special zone of life . . . (from “Undersea” as reprinted in Brooks, 1972/1989, pp. 22–23).

Carson gives a vivid description of creatures in each zone, finally reaching the creatures of the deepest sea, which are ultimately dependent on the “slow rain of dead plants and animals from above. Every living thing of the ocean . . . returns to the water at the end of its own life span the materials that had been temporarily assembled to form its body.” (p. 27). On the floor of the deepest sea, the few organic remains include the ear bones of whales and the teeth of sharks. Individual elements are lost to view, only to reappear again and again in different incarnations in a kind of material immortality. . . . The life span of a particular plant or animal appears, not as a drama complete in itself, but only as a brief interlude in a panorama of endless change. (from “Undersea” as reprinted in Brooks, 1972/1989, p. 29)

“Undersea” delighted Henrik Willem van Loon, author of The Story of Mankind, who showed it to Quincy Howe, senior editor at Simon & Schuster. Howe wrote Carson that Simon & Schuster would be interested in a book.

JUGGLING ROLES: THE EARLY CAREER YEARS (1936–1941) In the meantime, Carson had been hired by the Bureau of Fisheries in Washington as a junior aquatic biologist, one of the first two women to

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be employed there in a nonclerical capacity. She lived with her mother and nieces, whom she had moved to a house in Silver Spring, Maryland, near her work base, and at night and on weekends she did her freelance writing. Each aspect of this busy life had frustrations, but there were also positive features in each role and in the way they fit together. The government job did not pay well and was often uninteresting, but it gave her the opportunity to talk with scientists and see many natural sites, fisheries, and research facilities. She used what she learned on the job in articles for The Baltimore Sun and for magazines, and in work toward the book that she hoped to sell to Simon & Schuster. Although Carson presented herself as reserved and modest in many areas of life, she was convinced of the value of her work and wanted to be in control of what happened to it. Negotiating with editors was often annoying to her (and probably also sometimes annoying to them). Nevertheless, she had to deal with editors in order to make herself known as a writer. It was frustrating for her to have the concerns of a head of household when she wanted to concentrate on her writing, and her mother’s possessiveness was somewhat restricting. However, Maria Carson, almost 70 when her older daughter died, not only took care of the household, but also strongly supported Rachel’s writing: Each day she would type what Rachel, a perfectionist, had produced the night before, and she would listen as Rachel read her writing aloud for clarity, sound of words, and cadence. Carson’s primary investment in these years of her early 30s was in writing her first book, Under the Sea Wind (Carson, 1941). The book has three interlocking parts describing natural life near the shore, in the open sea, and in the depths of the sea. The main characters in part one are shore birds; in the second part, mackerel; and in the third part, eels. The plot is their struggle for survival and reproduction. Carson’s use of individual life narratives, density of description, and focus on the creature’s viewpoint (with a minimum of anthropomorphism) give the reader an absorbing sense of understanding and caring about what goes on in nature. She shows that lives are intimately interrelated. There is constant danger, but the endless cycles are soothing in their repetitions. In the sea, nothing is lost. The death of one creature contributes to the lives of others. Only humans destroy needlessly. Under the Sea Wind was highly praised by reviewers, both scientists and nonscientists. Sections of it were included as the final selection in William Beebe’s (1944) anthology of naturalists’ writings from Aristotle to the present. But the book appeared shortly before Pearl Harbor, and the mind of the public was diverted. Few copies were sold, and relations between author and publisher became strained.

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ROLE JUGGLING CONTINUES IN MIDCAREER (1941–1951) During the 1940s, Carson was gradually advanced in her government work. She wrote conservation bulletins and managed the publications program of what was now called the Fish and Wildlife Service. She was a well-organized administrator with high standards, a sense of humor, and a loyal staff. She enjoyed trips in nature with several of these younger colleagues, both male and female. After World War II, she conducted extensive fieldwork toward the writing (or editing) of 12 illustrated booklets on the national wildlife refuges. These set a new record of excellence for government publications. In 1949 (at age 42), she was made biologist and chief editor, a promotion that somewhat restricted her flexibility and freedom. However, her position gave her access to scientific experts and important wartime research on oceanography and wildlife biology. At home, conditions were also changing. In 1946, her mother had serious abdominal surgery that required Carson to care for her and run the household. Her mother was also having increasing problems with arthritis. In Carson’s freelance work, difficulties with editors continued. Finally, she sought an agent. Her successful partnership with Marie Rodell began in 1948. They agreed on several goals. Carson had shown Rodell her notes for a book on the natural history of the ocean, incorporating new research on oceanography. The first goal was to get a contract with a publishing house that would invest in the marketing and sales of this book. Other goals were to obtain a substantial fellowship that would enable Carson to take a leave of absence from her job to work on the book, to sell chapters from the book to magazines as they were finished, and to obtain an award that would bring in money and advance Carson’s reputation. These goals were reached, although not all of them quickly or easily. For one thing, research for the book was long and hard slogging. It required the reading of a great many technical papers in a variety of fields. Also, Carson had to work through several plans for its organization. Writing was agonizing for her until she found her own creative organization of the material. However, Rodell was a useful reader, and author and agent usually agreed. Many magazines turned down the chapters for advance publication, but the Yale Review published one that won a prize, and the New Yorker bought several for a princely sum. These articles paved the way for The Sea Around Us (Carson, 1951), published by Oxford University Press. The Sea Around Us is concerned with the natural history of the ocean, its relation to earth; what it contains in its different zones; how it looks

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on the bottom; where islands originate; the causes and effects of currents, winds, and waves; and other questions of interest to both scientists and laypersons. Although some readers missed the narrative structure of Under the Sea Wind, the posing and evaluation of scientific ideas are remarkably natural, interesting, and lucid; and Carson’s breadth of conception and use of objective details about creatures to elicit empathy, among other features of her literary style, make The Sea Around Us an integrated work of science and art. The book immediately became a nonfiction best seller and remained on the best seller list for more than 1.5 years. It won important awards and was eventually published in 32 languages. Under the Sea Wind, her previous book, was now reprinted and also became a best seller. At age 44, the introverted Carson had become a public figure. People wanted to know what she was like and how a woman could have written such a book. She received a lot of fan mail, and was invited to give lectures and make appearances. Although she learned quickly to deal with these new conditions of life, circumstances did not give her much time to relish her success. Her niece, Margie, had become pregnant in a relationship with a married man. Carson and her mother had to arrange care for Margie and her child and avoid informing her brother, who was now something of a religious fanatic. Carson kept a relatively low profile and did not encourage discussion of her family life.

THE LAST DOZEN YEARS (1952–1964) Carson had long wanted to retire from her government job and devote herself to her writing; now, she had enough money to do it. She retired in 1952, at age 45. Soon after, in 1953, she accomplished another goal: She bought a piece of lovely wooded land in West Southport, Maine, and built a summer cottage on a cliff near the tide pools of Sheepscot Bay. Here she planned to bring her household and do some of the work on a book about Atlantic Coast beaches for Paul Brooks, editor at Houghton Mifflin. However, she was not able to concentrate on this project as she had hoped. Besides her usual difficulties in arriving at an organic conceptualization, there were many distractions resulting from the success of The Sea Around Us and even more from increasing demands of family members. Her nieces were living independently nearby, but Margie was diabetic and frequently ill, leaving the care of her little son, Roger, to Carson and her mother. The mother had severe bouts of arthritis but did not want to share housekeeping with anyone but Rachel. She was also jealous of people such as Marie Rodell and Paul Brooks, who she believed might have too much influence on her daughter. Thus, despite Carson’s

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retirement from the Fish and Wildlife Service, it took her several years to finish the third of her books on the sea. The Edge of the Sea (Carson, 1955) treated life found on each of three kinds of shores along the Atlantic Coast. It reached the best seller list, won several awards, and further established her reputation as a naturalist, although it was narrower in scope than her previous works, and reviewers found it less exciting. Carson told a friend that in writing her two previous books she had at times reached the point where “the subject matter takes over, the writer becomes merely the instrument through which the real act of creation is accomplished” (Freeman, 1995, p. 148). But when writing The Edge of the Sea, she indicated that the many demands on her had kept her from ever being able to lose herself completely in the work. In 1956, her mother, Maria, now 87, had a series of serious respiratory infections. Carson finally hired a housekeeper. In 1957, Margie died, with Carson beside her bed. They had always been congenial. Margie left Roger, a delightful but difficult 5-year-old, to the care of his great aunt. Carson adopted him. In 1958, her mother died after a stroke, pneumonia, and other conditions that had required much care. During these years, Carson suffered not only exhaustion and depletion, but also several health problems of her own, some of them undoubtedly stress related. In 1960, she had a tumor removed from her breast that was diagnosed as cancerous. She would suffer much pain from a duodenal ulcer, metastasized cancer, heart trouble, arthritis, and other conditions in the 4 remaining years of her life. Nevertheless, in these postretirement years, Carson entered into her most fulfilling personal relationship, wrote the book for which she is best known, and produced the most complete expression of her nature philosophy.

FRIENDSHIP WITH DOROTHY FREEMAN In the early 1950s, Carson had many friends and correspondents, but few of them were intimate friends. Her beloved mentor, Mary Scott Skinker, had died in 1948. Marie Rodell was too extroverted and practical to be her intimate friend; Carson felt Rodell could not appreciate why she did not just hire help to take care of her home responsibilities. Rachel and Dorothy Freeman were drawn to each other from their first meeting in 1952. Dorothy and her husband, Stanley, were summer neighbors in West Southport, Maine. In the winters, they lived in Massachusetts (as Carson and her family lived in Maryland). Dorothy’s mother lived with them, and they had one married son who lived with his own family. Dorothy, 9 years older than Rachel, had taught home economics and served as assistant director of the Extension Division of the Massachusetts Department of

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Agriculture before her marriage to Stanley, an agriculture student who became an executive in a large feed company. Dorothy was a nurturing woman, who read widely and loved music, nature, and spiritual meanings. She had many friends with whom she exchanged letters, but in 1953 she and Rachel began what was to be a long-lasting and often intense correspondence (Freeman, 1995). Each woman says often in these letters how much she misses the other. Each describes rare experiences that she has had in the woods, on the beach, or in reading or music, and recalls similar experiences they have had together. Rachel describes the progress of her writing and workrelated happenings. She did not complain about her family often or to many people, but sometimes she expresses her worries or frustrations to Dorothy. Dorothy confides to Rachel her ambition to write. They express personal caring: They think in terms of what is important to the other, and if one is depleted, the other wishes that she could hug her or bring her breakfast in bed. Dorothy had trouble understanding how her friendship could be important to a famous, gifted person such as Rachel. Rachel said that there was terrible loneliness in the creative life, that it was necessary for her to have someone who was devoted to her and who had the understanding to share vicariously the sometimes crushing burden of creative effort. Although her mother had filled this role in the past, she was no longer able to do so. Rachel supposed that she herself must meet some need of Dorothy’s (Freeman, 1995, p. 20). Dorothy replied that before she met Rachel she had no one else with whom to love music, moonlight, the sea, and the things that feed the inner self, and that the natural world began to have so much more meaning with Rachel to open up new aspects. She said that Rachel had made nature more available to Stan as well, so that, for example, he now shared their interest in birds (Freeman, pp. 334–335). Both women found their love and affection for each other to be amazing. They agreed that it was fed by the writing of letters, but they couldn’t adequately explain it and agreed that they would just accept it. Rachel maintained a warm friendship with Stanley, as Dorothy did with Rachel’s family. They supported each other during the serious illnesses that they and their family members suffered. There were misunderstandings from time to time, and correspondence lapsed occasionally when other pressures were heavy, but the friendship remained strong until Rachel’s death. Dorothy was one of the few people with whom Carson discussed her many ideas for literary projects. Early in 1958, she described the heartache she felt in giving up the idea that much of nature was forever beyond the reach of humans. Now she wanted to write a book that would face up to the precariousness of life and its environment in the atomic age. At that time, she did not yet anticipate the form that this project would soon take.

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SILENT SPRING Carson had been interested in the ecological impact of pesticides during World War II. She had tried in vain to publish warnings on this topic. In January of 1958, a friend of hers published a letter in The Boston Herald about the spraying of her home and bird sanctuary with DDT, which was part of the state’s mosquito control program that also killed both birds and harmless insects. There were other outraged protests. Carson tried to help in various ways through her many contacts with government officials, scientists, and nature lovers, but the state would not yield and won a lawsuit that had been brought against it. For a while, Carson tried to arrange collaboration on a book with a science journalist. Then she realized that, despite other commitments and home responsibilities, she had to write this book herself. Rodell and Brooks supported her. Although she had never been a crusader and was facing powerful adversaries, everything important to her as a naturalist was being threatened. The scientific research she needed to do was extremely demanding, but she found a good assistant to help with journal reading and note taking. Carson interviewed scientists and later sent out sections of her book to experts to ensure that she had the best information and that there were no inaccuracies. The scientific complexities of the pattern she was putting together made her excited and happy. In December 1958, her mother died. Although devastated initially, Carson knew that her mother had strongly supported her cause, and in the spring and summer of 1959, she was riding a crest of enthusiasm and creativity. In 1960 and thereafter, she was in and out of the hospital. Still, she often worked late into the night. Time was limited, and the completion of Silent Spring was urgent. The New Yorker published advance excerpts (Carson, 1962a), which caused a sensation. The several installments in the New Yorker and the book, published by Houghton Mifflin in the fall, prompted fierce counterattacks by the pesticide industry. Carson was accused of insufficient scientific background and failure to look at the benefits of insecticides, as well as feminine emotionality and unreasonableness. Her argument was misrepresented. But she had done her work well, and her evidence could not be discredited. President John F. Kennedy appointed a Pesticides Committee, which vindicated Carson and gave her credit for making the public aware of the problem. State legislatures began passing new laws, as did governments in other parts of the world. Carson had told Dorothy that there would be no place for “poetry” in Silent Spring, that she wanted it to be “simple and clean and strong and sharp as a sword” (Freeman, 1995, p. 297). Silent Spring did have poetry, conveying in a single line, for example, the beauty of an imperiled bird as it glides over a lake. But the emphasis was on irrefutable facts, their

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sources carefully documented in notes. Her rhetorical skills included the clarity with which she presented the chemistry of hydrocarbons, the tingling horror of her objective description of a child’s pesticide-induced death, and the strength of her ethical position. Silent Spring challenged the idea that damage to the environment was the inevitable cost of “progress.” It became one of the leading influences behind the environmental movement of the 1960s, not only in the United States but also throughout the industrial world.

THE SENSE OF WONDER Carson published “Helping Your Child to Wonder” in the Women’s Home Companion in 1956 (Carson, 1956). She drew on her outings with her grandnephew, young Roger, in illustrating the varied experiences in nature that an adult and child can share. A child who has become aware of the beauty and wonder of nature wants to learn about it, she said, and the emotional experience of nature in childhood forms the basis of lifelong interest and respect. Furthermore, the enjoyment of nature, if maintained, keeps joy, excitement, and mystery alive in adults, broadening their perspective about permanence and impermanence and the place of humans in the cosmos. People who love nature are sensitive to the creatures with whom we share the world, recognizing both their interdependence and the value of all life. This article was slightly expanded and published with many additional illustrations by Harper & Row as a posthumous book (Carson, 1965). Carson’s family and friends saw the article as autobiographical. In his autobiography, the great sociobiologist, E. O. Wilson (1994), told how Carson’s views had been borne out in his own life.

THINKING ABOUT CARSON’S FAMILIAL AND CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS Carson’s childhood experience shaped her life. Treated as a special child, she inevitably had a sense of her own importance, and under her mother’s guidance she worked to develop this valuable self, pursuing especially her interest in nature and her ambitions in writing. In college, she made a painful choice between these, but later, in part through economic adversity and career frustration, found her destiny in combining them. The fact that she was the center of her mother’s life inevitably pushed her siblings into the periphery. But the siblings would exert a major influence. Her sister died at an early age, passing on her children for Carson and

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her mother to raise. Her brother remained near the family and was part of family gatherings, but he and his wife were minimally helpful. After Carson died, he ignored her arrangements to be cremated and to have a small memorial service, in favor of an elaborate state funeral. Within hours of her death, he destroyed documents and behaved abusively to Roger, Carson’s adopted son. According to Lear (1997, p. 491, note 28), he gave unreliable information to Sterling (1970), an early biographer. The closeness in interests and values between mother and daughter and the support from the mother for her daughter’s undertakings were advantageous for Carson’s career in many ways and for many years. It was certainly not a usual mother–daughter relationship, but then Carson and her mother did not aim to be like other people. Their love of nature may have developed, in part, from their lack of conventional kinds of intimacies. Did their relationship and her responsibilities for the household keep Carson from marrying? They probably contributed, but so did her creative drive; it is not unusual for creative women to stay single (Simonton, 1994). Did her care for the household reduce Carson’s productivity, exacerbate her health problems, and shorten her life? Perhaps they did, but intense creative drive, persistently maintained, has costs in comfort, relaxation, and health (Winner, 1996). Being faithful to her family ties and having close relations with her nieces and Roger were surely important to Carson’s overall development as a person; during some periods of her life, the family constituted a structure within which she could lose herself in her writing without threat to her personal integrity. It was when Carson had retired and her mother was becoming incapacitated that Rachel and Dorothy Freeman became intimate friends. This relationship was also unusual. Dorothy took over the role of the mother in sharing Rachel’s values and in caring about her and her work. Rachel felt freer to show her impish, mischievous self with Dorothy than with most other people. Both women knew that the other needed to be enjoyed and nurtured, and they each wanted to give and receive this kind of love. There are many dimensions of gratification in human relationships (Josselson, 1992), and Rachel and Dorothy found deep and important ones. In view of Rachel’s previous experience of intimacy, which had been confined primarily to relationships with her mother, pets, and nature, this friendship with Dorothy may have been a developmental achievement as well as a joy and support. Why did Carson feel such a strong need to be supported in her writing? Many creative people have high aspirations with periods of confidence and periods of self-doubt. They often work at a low level of control, open to the unconscious. This may be particularly true of those who use nature imagery (Helson, 2007). Because low control is associated with

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vulnerability to anxiety and other negative emotions, the support of a close relationship is a valuable resource.

THE WONDER OF RACHEL CARSON Because The Sea Around Us was published in 1951, during a sexist era, there was much surprise that a woman had been the author. How could a woman organize so much knowledge? How could anyone, male or female, write such good science with so much literary skill? After Silent Spring came out, people were amazed that a reserved little spinster could persist and win a battle with giants of industry. If one knows how ill she was, the wonder is even greater. How does one understand Carson’s integration of thinking and feeling, her moral courage and tenacity? The interpenetration of intellect and feeling has been the goal of an important school of naturalists since Thoreau, whom Carson greatly admired. Perhaps the attainment of this goal is related to the experience of wonder and awe in nature. Psychologists propose that awe is an emotion felt when something is perceived as much too big to fit into the self’s ordinary level of experience, and there is a need to change one’s mental structure so it can be understood (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Carson had felt awe as a child, realizing that the sea had once covered all the land around her. She had become a scientist as a way of understanding nature and a writer to convey to others the enlargement of perspective that the large and small wonders of nature had given her. Scientific observation and thinking, as well as a writer’s empathy and aesthetic skills, were integrated in the service of nature. The ocean is generally a symbol of the unconscious, but its more specific meanings vary from person to person and in the same person from one context to another. To judge from Carson’s favorite readings about the ocean (Brooks, 1972/1989, pp. 6–7), she was drawn by its awesome qualities, its vastness, freedom, power, danger, unexpectedness, complexity, and mystery. What it symbolized was the very opposite of her quiet manner, subdued voice, and “curiously uninflected speech” (Brooks, p. 14), her demeanor of always having herself and the situation under control. On trips to the seashore, however, she was described differently, as enthusiastic, adventurous, and indefatigable, excited by the prospect of new discoveries. To bring out the sea in her psyche was to encourage the creative spirit. The sea was a chest of wonders, containing the fearful, strange, and beautiful secrets of life. Her writings make clear that she repeatedly studied the sea, and nature as a whole, for a perspective on life and death, permanence and impermanence, accident and design, the

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contexts of aggression. These are important issues for most people. Certainly for Carson, who had grown up with a strong sense of specialness and a strong need to control her destiny, who had pursued selfdevelopment as a life aim, and who had a remarkable ability to identify with each creature in nature, the transience of the individual life was not easy to accept; it was the subject of much reflection. In one of their last outings before her death, Rachel and Dorothy watched the departure of Monarch butterflies in the closing journey of their lives. Rachel wrote Dorothy later that she was glad to realize that the two of them had felt no sadness. We don’t know the measure of the human life cycle, she said, but when a life has run its course, “it is a natural and not unhappy thing” that it comes to its end (Freeman, 1995, p. 468). A factor important in the personalities of many creative individuals is strength of purpose in life (Barron, 1968). Carson’s identity as a creative naturalist needed support but, when supported, it was a powerful motivator. Her role was to protect nature from humans and to communicate to humans the meanings in nature. This was her purpose in life, rewarded by hundreds of observations on the beach and in the forest, repaying hundreds of hours of work in learning and writing, worth arguing with editors about, worth incurring slander for, worth dying for. Talent, motivation, and supportive relationships have been found to describe creative individuals in many studies over many generations. However, what society needs at a given time is also of critical importance. The reason for there being so many books on Rachel Carson in our libraries is that she wrote Silent Spring in 1962, alerting the world to a horrific course of events in time to avert much of the disaster. She brought about an important and pervasive change in attitude, although today the danger in the relation between humans and the environment is greater than ever before. REFERENCES Albert, R. S. (1983). Family positions and the attainment of eminence. In R. S. Albert (Ed.), Genius and eminence (pp. 141–155). New York: Pergamon Press. Barron, F. (1968). The creative writer. In F. Barron (Ed.), Creativity and personal freedom (pp. 237–249). Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand. Beebe, W. (1944). The book of naturalists: An anthology of the best natural history. New York: Knopf. Beston, H. (1956). The outermost house: A year of life on the great beach of Cape Cod. New York: Viking. (Original work published 1924) Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). (1985). Developing talent in young people. New York: Ballantine.

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Brooks, P. (1989). The house of life: Rachel Carson at work. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (Original work published 1972) Carson, R. (1937, September). Undersea. Atlantic Monthly, 322–325. Reprinted in P. Brooks (1972). The house of life: Rachel Carson at work (pp. 22–29). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Carson, R. (1941). Under the sea wind. New York: Simon & Schuster. Carson, R. (1951). The sea around us. New York: Oxford University Press. Carson, R. (1955). The edge of the sea. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Carson, R. (1956, July). Helping your child to wonder. Women’s Home Companion. Carson, R. (1962a, June 16, 23, 30). Excerpts in “Reporter at large,” New Yorker. Carson, R. (1962b). Silent spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Carson, R. (1965). The sense of wonder. New York: Harper & Row. Freeman, M. (Ed.). (1995). Always, Rachel: The letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman. Boston: Beacon. Gartner, C. B. (1983). Rachel Carson. New York: Ungar. Goertzel, M. G., Goertzel, V., & Goertzel, T. G. (1978). 300 eminent personalities. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Graham, F. (1970). Since “Silent Spring.” Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Helson, R. (2007). Creativity, gender, history, and authors of fantasy. In C. Martindale, P. Locher, & V. Petrov (Eds.), Evolutionary and neurocognitive approaches to aesthetics, creativity, and the arts (pp. 101–115). Amityville, NY: Baywood. Josselson, R. (1992). The space between us: Exploring the dimensions of human relationships. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe; a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17, 297–314. Kudlinski, K. V. (1988). Rachel Carson: Pioneer of ecology. New York: Viking. Lear, L. (1997). Rachel Carson: Witness for nature. New York: Holt. MacKinnon, D. W. (1965). Personality and the realization of creative potential. American Psychologist, 20, 273–281. McCay, M. A. (1993). Rachel Carson. New York: Twayne. Quaratiello, A. R. (2004). Rachel Carson: A biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Simonton, D. (1994). Greatness: Who makes history and why. New York: Guilford. Sterling, P. (1970). Sea and earth: The life of Rachel Carson. New York: Crowell. Waddell, C. (Ed.). (2000). And no birds sing: Rhetorical analyses of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Williamson, H. (1928). Tarka the otter. New York: Dutton. Wilson, E. O. (1994). Naturalist. Washington, DC: Island. Winner, E. (1996). Gifted children. New York: Basic Books.

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N I N E

“Be-Going” The Story of Dorothy Day Mary Anne Siderits

New York World Telegram photo, courtesy of the Marquette University Archives.

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Peter Maurin. Courtesy of the Marquette University Archives.

Biographical resources generally describe Dorothy Day as a journalist and social activist who, with Peter Maurin, founded the Catholic Worker movement. In portraying the Catholic Worker, Cort (1980) put it more picturesquely: Here was something to stir the mind and the imagination. Here was a group of people, obviously of some intelligence and sensitivity, down in New York City in the twentieth century living a life of Christian poverty like any skinny gaunt-eyed saint out of a stained glass window . . . ” (p. 361)

What was this “Catholic Worker” in whose name Day and others pursued a life of voluntary poverty? It was a name associated with a radical newspaper that represented the plight of the poor, an expanding chain of “hospitality houses” that served the hungry and the homeless, and the nucleus of a peace and justice movement. Day’s most notable contributions were made within a Catholic framework, yet she was not a parochial figure. Her concern for the underprivileged drew on her extensive experience in espousing radical causes and writing for socialist newspapers prior to her conversion to Catholicism. Moreover, for 45 years after the founding

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of the Catholic Worker movement, Day’s call to social action engaged a variety of persons who did not necessarily share her religious faith. Dorothy Day’s story necessarily involves Peter Maurin. Each needed the other as a companion in the trail they blazed. If Maurin held the map that determined the direction of their trek, it was Day who was continually responsible for assembling the provisions that sustained the mutual segment of their life journeys. Although this chapter focuses primarily on Day, her working relationship with Maurin becomes a vital element in the account. Indeed, at one point Day suggested that Maurin was more properly the subject of biography than she, and this may be part of the reason she withdrew the permission she had given Miller to become her official biographer (Miller, 1982). There was, of course, at least one other reason for her demurral when it came to the publication of her life story. It was obvious that she ruefully regarded some of the major events of her young adulthood (prior to her conversion to Roman Catholicism). Despite having withdrawn permission for any official biography, Day did eventually give Miller a journal and letters that came to be housed in the Marquette University archives, and after her death he wrote a widely reputed unofficial biography (Miller, 1982). Included with these archival materials was a copy of The Eleventh Virgin (Day, 1924), generally regarded as an autobiographical novel and one that at one time Day wanted to have entirely out of circulation. Day wrote two openly autobiographical accounts, slim volumes written for different purposes and omitting some of the significant but personally troublesome episodes in her early life that were represented in the novel. The first of these admittedly autobiographical works, From Union Square to Rome (Day, 1939), was written in the manner of a letter explaining her conversion to her much-loved younger brother, John. The second, The Long Loneliness (Day, 1981), although still omitting important events, covered more of her life and apparently had a wider audience as its target. Miller’s biography and the series of Day’s partial autobiographical writings have been important resources for this chapter, along with Coles’ book-length account of his recorded conversations with Day (Coles, 1987), Riegle’s (2003) compilation of—and commentary on—reminiscences of Day by people who knew her well, and letters from Day’s hitherto sealed correspondence in the Marquette Archives, opened to the public on November 29, 2005 (the 25th anniversary of Day’s death). The picture of Day’s life is not unlike a jigsaw puzzle. There is a multitude of pieces generated by a life that is long, diverse, and—at least until midlife—notably unsettled. It has been useful to conceive of it as one might a puzzle worked at its several borders—with border detail essential to the overall theme but with the dominant character of the

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picture unclear until one has been able to identify and insert the central piece. That central piece is Day’s encounter and subsequent venture with Maurin. The material that provides the framework for the central event falls into several categories: Day’s early religious experience, her interest in the predicament of the needy, and her experience of intimacy of several kinds, including sexuality.

CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE Religious Experience Dorothy Day was born on November 8, 1897, in Brooklyn, New York, but her journalist father brought his wife and four children to California in 1904. At the age of 8, Dorothy experienced the San Francisco earthquake while she slept with her sister. Curiously, while her father was able to help the two older boys out of the house and Dorothy’s younger sister was carried out by her mother, Dorothy was left in the brass bed, rolling about the polished floor. In one of her autobiographical works, Day (1939) gave that event short shrift, labeling it as dreamlike and not fear inspiring, but in a later writing (Day, 1952/1981), she connected the earthquake with roughly contemporaneous nightmares involving God, the blackness of death, and the possibility of eternal nothingness: If I fell asleep God became in my ears a great noise that became louder and louder. . . . I am wondering if I had these nightmares before the San Francisco earthquake or afterward. The very remembrance of the noise which kept getting louder and louder, and the keen fear of death, makes me think now that it might have been due only to the earthquake. (p. 21)

If these retrospective observations have any merit, they suggest that perhaps even at this early point in childhood, but certainly at some point in her religious quest, Dorothy found herself dealing with alternative conceptions of the deity—whether as an impersonal force or as someone with whom she could have a warm connection. The grimness of an encounter with a remote force in a lonely universe played a part in at least one other childhood recollection that was meaningful enough to be included in otherwise generally condensed descriptions of her childhood. She had run off on a solitary adventure, only to find her long, happy afternoon suddenly terminated by the realization that I was alone, that the world was vast and there were evil forces therein. I can remember on the one hand my bliss—it was almost a state of natural contemplation—and then suddenly the black fear that overwhelmed me at being alone, so that I ran all the way home. (Day, 1952/1981, p. 19)

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One might speculate that this perturbation at the contemplation of impersonal power, evil, and infinity was the childhood equivalent of what mystics have called the “Dark Night of the Soul.” These recollections of the early alternation of bliss with the sense of lurking evil and impersonal power may have been what Schultz (2003) labeled “prototypical scenes”—memories of childhood events and feelings that prefigure essential aspects of the eventual life story. In Day’s case, these may have been early indications of the disposition to mysticism that persons such as Berrigan (1981) saw as undergirding Dorothy’s social activism. A strong sense of a personal divinity seems to have been an important consequence of the discovery of a Bible in the attic of a family residence at some point when the Days were living in California. To have a full understanding of the significance of this discovery, one must view it in the context of Dorothy’s life circumstances. Religious education—indeed, any emphasis on religion—was scarcely a part of her upbringing. Someone had taught the children evening prayers, and Dorothy was exposed to a reading from the Bible and a recitation of the Lord’s prayer at the beginning of each day in her Brooklyn school. However, Day recalls that neither of her parents so much as mentioned God. Dorothy’s finding the Bible, presumably left by some previous tenant, was part of an independent exploration of her surroundings, with which Dorothy (often in the company of her sister, Della) would while away the time. (Their father had placed certain restrictions on their recreational activities [e.g., on going outside the home or inviting other children there], and, consequently, Dorothy and Della were often forced to amuse themselves with whatever was at hand.) In these circumstances, the Bible may have acquired the aura of a treasure trove—an unexpected, buried, and valuable secret—and what it intimated of God may have had a ravishing mystique. Day (1939) said: Slowly, as I read, a new personality imposed itself on me. I was being introduced to someone . . . I know that I had just really discovered Him because it excited me tremendously. It was as though life were fuller, richer, more exciting in every way. Here was someone that I had never really known about before and yet felt to be One whom I would never forget . . . (p. 19)

Could this sense of religious presence have been the childhood version of the direct intuition of the divine that James (1902/1997) and others have seen as characterizing mystical experience? Some of Dorothy’s encounters with the religious life of others also left a deposit of imagery that was only gradually mined as she grew older. The reader can find the images scattered in her account of her life—for example, an individual absorbed in solitary prayer, a choir united in a hymn (whose content seemed less salient for her than the raising of

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the voices in unison), and the orderliness she perceived in the lives of religiously committed figures (Day, 1939). A solitary hold on the divine, identification with a group demonstrating unity of purpose, a life marked by order and certain regularity—all of these were goals that would much later be realized in the wake of her religious conversion.

Response to the Needy Dorothy Day would ultimately be known as a social activist, focusing her journalistic efforts and attention on the homeless and hungry in houses of hospitality that some would label “soup kitchens” and on the plight of the socially oppressed. This interest in those less fortunate was rooted both in her early experience and in an apparently basic personal disposition to enlarge her exposure to the world. These roots bear investigation. The aftermath of the earthquake had repercussions for Dorothy’s development of social concern. She recalled a temporary migration to Oakland by individuals from San Francisco, where fires had wrought widespread devastation. Although the Day family shortly left the area for economic reasons, Dorothy’s mother was active in providing food and clothing for the displaced San Franciscans. Dorothy appears to have had a warm relationship with her mother, so she may have been particularly affected by her mother’s modeling of altruism. The work of Eisenberg and Fabes (1998) indicates, not surprisingly, that such familial modeling is a particularly potent source of the development of altruism in the child. Moreover, the sense of community generated in times of civilian or military catastrophe may be hard to parallel in less dire conditions (M. A. Siderits, notes on interviews with European World War II survivors, n.d.). The importance of community would be evident throughout Dorothy’s life, and the early experience of it may have been the foundation of the kind of productive group identity Erikson (1963, 1968) described. Subtler but equally contributory to Day’s affiliation with the distressed were her curiosity and exploratory drive. Coles (1987) observed the unusual linkage of curiosity and idealism in Day’s recollections of her youth: When I was in college, and when I lived in New York, there was something in me—long before I met Peter that made me stop and look at people . . . and wonder and wonder about their lives. . . . Idealism in the young, I guess I’m saying, is curiosity as well as goodness trying to express itself. (Coles, 1987, pp. 19–20)

Throughout her life, her desire to extend her horizons would be evident even in areas not central to her social activism; in old age, a roadside

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flower might still tempt her examination (Riegle, 2003). Curiosity may have been a motor for her frequent traveling in pursuit of her social goals. Although the traveling served both journalistic and fund-raising purposes, it also satisfied a certain hunger for mobility in Day and led to her young daughter calling her “Be-going.” This was apparently the small child’s recapitulation of what her mother said to her when leaving on her various trips (Hennessy, cited in Riegle, 2003). In her preadolescent and adolescent years, Dorothy’s exploratory drive took her beyond the confines of her family and immediate neighborhood. When, as a consequence of the earthquake, Dorothy’s father lost his job as a San Francisco newspaperman, he moved his family to Chicago. With the resulting economic stringency, the family was forced to live in a tenement area and could no longer afford servants. In that situation, many children and their families might have kept to themselves, either out of embarrassment or in a vain attempt to preserve the illusion that they were different from their neighbors. Indeed, Day (1952/1981) recounted the story of some young neighbor children who held exclusive tea parties until Mrs. Day hosted a children’s tea party with a wider invitation list. Although a year after their move to Illinois Dorothy’s father was able to secure a full-time job with a local newspaper and establish the family in a better Chicago neighborhood, Dorothy continued her exploration of less advantaged parts of the city as she wheeled her baby brother in his pram (Day, 1952/1981). These adventures occurred in virtual solitude— they could hardly have been shared by the sleeping infant, although the sense of his company may have been important. Although Dorothy often relished solitude, she also needed a communal base, as is evident in the earlier cited description of the blissful solitary excursion that turned to separation anxiety.

Emerging Sexuality Dorothy’s home base appears to have been a good one. She describes almost idyllic play with her siblings and seems to have made friends easily. Her early sexual development also appears unremarkable. Prior to adolescence, there had been at least one instance of tentative sexual groping on the part of a neighborhood boy, but this did not seem beyond the frequent childhood pale. As she approached adolescence, Dorothy experienced the strong stirrings of a romantically tinged sexuality common in girls of that age. An adult, married neighbor, a musician, became the fantasized target of these emotions. Like many young women enduring strong but unrequited affection, Dorothy engaged in some harmless stalking at a distance; that is,

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she repeatedly went with Della to park concerts where she could observe the musician at work. In later life, Day would have intense misgivings about the sexual liaisons in which she engaged when she was beyond adolescence. However, subjecting her sexuality to religious concern did not await either the fulfillment of her sexual fantasies or her religious conversion. This is quite evident from her adolescent letter to a teenage friend—an interesting mélange of mildly titillating references to Dorothy’s state of sexual excitement and a soupçon of religious scruple—but withal a hint of the capacity for a mystical serenity. A few brief excerpts may convey some of the flavor of this writing: I was happy but not in the right way. I did not have the spiritual happiness that I crave, only a wicked thrilling feeling at my heart . . . all the old love comes back to me. It is a lust of the flesh and I know that unless I forsake all sin, I will not gain the kingdom of heaven. . . . How I love the park in winter! So solitary and awful in the truest meaning of the word. God is there. Of course, He is everywhere but under the trees and looking over the whole expanse of lake He communicates Himself to me and fills me with a deep quiet peace. (Day, 1952/1981, pp. 33–34)

The vacillation between sexual and religious preoccupations may have generated, or been generated by, what Erikson (1963) saw as the role confusion prominent in adolescents. In any case, it is interesting that at some point in her adolescence, Dorothy put aside her religious preoccupations, and they were to remain generally submerged for almost a decade.

Another Important Relationship In recalling her adolescent relationships, Dorothy said, “The love for my baby brother was as profound and never-to-be-forgotten as that first love” (Day, 1952/1981, p. 21). The strength of her relationship with her brother, John, born when she was 14, can be gauged by the amount of energy— specifically, maternal energy—that it required of her. The birth of the fifth of the Day children had left Dorothy’s mother exhausted. Consequently, caring for little John when he crowed for attention before dawn was typically left to Dorothy. Wary of waking the father (who as a newspaperman could not retire before 2 o’clock), their mother would bring the baby to Dorothy about 4 o’clock every morning. Dorothy would tend the fire and the baby as she studied her classical languages; she herself would usually wind up with barely 4 hours of sleep. The sleep deprivation appears not to have bothered Dorothy unduly. Her fond description of the baby

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reveals not only the depth of her appreciation of him, but also the quality of writing of which she was capable: [F]or a while he was content to make earthquake changes in the mountains and valleys of the bedclothes. Toes were fascinating if he could extricate them from the jungle, and there were noises to make at the flicker of a street lamp on the ceiling and the brass corner knob of his crib. Steadfast gazing at the knob reminded him that here was another toy, and in making his way down the crib in pursuit of his object, there was always the discovery—new every morning it would seem from the surprised way he stopped—of a singsong creaking of the spring. (Day, 1952/1981, p. 31)

Nor did sleep deprivation appear to interfere with Dorothy’s mastery of the classical languages she found herself studying under less than ideal conditions. She graduated from high school, holding a scholarship that she had won in a classical language competition sponsored by a local newspaper. At 16, she left home for the University of Illinois.

Young Adulthood Dorothy stayed only 2 years at the University of Illinois before leaving for New York to pursue a career in journalism. She is said to have been only an average student in her performance of class work. Berrigan (1981) went so far as to say that she “lazed about, soaking up her neighborhood . . . ” (p. xi). Unfortunately, this does not do justice to the economic pressure under which she pursued her university studies (e.g., working for a family, scrubbing her fingers raw as a part-time laundress; living through the harsh cold of Chicago winter with inadequate heat). That she was able to be even minimally successful in her course work is a tribute to her reserves of energy. It is not surprising, however, that she would allot some of whatever little time she had for herself to the aspects of college life that would be different from student life as she had known it at home in her teens. She would choose which classes to cut; would immerse herself in reading and writing; and, falling in love with “the masses,” would join the socialist party. It is noteworthy that after the first flush of university life—a few months after matriculating—she developed pangs of homesickness. There may have been some of the separation anxiety that overtook her in her earlier years upon venturing too far from home. However, particularly prominent in the homesickness was the separation from her baby brother. When her family moved back East, Dorothy decided to drop out of college

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and move to New York as well. There she began her career as a newspaper reporter and basked in the intellectual hubbub of Greenwich Village.

Concern for the Needy Given the leanings toward social justice that had marked her earlier years, it is not surprising that Day’s life in New York and, later, in Chicago continued its momentum of social activism. Marching with suffragettes, hunger striking, an attempt at nurse’s training, and being jailed for suspect political activity were all to be a part of her young life.

Intimacies The ease with which Day established friendly relationships never diminished. Her friends would include persons later ranked among the famous of their time, such as the playwright, Eugene O’Neill. They would also include what for others might simply be anonymous faces in the crowd, such as her fellow inmates when she was jailed for social activism. Young adulthood would also bring several serious ventures into the sexual domain. One of these, with an ex-newspaperman, Lionel Moise, would result in a pregnancy that was terminated in abortion. The relationship with Moise was an extremely unsteady one that ultimately ended because Moise could not match Day’s earnest desire for commitment. On the rebound from her relationship with Moise, Dorothy had a brief marriage, which took her to Europe, where she completed The Eleventh Virgin. Again, she was on the move—to Chicago and New Orleans and Staten Island. In the mid-1920s, she met and entered a common law marriage with Forster Batterham, who became the father of their daughter, Tamar. Dorothy describes her time with Forster almost ecstatically, and, despite the fact that her conversion to Catholicism would be the wedge that separated them, their emotional attachment to each other would continue in certain ways even after the ending of their union. It seems that, in human terms, Forster was the “love of her life.” Some of her friends might have been at a loss to describe just what it was that had attracted Dorothy to him. One friend opined that Day’s maternal instincts had come into play (Miller, 1982), and this has a certain credibility, given her strong maternal bent and her own noting of the maternal dimension in her relevant conversation with Coles (1987). In discussing what Forster had meant to her, Dorothy also spoke of such things as a shared love of nature. Moreover, despite Forster’s reserve in other respects, Dorothy was evidently able to experience intense physical affection with him. Although Day was to remain celibate after her conversion, she could poignantly recall just how much the physical aspects

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of the relationship had meant to her. That her sense of loss in that respect persisted is evident from a touching dream she had some 3 decades after they parted. Turner described her as coming from the dream (of being in bed with Forster) “beaming and bubbling and giggling,” secure in the conviction that “[y]ou can’t be held responsible for sinning in your dreams” (Riegle, 2003, p. 113). It was also clear that, had Forster been able to accept her conversion and been willing to participate in a Catholic marriage ceremony, the story of Dorothy’s life might have been simply that of a writer, homemaker, and sometime participant in social activism orchestrated by others. As she said to Coles (1987), If he had come over to my way of seeing the world, with God as its guiding spirit, I might have lived a completely different life than the one I did. I guess you’d not be sitting here now: I guess there would be no ‘here’, now, if you know what I mean. (pp. 44–45)

Elsewhere she suggested that she might have been satisfied by Forster’s simply accepting Tamar’s and her own baptisms and participating in the marriage required by the church. Forster did go so far as to catch lobsters for Tamar’s baptismal feast but could not bring himself to participate. His unrelenting atheism was as much a matter of principle and personal interpretation of his life experience as was Dorothy’s embrace of religion. Day (1939) herself noted, “The very love of Nature and study of her secrets which is bringing me to faith, separates him from religion” (p. 126). Both Miller (1982) and Coles (1987) might leave the reader with the impression that Dorothy broke her romantic connection with Forster not long after her conversion. Certainly, that was true of any expression of physical intimacy between them. However, her recently unsealed correspondence with Forster—outgoing letters that he apparently retained— revealed that for some 5 years after she left him, Dorothy continued to hope for a rapprochement (Day, 1928–1932).

Her Religious Conversion Day’s religious conversion mystified most of the friends in her circle of agnostics and socialists. It also mystifies the readers of her autobiographical works. Some of the pieces of the puzzle are clearly missing; others she may have “sat on” because, for reasons of embarrassment or reserve, she considered it difficult, perhaps even imprudent, to recite what she considered the sins of her past life. Clearly, during her life with Forster, there was a shifting of what James (1902/1997) called the field of consciousness,

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with her relationship to God occupying a centrality that had not been the case for years. To be sure, thoughts of God had been on the margins of her consciousness, as James expressed it, throughout her young adulthood. They would come to the fore sporadically, and they would sporadically be suppressed because they seemed incompatible with her socialist self. Day insisted that her permanent turning toward God had been a product of the intense happiness she had felt in her life with Forster and, most particularly, in her pregnancy. We must not discount this positive note in her conversion. We have seen that even as a very young person, when she was moved by beauty, music, and happiness, Dorothy experienced what James (1902/1997) saw as minor ecstasies, and these can well become a link to the religious. However legitimate Day’s account of this part of her conversion, Coles (1987) and others have suspected that it is only part of the story. Day herself gives us some hints regarding the missing pieces of the puzzle. In speaking of her joy at having conceived a child, she tells us (Day, 1938) that “for a long time . . . I had thought I could not have a child. . . . No matter how much one is loved or one loves, that love is lonely without a child” (pp. 120–121). One can only speculate that her fear of not being able to have a child may have been a consequence of her earlier abortion. Although this can be no more than speculation, it is supported by several things we already know: Biographers, including Miller (1982), have inferred that the account of the abortion in Day’s roman à clef, The Eleventh Virgin, comes close to the bone of her own experience. If so, we must infer that it was an abortion dictated by circumstances external to the fact of having a child—Moise’s opposition to having a child and Day’s inability to face her family. We can only assume—given the long history of Day’s intense maternal motivation—that she would otherwise have welcomed the opportunity to be a mother. We have also seen Day’s inclination in adolescence to subject even her sexual fantasies to moral scrutiny; how much more might she then have been mortified by actual sexual activity associated with the stunting of motherhood. Dorothy gives us another clue when she indicates that she wanted her daughter to have a life with the discipline and order lacking in her own. Introducing the notion of discipline is noteworthy because discipline is likely to be demanded when we observe a tendency toward transgression. It would be hard not to hypothesize that Day’s anticipation of her daughter’s needs issued from the crucible of her own perceived sinfulness. Her concern that her daughter lead a more orderly life would certainly be compatible with her mention in earlier accounts of the order and rigor she admired in the lives of religious individuals. In this light, it seems significant that the baptism of her daughter preceded her own—it reminds us

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of a mother’s motivation to rescue a daughter from potential peril before attending to herself. One of the remaining questions for Day’s friends, biographers, and present-day readers concerns her choice of Roman Catholicism for her religious affiliation. With the limited information at our disposal, we are tempted to conclude that there was much of the accidental in that choice. Day was impressed by ritual, and her earlier encounters with Catholic ritual may have left their mark. Nevertheless, she observes that she took no particular joy in her experience of the sacraments as a fledgling Catholic. Dorothy does explicitly note one source of attraction to the Catholic Church. She saw it as the church of the poor—in the sense that it attracted the allegiance of the masses. It did not, however, appear to Dorothy as the church of the poor in terms of devotion to the oppressed, and that was definitely a stumbling block for her for several years.

THE SECOND CONVERSION William James (1902/1997) maintained that whether a conversion is gradual or sudden, it often is associated with the unification of a hitherto divided self. Considering the gradual unfolding of Day’s religious interests, one would not be justified in calling her conversion to Catholicism a sudden one, even though it may have seemed so to many of those who were close to her. Nor did it provide a real unification of at least two of her prominent strivings. On the contrary, Dorothy was hard put to reconcile her conversion to Catholicism with what she saw as the Catholic Church’s imperviousness to the plight of the poor. She speaks of a combination of happiness and disappointment following her conversion (Day, 1952/1981). It was in that frame of mind that, while on a journalistic assignment in Washington, DC, she found herself praying at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to be able to turn her talents to work with the poor. At the same time, she experienced the yearning for at least one personal contact with a Catholic layman. Within a few days, Peter Maurin would enter her life, and she would regard him literally as an answer to her prayer. It would be difficult to overlook Maurin’s role in Day’s life story or her state of mind when she met him, but what the foremost writings about Day have not explicitly considered is that her initial response to Maurin was essentially a sudden conversion experience, allowing her the unification of self that the earlier religious conversion had not effected. Peter Maurin, a devout Catholic, born 20 years before Day to a French peasant family, was an eccentric evangelist for social causes that

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would easily appeal to Dorothy. For a time he had been a Christian Brother, but for decades before Day encountered him he had meagerly supported himself as a roustabout, taking a variety of jobs (Sheehan, 1959). Once he was living in New York, he spent much of his free time in the library. He had for many years been a truly voracious reader, ready to give intellectual substance to his social arguments. And argue he did—happily oblivious of differences in the venue or the social station of the persons he addressed. In the course of his reading, Maurin had seen something Dorothy had written for the Catholic magazine, Commonweal. With a cognitive impetuosity that was both characteristic and a trifle grandiose, he had decided that Dorothy could be a latter-day Catherine of Siena, capable of persuading powerful governmental figures (Day, 1952/1981). When she returned from the stint in Washington, she found him waiting in the apartment where she was staying with her brother, John, and his wife. On the whole, Day responded favorably to this “hardy tumbleweed,” as Berrigan (1981, p. xvii) would dub him. Berrigan and others have emphasized the similarity, and complementarity, of Maurin’s and Day’s viewpoints. But if Day and Maurin fit together like hand and glove, the glove was not a seamless one. There were points of difference, however trivial in the grander scheme of things, which must sometimes have chafed. Day was raised by a mother who, even after an exhausting day, would find time to refresh herself with a bath and a change of clothes. As an adult, Dorothy would be similarly attentive to her grooming, however simple she kept it. Even when water was scarce, she would take a “harlot’s bath” (sponge bath), adding a drop of some perfume she had been given for a gift (Riegle, 2003). Peter, in contrast, had no compunctions about appearing in a slightly grimy shirt. Dorothy’s past experiences suited her well to the amenities of social relationships, whereas Peter seemed almost childlike in his approach to others. Sometimes this may have been received as innocently charming, but at other times must have been mildly frustrating. Dorothy tells of one evening when she had settled down to enjoy a radio concert with a few friends, only to find herself constantly interrupted by an overeager Peter, who pursued his monologue. Dorothy briefly described some of Peter’s limitations to Coles (1987) in terms of his “vagueness and helter-skelter behavior which put burdens on others” (p. 131). Whatever may have been the weaknesses in Peter’s presentation of himself, Dorothy and others respected and profited from his insights. Indeed, Peter offered Dorothy a vision of an activist Catholicism that would allow her to wed her concerns for social justice to the practice of the religion in which she had become engaged. We might well view Dorothy’s response to Peter as a species of conversion to a perspective that allowed a unification of parts of her self that had previously seemed irreconcilable. That it was, indeed, a sudden conversion is evident from the fact that

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Dorothy was willing to implement Peter’s program within months of his describing it to her. This was no easy task. He had a three-step program involving publication of a radical newspaper, houses of hospitality for the hungry and homeless, and an agrarian movement that would answer the excesses of industrialization. Achievement of the first two goals was to mark their joint undertaking. Berrigan (1981) aptly asserted that Dorothy “grounded Peter’s lightnings” (p. x). In thinking about his goals, Peter’s head was in the past; he identified nostalgically with 10th-century Irish monasteries, 19th-century French communes, and the medieval world of Catherine of Siena. It was left to Dorothy to translate Peter’s goals into 20th-century urban terms. Where he was theory, she was praxis. This was poignantly illustrated on one occasion at the beginning of their efforts when she was engaged in fund-raising, while Peter, lost in prayer, was punctuating his orisons with characteristic point—counting gestures—as if the deity were one of the interlocutors whom he was trying to persuade of the justice of his appeal. It must be said that Maurin’s willingness to defer to Day’s practical expertise was testimony to an absence of any noticeable desire for personal aggrandizement on his part. He had assumed that he would be the editor of the paper he proposed. However, evidently bowing to Day’s greater experience as a journalist, he confined himself to a regular column in which he employed the form of the “easy essay” that he had devised, allowing simple expressions of social justice issues to be typographically structured in the form of blank verse. He yielded to Day on the paper’s name as well: He would have called it The Catholic Radical, but he acquiesced in her substitution of The Catholic Worker. “Man proposes, woman disposes,” was his gracious acceptance of the situation. From a point early in their acquaintance, Dorothy had been magnetized by Peter. Others, although they were impressed with his learning, found his personality less compelling than Dorothy’s (Riegle, 2003), and Peter was evidently willing to live in her shade. Dorothy seems to have had that quality called “presence”—even her mother saw it in her. Photographs may belie that. The camera often captured a grim demeanor, which was not entirely absent from her living presence. (The copy of Miller’s biography used for this chapter bears on its flyleaf that author’s inscription to a friend, referring to their mutual encounter with a “grim faced Dorothy.”) Dorothy’s physique was evidently also imposing. The artist, Ade Bethune, described her as a tall woman who looked as if she had been sculpted with an ax (Riegle, 2003). People with Dorothy for any length of time observed other things as well, including hauntingly beautiful slanted eyes, a fetching smile, and even a certain impish playfulness. This last is beautifully illustrated by the story of Dorothy inducing a friend to pilfer a few flowers from a neighboring plot so she could adorn Marx’s grave (Riegle, 2003).

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AN END TO RESTLESSNESS The work on The Catholic Worker and on the houses of hospitality acquired its own sustaining momentum over the years that followed their founding. There is a sense of peace and stability in Dorothy’s recollection. She tells Coles (1987): When I was young, I would wake up and wonder about the new people I’d see or what new and interesting thing I might be doing. . . . Then we got our Catholic Worker family going, and all of us have the same kind of lives. We aren’t looking for new twists on this life. (p. 140)

However, the pursuit of novelty may not have been as dormant as Dorothy’s words suggest; it was the inner restlessness that may have been quieted. “Be-going” was often on the road pursuing material for her columns and funding for her causes—necessary travel, but travel that she relished.

The Zeitgeist Dorothy’s life bore the stamp of the time in which she lived. The historical factors influencing the first part of her life are well-known chapters in 20th-century American history—socialist and communist activity, unionization, and so on. Even today, there are frequent references to the national economic depression during which Day and Maurin launched their venture. Less well known to persons outside its ambit are the dimensions of the Roman Catholic subculture to which Peter introduced her. Roman Catholics were in the minority in the United States, although the size of that minority and the extent to which it was treated prejudicially varied in different parts of the country. Ecumenicism was not widely encouraged at the time but would await John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council. The foregoing circumstances contributed to what one might label a Catholic subculture, one with prominent intellectuals transcending national boundaries—philosophers such as Maritain and Gilson and writers such as Bernanos and Greene, who did not hesitate to write from a Catholic perspective. (Dorothy’s pain in leaving Forster could easily have been the subject of a Graham Greene novel.) This durable intellectual Catholic subculture provided Dorothy with a group identity that should not be underestimated. Neither should one underestimate the extent to which The Catholic Worker and the houses of hospitality contributed to the Catholic subculture. Marciniak (cited in Riegle, 2003) recalled the intellectual discussions in the places where the

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Catholic Worker family met and the excitement of being on the cutting edge of Catholic thought. Of course, Dorothy and Peter’s impact extended far beyond that immediate family. In the mid-20th century, Catholic high school teachers attempted to inspire student altruism with stories of Day’s “soup kitchens,” and English classes wrote “easy essays” on a full range of subjects, although often without knowing their connection with Peter Maurin. The hospitality houses were able to have a Catholic ethos without becoming ghettoized. There was no religious test for working there; the only criterion was a commitment to the poor.

CONCLUDING REMARKS In The Long Loneliness, Day explicitly viewed her life in two distinct “halves”—before and after meeting Peter Maurin. Like Coles (1987), one may well take issue with that; the skills and values she brought to the meeting were developed over the preceding years. Her journalistic talents were honed in the years prior to her conversion. Her previous involvement in radical causes was evidence of a longstanding concern for the poor and the oppressed. As Sicius (Day, 2004) observed, “Peter simply saw her talent for journalism and passion for social justice and helped her order her life by putting these predilections at the service of Christianity” (p. xix). The notion of order is important here. Dorothy’s autobiography might just as easily have been entitled The Long Restlessness—a restlessness born of an inability to fuse her several strong yearnings in a single enterprise that would give her the order, the regularity, and even the “discipline” she seemed for so long to have admired in others. If her restlessness ended with her collaboration with Maurin, her mobility did not. “Be-going” often ventured far from her Eastern base to express her solidarity with the needy in her own country and elsewhere. “On Pilgrimage,” her column in The Catholic Worker, recorded these journeys that Berrigan (1981) so nicely described: She wrote from Cuba, from Rome, from jail, from the fields of the migrant workers, from coal mining areas, from the reservation of the far West. In her travels she lived with, talked with, walked miles with, marched with . . . ” (p. xxi)

As she traveled, she lived and assisted in the hospitality houses along her way. In addition to expressing Dorothy’s serious concern with furthering various social causes, these journeys must have gratified the delight in the novel that had always lured her from her home. No longer were there

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episodes of overwhelming homesickness, however, because the “Catholic Worker family” was always close by. For more than 3 decades after Peter’s final years, Dorothy was the gift that kept on giving—pursuing her unrelenting pacifism, joining in the civil rights struggle, supporting Caesar Chavez. Now, a quarter-century after Dorothy’s death, there are still more than 150 houses of hospitality welcoming the homeless in the United States and abroad, and The Catholic Worker is still published seven times a year by the New York community. Yet, Dorothy’s was not a parochial inspiration; wherever the work of peace and social justice is cultivated, “Be-going” is a model of translating commitment into action. REFERENCES Berrigan, D. (1981). Introduction. In D. Day, The long loneliness: The autobiography of Dorothy Day (2nd ed., pp. vii–xxiii). San Francisco: Harper. Coles, R. (1987). Dorothy Day: A radical devotion. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley. Cort, J. C. (1980). My life at The Catholic Worker. Commonweal, 107, 361–367. Day, D. (1924). The eleventh virgin. New York: Albert & Charles Boni. Day, D. (1928–1932). Letters to Forster Batterham. The Dorothy Day–Catholic Worker Collection, Marquette University Archives, DD-CW, Series D-2, Box 1. Day, D. (1939). From Union Square to Rome. London: Coldwell. Day, D. (1981). The long loneliness: The autobiography of Dorothy Day (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Harper. (Original work published 1952) Day, D., with Sicius, F. J. (2004). Peter Maurin: Apostle to the world. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Eisenberg, N., & Fabes, R. (1998). Prosocial development. In W. Damon & N. Eisenberg (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3, Social, emotional, and personality development (5th ed., pp. 701–778). New York: Wiley. Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). New York: Norton. Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. New York: Norton. James, W. (1997). The varieties of religious experience. New York: Simon & Schuster. (Original work published 1902) Miller, W. (1982). Dorothy Day: A biography. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Riegle, R. G. (2003). Dorothy Day: Portraits by those who knew her. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Schultz, W. T. (2003). The prototypical scene: A method for generating psychobiographical hypotheses. In R. Josselson, A. Lieblich, & D. P. McAdams (Eds.), Up close and personal: The teaching and learning of narrative research (pp. 151–177). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Sheehan, A. (1959). Peter Maurin: Gay believer. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday.

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C H A P T E R

T E N

Sister Annette Walters’s Unfinished Dream “To Make the Universe a Home” Eileen A. Gavin

Reprinted by permission of Dorothy Claesgens (Cliz), former student and good friend. 159

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At commencement in 1962, graduating seniors of the College of St. Catherine got their first glimpse of Sister Annette Walters. Sister Annette was the main speaker at the ceremony at this Catholic, liberal arts college for women located in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was about to challenge them “to make the universe a home” (Walters, 1962). Even before this highly regarded educator, psychologist, author, advocate for marginalized people, and woman religious said a word, the audience was beginning to realize that, despite the speaker’s religious attire (a throwback to the garb of 17th-century French widows), they were in the presence of a woman ready to take multiple leading positions in the contemporary world. Sister Annette’s appearance was enough to alert the audience to her special qualities as a speaker. Some people believed that her lively way of moving defined her spirit best (O’Hara, 1978). She moved quickly and with grace. She was a relatively tall and well-built woman with striking dark brown eyes that seemed to both receive and return friendliness. She had a gift for making people feel close. In fact, friendliness toward and rapport with people were characteristic of Sister Annette. She exuded lightheartedness, exuberance, and energy. Now, at the apex of a career that graced community, education, psychology, religion, and human welfare, as she lived her “very stormy but happy life” (Colonnese, 1978), Sister Annette risked using a controversial but appropriate source in her send-off of the graduates. The source in question was Lenin, the late communist leader of the Bolshevik Revolution: “No revolutionary movement in history has gained momentum without the active involvement of women” (Walters, 1962). She continued by noting that from the time of the revolution Lenin sought improved educational opportunities for both women and men. Appreciatively mentioning even the name of Lenin in the 1960s, during the Cold War, was risky behavior, especially for a college or university professor, but Sister Annette’s doing so not only made a major point, but also revealed, inadvertently, some of her values. Sister Annette was receptive to good ideas regardless of the source and was unafraid to speak the truth. Moreover, as an “inner-directed” woman (Riesman, 1950), Sister Annette did not seek popularity. In fact, she believed that choosing popularity over principle paved the way for personality deterioration. She believed that standing up truthfully for what one values is necessary to maintain integrity, even though doing so may spark fear and misunderstanding and evoke the label “controversial,” as it did in her case. Sister Annette continued her address by describing what happened when Russian women and men had opportunities for improved education. By the 1960s, “one-half or more of the teachers in Russia, including the science teachers, are women, and . . . the dramatic technological breakthroughs that Russia has made . . . could probably not have taken place

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without the most active involvement of women—in teaching, in research, and in the encouragement of others to engage in study and research” (Walters, 1962). She cited, as a case in point, Sputnik, the Russian space program that surprised many people in the West. Sputnik struck a special chord in Sister Annette, whose aim had long been “to make the universe a home.” Toward the end of her speech, Sister Annette linked her comments about major intellectual accomplishments, such as Sputnik, to her own hope for a better world that would be open to the entire universe. She reminded the new graduates that they were soon to engage in the intellectual and competitive challenges of the 1960s. She called especially upon women prepared in the social and natural sciences to share their expertise and carry their explorations further. She invited the new graduates, all women, “to shape the course of events as they have never done before” (Walters, 1962). To accomplish this, she entreated the graduates to foster and further “all that can make the universe a home” and “all that can make the human family fully noble and nobly self-fulfilled” (Walters, 1962). Finally, in the spirit of John Henry Cardinal Newman, author of The Idea of a University (Newman, 1959), a book she had loved and quoted over many years, she challenged the new graduates to make the fruits of their education “a diffusing good . . . a gift, a power, a treasure, first for themselves and then through them to the world” (Walters, 1962). Sister Annette’s commencement address was particularly timely. Throughout the 1960s, massive societal changes triggered fresh opportunities as well as unrest. Space programs, television, and technological advances using computers were in their infancy. Second-wave feminism was on the horizon. The civil rights movement was growing strong. John F. Kennedy, the only Catholic to serve as president of the United States, was calling for courage in meeting the challenges of the time. In many parts of the world, people were working to create a climate conducive to justice and its outcome, peace. However, millions of people worldwide remained alert to the possibility of annihilation by war or internal strife. Sister Annette welcomed, as her professional work had already demonstrated, another challenge to change that arose almost simultaneously from within the Catholic Church—the Second Vatican Council. In 1962, the then reigning pope, John XXIII, called bishops from around the world to Rome. He entreated church leaders “to open the windows to let in some fresh air.” He challenged the Church to change and to update itself, so it would be fully in touch with and of service to people of good will everywhere. His challenge reinforced for Sister Annette the aim of her life, “to make the universe a home.” At midcentury, Sister Annette, along with a bright philosopher friend and collaborator, wrote for the prestigious Century Psychology Series an

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innovative introductory psychology textbook that sold more than 20,000 copies and was used for a decade in 50 Catholic colleges and universities (Walters & O’Hara, 1953). Later, she edited a companion book of readings in psychology that challenged Catholic students to find ways to reconcile religion with science in matters such as evolution and free will (Walters, 1963). As a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow in 1952, she augmented her studies in psychology and philosophy at the University of Louvain in Belgium, where she also became acquainted with European scholars. She was active in a wide range of areas as the following sample of her professional activities attests.

r In the early 1950s, she, along with Alexis Portz, OSB, set up at r r r r

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St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, an ecumenical program to serve the mental health needs of clerics. In the late 1950s, she taught two of the earliest televised collegiate psychology courses for credit in the upper Midwest, which drew 80,000 viewers (CSJ Archives). She pioneered in distance learning by sending televised recordings of her “First Course in Psychology” to Catholic colleges nationwide. By taking the lead in educating Catholic sisters, who in turn educated millions of schoolchildren, she exerted a powerful impact on American society (“Nuns for the 21st Century,” 1964, p. 43). Before sessions of the Second Vatican Council that resulted in The Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, she presented to all American bishop delegates a pertinent book whose content had been presented earlier at one of the workshops for leaders of women religious that she directed and organized (D. Mulderry, personal communications, 2005; M. L. O’Hara, personal communication, 2004). She furthered the development of spirituality and interiority in youth by writing a readable and engaging book on the subject (Walters, 1970). She wrote numerous articles on psychological and mental health topics, and presented hundreds of lectures in 35 states, 7 Latin American countries, Canada, England, and Belgium (CSJ Archives). She consistently worked to improve conditions for marginalized people, no matter what their race, religion, or gender (CSJ Archives). Early in her career, she served on the presidential committee charged with improving education in the United States beyond high school. She also served on the Minnesota governor’s

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committee that established standards for psychologists in the state of Minnesota. During the early 1960s, she shared her ideas about enhancing the education of young people and their teachers in Latin America, while she also conducted work for the Department of State (D. Claesgens, personal communication, 2005).

In preparing this chapter about Sister Annette, I have, of course, drawn on my personal knowledge, but I have also used records from several archives; interviews with people who knew Sister Annette well; reviews of her written work; library resources; a visit to her birthplace; public, private, and legal records; and, above all, a final interview with Sister Annette that a history professor conducted just a year before she died (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). Before we consider how Sister Annette developed, let me clarify the various names I use in referring to her. Whenever I refer to Sister Annette before she joined the convent in early adulthood, I use her legal given name “Margaret” or I refer to her as “young Margaret.” For her adult years, I use her religious name, “Sister Annette,” according to her desire and the customary practice in most religious communities for women at midcentury. Except for a few of Sister Annette’s publications, such as books (Sellew, Walters, & Harvey, 1948; Walters, 1963, 1966, 1970; Walters & O’Hara, 1953) and research based on her graduate research (Walters & Eurich, 1936), she rarely used her surname, but she almost always used her title “Sister.”

YOUNG MARGARET’S EARLY ROOTS: HER PLACE AND HER PEOPLE For a girl who in adulthood dreamed “to make the universe a home,” Margaret’s birth in Elmwood, Wisconsin, on May 18, 1910, might seem an unlikely beginning. Even now, Elmwood, which became a village shortly before Margaret Walters’ birth, remains a picture postcard place. It is located deep in a valley within the hill country of west central Wisconsin. A river, the Eau Galle, which today looks simply like a small, clear stream, runs through the village. However, a century ago, storms that swelled the Eau Galle at its source in the highlands unleashed damaging floods on the valley people of Elmwood and its surroundings nearly every year. In fact, a storm and flood that destroyed Margaret’s father’s jewelry store a year after she was born changed the family’s plans and presaged symbolically the kind of life that Margaret would lead. In the words of a

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good friend, Margaret lived a “very stormy but happy life” (Colonnese, 1978). Despite stormy times in her life, archival records and family descriptions of her earliest years (CSJ Archives; D. Walters, personal communication, 2004) present a picture of a young girl with many advantages. Records indicate that Margaret was born into a “loving family.” When Margaret was 3 weeks old, her parents took her to be baptized in a small evangelical Lutheran church in the neighboring hamlet of Hatchville (CSJ Archives). Her parents and only sibling, Harold, who was 2 years older than she, supported, cared about, and reared Margaret in an environment that met her all basic needs (CSJ Archives; D. Walters, personal communication, 2004) and was conducive to her developing strengths such as trust, autonomy, and initiative. Margaret’s German-born father, Emil Walters, came from a family of landowners and jewelers. She referred to her father in her later years as “a true gentleman” (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). Her Swedish-American mother, Anna Berglund Walters, came from a family whose male members achieved university degrees in the 1890s. Anna was a “take charge” woman whose initiative Margaret admired and modeled (D. Walters, personal communication, 2004). Her parents agreed on the values of education, hard work, keeping an open mind, and concentrating on the present and the future, rather than on the past (CSJ Archives; D. Walters, personal communication, 2004). Moreover, Margaret’s parents were open to their children’s viewpoints and took personal interest in their progress. Above all, Margaret was able to count on the love and support of her brother Harold from infancy throughout her entire life. This certainty cemented Margaret’s sense of trust and autonomy. Young Margaret appeared to have in her life the building blocks conducive to healthy development (Harrington, 1993).

GETTING TO KNOW THE WORLD The family’s move in 1911 to a large metropolitan area, which included the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, changed the context of Margaret’s life forever. At home in Minneapolis, the young family found cultural, economic, religious, and educational resources similar to those of other thriving American metropolitan centers at that time. The Twin Cities also boasted an efficient transportation system of streetcars, a precursor to contemporary light rail, which enabled people to move quickly and easily throughout the metropolitan area during a time when automobiles were rare. This expanded milieu changed the world of

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experience for Margaret and her family because they were able to take advantage of the cities’ many resources. When the time came for Margaret to enter school, she was enrolled at Emerson Elementary School in south Minneapolis. School records (Minneapolis Public Schools, 2004) show that she readily mastered the cognitive tasks important in her place in time. During elementary school, she was accelerated a full year, which made her a year younger than most of her classmates. However, during the early school years, young Margaret also experienced discord at home (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). Her parents, who seemed temperamentally unsuited to each other, clashed on various matters, such as Emil Walters’ claim that his family was much better than Anna Walters’ family. After a period of parental separation, during which Margaret’s father served in World War I, Margaret’s parents divorced in 1921, when Margaret was nearly 11 years old (Hennepin County Family Court Division, 2004). The young girl was at the cusp of early adolescence. Two poignant incidents that occurred shortly after her parents’ divorce attest to the anguish that Margaret experienced during a time when divorce and remarriage were generally taboo topics in American society. One evening after the divorce, when Margaret was supposedly asleep, the young girl heard her mother’s fiancé say that Margaret adored her mother. Her mother retorted by stating her own reservation about remarriage because of Margaret’s regard for her father. Her mother said, “Margaret would never let anyone supplant her father” (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). In another incident, young Margaret found herself within earshot of neighbors who raised the question, “What will ever become of Margaret?” (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). The neighbors’ remarks troubled the young girl (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). Consequently, Margaret turned at times to the safety of her inner world (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). Deep down, she feared that she, too, would cause hurt if she repeated her mother’s history. Margaret adored her mother in some respects, but she had a continuing love–hate relationship with her at that time (Wolkerstorfer, 1977).

GETTING TO LOVE THE WIDE WORLD OF PEOPLE AND OF GOD Approaching adolescence, Margaret’s social and geographic horizons widened. In Erikson’s (1950) terms, she began to face the challenge of establishing her identity and testing her trust through intimacy. In the meantime, her mother married the man that Margaret later concluded was a far better match for her mother than her own father was able to be

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(Wolkerstorfer, 1977). After Margaret’s first year at Central High School, a family move resulted in her transferring to West High School, a large, coeducational public high school, located in the heart of Minneapolis. There Margaret’s social life, an early challenge to intimacy, and her access to a larger geographic area grew as she became part of an adolescent crowd, whose activities became a priority for the young girl honing her skill in dealing with people in social situations. At the tender age of 14, Margaret began a close and steady relationship with a boy several years her senior, who had access to a car (CSJ Archives). Her first love escorted her to social gatherings with her peers. One of these events proved pivotal in Margaret’s life (M. L. O’Hara, personal communication, 2004). That event was her attendance at an unauthorized and unchaperoned weekend party with underage peers, at which liquor was served (during Prohibition). Subsequently, a school official at West High School who found out about the incident recommended to Margaret’s mother that she transfer her young daughter to another school “in order to save her” (CSJ Archives). After Margaret’s mother asked her daughter where she would like to go to school (CSJ Archives), the two decided upon Margaret’s transferring to St. Margaret’s Academy, a Catholic high school for girls. One reason Margaret favored St. Margaret’s was that she already had a friend who attended and liked the school. Another was that St. Margaret’s dismissed earlier than West. Going to the new school would enable her to arrive early to meet her friends from West High School at a favorite haunt in downtown Minneapolis (CSJ Archives). During her time at the new school, Margaret became a friend of some of the women religious who taught there. She also developed negotiating skill and social adroitness, qualities that enhanced her dealings with others for the rest of her life. An amusing interchange between Margaret and the school principal reveals her nascent negotiating skill (CSJ Archives). The principal called Margaret to her office to talk to her about observing that a boy in a car picked Margaret up daily after school. Margaret admitted that the observation was true, and then asked the principal, “Oh, would you like to meet him?” Then Margaret continued to converse with the principal about the advantages of having access to a car, a matter on which the two agreed. While she was at the academy, Margaret’s spiritual side, which was consistent with the identity she was gradually working out, was on the rise; it was to play a vital role in her becoming a dedicated woman. In keeping with her parents’ openness to exploring various religious and political viewpoints, Margaret began to go alone on Sundays to hear a noted and scholarly minister, Dr. Roy L. Smith, who preached with love and compassion to a packed house at Simpson Methodist Church in

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south Minneapolis (CSJ Archives; Smith, 1945, 1974). At that church, Margaret became acquainted with a young girl who, after each session, discussed with her the message of their much admired pastor (M. Diehl, personal communication, 2004). Pastor Smith, who was known not only for his many scholarly contributions, but also for his ecumenical efforts to promote human solidarity throughout the world, stirred Margaret to find a worthwhile life path that she could follow, with God’s help. She sought the pastor’s help because she considered him a model of someone who lived a remarkable life. At that time, Margaret viewed herself, however, as a “marked woman,” destined, if she did nothing to change it, to repeat the pattern of her mother’s life (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). Meeting Dr. Smith, therefore, provided a stepping stone to Margaret’s future dream, “to make the universe a home.” He also exemplified for Margaret, while she was still in her teens, the verve and track record of a prodigious scholar and pioneer of ecumenism. Shortly after her senior year in high school, but before she started college, Margaret became a convert to Catholicism (CSJ Archives). Choosing her religion had been in the making throughout her early life because her parents had encouraged independent thinking. Although Margaret realized that she had good friends among the Catholic women religious who served at St. Margaret’s, she attributed her becoming a Catholic primarily to “the grace of God.” Intending to become a physician, Margaret attended the College of St. Catherine. During her first year in college, she took mostly liberal arts courses (The College of St. Catherine, Office of the Registrar, 2004). One of these turned out to be a critical course that from the evidence in her transcript appears to have been advanced rhetoric. The teacher of the pivotal course inspired Margaret to develop a habit of reading widely and regularly (CSJ Archives). During her sophomore year, Margaret grappled with a “wrenching” (Wolkerstorfer, 1977) conflict: whether to continue her steady relationship with the man she loved or to become a woman religious. The options were mutually exclusive. After making a retreat, Margaret answered “yes” to what she believed was God’s invitation to her: to become a woman religious, a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJ Archives). She determined that dedicating her life to God would find expression in service that would flow out to the world and its people. Her dream “to make the universe a home” was taking shape, and she informed the man she loved of her decision. It appeared that Margaret’s boyfriend did not really believe that she would enter a convent (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). He pled with her, saying that he would never find anyone else who would measure up to her. In a surprising move, shortly before Margaret was to leave for the convent

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(D. Walters, personal communication, 2004), her boyfriend appeared one day at Margaret’s home. Still somewhat conflicted over her decision, Margaret drove with him to Wisconsin. In hot pursuit, Margaret’s brother, Harold, followed. After he overtook the couple, he retrieved his sister and brought her home (D. Walters, personal communication, 2004). Margaret entered the convent in February 1929, intent on devoting her life to God and to God’s work, even though “breaking up” forever with someone dear was alien to her character. Throughout the ensuing years, the young woman religious, who took as her religious name a form of her mother’s name, Anna, continued to pray for the man she never stopped loving. He became a successful businessman and a well-known golfing professional, who eventually married at the age of 35 (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). Thirty years later, Sister Annette almost saw once more the man who had been so important during her early years. The wife of her early love called her and told her that she and her husband had watched Sister Annette’s televised series. Later, they went to see Sister Annette one Sunday but were turned away by the receptionist because that day had been designated as a special time for prayer. After Sister Annette was told about her callers, she retreated to her stark room in the science building at St. Catherine’s, which doubled as her office and living quarters. Realizing that she was now 50 years old, and feeling the pain of years bygone, she “cried and cried and cried” (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). She never again was to see the man she left behind when she was 19.

SISTER ANNETTE’S EARLY YEARS AS A DEDICATED WOMAN Throughout her years as a young adult, Sister Annette appeared to be led by insights of the sort that Lerner (1993) considered “not a product of rational thought” but of “individual inspiration and sudden revelatory insight” (p. 66). Sister Annette continually sought a deeper relationship with God (M. L. O’Hara, personal communication, 2004), whom she believed guided the almost dizzying range of projects that she undertook. From the beginning of early adulthood, Sister Annette was determined to follow a dedicated, goal-directed path toward what she believed to be God’s will for her. She held herself alone responsible for following her chosen goal. External circumstances or luck, as she saw it, would not determine her life course (Buhler & Massarik, 1968, p. 2). During early adulthood, the dedicated and temperamentally energetic Sister Annette seemed to lead a charmed life, replete with significant mentors who valued her highly, enjoyed her company, and provided her with

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timely opportunities to grow as she prepared for her life of service and scholarship. The earliest of these mentors was Mother Antonia McHugh, the first President of the College of St. Catherine. Mother Antonia, who had known the young woman from the time Sister Annette was a college student, encouraged her protégée, telling her “that the future of the Church depended upon her” (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). Mother Antonia arranged for Sister Annette to begin her graduate studies at the University of Minnesota in 1933, telling her that she wanted her to return eventually as a faculty member at St. Catherine’s. Sister Annette also accompanied Mother Antonia, a highly regarded Midwestern leader in higher education, to meetings that helped hone the younger woman’s expertise, especially in the liberal arts, at the collegiate level. Even as a 27-year-old PhD candidate in psychology and part-time teacher at St. Catherine’s, Sister Annette led her college’s faculty delegation at a select University of Chicago workshop for about 20 liberal arts institutions of higher learning (Ryan & Wolkerstorfer, 1992). There Sister Annette became acquainted with some of the nation’s leading educators of that time while she deepened her understanding of the liberal arts, acquiring expertise that she later shared with others on the regional, national, and international scenes. As a graduate student at the University of Minnesota during the 1930s, Sister Annette found other significant mentors who later became her friends. The first of these was Professor Alvin Eurich, her master’s degree adviser, who worked with Sister Annette as she launched her professional career. She kept in touch with Eurich after he moved on to head the Ford Foundation. In the late 1950s, Eurich supported a proposal that she presented to the foundation, which provided financial support for her televised “The First Course in Psychology.” Richard Elliott, chair of the psychology department at the University of Minnesota, also became Sister Annette’s teacher, friend, and mentor (CSC Archives, 2004). After he became editor of the prestigious Century Psychology Series, Elliott invited Sister Annette to develop and submit an introductory book in scientific psychology for that series, with a target audience of students in Catholic colleges and universities. This book, Persons and Personality (Walters & O’Hara, 1953), written with her philosopher collaborator, Sister Kevin (Mary L.) O’Hara, became very successful. Without compromising the foundations of scientific psychology, Persons and Personality focused primarily on the individual throughout the life span. It dealt with the areas that general psychology books include, but it did so with the individual in mind as he or she develops throughout the life span. The book also integrated insights from related fields, including literature, sociology, and philosophy. The design of Persons and Personality was influenced by Sister Annette’s contact with two illustrious e´ migré psychologists, Karl and

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¨ Charlotte Buhler, who taught at the then College of St. Thomas and at the College of St. Catherine, respectively, just as Sister Annette was finishing her doctoral studies (c. 1940). Human development throughout ¨ the life span was a forte of Charlotte Buhler, and Sister Annette adopted a developmental approach in her unusual book for the first course in ¨ psychology. Karl Buhler confirmed Sister Annette’s belief that something more than behavioral evidence, that is, experiential data, was needed in scientific psychology. Sister Annette liked, admired, and conferred with these senior colleagues, who for a short time helped solidify and direct her developing scholarly skills. It may be surprising to know that Sister Annette, a devout Catholic, had a close relationship as friend and professional with the behaviorist, B. F. Skinner, an agnostic, and one of the most prominent 20th -century psychologists. He made reference to her in some of his books (Skinner, 1978, p. 208; Skinner, 1983, pp. 371–372). At least during the last 20 years of her life, Sister Annette affectionately called Skinner “Brother Fred” (CSJ Archives). Their friendship, which began when Sister Annette was one of Skinner’s graduate students, continued for more than 40 years. Her friendship with Skinner was a reflection of her openness to a variety of ideas and of her regard for individuals who came into her life. It also reflected Skinner’s warmth and openness to someone whose background differed greatly from his. The two friends and colleagues differed considerably on some matters, for instance, on religious beliefs, which Skinner envied but did not find in his own life. However, the ideals that they shared steadily strengthened their relationship. For example, they both hoped to improve the world as they worked in their own ways to provide psychological expertise that could improve life for all people. They also applauded and supported each other in their respective work and kept in touch by mail, telephone communications, and occasional personal meetings until the end of Sister Annette’s life. In a touching incident that occurred shortly after Sister Annette’s death, Skinner—following his visit to France with his wife Eve—wrote that he lit a candle at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in memory of Sister Annette (SJ Archives).

SISTER ANNETTE’S GENERATIVE MIDDLE ADULT YEARS DURING WHICH MAJOR STORMS OCCURRED During middle age, Sister Annette’s regard for the next generation became especially strong. One generation of her students during the 1940s referred to her when she was out of earshot as “the Great Doctor” (D. Claesgens, personal communication, 2005). The title fit Sister Annette well. She knew

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and understood her field thoroughly and kept up with current work in her own and related fields. As a teacher, Sister Annette gave her students opportunities to work independently, required them to do their best work, encouraged them, and showed compassion for them when that quality was needed. One of her former students, who later became a junior colleague, likened Sister Annette to a Montessori teacher, who put out materials but expected wellprepared students to exercise initiative in using them (B. Biales, personal communication, 2004). Sister Annette was a master at encouraging her students. She made each student believe that world progress depended on her own efforts. She was also with her students in their sorrows and struggles (D. Claesgens, personal communication, 2005). In 1960, after years of working alongside other gifted religious sisters to improve the education of women religious in the United States and Central and South America, Sister Annette was summoned to Washington, DC, to serve in the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) as executive secretary of the Sister Formation Conference. During this period, Sister Annette’s dream “to make the universe a home” expanded as she lectured and served as consultant not only in North America, but also in Central America, South America, and Europe (D. Claesgens, personal communication, 2005). Her travels to Central and South America during the presidency of John F. Kennedy involved some potentially dangerous diplomatic work (D. Claesgens, personal communication, 2005). Because of the danger, she learned sharp shooting and carried a pistol with her. Sister Annette’s travels to Rome, especially during the Second Vatican Council (D. Walters, personal communication, 2004), put her in touch with other people who shared her dream and also with those who did not. Sister Annette left her post in the Sister Formation Conference in 1964 (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). The full story behind Sister Annette’s departure from her high-level position in Washington, DC, deserves more than this brief account of her experience and personal development as a woman of vision will allow. In summary, Sister Annette believed that one or more high-ranking and powerful churchmen had struck terror regarding her professional activities in the minds of her national and local superiors (Wolkerstorfer, 1977), that is, the people who had the final authority over her “mission,” including her place and kind of work. According to Sister Annette, the two superiors whom she viewed as upstanding but “terrified” people, who were free of self-interest in the matter (Wolkerstorfer, 1977), contacted her during a period in which patriarchy was strong at some echelons of the Catholic Church, and some Catholic lay people also were at odds on some Churchrelated matters. The major superior requested that Sister Annette not ask her questions. Then she asked Sister Annette to resign from her post as

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executive director of the Sister Formation Conference and from her office as vice president of the Religious Education Association of the United States and Canada. The superior also asked her to stop giving speeches during the crucial time of the Second Vatican Council (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). Sister Annette again appeared to be a “marked woman,” although in a context strikingly different from her years as a young girl. In 1964, the Sister Formation Conference was removed from the NCEA and became, albeit temporarily, a committee of a different organization, The Conference of Major Superiors of Women Religious. (J. Mock, personal communication, September 2004; Wolkerstorfer, 1977). Sister Annette returned to her home base, the College of St. Catherine, with job offers in the wings but amid unfounded rumors that she was leaving the sisterhood and was personally unstable (SJ Archives). As was the custom in religious congregations of that time, at least two invitations for Sister Annette’s service reached her major superior. One job offer asked approval to send Sister Annette to Belgium, where she would work with one of the most prominent leaders at the Second Vatican Council, Cardinal Suenens. Another invitation, from the head of the NCEA, asked for approval of Sister Annette’s continuing her creative work in Washington, DC, as a staff member there. Sister Annette’s superior declined both offers (Wolkerstorfer, 1977). Understandably, the next 2 years were difficult for Sister Annette, who had made a perpetual vow of obedience, but her spirit did not sag. The impact of Sister Annette’s creative work, which had reached Latin America and Europe and which made some consider her the most influential woman religious in the world (Skinner, 1964), came at a stiff personal price. Like other intellectuals, such as her contemporary, the Jesuit paleontologist and evolutionist, Teilhard de Chardin, who in his lifetime was forbidden to publish his works, and historical figures such as Galileo and Joan of Arc, Sister Annette encountered suspicion, envy, and disdain while storms continued to rage in her life. Controversy followed her throughout her last years. Characteristically, Sister Annette did not let disappointment, misunderstanding, or “character assassination” through rumors (Wolkerstorfer, 1977) deflect her from her life goal after she left her post at the NCEA. Instead, in response to her superior’s permission to accept an invitation to St. Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa, to oversee that college’s new department of psychology, she rejoined her longtime friend and collaborator, Sister Ritamary Bradley (SCC) for the last 12 years of her “very stormy but happy life” (Colonnese, 1978). Together Sister Annette and Sister Ritamary “fished from the other side of the boat,” teaching male and female students. Whenever they could not do what they had hoped to do, they adopted another related goal. They were especially grateful

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for the opportunity to teach future Catholic priests (M. L. O’Hara, personal communication, 2004). Sister Annette and Sister Ritamary worked on various initiatives to bring about justice and to foster peace (e.g., by promoting the establishment of just housing codes in Davenport, Iowa) (CSJ Archives). They were personally involved in peace efforts, such as those that took place outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where they experienced the effects of mace (SJ Archives). Those of us who were friends of Sister Annette during her adult years believe we have detected deeper foundations for her personal resilience than accounts of her childhood and adolescence indicate. Her public image as an attractive, affable, and creative force for positive change was not the whole of Sister Annette. She often described herself, in terms that some typologists might use, as a “thinking introvert.” In keeping with the spirit of solitude, Sister Annette read widely, from architecture to history to philosophy to the arts and literature. She enjoyed music and sometimes played the piano. She also did wood carving, a meditative activity. Above all, she continually sought to deepen her relationship with God (M. L. O’Hara, personal communication, 2004). For her, faith, the substance of things to be hoped for, was the source and the power behind her life’s aim. Faith led her to find personal depth through prayer. Her prayers were not simply vertical in the sense of a relationship to God. She included in her prayers her broad concerns for people throughout the world. Sister Annette took prayer seriously and devoted several hours to it every day. People who knew Sister Annette only as an intellectual may be surprised to know about her favorite ways of praying. She loved the rosary, a Catholic devotion that involves fingering beads while repeating words of prayer. For Sister Annette, praying the rosary, with its mantralike repetition of words of prayer, served as a backdrop for contemplating the life of Christ, whom she had taken as a model for her own. The rosary, together with the psalms, seemed to fortify her to face and formulate the projects she undertook “to make the universe a home.” Sister Annette seemed always to be working on several projects simultaneously. She valued time and experienced a sense of urgency to accomplish as much as she possibly could. Close to the time of her death, for instance, she was championing the cause of academic women who faced age and gender discrimination; developing an educational program for women in prison; and writing a book left unfinished, called The Psychology of Conscience and Moral Development (Walters, 1977). A few months before her death, she served as an elected delegate from the state of Iowa to the Women’s Year International Congress held in Texas in 1977 (CSJ Archives). Sister Annette was characteristically in the middle of things when she died in the aftermath of surgery on February 22, 1978. In a surge

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of memory, I recall her quick step, her enthusiastic spirit, and her lively striving to bring about a better world. Shortly after her death, I received a missive from one of her collaborators and admired male friends, Andre Godin, SJ, a renowned Belgian psychologist. He inscribed for me a recent book that he had written. The inscription wonders if Sister Annette is still “stirring us up” (A. Godin, SJ, personal communication, 1978). It would certainly be like her to challenge her friends and colleagues to advance her unfinished dream “to make the universe a home.” REFERENCES ¨ Buhler, C., & Massarik, F. (Eds.). (1968). The course of human life: A study of goals in the humanistic perspective. New York: Springer. College of St. Catherine, Office of the Registrar. (2004). College Transcript for Margaret Walters (Sister Annette Walters). College of St. Catherine, CSC Archives. (2004). St. Catherine Library. Available from Margery Smith, CSJ, Archivist, 2004 Randolph Ave., St. Paul, MN, 55105. Colonnese, L. M. (1978). Letter in Archives of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJ Archives), St. Paul Province, St. Paul, MN. Available from Mary Kraft, CSJ, Archivist, 1880 Randolph Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105. Erikson, E. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: Norton. Harrington, D. M. (1993). Child-rearing antecedents of suboptimal personality development: Exploring aspects of Alice Miller’s concept of the poisonous pedagogy. In D. C. Funder, R. D. Parke, C. A. Tomlinson-Keasey, & K. Widaman (Eds.), Studying lives through time: Personality and development (pp. 294–295). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Hennepin County Family Court Division. (2004). Court records. Available from Family Justice Center, 110 S. Fourth St., Suite 600 Minneapolis, MN 55401– 2279. Lerner, G. (1993). The creation of feminist consciousness: From the Middle Ages to eighteen-seventy. New York: Oxford University Press. Minneapolis Public Schools. (2004). School records. Available from Office of Records, 807 Broadway St., N.E., Minneapolis, MN 55413. Newman, J. H. (1959). The idea of a university. Garden City, NY: Image Books. Nuns for the 21st century. (1964, July 17). Time, 43. O’Hara, M. L. (1978). Remarks at funeral of Sister Annette Walters in Archives of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJ Archives), St. Paul Province, St. Paul, MN. Available from Mary Kraft, CSJ, Archivist, 1880 Randolph Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105. Riesman, D. (1950). The lonely crowd. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ryan, R., & Wolkerstorfer, J. C. (1992). More than a dream: Eighty-five years at the College of St. Catherine. St. Paul, MN: The College of St. Catherine. Sellew, G., Walters, A., & Harvey, A. (1948). The nursing of children. Philadelphia: Saunders.

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Skinner, B. F. (1964, 1978). Letter in Archives of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJ Archives), St. Paul Province. Available from Mary Kraft, CSJ, Archivist, 1880 Randolph Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105. Skinner, B. F. (1979). The shaping of a behaviorist: Part two of an autobiography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Skinner, B. F. (1983). A matter of consequences: Part three of an autobiography. New York: Knopf. Smith, R. L. (1945). In C. T. Howell (Ed.), Prominent personalities in American Methodism (Vol. 1, pp. 338–339). Birmingham, AL: Lowry Press. Smith, R. L. (1974). In N. B. Harmon (Ed.), The encyclopedia of world Methodism (Vol. 2, p. 2186). Nashville, TN: United Methodist Publishing House. Walters, A. (1962). Commencement Address at the College of St. Catherine in Archives of the College of St. Catherine (SC Archives), St. Catherine Library. Available from Margery Smith, CSJ, Archivist, 2004 Randolph Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105. Walters, A. (1963). Readings in psychology. Westminster, MD: Newman Press. Walters, A. (1966). Religious in the Constitution on the Church. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Walters, A. (1970). Prayer—Who needs it? Camden, NJ: Thomas Nelson. Walters, A. (1977). The psychology of conscience and moral development. Unpublished manuscript, Archives of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJ Archives), St. Paul Province. Available from Mary Kraft, CSJ, Archivist, 1880 Randolph Ave., St. Paul, MN, 55105. Walters, A., & Eurich, A. C. (1936). A quantitative study of the major interests of college students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 27(8), 561–571. Walters, A., & O’Hara, K. (1953). Persons and personality. New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts. Wolkerstorfer, J. C. (1977). Interview of Sister Annette Walters in Archives of the College of St. Catherine (SC Archives), St. Catherine Library. Available from Margery Smith, CSJ, Archivist, 2004 Randolph Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105.

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January 24, 2007

C H A P T E R

E L E V E N

Evelyn Gentry Hooker The “Hopelessly Heterosexual” Psychologist Who Normalized Homosexuality Joanne Quarfoth Floyd and Lynda Anne Szymanski

From Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker by Richard Schmiechen. Courtesy of Frameline. 177

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Mounted on the wall of Evelyn Hooker’s study was a plaque that read: The Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists Honors Dr. Evelyn Hooker In recognition of her pioneering research, Courageous advocacy, And enduring friendship May 16, 1990 In the 1950s, when homosexuality was considered psychologically deviant, morally reprehensible, and subject to criminal prosecution, Evelyn Gentry Hooker conducted pioneering research on a nonclinical sample of gay men. In her carefully controlled study, experts blind to the sexual orientation of the participants could not reliably distinguish between heterosexual and homosexual men from their responses on projective tests. In her research report, “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual,” Hooker (1957) made the radical suggestion that “[h]omosexuality as a clinical entity does not exist. Its forms are as varied as are those of heterosexuality” (p. 30). Hooker became recognized as a leading authority on the topic of sexual orientation. In 1967, she was appointed by the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to head the Task Force on Homosexuality. The report of the task force, submitted in 1969, called for the repeal of sodomy laws and for better training for mental health professionals around issues relating to human sexuality. Along with researchers such as Alfred Kinsey, Hooker was instrumental in validating human sexuality as a legitimate field of research. It was Hooker’s research that provided both the impetus and the empirical rationale for the decision of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to remove homosexuality from its categorization as a sexual deviation in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973. Judd Marmor, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who later became president of the APA, was one of the driving forces behind the movement to “depathologize” homosexuality. He maintained that Hooker’s research “was the reference point we always went back to” in the association’s deliberations (Shenitz, 1990, p. 20). In reading the testimonials written about Hooker before and after her death, it is clear that she had a profound impact on the lives of many marginalized gays and lesbians by affirming their value as humans. In an interview with Hooker published in the New York Times, Shenitz (1990) reported that Hooker was touched by the number of people who would come up to her at meetings or conferences or gay rights parades to thank her for changing their lives and their perspectives. Shenitz quoted Hooker

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as saying: “One of the great joys of my life is that I was able to do something for the ordinary man and woman. I’m gratified that my work had an effect on the APA, but what really brings joy to my heart is that somehow it reached those people I wanted it to reach” (Hooker, cited in Shenitz, 1990, p. 20).

DEVELOPMENTAL CATALYSTS In 1953, Evelyn Hooker applied to the newly established NIMH for a research grant to study the adjustment of noninstitutionalized homosexuals. What led Hooker, then a 46-year-old psychology teacher at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who was wont to describe herself as “hopelessly heterosexual,” to undertake such a controversial project in the midst of a McCarthy-era climate that discouraged intellectual freedom? One factor is the experiences in childhood and young adulthood that sensitized her to the struggles of the disadvantaged and the marginalized. Evelyn Gentry was born on September 2, 1907, in North Platte, Nebraska. Her parents were poor farmers who moved from state to state in the Midwest with Evelyn and her eight brothers and sisters while they tried to eke out a living. When Evelyn was 12, her mother insisted that the family move to Sterling, Colorado, the county seat, so Evelyn could attend high school there. The children had only attended one-room schoolhouses in remote rural areas until that time. The transition to high school was a difficult one for Hooker, partly because the contrast between the poverty of her family and the relative affluence of some of her classmates became so apparent and partly because she was a gawky, almost 6-foot-tall teenager who literally “stood out” as different from her peers. In the documentary Changing Our Minds: The Story of Evelyn Hooker (Haugland & Schmiechen, 1992), Hooker states: “Growing up for me was a very painful process. We were very much aware that we lived on the other side of the railroad tracks.” Hooker also experienced the inequality of being judged on the basis of her gender. Although Hooker attained a high level of education for a woman of her time, she also experienced sexual discrimination. A stereotypic belief at the time was that women were intellectually inferior to men and could not handle the academic rigor of doctoral-level programs. Hooker fell prey to this misconception when she wanted to apply to the doctoral program at Yale after receiving her MA in psychology at the University of Colorado. The chairman of the psychology department, a Yale PhD himself, told her that he simply could not recommend a female student for the university’s doctoral program. Hooker went on to receive

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her PhD at The Johns Hopkins University, completing her dissertation on discrimination training in rats. It was also commonly believed that women who did succeed in maledominated professions were unfeminine, overly abrasive, and unlikable. In 1939, Dr. Dunlop, the chair of the psychology department at UCLA, refused Hooker a position on the faculty because of her gender. “He informed me that he could not hire a woman because there were two women on his staff who were so hated that there was no possibility of hiring another” (E. Hooker, personal communication, March 5, 1994). Dr. Dunlop did direct Hooker to apply to the extension division, where she ended up teaching for many years. It was there that she met Sam From, a student who would dramatically influence the path of her career and her life. The gender discrimination Hooker experienced had an impact on the path of her career. Had she not been at the extension division of UCLA, she might not have had the opportunity to conduct the type of research she did. In fact, she once said, “Had the turn of events been different, and I had been appointed to the position in the Psychology Department [rather than the extension division], you would probably never have heard of me” (E. Hooker, personal communication, March 5, 1994). Her appointment at the extension division allowed her to get to know her students, including Sam From, quite well and their influence on her, and on her research, was profound. A group of undergraduates at a women’s college once wrote Hooker to ask her how being a woman affected her career. Hooker replied: “While being a woman did affect my career in what I thought at the time was (a) negative (way), as it turned out, the lasting effect on my career was very positive” (E. Hooker, personal communication, March 5, 1994). Another experience that attuned Hooker to the importance of advocating against social injustice was the year that she spent in Nazi Germany and Russia during 1937 and 1938. Hooker received a fellowship to attend the Institute of Psychotherapy in Berlin. While there, she lived with a Jewish family, where she became sensitized to the terror with which they lived and to the awful power that Hitler wielded in the lives of German citizens. Hooker tells the heartbreaking story of overhearing one of the children in the family begging her parents to let her become a Protestant. “I can’t imagine a more difficult thing to explain to a child than why you can’t stop being Jewish” (Haugland & Schmiechen, 1992). She also took a tour of Russia during her year abroad and witnessed the effects of the Great Purge in the Soviet Union, when hundreds of thousands of people were arrested, sent to labor camps, and/or executed because of opposition to the Communist Party in power. “The year in the two totalitarian states intensified a very deep concern, present from childhood, to find a means of making her life count in helping to correct social injustice” (“Award for Distinguished Contribution,” 1992, p. 503).

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What other factors helped Evelyn Hooker become a woman whose actions changed the course of the field of psychology? Hooker was blessed by the influence of strong mentors and caring friends in her life. Her mother was an intelligent and determined woman who repeatedly voiced one message to Evelyn: “Get an education and they can never take it away from you” (“Award for Distinguished Contribution,” 1992, p. 502). Hooker was fortunate to attend Sterling High School, a school that had a high proportion of teachers with master’s degrees. Hooker had intended to apply to a teacher’s college, but her high school instructors recognized her potential and convinced her to set higher goals. She received a tuition scholarship at the University of Colorado, where she became interested in studying psychology. There she took a course in comparative psychology from Dr. Karl Muenzinger, who became her mentor and lifelong friend. After receiving her MA under Muenzinger’s guidance, Hooker was offered a position teaching at the University of Colorado at Boulder. It was Muenzinger who persuaded her that she should turn down this position and pursue a doctoral degree in psychology. Hooker (1992) also identified Philip Sapir, chief of NIMH extramural grants while Hooker was receiving funding from them, as having a profound influence on her research. She noted that without his encouragement, she probably would not have continued to conduct research on homosexuality. Hooker appreciated her mentors and noted that, beginning in high school, she was blessed with “marvelous teachers who were incredibly helpful” (E. Hooker, personal communication, March 5, 1994). Thus, Hooker’s mentors were instrumental in setting her on the path that eventually led to her research pursuits. It became evident in reading about Hooker that she inspired love and caring in the people around her. When she contracted tuberculosis in 1934, it was friends who paid for her 2-year stay at a sanitarium in California. This encounter with serious physical illness became a kind of spiritual turning point in her life. “What I learned was that I was not absolutely indomitable. I could be struck down by one physical ailment or another—and I have been—but I had enormous powers of recovery” (Haugland & Schmiechen, 1992). On her return from California, she spent a year teaching at Whittier College and then received an anonymous fellowship to study in Europe from 1937 to 1938. This fellowship stands as another example of the faith placed in Hooker by the people who knew her: Clearly, someone wanted her to further her studies, this time in the field of clinical psychology. It is also likely that Hooker’s sense of humor was part of her appeal to others. Hooker was bright and quick witted. For example, when describing the refusal of the chairman of the University of Colorado’s psychology department to recommend her to Yale for her doctoral work because of her gender, she once stated, “He himself was

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from Yale and he had studied why raccoons wash their food. I think the only thing he discovered was—to get it clean” (Haugland & Schmiechen, 1992). Her laugh was infectious, and those close to her often described her warmth and humor. A final developmental catalyst involved Hooker’s serendipitous meeting with Sam From, a young gay man who took an introductory-level psychology class from Hooker in night school. Had From taken the class from another professor, Hooker’s life might have taken a different course. Hooker was quite impressed with From, and he was equally inspired by Hooker. “It quickly became clear that Sam From was very bright,” she recalls. For his part, From went away from the first session of Hooker’s class and told friends that his new teacher was “another Eleanor Roosevelt”—a woman of high ideals who spoke her mind. The two became friendly when From offered his professor a ride home after class (Shenitz, 1990, p. 20) Hooker and her first husband, Don Caldwell, became friends with From and his lover after the class ended. From introduced them to a group of gay friends that included philosophers, poets, and engineers. The two couples even went on a Thanksgiving vacation to San Francisco together, attending a drag show at the Finnocchio Club. After the show, they returned to the Fairmont Hotel for coffee. In the documentary, Hooker reports that From told her, “Now, Evelyn, it is your scientific duty to study people like us. We have let you see us as we really are” (Haugland & Schmiechen, 1992). Hooker was initially resistant to the idea, arguing that she could not be objective about friends. From would not let the subject drop and eventually convinced her to discuss the proposed research study with Bruno Klopfer, a colleague with whom Hooker shared an office. Klopfer, an expert on the Rorschach test, reportedly told Hooker: “No, he’s right. We don’t know anything about men like him. And he’s absolutely right that we should” (Haugland & Schmiechen, 1992).

HOOKER’S RESEARCH STUDY With From’s encouragement, Hooker began her investigation of nonpathological gay men. Initially, she administered projective tests to gay men referred to her by From (Shenitz, 1990). While conducting this initial research, Hooker and her first husband divorced. Hooker went to teach at Bryn Mawr for 1 year and did not return to her research program for 6 years. Little seems to be known about this period of her life. Upon her return to UCLA and subsequent marriage to Edward Hooker, she had a renewed interest in completing her research. At a time

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when McCarthyism was still a force in American society, Hooker applied for a grant in 1953 from the NIMH to study high-functioning homosexual men. Her application to NIMH was viewed with suspicion (in fact, NIMH sent a representative to visit with Hooker for a day), and she was uncertain if she would get the grant. To her surprise, it was awarded to her; Hooker stated, “Had I been anyone other than what I was—a heterosexual, married woman—they would not have given me the grant” (E. Hooker, personal communication, March 5, 1994). NIMH continued to fund her research until 1970. Hooker’s focus on homosexuality was unique because of the Zeitgeist of the 1950s. The original DSM (1952) and the DSM-II (1968) included homosexuality as a pathological mental illness. During this time, homosexual acts were considered to be criminal, and the consequences following arrest were severe. Psychoanalytic theory was the dominant theory used to explain the origins of homosexuality; it was widely believed that gay men had cold, indifferent fathers and overprotective, overbearing mothers (Kutchins & Kirk, 1997). The standard clinical recommendations included extensive psychoanalysis to uncover unconscious conflicts; once these conflicts became conscious, it was believed the person would be “cured” and attracted to members of the opposite gender. Even though the Kinsey report in 1947 suggested that the prevalence of homosexuality was greater than believed, its deviant nature and treatment goal of “making the homosexual become heterosexual” had not been questioned or challenged (Kutchins & Kirk, 1997). Hooker faced obstacles during every step of her project. When she initially proposed it, NIMH encouraged her to recruit a psychiatrist to serve as a consultant. The first psychiatrist she approached said, “There is no such person,” when she told him she planned to study normal gay men. Fortunately, the second psychiatrist, Frederic Worden, was more open minded and said, “I have never seen such persons but I sure would like to” (Hooker, 1992). These challenges, and Hooker’s resolution to continue to pursue this area, speak to her utter determination and her ability to draw people into the project despite the overwhelming stigmatization of homosexuality during this time. In addition to the remarkable challenge of attempting to study welladjusted gay men during a time when most denied their existence, there were obstacles involved in recruiting participants. First, she had to convince gay men to participate in the study. To accomplish this, she had to instill trust in them that she would absolutely maintain their confidentiality. University officials wanted Hooker to conduct her research on campus, but she insisted on doing it at her home. She remarked that she would not have attempted this research had she not had the luxury of living on a “very spacious estate of an acre of ground with a garden study

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separate from the house” (Hooker, 1992). As part of Hooker’s devotion to maintaining confidentiality, she felt obligated to work alone. In her words, One of my objectives was to understand each life as fully as possible, and thus to keep all of the personally identifying data for each man. This meant, in my opinion, that it would be impossible to share this highly confidential material with a co-worker. Building confidentiality with the gay community at that time was not an easy task. (Hooker, 1992)

Working in isolation was difficult for Hooker, a generally social, outgoing individual. She stated, “Without a colleague with whom to share the sympathetic knowledge of human suffering, sometimes one’s own vicarious suffering becomes almost unbearable” (Hooker, 1992). She especially had a difficult time coping after the death of her second husband. Recruiting the heterosexual men to serve as matched comparisons was also a great challenge. Hooker knew that no one would volunteer to participate in research investigating homosexuality. Her strategy, therefore, was to tell them only that she was investigating normal men, omitting anything about homosexuality, until they arrived to participate in the study. Then, she told them the true nature of the study and directly asked them if they “had any homosexual inclinations or experience” (Hooker, 1957, p. 20). Hooker stated that she did not include participants who “seemed to be severely disturbed by the question, or responded in a bland way, or denied it vehemently” (p. 20). Given the context of this period, it is quite remarkable that she was able to find 30 heterosexual participants who agreed to be part of the study. Clearly, she must have been very effective at establishing rapport! The methodology Hooker employed reflected her careful efforts to employ the best assessment tools (i.e., projective tests), methodology, and statistics of the time. She made every effort to use sound methodological principles and provided detailed explanations of her strategies. For example, she recruited experts in interpretation of the Rorschach, Thematic Apperception Test, and Make-A-Picture-Story Test to serve as judges and explained that she could not keep them blind to the purpose of the study because it was so well known in the Los Angeles community. She also took great pains to match the homosexual and heterosexual samples in relation to age, education, and IQ score. When she provided the information to the expert judges, she removed all identifying data except age. She initially had the experts rate all 60 subjects (30 homosexual, 30 heterosexual) on a variety of factors (e.g., affection and dependency needs), and then provided them with matched pairs and asked them to identify the homosexual. Although there were some differences between the judges’ ratings, they both judged approximately one half of the homosexual sample as either superior or above average in their overall adjustment. When asked

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to identify the homosexual in the pair, neither judge performed better than chance. Perhaps even more informative was Hooker’s description of the judges’ experiences. For example, one judge said, “I can hardly speak intelligently of the dynamics of the homosexuality when, until the last moment, I thought of him as a heterosexual,” while another stated, “If you want proof that a homosexual can be normal, this record does it” (Hooker, 1957, p. 27). Hooker openly discussed the limitations of her research and was quite tentative in making conclusions. She was, however, somewhat reluctant to publish her initial data because she wanted to be confident that it would stand up to the criticism and scrutiny that she knew would ensue. The editor of the Journal of Projective Techniques, in which her work was eventually published had to persuade her to publish the article and included an editorial note in its original publication stating that if readers find her conclusions “premature or incompletely documented, the blame must fall on the editors who exercised considerable pressure on her to publish” (Hooker, 1957, p. 18). Although best known for her classic study demonstrating no measurable differences between heterosexual and homosexual men, Hooker published other research supporting the “normalization” of homosexuals. The focus of one article was the group behavior of homosexuals (Hooker, 1956). Hooker would not have been able to write such an informed paper without having intimate knowledge of the gay world. She also wrote articles describing an individual case study of a homosexual man, a paper challenging the common conceptualization that homosexuality is caused by disturbed parent–child relationships, and an analysis of projective tests and their utility in diagnosing homosexuality. In her report describing male homosexuality and the Rorschach, she concluded by stating that continued use of the Rorschach as a diagnostic tool would “perpetuate erroneous concepts and greatly delay our understanding of a problem which is at least as much ‘cultural’ as ‘clinical’” (Hooker, 1958, p. 53).

LATER YEARS Hooker’s research was well known and respected, and it paved the way for her active involvement in furthering society’s understanding of homosexuality. Her involvement in the NIMH Task Force on Homosexuality and her research findings were pivotal in removing homosexuality from the DSM. After retiring from teaching and research, Hooker continued her work as a psychotherapist for many years. Hooker received her diplomate in clinical psychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology in 1962 (Shneidman, 1998). For reasons of confidentiality, not much

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information is available on her clinical work. However, some have surmised that Hooker must have been a very effective clinician, given her warmth and ability to connect with others. For example, David Haugland, the producer of the documentary about Hooker’s life (Changing Our Minds), said, “People, whether gay or straight, seem to love her instantly. They want to emulate her qualities” (Foster, 1992, p. 1). Hooker also went out of her way to mentor and befriend younger professionals, especially those pioneering in the field of gay, lesbian, and bisexual psychology. Linda Garnets, a lesbian psychologist, became a member of Hooker’s “kitchen cabinet,” a group of women who regularly met with Hooker for afternoons of “lively conversation and good humor.” In an article coauthored with Douglas Kimmel, Garnets describes how she had brought her parents to meet Hooker and how the conversation had turned to a discussion about the origins of homosexuality. Hooker remarked that she believed homosexuality was genetic, at which point my father jumped up and exclaimed, “It’s not my fault!” When he realized the effect of what he had said, he confided to Hooker, “You know, I always wished that Linda was heterosexual, and I still do.” Now it was Hooker’s turn to jump out of her seat. She said, “Ira, how sad! Here you have a daughter who has done everything to make a parent happy. She has a loving, stable, long-term relationship; she’s successful in her work; and she has a happy and fulfilling life. What more could any parent want?” What Hooker did for me that day is what her research has done for all of us. (Kimmel & Garnets, 2003, p. 33)

Hooker’s work affected not only views of homosexuality, but also funding of research in this area. Wayne F. Placek, a homosexual man who had been a subject in Hooker’s classic 1957 study, bequeathed her $500,000, with the mandate that she take charge of deciding who should get funding to increase “the general public’s understanding of gay men and lesbians, and reduce the stress experienced by those people in this and future civilizations” (“The Wayne F. Placek Award,” n.d.). Although Hooker knew he was a participant in her study, she recalled nothing else about him except that he “hated being gay because of society’s treatment” (Hooker, 1992). The Placek Award was established in 1995 and is administered by the American Psychological Foundation. Projects that have been funded with this money remain true to the award’s purpose. For example, recipients of funding have investigated topics as varied as the impact of discriminatory beliefs/attitudes on job earnings; voters’ responses to homosexual candidates; drug use in the gay, lesbian, and bisexual population; the function of religion for gay individuals; and how homosexuals experience and cope with stressors related to heterosexism and homophobia (“The Wayne F. Placek Award,” n.d.).

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Evelyn Hooker’s work led to many well-deserved honors. Most notably, Hooker received the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Contribution in the Public Interest Award in 1991. Hooker expressed great pride in receiving this distinguished award. In typical generous form, she stated during her acceptance speech: I wish to share the award with the gay and lesbian community—whose achievements are equal to, if not greater than, my own. It pleased me enormously that my research and my long advocacy of a scientific view of homosexuality have not only contributed to the well-being of gay men and lesbian women, but have contributed to their extended families and to the general public as well (Hooker, 1992).

The University of Chicago also honored Hooker’s work and established the Evelyn Hooker Center for Gay and Lesbian Mental Health. Today, the center provides resources for students and training for mental health professionals on issues related to gay, lesbian, and bisexual physical and mental health (Shenitz, 1990). Hooker was also held in high esteem in the gay and lesbian community. She reported in several interviews how touched she was by the impact she had made on so many lives. As a testament to her position of honor and respect among gays and lesbians, she was the grand marshal at the 1986 annual Christopher Street West Parade in Los Angeles (Shenitz, 1990). Although her roles as researcher and advocate are most prominently mentioned in descriptions of Hooker’s life, it is clear that her role as teacher was closest to her heart. She said: “I love the whole process of teaching—arousing the interest of students, getting them to be excited. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing in the world like it. NOTHING!” (Haugland & Schmiechen, 1992). It is clear that Hooker had a gift for opening the minds of others that extended far beyond the students in her classrooms. She had an impact on the opinions of professionals in her field, of lawmakers in her country, and of the journalists who interviewed her. Evelyn Hooker is a woman who truly made a difference and who did so in part by inspiring fierce loyalty and love in others. She was 86 years old when she died on November 18, 1996. In an obituary published in American Psychologist, Edwin Shneidman (1998) wrote: All in all, Evelyn Hooker seemed favored by genes and fortune. In her full bloom, she was a strikingly handsome woman, with a wonderfully full voice and a prepossessing, room-filling laugh. She was packed with zeal, but was not a zealot; she was filled with laughter, but she was not a fool; she was beset with vicissitudes, but she was not a coward; she was a bear for Judeo-Christian morality, but she was not a prude. (p. 480)

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REFERENCES Award for distinguished contribution to psychology in the public interest: Evelyn Hooker. (1992, April). American Psychologist, 47(4), 501–503. Foster, R. D. (1992, September 10). A reluctant hero: The work of Dr. Evelyn Hooker [Electronic version]. Los Angeles Times Magazine, p. 1. Haugland, D. (Producer), & Schmiechen, R. (Director). (1992). Changing our minds: The story of Evelyn Hooker [Motion picture]. Available from Frameline Distribution, 145 Ninth Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, CA 94103. Hooker, E. (1956). A preliminary analysis of group behavior of homosexuals. Journal of Psychology, 42, 217–225. Hooker, E. (1957). The adjustment of the male overt homosexual. Journal of Projective Techniques, 21, 18–31. Hooker, E. (1958). Male homosexuality in the Rorschach. Journal of Projective Techniques, 2, 33–54. Hooker, E. (1992, August). Reflections of a 40-year exploration: A scientific view on homosexuality. Davis: University of California Davis. Retrieved September 25, 2006, from http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/ hooker address.html Kimmel, D. C., & Garnets, L. D. (2003). What a light it shed: The life of Evelyn Hooker. In L. D. Garnets & D. C. Kimmel (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on lesbian, gay, and bisexual experiences (pp. 31–49). New York: Columbia University Press. Kutchins, H., & Kirk, S. A. (1997). Making us crazy. New York: Free Press. Shneidman, E. S. (1998, April). Obituaries: Evelyn Hooker (1907–1996). American Psychologist, 53(4), 480–481. Shenitz, B. (1990, June 10). The grande dame of gay liberation: Evelyn Hooker’s friendship with a UCLA student spurred her to studies that changed the way psychiatrists view homosexuality [Electronic version]. Los Angeles Times Magazine, p. 20. The Wayne F. Placek Award. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2006, from http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/placek.html

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C H A P T E R

T W E L V E

Athlete of the Century “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias Lee Joyce Richmond

Reprinted with permission by The Babe Didrikson Zaharias Foundation. 189

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She was born on June 16, 1911, in Port Arthur, Texas—Mildred Ella Didrikson, the woman who 40 years later was named by the Associated Press as “the greatest female athlete of the first half of the twentieth century” (Freedman, 1999, p. 139). Her right to that title remains unchallenged to this day. Before she died, far too young, of colon cancer, “Babe,” as she was called and is still known by sportswriters and fans, had won two Olympic gold medals (javelin and hurdles) and one silver medal (high jump). This occurred even before she took up the sport for which she is most famous—golf. Prior to her Olympic victories, Babe had won six gold medals and broken four world records for basketball. An all-around athlete, Babe was also proficient in baseball, softball, swimming, diving, tennis, and bowling. She could punt a football 75 yards and, as rumor has it, she once struck out Joe DiMaggio. In her lifetime, Babe Didrikson Zaharias was the world’s champion female golfer. She won 82 golf tournaments, 10 major championships, and the U.S. Open three times. One of those times was after cancer surgery, when most people believed that she would never play again. These winnings occurred during an historical period when people believed that a woman’s place was in the home. Babe proved against the odds that a woman’s place was on the athletic field, or wherever else she might choose it to be, winning a place for women in sports for future generations. In medicine, Babe also made her mark. In her day, no one talked about having cancer. It was a dreaded and hidden disease. However, Babe spoke about her illness publicly, mentioning it by name. In so doing, she brought the feared disease—cancer—out of the darkness and into the light of day, so it could be openly studied by scientists and fought by physicians and patients alike. Of cancer, Babe wrote, “I believe the cancer problem should be out in the open. The more the public knows about it, the better” (Zaharias, 1955, p. 5). Only 14 weeks post colostomy, Babe was back in the game, playing tournament golf with the entire world watching. She made sure that those who were watching were aware of the nature of her illness and of her subsequent colostomy. She was determined to win golf championships just as before. Babe spent the last years of her life fighting illness. She made numerous public appearances for cancer groups. With her husband, George Zaharias, she set up the Babe Zaharias Cancer Research Fund in 1955. A courageous pioneer, whether in illness or sports, Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias struggled to break down social customs that confined all people, but especially women, to stereotype. Some sports enthusiasts and sportswriters claim that, male or female, Babe was the greatest athlete of all time. Ambitious, fully aware of her talent, and spunky to the point of being brash, it is unlikely that Babe

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would have denied this. However outspoken and, perhaps, egotistical, Babe was not selfish. She was known to have entered women’s locker rooms just before contesting and challenging the other players by asking a question about who is going to come in second. Before her death, however, Babe established the Babe Zaharias Trophy to honor other outstanding female athletes. Today, no one doubts that Babe was great. She is, in fact, a legend. With the help of a professional writer, Harry T. Paxton, she published her dictated autobiography, which was later made into a motion picture. According to Susan Cayleff (1996), Babe’s autobiography, This Life I’ve Led, is a conscious construction in which the author revealed only what she wanted to reveal so she would be viewed as she wished to be seen. Cayleff further theorized that Babe’s life was made to appear more heroic by Paxton, who greatly admired her. Although that might be true, the cancer that took her life served only to enhance her legacy. Since her death, many books have been written about her. All are evidence that Babe was born with natural gifts. Nevertheless, she became a leader through great effort, endurance, and discipline. Many writers portrayed Babe as selfconfident, egotistical, and arrogant, but at home, among relatives and friends, Babe was known as a person who was often fun to be around. She had a gift of laughter and a great sense of humor. In his book, The New Art of the Leader, Cohen (2002, p. 21) defined eight universal laws of leadership. Maintaining integrity, knowing your stuff, declaring your expectations, showing uncommon commitment, expecting positive results, taking care of your people, putting duty before self, and getting out in front, are, according to Cohen, what leaders do— Babe Didrikson Zaharias did every one. This chapter describes how she used these factors while becoming a world-recognized leader in sports and a larger-than-life hero.

THE EARLY YEARS Of her childhood, Babe wrote, “I had a wonderful childhood. That must prove that it doesn’t take money to be happy, because the Didriksons had to work and scrimp and save just to be able to feed and clothe us all” (Zaharias, 1955, p. 7). There were, in fact, seven Didrikson siblings born to Norwegian immigrant parents, Hannah Marie Olson Didrikson and Ole Didrikson. Ole had been a cabinet maker and a merchant seaman when he lived in Norway, where his three oldest children were born. Hannah was a housewife who had been a good skier and skater. Once, while on a sea voyage, Ole docked in Port Arthur and decided it would be a good place to live. He later brought his family to settle there, where Babe

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was born, the third among the four Didrikson children born in America. In Port Arthur, Ole found work as a furniture refinisher. However, on the $200 a month that he earned, there was little money to go around. In l915, a hurricane devastated Port Arthur. Soon after, the family moved to a house in Beaumont, Texas. Ole set up a gymnasium in the garage and backyard. An old broomstick with flat irons on either side served as a barbell and was the children’s weight lifting machine. He also built bars for jumping and a homemade trapeze swing. Because Ole had little money to give his children for entertainment, he decided to “build good bodies for them” (Zaharias, 1955, p. 7). As they grew, the children played neighborhood baseball and football, chased running trains, jumped on and off boxcars, and jumped hedges for fun. Babe earned for herself the name of neighborhood tomboy. Babe was not only physical in games, but she also used her body when doing her chores. She helped her mother scrub the wash taken in to earn money for the family. “I wore my knuckles down scrubbing on washboards,” she later said (Zaharias, 1955, p. 17). She also washed windows, which exercised her arms and elbows (Knudson, 1985), and she scrubbed floors. When scrubbing the porch, she tied brushes on her feet and “skated” through the suds. At times, Babe was “hired” by the local grocery to fill 5-pound sacks of flour and sugar. When she wanted a harmonica, she cut grass to earn the money to purchase it. When she got it, she spent hours practicing and learning to play it well (Zaharias, 1955, pp. 14–21). The name, “Babe,” was actually given to her by her mother, who spoke fondly of her baby girl, her second youngest child, as “min babe,” meaning “my baby,” a mixture of her native Norwegian and acquired English (Zaharias, 1955, p. 22). Babe later said that the neighborhood kids called her “Babe” because she, like Babe Ruth, was a great hitter of home runs. This is a small example of Babe’s exaggerated storytelling, a gift that she learned from listening to her father’s sea stories and one that served her well throughout her life. Most of Babe’s childhood was spent in Beaumont, Texas. When money was low, Ole went to sea, and Hannah and her children worked even harder. The immigrant family was close. They weathered the change from Norway’s ice and cold to the heat and dust of Texas. They played music, talked about sports, and told stories in the evening. In the morning, the Didrikson children ate oatmeal with butter and sugar. They cleaned themselves outside with baths and inside with castor oil once a week. They enjoyed meatballs with onions and green peppers served with gravy as an evening meal, and ate what was left over in cold sandwiches the next day. All were encouraged to be who they were and to aspire to do whatever they wanted to do, and all were accepted and loved.

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Mildred Ella Didrikson knew what she wanted to do. In her autobiography, she said: “Before I was in my teens I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. My goal was to be the greatest athlete that ever lived” (Zaharias, 1955, p. 27). Babe’s parents never discouraged her or asked her to diminish her exuberance. Cayleff (1995) made a point of mentioning that Babe did not say the greatest female athlete. Babe said, and meant, the greatest athlete. Her gender had nothing to do with it. Her competitiveness accounted for everything! Babe loved to win even more than she loved sports. Her need to achieve, her ability to endure long practice and physical pain, and her single-mindedness were to take her to her goal. Although she concedes in her autobiography that she had the build of an athlete and some natural ability, Didrikson attributes much of her success to her family and the way that she was brought up. The material poverty that the family endured served to strengthen Babe’s endurance, and necessity invited inventive solutions to the challenges that were to come.

THE TEXAS TOMBOY’S TEEN YEARS Babe once told a reporter that she preferred playing with boys rather than girls, and that baseball, football, foot racing, and jumping with boys proved to be much more fun than playing girls’ games of hopscotch, jacks, and dolls (Freedman, 1999, p. 27). She considered herself too rough for girls’ play. Some of the girls in David Crockett Junior High School were afraid of her, and some of the boys teased her, but she was able to get even by doing well. She was great at sports. Freedman reported that her gym teacher claimed she could master any sport, and master it to a greater extent than anyone else. High school proved Babe no scholar, although she never failed a course. What she did during her high school years was win a YWCA swim match; capture the doubles crown in tennis; and play on the girls’ golf, baseball, and volleyball teams. She practiced hard. When, in her sophomore year, she was believed to be too short and did not get on the basketball team, she practiced even more. In her junior year, she made the Miss Royal Purple varsity basketball team, played center, and became the team’s high scorer. Babe’s entry in the 1929 Pine Burr, her high school yearbook, read in part: “MILDRED ‘BABE’ DIDRIKSON . . . forward . . . very seldom misses a basket. When Babe gets the ball, the scorekeeper gets his adding machine, and then he sometimes loses count” (Freedman, 1999, p. 32). Babe became All City and All State high school basketball star. She received her first newspaper write-up before she was 16 years old.

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In 1930, Colonel Melvin Jackson McCombs, manager of the women’s athletic program for Employees Casualty Company, went to Houston to watch Babe’s team play the Houston Heights High School girls’ team. According to Babe, the Houston Heights team was made up of tall girls. Babe wrote about that game: “I was still small, but I was fast, and I could run right around those girls. I scored twenty-six points” (Zaharias, 1955, p. 34). The result for Babe was an offer from McCombs to play for the Employees Casualty Company in Dallas. Hannah Didrikson, fearing that Babe was too young to go away, asked Ole what he thought. Ole said that he believed it to be a good idea, an idea that would lead to a better life for his child, which was the very reason he had come to America. According to Babe, it was arranged that she play out the season with the insurance company, and then return to school to take final exams and graduate. She led the team, the Golden Cyclones, to the finals. Although her team lost the National Championship to Sun Oil by 1 point, Babe was voted All American forward, made the papers once again, and was on her way to sports stardom. In June, she got her first full-time job with Employees Casualty (Zaharias, 1955, pp. 30–40). The role that Ole Didrikson played in Babe’s life was significant. When Babe was a child, he would read the sports pages in the newspapers and report the stories to her. He would also tell stories about his own adventures, many of them daring. If, on rare occasion, he had extra money for a movie, he would give it to his children after they wrestled him for it. He never punished Babe for the pranks that she was known to pull, such as putting soap on streetcar tracks so the car would slip and slide or for leading neighborhood kids into jumping from the rafters of a house that was being built into a sand pile beside it. Papa, as Babe called him, listened to her brag that she would be a great athlete someday, even enter the Olympics, and nourished her desires and dreams with love (Knudson, 1985, pp. 9–11). Furthermore, Ole calmed Hannah’s fears that Babe was too young to go to Dallas by offering to go with her on the trip. Momma gave physical birth to Babe and provided a strict, but loving home—but Poppa birthed her soul by providing the psychological space for Babe’s emerging leadership.

A CAREER IN PLAY After graduation, Babe went back to Dallas to work and play for the Employers Casualty team. She was paid $75 a month and sent $45 of it home. Officially, she was hired to do office work, and she learned to type on the job (Freedman, 1999, p. 37). Her job was not overly demanding, so she had plenty of time to practice basketball for the Golden Cyclones.

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In her day, corporations sponsored women’s basketball teams to gain publicity and earn the good will of the public. Immediately, Babe shone as the star among the corporate teams. When interviewed by the Dallas Dispatch, McCombs was quoted as saying, “Babe Didrikson was the easiest girl to coach and the hardest to handle of all of the athletes that I have had in the past fifteen years” (Cayleff, 1995, p. 51). According to Cayleff, Babe played practical jokes on everyone, and she was demanding and cocky. Babe, however, had scored 210 points in five games and had led her team to second place in the National Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) women’s basketball tournament (Knudson, 1985, p. 18). She was voted an All American player by newspapers and coaches. Babe knew that, although she was a secretary, she was hired to play. She also knew that she was marketable and that her family needed the money that she was making. McCombs knew that Babe was getting bored in the off season, and he wanted to keep her as a player, so in the spring of 1930, he took her to a track meet and introduced her to sports in which the players get rewarded for individual effort. The hurdles that she saw reminded her of jumping hedges back at home, and she was challenged by the javelin, basketball throw, shot put, high jump, and broad jump (now called the long jump). McCombs established an Employers Casualty track and field team. Each basketball player agreed to train for one event. Babe trained for all of them. Most of the team members practiced afternoons, after early dismissal from work. Babe wrote in her autobiography that she practiced afternoons and often until midnight, running by the light of the moon (Zaharias, 1955, pp. 40–45). The training paid off. In May 1930, Babe entered four events at the meet at Southern Methodist University and won all four: the high jump, the 100-yard dash, the 440-yard dash, and the broad jump. By the end of the season in September, she held southern AAU records in the high jump, the 8-pound shot put, and the broad jump. She held national AAU records in the baseball throw and the javelin throw. Had records been kept at that time, she would have held the world record for her javelin throw of 133 feet, 6 inches (Freedman, 1999, p. 41). It was after the meet that she announced that she was going to begin to train for the 1932 Olympics. For the next 2 years, while she trained, Babe led the Golden Cyclones to a national championship, set new records for her track events, performed exhibitions of springboard and platform diving, and proved a power hitter in baseball. Other teammates were envious of her, and although they admired what she could do, she won few friends. They hated her boasting! Knudson (1985) suggested that she might have developed her bragging ability as a next-to-youngest child trying to gain attention in a large family. She may have honed the skill so she could get back at people who

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insulted her for her masculine appearance and unfeminine ways. However, she also had a need to continually challenge herself. She said that she had always “had the urge to do things better than anybody else” (Zaharias, 1955, p. 30). Perhaps Babe boasted to keep reminding herself of what she wanted to do in the belief that if she could say it, she could do it. Whatever her reasons, Babe was not to be ignored, and her ability to give back what she got served her well when she gained celebrity and set world records with her performance in the 1932 Olympics. The combined AAU meet and Olympic trials took place in Dyche Stadium at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago. Before the events, Babe had a case of nerves that settled in the center of her stomach (Zaharias, 1955, p. 48). Babe did not do well in the 100-meter dash, but she qualified in everything else, breaking the world record in three events (Zaharias, 1955, p. 50). According to Freedman (1999), she broke three of her own records that were set the year before: in baseball hurling, javelin throw, and high jump. She also set a new record in shot put. In the course of 3 hours on a very hot afternoon, Babe walked away with six gold medals. She was 20 years old, and she was on her way to Los Angeles for the 10th Olympiad. Although she appeared to have easily aced the qualifying events, in actuality, she had practiced for them day and night for 2 years. As she put it, “I trained and trained, and trained” (Zaharias, 1955, p. 48). Babe bragged her way across the country on the train to Los Angeles. She told everyone on the train that she planned to keep setting records. However much her teammates may have disliked it, her bragging did not alienate sportswriters. By this time, she was their superstar. The New York Times wrote of her: “Babe is no boaster and braggart. She tells you simply what she can do and does it” (cited in Cayleff, 1996, p. 66). When Babe entered the Olympics, she claimed to be 2 years younger than she actually was. Her Olympic visa cited her name as Mildred Didrikson and her date of birth as June 26, 1913. In reality, Babe turned 21 one day before the Olympics started. Babe claimed to be unimpressed with the ceremonies. Her Olympic picture was that of a serious-looking, androgynous young person in a stocking cap. However, during the opening ceremony, Babe had to wear a dress, stockings, and white shoes that the Olympic Committee had issued her. In her autobiography, Babe said that it was the first time she had worn stockings and her shoes were hurting her feet (Zaharias, 1955, p. 53). Clearly, Mildred Didrikson came to the Olympics to win, not to make a fashion statement. Babe was undoubtedly the undisputed star of the women’s games, walking away with two gold medals and one silver. For her return to Dallas, Employers Casualty chartered an American Airlines transport, and

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15 U.S. Army planes escorted the plane that she was on. When she walked from the airplane in Dallas, the police band played Hail to the Chief. She then rode through the streets of the city propped up on the backseat of a rose-strewn limousine that belonged to the fire chief. However, when Babe saw her parents with her little brother and her sister, Lille, who had driven from Beaumont in the family’s old car to join the celebration, she invited them all to ride in the limousine with her, and they did. Babe was given the keys to the city that day (Freedman, 1999, pp. 68–69). For Babe, however, the best rewards were to be back with her family and to accept the offer that she received from sportswriter, Grantland Rice, to play golf with him (Zaharias, 1955, p. 57).

A DIFFERENT TURN After having been voted Woman Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in 1932, Babe did some promotional touring. Also, to ensure that she would not find a job elsewhere, Employers Casualty increased her salary to $300 a month. She was then able to give more money to her family. She bought clothes for both her mother and her father, as well as a new icebox and stove for her mother for Mother’s Day. Babe believed that she might make even more money if she turned professional, but at that point what she wanted to do was be a golfer. She was still a member of the Golden Cyclones, and she did not want to give up her amateur status. However, according to her autobiography, her name and picture “turned up” (Zaharias, 1955, p. 68) in a newspaper advertisement with a statement indicating that she liked the 1933 Dodge automobile. The Southern Branch of the AAU declared her a professional and would not let her play for the Golden Cyclones any longer. Babe asserted that she did not give permission for her name to be used in the advertisement. Nevertheless, because she had been called a professional, she determined to call herself one and did some work for the Chrysler Corporation at the Detroit auto show. Babe had name recognition, and she appeared for a short while in vaudeville doing athletic stunts. A promoter created a basketball team with whom she barnstormed. It swiftly became a winning team with which she toured in order to pay for an operation that her father needed. Then Babe joined an all-bearded male baseball team called The House of David. She was a big name, chosen to help the team draw a crowd. Although she knew she was being used to enhance the team’s publicity, she was earning $1,500 per month. With this money she supported her parents, assisted others in her large family, and paid for her sister Lille’s wedding (Freedman, 1999, p. 82). A large problem, however,

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rose in connection with Babe’s performances. Instead of being praised as the wonder girl who captured the Olympics, the press began to make remarks about her dress and her unladylike ways. Reporters tried to probe her personal life by asking questions about whether and when she would marry. In response, Babe put away her Olympic medals and decided to remake herself by taking up a new sport and changing her image. Retaining her competitive desire to be the best, Babe took her athletic talent, her endurance, and her willingness to practice until perfect and mastered the game of golf. In 1938, she married George Zaharias, a professional wrestler with whom she was teamed at the Los Angeles Open. Freedman (1999) discussed how Babe was unwilling to talk about her “Muscle Moll” days and quoted her as saying, “My sports career began with golf” (p. 85). Babe looked at the time she spent barnstorming baseball and basketball as a mixed-up time in her life. In the fall of 1934, she went back to her office job in Dallas and started taking golf lessons. The president of the company purchased clubs for her, bought her a country club membership, and paid the golf professional for her lessons. By November of that same year, Babe entered her first golf tournament. As in days before, Babe announced what she would do. “I think I’ll shoot about a 77,” she said, and that is exactly what she did (Zaharias, 1955, p. 87). The next best score was 82. Babe’s next golf goal was to win the Texas State Women’s Amateur Tournament. Every day she would get up early and hit golf balls for 3 hours. She would then leave practice for work at 8:30 a.m. She practiced in front of a mirror in her boss’s office during lunch and again all evening, long after leaving work at 3:30 p.m. for a golf lesson. She was determined not to fade into sports oblivion, so she played exhibition games, challenging male sport stars and playing with movie stars, both for publicity and practice. She created tall tales for the press about how she got into the sport, but the true story is a description of her personality. She exercised her endurance to the limit by relentlessly practicing, devotedly concentrating, and tenaciously willing to succeed. Cayleff (1995, p. 97) reported that people were amazed at the ends to which she went to improve her power and distance. One of her coaches, Stan Kertes, watched each day in awe as Babe hit 1,500 balls off the tee, until her hands actually bled. Babe qualified for the tournament, but when she won the woman’s championship of Texas, her title was declared invalid by the United States Golfing Association (USGA). Their claim was that Babe was a professional because she had played other sports as a pro. Babe fought the USGA’s decision in court to no avail. Her argument was that she was not a professional in golf. There were feelings that she was being discriminated against. At that time, golf was a gentlewoman’s sport, a sport for

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socialites, and that she surely was not. So Babe continued to polish both her game and her appearance. She even had her hair done and purchased lipstick. At first, the press commented on the change in her appearance. Later, people became used to seeing newsreels and press pictures of Babe golfing in skirts. When the USGA banned Didrikson from amateur golf, she became a professional. Unable to earn a living from the few tournaments open to professionals, she toured the country participating in exhibition matches with professional golfer Gene Sarazen, who befriended her. In 1938 George Zaharias, by then her husband, became her manager, and under his direction she won the 1940 Texas and Western Open golf championships. During World War II, Babe Zaharias gave golf exhibitions to raise money for the war effort through the sale of war bonds. She emerged from the war as the most successful and most popular female golfer in history.

FOR THE RECORD BOOKS Babe’s amateur standing was restored in 1943. In 1945, she played flawless golf on the Amateur tour and was named Woman Athlete of the Year for the second time. During 1947 and 1948, she won 17 tournaments, including the British Women’s Amateur. She was the first American woman to win the coveted British championship. In the summer of l947, Babe Zaharias turned professional again. She earned approximately $100,000 in 1948 for various promotions, but that same year, she earned only $3,400 from professional golf tournaments (Cayleff, 1995, p. 132). Babe wanted to earn more from professional golf. She believed that there should be a professional golf association for women. In January 1949, Babe and George Zaharias, Fred Corcoran, and Patty Berg met in Miami and drew up a charter for the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA). The idea was to make the prize money worth the effort for sportswomen and to ensure that the public would view golf as a serious sport for women athletes. Babe “bought” the LPGA with her game—a power game for women. Babe had a great year as a professional golfer in 1950. She won six major LPGA tournaments. As in 1932, 1945, 1946, and 1947, Babe was once again named outstanding Woman Athlete of the Year, but this time she was also named outstanding Woman Athlete of the Half Century. In 1951, Babe’s career continued to soar. After winning seven major tournaments and earning more money than any other female professional golfer, Newsweek named her “Mrs. Golf,” and Time, guessing her income

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from endorsements, called her “Big Business Babe” (Freedman, 1999, p. 146). The following year also started off well. In her autobiography, Babe said: I was around the top in every tournament I played. I won the Women’s titleholders in March and the first two legs of the Weathervane. . . . Again I was the leading women’s money-winner. . . . But now the trouble in my leg was really getting to me. (cited in Zaharias, 1955, p. 190)

Earlier that year, Babe made a cameo appearance in the movie, Pat and Mike, with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. According to Freedman (1999, p. 147), the script called for Babe to lose to Hepburn in a game of golf. The script was changed because, even in a movie, Babe refused to be beaten. She was, however, eventually beaten in her major contest—her fight for life against cancer, a fight that began with a pain in the leg in 1952. Babe entered the hospital in Beaumont for surgery related to a strangulated hernia in her left thigh. Although she felt well immediately after the operation and played a few tournaments, she began to feel tired much of the time. After playing and winning the Babe Zaharias Tournament in Beaumont by one stroke, Babe was too tired to celebrate with the crowd. She went back to Dr. Tatum who was treating her. She described her visit to the doctor: [H]e probed around some more. I could see his face out of the corner of my eye. All of a sudden he just turned white. He didn’t say a word. I guess I suspected all along what my trouble was. I said to him, ‘I’ve got cancer, haven’t I?’ (Zaharias, 1955, p. 197)

THE STORY DOESN’T END HERE Babe had told her friend and companion, Betty Dodd, some time before, when she was tired, that she thought she had cancer. She reported in her autobiography that she did not say anything about it to George because she was worried about how he would take it. Now, however, he had to know (Zaharias, 1955, pp. 188–192). Another doctor, also named Tatum, had confirmed it. A surgeon, Dr. Robert Moore, performed the colostomy, the nature of which Babe discussed with the public through the media and in her autobiography, This Life I’ve Led. She described how she kept her golf clubs in the corner of her room during her recovery, and she vowed to play again. Babe was not told what Dr. Moore told George

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and Betty Dodd—the cancer had spread to Babe’s lymph nodes, where it was impossible to operate. She could expect more trouble in a year or so (Freedman, 1999, p. 152). Babe recovered quickly, joked with everyone she saw, received thousands of well wishes, and played her harmonica. Throughout her recuperation, her friend and companion, Betty Dodd, stayed with her. Babe came back to tournament golf. After playing poorly in 1953, she excelled again in l954, winning four tournaments, including the U.S. Women’s Open. She was voted Woman Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press for the sixth time. After her win, President Dwight D. Eisenhower invited her to the White House where she was awarded the Sword of Hope of the American Cancer Society. Throughout 1954 and the early part of 1955, she continued to play golf, raising money for cancer and giving other victims hope. But the pain got worse, and Babe knew that she was going to die. When death occurred on September 27, 1956, she died as both a medical benefactor and a sports legend. She had dominated women’s golf for 18 years with more than 80 tournament wins. On January 23, 1957, the Texas House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring her gallantry and her memory. Cayleff (1996) wrote: “During her battle with cancer, Babe evolved from a self-centered athlete to a bona fide humanitarian” (p. 255). Freedman (1999) quoted Patty Berg who stated that with Babe “there was never a dull moment. Her tremendous enthusiasm for golf and life was contagious . . . even the galleries felt good when Babe was around” (p. 163). Freedman himself wrote, “Babe Didrikson broke barriers as well as records. She struggled to transcend the stereotypes of how a woman should behave and how a woman athlete should be” (p. 166). Knudson (1985) expressed it almost poetically when he wrote, “In those last years, Babe played in pain. She played to forget pain. She played confidently and well, adding to her growing reputation as the greatest athlete of the twentieth century” (p. 57). Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias is buried in Beaumont, Texas. There is a museum where her memory and memorabilia rest. As the years pass, the people who knew her, and those who were eyewitness to her amazing athletic ability, grow fewer. However, she is not forgotten. On Sunday, May 18, 2005, the Mercury News published an article by columnist Ann Killion. It is about a contemporary golfer, Annika Sorenstam. Killion (2005) wrote: “When Sorenstam tees off this week, she will become the first woman to compete in a PGA tour event in 58 years, since Babe Didrikson Zaharias qualified for the 1945 Los Angeles Open” (p. 1C). Perhaps the person(s) against whom Sorenstam wanted to compete was not a man (men), but Babe, whose record is still unbroken. The psychological characteristics that Babe acquired in childhood remained with her throughout her life. She had a strong need to achieve and

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a drive to accomplish. She learned endurance early, possibly because the family was poor and Babe survived doing difficult, manual work around the house. Being a daughter of immigrants who suffered discrimination taught Babe the value of striving to overcome obstacles. From her father, she learned to be an exhibitionist, and from her mother, she learned to love and to put duty before self. Feminist historians currently raise questions about the “real” Babe. They question the lack of anger in Babe’s autobiography. They also ask whether her marriage was one of convenience designed to ward off issues of gender preference that were not openly discussed in her day; some wonder whether Betty Dodd was Babe’s true love. Others question whether in fact the “mythic Babe,” the Babe of her own stories, actually existed. Babe’s record as both humanitarian and sportswoman speaks for itself. However intellectually interesting to some, these questions are dwarfed by Babe’s concentration, her power of will, her drive to achieve, her sense of family, and her sense of humor. Freedman (1999) captured it. He reported a statement from the New York Times, which published news of her death on the front page. After recounting the story of her life, her accomplishments, and her courageous 3-year battle with cancer, the Times wrote: “She didn’t know the meaning of the word quit, and she refused to define it, right to the end. It is not only the annals of sport that her life has enriched. It is the whole story of human beings who somehow have to keep on trying” (cited in Cayleff, p. 239). In the end, Freedman quoted a conversation between Babe and George that is supposed to have occurred near the end of her life: “George, I hate to die,” Babe reportedly whispered. “I am just learning to play golf.” (p. 163)

REFERENCES Cayleff, S. E. (1995). Babe Didrikson: The greatest all-sport athlete of all time. Berkeley, CA: Conari Press. Cayleff, S. E. (1996). Babe: The life and legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Cohen, W. A. (2002). The new art of the leader—Leading with integrity and honor. Paramus, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Freedman, R. (1999). Babe Didrikson: The making of a champion. New York: Clarion Books. Killion, A. (2005, May 18). More alike than meets the eye. The Mercury News, p. 1C. Knudson, R. R. (1985). Babe Didrikson: Athlete of the century. New York: Puffin Books. Zaharias, B. D. (1955). This life I’ve led. [As told to Harry Paxton.] New York: A. S. Barnes and Co.

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Lucille Ball Visions of Trauma, Crisis, and Comedy Calvin Saxton

Permission is hereby granted to newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals to reproduce this publicity photograph from Annabel Takes a Tour (RKO Studios circa 1938). 203

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Lucille Ball has been acclaimed as the first lady of comedy, and many fans believe that they know her through I Love Lucy. However, in reality, she was a complicated and contradictory person who contributed to numerous misportrayals of herself that persist in print, on the Web, and in documentaries. A biographer recalled: I asked about things a later generation of women thought they had invented—marrying younger men, giving birth for the first time at the age of thirty-nine, and running her own company. What made her such a trail-blazer? “Happenstance! Happenstance!” she shouted. “I was trying to do things like everyone else!” Her statements, I would later learn, were not entirely to be trusted. (Brady, 2001, p. xi)

Her contributions went beyond what Brady cited. She was the first female president of a major television studio, considered by many as the world’s most recognized and beloved female performer, the Emmy Awardwinning queen of television, and a groundbreaker for succeeding generations of comedians.

INTRODUCTION Lucille Desiree Ball was born August 6, 1911, in Jamestown, New York. An alternation of disaster and triumph punctuated her life, with her early experiences being marked by tragedies and apparently unresolved traumas. Her first memory was of the death of her father when she was 4. A bird flew into the house that day, and the painful memories of the loss were displaced and condensed into her lifelong phobia of birds. Her mother remarried 3 years later, leaving Lucille to reside temporarily with her new paternal grandparents. During these unhappy years, she experienced a keen loneliness to which she adapted by creating an imaginary playmate named “Sassafrassa.” Her step-paternal Grandma Peterson, in a misguided attempt to prevent the development of conceit in little Lucille, regularly ridiculed Lucille’s physical appearance and mannerisms. I have grandmother Peterson to thank for the gnawing sense of unworthiness and insecurity that haunted me for years. The Puritan idea that everything pleasurable is somehow bad almost ruined for me the first joys of our big I Love Lucy success. The hardest thing for me was getting used to the idea that I deserved it. (Ball & Hoffman, 1996, p. 12)

Money was so meager that Lucille did not have a pencil to take to school. For her, this was a shaming and deeply scarring experience. Decades later, Lucille (then a major star and CEO at Desilu Studios) hoarded pencils, keeping a closetful of unopened packages.

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At age 15, Lucille somehow found the means that enabled her to go to New York to study drama at the Robert Minton–John Murray Anderson School. From available evidence, her incentive to study drama remains unclear. Bette Davis, who started there at age 18, recalled how demanding it was: “We were constantly at work, rehearsing and memorizing while we forged ahead in our studies” (Brady, 2001, p. 23). Although star student Davis did indeed forge ahead, Lucille left the Minton-Anderson School after 1 month. She was to say little about this failure upon returning to high school in Jamestown. Later in life, she negatively dismissed it: “All I learned in drama school was how to be frightened” (p. 24). The following year, the entire family suffered a profound tragedy. Lucille’s brother Fred received a .22-caliber rifle for his 12th birthday. Lucille, ever generous, invited Fred’s friend Joanna over for target shooting. Joanna brought her 8-year-old cousin, Warner Erickson, and the family catastrophe began when Joanna accidentally shot Warner. Lucille had to inform Warner’s parents of this while (maternal) Grandpa Fred Hunt carried Warner home. Following Warner’s death, the Ericksons sued Fred Hunt for $5,000 plus court costs. Grandpa Fred was adjudged owner of the house and property and, as grandparent, responsible for the children, Lucille and Fred. Because he had no money, Grandpa Fred ultimately lost the house. The judge released Fred Hunt, but he was ordered to remain in the Celeron, New York, area for the following year. Lucille, her brother Fred, her mother, and her stepfather left to live in a small twobedroom apartment in Jamestown. Grandpa Fred reluctantly remained behind, alone. Lucille increased her efforts to pursue a show business career in Manhattan. Although she still suffered from shyness, she auditioned as a showgirl for various musical revues. The only alternative to overcoming her shyness would have been to return to Jamestown High School and her parents’ crowded apartment. During this period of financial deprivation, pursuing unpaid auditions and rehearsals, she began working as a showroom coat model for a top dress designer, Hattie Carnegie.

FROM CHESTERFIELD CIGARETTE GIRL TO GOLDWYN GIRL Lucille had been given several screen tests while a model and failed them all. Her childhood ambition to be an actress was fading, but the modeling job had given her the prominence of a poster girl—a Chesterfield cigarette poster girl. A chance encounter with an agent during the summer of 1933 led her to Hollywood. Poster girls were being sought for a forthcoming Eddie Cantor film, and Lucille was picked to be a backup, the 13th girl chosen for a company of 12.

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Twenty-one-year-old Lucille wondered how to be noticed when studio head Sam Goldwyn came to examine the new girls. She didn’t sing or dance and had no acting credentials. But she did have a sense of humor, a sense of initiative, and improvisational instincts. Not as amply endowed as her competitors, she stuffed socks, gloves, and other assorted padding down the top of her bathing suit, creating a comic effect. Because “the wadding was dangling in view,” Goldwyn noticed her (Brady, 2001, pp. 45–46). Lucille’s eagerness and “anything for a laugh” spirit also got her noticed by star Eddie Cantor, who appreciated her humorous risk taking. During her early Hollywood years, which she called her “hey hey” period, Lucille frequently went out dancing in the Hollywood clubs. Her vivaciousness was apparent, but gradually she began to realize that she could evoke the most laughs when she ridiculed herself. “Lucille’s sense of absurdity began with Grandma Peterson’s criticisms of her. She had always felt that she had to extend herself to make people like her, and this strategy was finally beginning to bear fruit” (Brady, 2001, p. 49). The fruit that Lucille’s strategy bore yielded more for her personal popularity than for her professional recognition. She labored over bit parts, often without dialogue. During this period, she was befriended by actress Carole Lombard, who became her mentor and ego-ideal. Carole and Lucille were both fun loving, possessing an expansive sense of humor, and equally comfortable being either glamorously sophisticated or earthy. At age 23, Lucille was finally able to reconstitute her family. Although not a star, she now earned enough to rent a cottage and bring her family to Hollywood. This “dispelled the curse of separation that came upon the family when Warner Erickson died. She established a home at last because she had finally taken charge” (Brady, 2001, p. 59). The family reunion offered the mutual support inherent in a working family and an opportunity to begin easing the memories of shameful deprivation that had haunted family life when she’d left Jamestown. Lucille was released from Columbia Pictures in 1934 and moved to the RKO (Radio Keith Orpheum) studio. “I’ve always been a family person, and I adopted RKO as my studio family. . . . I talked to everyone I met from office boys to executives—possibly because of that urgent need I’d always had to make people like me” (Brady, p. 63).

THOSE WHO LOVED LUCY In 1935, Lucille began an affair with Pandro Berman, a producer at RKO. This was not the first time that Lucille had found what seemed to be “her type . . . dark, broad and fleshy. Like Johnny he was energetic, forceful,

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and loved gambling. . . . He loved people, especially the ‘average’ ones with whom Lucille had been most comfortable” (Brady, 2001, p. 65). Johnny DeVita had been her first serious boyfriend back in upstate New York. Johnny, a 21-year-old, gun-carrying, rum-running hoodlum, was regarded as the wildest guy around, which gave 14-year-old Lucille a similar reputation. Beyond their mutual attraction, there was also a reciprocal fondness between Lucille and Johnny’s family. Johnny regularly took Lucille to her favorite activities—movies and live vaudeville shows. Because the Minton-Anderson School of Drama charged an expensive tuition, friends speculated that Johnny had helped pay her way. When she was 19, Johnny was apparently subsidizing her apartment, despite their deteriorating relationship. “The drama of their relationship was expressed in fights with vituperative shouting on the street, fisticuffs, and an occasional black eye for Lucille” (Brady, 2001, p. 35). After Lucille moved to New York City, her relationship with Johnny faded, ending with her move to California at age 21. Later in life, while enjoying the fame of celebrity, she began to dissemble in her account of her late adolescence. After she had filmed The Big Street in 1942 (in which she played a self-serving nightclub singer who becomes bedridden), Lucille began describing her late adolescence as that of being a bedridden invalid. Her accounts varied wildly regarding the cause of this condition. Although she did suffer from pneumonia and once collapsed while working as a model at Hattie Carnegie’s, her high school friend, Marion Strong, observed, “She’s responsible for a lot of this erroneous stuff. Lucille wasn’t paralyzed. She came home one fall wearing heavy shoes with insets” (Brady, 2001, p. 36).

MENTORING LUCY At RKO, Lucille added another important mentor, Lela Rogers. Lela was quite committed to furthering her daughter Ginger’s career, and RKO executives asked her to open a contract players’ workshop. Lela did this on the RKO lot, where she coached aspiring stars. Lucille later replicated this effort when she and her husband Desi purchased the RKO studio lot 2 decades later. Lucille continued playing small roles and enjoying minor successes. Her series of Annabel films was quite successful. By 1938, she was acclaimed “Queen of the B Pictures,” which was a greater accomplishment than being a contract player, but it was not the success of a “breakout star.” Her smaller successes were leading to parts in bigger pictures, for example, in the Marx Brothers’ Room Service and the drama Dance Girl Dance (a film conceived and directed by women). During the filming of the latter, a fight scene between Lucille and Maureen O’Hara was scheduled,

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attracting a large crowd of stagehands, technicians, and other studioaffiliated men who were planning to watch this catfight. Learning of this, Lucille and Maureen conspired to charge the men admission, donating the proceeds to charity. Lucille was filming Dance Girl Dance when she also began working on Too Many Girls. It was at this time that she met costar Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III and they started dating. “It was not love at first sight. . . . It took five minutes” (Ball & Hoffman, 1996, p. 141). Instant chemistry sparked a whirlwind romance, resulting in marriage by a Justice of the Peace on November 30, 1940, in Greenwich, Connecticut. Lucille moved from RKO to MGM in 1942, where she met comic mentors, Red Skelton and Buster Keaton. Keaton was a master of physical comedy and was now on the MGM payroll as consultant, director, writer, gag man, and script doctor. Keaton became a close personal friend and a mentor in the art of physical comedy. Two of Keaton’s contributions were the importance of thoroughly knowing your props and of adopting the comedic approach, “listen, react and then act” (Brady, 2001 p. 164). During the war, Lucille’s marriage to Desi was not idyllic. Desi was teaching English to illiterate inductees stateside and entertaining troops at military camps and hospitals. Their separation only inflamed less healthy aspects of their relationship. Marital storminess eventuated in a “divorce” that was never formalized because they reconsummated the relationship at the last minute, nullifying the divorce agreement. The “divorce” had improved their relationship, but only temporarily. In July 1948, Lucille appeared in a new radio show, My Favorite Husband, based on the book, Mr. And Mrs. Cugat. Working in front of a live radio audience encouraged her. She had been successful in other film roles, such as those in Dance Girl Dance and The Big Street, but she had finally found a role to which she could personally relate. It would change her life. From July 1946, when Easy to Wed opened, to October 1951 when I Love Lucy was first broadcast, Lucille Ball recapitulated in her own career the history of American show business. She performed in the theater and on radio, honed her slapstick skills under the tutelage of Buster Keaton and trouped on the remnants of the vaudeville circuit. (Brady, 2001, p. 152, italics added)

CONCEIVING I LOVE LUCY The newest technology of mass communication was television. Lucille and Desi visited Ed Wynn’s Camel Comedy Caravan in 1949, viewing

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Buster Keaton’s first television appearance, while observing the technical requirements for filming a television show. The Arnazes subsequently appeared on the show, with Lucy and Ed Wynn performing a silentfilm comedy routine. Television, although still a new and primitive experimental medium, offered something beyond radio. Still, Lucille was uncertain. . . . now at 39, she had little to risk by going into television, particularly if doing so would keep her husband at home. . . . But what finally reassured Lucille, she claimed, was a dream in which Carole Lombard, smartly dressed in a suit, urged her “Honey, go ahead. Give it a whirl.” (Brady, 2001, p. 177)

The first obstacle that Lucille and Desi faced in launching their work as television personalities concerned ethnic stereotyping. CBS did not want Desi to play her husband, but Lucille wanted Desi to costar so they could enjoy more family time together. The lifestyle that had Desi out on the road with his band while Lucille was occupied with radio or movies had not been conducive to marital harmony. The Arnazes finally convinced CBS that the general public would accept a Latin bandleader as Lucy’s husband, citing the positive audience responses to their recent vaudeville-styled tour with Pepito the Clown. CBS executives watched the Arnazes’ pilot episode and realized that something special was present, although they continued to believe that viewers would not accept Desi as a credible husband. No sponsors were interested until Phillip Morris made an offer, and they, too, were unenthusiastic about Desi; however, they believed that if his role could be kept limited, they could ultimately write him out of the series. A second obstacle was technical in nature. The standard procedure of the time was for television entertainers either to do the same show twice live (once for the East Coast and later for the West Coast) or to have the show recorded on kinescope, which meant making a film from a stationary camera trained on a television monitor (i.e., not a film of a show but a film of a crude television picture of a live show). Either option meant commuting from California to New York, and the Arnazes did not want to leave California and family life. This quandary led to their greatest gamble. Their agent negotiated an agreement whereby they would film their own shows and take a $1,000 salary cut ($4,000 per weekly episode and half of the profits for the first season of 39 episodes). CBS, preoccupied with innumerable issues associated with the new medium of television, allowed the Arnazes to buy the rights to future shows. Few persons in the entertainment world anticipated any future potential for reruns of a television series.

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AND BABY MAKES THREE The Arnaz union was still barren despite abundant attempts at conception. Lucille and Desi had a second wedding ceremony in 1949, this time with the blessing of a priest, hoping that this blessing would cure their childlessness. Approaching midlife, Lucille ardently wanted her own family. Lucille finally had a pregnancy that went full term and Lucie Arnaz, was born on July 17, 1951. Lucille had prepared the house and the baby’s room, hired a nurse, and enjoyed 6 months of motherly domesticity. After this, it was back to the other new baby—the challenges of a new series. I Love Lucy wasn’t merely about Lucy but about friendships and relationships. Recalling the family atmosphere that she had loved at RKO, Lucille wanted Desilu to have a family atmosphere and arranged company picnics and dinners. She had finally found her enduring stage persona in Lucy: “I never found a place of my own, never became truly confident until, in my Lucy character, I began to create something that was truly mine. The potential was there, Lucy released it” (Brady, 2001 p. 197). Despite the success of the series, Lucille still lived frugally and didn’t buy a mink coat until the second season. It was hard for her to accept the dizzying pace of triumph followed by triumph, rather than the more familiar pattern of disaster alternating with triumph. Lucille sought therapy, and the psychiatric treatment seemed to alleviate her distress.

I DENOUNCE LUCY Lucille need not have worried about her string of successes (a new baby, a popular television series, and the ensuing popularity), as a new disaster was festering, rooted in an apparently casual expression of voting preferences more than a decade earlier. In 1936, when Lucille and the rest of the family had registered to vote, they registered as communists to please Grandpa Fred, who had always championed the underdog, befriended the dispossessed, helped the needy, and sympathized with Eugene Debs and the Socialist Party. This was now coming back to haunt them. In April 1952, Lucille testified at the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), explaining to a closed session why she had registered as a communist, and this ended the HUAC’s investigation of her. Nevertheless, the ghost of her “communist” past was to haunt her once more, this time through gossip columnist, Walter Winchell, to whom a congressional investigator had leaked information about Lucille’s past. The Arnazes decided to confront the issue directly. That night during his warm-up, Desi’s explained: “Lucy has never been a communist.

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Not now and never will be. . . . And now, I want you to meet my favorite wife, my favorite redhead—in fact that’s the only red thing about her and even that’s not legitimate” (Brady, 2001, p. 220). Ultraconservatives still wanted her off the air, although the public continued to simply love Lucy. President Eisenhower (for whom the Arnazes had voted) invited them to the White House that November. Later, Ed Murrow charged Senator McCarthy and the HUAC with a “witch hunt” on his interview show, See It Now. As Senator McCarthy’s excesses finally became apparent, this shameful chapter of American history closed. But Lucille, with her sensitivity to shame and trauma, never voted again.

PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS AND PERSONAL FAILURES Lucille became pregnant again with Desi, Jr. Now, real life and television land were put “in synch” and “Lucy Has a Baby” became one of the best known television episodes of all time, viewed by 44,000,000 Americans, one fifth of the national population. By the late 1950s, Lucille’s professional life was thriving though her personal life was increasingly problematic. Professionally, Desilu had expanded significantly, adding other hit shows to the Lucy Show and Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour specials. The business physically expanded when they purchased the RKO studio complex. Lucille was 47, the children were 6 and 3, and her personal life was deteriorating just as her career was peaking. A 1957 issue of the tabloid, Confidential, published an exposé of Desi that thoroughly shamed Lucille. The article included interviews with call girls who had known Desi. The Arnazes developed the ability to compartmentalize their lives. They would explain their capacity for maintaining a hectic schedule, using the analogy of different mental drawers, allowing them to work on only one drawer at a time. If Lucille experienced guilt over not opening the motherhood drawer adequately, it was at least partially due to the demands of the numerous Desilu drawers. Motherhood challenged Lucille, and she was no gentler with the children than she was with her own hard-driving self. As Desi, Jr., observed, “even when we were young, my mother was never able to really turn off from whatever it is that drives her in her work” (Brady, 2001, p. 243). The children experienced a Lucy and Desi who were far more tragic and unhappy than the characters they had portrayed on television. The marriage steadily deteriorated, and the Arnazes pursued marital counseling for the final time. As in prior attempts at marital therapy, they would fight with each other fiercely and then sometimes jointly turn

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against the therapist. Desi soon quit altogether, but Lucille continued until the therapist asked about her childhood. “I had a happy childhood,” she angrily insisted, leaving therapy forever. The marital estrangement increased, as did the workload. Soon, life began to resemble art as they, like married couples in television programs, spent their evenings in separate beds. Desi, now one of the most important television executives, was beginning to succumb to occupational pressures by being truant, going on drinking binges, and spending time with hookers and starlets. Bob Weiskopf observed, “Desilu is a family, but daddy is never home” (Brady, 2001, p. 251). In October 1959, Lucille arrived at their mansion to find him in bed with two hookers. This was the final straw. The Arnazes divorced in 1960. The Arnazes’ portrayal of the Ricardos, the lovingly fractious couple, had reassured many viewers who suffered similarly. Sadly, the happy endings that characterized the fictional Ricardos eluded the real Arnazes. Lucille then went on to a Broadway project—the musical, Wildcat. Although the show didn’t achieve great success, there were enduring consequences. During this project, she began dating comedian Gary Morton, which renewed Desi’s interest in her and, although the Arnazes almost reconciled, Gary won, marrying Lucille on November 19, 1961. She returned to home life and work on films, along with the beginning of the new series, The Lucille Ball Show. Desilu, having been increasingly neglected by Desi’s absences, was starting to lose money. In 1962, she bought out Desi’s interest, becoming the first female studio mogul.

GENERATIVITY VERSUS STAGNATION With the new show and new responsibilities as studio head, the occupational demands on Lucille increased. People who knew her at the time described her as having become hardened and brittle. Regarding her divorce from Desi, friends observed, “She’s been forced to put steel around her heart” (Brady, 2001, p. 287). Although “Madame President” hired talented executives, these new responsibilities weighed heavily on her. Lucille dutifully labored on as studio head and delegated as much as possible, creating “no doubt that she would leave the running of it to others” (p. 282). Nevertheless, she had the wisdom to hire creative experts and heed good advice, and the courage to take risks. An unnamed CBS lawyer observed, “Lucy is no dope. Underneath that mop of carrot hair is one bright woman. She’s been smart enough to find the right advice. As a businessman who had faced her as an adversary, I can tell you one thing for sure: She’s no communist” (Metz, 1975, p. 193). She underwent significant

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financial risks to put Mission: Impossible and Star Trek on the air. Ed Holly, Desilu Treasurer recalled: I advised Lucy and the board that we’d have to sell the company if we did those pilots. She alone made the decision to go forward with the two series. If it had not been for her, Mission: Impossible and certainly Star Trek would never have gotten on the air. (Brady, 2001, p. 293)

She accepted the risk to keep the Desilu studio a central player with the major networks. By the early 1970s, Gulf+Western bought Desilu, and CBS terminated their traditional prime time lineup, pursuing a younger and more urban demographic. The Lucy Show was canceled. Meanwhile, Desi, Jr., was acquiring the dubious distinction of becoming a tabloid star because of his alcohol and drug problems. However, Lucille continued to portray the family as the normal, typical American constellation—an image that matched neither her personal reality nor the current cultural changes. The mid- to late 1960s through the early 1970s was a period of profound social turmoil and change comprising hedonism, progressive activism, and utopian dreams. Hippie culture, entirely incompatible with Hollywood culture, exacerbated the generational schisms for Hollywood parents of that era. The differences between general mood with that of Hollywood were compounded by the near simultaneous shift in programming preferences by network executives who desired only youthful viewers. Lucille’s 1985 attempt at serious drama, Stone Pillow, was not well received, and Desi died the following year. Lucille tried to find success once more in prime time, and although Life With Lucy failed, it was noteworthy for its attempt at squelching stereotypes of the elderly. The show depicted Lucille as she had perceived herself for so many years, an ageless self. The cycle of disaster alternating with triumph that had come to mark her life recurred a final time when, shortly after Desi’s death and the cancellation of Lucille’s last television series, President Ronald Reagan honored her with a Kennedy Center Award. She died April 26, 1989.

CONCLUSION Lucille tried to make the best of a tragic childhood, and this coping strategy paid off throughout her life. Although she was the object of ridicule in her tender years, she later developed the ability to make herself the target of humor. Poking fun at herself instead of others was one of her

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many endearing qualities. The simple human vulnerabilities that Lucille’s comedy represented made her appeal universal, a rare achievement. Her radio and film paths are more easily mapped than her television contributions. Lucille didn’t just give us Lucy; we must credit her with giving us two notable television executives and all that ensued from their contributions. Her insistence that Desi play her television husband ultimately led him to go beyond merely playing “Ricky Ricardo” as he developed into one of the most important television executives of the 1950s. She, herself, remained a noteworthy television executive through the 1960s. As the financial producer of Star Trek, she propelled a multiseries, motion picture tradition “to go boldly where no man has gone before.” The shy girl, who had dreamed of show business, blazed more paths than the maps have room for. The cycle of alternating disaster and triumph might have unhinged a less resolute, ambitious performer. This cycle, combined with unsolicited or seemingly random opportunities, may have influenced Lucille’s view that “happenstance” was responsible for her successful career. Hard work and willingness to take risks were among the actual qualities that facilitated her significant contributions. Lucille has never gone off the airwaves during the last half-century. Indeed, George Burns observed at her death, “Lucy is gone but she’ll always be with us.”

REFERENCES Ball, L., & Hoffman, B. H. (1996). Love, Lucy. New York: Putnam. Brady, K. (2001). Lucille: The life of Lucille Ball. New York: Billboard Books. Metz, R. (1975). CBS: Reflections in a bloodshot eye. Chicago: Playboy Press.

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Grace Brewster Murray Hopper A Woman Who Dared and Did Debra Sue Pate

Grace Murray Hopper Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Reprinted with permission.

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When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Grace Hopper was an associate professor of mathematics at Vassar College. Her response to the entry of the United States into World War II moved her from academic mathematics to the overlapping worlds of computers and the navy, and in each world she was a notable pioneer. Computers were then in their infancy, and women were first allowed to join the navy during World War II. Hopper remained actively involved with both computing and the navy for most of the rest of the 20th century, until shortly before her death in 1992, at the age of 85.

FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD Grace Brewster Murray was born in New York City on December 9, 1906, to Mary Campbell Van Horne Murray and Walter Fletcher Murray. Her sister, Mary Campbell Murray, was born 3 years later; her brother, Roger Franklin Murray II, was 5 years younger than Grace (Williams, 2004). The names of both of Grace’s younger siblings appear to be family names. Grace was named for her mother’s best friend (Billings, 1989). Walter Murray, following in his father’s footsteps, was an insurance broker. He lost both legs during Grace’s childhood because of circulatory problems. He walked on wooden legs with the aid of two canes. Despite his health problems, he survived into his 70s. Walter used his continued activity and his good humor in the face of his disability (e.g., he joked about changing his socks only when they became dusty) to illustrate for his children that they could accomplish anything to which they set their minds (Williams, 2004). Mary Murray shared with her older daughter a love of mathematics, but she did not have the opportunities for study that were later available to Grace. It had required “special arrangements . . . so that she [Mary] could study geometry” (Billings, 1989, p. 15) in high school, and she did not go to college. Her father (Grace’s grandfather), John Garrett Van Horne, was a surveyor and allowed Mary—and, later, Grace—to go with him on surveying trips. Her husband’s health problems created for her a fear of early widowhood, in response to which she assumed responsibility for the family’s finances (Billings, 1989), thus providing for her children an example of the mathematical competence possible for women. Atypically for the era, Grace’s parents emphasized the importance of education for Grace and her sister, as well as for her brother (Billings, 1989), and they wanted both their daughters and their son to be able to support themselves (Williams, 2004). In the same vein, Roger also was required to learn at least to sew on a button and to cook (Billings, 1989). All three children graduated from college, Grace and Mary from

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Vassar and Roger from Yale, and both Grace and Roger went on to earn PhDs (Williams, 2004). It is interesting to note that all three chose careers involving mathematics: Grace as a mathematician and computer scientist, Mary as a statistician for an insurance company, and Roger as a banker (Williams, 2004). Grace attended private girls’ schools, the Graham School and Schoonmakers School, in New York City, where she received an academically rigorous education (Mitchell, 1994). Then, having failed a Latin examination required for admission to Vassar, she spent a year at the Hartridge School, in Plainfield, New Jersey, another academically rigorous school, one known for sending many students on to Vassar. She then entered Vassar for her undergraduate education. Grace had an active childhood, including, but by no means limited to, traditional girls’ activities. She played with construction sets and dollhouses (Billings, 1989), and she was involved in school athletics (Mitchell, 1994). Her favorite activity, however, was reading (Billings, 1989). The family spent the summers in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, where there was an extended-family summer colony (Williams, 2004). The Murrays remained a close family even after Grace and her siblings were grown. When Grace married, she and her husband, Vincent Foster Hopper, traveled to Europe with her family rather than taking a honeymoon for just the two of them (Mitchell, 1994). In the early years of the marriage, Grace and Vincent lived in the same building as her parents, and they bought a house in Wolfeboro (Grace retained it after their divorce) (Williams, 2004). Childless herself, Grace was close to her siblings’ children and, eventually, grandchildren. She was an avid knitter all her life, and she knitted extensively for her family, “get[ting] orders for elaborately knitted sweaters, bedspreads, everything under the sun” (Mompoullan, 1985, p. 8). One story that Hopper often told of her childhood presaged her later interest in computers. At 7 years old, she disassembled an alarm clock. As the story goes, this early attempt at tinkering was not a success. In fact, not only was she unable to reassemble it, but she also had not figured out how to put the pieces back together after taking apart six more alarm clocks—all that there were in the house—to use as models (Billings, 1989). Another of her oft-told stories was of an incident one summer when a strong wind created waves that filled her canoe with water. Her mother reportedly called to her from the porch, “Don’t go down by the stern. What would your great-grandfather say?” Her great-grandfather, whom she had met as a small child, had been a rear admiral in the navy. In later years, as an officer in the navy herself, Hopper appeared proud to have followed in his footsteps—although she also told a story about putting

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flowers on his grave when she was commissioned and reassuring him that it was acceptable for a woman to be a naval officer (Billings, 1989).

VASSAR AND YALE Grace entered Vassar in the fall of 1924. She majored in physics and mathematics and took courses in many other sciences as well. During her undergraduate years, she tutored other students in mathematics and science. As she did throughout her career, she devised concrete demonstrations to illustrate abstract concepts, for example, having one student climb into a bathtub of water so the whole group of students could see for themselves the displacement of the water (Billings, 1989). As a later example of her ability to make the abstract concrete, one of her trademark demonstration pieces at lectures was to hand out “nanoseconds”—roughly foot-long pieces of wire that represented the distance an electron could travel in a nanosecond (one one-billionth of a second). For comparison, she also had made a “microsecond” (one one-millionth of a second)—which was 984 feet long (Mitchell, 1994; Williams, 2004). On her graduation with honors from Vassar, in 1928, Hopper received a grant from Vassar to support her graduate education. She began graduate work in mathematics at Yale University, receiving her master’s degree in 1930 and her PhD in 1934. Hopper is sometimes identified (e.g., Dickason, 1992; Golden & Findlen, 1998) as the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics at Yale, but this identification is incorrect. Although Hopper was certainly one of the early women who earned a PhD in mathematics from Yale, the first was Charlotte Cynthia Barnum, whose degree was awarded in 1895 (Riddle, 1995–1998). While pursuing her graduate studies at Yale, she also was on the faculty at Vassar, where she was appointed an instructor in mathematics in 1931. It was during this era, on June 15, 1930, that Grace married Vincent Hopper, whom she had met in Wolfeboro while she was a student at Vassar. He was a Princeton graduate who taught English at New York University. Atypical for the day but inevitable given their faculty positions, the Hoppers had a commuter marriage. They had a house in Poughkeepsie, and Vincent commuted from New York City for the weekends (Williams, 2004). With the stresses of living apart, of combining teaching with graduate study, and of enduring first the Great Depression and then World War II, it perhaps is not surprising that the Hoppers separated in 1941 and were divorced in 1945. They had no children. Another persisting myth about Hopper is that her husband died soon after their divorce, with some sources even reporting that he was killed

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during World War II. On the contrary, he remarried shortly after their divorce and lived until 1976 (Williams, 2004). Hopper was a successful and popular professor at Vassar. She taught a variety of courses, including mechanical drawing, trigonometry, and probability. To her students’ dismay, she insisted on the importance of good writing even in mathematics courses, reflecting the emphasis on writing in her own education (Williams, 2004). She had advanced to the rank of associate professor by the time she took a leave of absence, in 1943, to join the navy during World War II. To anticipate the story slightly, that was the end of her career at Vassar; after the war, she chose to remain at Harvard, where she was stationed during the war, rather than to return to Vassar.

WORLD WAR II After Pearl Harbor, Hopper, like many others, men and women alike, wanted to contribute to the war effort. She ran into several stumbling blocks, however. Professors of mathematics were considered essential to the war effort; thus, she had difficulty arranging even to take a leave of absence from Vassar. In addition, she was 35 years old, over the age limit, and, at 5 6 and 105 pounds, under the required weight for her height (Billings, 1989; Williams, 2004). The age problem was the first appearance of a theme that was to reemerge throughout Hopper’s navy career. She eventually was allowed to join the naval reserve as a WAVE in December 1943. She finished first in her class at the Northampton Midshipmen’s School and was commissioned as a lieutenant (j.g.) in June 1944 (Billings, 1989; Williams, 2004). Her initial—and only wartime—assignment was to the Bureau of Ships’ Computation Project at Harvard University, where she joined Howard Aiken’s team working with and on the Mark 1, the first electromechanical computer. Hopper was only the third programmer of the Mark 1—and the first who was a woman. On her arrival, Hopper was greeted rather peremptorily by Aiken, who had wanted Hopper assigned to his project immediately rather than spending 2 months at Midshipmen’s School. She was immediately assigned the task of computing “the coefficients for the interpolation of the arc tangent” (Billings, 1989, p. 48). Computers in those early days were radically different from the computers of the early 21st century—orders of magnitude larger and many orders of magnitude slower. The Mark 1 performed three operations a second. By the standards of the time and by comparison to the speed of human computers (the standard term of the era for humans who performed computations), the Mark 1 performed calculations remarkably

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rapidly. Hopper later described herself as having thought of the Mark 1 as “the prettiest gadget” she had ever seen (Billings, 1989, p. 49). Coding (as programming was called in that era [Hopper, 1981]) then was, perhaps, even more different from modern programming than early computers were from contemporary ones; even the idea of computer languages as we think of them today was well in the future. Instructions to the computer were written—laboriously—in machine language and punched on paper tape. In addition, there were no manuals at that time. In fact, Hopper herself wrote the manual for the operation of the Mark 1 (Billings, 1989; Williams, 2004). When she began programming (coding), she had available as references only code books and the knowledge of the programmers who had been working on the machine longer than she had, Richard Bloch and Robert Campbell. Because the programs were punched on paper tape, they could be collected and reused—and the Mark 1 workers did precisely that. Thus, even in those earliest days, they were collecting a library of “stored programs”—albeit not stored on (or in) the computer itself (Williams, 2001, p. 133). Perhaps more importantly, in an early move toward more modern concepts of programming, Hopper and her colleagues began collecting standard sets of instructions for common sets of operations (Hopper, 1981)—an early version of what we would now think of as subroutines. These, however, were not built into the computer or even incorporated into the software—there was no software in which to incorporate them. Rather, they were stored on paper in notebooks, and a programmer wanting to incorporate one in a program copied it by hand into the program as it was being written. This procedure, although substantially less onerous than writing all the instructions from scratch, was still highly subject to human error, particularly errors of transcribing either in the process of copying subroutines into programs or in the process of keypunching the programs once they were written (e.g., misreading a delta as a 4 or a B as a 13 [Hopper, 1981]). Hopper came up with the idea of using the computer itself to do the copying from stored subroutines, in essence letting the computer put together its own programs from a set of available pieces (Hopper, 1999; Williams, 2001). This idea provided the genesis of her later work on the development of compilers and high-level programming languages.

AFTER THE WAR After the war’s end, Hopper, by this time a lieutenant, was not permitted to transfer to the regular navy or to remain on active duty, despite her desire to do so. Again, the problem was one of age—she was 2 years

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past the maximum age (Billings, 1989; Williams, 2004). She did remain in the naval reserve. Faced with a choice of returning to Vassar with a full professorship or staying at Harvard, Hopper chose to remain at Harvard so that she could continue to work with computers. In these years, she worked on the Mark 2 and the Mark 3, successors to the Mark 1. Another of the persistent myths about Hopper derives from an actual occurrence during this era. The myth is that Hopper coined the use of the term bug for a problem with a computer or computer program. Investigating a relay failure that had caused the Mark 2 to stop functioning, the operators found a dead moth in the machine. They entered the moth itself into the logbook with the annotation “first actual case of bug being found” (Williams, 2004; see also http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/ h96000/h96566k.jpg for an image of the logbook entry). The use of the term bug was already common (Williams, 2004); in fact, the wording of the annotation suggests a joke, the humor of which depends on a general understanding of what a computer bug normally is. It may be, however, that the Harvard crew’s subsequent description of their activity when the computer was not running as debugging the computer brought that term into general usage (Williams, 2004). As a woman, Hopper could not remain at Harvard for more than a few years. Continuing appointments without promotion or tenure were not permitted, but there was resistance to promoting women (Williams, 2004). Thus, she moved into the world of commercial computing, joining the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she worked on the UNIVAC—the “first mass-produced commercially available computer” (Williams, 2001, p. 145)—and its successors. Over the years, with mergers and takeovers, the company changed names multiple times; by the time Hopper “retired” from the company in 1971, it was the Sperry Corporation.

COMPILERS AND PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES In the early 1950s, at Eckert-Mauchly, Hopper developed the first compiler, ignoring the consensus of the profession that “computers could only do arithmetic” (Hopper, 1981, pp. 13–14). Her persistence in the face of received wisdom seems to have been an enduring characteristic of hers; one of her commonly cited bits of advice is, “It is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission” (e.g., Hamblen, 1986/2002). Many variants of this line exist, but the gist remains constant. Her office clock was famous (Williams, 2001). It was numbered—and it ran—counterclockwise; she used it as a concrete illustration of the possibility of doing things in ways other than those in which they always had been done.

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By 1952, she had written a working compiler, the A-0—still in machine language—programming languages were still in the future. She described this compiler in a now classic paper, “The Education of a Computer.” In this paper (Hopper, 1952/1988), she described how a computer could be made to become a computer programmer, in essence, how the computer could be made to construct its own programs. Commercial use of computers was growing—and the computers were being used not only for computing (e.g., computing insurance premiums), but also for automating other processes involving nonnumerical data (e.g., preparation of bills). Even during the war, when Hopper had told her father about her work with the Mark 1, he had seen the potential usefulness of computers in the insurance industry, and one of the earliest commercial programs implemented was a joint venture of the Computation Laboratory at Harvard and the Prudential Life Insurance Company (Williams, 2004). With computers increasingly widespread (although not by today’s standards) and used for an increasing variety of functions, programming was a major bottleneck. Hopper was one of the early workers in computer science to consider the possibilities of writing instructions not in machine language but in something that looked more familiar, more comprehensible, to humans—namely (given that she was working in the United States) using things that looked like English—strings such as count and divide. Again, her idea was considered impossible by others—just as everyone had known that computers could not construct programs, everyone knew that “computers couldn’t understand English words” (Hopper, 1981, p. 16). As Hopper saw the problem, though, it was simply one of writing a compiler to translate instructions written in words into machine language. Her first such compiler was B-0. Somewhat paradoxically, perhaps, given her goal of developing ways of writing programs that were transparently meaningful to the writer of the program, Hopper maintained the programmers’ convention of naming programs with letters and numbers. By her account, the catchy names such as “MATH-MATIC” and “FLOW-MATIC” were imposed by the sales department (Hopper, 1981). B-0, introduced in 1955, was very limited, with a maximum of 20 statements, such as “INPUT INVENTORY FILE A; PRICE FILE B” and “OUTPUT PRICED INVENTORY FILE C,” but it ran (Hopper, 1981; Williams, 2004). Hopper and her team carried the development a step further, replacing English words with French words in one alternate version and with German words in another version, creating yet further problems with management. To the people who doubted even the feasibility of programs written in something that looked like English, “it was absolutely obvious that a respectable American computer, built in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, could not possibly understand French or German! And it took us four

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months to say no, no, no, no! We wouldn’t think of programming it in anything but English” (Hopper, 1981, p. 17). Hopper’s FLOW-MATIC was one of the earliest of the high-level computer languages in widespread use, another major one being FORTRAN, a language specialized for mathematical programming. FORTRAN is still in use; FLOW-MATIC is not. Nonetheless, FLOW-MATIC was the first of the widely used nonmathematical programming languages (Sammet, 2000), and it was used in the 1950s for a variety of applications. Equally important, FLOW-MATIC was the direct ancestor of and the explicit model for COBOL (Sammet, 1981, 2000). COBOL, an abbreviation of “common business-oriented language,” remains one of the most important and most widely used programming languages in contemporary use (Glass, 1999; “In COBOL’s Defense,” 2000; Schricker, 2000). Although the common characterization of Hopper as the mother of COBOL (or, less colorfully, the developer of COBOL) is apocryphal, she nonetheless had an enormous effect on this language. Conceptually, the structure of FLOW-MATIC had a major influence on the structure of COBOL (Sammet, 1981, 2000); moreover, Sammet, a prominent member of the group that did develop the language, wrote that “without the existing practical use of Flow-Matic, I doubt that we would have had the courage to develop a language such as COBOL” (Sammet, 2000, p. 31). Hopper also played important roles in the initiation and the implementation of the effort to develop a common business computer language. She was a member of the small group that initiated the project in 1959; it was she who suggested that an official at the Department of Defense, with no allegiance to any of the computer companies, be asked to lead the project; she was one of the technical advisors to the committee that constructed the language; and members of her staff were members of that committee. Although Hopper (1981) recognized that programming languages were not true languages and that the computers were not understanding English (or French or German) in the sense that humans understand these languages, after its initial release, COBOL became a case study in at least one way in which computer languages can mimic natural languages—dialects developed. They were developed, of course, not by the language itself, nor by the computers, but by the programmers within particular institutions (the language users) who adapted the language to meet immediate local needs. These local adaptations, however useful they were within a particular setting, interfered, of course, with the generality and transportability that had been the advantage of a common computer language. In 1966, Hopper, by that time holding the rank of commander, had been informed by the navy for yet a third time that she was too old. In

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a letter from the Chief of Naval Personnel, she was told “that she had been on reserve duty for 23 years, which was more than 20. ‘I knew that,’ Grace said. Another paragraph stated she was 60 years old. ‘I knew that, too,’ she said” (Billings, 1989, p. 87). With sadness, she complied with the request that she apply for retirement, and she was retired as of the last day of 1966. Within a matter of months, the problem of burgeoning dialects of COBOL led the navy to reverse its opinion that Hopper was too old. She was recalled to active duty—albeit for a limited term of 6 months—in August 1967 (Billings, 1989). The 6 months soon became an indefinite term that lasted for roughly 20 years—“the longest six months I’ve ever spent,” as Hopper described it (Billings, 1989, p. 90). Hopper’s immediate task on her recall to active duty was to restandardize COBOL. Again pioneering, she and her team developed validating routines that tested implementations of COBOL to ensure that the versions of COBOL running on different machines would produce the same answers given the same problems (Williams, 2004). For the next 2 decades, the navy considered Hopper, who already was past retirement age, indispensable. She directed the Programming Languages Section of the Naval Information Systems Division (Billings, 1989). Moreover, she became an emissary both for computing and for the navy, traveling extensively and giving hundreds of lectures a year (Billings, 1989; Williams, 2004), distributing nanoseconds coast to coast. In 1973, she was promoted to captain. A decade later, she was promoted to commodore, despite being technically too old; in fact, a special act of Congress was required (Billings, 1989). In 1985, the rank of commodore was changed to rear admiral. Harking back, perhaps, to the time when she first was commissioned during World War II, Hopper “telephoned her friends in Philadelphia to keep an eye on her great-grandfather Russell’s grave because, she said, ‘He may rise from the dead’” (Billings, 1989, p. 111). In 1986, the navy once again told Hopper that she was too old and must retire. Unwillingly, she acceded. When she retired, she was the oldest officer then serving in the navy; at her request, the ceremony was held aboard the USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned warship in the navy (Mitchell, 1994). With her retirement, which was permanent this time, “the last of the World War II WAVES . . . [left] active duty” (Williams, 2004, p. 171). Retired from the navy, Hopper was not yet ready to retire. She immediately assumed a position as senior consultant at Digital Equipment Corporation, and she maintained an active travel and lecture schedule until 1990 (Mitchell, 1994). She died not long thereafter, on January 1, 1992, and she was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

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AWARDS, NAMESAKES, AND LEGACY Over the years, Hopper received many well-deserved awards and accolades, from the Naval Ordnance Development Award, which she received in 1946 (Billings, 1989), to the National Medal of Technology, which she received in 1991, only a few months before her death (Mitchell, 1994). Many of these awards were firsts. For example, in 1969, she was the first person to receive the Computer Science Man of the Year award, given by the Data Processing Management Association (Billings, 1989). In 1973, she was the first woman and the first American to be named a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. She was the first woman to receive the National Medal of Technology as an individual. She herself said (Billings, 1989) that her greatest award was “the privilege and responsibility of serving very proudly in the United States Navy” (Hopper, 1981, p. 20); she routinely ended her speeches with some variant of this phrase. Both the navy and the world of computing also have honored Hopper by naming things after her, both before and after her death. In 1971, the year she retired from the Sperry Corporation, the Grace Murray Hopper Award, given annually to a young professional at the meeting of the Association of Computing Machinery, was established. In 1982, after visiting Brewster Academy, a private school in Wolfeboro, Hopper helped to develop a computer center for the school, and the center, opened the next year in a ceremony attended by high-level representatives of many computer companies, was named for Hopper. In 1985, the navy dedicated a new data processing center in San Diego, California, the Grace Murray Hopper Service Center. The USS Hopper, a highly computerized destroyer, was launched in 1996. The first Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing was held in 1994; the most recent (the sixth) was held in 2006. Ironically, Hopper herself was not a feminist, as attested by those who knew her well (Mitchell, 1994; Williams, 2004) and by her own words. For example, in an interview in the 1980s (Mompoullan, 1985), in response to a question about her 1969 Man of the Year award, she characterized the women’s movement as “all this hoopla. . . . All this silly women this and that stuff,” and she explicitly denied being a feminist. She denied that she had experienced sexism in either the computer industry or the navy (Williams, 2004). It is true that computing, by comparison to the broader society, was a relatively gender-blind field in the early days (Koss, 2003; Williams, 2004); nonetheless, it became increasingly male dominated over time. In addition, Hopper’s denials and her own atypical career notwithstanding, the navy did not treat men and women equally (Williams, 2004).

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Despite her derisive comments about the women’s movement, there is no doubt that Hopper in many ways was a feminist who simply did not accept the name. She supported and encouraged both women and men to contribute to the advance of computing. Also, she maintained that women were intrinsically as capable as men in mathematics and science, attributing existing differences to social and educational forces (Williams, 2004). In the early 1950s, when one of the programmers in her group announced that she needed to take a leave due to pregnancy, Hopper’s response, “without a moment’s hesitation, . . . [was] ‘Take your work home with you. You can work at home and come in twice a week,’ . . . [a] flexible workplace arrangement [which] was essentially unheard of, especially for a woman” at that time (Koss, 2003, pp. 55–56). Most important, Hopper’s own outstanding achievements both in computing and in the navy make her an exemplary model for (if not of) feminists, male and female alike. She is an example that disproves the rule that women cannot perform as well as men in the domains of mathematics, science, and technology. Following another piece of advice she often gave, Aude et Effice (the motto on the emblem of the Hopper), she dared and she did.

REFERENCES Billings, C. W. (1989). Grace Hopper: Navy admiral and computer pioneer. Hillside, NJ: Enslow. Dickason, E. (1992, April). Remembering Grace Murray Hopper: A legend in her own time. Retrieved September 10, 2004, from http://www.chips.navy.mil/ archives/92 apr/file2.htm Glass, R. L. (1999). COBOL: A historic past, a vital future? IEEE Software, 16(4), 118–119, 120. Golden, K., & Findlen, B. (1998). Grace Hopper. In Remarkable women of the twentieth century: 100 portraits of achievement (p. 81). New York: Friedman/Fairfax. Hamblen, D. (1986/2002, Spring). Only the limits of our imagination: An exclusive interview with Rear Adm. Grace M. Hopper—Amazing Grace. Retrieved September 10, 2004, from http://www.chips.navy.mil/archives/ 02 spring/index2 files/only the limits of our imaginati.htm Hopper, G. M. (1988). The education of a computer. Reprinted in the Annals of the History of Computing, 9, 271–281. (Originally published in 1952) Hopper, G. M. (1981). Keynote address. In R. L. Wexelblat (Ed.), History of programming languages (pp. 7–24). New York: Academic Press. Hopper, G. M. (1999). Commander Aiken and my favorite computer. In I. B. Cohen & G. W. Welch (Eds.), Makin’ numbers: Howard Aiken and the computer (pp. 185–193). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. In COBOL’s defense. (2000). IEEE Software, 17(2), 70–72, 75.

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Grace Brewster Murray Hopper: A Woman Who Dared and Did 227 Koss, A. M. (2003). Programming on the UNIVAC 1: A woman’s account. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 25(1), 48–59. Mitchell, C. L. (1994). The contributions of Grace Murray Hopper to computer science and computer education. Dissertation Abstracts International-A, 55(04), 879. (University Microfilms No. 9424392) Mompoullan, C. (1985). Grace Hopper. In Voice of America interviews with eight American women of achievement (pp. 1–10). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Depository Publications. Riddle, L. (1995–1998). Charlotte Barnum (May 17, 1860–March 27, 1934). Retrieved July 22, 2005, from http://www.scottlan.edu/lriddle/women/barnum. htm Sammet, J. E. (1981). The early history of COBOL. In R. L. Wexelblat (Ed.), History of programming languages (pp. 199–243). New York: Academic Press. Sammet, J. E. (2000). The real creators of COBOL. IEEE Software, 17(2), 30–32. Schricker, D. (2000). COBOL for the next millennium. IEEE Software, 17(2), 48–52. Williams, K. B. (2001). Improbable warriors: Women scientists and the U.S. Navy in World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. Williams, K. B. (2004). Grace Hopper: Admiral of the cyber sea. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press.

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Ella Fitzgerald The Singer’s Singer Beverly Greene

Photographed by Carl Van Vechten. Image courtesy of Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 231

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She was the best. She was the best there ever was. Amongst all of us who sing, She was the best. – Johnny Mathis (Zwerin, 1999)

In a career that spanned almost 60 years, Ella Fitzgerald was considered one of America’s preeminent jazz and popular vocalists. She appeared in heralded performances before royalty and heads of state and belonged to an elite group of artists recognized worldwide by just their first names. Her recorded output includes more than 200 albums and sales of more than 40 million recordings (Davis, 1999; Nicholson, 1993). As a result of digital technology, many of those recordings have been reissued and are popular with yet another generation more than 50 years after their initial printings. In the early 1990s, Fitzgerald had more compact disc recordings in general release than any other artist (Davis, 1999). Dozens of awards garnered during her career included more Grammys (13) than any other jazz musician. By the end of her career, Fitzgerald, who left high school in the ninth grade, held honorary doctorates from institutions that included Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, and Howard Universities (Nicholson, 1993). Dubbed the “singers’ singer,” Ella was consistently voted best female vocalist from 1937 to 1971 in annual readers’ polls in music magazines. Nicholson (1993) wrote that no other jazz artist received such unabated approval for such a long period. Fitzgerald’s remarkable artistic prowess as a creative artist was not the result of formal professional study. Rather, she possessed a unique combination of vocal talents that included a threeoctave range (d’ to C’) and perfect relative pitch. Perfect relative pitch is described by Nicholson (1993) as the ability, on hearing a note, to know its exact relationship to every note around it and to sing those notes precisely, giving vocalizations a quality of tonal perfection. Rosemary Clooney observed that in the decades she witnessed Ella perform, “She was never off key . . . she could not sing badly . . . it was impossible for her to do” (Davis, 1999). Other musicians commented on her exceptional ability for mimicry and for memorizing lyrics quickly and perfectly. She was also lauded for her sense of time and rhythm (Gourse, 1998), as well as her “impeccable diction, clarity and purity of voice and precise intonation” (Nicholson, 1993, p. 133). Singer Mel Tormé observed that Ella had an incredible ear for her instrumentalists, many of whom were the masters of jazz music idioms themselves (Nicholson, 1993). Despite the absence of formal training, she was touted as an excellent sight reader of music. The ability to read music was not a given for most performers

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of her era and had to have helped enormously when she had to master new material quickly or when she had to communicate with musicians.

THE CONTEXT Ella’s life and career took place against the backdrop of American society during the early 20th century, when prospects of success for a poor, awkward, young African-American woman, deemed decidedly unglamorous by the standards of the day, would have seemed dubious at best. Conditions were hardly those that would optimize the future of any woman, much less an African-American woman, orphaned early in life, who was not a conventional beauty and who came from an impoverished background. In 1967, the Los Angeles Times chose her, and eight other women, as Women of the Year for contributions to the status of women (Nicholson, 1993). At the same time, however, she was unable to purchase a home in the section of Beverly Hills in which she wanted to reside because it was restricted to whites. For much of her life, she lived in the midst of— and negotiated the glaring contradictions of—personal success and the humiliating barriers of social injustice. Information gleaned from interviews with her suggests that she saw herself simply having to do what was needed to survive. What Ella actually achieved against all odds would have ordinarily been deemed the stuff of fantasy. In interviews later in her life, she continued to be surprised by the magnitude of her success and the longevity of her popularity. Overall, she appeared oblivious to her own brilliance. Well after being considered an international superstar, her insecurity ranged from preperformance jitters to profound performance anxiety. Singer Carmen Bradford reported that prior to performances, Ella often fretted about whether she would “mess up” or whether the night’s audience would “like me” (Davis, 1999). Other artists remembered her sense of never taking the audience or the work for granted (Davis, 1999). Jazz and pop artist Al Jarreau cited her continuous striving to do the best work possible as a significant ingredient in the exceptionally high quality of her live performances over an unprecedented number of decades (Davis, 1999). Severe psychosocial stressors, and hazardous and unpredictable working conditions, were the norm for black performers and particularly for jazz artists. Despite the fact that she did not use drugs or alcohol to cope with the stressors and frustrations of the business, Ella was known to alternately diet and engage in eating binges that were a cause of significant weight gain. This continued until the 1970s when her health was compromised and she was forced to lose weight (Nicholson, 1993). No matter

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how successful she became, her weight and physical appearance were always sources of painful embarrassment throughout her life (Nicholson, 1993; Zwerin, 1999). For Black female performers, prevailing beauty standards proved a special challenge. Being beautiful meant being slender, curvaceous, buxom, and light skinned, with long straight hair and facial features that were small and delicate. These were the antithesis of the physical characteristics that defined Ella and most American women of African descent. Women for the most part did not play instruments in bands, except in novelty acts. Typically, they were hired as the band’s featured vocalist, and in that position they were as much ornamental as they were musically functional. Generally, those women who could best emulate the White beauty standard were taken more seriously (Greene, White, & Whitten, 2000). Fitzgerald, at that time, was a large, brown-skinned woman with short hair and did not approximate the “glamour” standard. The kindest assessments of her physically described her as “plain.” Natural hairstyles that would have been attractive and could be cared for more easily in the absence of professional hairdressers were completely unacceptable to both Black and White people. Black women were expected to straighten their hair, and the arduous process of “pressing” hair could be undone in a moment if the hair got wet or if the weather was humid. Air conditioning was not a routine feature of performance venues and working on stage in front of hot lights almost guaranteed that performers would sweat profusely, ruining a couple of hours of careful grooming in just moments. Thus, it was far more difficult for all women than for men, but even more difficult for Black women, to maintain the unrealistic beauty standard. Ella was known to be sensitive about her physical appearance throughout her career. She feared that audiences “wouldn’t like me anymore” following cataract surgeries requiring her to wear glasses on stage. It is her weight, however, that proved to be the most dogged source of her dissatisfaction. Until the 1950s and the advent of television, touring was the only way of delivering live performances to audiences across the country and the primary mode of making a living for most performers, regardless of their stature. Because of the vicious quality of Jim Crow racism that permeated American society and the widespread segregation in the South and other parts of the United States, touring for Black performers was often dangerous and humiliating. Even under the best of circumstances, touring was a challenge. Prior to the routine of air travel and limousines, performers usually traveled by car or bus from one city to another, at times appearing in a different city every night. Even after air travel was the common mode of travel for performers, Ella, her cousin/traveling companion Georgina Henry, and

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accompanist John Lewis were en route to a performance when they were bumped from a flight during a stopover in Honolulu because white passengers wanted their seats (Nicholson, 1993). They were not even allowed back on the plane to retrieve the personal belongings they left in their seats. The routine of touring meant leaving town right after a performance and traveling to the next venue, with no respite. Jazz impresario, Oscar Peterson, observed that “Ella was a trouper” and held her own in these situations (Zwerin, 1999). By his recollection, during the long bus rides between gigs, Ella was frequently the only woman on the tour. He recalled, “Once in a while . . . she’d just start singing and she’d bring that bus to a standstill. . . . I’m talking about well known, accomplished musicians would be like statues in their seats . . . transfixed” (Zwerin, 1999). In locations that were racially segregated, it was commonplace for black entertainers to perform before completely segregated white audiences in places where black performers could neither eat nor obtain lodging. Sometimes they were not even permitted to enter through the front doors of the establishments in which they performed. Complex arrangements had to be made for even noteworthy performers to find lodging. In most states, black and white performers were not permitted to travel in the same vehicles and could not appear on stage together. Not only was day-to-day life off stage rife with the indignities of racism, but life on the road could also be dangerous for artists whose notoriety elicited resentment from racists in the towns through which they traveled. As late as the 1970s, domestic terrorists such as the Ku Klux Klan attacked black people with little or no legal sanctions. Buses or cars filled with black performers traveling through rural areas between cities could be easy targets.

NAVIGATING JAZZ’S GOLDEN AGE, AND BEYOND Jazz was rapidly growing in popularity, and Ella developed in the “Golden Age of Jazz” (1935–1960). Ella’s vocal talent and improvisational style were well suited to jazz music idioms. However, Nicholson (1993) observed that even now jazz is a predominantly male bastion where women have to prove themselves more than do male artists. In the jazz world, Ella faced more discrimination as a woman perhaps than as an African American. Despite other characterizations of Ella as shy, deferential, and reticent, Nicholson (1993) pointed out that she navigated the “chauvinistic” world of jazz with the hard edge necessary to succeed. By all accounts she was not a “diva” but was very professional, always arriving seriously prepared for recording sessions and behaving as befits a disciplined artist with respect for her peers. As the first black artist who headlined in clubs such as the Copacabana and hotels such as The Waldorf-Astoria, she faced the additional pressure of being under heightened scrutiny. If

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she was successful, these venues could be persuaded to book other black artists, but any failure on her part would be used to justify the continued exclusion of her black peers. Ella generously credits musicians with teaching her “everything” and with influencing the development of her trademark improvisational “scat” singing, which she described as her attempt to use her voice to take the role of another horn in the band (Davis, 1999). Ella said that when she assumed the role of a horn she had “the feeling that everybody is all together . . . and we’re all for each other . . . it’s the greatest education I ever had” (Davis, 1999). Scat singing, the instrumental use of the voice, can be traced back to the turn of the 20th century. Although Louis Armstrong made scat a “household word,” Sonny Rollins credits Ella’s remarkable ability to use her voice to imitate the instruments, particularly horns, with bringing scat singing to a new level of artistry and describes her as one of the greatest improvisers of jazz (Nicholson, 1993, p. 92). Other artists described her scat techniques as “pyrotechnic”(Nicholson, 1993). Along with Armstrong, the Boswell Sisters, Ethel Waters, and, later, Dizzy Gillespie were among her earliest musical influences. Her 1945 recording of Flying Home used scat with what was described as dazzling creativity and stands to this day as a masterful performance of scat singing (Nicholson, 1993). Although she came into prominence during the swing era, Ella went on to prevail in bebop and other popular music idioms as well. According to Ella, “Dizzy was my teacher in bebop . . . that’s how I became a bebop singer—because I followed Dizzy!” (Davis, 1999). Her repertoire gradually expanded and included a wide range of musical forms. She proved that she could sing anything.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS Comparatively little biographical material on Ella is available. Nicholson (1993) penned what is considered the authoritative and detailed biography. Because he never actually interviewed her, his account—despite its value in other respects—lacks the immediacy of recent video documentaries of her life (Davis, 1999; Zwerin, 1999). The latter accounts include extensive interview footage with Ella herself and leave us with a more personal glimpse of who she was as a person, or at least what she would allow outsiders to see. Nicholson (1993) wrote that stories about Ella’s early life often contain inaccuracies and inconsistencies. He attributes this in part to Ella’s refusal to speak in more than “superficial generalities” about her early life or to give the details about her personal relationships. Off stage she has been characterized as “insular” and “remote,” allowing few people into the inner reaches of her world.

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According to the state of Virginia’s registrar, Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, on April 25, 1917, although on her marriage license she gave the date as 1918. William Fitzgerald, a transfer wagon driver, and Temperance Williams, a laundress, were her parents. Although the two were not married, William officially acknowledged that he was her father. Ella reported in interviews that she had been told that her father could play the guitar but that she never knew him. She also reported that her mother could sing beautifully and had a “classical voice” (Davis, 1999). In the year after her birth, her father abandoned the family and was replaced by Joseph Da Silva, the mother’s paramour, a manual laborer who moved the family to Yonkers, New York. Ella’s half-sister Frances was born in 1923. Ella would remain close to her sister until Frances’s untimely death in 1966 at 43. She assumed financial responsibility for Frances and her family, as she did for many other family members. Among African-American families, there is the informal custom for those who find work or are more well off to take care of those who are less fortunate. Ella’s observance of this custom influenced her working beyond the point when others were urging her retirement in the interest of her health. At those times, she would say that there were children who had to be taken care of and educated, so “we gotta go to work” (Zwerin, 1999). Ella’s childhood neighbors and playmates give us an early glimpse of this legend and her surroundings (Davis, 1999; Nicholson, 1993; Zwerin, 1999). Ella began attending public school in 1923 in Yonkers, New York. School records indicate that she attended school through the ninth grade and was an excellent student with a “retentive memory” (Nicholson, 1993, p. 89). Her family lived in an ethnically diverse neighborhood that included Italian, Irish, Greek, and some eastern European families. It appears that the children played and attended school together, and even visited in one another’s homes. According to self-reports, they were all poor. The children apparently attended one another’s church services, where music played an important role. Ella is remembered as positive, happy, and jolly at that time, always dancing and singing. It was her passion for dancing for her friends that seemed to stand out in the minds of those who remembered her, as did her declaration that she would one day become famous for her dancing. Despite Ella’s burgeoning talent and abundant interest in performing, Nicholson (1993) wrote that the Yonkers school archives show no record of her singing or participating in any school play or music events. Ella herself recalls that she “got in a couple of school plays . . . singing ‘Sing, You Sinners, Sing’ imitating that growl-ly voice of the fellow who sang it and the kids really liked me . . . ” (Davis, 1999). Ella’s peers recalled that she could imitate other singers with exceptional accuracy (Davis, 1999; Nicholson, 1993; Zwerin, 1899). Nicholson (1993) pointed out that Ella was among the first generation that grew up when radios and phonographs were widely available to

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mass audiences. Radio broadcasts increased the popularity of jazz, which in turn fueled the popularity of and demand for phonograph recordings. Music flooded everyday life in ways that were unprecedented, and the airwaves were filled with the sounds of the artists who would later be judged pioneers in jazz and American music idioms.

TURMOIL FOLLOWING HER MOTHER’S DEATH In 1932, Ella’s mother died suddenly. Despite the fact that Ella was still quite young, she and another childhood friend in Yonkers were already dancing in clubs to earn money. It is alleged that Ella’s stepfather became abusive after her mother’s death and neglected her. Some childhood friends say that Ella never talked about or actually acknowledged the abuse and that they would not ask about it, feeling that she would never admit to bad treatment, although aspects of her behavior suggested that abuse was occurring (Davis, 1999; Nicholson, 1993; Zwerin, 1999). Whatever the actual facts, Ella’s maternal aunt, Virginia, was prompted to take Ella into her own family in Harlem in April 1932. Most accounts of Ella’s life suggest that during this period her previously lighthearted temperament changed. She became truant and dropped out of school, became a lookout for a “sporting house” (brothel), and started “running numbers” to earn money. Wilson (Davis, 1999) and Norton (Zwerin, 1999) suggested that Ella may not even have known that running numbers was illegal, and in the post-Depression climate, earning money was paramount (Nicholson, 1993). Ella was caught, deemed a person in need of supervision, taken to the former Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale, New York, and from there transferred to the New York State Training School for Girls, a reformatory (Davis, 1999; Nicholson, 1993; Zwerin, 1999). Allegedly, girls in the facility were routinely beaten by male staff and faced a harsh, punishing regimen. Ella ran away in the fall of 1934, presumably to make her way in show business. She did not return to her aunt’s home in Harlem, fearing that this would be the place police would begin looking for her. She became a 17 year old, alone on the streets of New York during the Great Depression, and like many others, performed on the streets for tips and sought auditions in Harlem’s clubs.

THE APOLLO THEATER: THE PROFESSIONAL BEGINNING A turning point in Ella’s life as a performer came when, at the urging of friends, she entered the Apollo Theater’s amateur night on November

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21, 1934. Ella entered the contest as a dancer but recalls watching the Edwards Sisters, whom she dubbed “the greatest dancers of that time” close the show, leaving her feeling so intimidated that when she was finally on stage, she froze. First, the rowdy audience and then stage personnel urged her to “do something!” (Zwerin, 1999). Norma Miller was in the audience that night; she reports that the audience took one look at her and catcalled, “Oh what is she gonna do?” (Zwerin, 1999). Miller observed that Ella, “was tacky, out of shape, poorly dressed, pigeon toed, her hair was not coifed, there was nothing chic about her, and, like rowdy kids, we started booing her!” (Zwerin, 1999). Other accounts confirm that Ella, a “big girl,” was dressed shabbily, unlike other contestants and performers, in second-hand clothes and a pair of men’s boots, and she looked “jumpy and unnerved” (Davis, 1999; Nicholson, 1993). However, Miller reported that when Fitzgerald started to sing, the rowdy crowd quickly quieted down, and when she finished it became so quiet, “you could hear a rat piss on cotton . . . she put it right in the pocket!” (Zwerin, 1999). After three encores, she took first prize. Ella found other work and won other amateur contests, but her shabby physical appearance and poor hygiene worked against her, and she took a lot of teasing about it from band members during those early years. During this period, she was living, eating, and sleeping wherever she could; her lifestyle might today be considered that of a homeless person. However, this would change after meeting one of the most significant people in her professional life, noted bandleader Chick Webb. Webb, suffering from tuberculosis of the spine, lived only a few years after their meeting and Ella’s signing on with his band, but those would be very important years for Ella.

THE BEGINNING OF A LONG RUN After Ella’s triumph at the Apollo Theater, there had been efforts to bring her to Chick Webb’s attention, but Webb had taken one look at her, made derogatory remarks about her appearance, and initially dismissed the idea of using her for his band. Another musician, Charles Linton, persisted on Ella’s behalf. As Ella recalled the episode, Webb’s band was scheduled to play the prom at Yale University in 1935, and in anticipation of that event, there was an agreement: If the Yale students liked Ella, she would become the band’s lead vocalist; if not, she was out. The rest is history. According to Nicholson (1993), Ella’s appearance and hygiene was so ill kept that she had to be taught to comb her hair, wash, dress appropriately, and be presentable. Because Ella was underage, she would not be allowed to perform or tour without a guardian, so Webb became her legal

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guardian. Webb became the first of the two most important male mentors in her fatherless life. He expanded her vocal repertoire, tutored her, and occupied the role of partial father. By the time of Webb’s premature death in 1939 at 30, Ella had been voted the most popular female jazz singer. Although she continued with Webb’s band as its leader and lead singer, she was now vulnerable without his guiding influence.

RELATIONSHIPS Ella’s professional responsibilities and her own ambition worked against establishing enduring romantic relationships. One of her former pianists, Paul Smith, described Ella as having no romantic life, being a very sensitive and naive woman whose feelings could be easily hurt, and who because she was “by no means conventionally attractive” could be vulnerable to being taken advantage of when men simply paid attention to her (Nicholson, 1993, p. 174). She did enter into two marriages, both of which were ultimately unsuccessful. The first of these, lasting less than a year, was to a man with a reputation as a pimp and exploiter of women (Davis, 1999; Nicholson, 1993). Ella’s second marriage, to bassist Ray Brown, was marked by tensions associated with conflicting career demands and ended in a divorce that was so painful for her that she is said to have spoken of a temptation toward “doing way” with herself.

NORMAN GRANZ Ella Fitzgerald’s career was shaped in large measure by Chick Webb in the early days and later by Norman Granz. The fact that Granz was white and male was an essential ingredient in the sustained impact of his management on her career. At that time in American history, no black person or female could have attained access to the influential people and places needed to create previously unheard of opportunities for Ella in a society that was free to discriminate against her as a woman, African American, jazz artist, and person who was not a conventional beauty. Norman Granz was a jazz promoter whose legacy included elevating jazz performances to the level of other forms of popular music and insisting that a level of respect be accorded jazz artists. He booked his performers in clubs and venues that had not looked favorably on jazz music and black musicians but represented the locations where the “big money” was to be made and wider audiences could be found. Granz paid his performers more than most jazz promoters, insisted that they be paid wages in clubs and not work for tips, and instituted a heretofore unheard

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of policy that forbade racial discrimination in audiences as a matter of contractual agreement. If blacks were not allowed to attend performances or if blacks and whites were segregated, he would pay his artists, but there would be no performance. His Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts, which began in 1944, were known worldwide for bringing those who were considered jazz impresarios to venues around the world in live concerts and for providing what are now regarded as important recordings of those performances. Granz saw in Ella the potential to be the quintessential American singer and set about creating opportunities that made maximum use of her talent and assured exposing her to the widest possible audience. Acquainted with each other since 1946, Granz became Ella’s personal manager in 1949, included her in the famous Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts, and became her record producer in 1953 after her contract with Decca records expired. Ella was not easily won over by Granz. She was considered conservative about making major changes in her life and did not immediately acquiesce to Granz’s persistent appeals to take over her management, despite his track record as a successful and ethical jazz promoter. Also, at that time, Ella was already an established star. Granz made her an unusual offer. They would shake hands on a deal, making him her manager with no written contract. If she was ever dissatisfied, she was free to dissolve the business relationship (Nicholson, 1993). Ella herself recalled that when Granz expanded her recording repertoire from predominantly jazz and novelty songs to include the great American songwriters she feared that “Norman was trying to take me away from my jazz.” Although stories about his Svengali-like influence abound, there is no doubt that Granz, who started the infamous Verve record label, with Ella as one of its featured performers, was a formidable influence in Ella’s career, and his instincts about the direction of her career were ultimately sound. It is said that Granz believed that she was the greatest singer in jazz and steered her toward stellar collaborations with the top jazz artists in the world and recorded them on his record label. It was also Granz’s idea to record her most well-known works, The Songbooks, featuring Ella singing songs of all major American songwriters. She recalled that when Granz proposed that she record this series, her response was, “Who wants to listen to me sing this?” (Davis, 1999). Once again, however, Granz instincts were correct.

ANALYZING THE INGREDIENTS OF ELLA FITZGERALD’S SUCCESS There was and is a double standard for successful, high-achieving men and women. Although men are expected to be aggressive in prioritizing

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the work needed to achieve their career goals and may be seen as more desirable mates for doing so, women are negatively valued for doing the same thing. Regardless of the demands of their careers, women are often still expected to be the primary caretakers of spouse, children, and other family members. This attitude is particularly frequent among black women, who are typically encouraged to place the needs of others over their own needs. Ella clearly violated that expectation and paid a price for doing so. Her marriages ended in divorce; her romantic relationships were few and did not endure; despite her love for children, she could not have children of her own; and even her relationship with her adopted son was strained until the birth of her granddaughter. Nonetheless, Ella exhibited a resilience nurtured by many loving caregivers in her life (Jones, 1997). Ella’s mother, her Aunt Virginia, loyal friends during her childhood and adult life, cousins and close friends who served as her traveling companions while on tour, Chick Webb and Norman Granz’s entrance into her life at critical artistic developmental junctures, countless master musicians, and millions of fans over decades served as caregivers and sources of positive regard and great affection for her.

LAST YEARS Always finding joy on stage, she was the recipient of a series of international awards and enjoyed unwavering popularity, despite the fact that in later years her voice was not always as superb as it had been. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, her health began to show signs of wear from the decades of endless touring. In the fall of 1989, the Society of Singers established an award for lifetime achievement representing the standard of excellence in vocal arts. It was dubbed simply “The ELLA.” Ella received the first award and the following year presented Frank Sinatra with the second award. That occasion marked the last time these two icons of American music would appear and perform together on stage. Ella’s last performance was in January 1991, at a televised tribute to the life and career of Sammy Davis, Jr. On June 15, 1996, Ella Fitzgerald died in her sleep from the complications of severe diabetes. At the time of her death, Ella was the recipient of every major award in music, as well as the Kennedy Center Medal of Honor, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and others too numerous to mention. A list is available at the official Ella Fitzgerald Web site (http://ellafitzgerald.com/). Years after her death, Ella’s accomplishments continue to bring her recognition. She was the 2005 recipient of the Ford Freedom Award for

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contributions that made a significant positive impact on improving the African American community and the world at large, citing her distinctive voice and her influence on African Americans with musical talents (Gately, 2005). After her death, international artist, friend, and recipient of the fourth annual ELLA award, Rosemary Clooney, sadly reflected that “more of the same is all I want. . . . I miss her. . . . I wish I could just have more time” (Davis, 1999).

REFERENCES Davis, G. (Director). (1999). Biography—Ella Fitzgerald: Forever Ella [Videotape]. A&E Home Video. Gately, N. (2005, February 28). Ella Fitzgerald to receive 2005 Ford Freedom Award. Retrieved September 26, 2006, from http://www.ellafitzgerald. com/about/viewheadline.php?id=3038 Gourse, L. (1998). Ella Fitzgerald: Seven decades of commentary. New York: Schirmer Books. Greene, B., White, J. C., & Whitten, L. (2000). Hair texture, length and style: A metaphor in the African American mother–daughter relationship. Considerations for psychotherapy. In L. C. Jackson & B. Greene (Eds.), Psychotherapy with African American women: Innovations in psycho-dynamic perspectives and practice (pp. 166–193). New York: Guilford Press. Jones, F. (1997). Eloquent anonymity. [Review of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn]. Readings: A Journal of Review and Commentary in Mental Health, 12(1), 10–14. Nicholson, S. (1993). Ella Fitzgerald: A biography of the first lady of jazz. New York: Da Capo Press. Zwerin, C. (Director). (1999). Ella Fitzgerald: Something to live for. [American Masters series]. New York: WNET.

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S I X T E E N

Shirley Chisholm A Catalyst for Change Barbara L. Biales

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Shirley Chisholm announced her candidacy for president of the United States on January 25, 1972, at Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn. Running for president was not Chisholm’s idea originally. College students started her thinking seriously about it. She had spoken on more than 100 campuses since her election to Congress in 1968, and on most campuses someone would ask, “Why don’t you run for President in 1972?” (Chisholm, 1973, p. 11). The college students kept Shirley’s hopes for change in the political system alive when they wanted to know why so little action was taking place on issues of poverty, health, housing, racism, and unemployment, and why so many resources were supporting the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. Many of the most important themes in politics have been sounded first by young people and gradually, painfully forced on reluctant elders. This generation of students (between 1962 and 1972) decided to lay hands on their society and change it. A “new politics” was needed. It does no good to say, “Something ought to be done.” The question is, “What am I going to do?” (Chisholm, 1973, p. 10). Shirley Chisholm’s running for the presidency was significantly “generative” in that she wanted a much more inclusive society for future generations, a society in which a black candidate or a woman candidate might run. “I ran because someone had to do it first” (p. 3). Shirley Chisholm’s personal dream was to be a catalyst for change. She fought for expanded roles for women and blacks, both in her professional career as an educator and in her various activities in politics. She was the first black woman to serve in Congress, having won her seat representing Brooklyn’s 12th Congressional District in 1968. Congressman Chisholm fought to alleviate the problems of her inner-city constituents. Candidate Chisholm fought for a more inclusive system in both Congress and the presidential election process. Of the two major obstacles to these endeavors, she often said that she received more resistance from being a woman than from being black (Chisholm, 1970). We have had a glimpse of the mature, generative Shirley Chisholm’s political career, but what was the background of a black woman who had such a broad agenda for her life? What is leadership? Is it innate or learned? How important is timing for a leader? These are some of the aspects of Shirley Chisholm’s development that I want to explore with you. I have relied heavily on two books written by Chisholm, which describe her early life and entry into politics (Chisholm, 1970) and her campaign for the presidency (Chisholm, 1973). Two other biographies (Brownmiller, 1970; Hicks, 1971) were excellent supplements. A documentary on public television, Chisholm ‘72: Unbought and Unbossed, gives views of the older Shirley Chisholm’s reflections on her life. I am also indebted to the psychosocial theory of Erik H. Erikson (Erikson, 1950, 1959, 1968) and

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to Howard Gardner’s anatomy of leadership (1995) as influences in my views of Shirley Chisholm.

EARLY CHILDHOOD AND BARBADOS Shirley St. Hill Chisholm was born in Brooklyn on November 30, 1924. Her parents were immigrants from the West Indies. The family struggled economically as Shirley’s father worked in various factory jobs, while her mother was a seamstress and domestic worker. The family increased rapidly in size with the birth of three little girls in 3 years. Shirley was the oldest of the three and was already something of a leader. “By the time I was two and a half . . . I was already dominating other children around me—with my mouth. I lectured them and ordered them around. Even Mother was almost afraid of me” (Chisholm, 1970, p. 4). Shirley walked early and talked early, and got into a lot of mischief. Both parents decided it would be best to send the children back to Barbados, where they would be safer than they would be in Brooklyn. Then their parents could work longer hours to save for a decent house for the family. Nobody realized it would be 7 years of separation (Chisholm, 1970). One would expect that being separated from their parents would have been difficult on the St. Hill girls, but the girls found the large extended family with their cousins, another aunt and uncle, and their grandmother, a pleasant childhood. They could run and play on the small farm and swim in the ocean. Shirley described her grandmother’s house as having many rooms, simply furnished, but “elaborate with two necessities: warmth and love” (Chisholm, 1970, p. 6). In the 1930s, Barbados was still a British colony. When Shirley was 4, her grandmother decided that it was time for her to start school in the village. Years later, Shirley acknowledged that her education in the strict, traditional, British-style schools of Barbados was truly a gift from her parents. “If I speak and write easily now, that early education is the main reason.” She could read and write at the age of 4 (Chisholm, 1970, p. 8). An important adult model for Shirley was her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Emily Seales, a stately woman with a stentorian voice and one of the few persons Shirley admitted she would never dare to defy or even question (Chisholm, 1970). Shirley developed a close relationship with her grandmother, and one day when she and Shirley were alone, grandmother picked up the little girl, sat her on her lap, and told her about “success.” Her grandmother also told her that “nothing can stop you if you are determined not to be distracted by the world of temptation. . . . If you have strong character and determination and if you apply yourself, you will rise to the top” (Hicks, 1971, pp. 24–25).

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Back in Brooklyn, things had not been going the way Shirley’s parents had planned. The Great Depression of 1929 had come, and despite hard work, Ruby and Charles St. Hill could not achieve the security they had hoped to have. But they missed the children and feared that they would grow up without having known their parents, so at the end of 1933, the St. Hills decided that it was time to get their family, which now included a new fourth daughter, back together. Shirley was now a 10-year-old, a secure child who trusted her extended family, had a sense of self-discipline, took initiative to master her environment, and had a real sense of industry about learning in school. In March 1934, Shirley’s mother returned to Barbados to get her three daughters. “The carefree, sunny part of Shirley’s childhood was over” (Brownmiller, 1970, p. 25).

BACK TO BROOKLYN AND ADOLESCENCE With the return to Brooklyn, there were many discontinuities in the lives of the three girls. The weather was cold, and they were afraid of it. The family’s Brooklyn housing lacked adequate heating. The city had tall buildings and few flowers or fruit-bearing trees. There was a lot of traffic. Shirley had a hard time finding her way around and kept getting lost. After school, the girls were told to go straight home, lock the door, and not open it for anyone until their mother got home. This must have been quite a contrast to the girls’ safe environment in Barbados. Some of the more positive aspects of returning to Brooklyn were the discovery of movies, which Shirley and her sisters attended on Saturdays, the trips to the library to get three books each on Saturdays, and the purchase of a piano. Shirley took lessons for 9 years. With a British background from Barbados, Shirley’s mother wanted her daughters to become young ladies—“poised, modest, accomplished, educated, and graceful, prepared to take our place in the world” (Chisholm, 1970 p. 13). It was during this period that Shirley was learning about the world around her in her Brooklyn neighborhood. She was beginning to notice differences in people. The West Indies that Shirley had known was a Black culture, where there were no problems of racial difference. Black (sic) people managed their own affairs, business and government, and knew no other way of life. But Brownsville at this time was still mostly white (sic). . . . The differences in cultures fascinated Shirley and her sisters. From the window of their Brownsville apartment, they could see into the window of a synagogue that was right next door. . . . Finally someone explained that each religion has its own practices but that all are equally expressions of devotion. (Hicks, 1971, p. 29)

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Another positive aspect of Shirley’s adolescent life was her relationship with her father. Shirley idolized her father for his good looks, his extensive vocabulary, and his intelligence. She believed that he would have been a brilliant scholar if he had been able to go to college. He was a voracious reader of three newspapers a day. Many evenings her father would have friends over for conversations. Much of the talk was of the islands, working conditions in Brooklyn, and politics. Shirley learned a great deal about American politics by listening to her father and his friends. He instilled pride in their race at a time when it was not fashionable (Chisholm, 1970). When Shirley graduated from junior high school in 1939, she went to Girls’ High School, one of Brooklyn’s oldest schools. The school had a very good reputation. About half the students were white, but the neighborhood by now was nearly all black. People from the South were immigrating to the jobs in the defense industries during World War II. Black workers had to crowd into neighborhoods that were entirely black or partly so because housing was so scarce for them elsewhere. “No one knew it then, but the present-day ‘inner city’ was being created” (Chisholm, 1970 p. 20). At Girls’ High School, Shirley excelled with the combination of her high IQ and her good study habits. She was not a class or school leader, but at a time when black students were seldom elected to offices, she was elected vice president of an honor society. She was shy and self-conscious of her West Indian accent, so she kept to herself and became a voracious reader (Hicks, 1971). Becoming a serious student of American history, she was fascinated by the lives of three women who had influenced American politics: Harriet Tubman (a black woman who helped slaves escape from the South), Susan B. Anthony (a white woman who spent her life fighting for the equality of women), and Mary McLeod Bethune (a black woman who became the trusted friend and advisor to the then U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Brownmiller, 1970). Shirley’s high school years were not all academic. She was beginning to have a social life, and she loved going to parties, where she discovered that she was a good dancer. Her mother was horrified at Shirley’s love of dancing because she did not think it was proper for a young lady (Brownmiller, 1970). Shirley’s mother took the lead in handling social relationships, and her father let her do so, although he would try to persuade Ruby St. Hill that she was an immigrant and should adapt more to the ways of her new country. The St. Hill girls were allowed to go to school programs and occasional parties, but they were not allowed to date in high school. As many an adolescent will, Shirley began to rebel, but in small ways. It was certainly not a huge identity crisis, but Shirley showed that she was working out her own personal identity apart from

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her mother’s plans for her, such as playing jazz by ear on the piano or letting a boy walk her home (Chisholm, 1970).

BROOKLYN COLLEGE Shirley’s high school teachers were aware that Shirley was gifted and began to prepare her for college. She was encouraged to apply for scholarships to college, and she received four of them. Shirley entered Brooklyn College in the fall of 1942. Brooklyn College definitely changed her life. I was still naive about most things when I entered college, not quite eighteen. My fiercely protective parents had given me a sheltered upbringing that was incredible considering the time and place in which I grew up. In school my intelligence had put me in a special category. In college, I began to bump up against more of the world. (Chisholm, 1970, p. 22)

Brooklyn College was alive with activity. Meetings, clubs, programs, organizations, and more extracurricular activities than anyone could imagine. Many of these activities were politically oriented, and most were progressive. Shirley had already decided to become a teacher because there were so few options open to a young, black woman: “No matter how well I prepared myself, society wasn’t going to give me a chance to do much of anything else” (Chisholm, 1970, p. 23). She majored in sociology and minored in Spanish. In a college system where most local sororities did not admit blacks to membership, Brooklyn College did have a Harriet Tubman Society, in which Shirley became an active member. It was their speakers and programs that brought black consciousness and black pride to Shirley’s attention again, reminiscent of her father’s evening conversations with his friends. Shirley discovered that she loved to argue political issues. Brooklyn College had a debating society, and Shirley found her favorite afterclass club. Shirley was turning into a passionate speaker who could present a rational argument. The team won more debates than it lost (Brownmiller, 1970). In her senior year, a blind political science professor, Louis Warsoff, became interested in Shirley’s ability to debate and asked her if she had ever thought of going into politics. Shirley could hardly believe that he would ask her such a question because there were no black women in the U.S. Congress. He replied that there had to be a first sometime and that he believed that she was just the sort of person who wouldn’t settle for anything else (Brownmiller, 1970; Chisholm, 1970). Many long talks

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followed with this man Shirley called “Proffy.” “He was one of the first white (sic) men whom I ever really knew and trusted” (Chisholm, 1970, p. 25). “Proffy” suggested that she start to involve herself in politics on the local level. He asked her what she saw as the major problems of her own neighborhood, and her answer was bad housing, discrimination, and poor jobs with no chance of advancement. Warsoff said the first step is to recognize the problems, and the second step is to do something about them. He suggested that she begin to organize because she couldn’t do much without the help of others. He told her he was talking about the politics of change (Brownmiller, 1970). As Shirley finished college, she was still living at home, still going to church three times on Sundays, and still forbidden to date. She did join the Brooklyn Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and she worked for the Urban League and many community groups for more than 20 years. Shirley would give an organization a chance to show that it was really out to do something, and if it didn’t prove this to her, she would get angry. She began to see that it was useless for blacks to sit and talk with the “leading people” in the community on biracial committees. It seemed that as long as these committees were only talking, nothing much was going to happen, and she didn’t want to waste her time on inaction (Chisholm, 1970).

EARLY POLITICS, TEACHING, AND MARRIAGE In her senior year at Brooklyn College, Shirley was introduced to Wesley McD. Holder (Mac), a black man from Guiana, who was out to elect black candidates to represent Black communities. At that time, all the elected officials of the 17th Assembly District in Brooklyn were white. Mac and his group were pushing voter registration and managed to get a Black lawyer elected to a municipal court bench in 1953 (Chisholm, 1970). Mac would later work on several of Shirley’s campaigns for office. Shirley’s interest in politics grew, and she joined the 17th Assembly District Democratic Club. Shirley began to ask uncomfortable questions about community problems at the Democratic Club meetings, and they decided to handle her by electing her to the board of directors. She was in her 20s, black, and a woman. The trouble was that she didn’t behave (she kept bringing up neighborhood problems), and so she was dismissed from the all-white board (Chisholm, 1970). By now, Shirley was still working with community groups such as the NAACP, as well as teaching and going to graduate school at Columbia. Hers was a busy schedule with little time for a social life. Shirley had difficulty finding her first teaching position. She had graduated in 1946, cum laude, and was 22, but she looked about 16 because

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she weighed only 90 pounds. School after school turned her down even as a teacher’s aide; she didn’t look old enough to teach. Finally, she told one director to “Give me a chance to show you!” The director of the Mt. Calvary Child Care Center in Harlem, Mrs. Eula Hodges, was persuaded, and Shirley worked there for 7 years (Chisholm, 1970). Mrs. Hodges proved to be a good mentor for Shirley in her professional work in education, by teaching her how to relax a little, to be more flexible, and to organize (Hicks, 1971). Shirley became director of two other day care centers over the years, but her last and biggest position in education was as a consultant to the City Division of Day Care in 1959, where she was responsible for general supervision of 10 day care centers and a budget of $397,000. Shirley remained in this position until her election to the State Assembly of New York in 1964 (Chisholm, 1970). Although Shirley had had little time for social activities, one night when she was running from her class at Columbia to a meeting, a quiet, handsome Jamaican named Conrad Chisholm stopped her and asked her if she ever had any fun. He assured her that there was more to life than work and school, and he asked her out to dinner (Brownmiller, 1970). They soon discovered that they had much in common and that they both loved to dance. After a relatively short courtship, filled with laughter and teasing, they decided to marry in 1949. The young couple rented a small apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Shirley returned to teaching (Hicks, 1971). The Chisholm marriage appeared to be very strong. Shirley described it: “Probably few men could have stayed happily married to me for more than 20 years. I don’t think Conrad ever had a moment of insecurity or jealousy over the fact that I have always been a public figure” (Chisholm, 1970, p. 46). Shirley valued his understanding and devotion. She saw Conrad as a strong, self-sufficient personality, and believed that she did not dominate him. A successful career in education and an intimate relationship in marriage were two hallmarks of “the good life” as Shirley’s young adulthood was merging into middle age, but the politics of change were beginning to draw her back to her early mission.

THE STATE ASSEMBLY OF NEW YORK In 1960, a group of six persons, including Shirley Chisholm, formed the Unity Democratic Club. They began to run black candidates for office because they believed that the old Democratic Club of the Seventeenth Assembly District no longer represented the needs of the increasingly black-populated district. They promoted active education and training, and by 1961 the organization was able to win two primary elections with

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60% of the vote, and they were able to send two black representatives to the New York State Assembly. One of these representatives, Tom Jones, was nominated for a civil court judgeship, and his seat opened up for a new candidate in 1964 (Chisholm, 1970). Shirley Chisholm saw this as an opportunity to bring about change in her Bedford-Stuyvesant district and announced that she wanted to run for the assembly seat. Some of the men in the Unity Club would also have liked to run, but Shirley was not about to listen to why she should not run. She had spent about 10 years in ward politics doing all the menial tasks that go with running campaigns to get other people elected, and now she believed it was her turn. A woman had never been elected, and even some of the women told her she ought to be at home, not running for office (Chisholm, 1970). The Unity Democratic Club did not have much money to finance her campaign, so Shirley drew a total of $4,000 from her own savings and made it do. It was a long, hard summer and fall, but Shirley won by a large margin in a three-way contest. “In 1964 Mrs. Chisholm became the first black (sic) woman to be elected to public office in Brooklyn. She was forty years old” (Brownmiller, 1970, p. 74). In the State Assembly, Mrs. Chisholm was considered a maverick, but it didn’t keep her from being an effective legislator. She says of her reputation, I think they feel that there is no personal vindictiveness in my rebellions, that I am only fighting hard for things I believe in strongly, so they respect me as a person even when I horrify them as a politician. (Chisholm, 1970, p. 61)

Out of 50 bills she introduced, 8 passed, which is remarkable when so many bills never get to the floor for a vote. Two of the bills she was especially satisfied with were a program called SEEK, a plan to give state scholarships to bright black and Puerto Rican students whose parents did not have the money to give their children a college education, and a bill to set up the state’s first unemployment insurance coverage for personal and domestic employees (Chisholm, 1970). In the first 2 years of the SEEK program, 8,000 young people were granted scholarships to New York colleges (Brownmiller, 1970). Representative Chisholm, reflecting on her 4 years in Albany, compared them to a liberal education in how politics are run in our country, and she did not like a lot of what she learned. In Albany, she first saw something that she would later see in Washington: “ . . . men whose consciences urged them to one course of action were forced to take another by . . . one call from a boss advising [them] that [their] political future rests on his being for the bill” (Chisholm, 1970, p. 63). Another lesson Shirley learned

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was that if you decide to operate on the basis of your conscience rather than on political advantage, you have to be ready for the consequences and not complain when they come. “But all this prepared me consummately well for Washington. That lesson was what I needed before I became a congresswoman” (p. 64).

U.S. CONGRESS As a result of a Supreme Court ruling that districts must be of equal size and “compact and contiguous,” the New York State Legislature set up a committee to redraw some of the district lines in Brooklyn. The 12th Congressional District of Brooklyn was formed and referred to as the new black district. A black representative from Brooklyn would be going to Congress for the first time (Brownmiller, 1970; Chisholm, 1970). Shirley faced some opposition from the Democratic Party leadership, who said they hadn’t considered running a woman, and they picked another candidate, William C. Thompson. Another black woman candidate also ran in the primary. The primary turnout was small, but Shirley won the three-way contest (Hicks, 1971). The general election presented a more formidable opponent, James Farmer, the former national chairman of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality. Shortly after the primary, Shirley became seriously ill with a tumor and had to have surgery, which meant that she had to miss several weeks of campaigning against the wellfunded campaign of Farmer, and she feared she might lose (Chisholm, 1970). One of Shirley’s strategists noticed that in the voter registration in the district there were 2.5 women for every registered man. They began to organize among women, and Shirley’s Spanish minor in college helped in her appeal to the Puerto Rican voters. Farmer and Shirley had several public debates as well, and her knowledge of Brooklyn (he had not lived there) and her debating skills led to a win in the November election by twice as many votes as her opponent received (Chisholm, 1970). Representative Chisholm entered Congress in January 1968, when the Nixon administration came into office. The first big event in a freshman congressman’s career is a committee assignment. Although it is not likely that the first choice of assignment will be available (because length of service, seniority, counts more than anything else in committee assignments), Shirley was shocked to learn that the Ways and Means Committee, which makes the assignments, had appointed her to the Agriculture Committee. She could not see how serving on that committee would be of any use to her urban constituents and was even more shocked to learn that her subcommittee assignments were to be Rural Development and Forestry. She called Speaker John McCormack and told him that these assignments made no sense. He simply told her she would have to “be a good soldier.”

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Shirley went to the floor to protest and managed to get a new assignment to the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. Several male members of Congress were sympathetic but assured her that she had committed “political suicide.” As a long-time maverick, she reflected “that phrase sort of made me feel at home” (Chisholm, 1970, p. 85). Shirley pondered what kind of role she should play as a black member of Congress. How, as a freshman legislator with no clout, could she represent her district? She realized that she could use her office to apply pressure to the federal machinery to try to save programs and get new ones, to secure grants for her district, and to fight discrimination on federal contracts. Her prominence could be used as a major force for change outside the House, even if it could not be one within it (Chisholm, 1970). President Nixon had spoken of new approaches to domestic issues when he came into office, and for many months people had waited for the action to match the words of the campaign. Finally, President Nixon announced that the United States would not be safe until we started to build an antiballistic missile system. On that same day, he announced that the Head Start program in the District of Columbia was to be cut back for lack of money; Representative Chisholm had had enough of his ignoring domestic issues. She decided that her maiden speech in Congress would be on the topic of the expense of the Vietnam War (which she considered neither just nor unavoidable). As she later said, Now, I am not a pacifist. Ending the war had not been a major theme of my campaign; it was ninth on a list of nine goals that I had pledged to fight for if I were elected. . . . I had to tell the world that it was wrong to plan to spend billions on an elaborate and unnecessary war when disadvantaged children were getting nothing. (Chisholm, 1970, pp. 94–95)

As she completed the speech, Shirley was again told that she had committed political suicide, although there was not much notice of the speech in Congress. However, students heard about it and began to ask her to speak at various campuses, so many that she could not accept all the invitations (Chisholm, 1970).

RUNNING FOR THE PRESIDENCY When the college students asked Shirley Chisholm to consider running for the presidency in 1972, she began to think of them as a natural constituency, along with women, blacks, and other minorities. As a result of the passage of the Voting and Civil Rights Acts and the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, there would be more voters from these groups than before. As she announced her intentions to run for office, Shirley said, “I am the candidate of the people of America. The institutions of

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the country belong to all, including the neglected. Join me in an effort to reshape our society” (Lynch, 2004). Mrs. Chisholm’s candidacy met with various reactions. Black politicians could not agree on a candidate, and certainly did not think Chisholm should be the candidate, because they feared she would be the “candidate of women.” Shirley also got a cool reception by the White women’s movement. They feared she could not win but might take votes away from George McGovern, whom they were supporting. Many politicians wondered if she was really a serious candidate (Chisholm, 1973). Asked what her strongest asset was, she replied that she believed that her integrity set her apart from the other candidates. She was “unbought and unbossed” (Chisholm, 1973; Lynch, 2004). Chisholm had to run in primary races among 13 candidates. She had little money and had to choose those few primaries in which she believed that she might be able to win some delegates to the convention. Her campaign lacked professional staff and depended on volunteers, who sometimes competed with each other. There was conflict between her Congressional duties and campaigning. School busing was the major issue in the primaries, so she and George Wallace of Alabama, a segregationist, were made into a cartoon spoof of the “American Gothic” painting (Chisholm, 1973). At the Democratic convention in Miami in July 1972, Chisholm arrived hoping to get her delegates from California seated. She had done fairly well (28 delegates) in the California primary, but in the past the top vote-getter in the California primary received all the delegates from California. The Credentials Committee upheld the “winner-take-all” system in California, so her delegates would not get to vote (Chisholm, 1973). Other disappointments occurred. George McGovern won the nomination, and Shirley made a unity speech with an offer to help him with the general election in November. She noted that he didn’t take her up on her offer, and she thinks that was a mistake in his appeals to black and women voters (Chisholm, 1973). McGovern lost in November. To her supporters who felt crushed by the convention experience, Shirley Chisholm gave this advice: “Let’s just say this has been a wonderful trip we have taken together. There have been lots of mistakes. If we did it again, we would do it differently right from the start” (Chisholm, 1973, p. 123).

IDENTITY AND LEADERSHIP Shirley Chisholm certainly presents us with an example of a strong personality characterized by self-confidence and pride in her race and her gender. She trusts her own inner sense of direction. Almost from toddlerhood

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she seemed to display the ability to lead others with her high intelligence and the ability to put her thoughts into spoken language, which point to a good argument for leadership being innate. The influence of learning cannot be ignored, however. Shirley was raised in very nurturing family environments in both Barbados and Brooklyn. She had a series of mentors, including her Grandmother Seales, her parents, “Proffy” at Brooklyn College, political strategist Wesley McD. Holder, and educator Eula Hodges. She had comfort and emotional support from her marriage to Conrad Chisholm. Shirley was wise to accept their evaluations of her potential for leadership and their support. Shirley had lived in two different cultures, Barbados and the United States, which gave her a perspective on the differences in the inclusiveness of blacks into the two societies. Her experiences in trying to get positions in both education and politics taught her concretely of the obstacles faced by women. The college students gave her the momentum to believe that she really could be a catalyst for change in the 20th century, her fondest dream (Chisholm, 1970, 1973; Lynch, 2004). Timing also does appear to be essential in the process of leading. One can hardly imagine Shirley Chisholm, although very talented, having much success at elective office in the United States before 1960. The civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960s had made the political climate of her time the right time to “be the first.” In his study of great leaders, Howard Gardner (1995) found that a leader must have a story, the audience must be ready to hear the story, the leader must organize to bring the followers along, the leader must be authentic to the story, the leader might lead directly and indirectly, and the leader must have expertise. Shirley Chisholm had the story of the possibility of reshaping society at a time when an audience of blacks, women, and students were willing to listen and when she was able to organize them to participate and vote. Her unbought and unbossed integrity in elected office provided her authenticity, and she dared to take direct leadership. What may have compromised her goal was the lack of expertise in running a huge national campaign, although she reminisces with little regret at age 80, “Don’t let your spirit die. We’ve learned from our errors” (Lynch, 2004). Shirley Chisholm died on January 1, 2005.

REFERENCES Brownmiller, S. (1970). Shirley Chisholm: A biography. New York: Doubleday. Chisholm, S. (1970). Shirley Chisholm: Unbought and unbossed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Chisholm, S. (1973). The good fight. New York: Harper & Row. Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: Norton.

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Erikson, E. H. (1959). Identity and the life cycle, Psychological Issues, 1, no. 1. Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity, youth and crisis. New York: Norton. Gardner, H. (1995). Leading minds: An anatomy of leadership. New York: Basic Books. Hicks, N. (1971). The honorable Shirley Chisholm: Congresswoman from Brooklyn. New York: Lion Books. Lynch, S. (Director & Producer). (2004). Chisholm ‘72: Unbought and unbossed [Documentary]. REALside Productions.

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C H A P T E R

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The Case of the Purloined Picture Rosalind Franklin and the Keystone of the Double Helix Michael Wertheimer

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Few people are blessed with superior intellect. A small subgroup of this minority becomes obsessed with devoting their time and talents to the challenges at the forefront of scientific knowledge. A favored few of these, in turn, have the persistence, relentless dedication, and good luck that lead to breakthroughs that alter the course of human history and result in significant progress in knowledge. Among those brilliant 20thcentury geniuses is a scientist who has not fully received the credit that she deserves—Rosalind Elsie Franklin. Not that she and her contributions have been ignored. Far from it. A recent biography of Franklin (Maddox, 2002) lists no less than 40 items in its bibliography that explicitly deal with Franklin and her scientific achievements. What is perplexing about those accounts is the variation in the perspectives they provide on the same individual and the same events in the history of science. Some (e.g., Watson, 1968, except for a few hastily added paragraphs at the end) depict Franklin as a plodding, insensitive, unimaginative, and unattractive run-of-the-mill data gatherer. At the other extreme are authors (e.g., Sayre, 1975) who eulogize her as a vivacious, creative, innovative, and brilliant scientist who was cheated out of being recognized as the true discoverer of the secret of all life, the structure of the DNA molecule. (Other individuals were awarded Nobel Prizes for work for which they claim Franklin should have received the credit.) These disparate accounts do agree on a few facts. Although Franklin early displayed exceptional talent in mathematics and science, the British culture into which she was born and in which she spent most of her all-too-brief life was not supportive of women aspiring to a career in science. Her gender, and also her resentment of the fact that her gender put her at a distinct disadvantage relative to her male counterparts, seriously restricted her professional opportunities. Virtually all accounts of her life comment on her keen critical abilities and her extraordinary precision in experimental work, and all equally lament her demise at the early age of 37. There is agreement that Franklin made lasting contributions to the chemistry of coal and to the biochemistry of the tobacco mosaic virus, a major focus in the study of virology in general and specifically of how viruses affect a host. What is in contention is her contribution to the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule and of how that molecule reproduces itself—the foundation of modern genetics. In 1962, Britain’s Francis H. C. Crick and Maurice H. F. Wilkins, as well as American James D. Watson, were awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering the molecular structure of nuclear acids and its significance for information transfer in living material. The work for which they received this award from the Royal Academy of Science in Sweden was performed during the early 1950s. There is agreement that some 1952 X-ray crystallography

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photographs of DNA (specifically a “Photo 51” of DNA in its “B” form) taken in Franklin’s laboratory with a special camera that she and her doctoral student, Raymond Gosling, had designed, played a critical role in generating the double helix model of the molecule and for providing strong empirical support for the correctness of this model. The photo had not been published at this time, but Wilkins, working in another laboratory at the same institution, showed the photo to Watson and Crick, working in a laboratory at a rival institution, without asking Franklin for permission to do so. Hence, the title of this chapter. The picture had been purloined from Franklin, and it became the crucial piece of evidence for the model that Watson and Crick proposed—it was the keystone of the discovery of the double helix. Helices were in the forefront of speculations about the structure of DNA at the time, including mention in publications by American scientist Linus Pauling, who was to win two Nobel Prizes (one in chemistry in 1954 and one in peace in 1962), in discussions at scientific conferences, and even in Franklin’s own notebook. That a three-dimensional double spiral, with the two strands going in opposite directions, was indeed the correct model was suggested by and then corroborated by Franklin’s Photo 51. The Nobel Prize is awarded only to living recipients, and Franklin died of massive carcinoma and bronchopneumonia in 1958. Her extensive unprotected exposure to X-rays during her scientific work may well have played a role in potentiating her cancer and her early death. Had she lived until 1962, should she have won the Nobel Prize? This chapter briefly discusses the life of Rosalind Franklin, how she became involved in this field, what contributions she made to it (and to other scientific areas), and how her achievements were evaluated after her untimely death. Among the more dispassionate recent accounts of the life and achievements of Franklin are the book, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox (2002) and a documentary, “Nova: Secret of Photo 51” (Nova, 2003) that was aired on PBS. The present account is based largely on those two sources, primarily the former.

BACKGROUND AND EDUCATION Franklin was born July 25, 1920, into an upper middle-class family descended from Jews who had immigrated to England in the 18th century and had been successfully assimilated into the English class-stratified society; one of her ancestors had been London’s Lord Mayor and had been elected to the House of Commons in the mid-19th century. Rosalind’s father Ellis, the youngest of six children, served as a captain in the infantry in France during World War I and then joined a bank in which his father

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was a senior partner. He married Muriel Waley (a member of another long-assimilated Jewish family in Britain) in 1917, and five children were born in rapid succession: David in 1919, Rosalind in 1920, and two more boys and a girl thereafter. Relatives commented on Rosalind’s remarkable cleverness when she was only 6 years old, noting that she spent much time doing arithmetic for pleasure, always getting it right. That she, a girl, was the brightest of the children was a bit awkward for the Franklin family, which adhered to the prevalent sexist perspectives of that time and place—indeed, Ellis did not permit any female employees in his bank; even secretaries and telephone clerks were exclusively male. David and Rosalind were enrolled in a good coeducational private day school that provided strong training in history, literature, and mathematics, as well as in woodworking and sports (including hockey and cricket), which were all available to both girls and boys. Foreign travel, as part of her family life, also contributed substantially to her education. Rosalind was reportedly a somewhat stormy child, easily angered and ready with tears. When Rosalind was 9 years old, she was sent to a boarding school where she excelled in geometry, geography, poetry, sports, handicrafts, and especially science, typically achieving top grades, but letters to her parents revealed her homesickness. Two years later, she returned to London to a fine girls’ day school, St. Paul’s, known for its academic rigor and its aim of preparing its students for productive careers outside as well as inside the home. Although she did form lasting friendships at the school, there were also signs of rebellion and occasional hostility toward peers and teachers. At St. Paul’s, she delighted in science, sports, sewing, and geography, and won competitive scholarships and a Latin prize as well as making the school tennis, cricket, and hockey teams. By age 16, she began to concentrate strongly on science (chemistry, physics, and mathematics—but not the biology that her classmates hoping to go into medicine preferred) as her main subject. Apparently, she never received any formal or informal instruction about the facts of life either in school or in her rather prudish family home. But her lifelong love of hiking and mountaineering was kindled by an outing in the summer of 1937 in which her parents took her and her siblings to the mountains of Norway, where they crossed a glacier while roped together with a guide. By this time, Hitler had become a menace, and the Franklin family devoted time and effort to projects intended to help Jewish refugees from Germany and then from Austria. Rosalind became somewhat bored with school, so she went to Cambridge to take entrance examinations in physics and chemistry, although she still had one more year of secondary school.

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She did so well that she enrolled in a women’s college, Newnham, that fall; her performance in chemistry had ranked her first in the examinations. Although her father and mother might have preferred Rosalind to have aspired to some kind of more philanthropic—or maternal—career rather than a profession, they fully supported her decision to go to the university and were proud of her fine academic record. At Cambridge, Rosalind thrived, immersing herself vigorously in chemistry, physics, mathematics, and mineralogy, as well as scientific German. Cambridge had illustrious scientists on its faculty, including several Nobel laureates. But almost all of these scientists were men. Rosalind herself was not immune to the sexism rampant in these circles; in a letter home to her parents in January 1939, she called one lecturer “very good, though female” (Maddox, 2002, p. 48). Totally involved in her academic work, including long hours in the laboratory, she did not engage in many social activities, although she occasionally did go boating on the Cam, play tennis, and go on long-distance bicycle trips. Rather headstrong and independent throughout her life, she became impatient with the air raid practices and other inconveniences in preparation for Hitler’s attack on England and wanted to concentrate all her efforts on the optics, physics, chemistry, crystallography, and X-ray photography she was studying at Cambridge. She continued to work so hard that she again did exceptionally well on her examinations and, as a result, received a scholarship for her final year. Her 3 years at Cambridge, as Maddox (2002) wrote, did almost everything for Rosalind that a good university should. It changed her life. It gave her a profession and a personal philosophy. It enabled her to distance herself from her parents and become a mature adult with a sharp political and social conscience. (p. 69)

She was totally dedicated to a career devoted “to her faith in the provable truth of science” (p. 73); her political perspective had moved far to the left of her father’s, although their mutual love was not diminished. She graduated with excellent grades from Cambridge, including coming out on top of her class in her examination in physical chemistry. This record earned her another scholarship award to permit her to remain at the college one more year and to yield her a research grant from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. But after a short time working under this grant on the project to which she had been assigned, Rosalind realized that it would be impossible to obtain the results from it that her supervisor anticipated. This led to a bitter showdown between them; Rosalind, like her father, “did not suffer fools gladly” (Maddox,

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2002, p. 73). Fortunately, her supervisor relented and gave her another project more to her liking. Then, in the summer of 1942, she took a job with the new British Coal Utilization Research Association (BCURA). As assistant research officer at BCURA, a member of a team studying coal and charcoal, she flourished. She undertook extensive experiments on the shrinkage of coal and other carbons with major changes in temperature, leading to her PhD in 1945 in physical chemistry and to theories that would begin to give her an international reputation. She enjoyed her work, her independent residence, her cooking, her friends, and her strenuous mountaineering, hiking, and cycling vacations.

EARLY CAREER Rosalind’s first published article, coauthored with her supervisor at BCURA in 1946, concerned porous properties of various kinds of coal that turned out to have important consequences for industrial applications. She presented a paper at the Royal Institution, speaking “forcefully in public” (Maddox, 2002, p. 85), and self-confidently and forthrightly pointed out some errors in another person’s measurements of X-ray diagrams. By early in her professional career, she already established a reputation as being “abrupt and peremptory”; the correctness of her comments was indisputable. Not surprisingly, this pattern “of being forthright when she knew she was on firm ground sometimes gained her enemies” (p. 85). By this time, Franklin had become proficient in French and had developed strong positive impressions of French culture and cuisine. To her delight, in 1947, she received an offer to work in Paris at the Central National Laboratory of the Chemical Services as a physical chemist on the internal organization of coal and clay, using not only her familiar physical and chemical techniques, but also X-ray diffraction. She became 1 of 15 researchers at the laboratory, which also employed 6 technicians directed by a friend and admirer of Franklin, Jacques Mering. According to some observers, there was a strong mutual attraction between Mering and Franklin. The Paris years brought productive research results, warm friendships, superb culinary skill, intellectual stimulation, extensive practice of her excellent command of the French language—and treatment as an equal; at the time, competent women were treated in intellectual circles in Paris without the condescension still accorded to them in British society. She was totally dedicated to the French culture and to her work, earning a reputation as a consummate experimentalist—and as a woman who was remarkably savvy about chic clothing, if at the same time rather puritanical. Her 4 years in Paris may have been the happiest in her short life.

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When she was not engaged in research or writing (five important technical papers on coal were published or at press during her stay in France), she enjoyed her active social life or her strenuous mountain climbing expeditions. Her international scientific reputation was growing, and somewhat reluctantly she decided to try to return home to England, preferably to a prestigious position. Why she decided to do so when she was so happy in France is not known. An application for a job at Birkbeck College in London was turned down, and, characteristically, she did not apply for another position where she would have had to work under the supervision of a man whom she did not respect.

KING’S COLLEGE By early 1950, Rosalind’s scientific credentials had become most impressive. Her bilingual skill too had been recognized—and used—at scientific meetings in Nancy, Lyons, and Paris by illustrious colleagues from England, the United States, and continental Europe, and her now nine major published articles, in addition to papers presented at meetings, cemented her international reputation as a mature scientist competent in physical chemistry, crystallography, and X-ray diffraction techniques. When she now applied for possible positions in the London area, her superior credentials could not be ignored. Her application for a 3-year fellowship to work under physics and biophysics professor J. T. Randall at King’s College, London, on proteins in solution by means of X-ray diffraction techniques, was successful. Just before she arrived back in London in late 1950, Randall changed his research expectations for her, asking her, with Raymond Gosling, and the part-time help of Louise Heller, to work instead on fibers of desoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA) by means of experimental X-ray diffraction. Although she had not had extensive experience before with biological materials such as proteins, it was clear that her mastery of sophisticated microscopic X-ray diffraction methods could be readily applied to such substances. Although Gosling had already worked with another King’s College scientist, Maurice Wilkins, using X-ray diffraction methods on DNA fibers, Randall assured Franklin that “she would have the X-ray work to herself” (Maddox, 2002, p. 114). The prospect was most undoubtedly exciting to Franklin and her colleagues because by this time recent research in biophysics had established that DNA must hold the secret of heredity, of how genes reproduce, that is, of molecular genetics, indeed of life itself. Franklin came to King’s College at a time when Wilkins was on vacation. When he returned, he assumed that he was still in charge of the

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X-ray diffraction work on DNA, and that Franklin had, in effect, been hired by Randall to be Wilkins’s assistant. Franklin, however, insisted that Randall had made clear to her that she was an independent scientist in her own right. This confusion and disagreement soon led to continuing stress and rancor between Wilkins and Franklin (Nova, 2003). Although King’s College was at the time the best place to be for cutting-edge research on the structure of DNA (in large part because Maurice Wilkins was working there), the social milieu must have been difficult for Franklin to cope with, especially after her rewarding years in France. The laboratories there were segregated by gender; it was an “old boys’ place”; even the lunchroom was not available to women (Maddox, 2002, p. 128). Franklin adjusted as best she could; rather than “going out with the old boys at the lab to drink beer” in the evenings, she managed to develop a rich social life of her own, including dating the first violin, the concertmaster, of the London Symphony (Nova, 2003). In her work, she dedicated all her efforts to solving the problem of the structure of DNA. One of the first concerns was designing a camera within which the humidity could be held stable because the specimens to be studied had to remain moist. Young James D. Watson, an American, was aware that King’s College was one of the best places in the world to work on the structure of DNA and tried to obtain a position there right after he earned his PhD at the early age of 23. When that did not work out, he managed instead to land a job at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, where he joined Francis Crick, who was exploring the possible helical structure of various proteins. In the meantime, Franklin successfully designed and built, with Gosling’s help, a camera that was producing the best microscopic X-ray diffraction images of DNA yet seen. Unfortunately, at that time scientists were not fully aware of the danger that extensive exposure to X-rays poses for human tissue, and lead shields were not yet in wide use. Nevertheless, she soon established that there are two different forms of DNA, A and B; the B form produced a wetter, less crystalline image than the A form.

THE DOUBLE HELIX In November 1951, in a colloquium, Franklin reported that it had already been evident from work earlier that year that the B form of DNA must be helical. Now she had clear evidence that the A form is also helical. Watson, who had been sent by Crick, was in the audience at that colloquium. Linus Pauling, as well as Watson and Crick, had already explored various helical models, including one consisting of three strands for the structure of DNA, but all of these models to date had contained obvious flaws—flaws

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that Franklin characteristically identified publicly in no uncertain terms as flaws. Indeed, Franklin’s disdain for some of the then-current helical models of DNA structure had been evident earlier that year, when she had told Wilkins, who had given a paper on the DNA work at King’s at a conference that argued that all DNA must have the same unique twisting structure, that he should return to his optical studies and give up his X-ray work. Her recommendation devastated him (Maddox, 2002, p. 149). Indeed, Randall had written to Franklin earlier that “as far as the experimental X-ray effort is concerned there will be at the moment only yourself and Gosling,” but Wilkins had never seen this letter—and even expected that he would have the opportunity to analyze the photos that Rosalind and Gosling were taking (p. 150). The rift between Franklin and Wilkins was complete. Soon Franklin obtained clear X-ray diffractometer images of some 20 fibers of the wetter version of DNA, type B, and was beginning the arduous task of analyzing the diffraction patterns. At that time, before the widespread availability of high-speed and high-capacity computers, such analyses could require thousands of detailed calculations and as long as a year to complete. But it was already obvious that Franklin’s “sharp clear pictures . . . revealed something no one had noticed before” (Maddox, 2002, p. 153), namely that the B form of DNA, the longer, thinner, wetter version, when placed over a drying agent would become shorter and thicker again. Franklin and Gosling were excited by their discovery that all earlier attempts to understand the structure of DNA had been looking at a blur of the two forms (p. 153). The new photographs gave the first clear picture of DNA in the form in which it opens up to reproduce itself. When Wilkins returned from a visit to the United States, he was impressed by the new photographs and suggested to Franklin that they collaborate on further work with the photos. Franklin was outraged at the suggestion. “How dare you interpret my data for me!” she shot back at Wilkins (Maddox, 2002, p. 154). She became so disheartened that she decided to leave King’s and its atmosphere, which she perceived as hostile and demeaning. Her last few years, from 1953 to 1958, were spent at Birkbeck College in London, where, while heading a virus laboratory, she managed to work out the complex structure of the tobacco mosaic virus before she succumbed to multiple severe illnesses on April 16, 1958. On the day she died, her virus model was published in a newspaper (Nova, 2003). The rest of the story of the discovery that the molecular structure of DNA is a particular kind of double helix is complicated, both technically and in terms of the sociology of science. What is clear is that someone gave the sharpest image yet of the B form of DNA, “Photo 51,” to Wilkins, and that Wilkins, without Franklin’s knowledge or permission, showed Photo 51 to Watson and Crick, who became excited about the helix pattern

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that it revealed. The photo provided “crucial information” to Watson. Furthermore, Franklin’s own laboratory notes—which Wilkins also read without her permission—gave Crick what was to become a major insight about the double helix. Franklin’s work was fundamental to Watson and Crick’s early 1953 model, among other things, by making clear that the chemical bases in the model must be inside rather than outside the double helix. Hence, Franklin’s photo, data, and notes were critical in making it possible for Watson and Crick to generate their model—and provided information that corroborated its correctness. In late February 1953, when Watson and Crick came up with their model, which explained how DNA can reproduce itself, Franklin went to Cambridge to review the model. She immediately recognized, contrary to her severe criticisms of their earlier models and of other models such as ones by Linus Pauling, that this one was indeed correct. The double helix model of DNA that was to win Watson and Crick (and Wilkins) the Nobel Prize was clearly based largely on Franklin’s ideas and data; all the experimental work on which the model was based was done by Rosalind Franklin. Watson and Crick used her unpublished work to produce their model. As the Nova documentary put it, Franklin was their “unknowing and unrecognized collaborator” in the work that won them the Nobel Prize in 1962 (Nova, 2003). The historical record goes even further than that. Based on measurements she made of the B form of DNA in her Photo 51, she wrote in her notebook in 1952 that the A and B forms were both two-chain helices (Maddox, 2002, p. 201). This was before Watson and Crick produced their physical model of the DNA molecule (or at least of a crucial component of it). If one looks, then, at the documentary evidence, it is not at all inappropriate to conclude that the honor of discovering the structure of DNA as a double helix really belongs to Rosalind Franklin, rather than to the three men who won the Nobel Prize for that discovery, James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. Had the committee for the Nobel Prize recognized the enormous significance of the identification of the fundamental nature of DNA for the understanding of genetics, of the biochemical basis of life itself, somewhat earlier, such as during the mid-1950s rather than waiting until the early 1960s, Rosalind Elsie Franklin might well have been named a Nobel laureate in addition to—or instead of—Watson, Crick, or Wilkins.

THE AFTERMATH Franklin’s international reputation as a brilliant, meticulous, creative scientist continued to surge until her death; her work on the tobacco mosaic

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virus, in particular, contributed to this stellar reputation. It led, among other things, to an extended lecture tour throughout the United States and to many contributions to scientific conventions and further significant publications in prestigious journals. In an invited article for the October 1954 issue of the Scientific American, Crick did to some extent acknowledge Franklin’s contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA. He wrote, “Watson and I were convinced that we could get somewhere near the DNA structure by building on the X-ray pattern obtained by Wilkins, Franklin and their coworkers,” and accompanying the article was her Photo 51, credited to her, as an illustration (Maddox, 2002, p. 247). Meantime, although various illustrious scientists, eager to work with her, joined her laboratory over the next few years, she was to chafe under a system that regularly paid women less than men with comparable achievements and that did not give them as ready access to desirable scientific and academic positions. She wrote numerous letters to officials in power, trying to rectify these inequities, but with little success. Nevertheless, she continued to be invited to participate in the most prestigious scientific conferences and to publish in the most prestigious scientific journals, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. She also continued to enjoy strenuous mountain outings. Then, by the summer of 1956, she was diagnosed with a serious case of cancer. Extensive treatment, often performed without her coworkers’ knowledge, permitted her to continue her work, until by early 1957 she could hardly get up the stairs to her laboratory. In April, she died. She was buried in the Franklin family plot, with her great-grandparents, grandparents, and later her parents; her gravestone reads, “Scientist: her work on viruses was of lasting benefit to mankind” (Maddox, 2002, p. 307). In 1965, James Watson drafted a book on the discovery of the structure of DNA for Harvard University Press, in which “Rosy” was depicted in a highly deprecatory way, and in which Watson even boasted of using Franklin’s work without her permission. The press was favorably impressed by the draft but sought written consent from those who were mentioned prominently in it. Both Crick and Wilkins objected strongly, Crick with some anger, as did Linus Pauling. Rosalind’s brother Colin was furious and sent a cable to Watson about his “defaming the dead.” Another prominent figure, Max Perutz, was irate about the maligning of a “gifted girl” who could not defend herself because she was dead (Maddox, 2002, pp. 311–312). Although Watson did add a brief epilogue acknowledging “what a fine scientist Rosalind Franklin had been,” and that as a young man at the time, “he had not appreciated the difficulties of a woman making her way in the man’s world of science” (p. 312), the negative image of “Rosy” throughout the text remained intact during

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the several revisions that Watson prepared. In light of the objections, Harvard finally decided not to publish the book. However, Atheneum Press in New York did publish it, and The Double Helix (Watson, 1968) soon became a best seller. At the 1962 Stockholm celebration of the Nobel awards, only Wilkins was to mention Franklin at all (Maddox, 2002, p. 325). Then, in 1975, Franklin’s good friend Anne Sayre published a book, Rosalind Franklin and DNA, in which she eulogized Franklin, severely chastised Watson for his unconscionably negative depiction of Franklin’s personality (and of her apparently only minor contribution to the unlocking of the secret of DNA), and claimed that Franklin had been unjustifiably robbed by Watson of the acclaim she deserved for her critical contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA. Many other publications were to take a variety of perspectives on Franklin’s role in the significant discovery (e.g., Bernstein, 1978; Crick, 1979; Friedman & Friedland, 1998; Hussain, 1975; Jevons & Stokes, 1979; Klug, 1974; Olby, 1974; Sayre, 1975; Slyser, 1998). But among the most dispassionate recent ones, Maddox (2002) and the 2003 documentary, “Nova: Secret of Photo 51,” make clear that Rosalind Franklin has not yet received the acclaim she deserved for her enormous scientific contribution to the unlocking of the secret structure of DNA. She was without question one of the extraordinary women of the 20th century. She serves as a model of dedication to what it means to be a scientist totally devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and truth—for the ultimate betterment of the human condition.

REFERENCES Bernstein, J. (1978). A sorrow and a pity: Rosalind Franklin and The Double Helix. In J Bernstein (Ed.), Experiencing science (pp. 143–162). New York: Basic Books. Crick, F. H. C. (1979). How to live with a golden helix. The Sciences, September, 6–9. Friedman, M., & Friedland, G. W. (1998). Medicine’s ten greatest discoveries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hussain, F. (1975). Did Rosalind Franklin deserve DNA Nobel Prize? New Scientist, 20, 470. Jevons, F., & Stokes, T. (1979). Winner take all: Case study of the double helix. Victoria, Australia: Deak University Press. Klug, A. (1974). Rosalind Franklin and the double helix. Nature, 248, 78. Maddox, B. (2002). Rosalind Franklin: The dark lady of DNA. New York: Harper Collins. Nova. (2003). Nova: Secret of Photo 51 [Television broadcast]. Boston: WGBH Boston.

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Olby, R. (1974). The path to the double helix. London: Macmillan. Sayre, A. (1975). Rosalind Franklin and DNA. New York: Norton. Slyser, M. (1998). Waarom kreeg ‘Rosy’ geen Nobel Prijs? Vrii Nederland, August 15, 50–51. Watson, J. D. (1968). The double helix. New York: Atheneum Press.

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In the introduction to her feminist classic, The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir (1949/1953) argued forcefully for considering women individually rather than from a generic perspective. Her words remind us that each of our accounts in this book is the story of just one woman. To grasp the complexities of each woman’s life story, we must consider all aspects of a human’s life—the external circumstances, personality, and internal development of the individual. We hope you will join us in reflecting on these life stories. Because we refer to the details of each account only briefly, we rely on you to recall (or revisit) them as necessary.

EXTERNAL CONDITIONS We begin this reflection by considering the external conditions and events that shaped each woman’s development. Considerations include her family of origin; the influence of teachers, mentors, and others; the social and political events that occurred as she grew up and matured; and the mores, strictures, and opportunities of her time.

Family Most of our women seem to have enjoyed close family attachments during their early years. This does not mean that the families were always intact. 275

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Three of the women, Sister Annette Walters, Dorothy Day, and Isadora Duncan, had parents who were divorced, although the divorce occurred at different points in their respective development. More than one woman experienced the early death of a parent, and, in Eleanor Roosevelt’s case, it was the parent who—despite his personal recklessness and problems with alcoholism—remained a significant and warmly described figure in her later recollections. Dorothy Day’s father functioned largely as an absentee parent, living in the home but absorbed in his vocational endeavors, although he did apparently establish some household rules and, through his activity as a journalist, may have at least indirectly influenced that choice of career by two of his children. Asymmetric parenting, with one parent assuming the larger share of contact with the children, has not been unusual in our society. In fact, more often than not, it is the mother who assumes the greater parental responsibility. There were a number of such mothers (and mother figures) in the lives of the figures in this book. Moreover, we were repeatedly struck by the closeness of the women to their mothers or to other women who served as guardians or mentors. In several cases, the mothers were the sole breadwinners and modeled what for their time and social class was atypical—the assumption of economic responsibility for their households. Several of our profiled women as children and adolescents also assumed more than the usual responsibility for household welfare. In the majority of these cases, there was an overarching familial structure with at least one parent in the household. However, for Anne Sullivan, that sort of support was sadly absent even when she was still a young child; to sustain her existence, she had to interact with less savory aspects of society. Ella Fitzgerald’s position was similar but somewhat less extreme. Many of the women in this book were more fortunate, enjoying family stability. This was often accompanied by an emphasis on the importance of education, even to the point of family sacrifices or relocation in the interest of the children’s education. This did not mean that education-oriented families necessarily had a gender-neutral view of the prospects for their daughters. Quite the opposite was true in both Rosalind Franklin’s and Lillian Gilbreth’s experience, but, interestingly, in both cases the parents were willing to invest in educational opportunities that offered options to their daughters that their own gender-limited perspectives might not have encouraged. Quite apart from formal schooling, there were parents who supported the early leanings of their gifted children. Other parents served as models of the area in which their children would later be notable, although the parents could not have foreseen the precise form in which their behavior would be reflected in the lives of their daughters. Examples of such parents were the mother of Rachel Carson and the grandmother of

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Shirley Chisholm. In a very real sense, such people may be said to have been early mentors of their children.

Mentorship The biographies of our women are replete with outside-the-home mentors at crucial points in the life story. To mention just a few instances, the librarian who furthered Isadora Duncan’s informal education after the preteen quit school; the headmistress who helped transform a shy, slightly awkward Eleanor Roosevelt; the educator who pointed to a political niche that Shirley Chisholm might fill; the college president who inspired a career direction in the future Sister Annette; and the agent who took in hand not only Ella Fitzgerald’s career, but also her grooming in the most basic sense. Some of our women were endowed with such singular talent, as well as the early and spontaneous drive for its expression, that one might assume that they could scarcely have escaped celebrity. The artistically gifted Isadora Duncan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Georgia O’Keeffe come immediately to mind. Yet, without a family both literally and figuratively ready to dance attendance on her career, could Isadora Duncan have followed the inclinations that allowed the flowering of her talent? Similarly, Ella Fitzgerald’s magnificent vocal power might have been an open sesame to the lower echelons of the performance world. But without her agent’s regard and assistance, would she have survived in the doubly prejudiced climate in which she had to appear? Without Georgia O’Keeffe’s timely connection with Stieglitz, would her career have flourished so early or in quite the same way? Others among the women featured in this book discovered their paths in life gradually. However, although richly endowed with intelligence and a general propensity for productive living, these paths might have stopped short of leading them to become accomplished women were it not for the fortuitous intervention of supporters, mentors, collaborators, or other stimulus figures in their lives. For instance, in an unusual and touching incident, Evelyn Hooker responded to a student’s need. She believed that the world might never have heard of her had it not been for her response to that student.

Collaborators Several instances of effective collaboration deserve special mention. Respect for the woman’s contributions characterized each collaboration—a far cry from Rosalind Franklin’s experiences with her fellow researchers. Perhaps the most widely known example of collaboration in our biographical set is the relationship between Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller,

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whose lives meshed so dramatically. A close second might be the relationship between Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. Undoubtedly, Franklin’s political prominence provided Eleanor Roosevelt with opportunities that would not otherwise have been easily available; to note this is not to discredit either the degree of initiative or originality she exercised in capitalizing on them. Indeed, although her association with Franklin gave Eleanor access to certain circles she might otherwise not have entered so easily, she did not simply serve her husband’s agenda. Clearly, she had become a political force in her own right even before her husband won the presidency (Cook, 1995; Kerber & De Hart, 1995). That relationship pattern is typical of two of the three other notable instances of collaboration in our collection: Frank Gilbreth and Peter Maurin (Dorothy Day’s collaborator) invited Lillian Gilbreth and Dorothy Day, respectively, into arenas in which the women distinguished themselves with contributions that bore their personal stamp and that enriched their male collaborators’ work to a degree that would not have been possible with collaborators of lesser giftedness. The Ball–Arnaz partnership was a bit different because it was Lucille Ball who, in effect, introduced Desi Arnaz to the working situation in which they would make their mark as a couple. Her superior comedic talent and her willingness to challenge prevalent bigotry allowed the creation of a sitcom couple that made television history.

Intimacy Although a significant number of our women had male mentors and/or male collaborators, they were less successful in the matter of intimate relationships with men. Of course, we should eliminate from our consideration in this respect those women who may have had neither the time nor the interest to participate in such relationships and also those two (Dorothy Day, Sister Annette Walters) who forfeited intense romantic attachments for the sake of their religious commitments. Most of the remaining women—in fact, the majority of our sample—attempted sustained romantic relationships, but in only a minority of those attempts did the relationships really thrive. This failure in intimacy is not difficult to understand. The remarkable work these women did took a tremendous toll in time and energy. The degree of concentration on one’s work, the caliber of the expected performance, and the requisite cognitive seclusion conspire against the pursuit of intimacy, even in the male involved in the relationship. The situation is even more arduous for the female. The society in which she lives cuts her virtually no slack. A man’s absorption in an agentic role receives more sympathy; a woman may always be expected to give some priority to the needs of her intimates. The situation is complicated, as Erikson

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(1965/1987) noted, by the male expectation that the female will be his refuge from the world of work—with the attendant expectation that her availability in this respect will not be limited by occupational pursuits independent of his own. Moreover, the arrangement is frequently asymmetric rather than reciprocal; he may not stand ready to serve as a refuge for her in similar circumstances.

Other Influences Still another item deserves mention in our account of environmental influences that are potentially significant stimuli—one that has received less attention in the literature and, consequently, only minimal exposure in our biographical chapters. This is the matter of the natural and humanly created landscapes in which a person develops and to which he or she may be only unconsciously attentive—a factor to which Dubos (1968) so compellingly pointed. We find it in Rachel Carson’s early sensitivity to her natural surroundings, in Georgia O’Keeffe’s resonance with prairie landscapes, and in the portrait of the geography of Sister Annette Walters’ early childhood home. There are other factors that may potentiate the vision that our women manifested—factors that are less a matter of the individual’s immediate environment than of the general social climate in which the individual is imbedded. These factors include various aspects of the culture in which the individual lives and embraces historical events, the general level of technological advancement, and educational opportunities. Although our women had little control over such macrocosmic factors, their coexistence with them allowed a shaping of life histories in a way that would not have been possible earlier. Consider, for example, that Ella Fitzgerald’s monumental contribution to the world of jazz would have been unlikely had that art form not already been under development and had she not had some access to recorded music. In a different venue, Grace Hopper’s groundbreaking contributions to the field of computer programming depended both on preceding technological developments and on crucial wartime needs for personnel in positions that might otherwise have been closed to women. Fitzgerald’s vocal gifts and Hopper’s mathematical talents might otherwise have been expressed—but quite possibly not in the highly distinctive ways that the women in our accounts manifested. The external environments that these women experienced over their lifetimes certainly affected the trajectories of their exceptional lives. In addition, these women had rich inner lives that altered their outlook and led them to respond to and act on the world around them. Our women’s inner strengths determined the steps they would take to ensure their active and responsive lives.

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INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT To understand what these women were like as persons and how they developed to become women of vision takes us into the baffling thickets of human motivation, values, and spirituality—baffling because actions that appear similar may be differently motivated. For example, one student might study hard in school primarily to attain high grades, whereas another might study hard because she finds learning intrinsically interesting. Observation of someone’s action alone is insufficient for determining or understanding the quality of motivation or the values and experiences behind that motivation.

Motivation For more than two millennia, playwrights, philosophers, and other reflective persons have struggled to understand the complexities of human motivation. In the 20th century, behavioral psychologists wrestled for decades with defining motives and linking them precisely to environmental conditions. Most behavioral psychologists, for example, described a motive as whatever arouses, directs, and sustains behavior. In experiments with animals, these characteristics of motive worked quite well in predicting and controlling outcomes. Scholars in human motivation welcomed the behavioral scientists’ findings about animal behavior and motivation. However, they realized that in themselves those findings were insufficient for understanding the complex motivation of human actions. Psychologists interested in human motivation carried their quest further by looking at a person’s hierarchy of values, sense of identity, and the role of goals and purpose in life.

Values and Hierarchy of Values Values are personal appraisals of what matters. A person arranges values in a hierarchy according to the greater or lesser worth of the value to that person. Conferring higher worth on one value, however, does not negate the significance of lesser values in an individual’s life. This is clear in the life story of Sister Annette Walters, for whom serving God in a dedicated life became the paramount value that consistently occupied the top place in her motivational hierarchy. That did not mean that other values lost their force entirely. Thus, Sister Annette continued throughout her life to value and love the man with whom she chose to forego a close relationship. Similarly, Lucille Ball valued the approval of other persons, and this was expressed in the goal of making people laugh. For Rosalind Franklin,

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pursuing scientific truth was paramount. “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias valued attaining excellence in the expression of her athletic talents. What is particularly striking in them—and in all of our selected women—is the continuing pursuit of value-shaped goals, despite reversals of fortune. The behavior entailed in pursuing the basic goals might change with changing circumstances, but there was not alteration in the rank order of primary values.

Identity According to scholars interested in human motivation, a person in a Western industrialized society ordinarily establishes by late adolescence a coherent sense of self. This coherent identity results from the person taking stock of her values, attitudes, beliefs, abilities, and aspirations, and relating them to herself and to the world in her time and place. Finding a coherent sense of self marks all the distinctive stories in this book, although for some, such as Lucille Ball and Anne Sullivan, that development occurred later in life. The life stories of our women show how each expressed her distinctive identity. Ella Fitzgerald, Isadora Duncan, and Georgia O’Keeffe all showed artistic talents early in life, and each attended to her distinctive gift as she established her identity. By late adolescence, science and mathematics drew committed attention from women such as Rosalind Franklin, Grace Hopper, and Rachel Carson. Some women who developed in dissimilar surroundings nonetheless showed some remarkable similarities in identity formation. For instance, Eleanor Roosevelt was born into an affluent family, Dorothy Day’s family often enjoyed moderate means, and Mary McLeod Bethune and Evelyn Hooker grew up with economic hardship, but the identities of all four women included the aspect of caring deeply about needy, disenfranchised people. Formally establishing one’s identity through a rite of initiation, such as occurred when Margaret Walters assumed the name Sister Annette, was an exception among the women whose stories appear in this book. Most of the women, in fact, only gradually and without ritual worked out a sense of identity, overcoming whatever difficulties confronted them. Helen Keller, our only figure who could not see or hear, faced a special challenge in establishing her identity because she could not observe herself reflected in another person’s face or receive another’s words in response to her own. Despite being deprived of those basic sensory channels of vision and hearing, Keller marvelously established her sense of identity through the saving sensory channel of touch. It opened for her the entire world on which she could reflect and from which she could learn.

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In two cases, the lives of Lucille Ball and Anne Sullivan Macy, establishing identity proved difficult. For most of her life, Lucille Ball’s alternating triumphs and tragedies made it hard for her to establish a stable identity. The ridicule she experienced as a child living with her grandmother left her with feelings of unworthiness for decades thereafter, and this was bound to affect her self-appraisal. However, late in life, she was able to realize and appreciate to some degree the person she had become. The disturbed childhood of Anne Sullivan Macy made it difficult for her, too, to establish her identity. Her fortuitous relationship with Helen Keller, however, helped her find a coherent sense of self, quite possibly coinciding with her discovery of a purpose in life.

Purpose in Life Establishing a sense of identity leads to a personal sense of unity and prepares one to find a purpose in life. Purpose in life is best shown through a person’s steady commitment to a valid “something” or “someone” that takes one beyond oneself and gives life meaning. Whether expressed directly or indirectly, formally or informally, purpose in life marked the lives of all the women in this book. The chapter on Rosalind Franklin nicely illustrates this point; her life purpose was clearly the discovery of unknown truths. Georgia O’Keeffe committed her life to depiction of beauty in the natural world, which also reinforced her experience of meaning. Evelyn Hooker and Dorothy Day found a meaningful purpose in life by committing themselves to helping people who are often misunderstood. Another striking instance of purpose in life is that of Rachel Carson, who committed herself “to protect nature from human beings and to communicate to human beings the meanings in nature.” In fact, every story in this book illustrates the presence of a purpose established at some stage in life. Once established, the women’s purposes in life remained steadfast. For instance, Sister Annette Walters realized that some of the work she most wanted to do could not be done because of insurmountable roadblocks. However, each woman’s chosen purpose in life remained a lodestar for finding a meaningful niche in the world and a guide to selecting projects that contributed toward goals consistent with that purpose.

Spirituality Broadly conceived, spirituality orients a person to find a meaningful connection or hoped-for connection to an ultimate source of goodness, truth, or beauty that goes beyond what is visible or tangible, that is, beyond what one can experience solely through the senses. We can find examples

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of the presence and power of spirituality in several of our accounts. For instance, the life work of Rachel Carson strongly testified to her felt connection to a power greater than the self. She expressed her spirituality by committing herself “to make the world of nature as real for others as for herself, to protect it, and to enable others to feel its vastness, complexity, and its philosophical and spiritual meaning.” (see Ch. 8 this book) Rachel Carson experienced wonder and awe in observing nature, and when she asked herself what accounted for her observations, that question led her to wonder further about the source of what she saw, heard, or touched. It appeared that science alone was insufficient to account for what she experienced in nature. Although Rachel Carson made no reference to God or to religion, her account illustrates her connection to a source beyond the sensory world. Others’ life stories manifest spiritual life in the context of a religious tradition. Spirituality that is rooted in Christianity marks the life stories of Mary McLeod Bethune, Alice Paul, Dorothy Day, and Sister Annette Walters. For them, religious values and beliefs had a profound effect on the projects they undertook during their adult lives. Consider, for example, Mary McLeod Bethune, a deeply religious woman, who founded a college and worked tirelessly to improve educational opportunities for people limited by their lack of higher education. Her life story reveals faith in God as the foundation for her work, a faith that inspired her to alter the environment to suit her life work. Dorothy Day and Sister Annette Walters believed that by virtue of their faith they could reach their goals to serve individuals and through them improve the world—work that corresponded to values grounded in their Roman Catholic religious tradition.

Vital Personality Characteristics The women featured in this book share more with each other than their active and effective approaches to life—namely, authenticity, selfdetermination, resilience, and persistence. How these characteristics found distinctive expression in the lives of our women casts light not only on the development of the individuals, but also on the relationship among these components of their personalities and their eventual achievements. Let us take a brief look at pertinent evidence in the stories of these lives. All the women were authentic in the sense that they steadfastly remained true to who they were. They did not compromise in that matter. Who they were was a constant, important to them individually. The account of Shirley Chisholm (1970), who considered herself “unbought and unbossed” in her life of public service, provides a striking illustration of a woman being firmly true to herself.

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The women featured in this book also took responsibility for their lives. Properly understood, they all were self-determined people. Although they experienced environmental forces that were beyond their control and some faced limitations that made it impossible to do all that they hoped or wanted to do, they took responsibility for their lives. They did not use their misfortunes, setbacks, and circumstances as excuses to shrink from life. They took the cards that were dealt to them and played them well. Helen Keller’s story, for instance, aptly illustrates self-determination despite real limitations. Certainly, her sensory disabilities would have limited her conducting scientific work demanding close scrutiny of the target of observation or competing in the Olympics, if she had had those goals. Yet, she developed and used her other abilities and talents to contribute significantly to the larger world. What Kerber and De Hart (1995) said of Eleanor Roosevelt—that “her ability to change never ended”—could be said of most of the women in this book. It was certainly true of those who continued to achieve throughout their lives. However, we must be clear that “change” in these women involved a creative flexibility in adapting behavior to altered circumstances while remaining firm of purpose. For this reason, their resilience and their persistence must be viewed as complementary characteristics. Their persistence was twofold: These resilient women were persistent in pursuing goals that implemented their primary values and in expending extraordinary effort in confronting frustration and disappointment. Individuals of lesser fortitude might have relinquished what had been their earlier goals, succumbing to what the clinical psychologist, Albert Ellis, has called discomfort anxiety—an unwillingness to undertake tasks that demand effort and risk taking (Walen, DiGiuseppe, & Dryden, 1992). Not so with these resilient women. Lillian Gilbreth and Eleanor Roosevelt are just two examples of such resilient persistence. Both faced widowhood with its concomitant grief and an alteration of life circumstances that other people might have found permanently daunting. Gilbreth responded with continuing dedication and a burst of even more remarkable inventiveness. Similarly, Roosevelt’s later years were marked by astounding work in the United Nations and in helping to found UNICEF.

POSSIBLE MISCONCEPTIONS Some final words seem necessary, in light of the foregoing material. They concern several misconceptions that may require rethinking: 1. It is possible to believe that the destiny of our selected women is foreordained by the very gifts they bring to their eventual tasks,

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that “genius will out,” so to speak. The biographies in this volume should belie that. Although these women were intellectually talented, highly motivated, and persevering, they functioned in circumstances conducive to achievement and success. 2. Some parents may entertain the fond hope of creating a woman of achievement by attempting to nurture a child in the direction of genius, without allowing for the circumstances that are beyond that sort of control. Of course, there may be modes of parenting better suited than others to the nurturing of a child’s particular gifts, regardless of whether the child will turn out to be a highly accomplished individual. What can we learn in this respect from the lives of the women featured in this book? Our accounts offer examples of a variety of ways in which parents nurtured their children’s specific inclinations. They also suggest two general considerations for the maturing of basic talent. First, it is clear that most of these women grew up in families in which attention was paid to their needs, but there was no coddling. Rather, what Damon (1995) called “greater expectations” were made of them; that is, they were stimulated to greater autonomy in the honing of their talents, in the assumption of family responsibilities, and, in some cases, even in contributing to the common good outside their homes. In this connection, we may note that the majority of our women were from families that experienced straitened economic circumstances but not abject poverty. This necessarily afforded family members the manageable exposure to adversity that Baruch and Stutman (2003) considered an important component in their prescription for the fostering of resilience. At the same time, many of the parents were able to serve as models of strength in challenging circumstances—what Brooks and Goldstein (2004) emphasized as a necessary precursor of resilience in the children. Second, many of these women were voracious readers, expanding their horizons and testing their own ideas against the writings of other explorers and thinkers. Note that what was occurring was the reading of books, a quite different experience from today’s Internet surfing. The capacity for intense exploration of ideas that books permit is not easily duplicated in casual Internet usage, where cognitive indigestion of hastily assimilated materials is the more frequent risk. 3. It might be assumed that once an individual has achieved status as a woman of foresight, it is hers for life. In fact, an examination of these life stories reveals that the shape of the women’s lives (what in creative fiction might be called the “arc of the tale”) differs considerably. In other words, the durability of the remarkable

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vision may vary, depending not only on historical caprice (which is surely a factor), but also on the presence or absence of flexibility and openness in the women under consideration. Two examples may make the point: Isadora Duncan could not attune herself to the new musical rhythms of the early 20th century, and Helen Keller was not able to fully relate to the culture of the deaf. However, to suggest in such cases that the days of accomplishment were over before the end of life is not to deny the lasting impact of the achievements. Rather, it is as if such flagging achievers had set up camp at what was then a creative outpost where they built a strong edifice; new pioneers simply moved on past them. 4. We might expect that our accomplished women would all be avowed feminists. In some cases, their own words would suggest otherwise (i.e., they actually disavowed any connection with feminism or criticized some aspects of the feminist movement). We might resolve the apparent contradiction by suggesting that their repudiation of feminism seems limited to what Allport (1954/1979) labeled “anti-locution” (prejudicial utterances) or may have applied only to some of the manifestations of feminist interest. Occasional antilocution aside, the deeds of these women were certainly consonant with the essence of feminism as reflected in commitment to equality of opportunity, refusal to accept occupational limitations based on restrictive gender stereotypes, and a willingness to challenge the existing power structure. As you read our reflections, we hope and trust that additional thoughts and reflections of your own have arisen. Our chapter contributors have also shared their thoughts about individual women in questions and activities that appear in the Appendix. We invite you now to engage in further reflection. In some respects, the lives of our women of vision play a part in the lives of us all. Therefore, these extraordinary women may well lead us in new directions.

REFERENCES Allport, G. W. (1979). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. (Original work published 1954) Baruch, R., & Stutman, S. (2003), The yin and yang of resilience. In E. H. Grotberg (Ed.), Resilience for today: Gaining strength from adversity. Westport, CT: Praeger.

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Brooks, R., & Goldstein, S. (2004). The power of resilience: Achieving balance, confidence, and personal strength in your life. Chicago: Contemporary Books. Chisholm, S. (1970). Shirley Chisholm: Unbought and unbossed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Cook, B. W. (1995). Eleanor Roosevelt as reformer, feminist, and political boss. In L. K. Kerber & J. S. De Hart (Eds.), Women’s America: Refocusing the past (pp. 365–374). New York: Oxford University Press. Damon, W. (1995). Greater expectations: Overcoming the culture of indulgence in America’s homes and schools. New York: Free Press. de Beauvoir, S. (1953). The second sex. (H. M. Parshley, Trans. & Ed.). New York: Knopf. (Original work published 1949) Dubos, R. (1968). So human an animal. New York: Scribner’s. Erikson, E. H. (1987). On the potential of women. In S. Schlein (Ed.), A way of looking at things: Selected papers from 1930 to 1980, Erik H. Erikson (pp. 660–674). New York: Norton. (Original work published 1965) Kerber, L. K., & De Hart, J. S. (Eds.). (1995). Women’s America: Refocusing the past. New York: Oxford University Press. Walen, S. R., DiGiuseppe, R., & Dryden, W. (1992). A practitioner’s guide to rational-emotive therapy (2nd edition). New York: Oxford University Press.

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A P P E N D I X

Study Questions and Activities for Chapters 1 to 17

I. WOMEN WHOSE LIVES SPANNED TWO CENTURIES 1. Isadora Duncan A. Assume the role of an educational consultant. How might you recommend that dance be integrated into the school curriculum, in keeping with Isadora’s objectives? B. Locate and interview a dance therapist, if possible. (Otherwise, try to locate a psychotherapist who incorporates movement into his or her work—perhaps a Gestalt therapist or someone who employs Gestalt techniques or psychodrama—and interview him or her.) What aspect of your interviewee’s work resonates with Isadora’s innovation? C. Recall the episode involving belief in Santa Claus that culminated in Isadora’s leaving elementary school. Should the teacher have handled the situation differently, and if so, how? 2. Anne Sullivan Macy and Helen Adams Keller A. Discuss the role of the historical context in the lives of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan. How have developments in medicine affected the rate of blindness and deafness in American culture? In other parts of the world? How might modern medicines used to treat tuberculosis have changed Annie’s early family life? B. How did domestic violence and substance abuse affect Annie’s early life and her later development? How was Annie’s development 289

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influenced by her years of living in the poorhouse? What role did feelings of shame play in her life? C. How did the nearly symbiotic relationship between Helen and Annie affect their other relationships and their ability to achieve intimacy? Did they achieve integrity and generativity? D. Discuss the criticisms of Helen Keller’s legacy, especially her disability politics and her socialist activities. E. Discuss the ways Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan are depicted in children’s literature. What developmental characteristics of childhood might motivate writers to present such simplistic perspectives? What “goals” do they have in mind for the reader? Disability Experience Exercise. Spend a minimum of 2 hours in participation and/or observation of an activity or situation related to an issue concerning persons with disabilities, and prepare a short written report on your experience. You will find suggestions in the Disability Awareness Kit at http://www.openroad.net.au/access/dakit/welcome.htm. Additional activities are available at the Kern County SELPA Web site, http://kcsos.kern.org/specialEd/stories/storyReader#263, which features activities designed for Girl Scouts. Research the history of American Sign Language (ASL) and related languages for the deaf and hearing impaired, and write a short paper. You will find extensive information and links at the Gallaudet University Web site, http://depts.gallaudet.edu/deaf.studies/links.htm. Research the history of Braille and other reading codes for the blind, and write a short paper. You will find links to various aspects of this history at the American Council for the Blind Web site at http:// www.acb.org/resources/braille.html. Research further the notion of a “culture of disability” and write a short paper on this topic, especially as it applies to deaf culture. 3. Lillian Evelyn Moller Gilbreth A. Lillian Gilbreth was unique for her time in her motivation and in her drive to work and produce. What do you think contributed to her love of work and productivity? B. What other notable women in history are similar to Gilbreth in their attempts to “have it all”? C. What do you think contributed to the transformation of Lillian Gilbreth from a shy and reticent Victorian daughter to a world famous management expert and advisor to presidents? D. What were the strategies that Lillian Gilbreth used as a single parent to combine family and work?

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In her biography of Lillian Gilbreth, Jane Lancaster (2004) suggested that Lillian wrote and organized her papers to foreground her husband and minimize her own claims to ambitions and creativity. Nevertheless, the papers show her to have possessed a strength of purpose and a toughness that women of her generation (and many other generations) were trained to disguised [sic]. (p. 5)

Search for and read these papers, and note the aspects that made Frank more prominent, as well as those that conveyed Lillian’s strength of purpose and toughness. 4. Alice Paul A. In what ways did Alice Paul’s religious background influence her accomplishments? B. How did Alice Paul differ from the traditional image of her faith in attaining her goals on behalf of women? C. Why did Alice Paul battle so hard for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution? D. What was Alice Paul’s connection with the Equal Rights Amendment? E. What were Alice Paul’s thoughts on questioning of authority? F. What do you think of Alice Paul’s being so goal-oriented in getting the Nineteenth Amendment passed and in authoring the Equal Rights Amendment that she seldom ever wanted to talk about or focus on herself? Did that negatively affect her visibility as a prime mover for women’s rights? 5. Georgia O’Keeffe A. What life events and personality characteristics contributed to O’Keeffe’s strong determination and unwavering commitment to her art? B. Why do you think the landscape of the Texas panhandle and New Mexico’s badlands was so attractive to O’Keeffe? Are you surprised that she found these terrains so compelling? C. What do you make of the Stieglitz–O’Keeffe relationship? Do you think that it is easier today for a woman artist to combine a relationship with the pursuit of a career? D. How did the fact that O’Keeffe was childless affect her life and career trajectory? E. How did O’Keeffe’s narcissism (i.e., self-absorption) aid her career trajectory? Was there a “downside” to her narcissism?

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F. How was O’Keeffe able to tolerate Stieglitz’s deeply “essential” view of femininity and women? On some level, was it gratifying to her? G. So many theorists in feminine psychology see women as “relational.” Do you think that O’Keeffe was relational? H. Do you think O’Keeffe’s self-promotional behaviors would have been ignored had she been a man? Do you think it is because her drive and ambitions run counter to gender norms of modesty that they have received much attention? Compare a few books about women artists and marriage that could help answer questions C and D. The references to these books follow: Fryd, V. G. (2003). Art and the crisis of marriage: Edward Hopper and Georgia O’Keeffe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wagner, A. M. (1966). Three artists (three women): Modernism and the art of Hesse, Krasner, and O’Keeffe. Berkeley: University of California Press. 6. Mary McLeod Bethune A. Discuss in what way Mary McLeod Bethune had a feminist approach to education. B. From reading this chapter, what examples can you give of the concept of “race uplift”? C. What is meant by a collectivist culture? In what ways does Mrs. Bethune’s life exemplify the principles of a collectivist culture? D. Feminist scholars discuss how the person is political. What does the word “politics” mean in the context of this chapter? Discuss the goals from the Last Will and Testament. Have any of them been achieved? If so, which ones? For those you think are still to be realized, what do you see as the reasons the delay? 7. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt A. In what ways did (a) class, (b) gender, and (c) societal expectations influence Eleanor Roosevelt’s life span development and contributions? B. Discuss how Eleanor Roosevelt’s (a) family, (b) childhood, (c) marriage, and (d) life experiences influenced the person she became. C. How did Eleanor Roosevelt’s family background and life experiences influence the choices she made and her humanitarian contributions? D. Discuss how the social and historical context of the early and mid20th century influenced Eleanor Roosevelt’s life, circumstances, and behavior?

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E. Discuss whether Eleanor Roosevelt’s circumstances, experiences, values, and behavior would be similar if she were born a century later (i.e., in the 1980s rather than the 1880s). What lessons can be learned from Eleanor Roosevelt’s life? Hillary Rodham Clinton is a great admirer of Eleanor Roosevelt. Their lives can be seen as taking both similar and dissimilar paths. Read Living History: Hillary Rodham Clinton, an autobiography (Clinton, 2003). Compare and contrast Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Rodham Clinton on family background, childhood, marital history, choices, social context of their times, values, political influence, and national and international contributions. For additional information on Eleanor Roosevelt, see the References to Chapter 7.

II. WOMEN WHO MATURED DURING THE “ROARING TWENTIES” 8. Rachel Carson A. How did the Great Depression, attitudes toward women in science, and World War II affect Rachel Carson’s career? B. What sort of person was Maria McLean Carson? What were the positive and negative aspects of Rachel Carson’s relationship with her mother? Why was Rachel such a good and loyal daughter? C. When asked why she never married, Rachel Carson said that she never had time. What do you think of this statement? D. What were some of the characteristics of Rachel Carson’s creative work style? What did she need to function best? E. Why was this chapter entitled “Rachel Carson: The Strength of Wonder”? Think of seeing an enormous dinosaur skeleton, or a large flock of birds bursting unexpectedly from a thicket, or lightning and thunder. Can you imagine making the experience of awe and wonder central in your life? What do you think the consequences would be? 9. Dorothy Day A. In some sense, Dorothy Day’s encounter with Peter Maurin was the product of a fortuitous chain of events. Can you find something similar in your own life? Consider what in your life up to this point may have prepared you to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity. B. Become better acquainted with services for the homeless in your area. (Perhaps you’ll be able to assist as a volunteer.) Compare these

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services to what you can discover about the “Houses of Hospitality” in the Catholic Worker literature. C. Recall that Dorothy Day’s acceptance of Catholic Church dicta made certain aspects of her life nonnegotiable, despite her deep love for Forster Batterham. What aspects of your life—whether matters of religion or not—do you see as nonnegotiable? (cf. Question C) Debate the following statement: Because Tamar was the mutual daughter of Forster and Dorothy, Dorothy did not have the right to make a unilateral decision regarding her daughter’s religious affiliation and the incidental separation from her father. 10. Sister Annette Walters A. Identify some personality qualities that appear in the account of Sister Annette Walters. How did these qualities serve her in becoming a visionary woman? B. Based on her life story and your own observations of people, what do you think contributed to Sister Annette’s resilience? C. Do you think that Sister Annette would have become so influential if she had been born in 1810 instead of 1910? Provide reasons for your answer. D. Did anything in the chapter about Sister Annette take you by surprise? If so, state why. If you were not surprised, indicate why. During Sister Annette’s life the Official Catholic Directory of the United States did not list women religious (i.e., sisters or nuns) by name. Instead, it was common, in listings of people who staffed Catholic schools, to provide only names for the pastor and associate pastor of a particular parish. The women religious who taught at a particular school were listed, for instance, only as “12 nuns.” Check a recent Official Catholic Directory to see whether that practice has changed. Try to account for what you have found. 11. Evelyn Gentry Hooker A. People who conduct research formulate their research questions within a framework of their values, experiences, and interests. What led Evelyn Hooker to decide to study homosexuality at a time when research on this topic was often overtly or covertly discouraged? Do you think her research interests would have been different if her life had taken a different developmental course? B. In her classic 1957 study, Hooker suggested that “[h]omosexuality as a clinical entity does not exist. Its forms are as varied as those of heterosexuality” (Hooker, 1957, p. 30). What evidence did Hooker

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present to support this conclusion? Why was this a radical statement to make in the 1950s in the United States? C. Hooker’s research contributed to the decision of the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its categorization as a sexual deviation in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973. What does this suggest to you about the validity of psychiatric diagnostic systems? Are psychiatric diagnoses “socially constructed” according to the values and beliefs of the historical era? Are there other diagnoses that should be removed from the DSM? D. Hooker did not simply conduct and publish her research; rather, she used her research to promote changes in policy regarding treatment of homosexuals. In fact, although “hopelessly heterosexual” herself, she became part of the homosexual community and a tireless advocate for social justice for this population. Do you think researchers have an ethical responsibility to advocate for social change if their research findings reveal injustices? Can you think of contemporary examples of researchers becoming advocates for social and/or policy change? What developmental factors contributed to Hooker’s ability to become such an effective advocate?

12. “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias A. How did the financial hardships that the Didrikson family endured enhance Babe’s ability as an athlete? B. In addition to Babe’s natural gifts, what personal qualities did Babe necessarily develop in order to become who she was as an adult? C. What part did Babe’s family play in her development? D. What was insinuated when the press criticized Babe’s apparel and hounded her about when she would marry? E. What changes did Babe make in her persona when she took up golf? What didn’t she change? F. How did Babe’s struggle with cancer demonstrate her humanitarianism, and how did it enhance cancer awareness in the United States? G. What does the female golf champion, Annika Sorenstam, have in common with Babe Didrikson Zaharias?

Cite chapter evidence that Babe Didrikson Zaharias personifies each of Cohen’s eight laws of leadership. Reference what Babe did to make golf a viable professional sport for women.

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13. Lucille Ball A. In what ways can you see the experience of shame influencing Lucille’s psychological development? B. Lucille attributed her success to “happenstance.” Her life development from childhood through her senior years was characterized by an alternation of triumph and disaster. How might these two processes have been related? C. How might Lucille’s self-image as the “ageless self” have influenced her late life career decisions? Go to a Lucy fan club Web site (e.g., http://www.goecities.com/ TelevisionCity//6066/lucindex.html) and read an article written about her during her lifetime (e.g., a TV Guide profile or an interview). Then write a short essay indicating which statements are now known to be true and which are not. 14. Grace Brewster Murray Hopper A. Hopper maintained that the existing differences between men and women in scientific and mathematical ability could be attributed to social and educational factors. Describe and discuss some specific social or educational factors that could contribute to these differences. B. The debate about whether there are intrinsic (innate) differences between men and women in scientific and mathematical ability continues in the 21st century. State a position, and discuss two arguments supporting your position. State, discuss, and rebut at least one argument supporting the alternate position. C. Hopper, in common with many successful women of her generation (and of both later and earlier generations), denied having experienced gender discrimination. The historical record clearly indicates that she did experience gender discrimination (as well as prejudice based on other aspects, such as age), and she even told stories [e.g., of her colleagues at Harvard vying not to sit next to her (Billings, 1989)] that exemplified gender-based bias. Identify and discuss some reasons why a person who is or has been discriminated against might deny that he or she has been discriminated against. In your discussion, consider both people who have been successful despite the bias and people who have been unsuccessful (or less successful than they were reasonably entitled to expect). Look for Web sites for departments of computer science on which faculty members and/or graduate students are listed. Make note of the gender distribution of male and female students in computer science

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classes you are taking and/or visit computer science classes. You might want to compare graduate and undergraduate classes; you might also want to compare upper- and lower-division undergraduate classes (e.g., those that meet general education or distributional requirements vs. those in which students are primarily majors or minors). Assess the extent to which your examination suggests that computer science is currently gender blind.

III. WOMEN WHO BECAME ADULTS IN THE 1940S 15. Ella Fitzgerald A. What kind of social challenges did Fitzgerald face that were shared by most black women of her time? B. What kinds of social challenges did she face that were unique to her situation as a female performer during that period in history? C. Since Fitzgerald’s period in history, what has changed for black women like her, and what has not changed? D. Discuss some of the constituents of resilience in Fitzgerald’s life. How did they operate in ways that helped her to be successful? E. What kinds of elements in Fitzgerald’s background shaped her personality, and what role did her personality characteristics play in her success? F. What kinds of disappointments did Fitzgerald confront in her life? 16. Shirley Chisholm A. If you have studied the psychosocial theory of Erik Erikson, you know that there are eight stages in the interaction between an individual’s ego (sense of identity) and society over the life cycle. See if you think these eight stages are a good fit for the development of Shirley Chisholm over her life cycle. B. Have a discussion with your friends about these questions. Do you think a woman could be elected president of the United States today? Do you think that an African-American man or woman could be elected to the presidency today? C. Are you aware of particular national or local leaders who display a willingness to commit what Chisholm calls “political suicide” by voting their conscience versus the risk of not being elected again? Use the Internet to study the amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Note which amendments apply to the right to vote. How many? To which groups do the amendments apply? What are the dates of

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the amendments? What societal events led to the passage of the individual amendments? After reading this account about Shirley Chisholm, how would you plan a local election? A national election? 17. Rosalind Franklin A. Describe the attitudes and perspectives on women scientists in England late in the first half of the 20th century. Are the attitudes and perspectives on women engaged in scientific pursuits any different now than in England—and in the United States—early in the 21st century? B. Some scientific breakthroughs are due to the genius and insight of a single individual, whereas others are the product of cooperative efforts in a group of collaborating investigators. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the lone versus the group strategy in scientific research? In any creative endeavor? C. Awards such as the Nobel prize are based on recommendations and decisions by knowledgeable experts, but no expert is infallible. Some awards occasionally appear almost capricious, and often people who are widely viewed with favor and awe by their peers and colleagues are ignored or skipped over by awards committees. Can you think of a process for formally recognizing major contributions to science, medicine, social science, or technology that might produce truly fair and valid results? D. Progress in science, it could be argued, is more important than the feelings of the scientists who generate the progress. Given that the discovery of the double helix has had profound positive consequences for humanity, was Maurice Wilkins justified in showing Franklin’s crucial photo to James Watson? E. Many talented women never develop the skills needed to make full use of their talents. What role did Rosalind Franklin’s upbringing and family environment play in making her the internationally renowned scientist that she became? F. What difference would it have made, considering her illustrious achievements in scientific publications and in presentations at important scientific conventions, if Rosalind Franklin had been a male rather than a female? What difference might it make now, early in the 21st century? Note how differently Rosalind Franklin was received by her male coworkers in Paris and London. Although males in both settings were clearly aware of her femininity and reacted toward her in ways that showed that awareness, she was warmly accepted as part of the team

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in one setting but not in the other. Engage in role-playing skits in two 2-minute acts in which Franklin interacts with her scientific (male) colleagues first in Paris and then in London. Do this first with a female impersonating Franklin; then repeat the two-act skit with a male impersonating Franklin. During the role-playing, incidentally, it is appropriate to display subtle sexism (if and when it occurs) in only relatively decorous and mild forms in speech and action because that is undoubtedly how Franklin experienced it during her life. In an ensuing discussion, concentrate on how the Franklin impersonators felt during the interaction with their peers. Also, why do you think Franklin returned to England rather than remaining in France, where she was treated appreciatively?

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300

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Index

Addams, Jane, 70, 72 Adler, Alfred, 118 adolescent years of Carson, 124–126 of Chisholm, 248–250 of Day, 144–146 Erikson on, 148 of Roosevelt (Eleanor), 109–110 of Walters, 165–167 advocacy, by Roosevelt, 115–116 African American women, and Bethune, 96, 100 Agricultural Adjustment Act, 116 Aiken, Howard, 219 American Civil Liberties Union, 41 American Foundation for the Blind, 37 American Psychiatric Association (APA), 178 American Psychological Foundation, 186 American Psychologist, 187 Anagnos, Michael, 35, 37 Anderson, Marian, 115 Anthony, Susan B., 62, 70, 249 APA. See American Psychiatric Association Apollo Theater, 238–239 Army Nurse Corps, 115–116 Arnaz, Desi (husband, Lucille Ball) development of I Love Lucy, 208–209 purchase of RKO lot, 207 troubled marriage to Lucille Ball, 208 arrests/imprisonments, of Paul, 69 art, as male occupation, 86 Art Institute, Chicago, 87 Art Students League, New York, 87

Arts and Craft movement, 88, 89 artwork/paintings, of O’Keeffe aerial landscapes, 82 charcoal abstractions, 81 importance of “light,” 83 legacy, 80–83 Manhattan skyscrapers, 81 projection v. intention, 80–81 psychological themes, 83–84 sexual allusions/symbolism by, 80 Southwest explorations, 81–82, 88 Association of Teachers of Colored Schools, 103 Atlantic Monthly, 127 awards of Ball, 213 of Fitzgerald,(Ella), 242 of Hooker (Edward), 186 of Hooker (Evelyn Gentry), 183 of Hopper, 225–226 of Keller, 38 of O’Keeffe, 80 of Zaharias (Babe), 197, 199 Babe Zaharias Cancer Research Fund, 190 Ball, Lucille, 203–214 achievements/failures, 211–212 birth of children, 210 “communist” past of, 210–211 drama studies in NYC, 205 early life tragedies, 204 as first lady of comedy, 204 generativity v. stagnation, 212–213 humorous risk taking, 206

301

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Index

Ball, Lucille (cont.) and I Love Lucy, 208–209 identity expression, 282 Kennedy Center Award, 213 married life, 208–209 mentors of, 206, 207–208 modeling job, 205 movie/radio appearances, 208 relationship with DeVita, 206–207 ridiculed by grandmother, 204, 206 The Baltimore Sunday Sun, 127, 129 Barnard College (New York City), 49 Batterham, Forster, 150, 151 Beauvoir, Simone de, 275 Bell, Alexander Graham, 37 Belles on Their Toes (Gilbreth children), 46 Bethune, Albertus (Mary’s husband), 99 Bethune, Mary McLeod, 95–105 break with traditional role of women, 99 civil rights activism, 96 developmental aspects, 99 education of, 96, 97, 98, 101, 102–103 family support of, 100 female role models, 102 fight against racism/segregation, 100–101 friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, 101, 103, 104 government work, 103–104 historical influences on, 100 influence on Chisholm, 249 integration experiences, 102 and Ku Klux Klan, 98 “Last Will and Testament,” 104 literary information on, 97, 98 presidential appointments, 98 psychosocial aspects, 99 spirituality of, 104, 283 teaching experience, 98 woman-centered approach to, 100 women’s organizations, 103–104 Bethune-Cookman College, 97, 98, 101 Birdie and His Fairy Friends: A Book for Little Children (Canby), 35 Bolshevik Revolution, 160 Bradford, Carmen, 233 Bradley, Ritamary, 172 Bricklaying System (Gilbreth), 54 Brown University, 53 Brown v. Board of Education, 117 ¨ Buhler, Charlotte, 169–170

¨ Buhler, Karl, 169–170 Burns, Lucy, 69, 76 Caldwell, Don, 182 Canby, Margaret T., 35 Carson, Maria (Rachel’s mother) death of, 132 support of Rachel, 129 Carson, Rachel, 123–138 adult explorations by, 127–128 biographies about, 124 Bureau of Fisheries employment, 128–129 childhood/adolescence, 124–126 college years, 126 family background, 124–125, 127, 135–136, 138 farm childhood living, 125 Freeman’s friendship with, 132–133, 136 graduate school, 126–127 identity expression, 282 Kennedy’s vindication of, 134 love of reading, 125 mentorship by Skinker, 126, 132 move to Maine, 131 multiple roles of, 128–129 and ocean symbolism, 137 parental support for, 129 partnership with Rodell, 130 sense of purpose in life, 138 sense of specialness, 138 spirituality of, 283 summer research of, 126 writing efforts of, 125, 127–128 Cassatt, Mary, 86, 89 The Catholic Worker, 155, 156, 157, 158 Catholicism Day’s conversion to, 142, 153–155 of Kennedy, 161 Catt, Carrie Chapman, 70 celibacy, of Day, 150 Century Psychology Series, 162 Chace, Miriam, 25 Changing Our Minds: The Story of Evelyn Hooker documentary, 179 Chavez, Caesar, 158 Cheaper by the Dozen (Gilbreth children), 46–47 child labor, Eleanor Roosevelt’s stance against, 111

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Index childhood years of Carson, 124–126 of Chisholm, 247–248 of Duncan, 19–21 of Fitzgerald (Ella), 237 of Paul, 62–65 of Roosevelt (Eleanor), 108–109 of Sullivan, 32 of Walters, 164 of Zaharias, 191–193 Chisholm, Shirley, 245–257 adolescent years, 248–250 Brooklyn College years, 250–251 Democratic Party opposition to, 254 early childhood, 247–248 early politics, 251–252 education of, 249, 251 election to Congress, 246 identity/leadership, 256–257 influences on, 249–250 marriage of, 252 maverick nature of, 254, 255 mentors of, 252, 257 NAACP involvement, 251 NY State Assembly Representative, 252–254 presidential candidacy, 246, 255–256 relationship with grandmother, 247 SEEK scholarship program passage, 253 speaking invitations by students, 255 teaching at Columbia University, 252 Urban League involvement, 251 U.S. Congress Representative, 254–255 Warsoff’s inspiration of, 250–251 “The Church and Social Problems” presentation (Paul), 69 Civil Rights Act (1964), 76, 117 civil rights activism, of Bethune, 96 Clooney, Rosemary, 232 Cocteau, Jean, 25 College of St. Catherine, 160 Columbia University, 67, 88 communism Ball’s association with, 210–211 Duncan’s association with, 25 computers, and Hopper, 219–220, 221–224 Concrete System (Gilbreth), 54 Congressional Union (CU) for Women’s Suffrage, 70

303

conversions, of Day, 142, 151–153, 153–155 Cook, Nancy, 112–113 Craig, Edward, 23 creativity, characteristics of, 85 Crick, Francis, 267, 268, 270 The Dance of the Future (Duncan), 27 dance therapy, 26 Dark Night of the Soul, 145 Daughters of the American Revolution, 115 Davis, Bette, 205 Day, Dorothy, 141–158 abortion by, 150, 152 autobiographical works, 143 Bible’s influence on, 145 and The Catholic Worker, 155, 156, 157, 158 celibacy, post-conversion, 150 childhood/adolescence, 144–146 concern for needy, 150 consciousness shift, 151–152 daughter’s baptism, 152–153 dreams, 144–145, 151 education of, 149 emerging sexuality, 147–148 founding of Catholic Worker, 142, 143 intimacies of, 150–151 journalism career beginnings, 149–150 marriages of, 150 mystical predilection, 145, 148 prayers of, 153 purpose in life, 282 relationship with brother John, 148–149 relationship with Maurin, 142, 143, 153–158 religious conversion, 142, 151–155 response to needy, 146–147 Roman Catholicism choice, 153 spirituality of, 283 support of Chavez, 158 young adulthood, 149–150 Day, John, 148–149 Deliverance docudrama, 37 deMille, Agnes, 12 Democratic NY State Committee, 112, 113 DeVita, Johnny, 206–207 Dickerman, Marion, 112–113 disability, politics/culture of, 41–42 The Double Helix (Watson), 270 dreams, of Dorothy Day, 144–145, 151

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January 21, 2007

Index

DuBois, W.E.B., 102–103 Duncan, Isadora adolescence of, 21–22 ballet opposition of, 15 as central family figure, 21 childhood of, 19–21 as “choreographic philosopher,” 15–16 communist association of, 25 complex nature of, 12 composure/self-confidence of, 20 and costumes/setting, 17 dance school formation, 22–23 dance techniques of, 15 and dance therapy, 26 death of, 25 death of children, 23 European trip, 22 generativity of, 22–23 and Hellenism/pseudo-Hellenism, 16–17 identity expression, 282 impulsive adult behavior, 20 legacy of, 25–27 life turning point, 23–24 marriage v. single life ideas, 21–22 as modern dance founder, 13 parental background, 17–18 physical features of, 14, 24 pioneering music usage by, 16–17 presence of, 13–14 sexual licentiousness of, 24–25 as trailblazer, 12–17 upper body concentration by, 13, 15 young adulthood of, 22–23 Duncan, Mrs. (Isadora’s mother) dietary/drinking habits, 19 difficult pregnancy of, 18–19 parenting strategies of, 19–20 retreat from Catholicism, 18, 19 Dunlop, E., 180 Eastman, Max, 25 The Edge of the Sea (Carson), 132 education of Bethune, 96, 97, 98, 101, 102–103 of Carson, 126–127 of Chisholm, 249, 250–251, 251 of Day, 149 of Franklin, 262–264 of Gilbreth, 46, 49–50, 50, 57 of Hooker, 179–180, 181 of Hopper, 216, 218–219

of Keller, 36 of O’Keeffe, 86–87, 88 of Paul, 67, 70 of Paul, Alice, 75 of Roosevelt (Eleanor), 109 of Walters, 162, 165, 167, 169 “The Education of a Computer” (Hopper), 222 Eisenhower, Dwight, 210–211 The Eleventh Virgin (Day), 143, 150 Elliot, Richard, 169 Ellis, Albert, 284 England feminist tactics, 70 Militant Suffrage Movement, 69 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), 74–75, 76 equality Bethune’s fight for, 100 preamble, UN Charter, 76 “Towards Equality” dissertation (Paul), 67 ERA. See Equal Rights Amendment ergonomics, work of Gilbreth, 56 Erikson, E. H. on adolescent confusion, 148 generativity concept, 23 perspective of Eleanor Roosevelt, 118 psychosocial development model, 38 eugenics, and Gilbreths, 53 Eurich, Alvin, 169 Evelyn Hooker Center for Gay and Lesbian Mental Health, 187 Fagan, Peter, 39 family background of Annette Walters, 163–165 of Annie Sullivan, 32 of Eleanor Roosevelt, 108 of Georgia O’Keeffe, 83 of Grace Brewster Murray Hopper, 216–218 of Helen Keller, 34–35 of Lillian Gilbreth, 46–47, 50–54 of Rachel Carson, 124–125, 127, 135–136, 138 Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, 103 feminists of England, 70 Paul’s identification with, 66 snubbed by O’Keeffe, 84

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Index Field System (Gilbreth, Frank Bunker), 51 Fitzgerald, Ella, 231–243 Apollo Theater triumph, 238–239 awards of, 242 childhood years, 237 comments from peers, 232, 233, 235, 236 death of, 242 ELLA award, 242 final years, 242–243 in Golden Age of Jazz, 235–236 Granz’s management of, 240–241 health issues, 233–234 identity expression, 282 influence of mother’s death, 238 insecurities of, 233–234 mariage failures, 240 musical influences of, 236 physical appearance issues, 234, 239 and racism, 233, 234–235 scat singing as trademark, 236 as “singer’s” singer, 232 Webb’s guardianship of, 239–240 Woman of the Year (1967), 233 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 25 Fitzgerald, Zelda, 25 Ford, Gerald, 80 Franklin, Rosalind Elsie, 259–270 background/education, 261–264 bilingual skills, 264, 265 DNA work of, 266–268 early career, 264–265 forthrightness of, 264 friendship with Mering, 264 identity expression, 282 King’s College years, 265–266 PhD studies, 264 scientific contributions, 260–261, 265–268 supporters of, 269–270 and Watson, 269–270 Freeman, Dorothy, 132–133, 136 Freud, Anna, 23 From, Sam, 182 From Union Square to Rome (Day), 143 Gardner, Howard, 257 gays/lesbians, Hooker’s impact on, 178 gender discrimination, 180 gender rights, 76

305

generativity of Ball, 212–213 of Duncan, 22–23 of Keller, 37–38 of Walters, 170–174 Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisoneé, 80 Gernets, Linda, 186 Gilbreth, Frank Bunker (Lillian’s husband) construction innovations, 50–51 contributions with Lillian, 51–52, 54–56 death of, 56 efficiency fanaticism of, 53 as encouraging husband, 50 Gilbreth, Lillian Evelyn Moller, 45–59 Berkeley commencement speaker, 48–49 business consulting by, 57, 58 career/family integration, 53–54 continuation of Frank’s work, 56–58 criticisms of Taylor, 55–56 as first born, 47–48 graduate degrees of, 46, 49–50, 57 as “have it all” woman, 47 and industrial-organizational psychology, 54 managing children/career, 53 modest nature of, 58 multiple PhDs of, 53–54 partnerships with Frank, 51–52, 54–56 persistence of, 284 presidential public service appointments, 57–58 professional accomplishments, 46–47 self-thoughts, 48 solo career choices, 52 successful marriage/family life, 46–47, 50–54 time management interests, 54, 55 women’s groups involvements, 58 Godin, Andre, 174 The Goodson Gazette, 35 Granz, Norman, 240–241 Haugland, David, 186 Helen Keller Endowment Fund, 38 The Helen Keller in Her Story, 40 “Helping Your Child to Wonder” (Carson), 135 Henney, Nella Braddy, 33 Hodges, Eula, 252 Holder, Wesley McD., 251, 257

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Index

The Homemaker and Her Job (Gilbreth), 57 homosexuality depathologizing of, 178 Hooker’s research study, 182–185 and Rorschach test, 185 Hooker, Edward, 182 Hooker, Evelyn Gentry, 177–187 American Psychologist obituary of, 187 development catalysts for, 179–182 education of, 179–180, 181 gender discrimination against, 180 homosexuality research of, 186 impact on gays/lesbians, 178 as inspiration, 181 Institute of Psychotherapy appointment, 180 mentors of, 181 NIMH grant awarded to, 183 on NIMH Task Force on Homosexuality, 185 Placek Award given to, 186 purpose in life, 282 research study of, 182–185 teaching positions of, 179, 181 UCLA appointment of, 180 Hopper, Grace Brewster Murray, 215–226 awards, 225–226 compiler development, 222–223 early mechanical aptitude, 217 education of, 216, 218–219 family/childhood, 216–218 identity expression, 282 involvement with COBOL, 223–224 parental educational support, 216 persistence of, 221 PhD studies, 218 physics/mathematics skills, 218 professor at Vassar College, 219 technological advancements of, 219–220 work at Harvard University, 221 work on UNIVAC, 221 and World War II, 219–220 writing technical manuals, 220 Human Rights Declaration, 116 The Idea of a University (Newman), 161 Ingersoll, Robert, 18 Institute of Psychotherapy (Berlin), 180

James, William on conversion, 153 on minor ecstasies, 152 Jarreau, Al, 233 John XXIII (Pope), 161 Johns Hopkins University, 126, 180 Johnson, Lyndon, 38 Journal of Projective Techniques, 185 Junior League of New York, 110 Kansas City star, 32 Keaton, Buster, 208, 209 Keller, Helen. See also Macy, Anne Sullivan affair with Peter Fagan, 39 article written by, 32 benefactors of, 37 blind prints mastered by, 38 in children’s books, 39–40 denouncing of Rockefeller, 41 family background, 34–35 fast learning by, 35 financial challenges, 37 generativity/advocacy for blind, 37–38 glass eye replacement, 31 interpersonal/psychosocial challenges, 38–39 Leblanc’s observations of, 39 lobbying efforts, 38 onset of brain fever, 31 plagiarism scandal, 35–36 Presidential Medal of Freedom award, 38 Radcliffe College years, 36 as social reformer/socialist, 40–41 star of Deliverance docudrama, 37 and verbalism/word-mindedness, 35, 36 Kennedy, John F., 117, 134, 161 Kimmel, Douglas, 186 King’s College, 265–266 Kinsey, Alfred, 178 Klopfer, Bruno, 182 Ku Klux Klan, 98 The Ladies’ Home Journal, 32 Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), 199 Laney, Lucy Craft, 102 A Large Family Is Fun (Gilbreth child), 52 “Last Will and Testament” (Bethune), 104 Latin America, 163 League of Women Voters, 64, 112

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Index Leblanc, Georgette, 39 “The Legal Position of Women in Pennsylvania” dissertation (Paul), 70 Lenin, Vladimir Ilich, 160 Levien, Julia, 13 “Life-A Means to an End” (Gilbreth speech), 49 literature adult, about Bethune, 97–98 children’s, about Bethune, 96–97 Living with Our Children (Gilbreth), 57 Lombard, Carole, 206 The Long Loneliness (Day), 143, 157 The Long Restlessness (Day), 157 Loon, Henrik Willem van, 128 LPGA. See Ladies Professional Golf Association Macy, Anne Sullivan antagonism for men, 33 ashes of, 30 childhood family trauma, 32 living in poorhouse, 33 marital breakup, 33–34 partial success of operations, 31 trachoma onset, 31 wild mood swings, 34 Maddox, Brenda, 262 marriage of Babe Zaharias, 198 of Dorothy Day, 150 of Isadora Duncan, 21–22 of Lillian Gilbreth, 46–47, 50–54 of Lucille Ball, 208 of Shirley Chisholm, 252 Maslow, Abraham, 118 Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, 32, 37 Maurin, Peter, 142, 143, 153–158 McHugh, Antonia, 168–169 Medal of Freedom Award for Georgia O’Keeffe, 80 for Helen Keller, 38 The Mentor (Perkin’s alumni magazine), 35 mentors of Ball, 206, 207–208 of Carson, 126, 132 of Chisholm, 252, 257 of Hooker, 181 of Walters, 168–169 Mering, Jacques, 264

307

Midstream: My Later Life (Keller), 40 The Miracle Worker, 40 Moise, Lionel, 150 Moody Bible School, 98 Morgan, John Pierpont, 37 Morisot, Berthe, 86 Motion Study (Gilbreth), 54 Muenzinger, Karl, 181 Murrow, Ed, 211 mysticism, of Day, 145, 148 National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA), 62, 69, 71 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Chisholm’s involvement, 251 Eleanor Roosevelt’s advocacy, 115–116 National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, 98, 103 National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA), 171 National Consumers’ League, 110 National Council for Negro Women (NCNW), 103 National Council of Women, 103 National Gallery of Art, 80 National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 178 grant awarded to Hooker, 183 Hooker’s application to, 179 National Medal of Arts, for O’Keeffe, 80 National Woman’s Party (NWP), 71–72, 89 National Youth Administration, 103 NAWSA. See National American Women’s Suffrage Association NCEA. See National Catholic Educational Association The New Art of the Leader (Cohen), 191 New Deal, and Eleanor Roosevelt, 113 New York Times, 178 New Yorker magazine, 130, 134 Newman, John Henry, 161 NIMH. See National Institute of Mental Health NWP. See National Woman’s Party ocean symbolism, and Carson, 137 O’Hara, Kevin (Mary L.), 169 O’Keeffe, Georgia, 79–92. See also artwork/paintings, of O’Keeffe artistic quest of, 82

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January 21, 2007

Index

O’Keeffe, Georgia (cont.) business acumen, 87 depression of, 91 as “divine woman”/“American peasant,” 84 doll play of, 85–86 Dow’s influence, 88–89 early recognition of talent, 86 education of, 86–87, 88 family life, 83 feminists snubbed by, 84 finding of artistic voice, 87–90 identity expression, 282 influence of mother, 84–85 lack of empathic responsiveness, 85 National Medal of Arts winner, 80 and National Woman’s Party, 89 purpose in life, 282 recognition of talent by Willis, 87 relationship to Stieglitz, 82–83, 90–92 Speicher’s interactions with, 87–88 stoical/hardworking nature, 84 Sun Prairie, Wisconsin years, 83–86 teaching experience of, 88, 89 understanding of nature, 84 Williamsburgh, Virginia migration, 86–87 world travels, 81–82 “On Pilgrimage” column (Day), 157 O’Neill, Eugene, 150 organizations. See women’s organizations Out of the Dark essays (Keller), 41 Pankhurst, Christabel, 68 Pankhurst, Emmeline, 68 Paul, Alice, 61–78 adolescent years, 65–66 arrests/imprisonments of, 69 athletic interests, 65 childhood years, 62–65 Civil Rights Act work, 76 college days, 66–67 complex personality, 64 economics/political science interests, 67 England years, 67–69 ERA battle, 74–75 feminist self-identification, 66 founding of National Woman’s Party, 71–72 graduate school/law school studies, 67, 70, 75

historical ancestry of, 63 marriage v. career choice belief, 65 NAWSA membership invitation, 70 NWP presidency, 75–76 peace work of, 75 personal interests, 64 picketing of White House, 73–74 Quaker values, 64 radicalization of, 68 return to America, 69–71 siblings of, 63–64 suffrage movement interest, 66 vegetarianism of, 74 women’s rights work, 67–68, 75 Paul, Helen (Alice’s sister), 63–64 Pauling, Linus, 270 Perkins School (New York City), 35 Persons and Personality (Walters), 169 Perutz, Max, 270 Peterson, Oscar, 235 Placek Award, 186 politics of Chisholm, 251–256 of disability, 41–42 of Eleanor Roosevelt, 113, 115 of Keller, 34–35 Pollitzer, Anita, 89 The Psychology of Conscience and Moral Development (Walters), 173 purpose in life of Annette Walters, 282 of Dorothy Day, 282 of Eleanor Roosevelt, 112–113 of Evelyn Gentry Hooker, 282 Georgia O’Keeffe, 282 Hooker, Evelyn Gentry, 282 O’Keeffe, Georgia, 282 of Rachel Carson, 138 Quakers belief in women’s suffrage, 66 Paul’s background/beliefs, 64 Paul’s presentations to, 69–70 racism Bethune’s fight against, 100–101 and Ella Fitzgerald, 233, 234–235 Reader’s Digest, 127 Reagan, Ronald, 80, 213 religious presence, and Day, 145 Riesman, David, 160

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January 21, 2007

Index Rodell, Marie, 130, 132 Rogers, Annette P., 37 Rogers, Lela, 207 role models, female, 102 Rollins, Sonny, 236 Roosevelt, Anna Eleanor, 107–118 adolescence/young adulthood, 109–110 advocate/social activist, 115–116 assistant-principal/teacher, 112–113 charitable activities, 109, 111 childbearing years, 110 childhood sadness/loss, 108–109 childhood years, 108–109 collaborative beliefs of, 113 death of father/brother, 109 devotion to Franklin Delano, 110, 112 education of, 109 friendship with Bethune, 101, 103, 104 heritage/family of origin, 108 high-level positions, 117 interests/purposes of, 112–113 leadership role, 114–115 lifespan personality development, 117–118 marital/political challenges, 110–112 outsider feelings of, 109 persistence of, 284 political voice evolution of, 112 societal debut of, 110 stance against child labor, 111 and Truman, 116 and U.N. formation, 116–117 volunteer work, 111–112 women’s independence beliefs, 113 Roosevelt, Elliot (Eleanor’s father), 109 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano death of, 116 Eleanor’s devotion to, 110, 112 engagement to Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, 110 Rorschach test, 182, 185 Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA (Maddox), 262 Rosalind Franklin and DNA (Sayre), 270 Sanger, Margaret, 40 Sapir, Philip, 181 Sayre, Anne, 270 The Sea Around Us (Carson), 130–131, 137 The Second Sex (Beauvoir), 275

309

Second Vatican Council, 156, 161, 162, 171, 172 Serlin, Ilene, 11–27 sexuality in artwork of O’Keeffe, 80 of Day, 147–148 of Duncan, 24–25 Silent Spring (Carson), 124, 134–135 Singer, Paris, 22, 23 Skinker, Mary Scott, 126, 132 Skinner, B. F., 170 social activism, of Eleanor Roosevelt, 115–116 Social Darwinism, 53 Spaulding, John S., 37 Speicher, Eugene, 87–88 spirituality, 282–283 of Bethune, 104, 283 of Carson, 283 of Day, 283 of Walters, 162, 283 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 62, 70 Stieglitz, Alfred, 80, 82–83, 90–92 The Story of Mankind (Loon), 128 The Story of My Life (Keller), 36 Strand, Paul, 90 success, men v. women, 241–242 suffrage movement beginnings, 62 Congressional amendment defeat, 62 in England, 69 Helen Keller’s interest in, 35–36 suffrage parades in Dalston, England, 68 in Washington, DC, 70 Sullivan, Annie. See Macy, Anne Sullivan Swarthmore College, 65–66 Taylor, F. W., 55–56 Teacher (Keller), 35 teaching profession of Bethune, 98 of Chisholm, 251, 252 of Hooker, 179, 181 of Hopper, 219 of O’Keeffe, 88, 89 and Russian women, 160–161 of Walters, 172–173 technology. See under Hopper, Grace Brewster Murray Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 172

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310

January 21, 2007

Index

This Life I’ve Led (Zaharias), 191, 200 Thompson, Polly, 30 Thorndike, A. H., 50–51 Tormé, Mel, 232 “Towards Equality” dissertation (Paul), 67 Truman, Harry S., 116 Tubman, Harriet, 249 The Unconquered (Keller film biography), 40 Under the Sea Wind (Carson), 129, 131 “Undersea” (Carson), 127, 128 United Nations (U.N.) Charter, 76 and Eleanor Roosevelt, 116–117 Human Rights Declaration, 116 Urban League, 251 Val-Kiill Industries, 112 Vassar College, 218, 219 Wade, William, 37 Walters, Annette, 159–174 accomplishments, 162 adolescent years, 165–167 ¨ Buhler’s influence on, 169–170 childhood advantages, 164 collaboration with Godin, 174 controversial commencement speech, 160, 161 as dedicated woman, 168–170 early life, 163–164 education of, 162, 165, 169 encouraging personality, 171 entering convent life, 167–168 family background, 163–165 friendship/collaboration with Bradley, 172–173 friendship with Skinner, 170 Fulbright Research Fellow, 162 generativity of, 170–174 impact on Latin America/Europe, 163, 172 as inner directed woman, 160 inspiration/revelatory insights, 168 mentors of, 168–169 parental divorce, 165 PhD studies, 169, 170 purpose in life, 282 relationship with God, 165–168, 173

relationship with parents, 164 spirituality of, 162, 283 work with Second Vatican Council, 172 worldly love/love of God, 165–168 writings of, 162 Warsoff, Louis, 250–251 Washington, Booker T., 102 Watson, James, 269 Webb, Chick, 239–240 Whistler, James, 89 Willis, Elizabeth May, 87 Wilson, Emma, 102 Wilson, Woodrow, 70, 74 women’s development collaborators, 277–278 external conditions, 275–279 family influence, 276–277 identity, 281–282 internal development, 280–284 intimacy, 278–279 mentorship, 277 misconception possibilities, 284–286 motivation, 280 other influences, 279 purpose in life, 282 spirituality, 282–283 success expectations, 241–242 values/hierarch of values, 280–281 vital personality characteristics, 283–284 women’s organizations, 103–104 Congressional Union for Women’s Suffrage, 70 Daughters of the American Revolution, 115 Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, 103 Ladies Professional Golf Association, 199 National American Women’s Suffrage Association, 62, 69 National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, 98 National Council for Negro Women, 103 National Council of Women, 103 National Woman’s Party, 71–72 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 72 Women’s Peace Party, 40–41 Women’s Rights Convention, 62 Women’s Trade Union, 112 World Women’s Party, 75–76

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January 21, 2007

Index Women’s Rights Convention, 62 women’s rights movement, 62 Women’s Trade Union, 112 The World I Live In (Keller), 35 World Women’s Party (WWP), 75–76 Wright-Humason School (New York City), 35 WWP. See World Women’s Party Yale Review, 130 Zaharias, Didrikson “Babe,” 189–202 amateur v. professional status, 198–199 athletic awards, 197, 199 autobiography of, 191, 200 basketball career development, 194–195 as “Big Business Babe,” 200 breaking of world records, 196 childhood athleticism of, 192

311

death of, 201 early years, 191–193 goal development by, 193 golfing career, 198 health issues, 190, 200–201 high school years, 193–194 LPGA development, 199 marriage to George Zaharias, 198 movie cameo, 200 Olympic victories, 196 parental support, 192, 194 practical joking nature, 195 promotional work, 197 teenage/tomboy years, 193–194 track and field skills, 195 unkind press reports about, 198 USGA banning of, 199 Zaharias, George (Babe’s husband), 198, 199

12:34

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