A Different Point of View

Archived Newsletters: Winter 2005

Legislation Granting NWHM a Museum Site Will Remain a Priority

NWHM made significant progress in its efforts to secure legislation providing a prominent museum site, but fell short of its goal as Congress’ work on pending legislation took a back seat to election year priorities. When Congress returns, NWHM is poised to build on successes and achieve its goal of obtaining a suitably prominent location for a museum honoring women’s accomplishments.

During 2003, most of the legislative effort was focused on the Senate, and the year ended with a major success. On November 22, 2003,  the United States Senate unanimously passed S. 1741, a bill directing the General Services Administration to locate the National Women’s History Museum in the vacant Annex to the Old Post Office, 1100 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, DC. The bill was introduced  by Senator Susan Collins, who chairs the Committee on Governmental Affairs, and was co sponsored by  eleven women senators and eight male members drawn from the Governmental Affairs Committee. During markup of the bill,  many senators were shocked to learn that the Annex had been empty for over 10 years and were delighted that NWHM would renovate that space on Pennsylvania Avenue and put it to productive use.

After Senate passage, the bill was sent to the House of Representatives with hopes of quick passage. However, Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) objected.  As a result, the bill was referred to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where Mr. Oberstar is the Ranking Minority Member. 

While stating that he supports NWHM in concept, Mr. Oberstar favors legislation that would authorize commercial development of both the Old Post Office Building –an occupied federal office building-- and the vacant Annex. NWHM officials voiced their concerns that Mr. Oberstar’s development concept was controversial, could result in indeterminate delays, and divert assets from museum development. As the 2004 congressional year headed toward a close, NWHM worked to find a compromise as only unopposed measures had a realistic chance of passage in the Presidential election year. In the end, no agreement could be reached. Major stumbling blocks were the lack of a commitment to house NWHM in the Annex and the insistence that the museum should be a subservient to a commercial developer, which introduces a host of associated problems.

In the past, Congress has specifically allocated sites for museums in Washington DC at little or no cost to the museum’s organizers.  For example, the Women’s Memorial at Arlington Cemetery, the National Building Museum, the Holocaust Museum, the Law Enforcement Museum, the City Museum, and all of the Smithsonian Museums have been afforded free sites on federal land.  Museums have been regarded as the best use of  public property adjoining the National Mall and are often appropriated  millions of dollars as well as a donated site.  Congress has NEVER enacted legislation treating a museum as a commercial entity.

NWHM enjoys the broad bipartisan support of 150 members of the House of Representatives as well as the unanimous approval of the Senate. There will be many legislative opportunities to pursue in 2005 and NWHM is already making plans to secure passage of legislation to secure the Post Office Annex for the site of the Museum. Armed with determination and the conviction that the women of this nation deserve recognition through a Women’s History Museum, NWHM fully intends to succeed in its effort.

 

NWHM Members Invited to Discussion of Lou Henry Hoover

The Woodrow Wilson Center is partnering with NWHM and the Sewell-Belmont House to bring Lou Henry Hoover: Activist First Lady to our members and their guests. The program will take place at the Woodrow Wilson Center on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 between 3:00-5:00 P.M. A reception will follow the discussion. The event will launch the book authored by Nancy Beck Young, an accomplished historian and writer. The two commentators will be Edith Mayo, Curator Emeritus of the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and Maurine Beasley, of the University of Maryland, both of whom are extremely knowledgeable about First Ladies.

Lou Hoover, Herbert Hoover’s wife, was a modern First Lady whose life illustrated the transition between nineteenth and twentieth century views on women’s roles in society.  She was the first woman to major in geology at Leland Stanford University where she met Herbert in a geology lab. Mr. Hoover’s career took the couple all over the globe starting in China, then to Ceylon, Burma, Siberia, Australia, Egypt, Japan and Europe. As they moved Mrs. Hoover provided a comfortable home for her husband and their two sons. When she served as First Lady Lou Hoover earned the reputation of gracious and skilled hostess, entertaining dignitaries and less well-known people alike. But she also developed an independent political persona, and among her “firsts” as First Lady were speaking on the radio and giving regular press interviews.

Lou Hoover was not only hostess, homemaker and mother, but a life-long social activist. She organized and provided relief for refugees in China during the Boxer uprising in 1900, in London at the start of World War I, and again in New York during World War II. An avid supporter of the Girl Scouts, she served as troop leader in California and Washington DC, and provided leadership for the national organization. She had a genuine passion for education; even her husband did not know how much she did in support of schools until after her death.

Dr. Nancy Beck Young, author of Lou Henry Hoover: Activist First Lady is Professor of History at McKendree College and a former Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center. She is the award winning author of Wright Patman: Populism, Liberalism, and the American Dream.

Edith Mayo curated The First Ladies exhibition at the National Museum of American History. She co-authored Smithsonian Book of the First Ladies: Their Lives, Times, and Issues and First Ladies: Political Role, Public Image among others.

Maurine Beasley, Professor of Journalism at the University of Maryland, is an award winning author and editor. She co-edited The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia, and co-authored Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism, as well as other books and articles.

Lou Henry Hoover: Activist First Lady will take place on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 from 3:00 to 5:00 P.M. in the Conference Room on the 5th floor of the Woodrow Wilson Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW in Washington, DC.

Letter from our President

As we enter a new year, it is fashionable to comment on trends. One encouraging trend is the number of books that focus on women’s accomplishments.  While there are too many to list here, consider a few of the titles authored by high profile women who can be considered as famous in their own rights. Eleanor Clift has written about the suffrage movement in Founding Sisters and the Nineteenth Amendment (Turning Points in History) and Cokie Roberts has explored the unheralded achievements of earlier generations in Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation. Pat Schroeder gave us a personal account of the struggle to achieve political equality in her memoir 24 Years of Housework… and the Place is Still a Mess: My Life in Politics. At the same time, Lynne Cheney authored a children’s book about American women, A Is For Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women, and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison wrote about American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country.

While these individual women may not agree on many issues, it is striking that they share the belief that women’s contributions to the nation must be recognized. In addition to those popularizing women’s history, academics are performing research to expand the understanding of what women have been accomplishing. But the message needs to be communicated effectively to a broad audience, and that is why NWHM seeks a prominent museum site in Washington, DC from which we will reach out to the world. Judging from the trends, the National Women’s History Museum has a mission that unites all of us.

Celebrate These Women Born in Winter

Pulitzer Prize winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (2/22/1892) was born in Rockland, Maine. After her parents divorced, her mother raised Edna and her two sisters to be independent, promoting their appreciation of music and literature. With her mother’s support, Edna entered her poem “Renasence” into a contest, winning 4th place and publication. Her success led to a scholarship at Vassar, where she continued as a poet and also became a playwright and an actress. While at Vassar, she won the Pulitzer for her book The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems. Graduating in 1917, Millay published, Renasence and Other Poems. She moved to Greenwich Village in New York, leading a notoriously Bohemian life while continuing to publish poetry. In 1923 she married Eugen Boissevain, who gave up his own career to manage Millay’s literary career. Edna died in her home 1950, the year after her husband had died.

Charlotte Ray (1/13/1850) was born in New York City to the editor of Colored American. After teaching at Howard University, she was accepted to Howard’s Law College as “C.E. Ray.” Charlotte was the first African American woman to be admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia. Due to the prejudices of the time, she was unable to sustain an active law practice in the nation’s capital, and returned to teaching in New York City. Devoted to the cause of equal rights for women, Charlotte became active in the National Association of Colored Women and the National Women’s Suffrage Association. Charlotte died of bronchitis on January 4, 1911.

Mary Lyon (2/28/1797) began teaching at 17 in country schools in Massachusetts, where she was born. She taught to finance her own education at Sanderson Academy at Ashfield, Amherst Academy, and Joseph Emerson’s seminary. She taught at Sanderson and opened her own school in Buckland in 1824. In 1828 while teaching at Ipswich Female Seminary full time, she decided to address the need for quality education for women of moderate means. Mary raised funds for more than three years, obtaining a charter in 1836 for Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Holyoke opened in 1837 with approximately 80 students – some 400 applicants were turned away in 1838 for lack of space. Mary served as principal for 12 years, expanding the curriculum and the space. Holyoke became, and remains, a leading institution of higher education. She died in 1849.

Vastly influential in her own right, Corinne Claiborne “Lindy” Boggs (03/13/1916) was born on Brunswick Plantation, Louisiana. She was elected to the United States House of Representatives succeeding her husband, Majority Leader Hale Boggs, who died in a plane crash over Alaska. Once elected, she served nine terms in the House of Representatives. Among her many important contributions to the people of the United States, she was responsible for women having access to credit independent of their husbands. This was especially beneficial to widows who were in need of funding after their husbands’ deaths. Not only that, but she was also the first woman to become a chairperson of the Democratic National Convention. More recently, President Clinton honored Lindy Boggs by naming her the ambassador to the Holy See, Vatican City.

 

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