Achieved freedom in 1855

 Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born into slavery in North Carolina. Her mother was a seamstress, and Elizabeth was originally told that her father was George Hobbs, a slave who lived on a plantation one hundred miles away.  For the first eight years of Elizabeth’s life, Hobbs visited his wife and child at Christmas and Easter. Then Hobbs’ owner moved away, and George was never seen again by his family.

As Elizabeth’s mother was dying, she revealed to Elizabeth that though her husband was George Hobbs, Elizabeth’s true father was the owner of the plantation where they lived.

Keckley was only age 4 or 5 when she took on nursemaid duties for the plantation family.  There were four white children under the age of ten, so it was decided that Elizabeth would look after the most recently born infant daughter.

When she was in her teens, Keckley was sent to another household to work for the son of the plantation owner, and she became a target of abuse by the village schoolmaster who would summon her for beatings. Later she was sold and sent to St. Louis where she was raped.  She gave birth to her only son, George, named after her own presumed father.

Looking for a Way Out of Slavery

Keckley approached her owner, a Mr. Garland, and asked that the give her a dollar amount for which she could buy freedom for herself and her son.  At first Garland refused to give an amount and then after several requests he stipulated $1200.   Keckley’s income as a seamstress primarily went to support the Garland family who had hit upon rough times, so she found it impossible to save money.  She made plans to go North to look for financial help for buying her freedom, but before she left, one of her customers came forward and put up about $400 of her own money and got friends to put up the rest. Keckley and her son were free.

Keckley wanted her son to have an education, so when he was old enough she enrolled him in Wilberforce University (founded in 1856 in Ohio near one of the stops of the Underground Railroad.)

When the war started, George Jr. wanted to fight for the Union. Because his father was white, he looked white enough to enroll in the Union Army.  (African-Americans could not enlist until 1863.)  Sadly for Elizabeth, her son was killed in August of 1861 at the battle of Wilson’s Creek in Missouri.

Keckley continued to run her St. Louis-based business, and then decided to move on.  First she tried to settle in Maryland but laws were tightening on former slaves, so she moved to Washington D.C. in 1860 where she acquired an excellent reputation among the society women, including Varnia Davis (wife of Jefferson Davis) and Mary Anne Randolph Custis Lee (wife of Robert E. Lee).  She was recommended to Mary Todd Lincoln and was soon the First Lady’s favorite seamstress.  (One of Keckley’s dresses is in the Smithsonian as Mary wore it for the second inauguration, and any photos of Mary Lincoln by Matthew Brady were very likely taken in Keckley dresses.)

Elizabeth Keckley became one of the few people who could calm Mary when she was upset, so Keckley not only made Mary’s dresses but she was at the White House each morning to help Mary get dressed.  As a result, she had an unusual view of the White House and its inhabitants.

Helping Others

In Washington in 1862, Keckley came up with the idea of forming the Contraband (former slave) Relief Association.  She noted that white people in DC were raising funds for relief of the soldiers, and so Keckley suggested that the “colored people” form a group to raise money for their own unfortunate. The group raised money and gathered food and clothing; they sponsored Christmas dinners for the sick and wounded from the war; and they helped find teachers for the schools for the newly freed.  In 1864 the organization changed its name to the Ladies’ Freedmen and Soldiers’ Relief Association.  While the organization eventually disbanded, they set a standard and exposed the very real needs of the displaced black community.

After the assassination, Mary Lincoln eventually decided to move to Chicago.  Keckley escorted her, but Keckley returned to her DC business after Mary was settled.  The two women remained close and  corresponded, so when Lincoln ran into financial difficulty and wanted to sell some of her clothing, Keckley went with her to New York to find a market.  Unfortunately the story came to light and became known as the “old clothes” scandal. Lincoln was pounced on by the press for daring to sell her clothes to raise money.

Keckley published her ghostwritten autobiography, Behind the Scenes, Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House in 1868.  Keckley apparently thought her book would help restore her former employer’s reputation, but in that day, the idea that a “colored” had stepped out to tell “behind the scenes” stories was viewed poorly. Mrs. Lincoln felt betrayed by the woman she described as “my best living friend,” and Elizabeth Keckley’s reputation was ruined.  Mary Lincoln’s friends took their business elsewhere.

A representative of the alma mater of Keckley’s son came forward to help.  In 1892 she was offered a faculty position at Wilberforce University as head of the Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts.  Within a year, she was organizing a dress exhibit for the Chicago World’s Fair.

Her last years did not sustain this positive momentum.  She ended life in Washington in 1907; she was living at the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children when she died.

Then the other day I was doing research pertaining to department stores, and when I received the book I ordered I noted that it was by Jan Whitaker, the person who writes Restauranting through History…  Well, that did it for me.  Clearly Jan and I had shared interests in bringing to light stories of America’s past.

I knew I would be visiting her part of the country this spring so I contacted her and we met for lunch.  As I expected, the conversation flowed easily.  Our shared love of research and our interest in providing readers with interesting stories gave us plenty to talk about.  In the meantime, I highly recommend that you check out her blog and sign up for her mailings.  She digs out stories about restaurants and customs we wish were still in place.

I agree.  Tuesday night two of my daughters and I attended a program at New York’s 92^nd Street Y featuring Marissa Mayer, the young woman who is Employee #20 at Google and is now vice president of location and local services.  Suddenly I felt very hopeful. After years of worrying that America wasn’t really making as much progress as we had hoped when the women’s movement built speed in the 1970s and ‘80s, I began to re-think my concern.

Marissa Mayer was tough and savvy, smart and self-effacing. She talked of helping her team find balance in their lives; the balance she feels she has created in hers. At a place like Google, we  can imagine they are not working 40-hour weeks but Mayer talked of helping both the men and women on her team identify their non-work passions (from being with kids to a regular dinner with friends) and to make certain those commitments remain a part of the fabric of each week.

One mom at Google told Mayer about not minding 1 a.m. work phone calls to India but hating having to be late to her child’s school play. We need more workplaces where “someone has your back” if you need to leave for something that is really important to you.  (Every working woman knows the company will get it back in spades if bosses help accommodate their employees’ can’t-miss priorities.)

The Inspiration of Michelle Obama

When thinking of the future, I think, too, of Michelle Obama who is a Princeton grad and Harvard-educated attorney. She has always worked, first at the Chicago law firm, Sidley & Austin, to begin paying off her college loans. Later she moved to the Chicago mayor’s office as assistant commissioner of planning and development and then to serve as executive director of Public Allies Chicago, an organization that identifies and trains future leaders from diverse backgrounds.  Following that job, she became associate dean of student services at the University of Chicago for eight years.

In 2002 she moved to be executive director of community affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals (2002-2005) and in 2005 she was promoted to be executive vice president for community and external affairs, working with the local community and exploring how the hospital’s research might better serve the medical issues that were unique to local residents.

This was the job she had to leave in order to campaign for her husband.

Just as Hillary Clinton emerged from the White House and took the world stage in a way that she was educated and prepared for but couldn’t do during Bill Clinton’s presidency, I think we are in for a wonderful treat in observing what Michelle Obama chooses do after the White House.  Her campaign to fight obesity and get fresh foods into poor neighborhoods is a wonderful choice as a cause for the First Lady, but I cannot wait to see what she chooses once she is free to select from a more robust set of career options.

I believe there is still a strong need to spotlight these fascinating examples of what Americans have accomplished, so I will be back next February (Black History Month) and in March for Women’s History. But I am also very optimistic that women like Marissa Mayer and Michelle Obama and all our working daughters are going to push society forward to create a more gender equal world.

Plans for the Coming Months

In July and August I will be telling more of America’s story through our dogs–and a few other birds and animals.  (I’ll admit I can’t wait to do a story on homing pigeons, which were very important when it came to early communications.)  Please join me for the next series, The Dog Days of Summer.  It will feature three mailings per week for July and August.

If you’re curious about what we can learn through animals, I would point you to the story of the first seeing eye dog as well as the one about how our World War II canine corps was created because families donated their pets.  But we’ll keep the tone light by interspersing these more serious stories with ones about Presidential pets and Hollywood movie star dogs.

You can sign up on my main webpage, or send me an email: kate@americacomesalive.com with “dogs” in the subject line.

Thank you all for reading these posts… it brings me pleasure to bring this information directly to you. And please write if you have women—or any other story ideas—you think I should address.

Ardent abolitionist and advocate for women’s rights

• First woman to cover a story from the Senate press gallery

Jane Cannon Swisshelm was born in Pittsburgh in 1815. Her father was a Presbyterian minister who died when Jane was only eight.  Without him to provide for them, the family faced financial hardship so Jane had to quit school and work with her mother at lacemaking. When she was fourteen she was able to get a job as a teacher. (At a later date, I will investigate the changes in teaching requirements in American schools.)

At the age of 21, she married James Swisshelm, and they moved to Louisville where Jane began helping with the Underground Railroad.

In 1839 her mother became ill, and Jane left for Philadelphia where her mother was living. This was in direct opposition to what her husband wanted her to do.  Jane wouldn’t be swayed, and she took care of her mother until she died.  It was another 18 years before she got a divorce, but after that, Jane Swisshelm began to create an independent life for herself.

Her writing career began with articles against capital punishment for an anti-slavery newspaper in Pittsburgh.  That paper went out of business, so in 1848 Jane founded her own paper, the Saturday Visiter (sic).  The newspaper eventually reached a circulation of 6,000, and in 1856 it was merged into the Pittsburgh Journal. In 1850 she began contributing a column to Horace Greeley’s Herald Tribune, covering the tumultuous politics surrounding the Compromise of 1850. She became well-known during this time.

The Move to St. Cloud

When her divorce came through in 1857, she moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota where she controlled a string of newspapers.  She wrote frequently about abolition and women’s rights, including the fact that married women should have the right to own property. (Single women could own property but in the early 19^th century, married women had no legal rights. This began to change on a state-by-state basis during the latter part of the 19^th century.)  She also gave lectures on the causes that were important to her.

A major story that got a great deal of attention in Swisshelm’s Minnesota papers was the presence of a slave-owning Southern gentleman named General Sylvanus Lowry. Lowry had moved into St. Cloud—a free territory–and maintained ownership of his slaves.  Lowry also ruled the political roost in the town of St. Cloud.

Swisshelm took him on, writing regularly about his ownership of slaves and other misdeeds.   To retaliate, Lowry, who was under consideration to be Lieutenant Governor, formed a “Committee of Vigilance” that broke into the newspaper offices, smashed the printing presses, and threw parts of the machinery into the nearby river.  Swisshelm stayed in business and intensified her attack;  over time, Swisshelm’s voice was heard.  Lowry died in obscurity.

When the Civil War began and volunteers were needed for nursing, Swisshelm went immediately and was among the first to respond.  She worked throughout the war.

During a visit to Washington she connected with an old friend from Pittsburgh, Edwin M. Stanton, who was Secretary of War.  Stanton offered her a clerkship in the government, and so she sold her Minnesota papers and moved to Washington.  While living in D.C., she became friendly with Mary Todd Lincoln, and it is rumored that Swisshelm was the person who helped Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Lincoln’s seamstress, get her book published.  (As noted in a previous entry, Keckley meant to help Mary Lincoln, but she was viewed by the white women of D.C. as having forgotten her “place” by writing a book.)

After the war Jane Swisshelm started her last newspaper, the Reconstructionist, which criticized  President Andrew Johnson’s ineffective efforts at re-building the country.  As a result, she quickly lost her government job and eventually the paper went out of business as well.

Swisshelm continued to write, living at her home near Pittsburgh.  Her autobiography, Half of a Century, was published in 1881.  Swisshelm died in 1884.

Jennie Grossinger was born in Austria in 1892 to parents who wanted to save enough money to bring the family to America for a better life.  When Jennie was five, her father emigrated, and three years later he had saved enough money to bring Jennie, her younger sister, and her mother to New York; they lived on the lower east side.  Her father, a former real estate overseer, was now a coat presser; life was not easy.

When a new baby was born with health problems, Jennie’s mother decided she needed to return to Austria where they knew doctors who would help them. She took the younger sister and the baby, leaving Jennie and her father in New York.  Her mother and siblings did not return for four years.   As Jennie saw her father struggling with debt, she resolved to quit school and find work, and she did so, getting hired into a sweat shop to sew buttonholes.

Life Outside NY

In 1914 Jennie’s father decided they needed to get out of the city to survive.  He had worked on a farm in Austria so he bought a small farm in Ferndale, New York in the Catskill Mountains.  Unfortunately the ground was very rocky and not suitable for farming, but they had a seven-room farmhouse and decided to try running a boarding house.  Other Jewish people—not welcome in most vacation spots—might like to come out and enjoy the air.  Jennie’s mother and siblings had returned by then, so she took over cooking responsibilities and her father both managed and promoted the business.  Jennie, now married and living next door, worked as  bookkeeper, chambermaid and dining room hostess.

Guests were delighted to have a welcoming spot where they could enjoy kosher meals and the pleasures of the fresh air, the sun, and the beauty of the mountains.

By 1919 Jennie had her eye on a 63-acre hotel property, and she spearheaded the movement for the family to sell the farm and buy the hotel.  The hotel, located in Liberty, New York, was on a lake and surrounded by rolling hills, but Jennie wanted to make it into a full-scale resort.  In the 1920s she installed tennis courts and added a bridle path and hired a social director to organize social events and run a children’s day camp.

The 1930s were very hard for all businesses, including one like Grossinger’s.  Jennie’s father died in 1931 so Jennie was left with all decision-making as to how to stay afloat.  Her opportunity came in the form of a Jewish boxer.  Jennie disliked professional fighting but when Orthodox Jew Barney Ross began winning, he needed a place to train where he could observe his religious traditions.  Jennie invited him to Grossinger’s, promising kosher meals and the services of a rabbi.  Ross did well, becoming world lightweight  champ; the success of his “home away from home” training camp became part of the story.  Over time, Grossinger’s became the go-to spot for other fighters, including the world-famous Rocky Marciano.  (Rocky’s mom came along, and Jennie gave her access to the kitchen to cook her son’s pasta.)

The War Effort

During the war, Jennie actively supported the troops.  She raised more than a million dollars of funds for war bonds  War bonds, and she created “Grossinger Canteen-by-Mail,”  which sent packages of gum, candy, cigarettes and supplies to the men and women in the military who had worked at Grossinger’s.  In acknowledgment of her work for the war effort, the United States named one of the war planes “Grossinger.”

Later on, she turned her philanthropic efforts toward raising money for Israel, raising money for a medical center and a convalescent home.

By the early 1950s, Grossinger’s had 600 guest rooms, dining for seventeen hundred, a nightclub with two stages, an Olympic-sized pool, a golf course, tennis courts, a riding academy, an airport, a ski slope, and its own post office.

Though it bean as a vacation spot for Jewish people who were excluded elsewhere, Jennie’s ultimate goal was for it to become a resort for anyone.  She invited public figures, and among those who visited were Eleanor Roosevelt, Cardinal Spellman, Nelson Rockefeller, and Robert Kennedy.

During the 1960s when African-Americans were still having trouble being accepted in many places, Jennie welcomed baseball star Jackie Robinson and U.N. diplomat Ralph Bunche to Grossinger’s to send the message that all—including African-Americans—were welcome there.

In the early years, Jennie Grossinger established a resort where Jews could celebrate their religious and cultural identity. After World War II, when assimilation seemed important to her, Jennie grew the resort and expanded to welcome guests of all backgrounds.

Grossinger’s closed in 1986.

“Angel of the Battlefield”

Clara Barton was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, the youngest of five children in a middle class family.  When she was eleven, one of her brothers was seriously injured in an accident, and it fell to Clara to see to his needs over a two-year period of recovery.  During this time, she gained nursing experience, which prepared her for the role she created for herself during the Civil War.

Early Career

Like so many women of her era, the only job open to her after she finished school was teaching, and she taught for about a dozen years.  Her last connection to education involved starting a school in West Millbury, New Jersey, but when a man was hired over her to run the school she had started, she left for Washington, D.C.  There, she was hired to be a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office, an unusual position for a woman of that day.

When the Civil War began, Barton was in D.C. and was very moved by the plight of the soldiers coming into town.  Her first observation was the need for supplies, so she left her job at the patent office and began to collect items of clothing as well as medical supplies that she knew would be needed.  She soon began venturing onto battlefields to deliver supplies, and she began to nurse the wounded.  She became known as the “Angel of the Battlefield.” By 1864, she was made superintendent of the Union nurses.

War Time before Dog (I.D.) Tags

While Clara Barton is acknowledged for many accomplishments, she is less frequently recognized for what had to have been an incredible contribution: locating the missing and identifying the dead.

When the war between the states broke out, there was no organized system for supplies or for uniforms, and there was no method for keeping track of the whereabouts of soldiers or identifying the wounded or dead. If a young man was killed on the battlefield, his friends might write a letter to people at home.  Sometimes the identification of the injured or dead and any subsequent notification of the family was left to the medical people, if they located a letter or some sort of identifying information in the person’s wallet.

One of Barton’s first efforts in this regard occurred when a former prisoner at Andersonville (a Confederate prison in Georgia) came to Barton with a list of Union soldiers who had died while imprisoned there.  Barton visited Andersonville and saw that a record was made near there as to the Union soldiers who had died there –13,000 of them.  She also arranged for the dead to be listed in newspapers in the North so that families would know the answer to that terrible cry:  “What happened?”

As word of Barton’s effort spread, thousands of people wrote to her pleading for help in finding their loved ones.  Barton compiled lists and circulated them to post offices throughout the country, and in that way, she began to unravel the fate of many of the missing.  Some had intentional not gone home; some had moved elsewhere and married; some had died on the battlefield, and for some, no information ever came to light.

Eventually Barton had an office in D.C. (437 Seventh Street NW) from which to run her missing soldiers command center.  Recently the building was slated for demolition and a construction worker found a box of documents related to her operation.  Along with a sign that read “Missing Soldiers Office 3^rd Story Room 9 Miss Clara  Barton,” the box contained house slippers and other personal effects that indicated that Barton may have lived there for a time.

The Red Cross

The International Red Cross began in Europe, and Barton became involved with the organization after she went to Europe on doctor’s orders to take a badly needed rest.  Clearly, Barton was not capable of resting or remaining on the sidelines.  She worked with the international group and then returned from Europe in the early 1870s and began work on establishing an American Red Cross.

The initial reaction from Americans was that a disaster aid group would not be necessary—there would never be another situation like the Civil War. Barton pushed her cause by noting that the Red Cross that she foresaw would help out with any type of disaster.   The American Red Cross held its first official meeting in 1881 with Barton as president, a position  she held for 22 years.   Among the early disasters in which the Red Cross became involved were the Johnstown flood (1889) and the Galveston Texas hurricane of 1900.

Barton also was highly dedicated to fighting for and furthering the rights of women; she worked closely with Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and others.  Barton herself was the most decorated American woman, receiving the Iron Cross, the Cross of Imperial Russia and the International Red Cross Medal.  Her final act was founding the National First Aid Society in 1904.

In the late 1890s she bought a home in Glen Echo, Maryland where she lived during the last 15 years of her life.  When she died in 1912 at the age of 91, the Detroit Free Press wrote: “She was perhaps the most perfect incarnation of mercy the modern world has known.”

Barton’s Rules of Action

Clara Barton lived by two rules that bear repeating:

“Unconcern for what cannot be helped” and

“Control under pressure.”

One of the early female comics (Moms Mabley preceded her, performing in the 1910s, but she was on the black vaudeville circuit; more about her another day)

Born Celine Zeigman in Paris, France, she moved with her family to New York City when she was still a child.  Her father was abusive to her mother. Growing up in that atmosphere led Celine to the conclusion that she needed to be self-supporting, to never have to be dependent upon a man.

Spotted by a talent agent when she danced in an amateur show in the Bronx, Jean Carroll (the stage name she chose) soon joined a vaudeville circuit as part of a two-boy, two-girl dance act.   In the early 1930s Carroll met Buddy Howe, also a dancer.  They joined forces and toured with a dance act during which Jean would pull out for a few moments of humorous patter (written by her) before continuing the dance number.  They were married in 1936 and for the next three years they toured Britain before returning to the United States.

When the U.S. entered the war, Howe was drafted, and Carroll continued as solo comic and was quite successful. While Lucille Ball, Totie Fields, and Phyllis Diller cultivated personas that were frazzled, madcap or dowdy, Carroll always dressed beautifully, often wearing an evening gown and gloves to perform.

By 1949 Carroll became the first comedian to play the Copacabana, Paramoutn Theter and Capitol Theater in New York all within six months.

After the war, Howe returned and watched his wife work.  He realized the act was stronger without him so he became a talent agent, eventually becoming chairman of the Creative Management Agency.

In 1953-54 Jean Carroll had a sit-com on ABC called “Take It From Me.” However, her most successful venue was night clubs doing stand-up.  She found humor in everyday experiences of clothing, shopping, social life, and family—and yes, she poked fun at husbands.  One of her oft-quoted bits went: “The thing that attracted me to my husband was his pride. I’ll never forget the first time I saw him, standing up on a hill, his hair blowing in the breeze—and he, too proud to run and get it.”

While women in stand-up are still too few (why are all the late night shows hosted by men?), Carroll opened the door so that women like Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, Lily  Tomlin, and Sarah Silverman could come through.  The door could be open wider but at least it’s a start.

Co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America

“Democracy can only work if the people take power,” says Dolores Huerta, and she has dedicated her entire life to addressing labor and social problems and then helping the people involved take appropriate power.

Huerta was born in the mining town of Dawson, New Mexico.  Her father was a miner as well as a union activist and state assemblyman, but he and Huerta’s mother, Alicia Chavez, divorced when Huerta was only three.  Chavez moved her children to Stockton, California to be near extended family, and she started a restaurant and soon expanded to running a 70-room hotel. Many farm workers lived in Stockton, and Huerta’s mother was active in community organizations to help them.

Dolores Huerta graduated from college and taught school. She also volunteered for causes that were important to her.  In 1955 she co-founded the local chapter of the Community Service Organization (a Latino civil rights organization), and in 1960, she co-founded the Agricultural Workers Association and set up voter registration drives.

Hungry Kids Motivated Her

In 1962 she left teaching, saying: “I quit because I couldn’t stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children.”

That year she and César Chávez began working together and co-founded the National Farm Workers Association so that workers could advocate for a decent work environment.  Among their requests were to have clean drinking water available during the work day, toilets in the fields, sanctioned rest periods, and provisions for work-related disability.  During 1965 the United Farm Workers took their issue to the consumers and 17 million people stopped buying grapes, which was enough to bring the farm owners to the bargaining table.  In 1970 a three-year collective bargaining agreement was signed by the California grape industry.

Huerta also led a campaign against toxic pesticides that are bad for workers, consumers, and the environment.  The early agreements required growers to stop using dangerous pesticides in the fields.

With RFK in Los Angeles

On June 5, 1968, Huerta was on the speaker’s platform at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles with Robert F. Kennedy during his victory speech following his win for the California Democratic presidential primary campaign.  The group was ushered down into the kitchen to exit, and Huerta was just a few people behind him when Robert Kennedy was killed and five other people were wounded.

Huerta advocated the use of non-violent civil disobedience when necessary. She was arrested 22 different times. In San Francisco In 1988 during a lawful and peaceful protest of the platform of candidate George H.W. Bush, she was severely beaten. Several ribs were broken and she was hospitalized for emergency surgery.  The incident was caught on tape which led to a ruling in Huerta’s favor against the San Francisco Police Department.  The money she received went directly to benefit farm workers.

After a period of time for recovery, Huerta began to focus on women’s issues and by 2000 she was traveling the country encouraging more women to run for political office.

Huerta has received numerous honors for her work including the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights.  The California State Senate honored her with the Outstanding Labor Leader Award (1984) and in 1993 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.  That same year she received the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award; and the Eugene V. Debs Foundation Outstanding American Award, and the Ellis Island Medal of Freedom Award.

She is also the recipient of several honorary degrees and has received the Consumers’ Union Trumpeter’s Award. In 1998 she was one of three honored as a woman of the year by Ms. Magazine. She also appeared on the Ladies Home Journal’s, “100 Most Important Women of the 20^th Century.” 

Huerta was married twice and divorced twice; she is the mother of 11 children her last four children were by her companion, Richard Chávez, Cesar’s brother.

Today Dolores Huerta is president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, started in 2002.  It is a 501c3 organization that organizes at the grassroots level and encourages civic engagement and local leadership to further civil and labor rights.

Helped set tone for glamour photography of the 1920s

Born Ruth Goldstein in New York City, Ruth Harriet Louise was the daughter of a rabbi.  The family lived in a few different locations in Manhattan before settling in New Jersey.

Louise started taking photographs while still living at home.  She soon gravitated to the studio of society photographer Nickolas Muray who had come to New York from Europe before the outbreak of World War I.  He was working as a color printer and photo engraver in Brooklyn when he decided to open his own portrait studio in his apartment in Greenwich Village. He was getting regular work from Harper’s Bazaar when Ruth began apprenticing for him.

Some of her family—a cousin who was a silent film actress and Ruth’s brother —had already moved to Los Angeles, and they encouraged Ruth to join them on the West Coast.  She was 22, and young women of the day could not just rent an apartment on their own and be viewed well.  She needed to find someone respectable with whom she could live.

Her brother Mark Sandrich, who went on to direct movies with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, had recently married, so Louise was able to move in with them.  (The original family name in Europe was Sendreich; their father changed it to Goldstein on coming to the U.S. Mark reverted to an anglicized version of the family name; Ruth took ‘Ruth Harriet Louise’ as a professional name at about that time.)

Joan Crawford, picture by RHL

Ruth opened a small portrait studio near Hollywood and Vine, but her work soon was seen by Louis Mayer who hired her to set up her portrait studio at his new film company, MGM.  They were hiring and promoting new stars (Greta Garbo among them), and Ruth Harriet Louise became an important part of the team.

Film studios of that day relied heavily on still photography.  Budding stars were not sent for screen tests; they were sent to the portrait studio to see what image they would project in the glamor photos that would be used to promote them.  This was long before the paparazzi could snag quick candid shots, and as a result, the studio could tightly control the images they sent out to promote a star or a movie.  Fan clubs were to become big, and they, too, relied on the still photographs that could be sent to their members.  The movies and publicity machine that these photographs supported shaped the basic notions of stardom, glamour, and fashion in the 1920s.

Star-Photographer Bond

Movie stars and photographers developed working relationships, and once a bond was established with a staff photographer, the studio’s stars were quick to request that they only be photographed by “their” photographer.  Among those who favored Louise were Greta Garbo, Buster Keaton, Lon Chaney, John Gilbert, Joan Crawford and Marion Davies.

Shortly after Herbert Hoover was elected, Louise was selected as the right photographer to capture the president-elect at his home in Palo Alto.  In 1929 she was the photographer in

Buster Keaton photo by RHL

charge of shooting Nina Mae McKinney, known as the Black Garbo. She was to star in the first all- African-American film by a major studio.

By 1930 the world of portrait photography was changing.  Rising star Norma Shearer selected George Hurrell to be her personal photographer as she liked the sexy glamour shots he produced.  Louise’s elegant photos were not as desirable as they once were, and her contract was not renewed.

In 1927 Louise had married the writer and director Leigh Jason, so having a family became her priority.  She gave birth to a son in 1932 and a daughter a few years later. Tragically, their son died of leukemia while still young, and when Louise got pregnant again in 1940, she and the baby both died of complications during a premature birth.

Robert Dance has collected images from the silver screen for many years, and he and Bruce Roberston have co-authored a beautiful book about Louise’s life: Ruth Harriet Louise and Hollywood Glamour Photography.

First woman of color in U.S. Congress

Patsy Takemoto Mink served two separate stints in the US Congress (1965-1976) and (1990-2002), representing Hawaii’s 1^st and 2nd Congressional Districts.  As the first woman of color elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, she worked tirelessly for civil rights, women’s rights, economic justice, civil liberties, peace, and the integrity of the democratic process.

Early Life

Mink was born in Hawaii on the island of Maui to second-generation Japanese-Americans.  Her father was a civil engineer and her mother a homemaker. Her father, the first Japanese-American to graduate from the University of Hawaii, had experienced discrimination as a civil engineer in Maui.  Several times he was passed over for promotions with white males getting the better jobs.  After World War II, he resigned and moved the family to Honolulu where he established his own surveying company.

Mink learned campaign strategies and coalition-building as early as high school when she ran successfully for student body president. As a female who was of Japanese descent at a time when American tensions with Japan were high (World War II), Mink had to overcome prejudice and persuade the students that she would work hard for their interests.

She began college at the University of Hawaii. She transferred to the University of Nebraska and was surprised to encountered segregation—all non-white students lived in separate dormitory housing. Mink organized a coalition of students, parents, staff and administrators and fought successfully against this policy.

Mink intended to get a medical degree but soon found that out of 20 schools she investigated in 1948 none would accept women. She decided to gain the tools to fight discrimination by goint to law school.  She was accepted to the University of Chicago, and while living there she met and married John Mink, a hydrologist. They eventually moved to Honolulu.

Life in Hawaii

In 1956 as the Territory of Hawaii considered statehood, Mink was elected to the territorial legislature, representing her district in the House of Representatives. In 1959, Hawaii became the 50th state of the Union.

In 1965, Mink became the first female minority to join the ranks of Congress. She served six consecutive terms. Mink took what she learned in high school and built some of the most influential coalitions in Congress. Her most important was for the Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act that she co-authored, prohibiting gender discrimination by federally funded educational institutions.

While the amendment covered any type of discrimination, the issue was particularly important in the field of athletics. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was created in 1906 to oversee men’s football but had become the ruling body of all college athletics, but it offered no athletic scholarships for women and held no championships for women’s teams. There was also no funding for facilities or transportation for women. As a result, in 1972 there were just 30,000 women participating in NCAA sports, as opposed to 170,000 men.

Since the enactment of Title IX, women’s participation in sports has grown exponentially. The number of girl athletes in high school has increased from just 295,000 in 1972 to more than 2.6 million today. In college, the number has grown from 30,000 to more than 150,000. In addition, Title IX is credited with decreasing the dropout rate of girls from high school and increasing the number of women who pursue higher education and complete college degrees.

In recognition of her contributions to equal rights in the country, Congress named the Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act the “Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act.”

Other Accomplishments

Mink also introduced the first comprehensive Early Childhood Education Act and authored the Women’s Educational Equality Act. In 1972 she felt strongly about getting out of Viet Nam that she got herself on the Democratic primary ballot in Oregon.

In 1976, Mink gave up her seat in Congress to run for a vacancy in the United States Senate. After she lost the primary election for the Senate, she received an appointment from President Jimmy Carter to become Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, serving under Cyrus Vance and Ed Muskie.

After her service in the Carter Administration, Mink returned to Hawaii where she was elected to the Honolulu City Council.   In 1990, she had the opportunity to run for Congress again, and she won back a seat in Congress.

Mink was in the midst of running again for her Congressional seat when she was hospitalized in Honolulu with complications from chickenpox. She died unexpectedly. On November 5, 2002, Mink was posthumously re-elected; Ed Case filled the vacancy after a special election in January 2003.

In 2003 the Patsy Takemoto Mink Education Foundation was established to carry on Mink’s commitment to support the educational goals of low-income women. Each year, the Foundation offers five awards of up to $2000 each to assist low-income women with children who are pursuing education or training: www.patsyminkfoundation.org.