O Say Can You See?

A conversation on women's health

Women’s Health Week just concluded. I’ve been thinking about this and how influenced we are by current events. This is particularly true with women’s health. Most people immediately think about birth control, pregnancy, and breast cancer as the big topics in women’s health. Historically and even today, the field of women’s health encompasses other issues just as urgent and often as controversial. Just to give you a sense of change over time, the primary causes of death for women in 1900 were tuberculosis and childbirth. Today it is heart disease. Another striking historical comparison: the average age at death for women in 1900 was 48 and today it is 80.

I asked Marsha Henderson, the Assistant Commissioner in charge of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Office of Women’s Health about this. The FDA has been part of many of the significant events related to the health of women since it was created in 1906.

Q. How did you come to work on women’s health issues?

A: My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 11 years old and I spent a lot of time around doctors and hospitals. Things were very different in the early 1960s and the word “cancer” was often whispered. As a social worker, my mother tried to change that by running support groups and encouraging women struggling with cancer to talk openly about it.

I originally started out studying hospital administration, but realized my personality was better suited to working in health policy and consumer education. I worked on homelessness, infant mortality and workplace issues before finally being recruited to work on women’s health at the FDA.

Q. What do you think are the most striking changes in women’s health since the early 1900s?

A: In the early days, we often didn’t know what was in the medicines we took or the foods we ate. There were no national standards, and as a result many people were exposed to unsanitary food, dangerous devices and toxic chemicals. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt brought a “Chamber of Horrors” exhibit to the White House to highlight the dangers of products like a “womb supporter” that could puncture the uterus and an eyelash dye that blinded women.


Womb supporters, also known as pessaries, could cause serious complications. These are just three of numerous designs marketed to women. From NMAH collections.

By collaborating with drug, device, cosmetic and other companies, we now have comprehensive food and drug labels that educate consumers about the products they use. We have vaccines to prevent many of the conditions that killed women just a century ago. History buffs can learn about more of our Milestones in Women’s Health on our website. The quality of the science has never been better and this work has never been more important, either.

Q. One of the big historical issues is how the male body was the standard for most of history, including for diagnostics, in drug clinical trials, and in therapeutics. Even pregnancy was sometimes considered a disease until relatively recently. This had grave consequences for diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as cancer and AIDS. What has been the FDA’s relationship to getting women into the picture?

A: In its early years, the Agency worked to ban harmful, addictive and poisonous tonics that were marketed as cure-alls for women. Later, FDA worked to help women avoid public health hazards like the serious birth defects seen in many countries where pregnant women used thalidomide – a drug that was not approved in the U.S. thanks to Dr. Frances Kelsey, an FDA medical officer.


Buyer Beware. This patent medicine for women’s menstrual discomfort was not only 17.5% alcohol, there was no guarantee that the combination of ingredients would not make you feel worse. From NMAH collections.

However, an unintended consequence of the thalidomide incident was an exclusion of all women of childbearing potential from clinical trials in 1977. In 1992, a GAO report emphasized the need to study sex and gender differences in FDA-regulated products, prompting FDA to lift the ban. The Office of Women’s health was also established to advocate for the participation of women in clinical trials. Through years of effort by FDA, the National Institutes of Health, and industry, 53% of participants in NIH funded studies were women in 2010.

Q. How has the Agency itself changed? What external factors have most effected the Food and Drug Administration?

The work of activists helped highlight the urgent need for improved treatments for life threatening conditions. We now have expedited review of products for serious conditions, like cancer and HIV/AIDS. With the passage of the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act (FDAMA) in 1998, Congress enhanced the FDA’s mission to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It helped decrease the time FDA takes to review and approve applications. This Act also called for FDA to receive input from its stakeholders. As a result, the Agency doesn’t work in isolation. Contributions from patients and advocates help our scientists achieve the best possible outcomes.

Katherine Ott is Curator in the Division of Medicine and Science at the National Museum of American History.

Frame an Iconic American: Final days to vote

Over 10,000 votes have been cast in our contest to choose the subject of a new biographical portrait by Robert Weingarten, a noted photographic artist. If you haven't voted yet, join this unprecedented opportunity to collaborate on the creation of a new Smithsonian treasure.

Read about notable historical figures Audie Murphy, Alice Paul, Celia Cruz, Samuel Morse, and Frederick Douglass and then vote below for the figure you would like to see portrayed. Voting ends May 28, 2012, midnight Eastern time.

After the winning figure is formally announced, the public will have further opportunity to provide input, so check back on our blog to participate!

This project is inspired by the exhibition Pushing Boundaries: Portraits by Robert Weingarten, on view July 2-October 14 at the Smithsonian’s International Gallery, Ripley Center on the National Mall.

Research serendipity in South Texas

As a historian, I think one of greatest pleasures of working in an archive is not just getting my hands on what I hoped to find, but finding things I never knew existed. I was reminded of this recently when I had a serendipitous moment at The University of Texas at San Antonio photo archive. The archive is vast—a deep record of daily life in Texas beginning in the nineteenth century. While I was home visiting family in San Antonio, I decided to do a little research on the side. I am one of four curators working on the American Enterprise exhibition — an upcoming exhibit that will examine historical stories of business in the United States between 1770 and the 2010s — and my hope was to find some images of department stores and local advertising in South Texas, which would add regional diversity to the exhibition.

When I arrived, the senior archivist Tom Shelton was working with a set of photographs, each with an African American family in a similar domestic setting. The photographs stopped me dead in my tracks. They looked like family portraits, except every photo included a package of Butter Krust bread. Then it dawned on me; this was an advertising campaign. The photos featured dozens of families around their dining-room tables. Another light bulb went off over my head. Could these be an example of a local ad campaign in the 1950s and 1960s, a pivotal moment when manufacturers and advertisers began to recognize African Americans as consumers?

Then Marlon Gardley walked in. He began searching through the photos and expressed delight when he found what he wanted. When I asked what was so exciting, Mr. Gardley told me a story that added dimension to my thinking about advertising in this period. He and his family had starred in one of the ads. I’ve been working on the history of advertising for a while and never met anyone who was featured in an ad! This was truly exciting. You can read Marlon’s story on the American Enterprise blog.


Marlon Gardley and his mother, Emma Gardley, pictured here holding a copy of his family posting at their dining room table for a 1963 Butter Krust bread advertisement.

In 1960, the Richter Bakery, makers of Butter Krust bread, ran a series of ads in the city’s African American newspaper, the San Antonio Register. These ads departed from the typical image of a white girl in a gingham pinafore used in many Butter Krust ads. In many respects these were family portraits with children in school uniforms or Sunday clothing. As payment, each family received a nominal amount of money, a week’s worth of baked goods, and a copy of the photograph.


The Butter Krust ad with Marlon's family, as it originally appeared in the San Antonio Register on February 14, 1964.

The campaign ran for a decade, a testament to its popularity. One of the most powerful things about the campaign was its reliance on and connection to community. People looked for themselves and their neighbors in the paper; in the process, the Register changed how readers thought about advertising, and Butter Krust built brand loyalty. Within the context of national history, the campaign represents a remarkable change in advertising in postwar America when publishers, advertisers, and producers began to see African Americans as a powerful market force. The Register provides an illustration of advertising that not only acknowledged but respected African Americans as consumers and as community members.

Do you remember Butter Krust’s advertising? Did you participate in their campaigns or take a factory tour? Or did your home town have similar local advertising? Let us know and share your memories with us!

Interested in learning more? You can read Marlon Gardley’s full reflection here, or visit the American Enterprise biography section to learn about Caroline R. Jones, a pathbreaking African American advertising executive.

Kathleen Franz is co-curator of the American Enterprise exhibition at the National Museum of American History.

Breaking ground: Gillette Family Garden

In January 2012 the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), in partnership with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, opened the exhibition Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty. The exhibition is on view in the NMAAHC gallery at the National Museum of American History through Oct. 14, 2012.

To celebrate the exhibition, Smithsonian Gardens, in collaboration with NMAAHC and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, have chosen to create a garden to spotlight the Gillette family, one of the six slave families featured in the exhibition. The garden is a scaled down recreation of the plot cultivated by the Gillette family to grow vegetables for their personal use and to sell to the Jefferson family. Research indicates Israel Gillette Jefferson, a waiter and carder in the Monticello cloth factory, sold large quantities of cabbage; his father, Ned, also known as Edward Gillette, sold watermelons, beans, and potatoes. This garden demonstrates the expertise and entrepreneurship used by the Gillette family to improve their quality of life.

While we cannot definitively determine the exact produce grown in the Gillette garden, the research conducted by Peter Hatch, Director of Gardens and Grounds at Monticello, sheds some light on crop production. His thorough examination of Jefferson and Randolph account books, plant varieties typical of the 19th century, and crops grown at Monticello helped determine what was cultivated by enslaved families at Monticello.

Monticello’s Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants sent seed, which we started to grow at the Smithsonian Gardens greenhouse. We broke ground at the southwest corner of the Heirloom Garden at NMAH using the following garden practices:

Amending the Soil

On March 14, 2012, we removed the top six to eight inches of soil that had been overwhelmed by a particularly invasive weed and added five cubic yards of a well-balanced mix of topsoil and compost to the site.

Constructing a Wattle Fence

We also constructed a wattle fence for the garden. “Wattling” is a method of fence-making. We buried stakes every couple of feet and wove in boughs to form a tight, strong fence. Wattle fencing was used to keep out chickens and provide protection from the weather.

Natural material, like red-twig dogwood collected from Smithsonian gardens, provided an authentic-looking backdrop for the garden. Historically, actual materials may have included chestnut stakes and red cedar boughs.


Smithsonian Gardens Horticulturist Joe Brunetti and NMAAHC Public Affairs Specialist Fleur Paysour planting in the garden

Planting Spring Crops

NMAAHC staff joined Smithsonian Gardens horticulturists on March 29th to begin planting. We planted:

Cabbage: Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage, Brassica oleracea capitata
Beets: Early Blood Turnip-rooted Beet, Beta vulgaris
Lettuce: Tennis Ball Lettuce, Lactuca sativa; Brown Dutch Lettuce, Lactuca sativa
Turnips: Purple Top White Globe Turnip, Brassica rapa subsp. rapa
Peas: Prince Albert Pea, Pisum sativum

Information about the vegetables planted in the garden can also be found on Monticello’s website. We look forward to rotating the crops throughout the summer.


Results of the group’s labor. Photo by Michael Barnes.

Come see this story unfold as the garden grows at the National Museum of American History. Visitors will find it at the southwest corner of the terrace (to the left of the museum’s Mall entrance), overlooking the new NMAAHC museum site. Learn more about the lives of the families at Monticello on their website.

Joe Brunetti and Erin Clark are Smithsonian Gardens Horticulturists at the National Museum of American History. This post originally appeared on the Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty website.

Capturing D.C.'s rich Latino history

The Latino D.C. History Project is an initiative to document, preserve, interpret, and display the varied stories of Latino life in the nation´s capital and its suburbs. During World War II, when federal workers poured into the region, and in the ensuing decades as Washington became crowded with embassies and international organizations, the Latino presence began to take shape and become visible. It has evolved into a community with a history of growth and change that is closely connected to U.S. and global politics.

The nation´s capital is full of complex Latino stories such as those of the Afro-Cuban family which established the first Santería ritual space in Washington in the 1950s, the dissident Chilean muralists of the 70s, and the refugees from the Salvadoran Civil War who established small businesses across the region, just to name a few. While we have hardly been immune to our own internal racial and class prejudices, what´s amazing to me about D.C. is the unique plurality of its Latino community. From prize-winning Nicaraguan drag queens to Aymara-speaking Bolivian bakers, this region has an incredible diversity that offers new perspectives on the construction of community.

On May 13, 2012, the Smithsonian Latino Center organized a panel to discuss and remember some key chapters from our local history, told from the perspective of a group of veteran journalists from Spanish language media who have been working the local beat, some since the late 1960s. Wanting to situate this story within the broader U.S. narrative, we partnered with the National Museum of American History, which hosted the free public program. As always, audience engagement played a major role in the program, and visitors were given the opportunity not just to ask questions or offer their own personal testimony, but also to “set the record straight.” Roland Roebuck, a frequent community partner of the Smithsonian, interrogated the invisibility of Afro Latinos in media, and José Gutiérrez, another community partner in this effort, updated the panel on the work of the Latino D.C. LGBTQ History Project.


Panel members, from left to right: Jose Sueiro, Mario Sol, Rebeca Logan, Santiago Tavara, Ernesto Clavijo and Mario Martinez y Palacios.

What did I learn? Two major issues emerged from the conversation as having galvanized the local Latino community: foremost is education, and then housing rights. Recognizing the historical memory of places also came through as an important theme. As a result, I’m eager to photograph, conduct oral histories, and otherwise document places like the “Bolivian towers,” a set of apartment buildings in D.C. and Arlington that housed many of the Bolivian exiles of the 1970s, or the living neighborhood of Chirilagua in Alexandria, Virginia, where naturally, most of its residents hail originally from Chirilagua, El Salvador. Another key area to explore is sports, and in particular the soccer leagues and soccer fields that served as informal spaces for organizing the Latino community. This is definitely a rich and complicated story that offers opportunities for educating visitors about the connections between local, national, and global history.

Gay rights march, circa 1995. Courtesy of the Latino LGBTQ History Project.

Currently, the Latino D.C. History Project aims to continue its ongoing research phase, identify collections for display and possible acquisition, and ultimately develop an exhibition on the Mall that will be connected to smaller, local exhibits in historically Latino neighborhoods in and around the nation´s capital such as Mt. Pleasant, Arlington, Silver Spring, and Manassas. But it´s not just about what we can do at the Smithsonian—our greater goal is stimulating a sense of historical awareness within the local community. For this, a sustained engagement with our local audience is key, and we’ve barely scratched the surface.

Ranald Woodaman is the Exhibitions and Public Programs Director at the Smithsonian Latino Center. Since 2009, he has been working in collaboration with the museum, local organizations, researchers, citizen historians, and other community members to document Latino history in the Washington, D.C. region and to engage local audiences in practices of remembering and preservation.