O Say Can You See?

In Memoriam: Jane Nebel Henson, 1934-2013

Jane Henson died on April 2, 2013, after a long illness. In today's post, we remember her accomplishments and contributions to this museum. 

Kermit is wearing a black armband in honor of the memory of Jane Nebel Henson. He is on display in "American Stories" on the museum's second floor.

Jane Nebel met Jim Henson in the mid-1950s in a puppetry class when they were students at the University of Maryland. While still undergraduates, they teamed as performers, puppet designers, and puppet builders, eventually developing a group of oddball characters called the Muppets.

The Muppets made their broadcast debut in 1955 on a five-minute program called Sam and Friends, seen in Washington, D.C., on local NBC affiliate WRC-TV. They went on to become an international phenomenon on stage, on TV, and in motion pictures, winning acclaim for their zany sense of humor, a reflection of their creators' perspectives.

Jim and Jane married in 1959 and had five children: Lisa, Cheryl, Brian, John, and Heather. As the Jim Henson organization prospered, Jane was actively involved with a number of Muppet projects, including traveling exhibits and stage shows. In 1992, two years after Jim's death, she founded the Jim Henson Legacy to preserve her husband's work and to promote the art of puppetry.

Jane Henson died on April 2, 2013, after a long illness. She was a generous donor to the collections at this museum. Among her contributions are some of the original Muppets, including the first Kermit the Frog. At a 2010 donation ceremony at the Museum, she remarked how glad she was to have the Muppets back in Washington, D.C., where they first appeared: "Now they get to greet old friends and meet new ones."

Giant grasshoppers plague Kansas!

Sorry. Just an April Fool's Day gag—and there's more where that came from. Curator Shannon Perich shares historic exaggeration photos in the museum's collection.

"We can either laugh about it or cry about it," is an often used platitude to help some cope. We often use humor to deflect and ease painful or uncomfortable situations and these exaggeration postcards were created in that same vein.

 

Ride-Em Cowboy, exaggeration postcard by E.D Conrad, Garden City, KS, 1934 Sent from Ted Warren to Mr. George Layman, Box 68, Newberg, Oregon, postmarked August 9, 1938. The message on the back: "Dear George – Received your card and was glad to hear that you got along so well. You can see by this picture how the grasshoppers grow in Kansas. Ha. Thanks for your card and good luck to you George. So long – Ted Warren."

Clearly manipulated and collaged to create oversized insects, animals and vegetables, these photographic postcards were most popular in the United States between 1900 and 1917. Americans have a history of using tall-tales, like "Johnny Appleseed" and "Babe and the Big Blue Ox" to reinforce ideas that Americans are independent, strong-willed, and can tame any landscape.

 

Harvesting a Profitable Crop of Onions, exaggeration postcard, Wm. H. Martin, published by The North American Post Card Co. Kansas City, U.S.A, 1909

Combining ideas associated with tall-tales making giant grasshoppers and oversized food was one way of easing the farming and economic concerns associated with the Dust Bowl and Depression eras. Some of these exaggeration postcards were used as advertisements, and some were just plain silly.

 

The Bass I Caught, exaggeration postcard, Canadian Postcard Co., Toronto, 1910

Missouri apples, exaggeration postcard, Wm. H. Martin, 1909 Sent from N.E. Hillock to Mrs. Fred Reinhardt, Merriam, Kansas. Postmarked: Lexington, MO, June 24, 1909. Message on the back: "All's well in Lex- I have not forgotten you Lily. But have been so busy and it has been so warm I have never had time to write. But will write soon. With best wishes From N.E. Hillock"

Bringing in the Sheaves, exaggeration postcard, Wm. H. Martin, 1908. Sent from Aberdeen, South Dakota to Wm. Klapper, Cecil, Wisconsin Message. On the back: "Hello there: I am staying with Schatz but I think I will go to N. Dak, there is too many men here looking for work. M.K." In the upper left hand corner is that sentence, "I got here last night." (not dated)

Watermelons grow big in Wash., exaggeration postcard, Wm. H. Martin, 1908, published by The North American Post Card Co. Kansas City, U.S.A. Sent from Arthur Wayne Webber to Miss Clara Hancock, Vincentown, New Jersey. Postmarked Nov 21 , Spokane, WA 1910. Message on the back: "Dear Friend, How's the cranberry business. I work for Chas Whelen Wholesale Comm Spokane Wash. 923 RR Ave. Your th only out of six names that I wrote to. (Please write me) P.S. I’m 19 ½ yrs red hair wght 159"

You Don't Stick These Bunnies in Your Hunting Coat Pocket, exaggeration postcard, F.D. Conrad, 1930s. Message on back: "Let's go rabbit hunting!!!"

Potatoes grow big in our State, exaggeration postcard, Wm. H. Martin, 1908

Shannon Perich is Associate Curator for the Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History.

Finding female pioneers in mathematics

Before World War II, few women received PhD's in mathematics. Museum staff and volunteers tracked many of them down, and today we share their collections online.

The focus of Women's History Month this year was the history of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Smithsonian scholars have been pondering the topic for decades. The fruits of their work can be seen in a group of artifacts recently made available online.

Some of the artifacts in the Women Mathematicians and Museum Collections group were collected in connection with a day-long meeting held in August 1981 that honored American women who had received PhD's in mathematics prior to World War II.

 

University of Chicago Mathematics Graduate Students Julia Bower, Abba Newton, and Frances Baker in 1933. Gift of Julia Bower.

In 1886, Columbia University awarded the first PhD in mathematics granted to an American woman, Winifred Edgerton. During the next 40 years, 99 other American women received PhD's in mathematics. One of those who received her degree in 1926 was Christine Ladd-Franklin, who, as Christine Ladd, had completed all the requirements for a PhD at Johns Hopkins in 1882 but was denied the degree solely because she was a woman.

The 1981 meeting honoring women mathematicians was sponsored by the Museum's Division of Mathematics and was presided over by Uta C. Merzbach, then curator of the division. In preparation for the meeting Jeanne LaDuke and I, both mathematics professors and Honorary Research Associates of the division, sent approximately 100 women the information we had collected about them. We asked them to verify, correct, and supplement what we had found, and requested photographs.

About 50 of the questionnaires were returned and these form the basis for the Early Women Doctorates Collection. They also provide personal information that Jeanne LaDuke and I used in our book Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's.

 

Eighteen Women with PhD's in Mathematics at the museum in 1981

Many of the other items in the object group were collected from women who were among the invitees to the meeting. These include items donated by Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, whose distinguished career in computer science began in the Navy; by Sister M. Helen Sullivan, whose career centered around teaching; by Frances E. Baker, who was part of a mathematical family; and by Grace Shover Quinn, who was a friend of Olive C. Hazlett, a leading mathematician of the 1930s.

These women, like mathematicians generally, differed widely in background, interests, and accomplishments.

 

Olive C. Hazlett’s Tenor Recorder. Gift of Grace Shover and Robert Quinn.

Olive Hazlett was interested in music, puzzles, and photography as well as in mathematics. Some of her puzzles are also included in the object group.

 

"Nanoseconds." Gift of Grace Murray Hopper.

Grace Hopper's nanoseconds are pieces of wire that represent the distance an electrical signal travels in a nanosecond—a billionth of a second. In her later years, Hopper lectured widely and distributed thousands of nanoseconds to her listeners. Eventually, she used grains of pepper to represent the distance an electrical signal travels in a picosecond—a trillionth of a second.

Dr. Judy Green is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Marymount University and a Behind-the-Scene Volunteer in Mathematics at the National Museum of American History.

Crowning "Miss Negro History Week" since the 1930s

Can you celebrate Black History by competing for a pageant crown? This is the second in Kimberly Brown's series on Negro History Week.

When you think of pageants, you might not envision serious historic preservation.

But since the Association for the Study of African American Life and History established Negro History Week in 1926, the organization has sponsored and encouraged varied forms of public outreach activities to spark interest in the examination and celebration of the Black past. Pageants, among other public programs, figured into the Association's engagement strategy to carry out its mission of educating the masses, particularly the youth.

 

Pageant contestants pose in front of the Founders Building at Howard University. Photograph from the Scurlock Studio Records, ca. 1905-1994, Archives Center, National Museum of American History. This photograph is undated—let us know if you know the date!

Pageants were commonly incorporated into Negro History Week festivities held by local branches of the Association (which also included parades, breakfasts, banquets, speeches, exhibits, musical theater, poetry readings, and more). They reflected the significant impact of women's leadership within The Association and its mission of extending Black history into the larger public sphere.

But "Miss Negro History Week" pageants weren't all the same.

In Sylvia Tucker's case, there was no staged pageant. It was simply her labor to advance her Detroit, Michigan, branch that earned her the designation. During the 1930s and 1940s, it thrived under her leadership as she secured significant financial support for the cause. With her leadership, the group amassed 1,500 members and she established branches in nearby cities. Dr. Woodson himself praised her fundraising expertise. Tucker's countless lectures across the region and other achievements within the organization led people to address her as "Miss Negro History Week."

While Tucker's title came without a staged event, the Association also coordinated extravagant pageants that brought Black history to life. In February 1930, The Afro American newspaper announced a "brilliant pageant," which would open with "the Negro and the splendor of the Egyptian Court with her maid, with picturesque color effects."

No talent show, the pageant was a visual tour of the Black Experience. Performers acted both as enslaved persons auctioned off at Jamestown and bought by colonists, as well as freedmen confronting the stormy days of reconstruction. They demonstrated clashing viewpoints on racial adjustment as held by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois by hosting a debate between a skilled tradesman and a professional graduate.

The culmination of the production rested in the final scene during which a man, representative of the entire race, dramatically proclaimed his humanity: "He throws off the shackles, and with arms uplifted to heaven and eyes facing the east, cries forth in thunderous tones, 'I am the New Negro.'"

 

"Miss Nadine Harris becomes queen of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity at a Formal Dance," 1947. Scurlock Studio Records, ca. 1905-1994, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, the Our Authors Study Club, the Los Angeles branch of ASALH, regularly held Miss Negro History week pageants as the culminating event in a week of celebrations and educational programming. Young ladies often competed in oratory contests to win. 

In 1955, Boston's Aristo Club marked its 30th Anniversary by expanding its work in Black history, sponsoring Negro History Week pageants. The governor issued a proclamation observing Negro History Week in most of the schools in the Boston School system.

The 1980s produced more pageants. In Georgia, a "Negro History Week" celebration in Alma and Bacon County was climaxed with a beauty pageant: "Miss Sephanie Deen, daughter of James E. Deen, was crowned Senior Miss Negro History Week." After the coronation, the audience sang "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing."

At another celebration, competitors sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," spoke on the accomplishments of Blacks, recited "I, Too, Sing America," and recited "I Have a Dream." History and the present intersected as "the program ended with a prayer for the families of the murdered and missing children in the Atlanta area."

The pageant tradition continues today in examples such as Louisiana State University's annual Mr. and Miss Imani Scholarship Pageant.

While Dr. Woodson was a very serious man with an even more serious mission, he wholeheartedly supported programs, particularly those aimed at youth, which promoted the average person's interest in Black history and demonstrated their stake in Black progress. The Negro History pageants prove that public education and engagement can and should be enjoyable, interactive, and meaningful.

Kimberly D. Brown is a Ph.D. Candidate at Howard University and museum fellow.

Part II: "Rebel:" Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Civil War soldier and spy

When filmmaker María Agui Carter first came across the 1876 memoir of a Latina who fought in the Civil War, she recognized "a voice that sounded so modern" and was compelled to make a film about this maverick. Agui Carter answers a few questions about her film, which you can see here on March 28, 2013.

Director María Agui Carter and actress Romi Días prepare to shoot a scene in the historic Morris Jumel mansion in New York City. Photo by Julio Palleiro.

Why was Loreta Janeta Velazquez considered dangerous?

Velazquez did not write a self-effacing novel in the language women were expected to speak at the time. She wrote about her personal aspiration to make a difference in the public world, as opposed to the private world of the home where women were supposed to remain. She wrote of her sexuality at a time when even walking in the street un-chaperoned made a woman "suspect." So she did not conform to the social codes of the time and her book encouraged other women to imagine transgressing also. This was at a time postwar when returning male veterans wanted women to withdraw from more active roles in keeping up the homefront and go back to the home and hearth.

But Loreta Velazquez committed a much greater sin than that. Her book was published in 1876, during Reconstruction—a period during which the South was still reeling from wartime losses and trying to create a myth of the "Lost Cause" to justify the Confederacy and help romanticize them as heroes. The Woman In Battle was ostensibly a Confederate’s memoir but it did not conform to the Lost Cause interpretation of the Confederate cause.

 

Costume mistress Heather Hook fixes a dress during "REBEL" exterior 19th century street scene in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. Photo by María Agui Carter.

In 1878, Confederate General Jubal A. Early, who would become a leading force in creating that Lost Cause myth, came across her book, two years after its publication, and was outraged by it. He had been one of Lee's inner circle as a Confederate General in the battlefield. Post-war, Early used his pen to fight a new battle over the interpretation of the Southern role in the Civil War. Early came from one of the great slave-holding families of the South, although he did not own slaves personally.

In his Civil War memoir, Early contends that the Civil War was not about slavery but states' rights. He had a paternalistic view of slavery, and felt blacks had been better off as slaves. "The condition of domestic slavery as it existed in the south, had not only resulted in the great improvement of the physical condition of the negro race, but had furnished a class of labourers as happy and contented as any in the world, perhaps even more so," he wrote.

The same year Velazquez' book came out, 1876, Early took control of the Southern Historical Society, or SHS, but did not set his sights against her yet. The Southern Historical Society's own magazine reviewed her memoir shortly after it was published, and the writer for the Historical Society actually went so far as to check up on some of the Velazquez supporters who vouched for her. He concluded she had been a soldier although she had exaggerated her adventures. Early did not really turn his attention to her memoir until 1878.

 

Young Loreta, played by Isabel Taysin Carter, runs through columns in her Cuban plantation home. Photo by Alex Vlacos.

Velazquez' book painted the dark side of the Confederacy, portraying loose Southern ladies, petty, braggart un-heroic soldiers, and the corruption of wartime society. This was not the kind of veteran's story Early wanted out there. More seriously, he correctly pointed out many errors in her dates and her descriptions. Clearly she had fabricated and mixed up some of her story, written ten years after the war. After speaking with her and noting she did not have an accent as he expected, he declared she could not be a "Spanish lady." Of course, having grown up in the U.S. since age seven, she would not have had a Spanish accent at all. Early began a letter writing campaign against Velazquez.

Early would become one of the main arbiters of how the war would be remembered. He was so powerful that he easily discredited her publicly. His attacks have often colored subsequent interpretations of her work.

Do you think her contributions made a difference? Did she change history?

Velazquez did not change the course of history the way a General might have done. But that does not mean her experience was any less meaningful then or today. More important than her soldiering or spying during the war, is the book she wrote about her experience. Her story voices the disquiet women of the time felt being restricted to the home and barred from public life. The moment she published her memoir, that voice moved into the public sphere.

Velazquez' book is about reinvention, about choosing your own path regardless of what society expects you to do. It is a book that argues that our lives are not pre-determined by our race or our gender—that those are cultural constructs that do not define us.

María Agui Carter is Writer, Director and Producer of REBEL, which runs 75 minutes. Check local PBS listings to watch it on television on May 24. Read Part I of this post.