O Say Can You See?

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.

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

When filmmaker María Agui Carter first came across the 1876 memoir of a Latina woman who fought in the Civil War, she recognized "a voice that sounded so modern" and was compelled to make a film about this maverick. We asked Agui Carter a few questions about her film and the woman "who made no apologies about breaking every gender, social, and ethnic boundary." See REBEL at the museum on March 28, 2013.

 

Loreta Velazquez' first battle experience was at Bull Run. Photo by Geoffrey Luck.

Can you tell us a little bit about Loreta Janeta Velazquez and her story?
When the American Civil War broke out, Velazquez, a Cuban immigrant who grew up in New Orleans, disguised herself as a man to fight as a Confederate soldier, then spied as a double agent for the Union. Contemporary research shows she was one of about a thousand women soldiers who fought in the Civil War.

How did you first find out about Loreta Janeta Velazquez? What drew you to her story and made you think it needed to be shared?

I first came across the story of Loreta Velazquez, in her memoir The Woman in Battle, over a decade ago. She is one of only two Latina authors published in the U.S. in the 19th century. Her voice sounded so modern—here was a Victorian-era woman who made no apologies about breaking every gender, social, and ethnic boundary. There was something about her maverick nature and her constant reinvention that seemed quintessentially American to me. I wanted to know more about this rebel. It was striking to me that this Latina woman was fighting in a war that we think of as about race in terms of Black and White. Where did Latinos fit in all this, and why did she feel the need to hide not only her gender but also her race?

 

The preview for REBEL can also be viewed here

Why did historians think she was a hoax?
Older articles analyzing the book concluded she was likely a hoax, or based on a composite character—it seemed like such an impossible story. Even today, there continues to be a lot of inaccurate or incomplete information about her floating around, especially on the internet, and I’m hoping my film will spark interest in her real story and provoke additional research. An article popularly cited about Velazquez is "Heroine or Hoaxer" written in the 1970s by the excellent scholar Sylvia Hoffert that, based on the information available about Velazquez at the time, assumes her story is probably fictional.

But there has been so much more research on women soldiers of the Civil War since that article was published. When I read the series titled "Women Soldiers of the American Civil War" in Prologue magazine, by a Senior Military Archivist at the National Archives named Deanne Blanton, that included new information about Loreta Velazquez, my interest was again piqued. I visited the archives and Deanne showed me the records about Velazquez and about many other women Civil War soldiers. I wondered why her remarkable story continued to be dismissed. What I found out is what led me to make this film.

Velazquez had not only been forgotten, she had been erased. So REBEL is not only the exploration of the life of one tremendously exciting woman, it is a film about the politics of national memory. In a heterogeneous society with many histories and communities, how do we as a nation choose what to remember? How do we choose what to forget?

 

The signature image for "REBEL" is a composite of two portraits of Loreta Velazquez passing as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, soldier and spy of the American Civil War, played by actress Romi Dias. Photo by Gerard Gaskin, graphic work by Hayley Parker.

What do you think motivated Velazquez to adopt an alias and fight in battles? Why would a teenager from New Orleans do such a thing?

On the eve of the American Civil War Velazquez' life had been turned inside out. As a child, she had tomboy fantasies of being a Joan of Arc, but as a teen she had fallen in love and married a soldier, made a home, and had children. She was 18 in 1861, and had just experienced the loss of her entire family—I will let you watch the film to find out what happened.

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 II of this blog post.

Alice Paul: Champion of Woman Suffrage

The National Museum of American History and photographer Robert Weingarten are working in collaboration to build a historic portrait with help from the public. During the week of May 7-11, the museum will present five blogs about significant individuals in American history. Between May 11-28, visitors can vote on which of these historic figures they would most like to see depicted in the portrait. Once a winner is announced, the public will have further opportunity to contribute to Weingarten’s unique process of visual biography. The finished portrait will be displayed at the Smithsonian this fall.

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.

 

You may have never heard of Alice Paul, but when you cast your ballot this election season, say a quiet thank you to the person who did so much to win women the right to vote.

Alice Paul, around 1913

Alice Paul came to Washington in 1913 determined to change the established landscape of the suffrage movement that concentrated on winning the vote one state at a time. In just a few weeks she put together a pageant and parade that marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, demanding a Constitutional amendment giving women in the United States the right to vote. The parade took place on March 3, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, effectively putting the incoming president on notice that a new generation of woman suffragists was quite literally moving forward. The day was marred by violence from hostile crowds, prompting a Congressional investigation into the D.C. police’s protection of the marchers, but the event and its aftermath made headlines. And headlines, bringing public attention, public debate, and possibly public support and pressure, were exactly what Alice Paul wanted. For seven years she kept the demand for woman suffrage squarely in the public and presidential eyes in demonstrations that eventually escalated to picketing the White House and burning President Wilson’s speeches. When her tactics became too “radical” for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she formed the National Woman’s Party and continued on.

Paul’s life had prepared her for this work. Born in 1885, her Quaker upbringing taught her that men and women were equals. She earned advanced degrees in sociology but was frustrated by the slow progress of social work. To remedy the problems of poverty, health, and education required changing laws—and changing laws required the votes of women. Paul worked for woman suffrage while in college but it was during her graduate studies in England that she became exposed to the confrontational tactics of the English “suffragettes.” When she returned to the United States she was ready to adapt their tactics for an American audience.

The most dramatic episode of Paul’s suffrage battle is illustrated by two small objects in the museum’s collection—a small silver pin in the shape of a prison door with a heart for a lock and a torn fragment of yellow fabric. Such delicate objects to commemorate such outsize courage. In January 1917, discouraged by President Wilson’s continued opposition to the suffrage amendment, Paul posted pickets at the White House gates—the first people to ever picket the White House. These “silent sentinels” stayed on duty in all weather and in the face of threats, taunts, and physical violence. Using their banners and their quiet courage they asked, “Mr. President How Long Must Women Wait for their Liberty?” and “Mr. President What Will you do for Woman Suffrage?” Hoping to provoke a response, the language on the banners became more inflammatory. They used the president’s own words against him and pointed out the hypocrisy of his leading the country into the first world war to defend freedom while denying it to the women of his own country.

“Kaiser Wilson” protest banner, courtesy of the Library of Congress



Scrap of the protest banner in the Museum collections

Crowds who believed the pickets’ activities were disloyal in a time of war attacked the suffragists and destroyed their banners. In July the police began arresting the pickets for “obstruction of traffic.” When they refused to pay fines they were imprisoned. When they went on hunger strikes to demand the rights of political prisoners they were forcibly fed—a painful and invasive procedure. The pickets continued despite the risk. Paul had endured such treatment while she was in England. Although she knew what lay ahead and that she, as the organizer of the picketing, would receive a harsher sentence, she insisted on taking her place on the picket line. She was arrested in October. While in jail she was forcibly fed and threatened with commitment to an insane asylum. Reports of the long sentences, abuse, and the courage of the suffragists became public and all prisoners were released in November. In a December ceremony the imprisoned suffragists were awarded the silver “jailed for freedom” pins. Physically weakened by the ordeal but determined to prevail, Paul and her sister suffragists fought on.

“Jailed for Freedom” pin

The 19th amendment giving women the right to vote was ratified on August 18, 1920. Women had won the vote but not full equality, so Paul and the National Woman’s Party took up the fight for equal rights. Believing that the more she understood about law the more useful she would be, Paul went back to school and earned three law degrees. In 1923 she drafted the text of the Equal Rights Amendment and worked for women’s equality in national and international forums for the rest of her career. In 1972 when Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification, Paul began a set of charm bracelets now in the museum’s collection. She added a charm engraved with the date that each state ratified the amendment. She had started her fourth bracelet when she suffered a stroke in 1974. An Ohio state charm dated 2/7/74 was the last one that she added. Alice Paul died on July 9, 1977, at the age of 92. She would never know that the amendment for which she had fought so long and hard would not be ratified.

The objects remain. I don’t think of them as jewelry and fabric scrap but as an award for valor, a counting of votes in silver and enamel rather pencil ticks on paper, and a remembrance of battle. Alice Paul dedicated her life to championing women and their rights. Remember her the next time you vote.

The Sewall-Belmont House and Museum on Constitution Avenue was the final headquarters of the National Woman’s Party and Alice Paul’s home for many years. To learn more about the effort to create a memorial to the imprisoned suffrage pickets visit the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial. The museum also offers information about the woman suffrage movement for kids on the OurStorywebsite.

Lisa Kathleen Graddy is the curator of women’s political history in the museum’s Division of Political History. The Alice Paul collection is one of the first things she worked on when she came to the museum and it solidified her interest in women’s history.