Celebrating Archival Research & Re-examining Women’s History
Lance and I went to a wonderful talk at the University of Tampa last Friday. Kacy Tillman presented “The Epistolary Salon: Female Letter-Writing during the American Revolution.” She argued that writing letters was a way for the 18th century American female to engage in the American Revolution at a time when they could not fight, vote or legislate. I found it interesting how much of the material in the letters sounded like journalism. Her talk was also a reminder that women’s history and the role of women in the public sphere is more complex than previous historians have written.
Kacy described some wonderful finds in archives such as notes in the margins of letters. It reminded me of some of the discoveries Lance & I have found going through the papers of women’s page journalists. One of my favorites was in a P.S. on a letter from Fort Lauderdale News editor Edee Greene to Paul Myhre. The P.S. was “I wore a pantsuit to work today.” Then I noticed the date – August 26, 1970. It was Women’s Strike for Equality Day. It was her way of rebelling.
Paul Myrhe was the director of the Penney-Missouri Awards – the top honor for the women’s pages. (He is the namesake of our Baby Paul.) He wrote regularly to the women journalists and saved all of the letters. One of the women he was closest to Maggie Savoy, a women’s page editor in Arizona and California. It was fun to watch their friendship go from formal to one in which she signs her letters “Love Maggie.” These letters were important to understand the women’s page community – especially because Maggie died in 1970 and Paul died in 1971.
