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Vivian Castleberry’s college years
Today I did more work on my Vivian Castleberry book today, focusing on her college years at Southern Methodist University during World War II. Because so many men were off serving their country, she had opportunities that she would have not had otherwise such as being editor of the student newspaper. The above image came from her 1944 yearbook, the Rotunda, that I found on eBay.
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Reference to this blog
I found a great reference to this blog from a blogger with the Washington State Historical Society: “Every once in a while, something really wonderful crosses my desk and this blog post by Kimberly Voss was one of those things. In it, she explains how she was able to discover the story about journalist Bobbi McCallum in order to write the article featured in an issue of COLUMBIA magazine. You can check it out online at our website. As Kimberly said in her post: “Often, as scholars, we focus on the results — what it is we found. This is the story of how I got to the results.”
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Val Imm’s Sixth Floor Museum Interview
I am in the middle of transcribing the July 23, 1997, videotaped oral history of Val Imm. It is part if the Sixth Floor Museum’s oral history project in relation to the JFK assassination – but also explores Dallas overall. (Val was at Love Field when the president and first lady arrived.) Val was the society editor at the Dallas Times-Herald from 1960 to 1970. She reported to Vivian Castleberry who I am writing about. She won several awards for her work. She looked at society writing as sociology rather than high society. It was the same approach that Charlotte Curtis took at the New York Times.
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Jerry Mitchell speaks
Here is a clip of Thursday’s speaker, Jerry Mitchell, from the Colbert Report. Journalism legend (and winner of the 2009 “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation) spoke to both of my classes at UCF today. He addressed the lack of Southern newspaper coverage during the civil rights era. While that was true at most newspapers, one exception was the Louisville Courier-Journal. It was a more progressive newspaper and named women’s page editor Carol Sutton to the managing editor position in the 1970s. While was was M.E., she oversaw the coverage of busing. The newspaper took an anti-segregation position: ” Sutton said the staff tried to get information out as soon…
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Vivian Castleberry letters
I recently received several letters written between Dallas women’s page editor Vivian Castleberry and Penney-Missouri Award Director Paul Myhre, as well as some letters about Vivian. The letters can be found in the papers of the Penney-Missouri Awards at the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri. In these letters, including the one above written by Vivian’s fashion editor, gave me some new insight into Vivian’s life. This letter referenced a severe illness that Vivian’s husband Curtis went through – an incident that I had not been aware of before. Their marriage was and is a true partnership.
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Back to writing about Vivian Castleberry
We spent yesterday at a Cape Canaveral beach where I got back to writing my book about Dallas women’s page editor Vivian Castleberry. Lance’s initial suggestion for my book title: “White Gloves and Newsprint.” Today, I am adding some of Vivian’s articles to my manuscript. Unlike many editors, Vivian did a great deal of reporting and writing. I appreciate the great folks at the UCF library for finding these articles.
A website devoted to the history of newspaper women's pages
