Joan Marie Johnson - Funding Feminism

Funding Feminism

GENDER AND AMERICAN CULTURE

Coeditors

Thadious M. Davis and Mary Kelley

Editorial Advisory Board

Nancy Cott

Jane Sherron De Hart

John DEmilio

Linda K. Kerber

Annelise Orleck

Nell Irvin Painter

Janice Radway

Robert Reid-Pharr

Noliwe Rooks

Barbara Sicherman

Cheryl Wall

Emerita Board Members

Cathy N. Davidson

Sara Evans

Annette Kolodny

Wendy Martin

Guided by feminist and antiracist perspectives, this series examines the construction and influence of gender and sexuality within the full range of Americas cultures. Investigating in deep context the ways in which gender works with and against such markers as race, class, and region, the series presents outstanding interdisciplinary scholarship, including works in history, literary studies, religion, folklore, and the visual arts. In so doing, Gender and American Culture seeks to reveal how identity and community are shaped by gender and sexuality.

A complete list of books published in Gender and American Culture is available at www.uncpress.unc.edu.

JOAN MARIE JOHNSON

Funding Feminism

Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Womens Movement, 18701967

The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill

This book was published with the assistance of the Greensboro Womens Fund of the University of North Carolina Press.

Founding Contributors: Linda Arnold Carlisle, Sally Schindel Cone, Anne Faircloth, Bonnie McElveen Hunter, Linda Bullard Jennings, Janice J. Kerley (in honor of Margaret Supplee Smith), Nancy Rouzer May, and Betty Hughes Nichols.

2017 Joan Marie Johnson

All rights reserved

Set in Arno Pro by Westchester Publishing Services

Manufactured in the United States of America

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Johnson, Joan Marie, author.

Title: Funding feminism : monied women, philanthropy, and the womens movement, 18701967 / Joan Marie Johnson.

Other titles: Gender & American culture.

Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2017] | Series: Gender and American culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017004067| ISBN 9781469634692 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469634708 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH : FeministsCharitable contributionsUnited StatesHistory. | FeminismUnited StatesHistory. | Women philanthropistsUnited StatesHistory.

Classification: LCC HQ 1419 . J 64 2017 | DDC 305.420973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017004067

Jacket illustrations: Left, photograph of Gertrude Minturn Pinchot (courtesy of the George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-07824); right, photograph of Juliet Rublee on horseback at a woman suffrage parade (courtesy of the Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-hec-04146).

Portions of chapters 1 and 2 were previously published in a different form as Following the Money: Wealthy Women, Feminism, and the American Suffrage Movement, Journal of Womens History 27:4 (Winter 2015): 6287. 2015 Journal of Womens History. Reprinted with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press.

For Don, Darci, Sophie, and Elise

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

It was a pleasure to write this history of women philanthropists who funded the womens movement, and to consider ways in which these monied women used their philanthropy to give them a voice when, despite their privilege, they were perceived to be powerless due to their gender. Despite their many flaws, these women did advance equality for women in the United States, and feminist organizations now come much closer to working for equity for all, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, religion, sexuality, gender expression, and disability.

First I would like to thank the many librarians and archivists who assisted me as I worked on this book. The first archival research trip I took was to the Countway Library, Harvard University Medical School, as the recipient of a Foundation for Women in Medicine Fellowship at the Center for the History of Medicine at Countway. The library has a treasure trove of papers relating to the development of the pill and the birth control movement that complement other collections at the Library of Congress and Smith College. As have many other historians of womens experiences in the United States, I found many sources and received assistance from librarians in the Smith College Archives and the Sophia Smith Womens History Collection at Smith College, and gratefully acknowledge a grant to travel to their collections. Likewise, I was directed to a great number of sources at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. It was here that I first used a camera to take photos of materials instead of requesting photocopies, and I can no longer imagine conducting archival research without a camera. For the chapters on higher education, I traveled to several college and university archives and thus must thank the archivists at Stanford University Archives, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Archives, Scripps College Archives, and the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. I am particularly grateful to Daniel Hartwig at Stanford, who digitized several folders of documents for me upon my return home. I traveled to Newcomb College Institute, Tulane University, where I received excellent advice from Susan Tucker and others, as well as travel funding. In addition to the Newcomb College Archives, librarians at the Tulane Law Library guided me to the bound volumes concerning the estate of Josephine Newcomb, and I read Josephines original handwritten letters in the McConnell Family Papers in the Tulane University Archives. I also received assistance from archivists at the Historical Society of Wisconsin Archives, where the enormous McCormickInternational Harvester Collection is located. Librarians at the Library of Congress make work in the manuscript room there a pleasure, and I examined the Gregory Pincus Papers in person and other collections on microfilm. Unless otherwise indicated, much of the travel and research for this book was funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, and I am grateful for that support. I finished my research with a trip to the University of Southern California, on a Wallis Annenberg Grant, to study the Armond Fields Collection. I also received last-minute assistance obtaining photographs from Alison Terana, Daniel Hartwig, Lynn Rainville, Liz Kent Leon, Nanci Young, and Chloe Raub, and I thank them for their help.

I am grateful to a myriad of colleagues for their support over the course of the research and writing of this book. In Chicago, I would like to thank colleagues in the history department at Northeastern Illinois University and the many scholars who participated in the Newberry Library Seminar on Women and Gender over the last eight years, including Darlene Clark Hine, Elizabeth Fraterrigo, Lynn Hudson, Sue Levine, Amanda Littauer, Patrick Miller, Francesca Morgan, Michelle Nickerson, Rima Lunin Schultz, and Michael Tuck, with special thanks to Chris Joe. I have enjoyed many conversations with Louise Knight over lunch in Evanston and received valuable advice. I would also like to acknowledge the tremendous work that Mary Ann Johnson, of the Chicago Womens History Center, does to promote womens history in Chicago. Carla Bittel, Kathleen Clark, Ruth Crocker, Sylvia Hoffert, Margaret Marsh, Kathleen McCarthy, Yael Merkin, Johanna Neuman, Sarah Rodriguez, and Alison Sneider all provided valuable feedback at conferences, stimulating conversation, comments on drafts, or other support. Karen Cox has been a dear friend and colleague since our first Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH) conference in 1994. Although this book takes me beyond years of focus on southern women, colleagues from the SAWH have been friends and supporters for many years, including Kathleen Clark, Karen Cox, Shannon Frystak, Anya Jabour, Giselle Roberts, Rebecca Sharpless, Marjorie Spruill, and Melissa Walker. Special appreciation to Anya Jabour, who suggested the title, Funding Feminism , to me. Nancy Robertson discussed philanthropy with me when I first considered writing on this topic, and I appreciate the wealth of information she shared. My students at Northeastern Illinois University were always a source of inspiration, and I would like to especially acknowledge Marc Arenberg, Rene Delgaldo, Nicole Grigalunas, and Marla McMackin. I appreciate the support of all my colleagues in the Office of the Provost at Northwestern University. Parts of chapters 1 and 2 appeared in the Journal of Womens History in an article titled Following the Money: Wealthy Women, Feminism, and the American Suffrage Movement, and I thank editor Leigh Ann Wheeler and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful critiques.