“Try to Lift Someone Else As We Climb”
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“TRY TO LIFT SOMEONE ELSE AS WE CLIMB” 120 YEARS OF THE WOMEN’S PRESS CLUB OF PITTSBURGH AND THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT By Candi S. Carter Olson BA, Linfield College, 1999 MS, Boston College, 2002 MA, Carnegie Mellon University, 2007 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Candi S. Carter Olson It was defended on April 12, 2013 and approved by Dr. Lester Olson, Professor, Communication Dr. Brenton Malin, Associate Professor, Communication Dr. Jean Ferguson Carr, Associate Professor, English, Chair, Women’s Studies Dissertation Director: Dr. Ronald Zboray, Professor, Communication ii “TRY TO LIFT SOMEONE ELSE AS WE CLIMB” 120 YEARS OF THE WOMEN’S PRESS CLUB OF PITTSBURGH AND THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT Candi S. Carter Olson, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2013 In 1891, the Women’s Press Club of Pittsburgh met in the offices of the old Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette for the first time. Over the next 120 years, the women comprising this club found places for women in the public sphere by opening doors for newswomen. The clubwomen thus actively challenged widely held conventions about feminine limitations, and, as Hazel Garland, one of the club’s few African American members and the first woman managing editor of The Pittsburgh Courier, said, they reached behind and pulled up those women who came after them. WPCP members flew in hot air balloons, covered both WWI and WWII, funded scholarships for younger women, stood up to racism within their own ranks, and were some of the first women to enter post-game locker rooms with male sports reporters. Some activists in the women’s movement have called newswomen traitors for adhering to masculine frames of news coverage that dictate covering “both sides” of an issue, which sometimes means highlighting and publicizing an anti-women’s rights viewpoint in a story. However, this dissertation argues that mainstream female reporters should be considered in the stream of the broader women’s movement. Conventional presswomen, even those who worked on the widely excoriated iii woman’s pages, often were the voice of the women’s movement for a mainstream audience. While alternative presses preached to the converted, mass-audience presses persuaded the everyday person of the acceptability of previously unconventional ideas. By actively presenting themselves as the harbingers of change, seeking out and reporting issues of importance to the women’s movement, and creating opportunities for women’s professional advancement within the journalism profession, women’s press clubs like the WPCP made themselves an important resource for spreading activist ideology far and wide. Through the use of archival and oral history evidence, this dissertation shows how one of the United States’ longest-lived women’s press clubs, the Women’s Press Club of Pittsburgh, challenged conventions and gave voice to the nascent women’s movement, even as its members were apparently observing the dictates of the male-dominated news establishment. iv Acknowledgments The process of writing this expansive of a research project takes the mentorship and support of many people. First and foremost, I would like to thank my committee chair Dr. Ronald J. Zboray and his research partner and wife Mary Saracino Zboray for their guidance and conversations. My other committee members, Dr. Lester Olson, Dr. Brenton Malin, and Dr. Jean Ferguson Carr, are also due many thanks for their time and input on this project. All of these senior scholars’ insightful, thoughtful, and caring commentary has helped to make this project better at every step of the process, and I appreciate the opportunity I’ve had to develop into a media scholar under their tutelage. Every academic should be blessed with such devoted, informed mentors who are genuinely excited to help develop new work. Second, I owe much appreciation to the Women’s Press Club of Pittsburgh, and most particularly their longtime president Kellie Gormly. The members of the WPCP welcomed me into their sisterhood and gave me many hours of their time and support throughout the four years that I researched and wrote this dissertation. Next, I would like to acknowledge the entire library and archives staff at the Thomas & Katherine Detre Library & Archives at the Senator John Heinz History Center. The Heinz History Center staff were unstinting with their time in helping me think about new resources within their collection, and there were a few times that I walked in and Art Louderback, chief librarian, told me that he had found another piece of ephemera that was not with the rest of the collection for one reason or another. Unless otherwise specified, all illustrations and photographs are courtesy of the Thomas & Katherine Detre Library & Archives at the Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, PA. The library and archive has granted full permission to reprint any information gathered from its archive. This project would not have been possible without the organizations that provided financial support throughout the years. Thank you to the American Association of University Women for believing in this project and me enough to award me an American Fellowship, which allowed me to devote my final year to this work. I would also like to acknowledge the University of Pittsburgh Women’s Studies Department, which supported me with both a summer research fellowship and a full-year teaching fellowship as well. Parts of this dissertation have been presented at various conferences, including the National Communication Association and the Association for Educators in Journalism and v Mass Communication summer gathering. Thank you to the audience members who provided questions and feedback on this work, and thank you particularly to Dr. Frank Durham, associate professor at the University of Iowa, for his insightful feedback on my poster session during the 2012 AEJMC conference. Thank you also to Sheila Gibbons from Media Report to Women, who pushed me to improve my research on broadcast newswomen for a research paper that was published in November 2012. That work can be found throughout the sixth chapter and epilogue of this dissertation. Finally, many kudos are due to my family. I can’t say that having twins during the first term of a Ph.D. program is a decision I would recommend for many people, but my husband, Tim, made the process doable by giving me his unflagging support even as I spent every Saturday at the archives and took numerous evenings and holidays to read, write, and edit. He also provided many hours of enthusiastic help in reading and editing painfully terrible first-draft prose when I was too tired to read another line. To my boys, Christopher and Gabriel, I hope you continue to believe that history museums are just one big playground and that researching, reading, and writing are fun because they’re what mommy does for work. vi Table of Contents List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ viii Foreword .......................................................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: Introduction “Twas Simply Great”: The WPCP Flows Into the Women’s Movement ……………...…..…....… 1 Chapter 2: Stunt Girls and Scribbling Women: 1891 to the turn of the Twentieth Century……..................... 43 Chapter 3: Sob Sisters Recreate the Public Sphere: The Turn of the Twentieth Century to 1940 …...…........ 93 Chapter 4: Those Who Dare and Do in the Women’s Press Club: WWII and the 1950s ………………...... 139 Chapter 5: The Survivors and the Beneficiaries: the 1960s and 1970s ……….………………………...….. 182 Chapter 6: Survival of the Fittest: 1980-the Present Day ……………...………………………………...…. 237 Chapter 7: Epilogue: Some Reflections on Spaces for Women Journalists and Equality …………….……. 291 Appendix A: Deed of Gift ………………………………..…………………………………………………… 303 Appendix B: Figures ……………………………………..…………………………………………………… 305 Bibliography ……...……………………...………………………………………………….….. 317 vii List of Figures Figure 1.1: Photograph of Cara Reese ………………………….…………………………………………. 306 Figure 1.2: Women’s Press Club Cartoon ………………...………………………………………………. 307 Figure 3.1: Cartoon from The Waste Basket …………………………...…………………………………. 308 Figure 3.2: Anniversary cover of The Waste Basket …………..………………………………………….. 309 Figure 3.3: Cover of Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph with recall of Lt. Bernice Shine ………………………… 310 Figure 3.4: Cartoon celebrating Gertrude Gordon’s birthday …..………………………………………… 311 Figure 3.5: Gertrude Kelley’s (Gordon) grave site ..…………………………………………………….. 311 Figure 3.6: Rock Hudson being interviewed by Gertrude Gordon Scholarship hopefuls ………………… 312 Figure 4.1: Toki Schalk Johnson with a WPCP member and a Gertrude Gordon scholarship winner …… 313 Figure 4.2: Hazel Garland at the Pittsburgh Courier ………………………….………………………….. 314 Figure 4.3: Pohla Smith with Willie Stargell ……………………………………………………………... 315 Figure 4.4: Pohla Smith in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette office …………………………………………… 315 Figure 5.1: Members of the WPCP after the 2012 Annual Banquet ……………………………………… 316 viii Foreword The title of this dissertation is a reference specifically to the writings of Hazel Garland, one of the club’s pioneering black women journalists and