Meltzer Dissertation FINAL

Maternal Citizens:

Gender and Women’s Activism in the United States, 1945-1960

By Paige L. Meltzer

B.A., Hamilton College, 1998

A.M., Binghamton University, State University of New York, 2001

A.M., Brown University, 2004

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in the Department of History at Brown University

Providence, Rhode Island

May 2010

This dissertation by Paige L. Meltzer is accepted in its present form

by the Department of History as satisfying the

dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Recommended to the Graduate Council

Date ______Mari Jo Buhle, Avisor

Date ______Elliott Gorn, Reader

Date ______Robert Self, Reader

Approved by the Graduate Council

Date ______Sheila Bonde, Dean of the Graduate School

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Paige L. Meltzer, Curriculum Vitae May 11, 1976, Rochester, New York

Education

Brown University, Providence, RI Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History; Spring 2010 M.A. in U.S. History; Spring 2004 Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY M.A. in U.S. Women’s History; Winter 2001 Hamilton College, Clinton, NY B.A. with honors in History and German; Spring 1998 Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa Goethe Institute, Murnau, Germany; Winter 1997 University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; Spring 1997

Awards

University Dissertation Fellowship, Brown University; Fall 2008 Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women Dissertation Grant, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University; Summer 2007 to Summer 2008 Women’s History and Resource Center Research Grant, General Federation of Women’s Clubs; Summer 2006 to Summer 2007 University Travel Fellowship, Brown University; Fall 2006 to Spring 2007 Summer Enrichment Grant, Brown University; Summer 2004 to Summer 2006 Graduate Education Award, Binghamton University; Fall 1999 to Fall 2000 University Summer Award, Binghamton University; Summer 2000

Teaching Experience

Lecturer, History and Literature Program, Harvard University; Fall 2009 to present Instructor, “U.S. History since 1877,” History Department, University of Rhode Island; Summer 2007 Co-Instructor, “U.S. Women’s History through Popular Culture, 1945 to the present,” Summer Studies, Brown University; Summer 2007 Teaching Assistant, History Department, Brown University; Fall 2004 to Spring 2006; Fall 2007 to Spring 2008; Spring 2009 “European History, 1789-1989,” Prof. Joan Richards; Spring 2008, Spring 2009 “European Intellectual History, 1880-1914,” Prof. Mary Gluck; Fall 2007 “The Vietnam War,” Prof. Andrew Huebner; Spring 2005, Spring 2006 “Modern U.S. History through Film,” Profs. Andrew Huebner and Robert Fleegler; Summer 2005 “European Intellectual History, 1914 to present,” Prof. Mary Gluck; Fall 2005 “Modern European Women’s History,” Prof. Carolyn Dean; Fall 2004

Teaching Assistant, History Department, Binghamton University; Fall 1999 to Spring 2000 “American Civilization, Post-1877,” Prof. Kathryn Kish Sklar; Spring 2000 “The Great Depression,” Inst. Michelle Kuhl; Fall 1999

Publications

“‘The Pulse and Conscience of America:’ The General Federation and Women’s Citizenship in the Postwar Era,” forthcoming Winter 2010 with Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies

Presentations

“Defending a Mother’s Prerogative: Gendered Citizenship and Women’s Political Culture in the 1950s” presented to “Researching New York,” SUNY Albany; Fall 2007 “Gendered Citizenship: Women’s Political Culture in 1950s America” presented to the James A. Barnes Club Conference, Temple University; Spring 2007 Panel Commentator at “The Academic in Public Life” Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, Brown University; Spring 2005 “Defending a Mother’s Prerogative: Anti-Fluoridationist Women in New York City, 1955-1965” presented to “Gender Across Borders” Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, Brown University; Spring 2005

Professional Service

Graduate Advisor, Brown Journal of History, History Department, Brown University; Fall 2006 to Spring 2009 Chair, Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, “Space as a Category of Analysis: New Perspectives,” Brown University; Spring 2005 to Spring 2006 Department Liaison, History Graduate Student Association, History Department, Brown University; Spring 2005 to Spring 2006 Department Representative, Graduate Student Council, Brown University; Fall 2006 to Spring 2007 Graduate Advisor to Undergraduate Studies, Office of Undergraduate Studies, History Department, Binghamton University; Fall 2000

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my appreciation to the primary funders of this project,

Brown University’s Graduate School and the Department of History. Special thanks also goes to the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women at

Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University for supporting my work with a dissertation award, and to their archivists for assisting in my research. I would like to convey my deep gratitude to the leadership and staff involved with the Women’s History and Resource

Center at the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. This project would not have been possible without their financial support as well as the generosity of time, energy, and collegiality shown in particular by archivists Danielle Snyder, Gail McCormick, and

Ashley Carver.

My additional appreciation to the archivists at the Abraham Lincoln Library;

Gannett-Tripp Library, Elmira College; the Indiana State Library and the Indiana

Historical Society; the Long Island Studies Institute, Hofstra University; the New York

City Hall Library and the New York Public Library; and the staff at Brown University’s

Rockefeller and Hay libraries, among others. I also offer my sincere gratitude to the clubwomen who spoke with me about their early years in the GFWC during the 1950s:

Merle Allen, Molly Deignan, Jo Dukes, Sylvia Kimmel, Dottie Mitchell, Patricia

Mueller, and Betty Reiwarts.

This project owes many intellectual debts to my mentors. Mari Jo Buhle, Elliott

Gorn, and Robert Self made for a diverse committee that challenged my arguments about

gender, political culture, and postwar America while offering productive guidance.

Because of their involvement, the project has evolved tremendously since the outset. But because of their involvement, I can also see and am excited about all the ways the project will continue to evolve moving forward.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have been part of the final cohort of Mari Jo Buhle’s students before her retirement. She has trained an impressive generation of scholars and my colleagues and I are very proud to have shared in this moment in her career. I move on to the next phase of my career with her lessons in academic rigor and her commitment to women’s history anchoring my work. Thank you, Mari Jo.

Although this project began after our time together ended, I would like to thank

Kitty Sklar, whose ideas about womanhood and citizenship profoundly shape the historian I am today. Thank you also to Carolyn Dean, who taught me how to teach students to think about gender. And Joan Richards, whose support got me through the final stages of my dissertation and the early stages of motherhood.

I would also like to express my appreciation to Gayle Gullett and the anonymous peer reviewers for Frontiers who read an article based on parts of this work. Their comments pushed this project in entirely unexpected and beneficial ways.

Thank you to my writing group: Lara Couturier, Natalina Earls, Nicole Eaton,

Jessica Foley, Christopher Jones, and Stacie Taranto. I derived so much more from our collaboration than just constructive criticism and intellectual growth. I cherish the laughter, frustration, rewarding conversations, and friendship we have shared these last few years. Additional thanks goes to my fellow graduate students, especially Erik

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Anderson, Christopher Brick, Mark Robbins, and Gabe Rosenberg, who created an unfailingly stimulating environment. And a sincere thank you to Andrew Lewis for being a trusted friend and advisor through it all.

Thank you to friends and family who have watched all of this unfold, who have offered well wishes and encouragement. My work has been possible because there was never a doubt of support – from my family, from my in-laws, from my girlfriends.

Anything that needed to happen to make everything come together, you helped make happen. I must say a special thank you to my mother, Hannah Whittaker, whose long and frequent grandmother visits this year gave me the free time I needed to focus on finishing; I am grateful (as always) to her and my father Paul for the love and guidance they have given us. The same sentiment extends to Toni and Jeff Meltzer for their care of and devotion to our family. To all the grandparents: we appreciate everything.

Thank you Zoe for keeping everything in perspective for me, for being so joyful, and for bringing us so much joy. Welcoming you into the world has been the most amazing experience.

And for everything I am in awe of my partner and husband, Andy, who has never doubted me, or the path we have chosen. I am honored. Thank you.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………. vi

Chapter One Introduction: Maternalism and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs……………………………………………………….1

Chapter Two Homemaker Professionalization: Training Clubwomen in Postwar Citizenship…………………………………………………..46

Chapter Three Mothers and Cold Warriors: A Gendered Approach to Postwar Internationalism…………………………………………….103

Chapter Four The Americanism Campaign: A “Women’s Crusade”……………....162

Chapter Five Training America’s Youth: Maternal Authority, Civic Activism, and the Modern State………………………..……...215

Conclusion……………………………………………………………...... 277

Appendix A: GFWC Membership.…………………………………………...285

Appendix B: GFWC Governance….…………………………………………289

Bibliography………………………………………….……………………....292

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: MATERNALISM AND THE GENERAL FEDERATION OF WOMEN’S CLUBS

“[The homemaker] must concern herself with the world outside the four walls of her home. She must be concerned with the social life of her community, the educational systems in her town, as well as the civic problems of her own town and state. It is her duty, too, to concern herself with national problems…international boundaries and world markets, but her chief interest must be in the future of the boys and girls today…Whatever adjustments are made, the welfare of future citizens…must be the concern of the homemaker, if she would make her full contribution to the safeguarding of Democracy.” – Mrs. Herbert F. French, GFWC American Home department chairman, 19441

In 1954 in Lyndhurst, Ohio, an overwhelmingly white, middle-class suburb of

Cleveland, a young housewife named Dottie Mitchell joined the newly formed Lyndhurst

Junior Women’s Club. Dottie and her husband, a hospital administrator, had grown up in the nearby suburb of Shaker Heights and now had two young children, aged seven and four. According to Dottie, theirs was an idyllic suburban existence. Dottie spent much of her time with her good friend and neighbor Peggy Freeman and fondly recalls spending summers sitting with Peggy and their children by one of the town’s outdoor swimming pools. The two women were college graduates who, like many women of their time, had quit their teaching jobs when they started their families. Peggy’s sister founded the

1 Mrs. Herbert F. French, “Homemaking – Today and Tomorrow” program booklet (Washington, DC: GFWC, [1944-1947], photocopy), p. 6, General Federation of Women’s Clubs Archives, Program Records (Record Group 7), Lucy Dickinson, Box 1, Folder 4. All program records from this repository are found in Record Group 7; hereafter all “Program Records (Record Group 7), [GFWC President]” will be cited as “[Last Name] Program Records.”

1 2

women’s club to give young women something to do that “they could consider a contribution.” Dottie and Peggy joined in. Dottie called these her “halcyon days.”1

Dottie enjoyed the “luxury of being [an] at-home mother,” but she also “had a lot of energy” and she quickly became immersed in numerous social and service activities through her new women’s club. She and her fellow clubwomen volunteered at the tuberculosis hospital, raised funds for the local community college, worked at a camp for underprivileged children, assisted at a school for mentally handicapped children, and organized an annual town festival. For seven years, Dottie spearhead this last activity and took pride in creating a family fun day replete with swim races, teen dances, and parades. Looking back, Dottie “chuckles” at how “naïve” some of her club’s “do- gooder” projects were, such as sewing curtains for the settlement house downtown. But she also acknowledges that her clubwork shaped her community engagement through church, the PTA, and even as an elected member of the school board. Clubwomen,

Dottie explains, were “not sophisticated in those days. Truly. We were [only] very very hardworking.” What they lacked in political maturity they made up for with “fervor.”2

Post-World War II clubwomen like Dottie participated in a variety of public activities geared toward community service that might not seem particularly

“sophisticated" but were nonetheless politically meaningful. Women’s clubs provided a bridge between postwar domesticity and community activism. They gave form and content to women’s collective energies, opening doors to public service. They shaped

1 Author’s interview with Dottie Mitchell, July 17, 2007.

2 Ibid.

how women thought about themselves as part of a community and the type of work they could do. They brought women as mothers together in service of those around them.

Women’s clubs fostered a gendered notion of citizenship that defied traditional political categorization and informed in very real ways how women defined being American. As international tension with the Soviet Union mounted, how women engaged as maternal citizens with their communities signified nothing less than the preservation of democracy and American victory in the Cold War.

Dottie’s Lyndhurst Junior Women’s Club was just one of thousands of local women’s clubs that belonged to the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC), one of the nation’s largest women’s organizations in the postwar era. With 15,168 clubs and a dues-paying membership of 859,015 by 1955, the GFWC was an enormous network of women.3 Founded in 1890, the GFWC was a federation of state and local clubs – study clubs, service clubs, mothers’ clubs, literary societies, garden clubs – from across the nation and around the globe. Since its founding, the General Federation had been an overwhelmingly white, Protestant, middle-class organization. It began among urban women, but a conscientious push into rural areas in the 1920s gave the organization a nationwide presence. In the post-World War II era, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and California

3 Mildred White Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. II (Washington, DC: GFWC, 1975), p. 126. By comparison, the GFWC’s peer women’s institutions, the American Association of University Women and the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs had approximately 70,000 each in the 1940s and the League of Women Voters had more than 90,000 members. Susan M. Hartmann, “Women’s Organizations During World War II: The Interaction of Class, Race, and Feminism,” in Mary Kelley, ed., Woman’s Being, Woman’s Place: Female Identity and Vocation in American History (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co, 1979), pp. 313-314; Carole Stanford Bucy, “Exercising the Franchise, Building the Body Politic: The League of Women Voters and Public Policy, 1945-1964” (PhD dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 2002), p. 16. For further GFWC membership information, including a list of associated member clubs, see Appendix A.

had the largest GFWC membership while the fastest growth occurred in Texas, followed by Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Alabama.4 Although not officially segregated, the GFWC decided in 1902 to leave black women’s admission up to each state federation, effectively limiting black membership to state federations rather than the GFWC and setting a precedent of avoiding issues of race to maintain internal unity.5

In the postwar era, the GFWC continued to be an organization of middle-class white women. Based on leadership profiles, members were older women with grown children, even though the group strongly encouraged growth among “Junior” clubwomen

(those younger than thirty-five). Like their predecessors, many leaders were college- educated and had professional lives before and after their child-raising years. A 1954 survey of its 181-member Board of Directors revealed that it included social workers, company owners, judges, lawyers, teachers, farmers, and scientists who sat on numerous philanthropic, college and state boards, and that more than thirty Directors held

“positions of serious responsibility” in political parties.6 Clubwomen’s husbands were lawyers, doctors, engineers, insurance agents, and other white-collar professionals who were often also involved with community organizations. Clubwomen identified strongly

4 “Universal Membership: Clubs admitted since June 1947 through April 25, 1950,” GFWC, Membership Records (Record Group 6), Membership Reports (Series 12), Folder 1; “Per Capita Membership in State Federations and Per Capita National Clubs, May 14, 1954,” GFWC, Membership Records (Record Group 6), Membership Reports (Series 12), Folder 5.

5 For more on the controversy over black membership, see Corinna A. Buchholz, “The Ruffin Incident and Other Integration Debates, 1890-1902” (MA thesis, Sarah Lawrence College, 2000Mildred White Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. I (Washington, DC: GFWC, 1953), pp. 363-368.

6 Helen Chapman and Mimi Galvin, “The Mid-Century Clubwoman: Who is She?” General Federation Clubwoman, February 1955, pp. 14, 31, quote p. 31. Hereafter cited as Clubwoman.

as Christians, usually Protestant. Expanding as clubs did along existing friendship and church networks, however, individual clubs may have attracted women from other denominations, especially Catholicism. Greater diversity along religion and class lines began to emerge after World War II as postwar prosperity gave former working-class ethnic white Americans greater access to a middle-class standard of living and institutions such as women’s clubs.7

The General Federation was a leading organization for white middle-class women’s activism. Historically, the General Federation had supported woman’s suffrage, an end to child labor, and public health reform. In the post-World War II era, its priorities loosely fell into four categories: preventing juvenile delinquency, promoting active democratic citizenship, women’s advancement, and American strength at home and abroad. Examples of this work included anti-obscenity campaigns, “get out the vote” campaigns, and support of the Equal Rights Amendment and the United Nations.

Because the GFWC was a federation, there was wide variation of purpose across individual clubs as well as the presence of the GFWC at the local level. Some clubs like

Dottie Mitchell’s were more socially-driven, providing an avenue for networking and local philanthropic activities, while other clubs considered themselves sites for adult education where clubwomen made deliberate effort to engage the GFWC’s priorities at

7 Author interview with Merle Allen, June 5, 2007; Author interview with Molly Deignan, June 12, 2007; Author interview with Patricia Mueller, June 12, 2007; Mitchell interview; Author interview with Jo Dukes, June 29, 2007; Author interview with Sylvia Kimmel July 18, 2007; Author interview with Betty Reiwarts, July 19, 2007. For the changing demographics of women’s clubs, see Julieanne Appleson Phillips, “‘Unity in Diversity?:’ The Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Middle Class in Cleveland, Ohio, 1902-1962” (PhD dissertation, Case Western University, 1996). For more on Junior membership, see Appendix A.

their monthly meetings. Given such variation, GFWC priorities trickled down to member clubs unevenly. Some clubs committed significant resources to the General Federation’s agenda; one club in Boston, for example, heard monthly lectures on international affairs from the Boston Globe’s political correspondent. Other clubs relied on one or two club leaders to keep them apprised of GFWC interests; in Louisville, Kentucky, one club’s education chairman implemented the GFWC’s recommended programs without the club ever really adopting the platform itself. Looking back on the postwar years, clubwomen could rarely identify specific GFWC projects within their clubs. But their descriptions of activities – like Dottie’s hometown festivals or the Kentucky club’s community improvement projects – were the types of activities the GFWC strongly encouraged member clubs to sponsor. Regardless of region or club purpose, GFWC clubs united women in a sense of community and gave them tools and programs to lead their communities in philanthropy and civic education.8

The GFWC advanced an agenda of maternalist politics. As defined by historians

Sonya Michel and Robyn Rosen, maternalism is “a political concept that accepts the principle of gender difference, specifically, women’s identity as mothers, but maintains that women have a responsibility to apply their domestic and familial values to society at large.”9 Popular among women’s organizations at the turn of the twentieth century,

8 Deignan interview; Dukes interview; Indianapolis Woman’s Club Papers, Meeting Minutes (1945-1962), Series 1, Box 2, Folders 5-14, Indiana Historical Society; Kimmell interview; Mitchell interview; Mueller interview; New England Women’s Club Papers, Recording Secretary Minutes to Meetings (1949-1961), Reel 8, Harvard University, Radcliffe Institute, Schlesinger Library. This last repository will hereafter be referred to as SL.

9 Sonya Michel and Robyn Rosen, “The Paradox of Maternalism: Elizabeth Lowell Putnam and the American Welfare State," Gender & History 4, No. 3 (Autumn 1992), pp. 364-386, quote, p. 364.

maternalism argued that women had the skills and moral authority to mother beyond the walls of their homes. Female social reformers, especially GFWC clubwomen, used ideas about women’s maternal responsibilities to their communities to leverage greater public power. They often looked to the state as an ally in this project. Situating themselves as maternal authorities over others’ families and institutions, clubwomen created new state social services bureaucracies and professions – such as a social work, home economics, and public health – derivative of mother’s domestic nurturing responsibilities.

Over time maternalism faltered. Social, political, and cultural changes during the

1920s and 1930s undermined maternalism as Progressive-era clubwomen had practiced it. Increasing professionalization of social welfare fields placed them beyond the reach of everyday clubwomen, new social services agencies were absorbed into the emerging welfare state, and erosion of nineteenth-century gender roles challenged assumptions about women’s “natural” caregiving qualifications. Business and conservative political interests further crippled reformers’ activities by casting them as radical or communist.

Although gendered and even maternal language still remained a staple of women’s groups, by the 1930s maternalism no longer defined the platform for women’s activism as it had during the Progressive era.

“Maternal Citizens” argues that the post-World War II General Federation used maternalism in different ways to negotiate a new construction of the woman citizen. The

GFWC continued to assume that all women were potential mothers of their communities if not necessarily their own children, and had a responsibility to nurture those in their domain. Rather than look to the welfare state and social services professions as a partner

in this work as it had in the past, however, the postwar GFWC looked to itself and its membership to carry out community mothering. Maternalism now leveraged women’s public power through private actions and institutions rather than state ones. In doing so, it attempted to reconstitute the relationship between the citizen and the state by devolving responsibility for community health away from the welfare state to the individual, especially the clubwoman.

To do this the General Federation embarked on a campaign to revitalize the

American home and awaken clubwomen to the civic responsibilities they had by dint of their motherhood. Since the founding of the nation, women’s civic contributions had often been understood in terms of rearing the next generation of democratic citizens. The postwar GFWC built on this tradition and charged clubwomen with training citizens within the home and beyond it. From domestic democratic activities, women could then energize local communities, raise the tenor of democratic activism nationally, and shape international cooperation for a new postwar world. Women’s significance to the body politic stemmed from their ability to produce good homes and citizens and put them in service of the larger community. Theirs was a gendered citizenship grounded in maternal responsibilities to the home and nation.

The call was timely. The GFWC’s target demographic – white middle-class married women with children – was the fastest-growing sector of the paid workforce. By urging clubwomen to return their focus to their homes, the GFWC partook in the broader postwar romance Americans had with domesticity. Unlike many of its contemporaries, however, the General Federation made very clear the connection between women’s

domestic responsibilities and their civic ones. Moreover, coinciding as it did with the hardening of the Cold War – in which the American home held immeasurable symbolic weight – the GFWC’s postwar maternalism endowed clubwomen with the power to save the national character. Countering broader cultural trends that blamed mothers for all manner of social ills from poverty to communism, the General Federation’s gendered construction of citizenship framed domesticity in positive terms and extended it beyond the four walls of the home.

The GFWC’s postwar maternalism defied traditional political categories. As a federation, the organization held together a massive membership with a wide range of political opinions. Individual clubs and clubwomen within the federation could pick and choose which GFWC priorities to support, and a club in rural Alabama very likely promoted programs that were different from those of its sister club in Chicago. But clubs nonetheless came together around the idea that there was something to be gained – in resources, knowledge, and public strength – as part of a collective group of women. This unity was firmly rooted in shared identity as mothers and homemakers. Time and again the GFWC identified itself as an organization of homemakers, as the mothers of the world. Its agenda – for protecting children, for active engagement in civic life, for women’s advancement, for American strength at home and abroad – was done in service to the homes of the nation and the world. Different clubs with different political orientations in different regions might set about achieving this goal through different means, but the GFWC provided these groups with a multifaceted program agenda that could accommodate political and regional disparities. The GFWC assumed that all

women could conduct its program, regardless of political affiliation or regional identification. Mother’s work was apolitical.

And yet this postwar maternalist agenda made political choices. Locating the root of democracy in the home and the heart of democratic education in mother, the General

Federation claimed authority to define American values. When clubwomen provided their families and communities with civic education, they advanced a particular interpretation of the national character. Teaching individuals to accept personal responsibility for the health of their homes and communities fostered an ethic of self- reliance that assumed all had equal access to resources, institutions, and power. In part this reflected clubwomen’s own race and class privilege. But it also reflected the postwar anticommunist zeitgeist that viewed an active state with suspicion and hinted at fissures in the New Deal order.

The GFWC’s Maternalism in Historical Perspective

The General Federation of Women’s Clubs of the late nineteenth century relied on maternalist arguments to gain public power but was less focused on women’s homemaking than its post-World War II descendents. The founders of the earliest women’s clubs in the late 1860s were proto-career women seeking professional support, sorority, and an outlet for reform interests. As women’s clubs caught on across the country, women most frequently came together in literary societies and other more

“ladylike” pursuits. When the pioneering professional reform women founded the

GFWC and federated with these cultural clubs in 1890, they attempted to “divert”

member clubs from cultural programs toward social reform. It used the argument that women were “municipal housekeepers” – that women could clean up and care for their cities and towns just as they did their own homes – to justify women’s social reform efforts. “Federation,” historian Karen Blair contends, “became the vehicle through which clubs were led to consider ways in which woman’s special sensitivity could be applied to the problems of the community.” In this vein, women’s clubs used accepted gender roles regarding motherhood and homemaking to reconstitute the boundaries of acceptable public behavior for women.10

In its Progressive-era incarnation, maternalist politics fundamentally altered ideas about the social contract and helped establish the framework for the welfare state.

Clubwomen believed they had a moral obligation as mothers to protect all children, not just those in their own homes. They took on progressive causes including child labor, health care, and education. Like their male colleagues in the Progressive movement, these female reformers believed in the state’s ability to mediate social and economic relations between citizens to ensure basic health and welfare. Female reformers pioneered methods of social investigation and became experts on social reform. They lobbied for the creation of and secured a place for themselves in an emerging state welfare bureaucracy. Although they met with resistance from men in existing bureaucracies that tried to co-opt new departments (namely, the Children’s Bureau) and

10 The GFWC traced its roots to two of the most prominent early women’s clubs, each established in 1868: Sorosis, a New York City-based group of elite female (many of them professional) writers, and the New England Woman’s Club, an elite Boston-based group of more reform-minded and less career-oriented women. Karen Blair, Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914 (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1980), pp. 42-58, 93-113, quote, p. 93.

from male professional groups that saw reform as a usurpation of the male professional’s territory, many of the female reformers’ ideals found purchase within the state apparatus.

It would take some time, but many of their goals came to fruition with the New Deal – in programs heavily influenced by female reformers within the state bureaucracy.11

Progressive-era maternalism left its mark on the post-World War II General

Federation. The GFWC remained committed to key agenda items that had defined its

Progressive-Era activism: the Children’s Bureau, child labor legislation, and the Food and Drug Administration consistently won the GFWC’s support. As it had in the

Progressive Era, the post-1945 GFWC advocated for equal opportunities for qualified women in public life and joined with other women’s organizations to support the advancement of women. Like their Progressive forebears, postwar clubwomen engaged at all levels of civic debate, investigated their community’s needs and tried to address them.12

11 Julia Lathrop’s story exemplifies this development. A clubwoman in the Chicago Woman’s Club, Lathrop developed rigorous programs of social investigation in conjunction with the University of Chicago to train reformers in scientific social investigation. She went on to become head of the U.S. Children’s Bureau. Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). See also Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920,” The American Historical Review 89, No. 3 (June 1984), pp. 620-647; Estelle Friedman, Maternal Justice: Miriam Van Waters and the Female Reform Traditions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Suzanne Lebsock, “Women and American Politics, 1880-1920,” in Louise A. Tilly and Patricia Gurin, Eds., Women, Politics, and Change (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1990), pp. 35-62; Landon Y.R. Storrs, Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers’ League, Women’s Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2000); Susan Ware, Beyond Suffrage: Women and the New Deal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).

12 Based on her study of the postwar League of Women Voters and the Minute Women U.S.A., Abby Scher sees these components as tying postwar women’s organizations to the Progressive Era. Women’s organizations mobilized as nonpartisans during the Progressive Era because they saw urban Party machines as contributing to corruption and vice and standing in the way of public good. Women believed they were uniquely situated to clean up politics not just because of their maternal authority, but also because they came from outside a corrupt system. Their rational study of problems made them “mini experts” on issues and better prepared to address local crises. Civic expertise, nonpartisanship, and a belief that they served

Unlike their predecessors, however, postwar clubwomen looked for solutions to social ills based on individual activism and volunteerism, not state action. Although the postwar GFWC remained invested in some Progressive-era legislative priorities, it did not tend to turn to the government for its new priorities. Nor did a social justice agenda drive its postwar work as it had during the Progressive era. Postwar maternalism retained

Progressive-era belief in women’s municipal housekeeping, but generally decoupled this activism from the welfare state. Instead, postwar maternalism believed individual clubwomen were the catalyst for change in their communities.

The key to understanding this shift is the backlash of the 1920s. During those years, the General Federation responded to a changing political culture in which the woman’s movement splintered and progressive reform came under attack. Profoundly influenced by these changes, the GFWC’s maternalism lost its impetus for social justice.

The 1920s brought a sea-change to the woman’s movement. Woman’s suffrage failed to bring about the “women’s voting bloc” and subsequent might for social reform that suffragists had envisioned. Even before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, schisms in the woman’s movement had become apparent between equal-rights feminists and more politically accommodating suffragists. Feminism itself threatened the woman’s movement by challenging nineteenth-century gender constructions upon which maternal the public interest became the defining characteristics of Progressive-Era women’s groups and continued to be into the postwar era, whether those groups were conservative or liberal. My study of the GFWC suggests this analysis applies to the General Federation as well, but it is worth noting that the General Federation eschewed the nomenclature nonpartisan in favor of bipartisan in the postwar era. GFWC leadership were often loyal Party workers for both the Republicans and the Democrats and urged clubwomen to push the GFWC’s agenda through their respective Party of choice. Abby Scher, “Cold War on the Home Front: Middle Class Women’s Politics in the 1950s” (PhD dissertation, New School for Social Research, 1995), pp. 29-35.

authority for reform rested. Freudian psychology and new theories of the self, sexuality, and gender further undermined nineteenth-century gender constructions. The rise of heterosocial leisure culture and women’s paid employment changed the environment in which women’s associations had flourished and diminished the appeal of women’s clubs to the younger generation. This decline was only exacerbated by the movement’s neglect of working-class, ethnic, and African-American women, who increasingly demanded self-representation.13

Perhaps most devastating to maternalist reform, however, was effective counter- activism from the right wing and business interests. Reform programs altered the relationship between the citizen and the state by increasing government intervention in economic and social relations on behalf of the working class, women, and children against the rights of private property. During the Progressive Era, Americans accepted that such change was needed to ease the suffering caused by rapid industrialization, urban poverty, and mass immigration. With the startling spread of labor unrest during World

War I, with the uncertain postwar economic transition, and with the real example of a communist revolt in Russia, however, Americans were less sympathetic to progressive causes after 1920. The 100% Americanism programs that grew out of World War I in an attempt to demonstrate loyalty to the nation, the tolerance of civil rights violations exemplified by the Palmer Raids, and the desire to restore economic stability all spoke to

13 See Candice Bredbenner, A Nationality of Her Own: Women, Marriage, and the Law of Citizenship (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Mari Jo Buhle, Feminism and Its Discontents: A Century of Struggle with Psychoanalysis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Americans’ more conservative political orientation. Private property met little resistance as it mobilized to protect its social, economic, and political privileges against the recent gains of labor, women, and immigrants.14

Communism became a convenient charge to level against reformers to discredit them and progressive maternalists grew ever more vulnerable to these accusations.15 The

Women’s Joint Congressional Committee (WJCC), an umbrella organization founded in

1920 of women’s groups including the GFWC, League of Women Voters, and the

Women’s Trade Union League, attempted with limited success in the years following suffrage to provide female activists with a Party-like infrastructure to coordinate a progressive women’s political agenda. Although it won some early victories, its influence declined throughout the 1920s as it became a particular target of right-wing patriotic groups and business interests and lost congressional support. Women’s international peace efforts – another major focus area of women’s activism in which the

GFWC was peripherally involved in the early 1920s – met a similar fate, demonized by the right-wing as part of a Moscow-inspired communist conspiracy. “Anticommunism” served as a catch-all ideology that crippled progressive initiatives, tapped into hyper- patriotism, protected private property, and became the reigning paradigm of the twentieth century that framed virtually all domestic and foreign policy.16

14 For a discussion of this mobilization, see Alan Dawley, Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1991).

15 Progressive maternalists by and large were not communists even if some leading reformers (not necessarily the rank and file) had been influenced by socialism.

16 Historians have interpreted the WJCC’s loss of congressional support as politicians’ recognition that there was no women’s bloc to appease. Jan Wilson argues that the story is deeper than that. The WJCC

Women’s associations played an important role in the post-World War I Red

Scare. It was right-wing patriotic women’s groups, most notably the Daughters of the

American Revolution (DAR) and The Woman Patriot Publishing Company (an outgrowth of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage), that led the charge against progressive maternalists and their reform agenda. Anti-radicals, fearful of the effect government intervention would have on the sanctity of private family relations, drew connections between radicalism, socialism, pacifism, feminism, progressivism and the destruction of the God-ordained family structure, which would lead to the fall of western civilization. Gender was a central component of their anti-radicalism, making progressive women and their organizations particular targets.17 The Woman Patriot’s propaganda provided “evidence” that organizations including the WJCC were conspiring to undermine national security and smooth the way for Soviet-style communism – evidence which a secretary in the Chemical Warfare Service division of the U.S. War

Department compiled into the “Spider Web Chart.” The infamous chart showed the had support in the early 1920s when its proposals clearly reflected maternalist politics, but it lost support after the mid-1920s when the WJCC’s agenda became less about maternal protection than about class equity. The WJCC enjoyed support from politicians comfortable with an expansion of federal powers and conversely did not enjoy support from those uncomfortable with expansion of federal powers. Wilson also contends that historians undervalue the extent to which women’s right-wing patriotic associations were funded by business interests such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the Allied Industries of Massachusetts. Jan Doolittle Wilson, The Women’s Joint Congressional Committee and the Politics of Maternalism, 1920-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007). See also Dawley, Struggles for Justice; Kirsten Marie Delegard, “‘Women Patriots:’ Female Activism and the Politics of Anti Radicalism, 1919-1935” (PhD dissertation, Duke University, 1999); Francesca Constance Morgan, “‘Home and Country:’ Women, Nation, and the Daughters of the American Revolution, 1890-1939” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1998); Kim E. Nielsen, Un-American Womanhood: Antiradicalism, Antifeminism, and the First Red Scare (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001).

17 This was not a new argument in the 1920s. These arguments operated in the nineteenth century against woman’s suffrage and other reform measures. Delegard, “Women Patriots,” p. 190; J. Stanley Lemons, The Woman Citizen: Social Justice Feminists in the 1920s (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1990), pp. 11-12, 210.

alleged links between supposedly subversive organizations. It was eventually published in Henry Ford’s right-wing newspaper The Dearborn Independent in March 1924 and gained a certain legitimacy that plagued progressive women’s groups for the rest of the decade.18

Anti-radical women also attacked progressive maternalists within their own organizations, including the GFWC, crippling progressive maternalism from within.

Conservative clubwomen had been part of women’s organizations since their founding, learned the same leadership and political skills as their progressive colleagues and even shared in many of their ideas about citizenship and the power of motherhood for addressing social ills. It was not until progressive maternalists gained power on the national stage and began to reformulate the responsibilities of the state that anti-radicals mobilized against the very maternalist ideals they had hitherto supported.19 Anti-radical clubwomen challenged progressive maternalists’ authority to speak for all women and their right to use the state as a surrogate parent. These attacks eroded the foundation upon which progressive maternalists’ moral authority rested. Anti-radical members put so much pressure on their organizations from within that they nearly eviscerated the progressive impulse that formerly defined women’s reform activism. As one historian notes, “Women’s clubs never recaptured their earlier vibrancy or political influence.”20

18 Delegard, “Women Patriots,” pp. 51-65; Lemons, The Woman Citizen, pp. 210-214-216; Wilson, The Women’s Joint Congressional Committee, pp. 148-155.

19 Michel and Rosen, “The Paradox of Maternalism.”

20 Delegard, “Women Patriots,” pp. 247-248.

Anti-radicals’ affect on the General Federation became apparent in the early

1920s. Anti-radical sentiment percolated around the proposed Sheppard-Towner

Maternity and Infancy Act in 1921 – a proposed national health care plan for mothers and infants – and became more vocal in 1925 around a proposed constitutional amendment to ban child labor. Both issues were top priorities for the GFWC and its umbrella women’s association, the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee. A small insurgency began, led by writer Georgia May Martin of Louisville, Kentucky. Martin used a states’ rights argument to denounce such federal measures and urged local women’s clubs to exercise their “clubs’ rights” against the GFWC’s agenda. Not a devoted anti-radical herself,

Martin nonetheless gained a following among anti-radical clubwomen who feared the

WJCC as a socialist enterprise dedicated to destroying “free government.”21

The GFWC at the national level successfully fended off these feints for a few years, but the cracks in its solidarity with progressive maternalism began to show. When it participated in Carrie Chapman Catt’s politically moderate National Conference on the

Cause and Cure of War in 1925, the GFWC did not endorse the resolutions, fearful that they endangered national security. That same year, the GFWC passed a resolution at national convention to study the “plan for destructive revolution in the United States by international communists” (which, the resolution averred, was “no myth,” but “proven fact”).22 Internal debates beginning in 1926 over the renewal of Sheppard-Towner rent the organization and sapped its energy to advocate controversial reforms. Opponents cast

21 Ibid. pp. 252-260.

22 Quoted in Delegard, “Women Patriots,” p. 260.

the Act as an attempt to nationalize children into wards of the state, eradicating the need for the private family and ushering in Soviet-style (and atheistic) parenting.

Conservatives saw the expansion of local and state public health infrastructure under the

Act as emblematic of this transformation; they also opposed the measure on fiscal grounds.23 In 1928, as if to wave the flag of surrender, the General Federation withdrew from the WJCC and elected as president DAR member Bettie Monroe Sippel, a clear signal of its new political orientation.24

The General Federation never really regained its progressive maternalist platform.

Whereas the Great Depression revived progressive politics among many groups, it did not among the General Federation. Clubwomen may have staffed the New Deal bureaucracy, but they were a holdover from an earlier progressive incarnation of the

GFWC and did not represent the current direction of the organization. Instead, the

GFWC aligned with anti-radical groups such as the International Committee to Combat the World Menace of Communism, distributed anti-radical propaganda that classified former allies LWV and WTUL as “red,” and encouraged “Americanism” and

“citizenship” study programs.25 It seems significant that while its former colleagues were helping to shape the New Deal, the GFWC’s primary civic activity during the Depression years was its work to create a women’s auxiliary at the American Cancer Society.26

23 Sheppard-Towner was extended until 1929 and then shut down.

24 Delegard, “Women Patriots,” pp. 307-308.

25 Ibid. p. 308.

26 Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. II, p. 45.

In one realm the General Federation remained somewhat allied with its former maternalist peers during the interwar years, separating it from the right wing: internationalism. Like other leading women’s organizations at the turn of the century the

Young Women’s Christian Association and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the GFWC had forged international ties at the turn of the century with clubwomen overseas, most frequently American expatriates or elite local women. The GFWC advanced similar programs for women’s advancement and municipal housekeeping abroad as it did in the United States, using the same arguments about women’s maternal responsibilities. Such essentialist gender constructions fostered a sense of unity with women – specifically, mothers – worldwide and contributed to the evolution of an international women’s peace movement. Although the GFWC was not intimately involved at the front lines of this movement, pacifist leadership frequently comprised clubwomen, most notably Jane Addams, and encouraged a certain internationalist-not- quite-pacifist outlook within the General Federation.27

When women’s peace movements came under anti-radicals’ attacks in the 1920s

(claiming that pacifism was part of a Moscow-directed international communist conspiracy to undermine the United States and capitalism), the General Federation hedged its bets. It took pains to steer clear of Addams’s leftist Women’s International

League for Peace and Freedom. Indeed, it was in part WILPF’s purported association

27 The GFWC held peace institutes across the country to encourage will for peace in the years leading up to the war, for example, but when war was imminent, the GFWC threw its energies into the cause (unlike its more committed pacifist colleagues) and was recognized after the war for its extensive contributions. Mary Jean Houde, Reaching Out: A Story of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (Chicago: The Mobium Press, 1989), pp. 137-161.

with the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee that prompted the GFWC to withdraw from the WJCC. The GFWC instead participated in Catt’s more moderate Conference on the Cause and Cure of War, but did not fully endorse the Conference’s policies. Despite its hesitancy to commit itself to a specific pacifist position, however, the GFWC did not abandon its belief that peace was “woman’s cause.” As mothers, it argued, all women wanted peace so their children would be safe.

The GFWC attempted to accommodate this position with a political culture suspicious of pacifism by framing internationalism as key to national security. Although the right wing castigated internationalism as part of a communist conspiracy, GFWC leaders claimed that internationalism was the only way to prevent a communist (or fascist, or any non-democratic) conspiracy against the United States. It supported the

League of Nations and the World Court, contending that international cooperation was the best way to ensure peace and protect American interests. In the 1930s, the General

Federation supported President Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy in Latin and South

America as a means of shoring up American stature in the region. Club leaders made

Good Will tours to spread American influence and urged clubwomen to study other cultures and regions. Although it resisted intervening in growing tensions in Europe and

Asia – the GFWC supported bans on armament sales to warring nations – it repeatedly did so out of a commitment to international womanhood rather than isolationism.28 Yet when war appeared imminent by the late 1930s, GFWC leaders called on clubwomen to prepare for war mobilization because it was in the nation’s best interests to do so. When

28 Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. I, pp. 107-112, 234-238.

Sara Whitehurst of Maryland became GFWC president in 1941, her platform included a

“call to arms for national defense for America” and clubwomen responded.29 World War

II clubwomen set aside their desire for international cooperation and did their patriotic duty by giving the war their full support. National security demanded it.

In the postwar era, a “national security” platform blended the General

Federation’s more conservative domestic agenda with its historical commitment to internationalism. Like most Americans, the GFWC interpreted World War II as a war to prevent the spread of fascist imperialism and save democracy. For national security, the

General Federation focused on revitalizing democracy in both the national and international arenas. This remained its primary goal in the postwar era as well. All of its domestic program work from preventing juvenile delinquency to community improvement initiatives aimed to strengthen a democratic citizenry. In its international program work, including its vigorous support of the United Nations, the GFWC similarly argued that international cooperation best spread democracy and strengthened American interests abroad.

Through this work, the General Federation articulated a new brand of maternalist politics. In all of its domestic and international programs, the General Federation invoked clubwomen’s historical role as community mothers to place responsibility for the community’s democratic health on clubwomen’s shoulders. As the Cold War hardened, anticommunism became a central feature of this work both domestically and internationally. But because the GFWC looked to individual clubwomen to usher their

29 Ibid. pp. 113-117.

communities safely into democratic citizenship, its postwar maternalism was not as vulnerable to red baiting as it had been during the 1920s. To the contrary, postwar maternalism became a vehicle of anticommunism as an expression of faith in the individual, her independence from the state, and the value of individual democratic activism. It was women’s contribution to winning the Cold War.

The General Federation’s Postwar Maternalism

With postwar maternalism, the General Federation declared clubwomen arbiters of citizenship and, by extension, the national character. Locating women’s contribution to the body politic within the home, the GFWC identified mother’s homemaking an essential weapon in the fight to protect democracy. Homemaking produced democratic citizens within the home and outside of it. The skills women gleaned from homemaking and motherhood prepared them to go into their communities, whether local or international, and spread democracy and other American values. Implicit in this task was the belief that clubwomen knew what “American values” meant. How they defined them held tremendous significance to clubwomen’s work and, more importantly, what kind of

America they sought to preserve.

In its discussion of the national character, the General Federation promoted an ethic it defined as “Americanism.” This construction shaped the civic lessons clubwomen taught about American values at home as well as abroad. Americanism reflected the GFWC’s belief that democracy relied on the individual. It called for the individual’s active engagement in democratic practices, acceptance of personal

responsibility for one’s own well-being and the well-being of one’s community, and the preservation of the free market and capitalism as the economic expression of individualism. Undergirding these tenets was strong religious faith in God – especially

Christianity – because clubwomen contended that it was religion that first taught the value and integrity of the individual, creating personal will for democracy; without religion, there would be no democracy. The GFWC was espousing this definition of the national character by the end of World War II, but it gained new weight with the onset of the Cold War when individualism, capitalism, and religion each stood in their own right as powerful symbols of the differences between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Postwar maternalism – and the Americanism ethic guiding it – eludes easy political categorization. On the one hand, it fell in line with the prevailing Cold War liberal consensus. Cold War liberals called for a robust cooperative politics that was hard on communism at home and abroad. Wary of extremist politics after the horrors of

World War II, Cold War liberals promoted a “Vital Center” that advocated political moderation and aggressive strength when necessary. It targeted the middle of the political spectrum, appealed to centrist Democrats and Republicans alike, and for the most part defined Truman’s and Eisenhower’s presidential administrations. Although the

GFWC did not always agree with specific Cold War liberal domestic goals, the General

Federation’s fervent belief in civic activism and staunch anticommunism fit well with this political culture, especially when it came to foreign policy. Like the Cold War liberal

consensus, the General Federation supported the United Nations, monetary and trade policy to contain communism, and American strength overseas.30

The GFWC’s construction of gendered citizenship bears the influence of Cold

War liberalism. The General Federation upheld Cold War liberalism’s language about a healthy, strong, vital citizenry capable of fending off external threats and expelling internal subversion, all of which coded citizenship in masculine terms. But the GFWC manipulated this construction to argue that women were the key to nurturing such a citizenry. Women needed to be healthy, strong, and vital citizens themselves to teach it in others. The GFWC believed women should embrace domesticity as postwar culture idealized, to be sure, but by connecting domesticity to public activism, the GFWC showed how domesticity informed both private and public citizenship. Doing so, it tried to counteract widespread cultural suspicion of strong women, contending instead that there was a “good” strong woman archetype that could be put in service of the nation.

Cold War liberalism may have been a masculinized political construction, but that did not preclude a vital public role for women. Indeed, it was not possible without mother’s civic education.31

On the other hand, however, postwar maternalism could foster a gendered antistatism that set it apart from Cold War liberalism. Postwar maternalism’s reverence

30 See Alonzo Hamby, Liberalism and Its Challengers. 2nd Ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Helen Laville, Cold War Women: The International Affairs of American Women’s Organisations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom. With a New Introduction by the Author (New York: Da Capo Press, Inc., 1988).

31 For a discussion of the gendering of Cold War liberalism as masculine, see Ruth Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1930-1965 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000).

for the individual often translated into a resistance to the welfare state and state intervention in private institutions when it threatened maternal authority. As civic mothers, clubwomen guarded against threats to mother’s domain, whether that was a physical domicile or community.32 This commitment was reflected in its model of activism, which relied on personal engagement with issues, local investigation and outreach, and public education. It was a tried-and-true method originating with nineteenth-century clubwork when women’s limited access to insider politics made localized civic activism necessary.33 But this approach also embodied the organization’s postwar political orientation. Glorifying the local and the personal over government bureaucracies and solutions, the GFWC’s model of activism reinforced its skepticism of the welfare state.

As such, the postwar General Federation hints at fissures in the New Deal order.

Americanism held that the nation had been built on the pioneering spirit and rewarded ingenuity and individual entrepreneurship. It believed these characteristics would best flourish in the absence of government interference. Although the GFWC believed in a strong military and some social services such as public education, it opposed others that it deemed too expansive of government, such as proposals for national health care and

32 The GFWC’s willingness to seek state action to protect domestic maternal authority against external influence – as happened during the GFWC’s anti-obscenity campaigns – underscores the centrality of gender in the GFWC’s construction of the state and its responsibilities. To be discussed more in Chapter Five, gender drove its antistatism, making its antistatist position less than ideologically consistent. It just so happened that the GFWC often saw the state as the biggest threat to maternal authority.

33 Scher posits that Progressive-Era associations formed not so much to gain access to insider politics, but to subvert insider politics, which were corrupt Party machines uninterested in helping its constituents. Progressive activism, and by extension most women’s groups, demanded nonpartisanship as a pillar of progressive’s moral claim to reform. Scher, “Cold War on the Home Front.”

federal aid to education. Club leaders cautioned that the Founding Fathers rightly had guarded against a strong state and it was clubwomen’s American responsibility to continue that tradition by preserving the institutions that bolstered free society, namely the private family, civic associations, and the free market. In this light, the General

Federation defined as American those systems which protected private property (and racial privilege) against interventionist social justice measures characteristic of the New

Deal.34

The General Federation’s positioning of itself as defending individual liberty against an over-reaching state was not an uncommon stance among voluntary associations during the postwar era. For many Americans, civil society was a trademark of American liberty. The right to free association brought groups of people together and served as a bulwark against any type of mass movement, whether from the state or from the populous. In a nation of vibrant civic groups, no one group or leader or even the state could become so powerful as to enslave the others. After witnessing fascism and totalitarianism during World War II, Americans’ faith in civil society was even greater.

In the postwar era, voluntary associations enjoyed unprecedented membership, in part because socially mobile Americans joined civic groups to create a sense of community in their new suburbs built on recent prosperity, but also because associational life was

34 For discussion of how the myth of the individual was deeply engrained in the postwar national imagination, see David M. Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).

considered an expression of American liberty and a rejection of fascism and totalitarianism.35

Yet voluntary associations were part of state-building, not separate from it. In

1969, reflecting on the popularity of postwar associational life, Grant McConnell challenged popular postwar assumptions that voluntary associations protected individual liberty. He mused that associations gave order to the populous by connecting disparate peoples across a vast nation, shaped them into manageable cohorts with identifiable leaders, and held them accountable to an internally authorized system of law that keeps members in check. Associations gave public order to the social body to such an extent,

McConnell contended, that, “the distinction between what is private and what is public has been blurred so that it is often extraordinarily difficult to determine which is the character of a particular form of action or rule.” According to McConnell, voluntary associations filled the spaces between people and institutions while extending the reach of the state and giving the appearance of decentralization.36

Civic organizations such as the General Federation must be seen not only as a feature of America’s free society, then, but as a creator of a certain type of free society that protected maternal authority rooted in private institutions. With its ideal of the national character tied to the individual and the free market, the GFWC bolstered the myth that American greatness was dependent on the “weak” state and ignored the

35 See Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “The Biography of a Nation of Joiners,” American Historical Review 50, No. 1 (October 1944), pp. 1-25.

36 Grant McConnell, “The Public Values of the Private Association,” in J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman, Eds., Voluntary Associations (New York: Atherton Press, 1969), pp. 147-160, quote p. 155.

political work this construction did. As William J. Novak has argued, however, the strength of the American state lies not in the might of its centralized authority, but in its ability to operate through non-state apparatus, through diffuse legal jurisdictions, bureaucracies, and civil society. The myth of the weak state, he continues, promotes a false public/private divide that masks the ways in which the state actually operates in the private sphere to promote a certain power structure. For conservatives during the Cold

War, the myth created erroneous historical justification for neo-liberalism, deregulation, and privatization. Clubwomen’s glorification of their “Americanism principles” – of the free market as a purely independent institution capable of self-regulation, profit, and protection of workers, as well as their belief in civic associations’ ability to ameliorate social needs, and their broader rejection of state intervention into “private” spaces – actually endorsed a particular kind of state structure and political power that protected maternal authority.37

The General Federation’s program work made this abundantly clear. Its priority programs around citizenship training, civic activism, and international affairs each promoted private association and voluntary activism – models of citizenship in which maternal authority flourished. That the GFWC built these programs as an outgrowth of

37 Novak draws on the scholarship of sociologist Michael Mann, who considers state power in terms of despotic power (the ability to rule unchecked by other state powers or civil society) and infrastructural power (the “ability to ‘penetrate civil society’ and implement policies throughout a given territory”). With its breadth and diversity of institutions, jurisdictions, laws, and customs, the American state exercises infrastructural power and is in fact a very strong state. Novak contends that the very “characteristic sprawl of the American state is key to both its distinctive strength and its elusive nature.” Notably, this model also incorporates the extent to which the state uses the private sector to advance its public objectives. William J. Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review 13, No. 3 (June 2008), pp. 752-772; quotes pp. 763, 766.

women’s homemaking solidified its construction of gendered citizenship as rooted in maternal authority. The GFWC resisted any infringement on that authority from liberal fiscal policy to state welfare programs to popular culture. Citizenship training, civic activism, and international affairs reinforced clubwomen’s self-perception as the nation’s mothers responsible for training those around them in Americanism. This they did within their homes and in their communities through direct education efforts and by setting an example of personally engaged activism and promoting democratic participation.

These maternalist programs were both local and international in scope, giving women a specific, critical role to play in the Cold War. Like many Americans, the

General Federation argued that the health of the nation and victory over the Soviet Union depended upon a vibrant grassroots citizenry and upon protecting American interests overseas. The Americanism ethic guiding postwar maternalist programs could be applied to both situations. Through these programs, women set about creating a political culture at the grassroots receptive to official (masculine) domestic and foreign policies.

On the homefront, Americanism roused individuals out of civic apathy and mitigated potential communist infiltration and other forms of domestic subversion.

Nothing captured this work so much as the 1952 “Americanism campaign” launched by

GFWC president Mildred Ahlgren, which translated the Americanism ethic into an action campaign. The General Federation led get out the vote drives, pushed for women’s participation in public life, and prepared study sessions of American political and economic thought. It urged Americanism in schools, encouraged appreciation of

America’s cultural heritage, and implored clubwomen to preserve the family, democratic

institutions, and private enterprise. The campaign’s emphasis on a rededication to religion became the campaign’s top priority, making the stakes in the battle between

American freedom and Soviet totalitarianism nothing less than personal and national salvation. Each of these items on the Americanism campaign’s agenda relied on clubwomen’s familial and communal maternal status to guide those around them into robust citizenship practices.

Internationally, Americanism informed the messages American clubwomen sent clubwomen in other nations, priming their international colleagues for advancing democracy, self-reliance, and capitalism within their own countries. As a global ideological battle, the Cold War meant that the United States was in danger anywhere

Soviet influence could be felt. Soviet totalitarianism would shut down democratic institutions, crush local peoples under its boot heel, and close off free markets.38

Through their international clubwork, American clubwomen believed they would build personal relationships with international women as mothers united in peace and from there cultivate in their fellow mothers a love of democratic institutions and the importance of personal activism in addressing local needs. Men may have created the policies to fight the Cold War, but clubwomen believed women would create grassroots support for those policies.

With its local and international activism, the General Federation’s postwar maternalism constructed an ideal of the national character that fit the organization’s own

38 American corporate interests had long been a stand-in for American political interests overseas. See Emily Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890- 1945 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982).

complicated political orientation. Identifying the national character with active civic engagement, the individual’s responsibility for personal and communal well-being, and preservation of the free market, this ethic of “Americanism” resonated with Cold War political culture. It demanded vigorous citizens, strong and committed in their anticommunism, and suspicious of state powers or any infringement on maternal authority. Because maternalism drove its Americanism politics – a belief in a mother’s rights, responsibilities, and skills – the GFWC cannot be neatly categorized according to political convention. Instead, the GFWC’s postwar maternalism must be understood on its own terms, analyzed from the root of activism – the home – and the ways in which the organization activated mother’s domestic citizenship in other arenas.

The Project

The General Federation of Women’s Clubs remains understudied in the histories of women’s post-World War II activism.39 When it appears in the historiography, most

39 Despite early scholarship that called the inter-wave years the “doldrums,” recent scholarship has shown that even during the Age of Domesticity of the early post-World War II years women continued to organize and agitate through partisan politics, women’s organizations, and mixed-sex groups. As part of organized labor, the peace movement, Leftist and right-wing politics, and the civil rights movement, women exercised the lessons they had learned through the woman’s movement and made vital contributions to a broad range of causes. Women’s organizations in particular bridged the inter-wave years as spaces where women gained leadership experience, built political skills, networked among female activists, and often kept alive social justice priorities amidst a conservative political climate. See Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism; Nancy Gabin, Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers, 1935- 1975 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998); Laville, Cold War Women; Susan J. Lynn, Progressive Women in Conservative Times: Racial Justice, Peace, and Feminism, 1945 to the 1960s (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992); Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988); Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Joanne Meyerowitz, Ed., Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1965 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994); Sylvie

studies credit it with nurturing women’s political and leadership skills and keeping alive certain feminist priorities such as the Equal Rights Amendment, but give little attention to the organization beyond such categorization.40 There are three institutional histories of the GFWC and, although they catalogue much information, they generally provide superficial narratives.41 Those analytic studies that take a closer look at the postwar

General Federation concentrate either on specific GFWC programs within the organization or on the GFWC’s postwar tactics.42 This approach helpfully situates the

GFWC among contemporary women’s groups and the trajectory of middle-class women’s activism during the twentieth century. But by restricting analysis to a particular aspect of the GFWC, this scholarship misses the opportunity to fully explore what the

General Federation can say about women’s political culture at the dawn of the Cold War.

Murray, The Progressive Housewife: Community Activism in Suburban Queens, 1945-1966 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Michelle Nickerson, “Domestic Threats: Women, Gender, and Conservatism in Cold War Los Angeles, 1945-1966” (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2003); William O’Neill, Everyone was Brave: The Rise and Fall of Feminism in America (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969); Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990); Catherine Rymph, Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Ware, Beyond Suffrage; Kate Weigand, Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

40 See Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism; Laville, Cold War Women; Lynn, Progressive Women; and Rupp and Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums. The GFWC avoided the ERA when it was particularly divisive in the 1920s, but was one of the first organizations to take it up again in the 1940s, signing on in 1944. A prominent clubwoman, Anna K. Wiley, was also editor of the official magazine of the National Woman’s Party, the coordinator of the ERA campaign.

41 Houde, Reaching Out; Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. I; Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. II.

42 See Andrea Friedman, “Sadists and Sissies: Anti-pornography Campaigns in Cold War America,” Gender & History 15, No. 2 (August 2003), pp. 201-227; A. Lanethea Mathews-Gardner, “From Woman’s Club to NGO: The Changing Terrain of Women’s Civic Engagement in the Mid-Twentieth Century United States” (PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, 2003); Margaret Nunnelley Olsen, “One Nation, One World: American Clubwomen and the Politics of Internationalism, 1945-1961,” (PhD dissertation, Rice University, 2007); Phillips, “‘Unity in Diversity?;’” Rupp and Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums.

“Maternal Citizens” adds to the scholarship on three levels. First, it contributes to our knowledge about the General Federation’s postwar work. Karen Blair’s Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914 stands as the authoritative history of the GFWC, but only covers the organization through World War I. Some studies of the post-World War II era include the GFWC as one component of a broader examination about postwar culture. Laura McEnaney’s Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization

Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties, for example, discusses the General Federation’s civil defense efforts as part of her analysis of the ideology and implementation of civil defense in the early Cold War. Margaret Olsen’s “One Nation, One World: American

Clubwomen and the Politics of Internationalism, 1945-1961,” compares the GFWC with other women’s organizations to explore the ways in which internationalism became an organizing principle for postwar women’s activism and claims to public power.43

Other studies are more concerned with how the postwar years contributed to the organization’s decline after the 1960s than with the postwar years as a distinct moment in

GFWC history. A. Lanethea Mathews-Gardner’s “From Woman’s Club to NGO: The

Changing Terrain of Women’s Civic Engagement in the Mid-Twentieth Century United

States” examines the GFWC’s postwar political strategies as part of an investigation of women’s clubs and their inability to adapt to changing political practices in the postwar era. Her focus on the continuity of tactics and priorities from the nineteenth century to the postwar era obscures how the GFWC had changed since its early years and does not

43 Laura McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Olsen, “One Nation, One World.”

adequately explore how clubwomen’s tactics to build public awareness and encourage local activism were particularly well-suited to the organization’s political agenda, nor the range of its Cold War-oriented priorities.44 By taking the early postwar years on their own terms, “Maternal Citizens” gets at these elements within the General Federation.

Second, “Maternal Citizens” provides new depth to the narrative of postwar mainstream women’s political culture. The General Federation worked in partnership with mainstream groups such as the American Association of University Women

(AAUW), the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs (BPW), the Young Woman’s Christian Association (YWCA), and to a lesser extent the League of

Women Voters (LWV) – exemplars of inter-wave mainstream women’s groups – on a number of issues pertaining to women’s advancement in public life, national security, peace, and youth service.45 These groups were proponents of various progressive causes.

The YWCA championed civil rights, the BPW and AAUW took the lead on women’s rights, and the LWV advocated a stronger welfare state. But the GFWC trended more conservatively than its peer women’s organizations during the 1940s and 1950s. It remained mute on civil rights, extolled women’s domestic responsibilities, and frequently resisted expansion of the welfare state. The GFWC found common ground with these mainstream groups mainly on matters of national security and international affairs; its firm commitment to the United Nations set it apart from right-wing women’s

44 Mathews-Gardner, “From Woman’s Club to NGO.” See also Philips, “Unity in Diversity?”

45 McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home; Laville, Cold War Women; Rupp and Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums.

organizations. The General Federation was both part of the mainstream and different from it, complicating the traditional narrative about postwar mainstream women’s political culture and social reform.

Maternalism offers a promising avenue for developing a fuller picture of mainstream women’s activism in the postwar era. Scholars have begun to examine the presence of maternalist arguments in mainstream women’s organizations’ national defense work. McEnaney provides astute analysis of the “militaristic-maternalist” civil defense efforts of the AAUW, BPW, and GFWC that enabled them to carve a space for themselves among the national security establishment.46 Helen Laville’s Cold War

Women: The International Activities of American Women’s Organisations [sic.] demonstrates that these same groups as well as the LWV, the YWCA, and the National

Council of Negro Women used essentialist gender constructions to justify their international organizing on behalf of American interests during the Cold War.47 Amy

Swerdlow, Dee Garrison and others have shown that women on the other side of the security debate used maternalism to frame messages protesting the arms race and the national security state.48 The proliferation of maternalist arguments in national defense activism perhaps points to how transgressive women’s efforts to participate in Cold War

46 McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home, pp. 97-110.

47 Laville, Cold War Women.

48 See the following essays in Meyerowitz, ed., Not June Cleaver: Harriet Hyman Alonso, “Mayhem & Moderation: Women Peace Activists during the McCarthy Era,” pp. 128-150; Dee Garrison, “‘Our Skirts Gave Them Courage:’ The Civil Defense Protest Movement in New York City, 1955-1961,” pp. 201-226; Deborah A. Gerson, “‘Is Family Devotion Now Subversive?:’ Familialism Against McCarthyism,” pp. 151-176. See also Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

policy-making actually were. Using the familiar language of motherhood and essentialist gender constructions may have made their transgression less visible and more permissible.

On issues outside national defense, however, little work has been done to further the analysis of maternalism among mainstream women’s organizations.49 Contemporary accounts abounded with depictions of women as public housekeepers, conveying the ubiquity of gender in legitimating women’s presence in political life, but the scholarship suggests these mainstream women’s groups considered themselves professional citizens conscientiously working on behalf of women but not necessarily as women citizens.

Carole Stanford Bucy argues that the LWV for one deliberately eschewed the idea of a distinct female citizen.50 Abby Scher concurs that postwar women’s organizations on both the Left and the Right relied on women’s “use of study and reason to become mini- experts on issues” to explain their activism on behalf of “public interest” and no longer needed motherhood to leverage public authority.51 Yet maternalism remained a crucial component of postwar GFWC activism, suggesting the saliency of motherhood among

49 Mathews-Gardner remains a notable exception. Sylvie Murray contends that women on the Left used motherhood to advance their causes only when other strategies failed. Michelle Nickerson suggests right- wing women’s use of essentialist gender constructions was a strategy to expand political power and not necessarily a genuine political orientation. Catherine Rymph illustrates that the National Federation of Republican Women deliberately appealed to maternalist and essentialist gender constructions to bring conservative women into the organization. Murray, The Progressive Housewife; Nickerson, “Domestic Threats”; Rymph, Republican Women.

50 Bucy, “Exercising the Franchise, Building the Body Politic.”

51 Scher, “Cold War on the Home Front.”

civic-minded women and its ability to bring women together from across the political spectrum in ways that defy easy Left-Right distinctions.

Finally, “Maternal Citizens” provides a counterpoint to the literature that depicts a hyper-masculinized Cold War political culture. Historians have explored the heavily gendered-male language of postwar political discourse, often recalling public intellectual

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s writings about the “Vital Center” and the Cold War as a crisis of masculinity. Studies of postwar political culture have reinforced this interpretation with examinations of red-baiting and persecution of homosexuals within the State Department and other state venues. These gender analyses show how postwar Americans imagined women at best as the figurative opposite of the vigorous public man (as happy wives secluded in domestic bliss) and at worst as dominating vipers sapping male vitality and crippling the democracy.52 Even those studies not directly offering a gender analysis of postwar political culture nevertheless project a masculinized political realm with their attention to official state apparatus and political history of the Cold War.53 Diplomatic historians including Emily Rosenberg have encouraged greater attention to women and gender in Cold War scholarship. McEnaney and Laville have begun that work, but the

52 See K. A. Cuordileone, “‘Politics in an Age of Anxiety:’ Cold War Political Culture and the Crisis in American Masculinity, 1949-1960,” Journal of American History 87, No. 2 (September 2000), pp. 515- 545; Robert D. Dean, Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001); Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White; Schlesinger, The Vital Center.

53 See Alan Brinkley, Liberalism and Its Discontents (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Paul A. Carter, Another Part of the Fifties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); William H. Chafe, Ed., The Achievement of American Liberalism: The New Deal and its Legacies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); Hamby, Liberalism and Its Challengers; Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

former considers domestic civil defense efforts and the latter considers international activities of American groups; neither provides a holistic view that puts domestic and international activities fully in dialogue with one another.54

“Maternal Citizens” suggests how much deeper a gendered reading in postwar political culture can go when the ways in which women participated in this culture is brought to the fore. The Cold War encompassed all of the General Federation’s activities and priorities, and it influenced the very fiber of the organization from policy decisions to models of activism. It operated from a position of womanhood, believing that women’s contributions could mitigate the dilemmas of the day. Rather than fight against reigning gender constructions, the GFWC manipulated them to leverage greater public authority.

They attempted to write themselves into the Cold War in concrete ways and mediate the masculine tenor of postwar political culture. How the General Federation did this provides an important intervention in postwar studies and presents a more robust historical narrative of Cold War political culture.

The General Federation’s ideals of women’s citizenship did important political work during the Cold War. The GFWC told members that each clubwoman was responsible for nurturing citizens and communities in the values it defined as

“American:” democratic activism, personal accountability for one’s self and one’s communities, and the free market. Assuming the right to serve as arbiters of citizenship,

54 Laville, Cold War Women; McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home; Emily S. Rosenberg, “Gender,” The Journal of American History 77, No. 1 (June 1990), pp. 116-124. For more on women in diplomatic history, see also Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1917-1994 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995); Craig N. Murphy, “Seeing Women, Recognizing Gender, Recasting International Relations,” International Organization 50, No. 3 (Summer 1996), pp. 513-538.

postwar clubwomen defined the national character in principles significantly removed from the progressive vision of their forebears. Reclaiming the individual’s rights and responsibilities – particularly a mother’s – to raise her own family, to tend to her own community’s needs, and to encourage women abroad in this model of activism, clubwomen reasserted maternal prerogative and attempted to diminish public reliance on the state. Using the framework of citizenship to approach clubwomen’s activities,

“Maternal Citizens” provides a gender analysis of postwar political culture that complicates current understandings of maternalism, civic engagement, and the Cold War.

The project is divided into four chapters on key components of the General

Federation’s postwar maternalism: the postwar home, internationalism, the Americanism campaign, and youth citizenship training. Each area of program work relied on women’s maternal responsibilities for rearing a democratic citizenry, whether at home or abroad.

Taken together, they created a comprehensive strategy for preserving the Americanism ethic and winning the Cold War.

Chapter Two, “Homemaker Professionalization: Training Clubwomen for

Postwar Citizenship,” situates the American home as the centerpiece of postwar clubwork and establishes the GFWC’s belief in an ideal of gendered citizenship that assigned women civic responsibilities based on their domestic duties. It begins in 1945 with the end of the war and concerns about the state of the “American home” and its relationship to the fate of democracy. According to the GFWC, the American home was the building block of American democracy and the foundation upon which clubwomen’s moral authority rested, but social upheaval in various forms threatened to undermine this sacred

institution. The chapter examines the General Federation’s efforts to professionalize homemaking in an attempt to secure the national character and how these professionalization programs changed to accommodate the exigencies of the Cold War.

Under the GFWC’s leadership, clubwomen became mothers and homemakers prepared to nurture a particular kind of citizen who valued democratic institutions, self-reliance, and the free market.

Chapter Three, “Mothers and Cold Warriors: A Gendered Approach to Postwar

Internationalism,” considers how maternalism extended the GFWC’s gendered notion of citizenship into the international arena and created grassroots support for Americanism principles around the globe. It looks at the General Federation’s internationalism in historical perspective as well as its place among other women’s groups in the postwar era before focusing on the early 1950s when its internationalism began to take on a decidedly anticommunist edge. The chapter examines the GFWC’s gendered approach to its support of U.S. foreign policy and public diplomacy efforts including international philanthropy, communications, cultural exchange, and travel. Throughout, the chapter investigates how the GFWC’s internationalism was predicated on imagining common ground among all women as mothers the world over to bring international women into

American women’s sphere of influence. Their historical commitment to internationalism could not be separated from their Cold War mission.

Chapter Four, “The Americanism Campaign: A ‘Women’s Crusade,’” examines the Americanism ethic on the domestic front during the “Americanism” campaign under

GFWC president Mildred Ahlgren between 1952 and 1954. Fearful that clubwomen

were expending too much attention on the international arena at the risk of ignoring the needs in their own backyards, the campaign re-energized clubwomen about democratic institutions, personal accountability, the free market, and religious devotion at home.

Reflective of the heightened anticommunist mood of the nation, the Americanism campaign kept the ideological threat communism posed to the nation at high-pitched fervor. On one level, the chapter explores the components of the Americanism campaign, the assumptions behind the Americanism ethic, and the political goals of the campaign.

On a deeper level, the chapter reveals the ways in which the General Federation constructed Americanism as a deeply gendered ethic, reliant on women’s leadership in both the family and in public activism. It closes with a discussion about the tensions between Americanism as practiced on the national stage and the organization’s internationalism and how maternalism could both reconcile and exacerbate these tensions.

Chapter Five, “Training America’s Youth: Maternal Authority, Civic Activism, and the Modern State,” brings these themes together by examining how clubwomen trained the next generation of citizens in the lessons of Americanism and attempted to retain maternal authority for youth over competing influences. It analyzes the GFWC’s ongoing “Youth Conservation” campaign aimed at curbing juvenile delinquency after

World War II and its community improvement contests of the 1950s. Both initiatives were massive undertakings that could affect all club work and revitalize clubwomen’s

Americanism activism within their communities on behalf of youth and reveal the centrality of gender in the GFWC’s construction of the relationship between the citizen

and the state. The chapter considers what these programs say abut how the GFWC constructed the modern state and what that construction reveals about the broad middle ground of postwar politics.

Framing postwar clubwomen’s public contributions in terms of their maternal ability to train citizens rooted in maternal authority made for a complicated political agenda. As a federation, the GFWC accommodated the political (and regional) positions of its diverse membership. In defense of the American home, the GFWC vigorously endorsed aggressive internationalism, a staple of Cold War liberals – it even occasionally came under attack from the right wing and its own conservative constituents for its internationalism. But the GFWC was hardly comprised of Cold War liberals.

Throughout most of its postwar work, the GFWC’s maternalism resonated with antistatist undertones. Because the General Federation’s antistatism stemmed from maternal prerogative, however, it was less an ideological position than a pragmatic one. When maternal authority was threatened by sources besides the state – by popular culture, for example – clubwomen did not hesitate to turn to the state for enforcement of their moral code and maternal authority. Maternalism demanded that type of intellectual flexibility, making it a compelling glue for this massive network of regionally and politically diverse women.

The General Federation provides important lessons about postwar political culture. First, it exposes the gendered lines along which Cold War liberalism overtook the progressivism of the New Deal and hints at the fissures in postwar consensus politics.

Suspicious of state intervention since the 1920s, the GFWC looked askance at New Deal

social welfare programs for weakening Americans’ character. Committed to its own ideal of Americanism and women’s responsibility for protecting it, the postwar General

Federation frequently skewed rightward and embraced a gendered antistatism. While its peer women’s institutions tackled civil rights and tried to expand the responsibilities of government, the General Federation advanced an ideal of the Americanism ethic that frequently privileged the rights of private property over social justice.

It was internationalism portrayed as national security that kept the GFWC’s maternalism most grounded in the centrist political culture. Separated out from national politics, Americanism in the international context operated on a more theoretical level that left greater room for alignment with Cold War liberalism. Clubwomen used maternalism to forge common ground with mothers around the world and encourage them to accept responsibility for nurturing democracy, personal responsibility, and free markets. These were the defining components of the Americanism ethic, but without the specificity of national political debates attached to them. The pressing need for containing communism made message more important than political form. As such, postwar internationalist maternalism perhaps most closely resembled that of the

Progressive era, only infused with a stringent anticommunism.

Second, the General Federation’s maternalism shows the saliency of motherhood in American postwar politics. The organization had trended rightward since the

Progressive era, but it nonetheless included women from both sides of the political divide. Bi-partisanship was a central feature of the GFWC’s self-identity, considering motherhood as it did as something that transcended Party lines on behalf of the nation.

Women’s work was America’s work and could be done through both major parties. The

General Federation’s voter drives and its insistence that members become informed political actors out of combined maternal duty and patriotism reflected this belief. The political bias of the GFWC’s postwar maternalism came not from being maternalist but in how the organization interpreted the national character maternalism sought to preserve.

Finally, “Maternal Citizens” offers an invaluable counterpoint to the masculine political culture of the Cold War. It explores how the General Federation constructed a gendered notion of citizenship that used traditional women’s work to write clubwomen into the battles of the Cold War. As literal and figurative mothers of their homes, local communities, and the world, clubwomen trained citizens in lessons that would protect democratic institutions and the free market against Soviet aggression on the domestic front and overseas. In so doing, “Maternal Citizens” examines the persistence of maternalist politics in the postwar era but a politics put to different ends than it had been in the Progressive era. No longer routinely turning to the state as an ally in social justice, postwar maternalism looked to clubwomen themselves to bolster the citizenry, preserve private institutions, and remedy social ills.

CHAPTER 2 HOMEMAKER PROFESSIONALIZATION: TRAINING CLUBWOMEN FOR POSTWAR CITIZENSHIP

“The first obligation of…woman…is primarily homemaking. We must dismiss the idea that there is any more essential responsibility for women…The greatest contribution she can make to society is the development of a home environment conducive to the growth of disciplined, well-balance, responsible and happy citizens, while preparing herself for greater political activity a bit later in her career.” – Lucy Dickinson, GFWC President, 19461

On Wednesday morning, June 25, 1947, hundreds of GFWC clubwomen gathered at their national convention to hear a forum titled “What Can We Do About the American

Home?” Young clubwomen from Arizona, California, Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, and

Texas led the discussion. Their concern was palpable. According to clubwomen, the home was the “key to our civilization.”2 But the trials of World War II – family separation, women’s paid employment, relaxed supervision of youth, and social mobility

– had undermined this great institution. Clubwomen believed that Americans, especially young wives, were ill-equipped to deal with these challenges and watched with horror as divorce rates and juvenile delinquency increased. Panelists warned their audience that they must realize that “we as women are failing in increasing numbers in our jobs as

1 Lucy Dickinson, “Salute to the Juniors!” Clubwoman, January 1946, p. 2.

2 Mrs. Thomas Pender, “Education for Jobs versus Education for Life,” panel presentation to the GFWC national convention, June 25, 1947, GFWC, Convention Records (Record Group 3), 1947, Vol. 1, pp. 181- 184, quote p. 181. All GFWC convention records belong to Record Group 3; hereafter all “Convention Records (Record Group 3), [Year],” will be cited as “Convention [Year].”

46 47

homemakers.”1 American women were taking the home for granted and needed to rededicate themselves to training homemakers who would invest their energy in a renaissance of the American home. The future of the nation was at stake. According to one panelist, “No nation has ever survived such disintegration of home life…The dissolution of the home produces the dissolution of society.”2

The American home was the centerpiece of the General Federation’s construction of women’s citizenship and maternalist activism in the postwar era. Because the home was the building block of society, the GFWC argued, the nation was only as strong as its homes. As mothers and homemakers, clubwomen had an enormous responsibility for ensuring the health – social, economic, political – of both. A solid home needed to be grounded in an active community with robust democratic institutions and a vibrant economy, secure from any type of external threat or internal subversion. It was clubwomen’s maternal as well as patriotic duty to nurture such familial and communal well-being. Consequently clubwomen’s homemaking extended beyond their personal domiciles into the community at large, turning homemaking into a distinctly civic activity. The home was the heart of broader civic maternalist activism.

This was not necessarily a new idea. Since the founding of the nation, American women’s citizenship had often been understood in terms of domestic responsibilities.

“Republican Mothers” expressed their citizenship in the early republic by wielding their

1 Ibid. p. 183.

2 Mrs. Russell Morgan, “The Establishments of Clinics in Schools and Communities to Give Young People Specialized Marital Advice,” GFWC, Convention 1947, pp. 186-188, quote p. 186.

maternal influence to guide husbands and sons down the path of public virtue.

Homemaking and motherhood remained the central feature of women’s citizenship throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries as well. Women’s home management in the mid-nineteenth century exemplified by Catharine Beecher held political significance by creating national order and defining American values at a time when regional differences split the country. Many of the female social reform movements at the end of the century such as temperance and woman’s suffrage justified women’s entrance into public life by claiming that women’s domestic duties could purify and thereby strengthen the nation. Homemaking and motherhood framed women’s activism in familiar and acceptable terms, providing a vehicle to fuller citizenship at a time when such public activism transgressed gender norms.3

The 1947 GFWC panelists’ jeremiads, however, held particular meaning in the early postwar years when Americans believed that the home directly contributed to preservation of American values against fascism and communism. First, the home was a site of democracy where family members learned how to participate in and value a democracy. Coming out of World War II, it was homemakers’ primary civic responsibility to prepare families for democratic citizenship. Second, the differences between American democracy and German fascism or Soviet communism crystallized in the home around the degree to which the family operated as a private unit independent of

3 See Ruth Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986); Anne M. Boylan, The Origins of Women’s Activism: New York and Boston, 1797-1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976).

the state. Third, as an idealized private realm, the home reinforced clubwomen’s valorization of private institutions such as the free market as more “American” than public ones. With this construction of the American home, the General Federation made the home central to American victory over fascism and communism.

On this first point, clubwomen considered the home the key to democracy.

Americans nurtured in democratic family relationships learned the inherent worth of the individual, the value in the open exchange of ideas, and the methods of democratic decision-making. In 1945, clubwomen believed that such domestic practices promoted positive psychological development and produced “normal” adult citizens. Invested in democratic traditions, the healthy citizen would resist “abnormal” politics like fascism and other anti-democratic movements. Instead, he would spread peace by building constructive interpersonal relationships beyond the domestic sphere. As the Cold War set in, clubwomen were less concerned with fighting the next Hitler than halting communism and used family practices to impress upon citizens the preeminence of democracy. With no end to the conflict in sight, the United States needed an absolutely vigilant citizenry at the grassroots level who could keep the fires of democracy alive indefinitely until the nation emerged victorious. Clubwomen took very seriously their responsibility to instill in all their family members this faith in democracy. Their success as homemakers would be directly measurable by the United States’ triumph over the Soviet Union.

On this second point, the home embodied the freedom of private institutions from state intervention in a democracy as compared to a fascist or communist state.

Physically, postwar American homes illustrated the sanctity of the American family as a

private unit. New single-family homes with expansive lawns and picket fences in planned developments of booming suburbs isolated the family by creating a barrier between the private and public realms, keeping it safe from unwanted intrusion.4 The private American home was the creation of its members for good or ill. It was within the home that parents determined for themselves their approach to all things familial from financial planning to childrearing to religious worship. Good parents, especially good mothers, would inculcate in their children democratic values and reverence for religion by choice; they would not teach these values by coercion. Fascism and communism, by contrast, erased the boundary between public and private and denied parents the most fundamental personal freedoms in familial relationships. The fascist or communist family was beholden to the state. It was an abomination of the private family.

Religion was a prominent feature in clubwomen’s configuration of public and private power over the home. Although there was perhaps greater religious diversity within the GFWC in the postwar era than there had been historically, clubwomen were still overwhelmingly white Protestants with strong religious convictions. Clubwomen believed that Christianity, like democracy, was something first taught in the home at mother’s knee, and then spread out to the world. Indeed, the two went hand in hand.

Christianity was the religious corollary to democracy: both ethics recognized the inherent

4 For discussion of postwar suburban development, see Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (New York: Basic Books, 2001); Sarah A. Leavitt, From Catharine Beecher to Martha Stewart: A Cultural History of Domestic Advice (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Peter Schrag, Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future. Updated with a New Preface (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

worth of the individual. That clubwomen endowed America’s founding fathers with great religious conviction only enhanced the patriotic imperative of religious education.

It was one of mother’s preeminent moral and civic responsibilities to her children. An atheistic state such as the Soviet Union denied parents this noble duty by interfering in the private family and persecuting religious conviction, thereby repressing the personal philosophical enlightenment that fostered democratic thought. The political effects of state imposition of atheism in the home could not be underestimated. For clubwomen, domestic religious education became even more significant.

On this third point, clubwomen’s idealization of the home as a private realm free of state intervention nurtured a belief that private institutions and actions were more

“American” than public ones. The fate of the home lay with individual members, especially the homemakers, just like the fate of the nation lay with individual citizens.

The nation’s success in the emerging Cold War relied on private endeavors and individuals, not state action. This construction of citizenship glorified self-reliance and personal accountability – private behaviors with public consequences. It assumed that the state should provide basic infrastructure and defense but let private institutions like the family, business, and the economy regulate themselves; private institutions could best protect individual liberty. This social contract imagined that all Americans had equal access to resources and public power, obviating the need for state intervention into the economy on behalf of workers, for example, or into race relations on behalf of African

Americans and other minorities. Indeed, clubwomen generally viewed state intervention

in private matters as a threat to the integrity of these relationships and as un-American. It reeked of communism.

Clubwomen’s skepticism of a strong state resonated with the broader consensus political culture. World War II had shown the danger ideology could pose in the political sphere and many Americans of all persuasions eschewed ideological politics in favor of more moderate centrism. By 1947, the New Deal order had begun to crumble under the pressures of business interests, anticommunism, and racism. That year, business successfully mobilized against the gains workers made during the 1930s and World War

II, winning the anti-union Taft-Hartley bill over President Harry Truman’s veto.

Truman’s proposal to nationalize health care was a resounding failure, stalling his progressive agenda. The onset of the Cold War intensified Americans’ anticommunist passions, generating antistatist sentiment and suspicion of state-led social justice efforts, especially towards civil rights. Racists capitalized on Truman’s need to prove that he was tough on communism and red-baited civil rights activists, crippling the president’s ability to redress race relations. Southern Democrat Senator Strom Thurmond’s foray into third party presidential candidacy on a segregationist platform in 1948 underscored the tenuous hold liberal Democrats had on the New Deal coalition. By the late 1940s, the political will for sweeping reform had passed as Americans settled into postwar prosperity that elided class and racial differences and limited acceptable forms of dissent and activism.5

5 Brinkley, Liberalism and Its Discontents; Carter, Another Part of the Fifties; Hamby, Liberalism and Its Challengers.

The image of the white middle-class nuclear family, single wage-earner home did important cultural work within this milieu. The ideal, deeply embedded in popular culture, flickered across television screens and was written into public policy through tax codes, social security, and civil defense efforts.6 The home was a private arena filled with consumer goods that showcased the social mobility available under capitalism and democracy. It was a morality tale: single-family homes with big yards and a car in the driveway could be yours with hard work and perseverance. The fable conveniently ignored that postwar expansion of the middle-class owed a great debt to unions and federal subsidy programs such as the GI Bill and the Federal Housing Administration.

And while the fantasy may have reflected the experience of many white ethnic working- class Americans who reaped the benefits of these changes, it excluded those whose family patterns deviated from the wage-earning husband/full-time homemaker ideal such as those in extended families, single-parent households, families with a wage-earning mother, working-class families, and families of color. Nevertheless, the home symbolized all the promise of postwar prosperity and stood in stark contrast to the limited opportunities for personal growth under communism.

The ideal did not go uncontested. Labor activists, social critics, and even women’s magazines pushed against the domestic boundaries within which the ideal tried to circumscribe women. By the very dint of their paid employment, millions of women defied the ideal as well. Since the 1920s women had been increasing their labor force

6 See Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America (New York: Oxford, 2001); McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home.

participation. By 1950, the eighteen million women in paid employment comprised thirty-two percent of the work force, a net gain of sixteen percent since 1940. Although many women were forced out of their jobs at the end of the war to make room for returning veterans, white middle-class women with children under the age of eighteen were the fastest-growing sector of the workforce. Millions of families owed their upward social mobility to the paid employment of married women with children, upending assumptions about the single wage-earning family and postwar domestic life.7

Yet such lived experiences did not diminish the romanticized middle-class nuclear home in the American imagination – and may have made the ideal even stronger.

Although women had taken advantage of the war’s employment opportunities to gain a foothold in higher-paid and higher-skilled positions and in nontraditional employment, employers tried to curtail these gains, firing them at a higher rate than male employees in these jobs and squeezing women back into traditional manufacturing and service sector roles after the war. For many women, especially young women who had not worked before the war, paid employment in unchallenging work offered little allure and they happily returned their sights to home life. Moreover, women often understood their paid employment as something in service of the family, not necessarily a move of personal ambition. Their continued employment after the war points more to the increasing

7 Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 278.

economic demands of postwar home life and women’s commitment to it than a rejection of it.8

Such attitudes towards women’s employment enhanced the ideal of the postwar home as a potential source of empowerment that paid employment could not meet. For those women dissatisfied by their employment options and the limited public opportunities available to them, the home became a realm in which they could invest their efforts, see them flourish, and earn respect and appreciation for their work. For those women in the workforce, the home and the needs of those within it remained a central motivator for paid employment. For those full-time homemakers, the ideal of the postwar home validated their life choices. For clubwomen, most of who fell into this last demographic even though it was also the demographic joining the labor force faster than any other sector, postwar domesticity was reassuring. At a time when middle-class women’s traditional homemaking was seemingly threatened by new employment trends, the image of the postwar home – and even how it figured in working women’s justifications for their work – reasserted an idealized class-based, gendered division of family and wage-earning labor.

Postwar Americans imbued these gendered home responsibilities with national significance. Believing that the home was the cornerstone of democracy and the cradle of the American spirit, what happened within its walls happened to the nation. The home was a stabilizing influence, a way to cordon and mediate the social upheaval caused by

World War II and the Great Depression before it. The Cold War only raised the stakes on

8 Ibid. pp. 287-299.

this domestic work. It was a space that physically contained the threats to the homefront, particularly sexuality and communism. The idealized home was a double-edged sword for women: they must be strong mothers to guide the nation, but were vulnerable to misogynist attacks as over-bearing, emasculating, and psychologically damaging.

Postwar women tried to navigate these ill-defined boundaries and domesticity helped do that. It did not need to be isolating or disempowering. Domesticity was, in the words of one historian, “an expressions of one’s citizenship.”9

The 1947 GFWC panelists’ admonitions about the fate of the postwar home must be seen within this context. As this chapter shows, the home was a symbol of American democracy and freedom, and homemaking became an expression of one’s patriotism.

Within this private arena, mothers schooled their families in the values of democracy, self-reliance, and private enterprise – values taught during the Cold War as explicitly anticommunist and inherently American. So informed, the private family would spread this ethic through their public civic engagement on the local, national, and international levels. What happened in the home happened to the nation and the world – and it started with the homemakers.

This chapter examines the home as the linchpin of the General Federation’s postwar maternalism and construction of female citizenship. It begins with a discussion of the ideology girding the GFWC’s ideas about clubwomen, the home, and democracy and how the organization adapted these ideas to meet the exigencies of the Cold War. It then explores the GFWC’s attempts to translate this ideology into practice through

9 May, Homeward Bound, p. 141.

professionalization programs that likewise reflected the nation’s shifting priorities from the end of World War II into the Cold War. It ends with a brief look at the General

Federation’s civil defense and consumer education programs as two professionalization areas that reveal the ways in which the GFWC’s maternalism used the home and democracy to articulate its own definition of American values and position itself and clubwomen as arbiters of American citizenship.

The Democratic Family and Citizenship

According to the General Federation’s maternalist politics in 1945, the fate of national security and postwar peace depended upon mother’s cultivation of democracy and an appreciation of international cooperation within the home. It was a religious mission that simultaneously ensured a psychologically healthy citizenry. Clubwomen believed that Christianity taught the inherent worth of every individual and charged man with loving thy neighbor. Politically, Christianity found expression in American democracy and international collaborative efforts such as the United Nations, both of which respected the individual and sought solutions to problems that valued the individual’s and the community’s needs. Like many contemporaries, clubwomen believed this political approach nurtured psychologically “healthy” adults and communities resistant to “unhealthy” political movements like fascism. Clubwomen devoted themselves to implementing democratic practices within their homes and raising

“normal” children according to democratic principles with a strong internationalist perspective to promote postwar peace.

The focus on the home’s responsibility for producing healthy citizens reflected broader cultural trends. Midcentury psychoanalysts and social scientists coming to terms with fascism and the recent war looked to theories about personality development and argued that nothing shaped the individual and national character so much as the family.

Child rearing practices had profound consequences on the normal psychological development of individuals and society. A profusion of “national character” studies in the 1940s and early 1950s sought to uncover the psychological roots of German fascism,

Japanese imperialism, and Soviet totalitarianism by looking at the family and childrearing patterns.10 Rather than blame ephemeral ideas like nationalism for the recent tragedy, academics turned to the family to understand national “pathologies.” “Character structure…originates in the early months and years of life in the home,” wrote the editor of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry in 1945 to explain German fascism. He continued, “No national culture based on any other idea than that of close affectional relationships between parents and children can possibly hope to produce other than the kind of sadistic, egotistical, paranoid people who are so characteristically German.”11

The publication in 1950 of sociologist Theodor Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality famously solidified this analysis as the leading interpretation of the roots of fascism.

Adorno and his colleagues argued that excessively harsh parenting instilled in children a tendency to follow strong disciplinary authority figures. In the absence of an affectionate

10 Buhle, Feminism and Its Discontents, pp. 140-146.

11 Lawson G. Lowrey, “To Make the Germans Men of Peace,” New York Times, June 17, 1945, pp. SM7+, quote p. SM7. Hereafter this will be cited as NYT.

nurturing environment, children grew into adults incapable of thinking for themselves and choosing democratic public life.12

Such cultural attitudes placed a tremendous burden on American women. They posited that mother’s role in early infancy shaped future personality. The most common interpretation of the modern mother was that she was too overprotective of her son, thwarting his capacity for independent thought, and that she wielded shrewish control over the family (thereby emasculating her husband and castrating him as a role model).

The dominant mother archetype – a backlash against changing sex roles since the 1910s and the authority women exercised during the Great Depression and World War II – was herself psychologically unfit and transmitted her illness to the entire family. According to this so-called Momism, all manner of personal, familial, and social dysfunction ranging from homosexuality to poverty could be attributed to bad mothers. This latter plagued black women, who were stereotyped as matriarchs infantilizing black men and held at fault for African-American poverty and white racism. Perhaps most associated with Philip Wylie’s 1942 misogynist polemic Generation of Vipers, Momism held credence with psychoanalysts and social scientists but quickly infiltrated nearly all forms of political and popular culture. Although it arose well before the Cold War, Momism played into the Red Scare’s belief that enemies lurked within and gave Americans a very clear target: mother. Attention postwar experts gave domesticity, child-rearing, and even

12 Theodor W. Adorno, Else E. Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, R. Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper and Row, 1950).

women’s paid employment were attempts to shape women’s activities and corral them into “healthy” practices less threatening to the family and society.13

The General Federation’s postwar maternalism fed into these cultural attitudes even as it turned them on their ear. The GFWC accepted that there was a close relationship between maternal nurturing, psychological development, and healthy society.

But rather than embrace the dark interpretation popularized by Momism, the General

Federation used such arguments to contend that women were the critical force behind preserving a healthy democratic nation and building a peaceful postwar world. This message rejected Momism’s analysis of modern mothers as psychologically damaged.

Instead, it posited that strong vibrant women were the only ones capable of ushering families to healthy psychological maturity and robust citizenship.

The GFWC’s postwar maternalism told clubwomen that mother taught family members the democratic values they would need as citizens of the world. Childrearing practices that nurtured the individual, treated him fairly, and encouraged cooperation set the foundation for future public participation in democratic institutions. Open parental relationships reinforced these lessons; such dynamics showed respectful exchange between equals working together in a collaborative process without undermining father’s authority as head of the family.14 With the proper amount of love, affection, and

13 Buhle, Feminism and Its Discontents, pp. 147-164.

14 GFWC, “United Family in the Home: American Home Department Program No. 1” program pamphlet (Washington, DC: GFWC, [1947]), GFWC, Buck Program Records, Box 1, Folder 1; Lydia Ann Lynde, “Pattern of Family Living” program booklet (Washington, DC: GFWC, [1947] photocopy), GFWC, Buck Program Records, Box 1, Folder 2.

guidance, children would grow into healthy normal adults who embarked on similarly healthy relationships in their homes and public spaces. As one program booklet told clubwomen, “[Homemaking] is in its ultimate essence the creation of a social situation in which normal family life may develop…it is the homemaker who stands revealed today as the maker of men and women in an era desperately in need of the best that favorable circumstances can develop from human capacities.”15

With the example of Nazi totalitarianism fresh in their minds, clubwomen could not overestimate the importance of building support for democracy at the most basic levels of society. This meant creating family patterns that respected each individual member, honored his or her psychological development, and allowed all to contribute to group decision-making. Regular implementation of these ideals would prepare family members to actively participate in the political arena and steel them against the hypnotic allure of charismatic leaders. Ideally family members thus trained would also join voluntary associations, becoming part of a vibrant civil society, further warding against state aggrandizement of power.16 If successful, American families would never be subject to the kind of total state control German families suffered under Hitler. It was hardly coincidence that the American home department’s theme at the end of the war was

15 Maude Williamson, ed., “Family Living Today” program booklet (Washington, DC: GFWC, 1946, photocopy), p. 3 quoting J.H.D. Bossard, “Family Problems of the Immediate Future,” Journal of Home Economics 37, No. 7 (September 1945), pp. 383-387, GFWC, Dickinson Program Records, Box 1, Folder 3.

16 The GFWC claimed clubwomen’s husbands belonged to “international service clubs” with purpose similar to the GFWC, but that cannot be corroborated. GFWC, “The United Family in the Home,” p. 2.

“The Reconstruction of the Home and the Re-Creation of the Individual.” Against the backdrop of this recent history, rebuilding the home became a democratic necessity.

The GFWC’s American Home department recommended “Family Councils” as a way to articulate the democratic foundations of the home and lay bare the home’s importance to American political institutions. Family Councils brought family members together to define the priorities of the body politic, allocate resources, and govern.

Participation in such Family Councils, the GFWC believed, would invest children in democratic processes while learning “his own personal worth [and] his importance in a unit wherein he has a role to play and receives the appreciation of the rest of his group for his achievement of that role.”17 Because they engaged entire families in democratic living, Family Councils were an expression of citizenship for children and parents alike.

Family Councils specifically and the General Federation’s approach to postwar democratic living broadly reflected contemporary family living trends. Child and education experts recommended this type of parenting. It nurtured the psychological development of the individual child (and guarded against the kind of overbearing parenting associated with Momism), which allowed for positive social adjustment.

Family Councils also created an environment of “togetherness” that promoted the kind of domestic containment critical to postwar social reorganization.18

17 Lynde, “Patterns for Family Living,” p. 2.

18 Malvina Lindsay, “Changing Family Life,” Washington Post, November 14, 1946, p. 6; Catherine Mackenzie, “Psychiatry’s Aids to Family Listed,” NYT, April 17, 1947, p. 37; H.A. Overstreet, The Mature Mind (New York: W.W. Norton, 1949). Hereafter the Washington Post will be cited as WP.

A 1945 “Rate Your Home” quiz in the New York Times Magazine exemplifies postwar belief in the correlation between normal individual adjustment, democratic family practices, and community health. Written by a doctor at the Institute of Child

Study in Toronto, the quiz helped readers judge whether they had “an excellent home for a child to live in” or were failing “to provide the kind of home which every child should have.” It asked readers if their homes were a “democratic society in which all members have a voice?,” if “all members of the family play together?,” if there is a “functioning family council?,” and if all “members of the family take an interest in community affairs?” The more yes/always responses, the higher the home rated. The quiz made clear that the healthiest families were those that governed together within the home and took part in affairs outside of it.19

Democratic family practices stressed the individual’s place within a community and prepared them for the kind of international coalition building necessary to achieve postwar peace. This internationalism built on the GFWC’s prewar overseas outreach while updating it to reflect new postwar concerns. If Americans wanted to prevent the rise of another Hitler, they needed to engage with other citizens of the world with the same kind of respectful interactions they used within their own homes. They needed to nurture the world’s children, value each individual nation, and work toward mutually beneficial solutions to problems: they needed to approach international affairs as one large Family Council. Appropriately trained in democratic family life, postwar

Americans would be able to advance peaceful international relations. As one GFWC

19 Catherine Mackenzie, “Parent and Child,” NYT, March 25, 1945, p. SM 15.

program pamphlet claimed, the child of the democratic family would feel secure enough to “widen his circle of loyalties” to those “he has never seen in order that his security may be strengthened and assured by theirs.”20 Democratic family practices paved the road to this type of global citizenship.

Global citizenship drew on Christian teachings to love thy neighbor, captured in what contemporaries referred to as the “brotherhood of man” principle. The brotherhood assumed that all persons were children of God, no matter what form of God any given individual worshipped, and that every individual therefore had a moral responsibility for the welfare of other individuals. The brotherhood principle as a political idea was popularized by the nineteenth-century Social Gospel, a movement among reformers to apply Christian teachings to social problems such as poverty. It remained an undercurrent of progressive social reform throughout the early twentieth century and gained new traction during World War II. As President Franklin Roosevelt told

Americans on Christmas day 1941, “Our strongest weapon in this war is that conviction of the dignity and brotherhood of man which Christmas Day signifies...Against enemies who preach the principles of hate and practice them, we set our faith in human love and in God’s care of us and all men everywhere.”21

The brotherhood was a strong motivator for clubwomen’s belief in peace and global citizenship. Expounding on shared “kinship with the other members of the human family, whatever their nationality or race or creed,” GFWC president Lucy Dickinson

20 French, “Homemaking Today and Tomorrow,” p. 4.

21 Franklin Roosevelt quoted in “Americans Must Arm Their Hearts,” WP, December 25, 1941, p. 5.

prophesied after the war that, “If every homemaker will resolve to generate around her fireside the qualities of justice, integrity and respect for differences, she will be making an important contribution to a lasting peace.”22 The General Federation sat on the

National Council of Christians and Jews and supported International Brotherhood Week and engaged in a variety of international peace-building efforts.23 As one leader wrote,

“every service we render should be activated by a firm faith in God and the brotherhood of man.”24

The work clubwomen did at home produced citizens for the new world order.

Like Republican Mothers at the nation’s founding, post-World War II clubwomen understood their citizenship in terms of their ability to guide their families toward democracy. It raised the stakes on childrearing practices and “normal” psychological development. These practices also had deep spiritual significance. Driven by a strong sense of faith, clubwomen’s nurturing of democratic homes and global citizens was a religious imperative.

But the onset of the Cold War soured this dream as early as 1947. Although the

General Federation remained committed to internationalism and the United Nations, its definition of citizenship became more aggressively anticommunist. Christian teachings

22 Lucy Dickinson, “The Present-Day Challenge to the American Home,” article for unknown publication [1945-1946],” p. 1, GFWC, Presidents’ Papers (Record Group 2), Papers of Lucy Dickinson, Box 1, Folder 9. All presidents’ papers are contained in Record Group 2; hereafter “Presidents’ Papers (Record Group 2), Papers of [GFWC President]” will be cited as “[Last Name] President Papers.”

23 Mari Yanofsky, “The Good Ship Brotherhood,” Clubwoman, February 1952, p. 28.

24 Mrs. Eula G. Montgomery, “Religion Division, American Home Department, GFWC Programs, 1950- 1951,” Clubwoman, September 1950, pp. 9-10, quote, p. 10.

mandated a continued internationalist perspective, for example, but clubwomen talked less about the brotherhood of man and more about how their internationalism stopped the spread of communism abroad. Democratic family practices nurtured specifically anticommunist psychologically adjusted normal citizens. Religion in the home became more pronounced as the antithesis of atheistic communism. The glorification of the private home also reinforced clubwomen’s privileging of private institutions and actions as inherently more “American” than state ones. As clubwomen began to filter their homemaking responsibilities through the prism of anticommunism, homemaking became clubwomen’s most important expression of anticommunist American citizenship.

The General Federation’s attention to women’s responsibility for religious education within the home exemplifies how it adapted women’s homemaking into a tool against communism. Battling an atheistic enemy, religion became the cornerstone of clubwomen’s American identity because, as former GFWC president Sara Whitehurst put it, communism was “inherently anti-Christ.”25 Technically the GFWC took an inclusive approach to religion, happy to “strengthen the faith of each member and work together for the same ideals” regardless of denomination.26 But at the same time it overtly described the home and nation as Christian domains. A 1954 American Home program booklet, for example, asked members, “What is a Christian Home?” and “What do you

25 Sara A. Whitehurst, “Americanism Campaign: Christmas and Democracy in America,” Clubwoman, December 1953, p. 12; Mildred Ahlgren, “The Meaning of Thanksgiving,” Clubwoman, November 1953, p. 6.

26 GFWC, “American Home Program, 1950-1952” program pamphlet (Washington, DC: GFWC, 1952), p. 9, GFWC, Houghton Program Records, Box 1, Folder 1.

do to make your Home a Christian one?” It explained that clubwomen (as Christians or

Americans it was not specified) shared a common “spiritual heritage” that “recognizes

God as the source of all things” and recommended studying Christian materials to enhance family life.27 During one executive committee meeting in 1956 GFWC president Mabel Prout requested members join in exhibiting family bibles at headquarters for the day to dramatize the importance of regular bible study in the home.28 Religious devotion was a defining characteristic of the American home in comparison to the communist home and it was up to women to provide this spiritual leadership.29

The GFWC’s religiosity reflected the resurgence of religion across America in the postwar period. Religious affiliation peaked in the 1950s with 69% of Americans declaring official affiliation by 1959. That was up twenty percentage points from 1940.

In a fiercely anticommunist culture, religious affiliation signaled to neighbors and associates one’s patriotism. The tremendous following preacher Billy Graham gained as well as the rise in specifically anticommunist religious organizations such as Dr. Fred

Schwartz’s Christian Anti-Communist Crusade further point to the cultural work religion

27 GFWC, “Home Department” program pamphlet (Washington DC: GFWC [1954-1956]), p. 4, GFWC, Chapman Program Records, Box 2, Folder 6.

28 “3-Day Session: GFWC Leaders Meet Here,” WP, October 11, 1956, p. 59. Anna Kelton Wiley Papers, Box 2, Folder 9, SL. These papers will hereafter be cited as AKW Papers.

29 Clubwomen fostered faith in many ways. They reported regularly attending church as a family on Sundays and integrating prayer into daily living, teaching Sunday School, running vacation Bible school, providing transportation for others to attend church, and holding spiritual programs. Clubwomen also extended their faith into the public realm with organized campaigns to raise awareness of faith through “Keep Sunday Holy” campaigns, “Put Christ in Christmas” efforts and initiatives to enact blue laws. Mrs. William W. Gullett, “American Home Department, Administration Report, 1958-1960,” p. 7, GFWC, Gifford Program Records, Box 1, Folder 3; “American Home Department Report,” Clubwoman, May 1952, p. 17

did in the Cold War. But numbers also suggest faith was not superficial. In 1954, for example, one survey showed that nine in ten Americans believed in Jesus Christ and two- thirds believed in the existence of the devil. Polls also showed that churches were the most trusted institutions in American life. Americans put their money where their mouths were: within the first year of its publication in 1952, 26.5 million copies of the

Revised Standard Version of the Bible were sold. Diffused religious messages reached millions through the writer Rev. Norman Vincent Peale and his famous book The Power of Positive Thinking. Religion even adapted to modern culture with Rev. Robert H.

Schuller’s introduction of the drive-in church in May 1955 in Garden Grove, California.30

The GFWC participated in some of its own symbols of religious renewal, such as the 1955 Bald Knob (cross erection) Project. The Bald Knob Project, much like drive-in churches, reflected the larger-than-life proportions Christianity assumed in the 1950s. It was a project, supported by the GFWC along with many other groups, to build a thirty- story cross, lit from within, at the “population center” of the United States in southern

Illinois. Bald Knob, a mountain in the Shawnee National Forest that hosted thousands of worshipers at Easter morning sunrise services, would be renamed Mount Calvary upon project completion and Illinois’s governor vowed to back efforts to rename the access

30 Edwin Scott Gaustad, A Religious History of America. New Revised Edition (New York: Harper Collins, 1990), pp. 284-305; McGirr, Suburban Warriors, pp. 105-110; James Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 328-333; Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War. Second Edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 83- 91.

route 127 Way of the Cross. The monument would be a “national shrine,” to celebrate both nation and Christ.31

Impractical as the project might seem, Bald Knob nonetheless underscores the symbolic weight religion held for postwar clubwomen. It was a defining component of their homemaking responsibility as Americans because it set their homes apart from atheistic communist homes. American homes had the freedom of worship that allowed for the rearing of democratic families – something denied families oppressed by an interfering state. As GFWC president Mildred Ahlgren reminded members in 1953, “As homemakers of America we can play an important part in this [American] religious renaissance…[and] at the same time we will help to combat Communism, for

Communism and religion do not go together.”32 For clubwomen, the intense interest in the home’s spiritual health could not be separated from its democratic health, nor from its sanctity as a private space protected from state interference.

Informed by religious conviction, faith in democracy, and psychology, clubwomen crafted a definition of the American home that played with popular attitudes towards domesticity and situated clubwomen as necessary to the body politic. Its sense of urgency about the relationship between the health of the home and the health of the

31 GFWC, “Home Department,” program pamphlet (Washington, DC: GFWC [1954-1956]), pp. 18-20, GFWC, Chapman Program Records, Box 2, Folder 6; Irene Powers, “Hope to Start on Bald Knob Cross in June,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 18, 1955, p. B13; Irene Powers, “Club Leaders to Worship at Hilltop Shrine,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 30, 1956, p. A8; “Women’s Club Plan to Erect Cross Opposed,” WP, March 28, 1955, p. 25; “Faithful Head for Bald Knob with Shovels,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 29, 1959, p. 4. The project only raised a fraction of its goal ($175,000) and trimmed back its original construction plans to erect only a 111-foot cross; construction did not begin until 1959. The Chicago Daily Tribune will hereafter be cited as CDT.

32 Ahlgren, “The Meaning of Thanksgiving,” p. 6.

nation reflected misogynist Momism messages percolating in American culture. But the

GFWC twisted this dark interpretation of mother’s influence into a source of positive potential. Coming out of the war, club leaders focused on how women in the home could prevent the rise of fascism and build democratic societies. As the Cold War iced over, they increasingly infused these same arguments about democracy, psychologically healthy families, and religion with anticommunism. The American home was the cornerstone of the nation and American clubwomen were laying the foundation for its future.

Professionalizing Homemaking

According to clubwomen, however, American democratic homemaking at the end of World War II was in crisis. The problem was two-fold. First, the war had de- stabilized the home. Wartime service, family separation, social mobility, and women’s paid employment had uprooted the family and confused gender roles. In 1945, the

Department of Labor reported that sixty percent of women wanted to keep their jobs at the end of the war and subsequent accounts suggested that many women needed their jobs to maintain the increased standard of living their families won during the war.33 The

General Federation accepted that many women needed and even wanted to hold paid employment. But it worried that too many women believed that their wartime experiences meant they had “‘graduated from homemaking.’” To the contrary, the

33 Malvina Lindsay, “Budgets Spur Job Seeking,” WP, July 9, 1947, p. 12; “80% of Md. Women Want to Keep Jobs,” WP, August 31, 1945, p. 3; “Many Women Stay in Wartime Jobs,” NYT, September 12, 1947, p. 25.

General Federation argued, America needed its homemakers more than ever and set out to “‘re-sell’” homemaking to American women.34

Second, Americans, especially young wives, were ill-equipped to meet the challenges of modern homemaking. The GFWC looked to the spiraling divorce rate to support this claim. In 1945, Washington, D.C. divorce filings were up sixty percent over

1939.35 In 1946, the United States Public Health Service reported 610,000 divorces, or

4.3 per 1000 people, affecting one in three marriages – the highest on record.36

Observers attributed the spike to couples rushing into marriage both before and after the war. Such relationships were based on romantic “sentiment” and lacked a lasting foundation; hasty weddings made for troubled marriages. Although the General

Federation revered marriage, it watched the spike in marriages, especially among youth, with much anxiety, fearful that young people did not approach marriage with the appropriate gravity.37

These trends were so troubling to the GFWC because the fate of the nation rested on women’s commitment to preserving the home. Democratic family practices may have involved the whole family, but it was up to women to teach their husbands and their

34 Brossard quoted in Williamson, “Family Living Today,” p. 3.

35 “Divorce Pleas By GIs Rising Sharply Here,” WP, November 17, 1945, p. 3.

36 “Divorce Rate Trend Still Downward,” WP, October 18, 1948, p. 7.

37 Malvina Lindsay, “‘Decline’ of the Home,” WP, September 3, 1946, p. 12; Malvina Lindsay, “New Patterns Of Marriage,” WP, February 24, 1949, p. 10; “Divorce Pleas By GIs Rising Sharply Here,” WP, November 17, 1945, p. 3.; “War End Marks Sharp Rise In Md. Nuptials, Divorces,” WP, February 19, 1946, p. 7; “Untitled,” WP, September 16, 1946, p. B8; “Marriage Courses,” WP, February 9, 1947, p. B4; “Every Third Marriage Failed in '46; Lectures Planned On Preparation For Marriage,” WP, February 5, 1950, p. M7; “Marriage Counseling Increase Held Needed,” WP, December 6, 1950, p. B2.

children these practices. It was the era of “togetherness” – a term coined by McCall’s magazine in 1954 – but responsibility for planning and carrying it out fell to one partner: the wife.38 Without women’s commitment to these practices within the home,

Americans’ appreciation of democracy would fade, the citizenry would become apathetic, and the nation would collapse.

The GFWC embraced professionalization as the answer to the crisis of the

American home at the end of World War II. By professionalizing homemaking, the

General Federation reached out to those who believed they had “graduated from” the home. Elevating it to “career” status marketed homemaking as a viable alternative to paid employment. By definition professionalization also created a standard for homemaking that could be used to train young wives who were presently ignorant to the demands of the vocation. GFWC professionalization program components included modules on training young homemakers in the democratic family, interpersonal cooperation, housekeeping, home economics, economic literacy, sexual health, and motherhood. Each of these program areas reflected a major concern of postwar family living, whether it was the home’s economic stability or satisfying sexual marital relations.

The General Federation was hardly alone. Writers across the country extolled the virtues of educating for family life; the convening of the first White House Conference on

Family Life in 1948 with the support of 110 organizations highlights Americans’ concern for the health of the family. Family living courses could be found in high schools,

38 For women’s responsibility for postwar togetherness, see Jessica Weiss, To Have and To Hold: Marriage, the Baby Boom, and Social Change (Chicago University Press: Chicago, 2000), pp. 118-122.

colleges, and adult education institutes. Courses taught domestic roles for both men and women. Indeed, men’s attendance suggests the pervasiveness of domesticity in postwar life and the belief that all family members contributed to creating a healthy domestic environment.39

Reflecting the trend of family living courses, the 1947 convention panelists asking

“What Can We Do About The American Home?” suggested a variety of avenues for professionalizing homemaking, beginning with the education system. Junior California clubwoman Mrs. Thomas Pender suggested that schools could reinforce the lessons already learned in the home while teaching more specific material as well.40 It would be important that both boys and girls be exposed to such education, but Pender insisted that girls needed targeted education. “Many educators agree that women have been educated too long under programs designed for men,” she attested. “It’s about time that we educated our women citizens, recognizing the difference in the purpose and ability of the sexes.” Young women needed to be taught the difference between housekeeping and homemaking, and learn how homemaking could tap creative drives and provide as much reward “as painting or writing.” They needed to prepare for home life with courses on

“human relations, marriage, home management, parenthood and child psychology” just as much as they needed to learn about economics, literature, history and mathematics. It

39 Mary Ann Callan, “Family Relation Classes Insure Wiser Marriages,” Los Angeles Times, October 19, 1948, p. B1; Malvina Lindsay, “Strengthening Family Life,” WP, March 6, 1947, p. 6; Catherine Mackenzie, “Revitalize Family, Parents are Told,” NYT, April 24, 1947, p. 28; “Marriage Course Begins,” NYT, January 30, 1947, p. 22; “Marriage Courses,” WP, February 9, 1947, p. B4; “Seminar to Seek Family Security,” NYT, October 2, 1947, p. 24. Hereafter Los Angeles Times will be cited as LAT.

40 Junior clubwomen tended to be younger than thirty-five. See Appendix A for a full explanation of Junior membership.

was a weighty agenda, but the “preservation of the American home is dependent upon our ability to produce trained homemakers.”41

Training should come after marriage as well. Panelist Mrs. Russell Morgan of

Florida encouraged clubwomen to use family clinics as a model for training young couples in the emotional and psychological aspects of family living. Clubs in Miami sponsored clinics that brought together an array of experts including clergy, psychologists and urologists who worked with young couples on how better to relate to one another emotionally and sexually to have a fulfilling marriage. The goal was not to save marriages from divorce, but to build marriages worth preserving. Russell reported that the clinics served four or five couples every evening.42 The clinics hint at how seriously postwar Americans took marriage’s ability to meet all the individual’s emotional and sexual needs as well as the incredible social value such satisfaction had.43 As Morgan argued, “Only on a foundation of such homes can we produce individuals, communities and a nation able to meet the needs and pressures of our time.”44

As it moved into the 1950s, the General Federation urged professionalization in even more explicit ways. It warned against relying on inspiration alone for good homemaking, encouraging clubwomen to organize home committees and young mothers’

41 Pender, “Education for Jobs,” GFWC, Convention 1947, pp. 183-184.

42 Morgan, “Clinics in Schools and Communities,” GFWC, Convention 1947, p. 200.

43 See Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992); Susan Kellogg and Steven Mintz, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988); May, Homeward Bound; Weiss, To Have and to Hold.

44 Morgan, “Clinics in Schools and Communities,” GFWC, Convention 1947, p. 200.

groups, to study among themselves nutrition, interior decoration, family living, and family finances.45 It told clubwomen to investigate what kind of training colleges, not just high schools, provided for potential homemakers.46 Finally, it applauded clubs’ collaborative efforts with local experts and universities to hold workshops and training seminars for members and their communities.47

Discussions of training for professional homemaking necessarily involved discussions of training for professional motherhood. The GFWC endorsed a program of

“Mothercraft,” created by Massachusetts clubwoman May Dickinson Kimball during the

Progressive era, which emphasized that the “occupation of being a Mother” is both “art as well as craft.” Based on Kimball’s textbook, Children Well and Happy, the program used “systematic instruction of girls” to teach them how to take care of babies and the home. Students took classes in areas such as child psychology led by trained nurses or other personnel, complete with graded lessons and a certificate upon completion.

Coursework focused on health and care of infants and young children, covering personal hygiene, home sanitation, caring for newborns, breast feeding, bottle feeding, bathing, clothing, child development, and emergency situations.48 The GFWC recommended local clubs work with schools, colleges, and Girl Scouts to reach potential mothers to

45 French, “Homemaking – Today and Tomorrow,” p. 2.

46 GFWC, “The American Home, Our Greatest Asset: American Home Department,” program pamphlet, p. 2, GFWC, Ahlgren Program Records, Box 3, Folder 3.

47 “Strengthening Family Life: First Door to Youth Conservation – Better Family Patterns Critical,” Clubwoman, April 1950, p. 7; Gullett, “American Home Department Report, 1958-1960,” p. 2.

48 May Dickinson Kimball, “Mothercraft: Well and Happy” program pamphlet (Washington, DC: GFWC, [1944-1947]), GFWC, Dickinson Program Records, Box 3, Folder 23.

participate in the course. It believed many who took the course would be prepared to enter careers in nursing – for which there was a nationwide need – and to face motherhood as professionals.49

Like all of the GFWC’s professional homemaking initiatives, Mothercraft had strong implications for the nation. As its slogan expressed – “Better mothers, better babies, better homes, better citizens” – clubwomen believed training better mothers was the first step to protecting the nation. It posited that appropriately trained mothers reared children prepared to work well with others, contribute positively to the community, and live with integrity.50 Amid the upheaval of the early postwar years, this was a comforting message.

Such programs built on the General Federation’s historical efforts to modernize the home and define homemaking. During the Progressive era, clubwomen had included homemaking instruction alongside civic lessons and English classes in their

“Americanization” efforts to assimilate recent immigrants. Instruction implied an

“American” way rooted in the rising home economics and domestic science movements that defined homemaking as modern, rational, and standardized. Early clubwoman Ellen

Richards’s model kitchen at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair epitomized these efforts.

Such projects sent clear messages to all women – recent immigrants, native working-

49 Ibid; May Dickinson Kimball, “The Mothercraft Program” information sheet (Washington DC: GFWC [1944-1947], photocopy), GFWC, Dickinson Program Records, Box 3, Folder 24.

50 May Dickinson Kimball, “What Can We Do? Mothercraft Committee Program No. 2” program pamphlet (Washington DC: GFWC [1944-1947]), GFWC, Dickinson Program Records, Box 3, Folder 23; Kimball, “The Mothercraft Program.”

class, rural, and even middle-class women – about what the American home should look like and how it should be used for optimal efficiency and health. Clubwomen’s fingerprints were all over the home economics and domestic science movements by the end of the century, shaping how women, producers, marketers, and even architects approached homemaking and the physical space of the home for generations to come.51

The GFWC’s attitude toward professional homemaking in the post-World War II era as compared to the Progressive era reveals important internal organizational changes as well as broader social shifts. Early home science movements aimed to free women from household “drudgery,” giving them time and energy to be both better homemakers and pursue other interests. Early women’s clubs made similar claims. Comprised mainly of older, proto-career women, early women’s clubs looked to expand women’s horizons beyond the home. GFWC clubwomen often wrestled with their dual obligations to home and public life and veiled their external interests in the language of domesticity to justify those outside pursuits. It was not until 1924 that the GFWC officially formed the

American Home department – the same time that the backlash against the woman’s movement in the broader culture really matured. The new department signified the retrenchment of women in the home and a shift away from the professionally- and publicly-minded women’s clubs that had defined the club movement through World War

51 See Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes. Edited with an Introduction by Victoria Bissell Brown (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 1999); Houde, Reaching Out; Leavitt, From Catharine Beecher to Martha Stewart; Laura Shapiro, Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1986).

Even so, the new American Home department of the mid-1920s continued to focus on home modernization and rationalization, marking it indebtedness to Progressive- era home science movements. The department’s first project was a massive survey of

America’s homes to determine what equipment they needed to survive in the modern world. The survey collected data on nearly eight million homes in 2228 urban communities and 40,000 homes in rural areas across the forty-eight states. With the information, the GFWC compiled Home Equipment Primers detailing for clubwomen – and manufacturers – what equipment homes needed to “modernize” depending upon their access to public utilities and their surrounding communities. As an outgrowth of the project, the GFWC built a demonstration house with the National Manufacturing

Association to showcase the modern, efficient home, fully furnished with goods donated by retailers.52

As it had during Catharine Beecher’s age in the mid-nineteenth century, 1920s’ homemaking served to create a national identity that smoothed over class and racial differences. Assuming authority over homemaking, white middle-class clubwomen told poor, working-class women – many of them recent immigrants or rural farmers – what their homes should look like and how to raise their children according to American standards. Through “Americanization” programs like the 1924-1925 Better Homes campaign, the GFWC reached thousands of women and educated them in basic health and sanitation, but they also attempted to enforce from above a class- and race-specific ideal of homemaking specifically tied to the physical quality of the home. Other club

52 Houde, Reaching Out, pp. 180-184.

priorities such as the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Health Act were likewise impressive public health campaigns, but nevertheless advanced a standard of health and childrearing that left little room for individual cultural practices. Such efforts were especially problematic for black mothers. Often segregated into neighborhoods with the least access to basic services, cordoned into low-paying employment, and frequently denied equal citizenship, black mothers were still held accountable for meeting

“American” standards.53

The post-World War II GFWC’s attempts to professionalize homemaking served a similar “Americanizing” purpose, but through different means. Although mildly interested in educating foreign war brides in American homemaking, the General

Federation was less interested in immigrant populations than in the past. It was also less interested in defining the home in terms of consumer goods than it had been during the

1920s; when it discussed consumer goods in the postwar era, it warned about the perils of inflation caused by rampant consumerism. Instead the GFWC in 1945 was most concerned with women in paid employment who shirked their “American” responsibility for homemaking (including, statistics suggested, women just like themselves – or even clubwomen themselves: white middle-class married women with children still living at home). They were also troubled by the extremely mobile cohort of young wives separated from older maternal figures, who in ages past would have guided young wives

53 Tera W. Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 186-218; Nancy Tomes, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 129-133, 220-233.

through the difficult early homemaking years. Clubwomen targeted these groups for their professionalization efforts, which now focused on promoting democratic family patterns and citizenship as the quintessentially American features of homemaking.

Whether in 1925 or 1945, clubwomen’s interpretations of what made homemaking “American” responded to broader social trends and national anxieties. The

1920s were a response to decades of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration as well as political upheaval in the form of labor activism, the woman’s movement, and radicalism. The backlash included strict immigration laws, anti-union labor legislation, and the retrenchment of gender roles – symbolized in the GFWC by the formation of the

American home department – which attempted to reassert race- and class-based privilege.

The post-World War II era was also a response to major economic transformations, social mobility, and disrupted family patterns stemming this time from the war and the Great

Depression before it. Postwar reaffirmation of the single wage-earner/full-time homemaker family model mediated these transformations by once again reasserting an ideal predicated on race and class privilege.54

Significantly, like their antecedents, postwar professionalization initiatives ignored class and race biases inherent in their prescriptions for “American” homemaking.

Postwar professionalization relied on women with the time and the financial support to devote themselves fully to unpaid homemaking. Such bias is hardly surprising, since the

54 Domestic advice literature exemplifies this trend. Postwar domestic experts who advocated “togetherness” and open-floor plans in postwar housing, for example, were containing social upheaval by locating the family in a transparent private space as a single social unit. Leavitt, From Catharine Beecher to Martha Stewart, pp. 171-194.

GFWC was after all an organization of white middle-class women, most of them full- time homemakers. Many of those in paid employment including GFWC leadership were older, professional women who had already raised their children. When the GFWC proudly described itself as first and foremost an organization of homemakers, it appealed to this demographic.

But those espousing professionalization were also likely struggling to reconcile the ideal with a changing reality. More and more women just like themselves – white middle-class women, even those with young children – were engaging in paid employment with greater frequency. Many of these women worked to maintain the standard of living postwar America – including the GFWC – demanded homes meet.

Some clubwomen, such as Miss Margaret Berry, head of the Texas junior clubwomen and one of the 1947 convention’s “What Can We Do About the American Home?” panelists, applauded women’s paid employment as a worthwhile and necessary thing.

But Berry was in the minority and even she did not waver on labeling homemaking women’s most important vocation. The GFWC made allowances for women’s paid employment, but it offered caveats – just as Berry did when she explained that women needed to “evolve a system of homemaking that will enable talented young women to keep a job and still have a home.”55 The General Federation’s model of professionalism demanded full-time homemaking and left little room for women’s paid employment even

55 Margaret Berry, “Women and Jobs and their Positions in a World of Booms and Busts,” GFWC, Convention 1947, Vol. 1, pp. 192-194, quote p. 194.

though many working-class and African-American – and increasingly white middle-class

– families relied on it.

The GFWC’s 1944 “Reconstructing the Home” program guide illustrates how deeply embedded assumptions about clubwomen’s white middle-class status was in the organization’s ideal postwar homemaker. The guide identified potential obstacles families might face to postwar readjustment such as the housing shortage and encouraged clubwomen to study other problem areas. As part of this study, the GFWC asked clubwomen to contemplate “majority-minority relations” and labor-management tensions. It implied that, like the housing shortage, these were social problems that could adversely affect clubwomen but were not of their own making. It seemed to suggest that these issues were external to clubwomen and their homes, but clubwomen might feel the negative impact of them all the same.56

In raising these issues, the GFWC communicated its awareness of and unease with percolating change at the end of the war. African Americans’ wartime Double-V campaign challenged racism at home and abroad, galvanizing the civil rights movement.

Some clubwomen were uncomfortable with persistent American racism because of their commitment to the brotherhood of man. For them, American racism was no better than

Nazi anti-Semitism. As GFWC president Lucy Dickinson intoned, “[the brotherhood] does away with the Axis idea of classifying our fellow men as foreigners or Negroes or

56 GFWC, “The Reconstruction of the Home: American Home Department Program No. 1” program booklet (Washington, DC: GFWC [1944-1947]), p. 2, GFWC, Dickinson Program Records, Box 1, Folder 2.

Catholics or Jews or Protestants instead of regarding them as equal human beings.”57 To maintain federation unity (and avoid offending its southern constituency), however, the

GFWC followed its unwritten policy of ignoring racism. Doing so was the politically expedient stance it had taken since 1902 when it denied black membership in the General

Federation. Using the term “majority-minority relations” signaled its awareness of the civil rights movement – and perhaps sympathy with it – without challenging the status quo.

On the labor question, the GFWC was less hesitant. Labor unions, which had pledged to silence demands during the war, geared up to share in the profits of the postwar boom. Although union membership would actually help usher in a period of peaceful prosperity that brought millions of working-class Americans into the middle class, many contemporaries at the end of the war feared a repeat of post-World War I labor radicalism. The GFWC shared this concern, and continued to disparage unions even after the immediate threat of radicalism had passed, painting unions as a violation of the individual’s right to sell his own labor and a threat to the free market. The General

Federation’s concern over both these possible trends – civil rights unrest and unionism – underscores its anti-radicalism and the extent to which it imagined the American home in the language of the white middle class.

The bias was so engrained in the General Federation that it could be captured on film. In 1947 the General Federation sponsored an illustrated lecture featuring slides and descriptions of clubwomen’s “Homes of America.” The slideshow traveled the country

57 Dickinson, “The Present-Day Challenge to the American Home,” p. 2.

at state conventions as a celebration of American homemaking. So successful was the project that the GFWC exported it to member clubs overseas. International clubwomen used the slideshow as a visual cue to learn about American homes because they had “not

[yet] had the opportunity to see us.”58 For clubwomen, the physical space of the home embodied and could visually represent American domestic features such as family togetherness, democracy, and consumer culture, as well as underlying assumptions about whiteness and class in the postwar domestic ideal – anticipating by more than a decade

Vice President Nixon’s iconic 1959 “Kitchen Debate” with Soviet Premier Nikita

Khrushchev.

The General Federation’s postwar homemaking professionalization efforts tried to instill in clubwomen a sense of urgency about their domestic responsibilities. Because it conceived of the home as the starting point for postwar democratic citizenship, the

GFWC believed it was critical to raise the quality of American homes.

Professionalization provided an avenue to do this. Drawing on earlier professionalization programs, post-World War II professionalization defined homemaking in ways that reflected national concerns about gender roles and the democratic family. Like earlier professionalization efforts, post-World War II professionalization advanced an ideal of women’s homemaking that privileged the white middle-class nuclear family. To some extent, this reflected the composition of the General Federation, but it also did important

58 Mrs. Frank J. Pratt, Jr., “Bulletin: The American Home Department Report, September 1948,” p. 1, GFWC, Buck Program Records, Box 1, Folder 3.

political work obfuscating very real class and racial differences to promote an image of national unity.

Homemaker Training for the Cold War

Emblematic of the General Federation’s interweaving of professional homemaking with national health was its civil defense program and its consumer literacy program, two divisions of the GFWC’s National Defense Department.59 GFWC president Dorothy Houghton’s creation of the department in 1950 highlights the pressing anxiety postwar Americans felt about precarious relations with the Soviet Union. It was peacetime, but clubwomen remained on high alert and developed club programs to prepare members to meet the potential war. Both the civil defense division and the consumer literacy division gave clubwomen concrete action plans for using homemaker activities to make the nation safer. They encapsulate how the General Federation saw homemaker training as bigger than housekeeping instruction and parenting guidance.

With civil defense, the GFWC trained clubwomen to use homemaking skills to meet a potential physical threat; with consumer relations, the GFWC trained clubwomen to use homemaking to stake their claim in the economy – the symbol of a free, democratic society. With both programs, the GFWC promoted a construction of women’s

59 GFWC president Dorothy Houghton created the department at the start of her tenure in 1950. Civil defense was a new division, but the consumer relations division had existed in some form for decades, most frequently as part of the American Home department. The National Defense department dissolved at the end of Houghton’s term, but the divisions therein lived on in some form through other departments.

citizenship that valorized ideals of self-reliance and private enterprise and defined individual actions and institutions as more “American” than state ones.

The GFWC’s civil defense program called upon members to use their homemaking skills to prepare their homes and communities for possible threats. With the

Soviets in possession of a nuclear weapon after 1949 and lurking as a seemingly imminent but indeterminate danger, government officials adopted civil defense as the only logical solution to maintaining permanent, heightened homefront preparedness without creating a police state.60 Civil defense enlisted civilians to monitor the homefront for potential dangers and relied on civilians to provide strategic support services in the event of a national emergency. The General Federation worked independently of the government and in tandem with it on civil defense, encouraging clubwomen to volunteer and ready their homes and communities for an attack.61 The

GFWC’s civil defense program treated clubwomen as defenders of the homefront, qualified through years of homemaking to lead communities, treat the sick and injured, and protect their families in times of crisis. A homemaker’s preparedness to do so was a statement about her commitment to preserving her home and the nation.

Civil defense officials looked to women for success. Women had done this type of work before during war, but their peacetime mobilization made 1950s’ civil defense

60 Because of budgetary restrictions and ideological conflicts in Congress over the advisability of a publicly-funded and militarily-staffed domestic defense initiative – which would create a “garrison state” at an estimated cost of more than $300 billion – civil defense relied on volunteer labor. “Garrison State Held Price of Atom Security,” WP, March 26, 1950, p. M1. See also McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home, pp. 11-39.

61 It is nearly impossible to determine how many members participated because it was such a voluntary activity run through individuals and associations. McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home, pp. 63, 117.

efforts very different. The amount of land and population needing coverage was astounding, leaving civil defense agencies begging for ever-more volunteers. By 1952, three million (men and women) volunteers offered their services, but government officials said another 17.5 million were needed.62 They routinely turned to women

(implied, full-time homemakers) to fill the need for volunteers. News reports of civil defense-trained housewives who spotted potential threats that military radar missed reinforced the sense of how badly needed women’s volunteer services were.63 Civil defense offices also targeted women to spread the message about how to protect the civilian population during an attack, especially among their own families.64 As Katherine

G. Howard of the Federal Civil Defense Administration repeatedly told American women, “‘Civil defense must begin at home – in every home.’”65

The General Federation embraced civil defense as clubwomen’s familial and national responsibility. In 1952 it set itself the improbable goal of registering every clubwoman as a civil defense volunteer.66 The GFWC believed clubwomen were well- situated to lead these efforts. Historically, they had conducted the kind of voluntary community outreach from which civil defense efforts would draw. The skills civil defense required – basic first aid, caregiving, and leadership – matched those clubwomen

62 Estelle Sharpe, “Only Civil Defense Can Save Home Front, Women Told,” WP, October 4, 1952, p.19.

63 “Civilian Watch Spots ‘Red Planes;’ Radar Misses Them, Women Don’t,” NYT, April 14, 1953, p. 1.

64 Glendy Culligan, “Your Civil Defense Job Begins at Home,” WP, January 13, 1952, p. S1+

65 Katherine G. Howard quoted in “Civil Defense Begins at Home,” WP, June 20, 1953, p. 16.

66 “Civilian Defense Aid Set By Clubwomen,” NYT, February 7, 1952, p. 16.

used every day as mothers. On a practical level, the vast majority were full-time homemakers who would be home in the event of an attack and able to coordinate safety and relief efforts in their own neighborhoods. Members even argued that there was little use relying on men for civil defense when chances were they would be at work when an attack hit.67

Clubwomen set about training themselves and their communities in the many activities comprising civil defense as part of their homemaker responsibilities. As one

GFWC booklet explained, “It is [women’s] obligation to see that good plans are being made and that there is understanding and active support of Civil Defense.” Although women may not be the best choice for hard labor and “mechanical or technical skills,” they would be invaluable to welfare services, public information, and training.68 For example, one Georgia club leader completed a three-day training course called Operation

Improvise where she learned how to distribute food from Fort Benning to people of a bombed city.69 Clubwomen also turned civil defense into a club activity. Every junior club in the state of Maine had a civil defense plan in place, including food and “safe” locations with every clubwoman in possession of a survival kit.70 As part of Home

67 GFWC, “Your Place in Civil Defense: Suggestions for Home Protection Service in Case of Disaster,” information sheet, [1950-1952], GFWC, Houghton Program Records, Box 4, Folder 3; GFWC, “Peace through Strength: National Defense Department” program booklet (Washington, DC: GFWC, [1950- 1952]), GFWC, Houghton Program Records, Box 3, Folder 13.

68 GFWC, “Peace Through Strength,” p. 4.

69 “Clubwoman Trains for Bomb Emergence,” Clubwoman, October 1953, p. 26.

70 Mrs. William H. Berry, “Public Affairs Department Special Report,” presented to the GFWC national convention June 5, 1959, GFWC, Convention 1959, Vol. 1, pp. 776-778.

Protection Units – local neighborhood crisis teams – clubwomen also prepared to help fight fires, administer first aid, direct traffic, and minimize hysteria.71 Each of these projects utilized clubwomen’s homemaker skills – nurturing, organizing, planning – and put them in service of national security.

The GFWC worked with other women’s organizations, most notably the National

Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs and the American Association of University Women, to gain women official recognition in civil defense efforts in

Washington. In 1951, they took, what the New York Times termed a “bold new approach to total mobilization” and formed the Assembly of Women’s Organizations for National

Security (referred to as the Women’s Assembly), chaired its first two years by GFWC president Dorothy Houghton.72 The GFWC and its peers believed that civil defense efforts would only be as effective as the extent of women’s participation because women, as neighborhood leaders and activists, had the networks and organizational skills to

71 GFWC, “Your Place in Civil Defense.”

72 Bess Furman, “Women Organize a Crisis ‘Nucleus,” NYT, October 7, 1950, p. 6. The Women’s Assembly served as a clearinghouse of national security information and activities to be spread to member organizations’ grassroots. The original twelve organizations were the American Association of University Women, GFWC, National Federation of Business and Professional Women, National Association of Women Lawyers, American Federation of Women Lawyers, American Federation of Soroptimist Clubs, National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women, Ladies Auxiliary to the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, American Legion Auxiliary, Pilot International, American Women’s Voluntary Service, Zonta International, Associated Women of the Farm Bureau Federation, and the Women’s Auxiliary to the American Medical Association. Within two years of its founding, these twelve were joined by the National Home Demonstration Council, the National Home Demonstration Agents’ Association, Ladies Auxiliary of the Jewish War Veterans, National Federation of Women’s Republican Clubs, and the Women’s Division of the National Democratic Committee. Mrs. Wyman H. Chadwick, “Data Sheet: Assembly of Women’s Organizations for National Security, February 1, 1951,” GFWC, Houghton President Papers, Box 1, Folder 11. Also Margaret Rawalt, “Summary of [Annual Meeting of the Assembly of Women’s Organizations for National Security], September 19-20, 1958,” GFWC, Houghton President Papers, Box 1, Folder 11.

mobilize civil defense quickly and efficiently in the event of an attack. Any government civil defense initiative that did not include women in the planning would be disregarding at its own peril women’s special training and jeopardize the availability of womanpower in the hour of need. Using women’s domestic duties to gain public power over national security was, in the words of one historian, a sort of “militarist-maternalist women’s movement.”73

Government officials tried to capitalize on women’s enthusiasm for civil defense by giving them a nominative role without giving them any real power. In 1951, the

Federal Civil Defense Administration thought to appropriate womanpower and temper it by creating the Women’s Advisory Committee, headed by none other than former GFWC president Sara Whitehurst (and soon-to-be GFWC Americanism campaign chairman under Mildred Ahlgren). The FCDA, however, never took its own Women’s Advisory

Committee or the Women’s Assembly very seriously as equal partners in civil defense.

The existence of a separate women’s arm within the FCDA merely succeeded in codifying women’s marginalization within the FCDA and official civil defense efforts.74

As a government program that relied on private actions for implementation, civil defense crafted a particular relationship between the citizen and the state. From its earliest stages “the ideal pattern for civil defense,” wrote one journalist, “starts with the principles of self-help.”75 This model of civil defense normalized self-reliance and the

73 McEnaney coins this phrase. McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home, p. 41.

74 Ibid. pp. 88-122.

75 Harold B. Hinton, “Civil Defense Planned Against An Atomic War,” NYT, May 23, 1948, p. E7.

private nuclear family. The approach was perhaps best epitomized by the government’s recommendation of the privately-financed individual family bomb shelter over state- funded public ones. Civil defense discussions left little room for questions of urban residents without access to private backyards and the poor who could not afford to finance private shelters.76

This construction of civil defense meshed with the GFWC’s ideals of women’s citizenship rooted in private realms and activities. Through Home Protection Units and other domestically-oriented actions, clubwomen would proactively defend their own homes and neighborhoods. Civil defense located a public service quite literally within the home. It added a new Cold War dimension to homemaker training that reinforced ideological assumptions about the utility of private action over state ones in a democracy.

With its consumer literacy program, the General Federation similarly tied specific private homemaker skills to national security. The consumer relations division of the

GFWC’s National Defense department assumed that the capitalist economy was the pillar of a free democratic society, but warned that it was extremely vulnerable to communist subversion, especially in the form of inflation. The homemaker’s every economic decision from personal consumption to her knowledge about the national budget had the potential to strengthen or destroy America’s economic stability. The division’s programs covered a range of topics, most of which the GFWC had historically cared about, such as training women to be smart consumers, family financial and estate planning, the national

76 As McEnaney argues, the private shelter “symbolized the superiority of a society of autonomous, property-owning individuals and strong families who had the capability and the choice to shelter themselves.” McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home, pp. 24-65, quote p. 41.

budget, and inflation. Traditionally, the GFWC had traditionally tied these issues to the nation’s economic health, but the Cold War – as a fight between capitalism and communism – made these economic markers important indicators of the nation’s democratic and spiritual health as well. This became particularly evident in the GFWC’s treatment of the relationship between personal consumerism, inflation, and the national budget in the 1950s.

Since the Progressive era, when the General Federation discussed consumerism it concerned itself with morally responsible purchasing, something historian Lizabeth

Cohen refers to a feature of the “proto-consumer citizen.” Progressive-era proto- consumer citizens foreshadowed the “consumer citizens” of the New Deal and World

War II. Loosely, both groups tried to harness consumerism for public good, using consumer power to affect progressive social change. Consumer citizens competed during the New Deal and World War II with “purchaser consumers,” who believed individual self-interested consumption contributed positively to aggregate purchasing power and would produce economic growth. Both modes of consumption reflected Americans’ attempts to understand their place within dramatic social and economic changes. They also reflected the distance between different Americans’ interpretations of public good.

For the consumer citizen, it lay with a more populist ideal of shaping the market, often with government assistance, for the benefit of the many. For the purchaser citizen, it lay with the growth of the market. After World War II, a compromise paradigm of consumption emerged, which Cohen calls the “Consumers’ Republic.” Amid postwar

prosperity, mass consumption would both benefit the many and grow the economy.

Americans came to think of individual consumption as an expression of citizenship.77

In the postwar era, the GFWC began to shift towards the consumerist paradigm

Cohen describes, evident in its attitude towards economic controls and inflation. In 1945, the GFWC along with many other women’s groups supported the continuation of price controls and rent control as a means of reining in inflation and keeping access to essential goods open to the greatest number of people. If people were priced out of consumption, the GFWC argued, there would not be enough market demand to create jobs for the vast numbers of returning workers. In this they joined many mainstream women’s organizations such as the AAUW, the NCL, the LWV, and the National Council of Negro

Women.78 When it urged the reintroduction of price controls during the Korean War,

77 Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage, 2003). The GFWC’s proto-consumer citizen orientation can be seen in its alliance with the National Consumers League. Founded in 1899, the NCL was a cross-class alliance predominately of women who believed that poor working conditions were allowed to exist because middle-class consumers ignored them. The organization’s extensive education campaigns awoke in many middle-class women a sense of responsibility for horrific working conditions, especially among women and children, that helped create political will for protective labor legislation. The NCL was perhaps best known for its “white label” campaign. As part of the campaign, middle-class women investigated factories and awarded the label to goods meeting the NCL’s standards; conscientious consumers knew which goods had been produced under fair conditions and put their dollars towards supporting those goods. The label movement was the type of Progressive-era priority that survived the GFWC’s conservative turn in the late 1920s. In 1933 for instance, the GFWC joined the NCL and a host of other women’s groups in encouraging consumers to buy goods tagged with the National Recovery Administration’s Blue Eagle garment label, which indicated that they had been made by workers earning a decent wage in fair working conditions. “NRA Label Drive Backed by Women,” NYT, November 24, 1933, p. 6; “Consumers Support Apparel Label Plan,” NYT, June 19, 1935, p. 37. See also, Storrs, Civilizing Capitalism; Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Theda Skopcol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1992).

78 GFWC, “Inflation and the Consumer: Consumer Responsibility Committee Program No. 2” program booklet (Washington, DC: GFWC [1944-1947]), pp. 3-6, GFWC, Dickinson Program Records, Box 5, Folder 2; “Continuance of OPA Urged by 30 Groups,” WP, February 10, 1946, p. M5.

however, it did not repeat the consumer citizen message. It argued that inflation was on the rise because the war shifted production away from consumer goods towards the war effort and workers were earning more money and had fewer consumer goods to spend it on.79 The GFWC still trained its clubwomen to be smart consumers, but their restraint worked to control inflation – it was not a reformist collective consumer action. Instead, the GFWC’s economic literacy programs drew clear connections between domestic economic practices and economic stability.

Doing so, the GFWC contributed to broader discussions about gender, consumption, and national health. Leading economists worried about the health and advisability of an economy becoming more reliant on producing goods merely to meet what they deemed to be frivolous (and irresponsible) consumer demand. Irrational spending – driven by advertising that appealed to base emotions such as desire – on unnecessary goods gave the appearance of prosperity, but led to inflation and recession.

Defining durable goods such as automobiles “good” rational consumer demand while defining the proliferation of postwar household and fashion-related consumer goods as

“bad” and irrational, social observers gendered consumption. Identifying rational consumption as masculine and irrational consumption as feminine was not new to the postwar era. But since many of these “optional” household goods were afforded by married women’s paid labor, the debate took on a new tone in the postwar era. The

General Federation warded against this type of characterization of women’s consumption

79 Mrs. Gilbert Loeb, “Price Control and Your Budget,” Clubwoman, November 1952, pp. 5+; Dorothy Houghton, “A New Birth of Freedom” address before the GFWC national convention May 15, 1951, GFWC, Convention 1951, Vol. 1, pp. 145-165.

by training clubwomen to become “smart” consumers of everything from lampshades to life insurance.80

The General Federation’s economic literacy programs educated clubwomen to exercise their domestic purchasing power deliberately. In 1950, the GFWC teamed up with the Association of Stock Exchange Firms, the American Bankers Association and the Institute of Life Insurance to develop Finance Forums for club meetings. One sample forum, “Investment in Securities: A Woman and Her Money,” focused on how to make the most of one’s purchasing power through wise investment. The forum explained terms

– such as the difference between savings and investments – and used practical examples of how inflation diminished the value of the dollar by considering the cost of rib roast, as well as how to wisely buy stocks and why one would want to.81 Other programs advised incorporating new technologies into consumption patterns and told homemakers they must be educated about the goods on the market, how to use them, and how to make them last. One 1954 program entitled “Plastics – The fantastically beautiful; the useful products of today and tomorrow!” included steps on what plastics to buy for which uses, when in home furnishing plastics is most practical, and how to care for them.82 Speakers reminded clubwomen that buying was only one part of homemakers’ consumer function and that the use women made of what they bought said more about how they bought than

80 On the gendering of consumption in the postwar era, see Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White, pp. 114-116.

81 GFWC, “Finance Forum Program Topic Number Three: Investment in Securities – A Woman and Her Money” program booklet (Washington, DC: GFWC, [1950-1952]), GFWC, Houghton Program Records, Box 4, Folder 3.

82 GFWC, “Home Department” program booklet (1954-1956).

the actual goods they bought.83 Between June 1950 and May 1952, 254 finance forums had been held across the country with 26 at the state or regional level, 26 at the county level, and 202 at the local club level.84

As important as it was for clubwomen to understand their own financial habits, they needed to understand the connections between personal financial practices and governmental financial practices. How the family money was spent and how the family prepared for the future affected the strength of the family and its ability to stand on its own – its standard of living. But a family’s ability to earn, spend and save depended heavily on the health of the American economy, which in turn relied on America’s strength and stability on the world stage. Americans’ standard of living could only be as high as the level of American security in an increasingly fraught world. In 1950, one

GFWC leader sent a bulletin to clubwomen telling them that such security was

“fundamentally based on Civilian Defense, family incomes and budgets, savings, insurance, investments, consumer’s problems, taxes and intelligent knowledge of national affairs.”85 She drew direct connections between quotidian economic practices and national economic policy. The corollary to familial financial concerns on the national stage were military preparedness, the national budget, federal taxes, trade agreements and

83 Mrs. A.N. Satterlee, untitled Home Department panel presentation before the GFWC national convention, May 17, 1956, GFWC, Convention 1956, Vol. 1, pp. 478-479.

84 “Economic Security Committee Report,” Clubwoman, May 1952, pp. 40-42.

85 Frances Diehl, “Bulletin #1, October 1, 1950” information sheet sent to GFWC Board of Directors, state editors of state club magazines, state chairmen of Economics and Security committees, chairmen of American Home departments, chairmen of Press and Publicity departments, and chairmen of Juniors, p. 1, GFWC, Houghton Program Records, Box 5, Folder 5.

monetary systems. Clubwomen needed to be as familiar with these issues as with their own family budgets. It was never so simple as how women spent their money.

Spending, saving, and investing all related back to the nation’s own security.

With the lessons of their economic literacy programs informing them, clubwomen demanded the same kind of restrained spending to halt inflation from the government as they did of themselves. In 1949, using the language of the emerging consumerist paradigm, the GFWC advocated cutting government “services to consumers (taxpayers)” and channeling “hundreds of thousands of government employees” into “jobs as producers” – as opposed to their current jobs as bureaucrats. If wages were to increase, the GFWC proposed commensurate increases in productivity.86 When the country moved into war in Korea, the GFWC called on clubwomen to lobby for reduced non-military government spending. “We can’t build planes, guns, tanks, ships and at the same time

‘compete with ourselves’ for bridges, dams, roads and social benefits,” one club leader explained. Trying to do both would lead to deficit spending, a looming source of inflation that would weaken the American dollar.87 Once again, clubwomen performed a patriotic service to the nation by guarding against inflation.

Clubwomen’s consumerist attitude toward government became apparent in 1959 when it lobbied against an increase in the federal gasoline tax. Congress was debating a four-cent increase to cover a deficit in the Interstate Highway Fund. The GFWC opposed

86 GFWC, “The Whys of Inflation: A General Plan for Panel Discussions” sample forum program kit [1947-1950], p. 2, GFWC, Buck Program Records, Box 1, Folder 5.

87 Diehl, “Bulletin #1, October 1950,” p. 2.

the proposal. The GFWC contended that the deficit was the result of spending federal automotive taxes on projects besides those related to the federal highway system.

Instead, it had “siphoned off [$1.5 billion of federal highway taxes] into the General

Treasury” (underline original). The GFWC also worried that the tax increase would not stop there. “One tax increase usually calls for another,” the GFWC Consumer chairman

Mrs. William Shary intoned, “with more state tax money needed to meet federal tax money. And other federal increases can be expected if this one goes on the books.”88

In her information packets for clubwomen, Shary spelled out what this would mean for the American home. Given the dependence on automotive transportation for everything from getting children to school to getting goods to market, American families would feel a pinch from the gas tax beyond their own gas pumps. Central family activities like church attendance would be impacted by the new gas tax, and could affect whether or not Americans could continue with their usual activities including club work, grocery shopping, picking up children at school, business trips, and pleasure jaunts. At the very least, the gas tax would affect the family as consumers when prices of food, clothing, and household goods all went up to cover the new tax. When businesses relying on home deliveries such as the milkman, drycleaner, and fuel dealer raised prices, it would hit home in very real ways.89

88 Mrs. William S. Shary, “Know the Facts about the Proposed New Federal Gasoline Tax Increase” information sheet January 6, 1959, pp. 2-3, GFWC, Gifford Program Records, Box 1, Folder 5.

89 Mrs. William S. Shary, “More Facts on the Proposed New Federal Gasoline Tax Increase,” information sheet circulating at GFWC national convention June 2-5, 1959, AKW Papers, Box 2, Folder 9, SL.

If the unwritten contract of taxes was that the taxpayer received a public benefit from those taxes, then the American government was failing taxpayers when it came to automotive taxes. Breaking down state and federal taxes, and the purposes to which that tax income had been put, the GFWC claimed that a significant nine percent of the state tax went to non-road purposes, while fifty-three percent of the federal gas tax went to non-road purposes.90 For the General Federation, taxes did contribute to the public good, but its consumerist approach demanded that taxes bought specific services restricted to those taxes.

Certainly this was about money, but it was also about the relationship between the private home and the state. According to the General Federation, the gas tax negatively impacted the family’s purchasing power. The gas tax became a symbol of state intrusion into private life. It also pointed to a growing, inefficient state bureaucracy. Both of these were troubling trends given clubwomen’s commitment to the sanctity of the private family and the free market. Although they did not use the language of anticommunism in their anti-tax message, the stance nonetheless reverberated with a decade’s worth of anticommunist activism. According to their analysis, the home represented a private space free from state intervention, and the economy was a pillar of American democracy.

The gas tax threatened both.

The GFWC’s economic literacy programs highlight the connection between clubwomen’s domestic responsibilities and the economic health of the nation. For the

90 Ruth Beeler White, “The Family Budget and Automotive Taxes: What the Family Pays in Taxes to Drive the Family Car – Where the Money Goes” program booklet (Washington, DC: GFWC [1960]), pp. 5-7, GFWC, Ozbirn Program Records, Box 2, Folder 18.

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General Federation, sound financial practices – whether purchasing habits or national tax policy – began in the home. It was as important for clubwomen to understand how their taxes were spent as it was for them to know every source of family income and how to invest it wisely for the future. They demanded the same responsible savings and spending habits of the federal government as they did of themselves.

Civil defense and economic literacy added a new component to homemaker training for the post-World War II era. They made explicit that women were responsible for national security through their daily practices. Both programs built on the idea that the home was a private realm separate from the state but critical to the nation. They convey in concrete ways how the GFWC believed that the health of the nation relied on the individual efforts of private individuals, especially homemakers. As such, they point to how the GFWC’s idealization of the home lent itself to idealization of private institutions and actions as more “American” than public ones. As the following chapters further demonstrate, this had important implications for how the General Federation conceived of the relationship between the citizen and the state and how that shaped their public maternal activism.

Conclusion

In 1948, the American Home chairman Mrs. Frank J. Pratt, Jr. warned that the

America home was “taken for granted to an alarming degree.” She acknowledged that clubwomen love the home and all it represents, but said they do nothing to protect it or

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make it stronger. “It just IS,” she wrote, and, as a consequence, “the rapid deterioration of home life also IS. NO real home exists without constant vigilance and effort.”91

Clubwomen’s homemaking in 1945 was an incredible burden and an incredible source of civic power. Identifying the American home as the “key to our civilization,” the GFWC bolstered the role women could play in building the postwar political order. It looked to their traditional homemaking responsibilities and stressed their political value.

To avoid repeating the horrors of the recent past, the world needed healthy global citizens who respected the individual and were skilled in interpersonal cooperation. The world needed well-adjusted democratic Americans to lead this mission. For devout clubwomen, this project could not be separated from its religious foundation.

Christianity gave birth to democracy while bringing all of God’s children together under the umbrella of international brotherhood. It was a moral imperative that clubwomen rededicate themselves to their homemaking duties.

The GFWC’s homemaker professionalization efforts provided an avenue for making that happen. Training clubwomen in democratic family practices, family living, and motherhood elevated the status of the homemaker and recognized her worth to the health of the nation. These projects built on historical professionalization efforts from the

Progressive era. Like those earlier programs, postwar professionalization standardized homemaking, eliding racial and class differences. Conforming to a white middle-class ideal, professionalization reflected the GFWC’s own racial and class privilege while creating a sense of national unity.

91 Pratt, “Bulletin: The American Home Department Report, September, 1948.”

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The onset of the Cold War heightened the importance of homemaking by turning it into a weapon against communism. Already conceived of as the building block of society, the home became ever more idealized as a private space separate from state intrusion. Religion figured prominently as a symbol of the sanctity of the private home and religious devotion became an expression of American citizenship. It also reinforced clubwomen’s construction of the national character as democratic, self-reliant, and best served by private institutions and actions. Through civil defense and economic literacy programs the General Federation deliberately trained clubwomen in these lessons.

Informing the General Federation’s construction of female citizenship was a belief in shared maternal priorities among all women. Even as it appealed to the white middle class, the GFWC used universal language about motherhood and democracy. It imagined that women shared a common bond as figurative communal mothers and as such had a maternal responsibility to promote democracy within their actual and communal families. Club leaders were sincere in their ideas about womanhood and maternal leadership, but such assertions also proved a useful tool for expanding women’s claims to public power at home and abroad. As the next chapter shows, the GFWC used this construction to extend women’s domestic reach into international arenas. Informed by its commitment to global citizenship, the GFWC pushed the boundaries of women’s homemaking into other nations among international women, all the while remaining steadfast in its assumptions about active citizenship, self-reliance, and private enterprise as quintessential American values.

CHAPTER 3 MOTHERS AND COLD WARRIORS: A GENDERED APPROACH TO POSTWAR INTERNATIONALISM

“There can be no war in a world whose women know, understand and appreciate one another. We believe in that tenet.” – Dorothy Houghton, GFWC president, 1950-19521

In 1951 at the height of the Korean War, GFWC president Dorothy Houghton laid out clubwomen’s responsibilities for the “sixth year of the Atomic Age.” Contending that democratic health and national security could only be understood in both national and international terms, Houghton outlined an ambitious internationalist maternalist agenda that complemented the GFWC’s vision of postwar homemaking. “We women are seeking to benefit American life at the local, state, and national levels, and at the same time, we have become almost overnight world citizens and global thinkers,” she told members. The Cold War had fused national and international politics, making the lives of everyday Americans an international affair. “We believe that the most constructive work is not always accomplished by statesmen around conference tables,” she continued.

“The preservation of our American way of life and the hope for an everlasting peace depends ultimately upon the fabric of everyday, decent living.” How clubwomen translated their maternal domestic responsibilities for citizenship training from their

1 Dorothy Houghton, “Guideposts for Freedom,” address at the GFWC national convention May 12, 1952, p. 6, GFWC, Houghton’s President’s Papers, Box 1, Folder 2.

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homes to the world would directly contribute to the United States’ victory in the Cold

War.1

The General Federation’s gendered construction of citizenship assigned clubwomen an important role in the international arena during postwar era. The GFWC believed that all women the world around – as mothers – wanted peace because it was the best way to preserve human life. According to the GFWC, this shared desire turned clubwomen into a unique envoy for postwar peace. The organization believed that

American clubwomen could connect with international women and promote peace by spreading core American values of democracy, self-reliance, and private enterprise.

Theirs was a sort of public diplomacy conducted outside official channels but in service of advancing American interests abroad.2 Clubwomen did this through their support of the United Nations, cultural exchange, philanthropic efforts, and international communications initiatives, all of which drew on clubwomen’s traditional gendered methods of public education and activism. As such, their maternal responsibility for educating the citizenry was reframed as part of a distinctly Cold War strategy both at home and abroad. Men may have made the policies that by and large set the course of international affairs, but clubwomen believed they helped create the grassroots support for them.

1 Houghton, “Today’s Challenge,” p. 1.

2 Wendy Wall argues that public (or popular) diplomacy engaged everyday Americans in advancing a particular image of the “American way” overseas through work similar to that conducted by the GFWC, including letter-writing with international pen pals, the Crusade for Freedom, and Voice of America. Wendy L. Wall, Inventing the “American Way:” The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 242-243.

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The GFWC’s internationalism had a strong nationalist undercurrent. Despite its calls to international sisterhood, the General Federation’s international affairs efforts provided clubwomen with the opportunity to build grassroots support for American-style democracy and capitalism. Theirs was a vision of western internationalism, reflective of the Cold War Liberal Establishment’s U.S. foreign policy that increasingly sought to create kinship among the “free” western world as part of its anticommunist strategy.

Like its home government, the GFWC stepped up its interest in South East Asia, Latin

America, and the Middle East where the communist menace seemed most urgent.

Although the General Federation sincerely believed that the United Nations could be an effective international regulatory body that could prevent the outbreak of another world war, the GFWC increasingly saw the U.N. as a means of protecting American interests through international diplomatic relations. With the onset of the Cold War, when the

General Federation advocated peace, it meant peace on terms favorable to American geopolitics. The same philosophy applied to clubwomen’s international activism among women overseas. It preached the common bond of womanhood, but among women in places where conditions allowed American values to flourish.

This balance between an imagined international womanhood, peace, and patriotism proved critical to the GFWC as the United States headed into the Cold War because it allowed the organization’s historical commitment to internationalism to flourish while the organization positioned itself as a potential broker for peace without undermining American interests. Like many Americans, the GFWC saw the Soviet

Union as an aggressive power and the barrier to international peace. American foreign

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policies, by contrast, protected the world from further destabilizing communist influence.

In the GFWC’s promotion of peace and Western international cooperation, the organization became a missionary of American foreign policy. By concentrating as it did on the work conducted among and between women as global mothers, the General

Federation also made a gendered argument for expanding women’s power as political players. As one clubwoman put it, “We talk about mobilizing ‘man-power’ when there is a war to be won. Why not mobilize ‘woman-power’ for peace?”3

The GFWC’s activism in this realm resembled its peer women’s organizations such as the League of Women Voters and the American Association of University

Women. Historian Helen Laville argues that American women’s organizations at the end of World War II sought to promote peace overseas by training international women in

American-style democratic citizenship. They believed this could best be done through voluntary associations. Drawing on Grant McConnell’s work about the utility of voluntary associations as a tool for social organization, Laville argues that women’s groups tried to establish the women’s club model of citizenship overseas as a means of constructively directing individual political activism. As part of a women’s club, international women would be taught how to become politically active in ways that enhanced their newly democratic states and guarded against the rise of anti-democratic movements. The AAUW and the LWV, for example, held cultural exchanges with

German women through the State Department and the U.S. Women’s Bureau to show

3 Milicent Chatel, “Something New,” Clubwoman, January 1947, p. 9.

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German women how to organize as part of an association and the benefits to civil society of doing so.4

According to Laville, these efforts relied on a construction of international sisterhood that could not entirely weather the Cold War. American women’s groups used essentialist arguments about woman’s natural desire for peace to legitimate their political participation. But American women’s groups also believed in the superiority of the

American model of citizenship and the voluntary association specifically. Their approach created tensions with international women who wanted to participate in their rebuilt democracies directly rather than through women’s clubs. International sisterhood was further challenged by the emergence of the Cold War. American women’s groups, the

Women’s Bureau, and the State Department were unwilling to endorse international sisterhood when promoted by the communist Women’s International Democratic

Federation. Sisterhood prevailed, but only among Western women and on terms conducive to democracy and capitalism.5

The General Federation’s contribution to this type of outreach has been understudied. Laville suggests that the GFWC was very “introspective” compared to its colleagues such as the AAUW, the BPW, the LWV, the YWCA, and the National

Council of Negro Women. She contends that the General Federation was more interested in educating its members on international relations than in deliberately political

4 Laville, Cold War Women, pp. 45-95.

5 Ibid.

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international outreach.6 But between July 1947 and August 1948, the General Federation reported welcoming nineteen international clubs with over five million members into the federation.7 Significantly, the majority came from areas shaken by the war including

France, Greece, the Philippines, Austria, and England as well as a few from Cuba,

Argentina, and Mexico.8 By 1953, the GFWC had 131 international clubs in thirty-nine countries.9

The GFWC led pro-U.S. efforts among these clubs similar to those Laville describes occurring among the AAUW and its colleagues. Former GFWC president Sara

Whitehurst initiated and led the GFWC’s internationalization drive from 1947 until 1952.

She believed spreading the American women’s club model helped make “democracy work in our own country and sell it [abroad].”10 Not unlike the AAUW’s and the LVW’s experience in Germany, for example, the GFWC explained that American wives of

American soldiers became familiar with local German women and formed German-

American women’s clubs for the purposes of friendship and “to make German women

6 Laville, p. 59.

7 This is a highly inflated number, but records give little guidance for determining the actual membership. The GFWC only acknowledged that there was tremendous overlap in the estimated 4.3 million members of the newly-affiliated Korean Federation of Women’s Clubs because “practically every Korean woman belongs to at least four of the organizations forming the Federation.” Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. I, p. 42.

8 “Clubs Affiliated with the General Federation of Women’s Clubs Since July 1, 1947,” GFWC membership report, August 2, 1948. GFWC, Membership Records (Group 6), Series 12 (Membership Reports), Folder 1.

9 Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. I, p. 43.

10 “5,102,000 Overseas Join Clubwomen,” NYT, May 25, 1948, p. 30.

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more civic minded.” Clubs had one German and one American woman in each officer position and meetings were conducted in both languages.11

That Sara Whitehurst instigated and coordinated the task of building up the

GFWC’s international membership in 1947 underscores the nationalist component of clubwomen’s international outreach. Whitehurst was a loyal Democrat from Baltimore, head of her deceased husband’s machine manufacturing company, and a respected clubwoman. She had filled a string of GFWC positions, including chairman of Education during the mid-1930s, at which point she pushed for a resolution urging schools to teach democratic forms of government because she was concerned about the permeation of

“foreign ‘isms’” in American life. She also had presided over the organization as president between 1941 and 1944, during which time she traveled through the western hemisphere on a series of “Good Neighbor” tours meant to strengthen ties between North,

South, and Latin American clubwomen. After her stint as GFWC president, she briefly flirted with leadership of the equal rights feminist group the National Woman’s Party. In

1948, Whitehurst was elected Democratic National Committee chairwoman for the state of Maryland, she ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1950, and was rewarded for her party loyalty in 1951 with an appointment to President Truman’s newly-formed Federal

Civil Defense Administration coordinating civil defense efforts among women.

Whitehurst’s patriotic credentials could not be questioned.12

11 Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. II, pp. 164-165, quote p. 165.

12 Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. I, pp. 113-119.

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Whitehurst was deeply suspicious of any threat to the American way of life.

When clubwomen debated intervention in the years before World War II, Whitehurst decisively led them into the war effort in 1941 by declaring that her three objectives for her presidential administration were to “work for the preservation of our representative form of government,” to champion a “return to religion,” and to initiate a “call to arms for national defense for America.” Since the 1930s she had been known to travel to club meetings across the country with copies of The Communist Manifesto to educate members about the evils of communism because she thought clubwomen were too embarrassed to buy copies of it for themselves. It would be Whitehurst who would lead

GFWC president Mildred Ahlgren’s “Americanism” campaign between 1952 and 1954, sharpening Whitehurst’s anticommunist leanings into a national campaign to defend democracy, religion, and private enterprise. She repeatedly pushed for anticommunist positions within the GFWC and outside of it. In 1966, she resigned her seat on the

Maryland Board of Regents after serving thirty-three years because the “board refused to ban Communists or Communist sympathizers from speaking to students.”13

Whitehurst’s active international outreach had as much to do with her concern for protecting national security as for the fates of international women. Preserving the

American way of life meant building positive foreign relationships that invested international women in democracy, self-reliance, and private enterprise. Only then would they guard against the spread of communism and other anti-democratic movements in their own home territories. Describing the affiliation of international women with the

13 “Sara Whitehurst, Prominent in Party,” WP, March 7, 1971, p. 37.

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GFWC in 1948, Whitehurst told members that the GFWC was determined to “‘sell democracy to the women of the world in order to combat Russian propaganda in all of these countries.’”14 Whitehurst’s efforts were hardly “introspective.” Whitehurst, like the General Federation, did value member education as a critical step in its outreach, but such attention was not synonymous with lack of politicization or ambition.

The General Federation’s focus on member education was instead a critical step in its strategy to earn women greater public power. As historian Margaret Olsen argues, member education was necessary to build political will among the membership for internationalism. Through member education, clubwomen learned that international politics had a direct effect on national politics. It was therefore clubwomen’s duty as community leaders and defenders of domestic life to promote international issues such as the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, and the Reciprocal Trade Agreement.15 Olsen posits that clubwomen’s support of “an international organization [the U.N.] that would, in turn, facilitate women’s advancement in national and international society” drew on

“women’s capacity as family and community caretakers both to contribute to global stability and to involve women in the political culture of the day.”16 Thus educated and engaged, clubwomen added internationalism to their repertoire of traditional activism: they led local public education campaigns on behalf of the United Nations and foreign philanthropic efforts, they lobbied their political representatives for specific international

14 “5,1032,000 Overseas Join Clubwomen,” NYT, May 25, 1948, p. 30.

15 Olsen, “One Nation, One World,” p. 98.

16 Ibid. pp. 55-56.

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policies, and they demanded women’s voices be heard in policy-making. GFWC leadership then used this activism to push for greater public power for women, particularly on issues relating to foreign affairs with some limited success.

Olsen’s analysis hints at but does not fully explore the GFWC’s maternalist ideology that made such gendered politics possible. As this chapter shows, clubwomen’s internationalism was rooted in their maternal identities. As mothers the world around, clubwomen relied on woman’s “natural” desire for peace and protection of her family to promote cooperative international relations and American interests overseas.

This chapter examines how the General Federation leveraged its maternalist politics to extend women’s domestic citizenship training responsibilities beyond the nation’s borders to the international arena. It begins with a discussion of the GFWC’s internationalism in historical context and in the postwar era, showing how the organization modified internationalism to accommodate American interests. With the onset of the Cold War, the GFWC scaled back its calls for “world federation” and increasingly saw internationalism as a means of stimulating Americanism principles among clubwomen overseas. The chapter then considers how the General Federation conducted this work through other forms of popular diplomacy, namely personal cultural exchange, philanthropic projects, and international communications initiatives. In its popular diplomacy, the GFWC encouraged clubwomen to think about the common bond of motherhood in global context while training international citizens in democratic participation, self-reliance, and appreciation of the free market. Unsurprisingly, their vision looked very similar to that of Cold War liberals in the U.S. government. But the

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GFWC managed to retain the language of universalism by showing how peace favorable to American interests favored all women and their families. In so doing, the GFWC encouraged an internationalist maternalism that endowed clubwomen with responsibility for training citizens in Americanism around the world.

International Maternalism

The General Federation’s postwar internationalist maternalism grew out of a history of internationalizing American clubwork. Since the late nineteenth century,

American women overseas had been exporting American-style women’s activism by organizing women’s clubs, sometimes in partnership with local women. Like they were at home, international women’s clubs became a forum for women’s education and an avenue for public participation. Expatriate American and international clubwomen often devoted themselves to the protection of children and the welfare of families, extending their domestic responsibilities into the public realm. As it did in the United States, such

“municipal housekeeping” overseas relied on an essentialist construction of womanhood that imagined all women as natural caregivers. In the international arena, this essentialist construction served both to justify women’s public activism in their local environs and to unite American and international women in common cause around the world.

American clubwomen’s sense of shared sisterhood with international women dovetailed with their religious beliefs. The Judeo-Christian ethic preached the worth of all of God’s creatures. It connected all women in all cultures and nations and reinforced

American clubwomen’s sense of responsibility for their sisters’ well-being. Accordingly,

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international clubwork was a religious obligation. This argument owed a debt to female missionaries who had already extended American women’s influence overseas, as well as to popular ideas about women’s virtue. American clubwomen often translated this moral errand into a call for international peace as the surest way to care for their international sisters and all of God’s peoples.

Early GFWC international clubs grew in areas exposed to Anglo-American influence. A New York City-based Sorosis clubwoman traveling through Bombay founded the first international club among Indians and Western women in 1889 and another club in Perth, Australia five years later. Both clubs, like Sorosis and other

GFWC women’s clubs in the United States, espoused the benefit of association as a means of women’s cultural education and public participation. During its first two decades of existence, the GFWC welcomed clubs from Western Europe, the United

Kingdom, Canada and Mexico, Africa (Egypt and Tunisia), and Asia (China, Japan, and the Philippines) – places with Anglo-American presence. In 1907, the GFWC went at the behest of the United States government to the Panama Canal Zone to organize American workers’ wives into women’s clubs because it was believed clubwork would settle disgruntled male workers via their families and provide moral uplift. International clubs in effect proselytized the American model of female citizenship based on an essentialist notion of women’s purity and maternal obligations.17

In this the GFWC was similar to its peer organizations in the temperance, suffrage, and peace movements, which also internationalized in the late nineteenth

17 Houde, Reaching Out, pp. 29-30, 71, 125-127.

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century. The Young Women’s Christian Association, the Woman’s Christian

Temperance Union, and the International Council of Women among others relied on the belief that all women shared a common interest – a mother’s desire to care for her family and her community – to justify their expansion into other countries and colonial regions.

There they joined American expatriates and local women on a host of issues that would enhance quality of life while advancing women’s position in society. Like the GFWC, many of these groups shared a strong religious conviction about their international work and the bonds of womanhood. Belief in a common womanhood was especially prominent among social justice and peace activists including Jane Addams and her

Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which used this essentialist construction to justify working outside the traditional framework of nation-states.18

Although well-intentioned, there were limits to American women’s internationalism. American clubwomen could replicate American class and racial hierarchies overseas, which reinforced American women’s authority over non-American and non-white women. Such disparities gave American women a tool to translate their international power into greater power at home, but undercut the real possibilities for international sisterhood. American women’s internationalism could also code

Americanization projects. As suggested by the GFWC’s international clubs in Bombay

18 Harriet Hyman Alonso, Peace as a Women’s Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Women’s Rights (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993); Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York: Free Press, 1989); Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Kathryn Kish Sklar, Anja Schüler, and Susan Strasser, Eds., Social Justice Feminists in the United States and Germany: A Dialogue in Documents, 1885-1933 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). See also Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).

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and the Panama Canal Zone, American women’s groups were often less interested in genuine international exchange than in exporting American ideals. As one historian argues, by the 1920s “‘internationalists’ became the term for those who held the view that peace and international harmony depended on the globalization of the American liberal tenets of private enterprise, the open door…and on the development of international policies to ensure the triumph of these conditions.” Groups such as the Y, which did try to minimize its “American” character in favor of internationalism, lost much of its domestic financial support. Other groups not beholden to the liberal economic model, such as WILPF, became especially vulnerable to red-baiting during the 1920s, which crippled its political power at home.19

Unsurprisingly then, many women’s groups subordinated their international organizing and peace efforts to patriotic duty during World War I. Although pacifist movements flourished among women’s organizations including the GFWC during the

Progressive era, many women’s groups set aside their peace messages once war became imminent. Eva Perry Moore, GFWC president from 1908 to 1912, stands as an example of how clubwomen successfully blended a commitment to internationalism, patriotism, and the war effort. Moore helped organize the GFWC women in the Panama Canal Zone in 1908 and became the GFWC’s “foreign correspondent,” reporting to the group on

19 Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream, p. 115. See also Nancy Boyd, Emissaries: The Overseas Work of the American YWCA, 1895-1970 (New York: Woman’s Press, 1986); Carol Chen, "Beneficent Imperialists: American Women Missionaries in China at the Turn of the Century” in Diplomatic History 27, No. 3 (June 2003), pp. 327-352; Louise Michele Newman, White Women’s Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Authority in the American West, 1874-1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Ian Tyrell, Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in Internationalist Perspective, 1880-1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).

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international clubs and affairs until 1928. After her presidential term at the GFWC ended in 1912, she became the president of the internationally-minded suffrage and social reform organization the National Council of Women until 1920, when she became the vice-president of the International Council of Women until 1930. During the war years, however, she served alongside suffragist Dr. Anna Howard Shaw as the secretary of the government’s Woman’s Committee of the U.S. Council of National Defense.20 Shaw, along with many suffragists including fellow Woman’s Committee member Carrie

Chapman Catt, likewise set aside their political demands to lead the nation’s women through war. Indeed, many suffragists saw war work as proof of women’s contribution to the polity and believed they could leverage it to demand the vote after the war was over.

After the war, the GFWC resumed its internationalist stance while astutely modifying it to fit the changing political culture and more overtly promoted American interests. The General Federation supported the League of Nations and joined Catt’s

National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War in 1925. But, wary of red-baiting and its own increasingly conservative membership in the 1920s, the GFWC distanced itself from more progressive international women’s initiatives. The General Federation withdrew from the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee in 1928, for example, partially to avoid aspersions cast on the group that it was part of an international communist conspiracy; the GFWC likewise steered clear of the WILPF, a constant target of antiradicals.

20 Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. 1, p. 75.

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The GFWC instead expressed its internationalism by advocating cultural exchange – a seemingly innocuous activity – between clubwomen throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The General Federation encouraged such exchange within the western hemisphere in hopes of shoring up U.S. influence over its southern neighbors and supported the government’s “Good Neighbor” policy. The group’s endorsement of a series of neutrality agreements in the 1930s likewise reflected its balancing act between keeping international sisters from the hardships of war and opposing foreign intervention into American spheres of influence. Ironically, its position consequently often matched that of conservative isolationists during the 1930s. But by dint of its cultural exchange programs, the GFWC stood apart from conservatives.

As with World War I, however, the General Federation came to support World

War II. Although clubwomen extensively debated the value of neutrality over intervention, they were ultimately pulled around to the war’s cause by the leadership of the strongly patriotic GFWC president Sara Whitehurst. Clubwomen embarked on a number of homefront projects to strengthen the American war effort, such as its “Buy a

Bomber” campaign to encourage the purchase of government bonds and Red Cross work.

Many of the GFWC’s peer groups including Catt’s NCCCW also amended their pro- peace stances. Uncompromisingly internationalist groups such as the WILPF proved the exception rather than the rule. All but the most committed pacifists came to espouse

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some form of intervention during World War II if for no other reason than to best assist their international sisters.21

Despite widespread support for World War II, the GFWC did not abandon its dream of international cooperation and understanding. By 1944, the General Federation was lobbying membership and politicians for the creation of a postwar international body that would help preserve peace after armistice. The GFWC was a strong proponent of the

Dumbarton Oaks conference in October 1944 and was later invited by the State

Department as an official consultant to the San Francisco conference in April 1945 that formed the United Nations. After the U.N.’s charter, the GFWC became a recognized

N.G.O. and accredited observer.22 The U.N. represented an avenue where internationalism in its most institutionalized cooperative form could flourish. The

General Federation used that definition of the organization to push for greater humanitarian goals such as human rights and women’s rights. When the two major superpowers came to several stalemates in the early Cold War, the GFWC looked to the

U.N. as a potential peace broker, even supporting the creation of an international police force to enforce international agreements and maintain the balance of power.

21 Margaret Paton-Walsh, Our War Too: American Women Against the Axis (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002).

22 Among the other NGOs to the UN included organizations representing industry, labor, religious groups, and 42 service organizations such as the International Lions and Rotarians. Only five women’s organizations were originally invited to be NGOs to the 1945 San Francisco conference: AAUW, LWV, BPW, the Women’s Action Committee for Victory and Lasting Peace, and the GFWC. Constance Sporborg, “International Affairs Department” panel on the United Nations at the GFWC national convention June 5, 1957, GFWC, Convention 1957, Vol. 1, pp. 353-356; Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. I, pp. 120, 238; “Women Representatives to the United Nations Conference,” undated information sheet, GFWC, Dickinson Program Records, Box 1, Folder 23; GFWC, “Freedom for All Mankind: International Affairs Department” program pamphlet (Washington, DC: GFWC, [1952-1954]), p. 15, GFWC, Ahlgren Program Records, Box 4, Folder 32.

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The United Nations meshed well with the GFWC’s own ideas about international womanhood, the interconnectedness of all persons as part of God’s humanity, and women’s obligations to both as the world’s homemakers. In preparation for the 1945 San

Francisco conference, GFWC delegate Constance Sporborg urged all state federation presidents and International Relations chairmen “to impress upon the consciousness of

EVERY clubwoman her individual stake and that of her family in a world planned on the basis of human rights; economic and social security; political expansion; and ethical and spiritual instruments with which to fortify a gradually integrated world destined for the uninterrupted advancement of the human family.”23 Given the United States’ failure to enter the League of Nations after World War I and the League’s subsequent impotence to stop World War II, the creation and success of the United Nations was not inevitable.

Sporborg’s emphasis on the human family aimed to stir clubwomen’s reverence for

God’s family and women’s obligation to protect that family – the same values that informed clubwomen’s notion of maternal citizenship within their own homes. Framing the U.N. in these terms gave it a moral weight that demanded clubwomen’s endorsement.

In the final years of World War II, many Americans, including GFWC clubwomen, imagined postwar peace would come through some sort of world federation that brought all the nations of the world together into one ruling body. The models for world federation ran the gamut from those that proposed an international body with

23 Constance Sporborg, “A Call to Action” memo to state federation presidents and chairmen of international relations departments, February 26, 1945, p. 2, GFWC, Dickinson Program Records, Box 2, Folder 1.

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legislative and judicial powers to those that proposed a United Nations-esque approach.24

As will be discussed in the next chapter, world federation and even internationalism more broadly construed faced serious opposition from many conservatives, and accusations of communism tainted anything approaching internationalism, including the United Nations.

But in the early years following World War II, world federation promised a glimmer of hope for war-weary Americans anxious to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. As the president of one internationalist group wrote to the New York Times in 1943, individual countries should indeed look after their own national security after the war, but it would be “political folly to neglect a more lasting solution of the problem of our security through international cooperation.”25

The General Federation embraced “world federation” as a promising political embodiment of its internationalist principles in 1945, but pulled back from it with the onset of the Cold War. In the GFWC’s 1945 incarnation of the term, world federation referred to a democratic international decision-making body that reconfigured relationships between citizens, nation-states, and the international community. In a world federation, Americans would be loyal to their nation, but to their international community as well; such identification with an external community would diminish, perhaps eradicate, war. The specifics of how a world federation would govern and the kind of power certain nations held within that body remained vague, but many including the

24 See “World Federation is Urged for Peace,” NYT, December 25, 1942, p. 11; “Post-War Federation Plan,” NYT, June 20, 1943, p. 27.

25 Ely Culbertson, “Unified World Policy Urged,” NYT, August 10, 1943, p. 18.

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GFWC felt it could begin with strengthening the United Nations’ legislative and judicial authority. This seemed a straightforward position to take: without any discussion, the

General Federation in 1948 passed a resolution endorsing this very idea.26 Lacking specifics, the principle of world federation was for the General Federation largely symbolic, meant to prioritize the ideals of peace and cooperation – the brotherhood of man – in the postwar order.

As with all of its issues, the GFWC endeavored to educate its membership on world federation. In March 1950, for example, GFWC president Dorothea Buck shared with members her congressional testimony in favor of House Resolution 64, which urged the strengthening of the United Nations into a world federation. Buck’s testimony claimed that HR 64 would “serve as a declaration to all nations that this country has not lost faith in the United Nations and its potentialities. At the same time it recognizes the need for strengthening the Untied Nations into a more effective instrument for peace.’”

She also kept members apprised of different proposals before Congress (at that count, six) to create various forms of world federation. In keeping with General Federation policy, Buck was careful to stress that the GFWC did not support any particular proposal and urged members to give each thorough study.27

World federation, however, had become a contentious issue. As they had in the

1920s, conservatives claimed internationalism threatened national sovereignty and was

26 “Principle of World Federation Resolution,” GFWC national convention May 27, 1948, GFWC, Convention 1948, Vol. 2, p. 475.

27 Dorothea Buck, “Is There an Answer to the H-Bomb?” Clubwoman, March 1950, p. 3.

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part of an international communist conspiracy. Many leftists and socialists did, after all, support world federation and communism did strive to eradicate national boundaries and establish a worldwide federation of workers (presumably beholden to Moscow).28 World federation quickly lost credibility with the hardening of the Cold War. The conservative

Chicago Daily Tribune made it its mission to disparage world federation in any form

(including “one-worldism,” “global citizenship,” and “world citizenship”) as

“globaloney.”29 The Tribune even attacked the GFWC for its eagerness to support internationalist foreign policy, including its sympathy for world federation, as a lackey of the State Department.30

GFWC clubwomen were disturbed to realize some in the public interpreted the

1948 resolution as a vote of support for the United World Federation. This was extremely distressing, since the patriotic credentials of the UWF were, according to the

GFWC, questionable at best: UWF advocated limiting national sovereignty and “federal division of powers involving the transfer to a world government of such legislative, executive, and judicial powers as are found indispensable to the preservation of peace.”31

28 “Group Asks Drive for World Rule,” NYT, November 2, 1947, p. 50; “New Peace Policy Urged By Thomas,” NYT, October 24, 1948, p. 62; “Roosevelt Favors World Federation,” NYT, April 29, 1949, p. 13; “World Government Urged by Einstein,” NYT, December 27, 1950, p. 2.

29 A term coined by Rep. Clare Booth Luce of Connecticut in her 1943 attack on progressive Vice President Henry Wallace. “Mrs. Luce’s Gibes at ‘Globaloney’ Convulse House,” CDT, February 10, 1943, p. 3.

30 Willard Edwards, “Flattery Wins Women Leaders to State Dept.,” CDT, March 24, 1952, p. 18.

31 “Group Asks Drive for World Rule,” NYT, November 2, 1947, p. 50.

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The California Federation of Women’s Clubs claimed it had even lost members because of it.32

With political adroitness, the General Federation back-tracked from its public support of world federation. The outbreak of the Korean War seemed to signal the impossibility of peaceful coexistence between two ideologically opposed superpowers.

Amid this hostile environment, the GFWC, with very little discussion, rescinded its world federation resolution in May 1951. The GFWC still supported internationalism and sought peaceful relations (indeed, it was not clear that the organization approved of the current war, even though the GFWC supported it). But it also recognized how politically untenable ideas like “world federation” were in this new climate and began to stress its own anticommunist credentials even more vociferously. The GFWC was truly becoming a group of Cold Warriors.

Constance Sporborg, the GFWC’s representative to the United Nations, embodied this negotiated internationalist perspective of the GFWC. Born in Cincinnati in 1879,

Sporborg was active in progressive causes, reportedly beginning when she invited children from the city’s settlement house to her twelfth birthday party. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in languages and moved with her family to New York City, where she married her husband, an attorney, and had two children.

Sporborg was a suffragist and close friend of Carrie Chapman Catt, whom Sporborg called the most influential woman in her life besides her own mother. Unlike the vast

32 “World Federation Resolution,” GFWC national convention, May 18, 1951, GFWC, Convention 1951, Vol. 2, pp. 749-750.

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majority of GFWC membership, Sporborg was Jewish. At various times she served in leadership positions of the New York City Federation of Women’s Clubs, the New York

State Federation of Women’s Clubs, and the National Council of Jewish Women, and was a member of the League of Women Voters. She was en route to the presidency of the GFWC in 1937 when her troubled eyesight necessitated her withdrawal from consideration. (Her withdrawal allowed her opponent, the vocal patriot Sara Whitehurst, to advance up the organization hierarchy, positioning Whitehurst for GFWC president in

1941.)33

Sporborg was an avid internationalist who understood that international affairs relied on a series of interrelated, complex political, economic, and social factors. Her constant emphasis on clubwomen’s education in international affairs reflected her belief that the most important tool in creating international stability – and hopefully peace – was international understanding. Americans needed to be knowledgeable about a broad range of issues from international trade to human rights in order to fully comprehend and then mitigate international tensions. She led countless sessions to educate women on international affairs, such as the two-day seminar in 1946 offered in conjunction with the

New York Times.34 In 1946, she vice-chaired the nation-wide Women’s Action

Committee for Lasting Peace, a non-partisan campaign to unseat isolationist congressmen

33 Kathleen McLaughlin, “Drops from Race in Women’s Clubs,” NYT, November 9, 1937, p. 23; Faith Rogow, Gone to Another Meeting: The National Council of Jewish Women, 1893-1993 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993), p. 239; “Mrs. William Sporborg, 81, Dies; Leading Clubwoman 30 Years,” NYT, January 3, 1961, p. 29; “Mrs. Sporborg’s Rites,” NYT, January 5, 1961, p. 31.

34 “Foreign Relations Theme of Seminar,” NYT, March 27, 1946, p. 21.

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and spur support for internationalism within Congress.35 For the next decade, Sporborg devoted herself to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

(UNESCO), which encouraged member nations to teach cultural awareness and international exchange. As the presiding rabbi told mourners at her funeral in 1961,

Sporborg “‘wanted to make the world a neighborhood.’”36

Even Sporborg’s internationalism, however, was filtered through the patriotic anticommunism of America’s postwar political culture. In 1947, she became a member of the advisory committee to the new group Common Cause, which included among its founders New Dealer and Liberal party chairman Adolf A. Berle, Jr. as well as coiner of the “Vital Center,” Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Originally Common Cause believed the

American way of life was under attack from communism and fascism, “‘two aggressive totalitarian movements now bidding for the idealism of the young and the hopes of the exploited and oppressed of the earth.’” The organization aimed to repudiate both by affirming democracy at home and helping it “‘to live abroad.’”37 As the Cold War heated up, Common Cause quickly focused its efforts on fighting communism and established a division dedicated to training young adults in this mission.38 The organization became in

35 Bess Furman, “Women Map Campaign to Defeat Congress ‘Isolationists’ at Polls,” NYT, April 26, 1946, p. 15.

36 William Rosenblum quoted in “Mrs. Sporborg’s Rites,” NYT, January 5, 1961, p. 31.

37 Natalie Wales Latham quoted in “New Unit Formed to Aid Democracy,” NYT, January 20, 1947, p. 3.

38 Natalie Wales (Latham) Paine led Common Cause. Paine was a society matron who founded the successful wartime Bundles for Britain. “New Plan to Assist Anti-Totalitarians,” NYT, March 28, 1947, p. 3; “Aid to Mindszenty Urged,” NYT, February 7, 1949, p. 2; “Common Cause to Expand,” NYT, September 12, 1949, p. 3; “Help for Iran is Urged,” NYT, May 14, 1951, p. 19.

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effect a non-governmental articulation of Cold War foreign policy: internationalism on

American terms.

The same could be said of the American-Korean Foundation, to which Sporborg played a contributing role. As head of the Women’s Committee of the Foundation beginning in 1954, Sporborg worked under Foundation head Milton Eisenhower (a

Republican, former university president and civil servant in the Dept. of Agriculture during the New Deal, and brother to the United States president) on American outreach to

Korean women. Founded in 1952, the Foundation sought to strengthen ties between the

United States and South Korea. It was a clear example of international nonprofit enterprise intended to bring a vulnerable region further into the American sphere of influence. The Foundation gave humanitarian relief to the war-torn country, at once helping provide basic standard of living for destitute Koreans and spreading American good-will.39 Reflected in Sporborg’s involvement with these two organizations,

Sporborg espoused internationalism, but even she understood it within the Cold War paradigm and used internationalism to advance American interests and defeat communism whenever possible.

It was Sporborg’s efforts on behalf of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in particular that demonstrated her gendered approach to internationalism and how she framed it as beneficial to American interests.

Founded in 1946, the multifaceted cultural project was concerned primarily with

39 “Korea Post Taken By Dr. Eisenhower,” NYT, December 15, 1952, p. 7; “American-Korean Foundation,” NYT, December 16, 1952, p. 30.

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improving access to and quality of education on a global level. This work took many forms from combating illiteracy to encouraging freedom of the press to tempering nationalism by promoting a more international worldview in primary and secondary education.40 The GFWC (and Sporborg specifically) sat on Congress’s fifty-member

United States National Commission for UNESCO, which advised the State Department on matters relating to UNESCO. (This Commission gave the appearance that UNESCO was not a government project and that individuals actually could contribute to the formulation of foreign policy; as the New York Times reported in 1947, “It is already apparent that the strange groundswell of interest in UNESCO is largely due to the feeling that there is one international organ in which people as individuals and in societies can throw their pennysworth [sic] into the struggle for peace and cooperation.”41) Sporborg committed significant energy to the project. She routinely gave speeches on the organization to member clubs as well as other groups, such as the National Council of

Jewish Women, the League of Women Voters, and the Women’s Press Club of New

York, often reaching an audience of one-hundred-plus at each lecture.42

40 UNESCO purported to be on an international humanitarian mission, but the Soviet Union saw it as a western propaganda tool. UNESCO’s support for open discussion, freedom of the press, and respect of the individual conveyed Western sympathies. The Soviet Union refused to join and its satellite states Poland and Hungary, which were members, often participated with what the press portrayed as cautious and even disruptive behavior. “William P. Carney, “Free Press an Aim in Mexico Meeting,” NYT, November 2, 1947, p. 52; William P. Carney, “U.S.A. ‘Warmonger,’ UNESCO Pole Says,” NYT, December 4, 1947, p. 10; Kathleen Teltsch, “2 Satellites Again Quit UNESCO Talks,” NYT, May 31, 1950, p. 12; “A Charter for UNESCO” NYT, November 10, 1947, p. 28.

41 Anne O’Hare McCormick, “Where the United Nations Touches the Grass Roots,” NYT, September 15, 1947, p. 10.

42 GFWC report to the Department of State, US National Commission for UNESCO regarding the GFWC’s articles and speeches on behalf of UNESCO, completed by Constance Sporborg, signed May 13, 1949, GFWC, Buck Program Records, Box 2, Folder 1.

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UNESCO’s aims coincided with the GFWC’s own gendered internationalism. Its stated goals were progress on human rights, better teaching materials to promote better global understanding, awareness of global problems, promotion of the U.N., aiding educational reconstruction in war-torn countries, and international exchange.43 At heart, it tried to provide the cultural components necessary for peace – to “remove the causes of war ‘from the hearts and minds of men’” as an important steppingstone to the work of the

United Nations.44 UNESCO, for example, studied educational systems in various countries to determine whether education itself was a barrier to a spirit of international cooperation. It even undertook revision of history textbooks because they tended to be, in the words of one UNESCO director, “‘primarily a description of war and victories aimed to develop in the feelings of the child those dangerous attitudes of Jingoism and imperialism which created in the mind of men warlike tendencies.’”45 This approach was not dissimilar from clubwomen’s efforts to raise democratic citizens within their own homes and communities. Such work codified the GFWC’s view of clubwomen’s citizenship training efforts within an international institutional framework. In this light,

UNESCO was very much a gendered policy initiative.

43 Constance Sporborg, “Working with UNESCO: ‘The Citadel of Men Without Uniforms,’” Clubwoman, pp. 8-9.

44 Karl E. Mundt quoted in Robert Young, “Call for Global Slant in U.S. School Books,” CDT, March 26, 1947, p. 1.

45 Bernard Drzewieski quoted in Young, “Call for Global Slant in U.S. School Books,” CDT, March 26, 1947, p. 1. See also Benjamin Fine, “National Conference on UNESCO Considers How the Organization Can Promote Peace,” NYT, March 30, 1947, p. E9.

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Yet Sporborg worried that male leaders would not give women “the right of way to organize for peace.”46 Member education and public awareness campaigns were the hallmark of clubwomen’s traditional activism and it seemed readily apparent to Sporborg that UNESCO ought to follow a similar model. But when Sporborg “boldly” proposed in

March 1947 that this strategy be applied to U.S.-Soviet tensions in hopes of building a bridge between the two superpowers, (American) UNESCO leaders shot her down.

Milton Eisenhower (then-chairman of UNESCO) termed her proposal “laudable” but also

“impractical” because the Soviet Union was not a UNESCO member.47 Secretary of

State William Benton echoed this sentiment; a few years later, he would call the notion that UNESCO could serve as a bridge for peace a “delusion” and a “chimera.”48 The men seemed to worry that “studying the tensions” meant meeting the Soviets halfway – of conceding the moral high ground that was American democracy and free enterprise.

(Indeed, in 1950 Benton clearly expressed his belief that UNESCO was a western tool to

“counteract Soviet efforts to destroy freedom of thought, science, and education” and ought to be used to “promote fundamental liberties” particularly in Soviet-threatened regions.)49

For Sporborg, this attitude was shortsighted. As a clubwoman, she had faith in education and public awareness as key factors in changing any social, political, and

46 Constance Sporborg, “Bombs or Ballots?,” Clubwoman, February 1948, pp. 5-6, quote p. 5.

47 Benjamin Fine, “U.S.-Soviet Tension Held Bar to Peace,” NYT, March 27, 1947, p. 21.

48 “UNESCO Study of Soviet-U.S. Tensions Opposed,” WP, March 27, 1947, p. 2; “UNESCO Called on to Counter Soviet,” NYT, June 7, 1950, p. 5.

49 “UNESCO Called on to Counter Soviet,” NYT, June 7, 1950, p. 5.

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economic condition – even on an international scale. “The battle of ideas is going apace,” she warned UNESCO delegates. It would be foolhardy if they failed to take this opportunity to use cultural education to defuse the ticking bomb.50 She had no doubt that concerted study and public awareness efforts would in the end dovetail with American interests. She believed this to be the case because her experiences as a clubwoman had shown her that women wanted peace and security for their children and that they would find those two things through western political and economic systems.

Sporborg knew women could both work toward easing U.S.-Soviet tensions through public education and promote American values. In fact, this job was particularly well-suited to clubwomen. As she told clubwomen in 1948, the “common bond between mothers all over the world in their love of and ambition for their children” to live in a secure world made women especially committed to smoothing international tensions and forging international peace. If UNESCO would encourage truly international exchange, she told members, then the world would learn that this ideological conflict was a choice between freedom – what she termed “free citizenship, free choice and free chance for security” – and destruction. If mothers around the world could hear this message, they would come to understand how “freedom” (i.e. American democratic and capitalist institutions) offered the best possibility for a safe and secure world for their children. If

UNESCO would just do this type of work, Sporborg marveled, “HOW [the men]

COULD COUNT UPON THE MOTHERS OF THE WORLD! (cap. orig.)” From a clubwoman’s perspective, international education and public awareness – clubwomen’s

50 Fine, “U.S.-Soviet Tensions Held Bar to Peace.”

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traditional activism put in service of UNESCO – could build the will for peace favorable to American values.51

Historically and into the postwar era, the General Federation looked to an essentialist construction of womanhood to participate in the international arena.

Clubwomen used ideas about motherhood to expand women’s citizenship both in their local environs and in a global context. Internationalist ideals, however, existed alongside

American clubwomen’s patriotism and, when necessary, American clubwomen subordinated their internationalism to national causes, including the two world wars.

During the Cold War, this behavior took on even greater political meaning. The General

Federation believed women could and did contribute to the American cause during the

Cold War in overtly political ways. Epitomized by Constance Sporborg, the GFWC’s support of the United Nations and UNESCO signaled its continued faith in internationalism as a means of national security and women’s unique ability to advance both.

International Maternalism as Public Diplomacy

With its internationalist maternalism, clubwomen engaged in public diplomacy: the export of a distinct understanding of American values through unofficial channels.

The GFWC’s public diplomacy took many forms, most notably international philanthropy, participation in international communications initiatives, and person-to- person cultural exchange. Each of these advanced ideals about democratic citizenship,

51 Sporborg, “Bombs or Ballots?,” p. 5.

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self-reliance, and the free market. But they were also deeply rooted in constructions of gendered citizenship that connected all women as mothers in the common goal of peace.

This was particularly evident in the General Federation’s international philanthropic projects. Philanthropy had always been part of traditional clubwork, but the GFWC’s postwar international philanthropy efforts deliberately contributed to

American geopolitical might. The General Federation, for example, had ongoing projects in Germany, South Korea, and Iran – areas vulnerable to communist expansion in the late

1940s and early 1950s. It framed this work as part of a humanitarian mission and no doubt many clubwomen participated because they were moved by stories of destitution and a sense of sisterhood. But GFWC leaders also made clear that such actions helped stabilize vulnerable regions and spread the American model of women’s citizenship to women overseas. Clubwomen believed international philanthropy stabilized social, political, and economic situations so that healthy homes could prosper and international mothers could better train their children in democratic citizenship. Addressing foreign crises with voluntary philanthropy rather than state action moreover encouraged the very kinds of self-reliance and independent civic activism American clubwomen believed were at the core of the national character, bringing international women as beneficiaries of these projects into the American sphere of influence.

That the General Federation worked with CARE on international projects underscores the dual purpose of its international philanthropy. CARE was a non-profit humanitarian organization founded in 1945 as the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe aimed at alleviating hunger brought on by World War II. Officially sanctioned

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by the President’s War Relief Control Board, CARE facilitated private American citizens’ purchasing of food (army rations), earmarked it for consumption by individuals and families, and then distributed it to the intended recipients.52 CARE quickly expanded its work to Latin America, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and a few locations in Eastern

Europe. Initially focused on food relief, CARE’s projects grew to include other material goods as well.

CARE marketed itself as an organization that promoted self-help, just the kind of self-reliant civic ethic clubwomen endorsed with their maternalist politics. Describing the group’s work to clubwomen, one CARE representative explained that it dealt in

“forms of Self-Help that can bring permanent improvement to the people in developing areas.”53 At the 1959 GFWC national convention, she elaborated on CARE’s strategy.

“Self-help literally means that we are lending a helping hand to groups of people who are facing up to the solution of their own problems in health, education, and economic development,” she told clubwomen. “We understand the yearnings of people everywhere, not for the gift of bread but for the opportunity to earn it (underline orig.).”54

When clubwomen worked with CARE to provide material goods for their international sisters overseas, they also exported a particular ideal of active citizenship that valued

52 Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, “Cooperatives Will Distribute to Europeans,” WP, December 16, 1945, p. S7; Herbert H. Lehman, “Packages for Abroad,” WP, January 5, 1946, p. 6.

53 Mrs. Orlando Petrillo, “In Prophetic Promise,” excerpt from a speech to the District of Columbia Federation of Women’s Clubs, [1947], reprinted in GFWC, “Club News from Other Lands: The International News Bulletin, April 1959,” (Washington, DC: GFWC, 1959), AKW Papers, SL, Box 2, Folder 10.

54 Mrs. Orlando Petrillo, “Council of International Clubs Luncheon, CARE Project Report” to the GFWC national convention June 3, 1959, GFWC, Convention 1959, Vol. 1, pp. 256-257.

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individual enterprise – a critical component of the GFWC’s own construction of the

American character.55

CARE also shared the GFWC’s desire to spread democracy overseas. In

1949, for example, CARE asked Americans to support the General Clay Fund for

German Youth Activities. The Fund (named for the American commander in

Berlin) distributed goods to German children at German Youth Activities centers voluntarily staffed by American servicemen and their wives. According to the

Fund’s chairman, the centers “are the only places overseas where German children of all backgrounds can learn democracy in action through discussion forums, team games and handicraft programs.”56 It was important to nurture these children because “they will be the leaders of tomorrow, perhaps our first line of defense” against future anti-democratic movements.57 Within one year of the project’s start, 300 centers had been established reaching 800,000 children.58

The GFWC reveled in the project’s potential for training German girls in

American-style citizenship. At the General Federation’s urging, clubwomen in

1950 purchased 26,000 pounds of fabrics and tools through the Fund to support

55 The emphasis on self-help could also be seen in the GFWC’s work with UNICEF. Between 1952 and 1954, the GFWC increased the number of clubs fundraising for UNICEF ten-fold, raising $273,335 in 1954 among 4000 community groups. The GFWC extolled the way “UNICEF helps them [over 90 underdeveloped countries] to help themselves in establishing health and nutrition facilities [italics original].” “U.N. Corner,” Clubwoman, September 1955, p. 30.

56 Jouett Shouse quoted in “Funds Sought for Youth Centers in Germany,” WP, October 22, 1949, p. B1.

57 Jouett Shouse, “German Children,” WP, December 22, 1948, p. 14.

58 Jouett Shouse, “General Clay Fund,” WP, December 15, 1949, p. 12.

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girls’ sewing classes.59 One member of the State Department told clubwomen that this support of the Fund “was a little Marshall Plan” they carried out “in order to implement our policy of helping the people of Western Europe to help themselves.”60 GFWC president Dorothy Houghton reported to her Board of

Directors that the girls had started English lessons and “organized their own clubs the American way, learned to know men and women from the United States in

Western Germany, and…became interested in our way of life.” Echoing the

Fund’s sentiments, Houghton told the Board that, “These teenage German girls will be the new leaders of Germany” and clubwomen’s support of the Fund was an important citizenship-building tool. The GFWC had never done “anything more worth-while materially and spiritually” than this work to combat communism and promote democracy in western Germany by training girls in

American-style women’s activism. Their support of the Fund was a humanitarian effort, to be sure, but a self-consciously Americanizing project as well.61

The GFWC’s international philanthropy was complemented by its support of international communications programs as a means of public diplomacy. In particular it endorsed the Crusade for Freedom, Radio Free Europe, and Voice of America as means of spreading the Americanism ethic. These projects became an avenue for women to

59 Houghton, “Guideposts for Freedom,” p. 6.

60 Walter Schwinn quoted in Houghton, “What’s Ahead for Women?” Clubwoman, January 1951, pp. 3+, quote p. 26.

61 Houghton, “Together We Serve America,” p. 5.

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reach other women overseas and encourage international women in their citizenship responsibilities.62

The General Federation especially encouraged clubwomen’s support of the

Crusade for Freedom. The Crusade for Freedom was a campaign begun in 1950 to urge

Americans to pledge their loyalty to freedom and liberty, and to extend their hands in friendship to those trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Although masterminded by the

Advertising Council, respected military leaders Gen. Lucius Clay (of CARE’s Clay

Fund) and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower became public faces of the Crusade.63 The

Crusade tapped into high anti-Soviet emotions following the Berlin Airlift and the hardening of the Soviet-American divide. A New York Times editorial summed up the indignation fueling the Crusade, calling it “a private movement to focus the full moral strength of America on the struggle to preserve human liberty against the tyrannical forces of aggressive Communist imperialism.”64 For six weeks beginning on Labor Day

1950, “Freedom Scrolls” circulated the country collecting signatures – including the

GFWC’s – of Americans devoted to the campaign. At the end of the crusade, the group rang a ten-ton bronze “Freedom Bell” in the western zone of Berlin, cast especially for the event, inscribed with Lincoln’s words from Gettysburg – “That this world under God

62 For an astute discussion of this type of popular diplomacy and its part in forging postwar consensus politics on the domestic stage, see Wall, Inventing the “American Way.”

63 The Ad Council is an advertising industry group primarily focused on public service advertising. It conceived of the Crusade as a means of building popular support for its main priority, Radio Free Europe. Bringing in small monetary donations from across the country, the Ad Council hoped the Crusade could do for RFE what war bonds did to create support for World War II. Wall, Inventing the “American Way,” p. 271.

64 “The Freedom Crusade,” NYT, September 4, 1950, p. 10.

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shall have a new birth of freedom” – and depicting the “five races of mankind passing the torch of freedom.”65 GFWC president Dorothy Houghton celebrated the campaign as

“the American people’s challenge to communism” and declared the bell the “symbol of resistance to world tyranny.”66

The General Federation also supported Radio Free Europe, launched earlier that summer on July 4, 1950 by the same interests behind the Crusade for Freedom. Radio

Free Europe aimed to connect exiled democratic, non-fascist, anticommunist leaders in the West and to reach those still trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Broadcasts included programs from exiled political leaders as well as programming directed by staff from

Eastern European countries. Begun on three channels in Germany (gained through the

State Department), RFE quickly expanded into Eastern Europe. Because RFE was a private organization, it had greater leeway in its broadcasts than the State Department’s official propaganda arm “Voice of America.”67 It was the most direct way to spread

American ideals and as such had the General Federation’s endorsement. As Dorothy

Houghton said when she urged clubwomen to lend their financial support in 1951, “The

65 George Eckel, “Freedom Crusade Will Begin Sept. 4,” NYT, July 28, 1950, p. 23.

66 Houghton, “Together We Serve America,” p. 4.

67 Jack Gould, “Radio Free Europe,” NYT, July 9, 1950, p. X9; “Gen. Clay to Help Free-Europe Drive,” NYT, April 27, 1950, p. 22; “Exiles Will Pierce the Iron Curtain In New Radio Broadcast Tomorrow,” NYT, July 3, 1950, p. 1; “Radio Free Europe,” NYT, July 4, 1950, p. 16; “New Radio Programs Aim at Iron Curtain,” NYT, July 14, 1950, p. 25. See also Robert Jackall & Janice M. Hirota, Image Makers: Advertising, Public Relations, and the Ethos of Advocacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

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hard-hitting transmitters of Radio Free Europe pierce the Iron Curtain, spiking

Communist lies with the truth and undermining the influence of the Red rulers.”68

The GFWC boasted a relationship with Voice of America as well. Part of the

State Department between World War II and 1953 when it moved to the U.S. Information

Agency, Voice of America broadcast overseas in native languages to counter communist and anti-American propaganda. Although officially under state direction, civic groups unaffiliated with the program broadcast messages overseas as part of their efforts to promote American good-will. The GFWC, for example, sent a message of sympathy and solidarity to the women of South Korea over Voice of America days after the North

Korean invasion in June 1950.69

The GFWC’s “Radios for Iran” project in 1951 combined its interest in international philanthropy with its support of international communications as a means of citizenship training overseas. Project chairman Constance Sporborg urged clubwomen to buy “GFWC”-inscribed silk scarves to raise funds to purchase radios and loud speakers over which Voice of America could be broadcast in Iran; the Woman’s Press Club of

New York donated the money for the first radio (thirty-six dollars). On March 16, 1952, within one year of beginning the Radios for Iran project, clubwomen had raised $2500 and presented five loudspeakers to the mayor of Tehran and the International Women’s

Club of Iran. Over Voice of America, GFWC president Dorothy Houghton “spoke

68 Houghton, “Together We Serve America,” p. 4.

69 “Women Send Message to Korea,” NYT, June 27, 1950, p. 11.

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directly to the women of Iran” through a loudspeaker in a public park in Tehran. Reports claimed that the speaker reached ten thousand listeners every day.70

The timing was hardly coincidental, since 1951 marked the beginning of the brief reign of Mohammad Mossadegh as Iran’s Prime Minister. As a nationalist who resisted foreign intervention in Iran and nationalized the oil fields, the U.S. considered him a communist threat and the C.I.A. backed a coup removing him from power in 1953.

Notably, the General Federation did not mention Mossadegh by name in its Radios for

Iran materials, nor did it paint Iran as a left-leaning country.

But American clubwomen would have understood the threat Mossadegh and Iran posed to the United States politically and economically. The American press, following

Washington’s lead, portrayed oil nationalization as economic “suicide” at the hands of an irrational Mossadegh while lauding the Shah as a progressive trying to pull his country into the twentieth century. Coverage suggested Iran’s technological and political weakness as a nation and Iran’s consequent vulnerability to Soviet influence. Such gendered language molded the Iranian situation, which was a drive for economic independence from colonial powers, into the familiar Cold War paradigm. An emasculated, feminized Iran needed rescuing by virile Western powers from the sinister

Soviets who perversely preyed on such impotency. Tehran’s temporary ban on Voice of

70 [Constance Sporborg], “Radios for Iran Project: A Report, April 1952,” quote, p. 1, GFWC, Houghton Program Records, Box 3, Folder 7. The official GFWC history claims that six sets were purchased, “sent through the State Department to the American Embassy in Iran for distribution by the Iran International Women’s Organizations;” one additional set was presented by Houghton to the U.S.S. Courier, a U.S. Coast Guard ship, to serve as a “floating radio station.” Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. 1, p. 243. See also Constance Sporborg, “Radios for Iran,” Clubwoman, April 1951, p. 18.

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America and the British Broadcasting Corporation in November 1950 for supposedly derogatory comments about the Soviet ambassador underscored the urgency of the situation in Iran and heralded the West’s precarious position in this strategically important nation.71

The GFWC framed Radios for Iran as an international outreach project, but it was clearly a deliberate pro-West political act. According to reports, Mrs. Henry F. Grady of the International Women’s Club of Iran requested the radio sets. Grady was wife of the

U.S. ambassador to Iran, a recent transfer from Greece where he had been critical in implementing the Truman Doctrine. He had been sent to Iran where he tried to facilitate discussions between Britain and Iran over oil nationalization.72 At the radio presentation ceremony, in front of a host of elite women (mainly wives of ambassadors and at least one Iranian clubwoman) and Iranian officials, Mrs. A. J. Schrikker, president of the club and wife of the Netherlands ambassador in Iran, said that the gift was “an inspiring example of the cooperation of women of the world” and a “symbol of our common belief that the future happiness of all people depends on their being well-informed – about their

71 Michael Clark, “Iran Kept in Turmoil by Oil and Communism,” NYT, April 29, 1951, p. E4; Michael Clark, “Iran Senate Votes Oil Nationalizing,” NYT, May 1, 1951, p. 17; Drew Pearson, “Moscow Wooing Iran from U.S.,” WP, January 30, 1951, p. B15; Albion Ross, “U.S. Seeks to Woo Kurds from Soviet,” NYT, January 7, 1950, p. 6; “Iran Will Broadcast,” NYT, May 21, 1950, p. 14; “Iran Bars Relay to Soviet of U.S. ‘Voice’ Programs,” NYT, November 16, 1950, p. 13; “Attack on Envoy Denied,” NYT, November 17, 1950, p. 3; “Jamming on Radio Protested in U.N.,” NYT, November 18, 1950, p. 3. See also William A. Dorman and Mansour Farhang, The U.S. Press and Iran: Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Cyrus Schayegh, “Orientalism Enters the Cold War: The New York Times' Coverage of Iran under Mosaddeq,” JUSUR: The UCLA Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, October 1, 2004. Permanent URL: http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid =15503 (Accessed April 10, 2009).

72 Michael Clark, “Iran Expends Time on Oil Ultimatum,” NYT, June 17, 1951, p. 24; Michael Clark, “U.S. Spurring Iran to Renew Oil Flow,” NYT, June 30, 1951, p. 1; “Grady is Shifted to Teheran Post,” NYT, May 30, 1950, p. 8.

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fellow men, their own countries and the nations of the world.”73 The International

Women’s Club of Iran – like so many of the GFWC clubs overseas since the early 1900s

– comprised a significant western constituency and embraced a strong western perspective, exemplified by its appeal to American clubwomen for support in its

Westernizing mission. Schrikker used the words of “cooperation,” “common beliefs,” and appealed to the ideal of truth, but she meant them insofar as they united Western sympathies and countered a dangerous Iranian nationalism that threatened Western influence. In 1952 amidst the oil nationalization controversy, that clearly meant capitalist market influence.

The driving force behind the General Federation’s gendered public diplomacy, however, was person-to-person cultural exchange. It was predicated on the belief that all women were mothers seeking peace as the best means of protecting their families, no matter where they lived or what their circumstances. Women relating to women as mothers conscientious of their place in the greater human family would work towards peace with greater fervency and efficacy than male political channels alone. Through the international GFWC, clubwomen had an opportunity to reach across national boundaries to learn from one another. Such cultural exchange would promote both peace and democracy around the world. As an international organization of homemakers and mothers, clubwomen were uniquely situated to make that happen.

73 Schrikker quoted in “Radios for Iran Project Report,” p. 2. According to the GFWC account, Iranian officials very graciously accepted the gift and installed the speakers at public squares around the country.

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Cultural exchange opened American clubwomen’s eyes to the idea that what happened to women abroad happened to women at home. As GFWC president Helen

Chapman told her members in 1954: “Your home cannot be safe, secure, clean, wholesome, happy if there is a war in this small world of ours, if there is disease in the house next door or an epidemic in the country across the border…everything which affects people anywhere affects your home and your family. And so our task as homemakers is a world-wide one – we are indeed our brother’s keeper! (itals. orig.)”74

The GFWC’s was a kind of global housekeeping that would stabilize international relations and promote peace by connecting women to women. This was a distinctly gendered process. In being “our brother’s keeper,” clubwomen nurtured the world, united as women to prevent war.

Ultimately cultural exchange was designed to proselytize American-style democracy and private enterprise, but on the surface, the GFWC claimed that cultural exchange was a two-way street. The General Federation wanted members to learn about other nations and cultures to develop international understanding, and relied on international projects to provide avenues for such exchanges. Project booklets offered detailed lists of what clubwomen could send to which countries on each of the continents.75 In the words of the 1950-1952 program booklet, international projects were

“bridge-builders” that “put up the lines of communication,” “defy time and space,” and

74 Helen Chapman, “Notes from the President,” Clubwoman, November 1954, p. 7.

75 GFWC, “World Cooperation, Revised Edition, October 1951” loose program pamphlet (Washington, DC: GFWC, 1951), GFWC, Houghton Program Records, Box 5.

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are a “universal language” across clubwomen, capable of serving the needs of the lowliest and the highest. In short, “They are of the stuff peace is made [sic].”76

The GFWC’s Council of International Clubs institutionalized this international exchange through overseas club expansion, learning and travel experiences, and targeted international projects.77 Created by Sara Whitehurst in 1947, the department recommended correspondence with international pen pals as a way for American clubwomen to forge personal relationships with clubwomen overseas; a 1951 report showed twenty-five thousand American clubwomen writing to pen pals abroad (although

GFWC president Dorothy Houghton liked to refer to them as “peace pals”).78 A club might also sponsor an exchange student program through Latin-American Scholarships (a division of the Institute of International Education in Washington, D.C.), or less formal exchange programs involving students and/or teachers.79 Clubs were encouraged to reach out to international people in their own communities. A club might form a local Inter-

American group to serve as a space where local Latin American residents and native-born clubwomen might come together for cultural and friendly exchange. Clubs could also sponsor folk festivals, reach out to Displaced Persons living locally, and observe

76 GFWC, “International Relations: Policy, Program, Projects” program pamphlet (Washington, DC: GFWC, [1951]), p. 6, GFWC, Houghton Program Records, Box 2, Folder 19.

77 See Appendix A for a list of international clubs circa 1953.

78 Houghton, “Together We Serve America,” p. 5; Houghton, “Guideposts for Freedom,” p. 6. A 1949 article in the monthly magazine offered suggestions on appropriate correspondence decorum: learn about your new friend’s culture before writing, and don’t criticize the government or customs of your new friend’s land. Sara A. Whitehurst, “World Cooperation,” Clubwoman, February 1949, p. 23.

79 Houghton reported that thirty-four states sponsored exchange programs in 1951. Houghton, “Together We Serve America,” p. 5.

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international holidays such as Pan American Day, United Nations Day, and Human

Rights Day.80 In 1951, 112 clubs initiated United Nations Day programs, 508 participated in community projects dedicated to the U.N., and members sewed U.N. flags for 237 local meeting places.81

The GFWC’s International Hostess program formalized this type of outreach.

American clubwomen serving as international hostesses assumed responsibility for greeting and hosting foreign visitors, especially clubwomen from overseas; it could require extensive travel and personal financial outlay. As hostesses, clubwomen shared their communities, homes, and clubs with visitors in ways the General Federation saw as distinctly American. “[The hostess] will appreciate humbly the great blessings that are hers as an American,” one program booklet intoned, “and, at the same time, increase her appreciation of other cultural values…She will be doing her small part in bringing peace and understanding to a troubled world.”82 Hostessing brought cultural exchange into intimate family spaces, highlighting the value placed on the nuclear family as the center of American democracy while also showcasing the physical components of nuclear family living, particularly consumer culture. The very conditions that made a clubwoman a potentially good hostess – she had a car, an “entertainment budget” and leisure time to

80 GFWC, “International Relations: Policy, Program, Projects, ” pp. 6-7.

81 Constance Sporborg, “International Relations Department Reports, United Nations, Division,” Clubwoman, May 1951, p. 21.

82 GFWC, “Freedom for All Mankind,” p. 14.

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engage in such activities – were the same that signaled the “American-ness” of the clubwoman to visitors.83

International philanthropy and communications projects did not create the same close bonds between clubwomen that cultural exchange did, but the three programs together comprised an important facet of clubwomen’s internationalist maternalism.

They advanced clubwomen’s self-perception as arbiters of citizenship responsible for training healthy citizens, whether at home or abroad. Understanding that clubwomen’s maternal influence would be most successful in economically, politically, and socially stable environments, international philanthropy and communications projects tried to create environments conducive to “healthy” citizenship. Cultural exchange meanwhile made the very real connections between women as mothers around the world to foster

Americanism at the grassroots. Encouraging democratic activism, self-reliance, and private enterprise – even if not equally emphasized in all projects – these efforts in public diplomacy sought to proselytize Americanism principles to distant women overseas.

International Maternalists as World Travelers

The pride of the GFWC’s cultural exchange program was its Good Will

International Travel Tours, which physically brought American clubwomen into international lands to interact with clubwomen overseas and promote Americanism

83 It is hard to know exactly who participated as visitors or hostesses, but the high number of guests hosted according to GFWC records suggests clubwomen interpreted their duties broadly. In 1955, for example, five districts in Colorado reportedly played international hostess to 823 guests, Kansas reported hosting 426, and Indiana reported hosting 300. “International Affairs Department Report, International Hostesses Division,” Clubwoman, May 1955, p. 44.

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principles. Begun in 1947 as then-GFWC president Dorothea Buck’s trips to Europe and

East Asia to confer with women leaders and affiliated clubs abroad, the tours expanded in

1950 to include dozens of clubwomen. Over the course of four to eight weeks, members embarked on planned trips to various global destinations.84 Along their route, they met with affiliated clubwomen and ambassadors, becoming eyewitnesses to other peoples, cultures, and the challenges their hosts faced. Between August and October 1950, for example, forty clubwomen traveled to Europe, took in relief and rehabilitation efforts, and “we came back realizing the close bonds between the peoples of freedom-loving countries.” Such trips gave concrete meaning to the GFWC’s support of the Marshall

Plan, the United Nations, Voice of America, NATO, reciprocal trade agreements, and displaced persons.85

The tours also went places without such clear connections to the West. After visiting Paris, Naples, and Athens in 1951, one Good Will tour went to Egypt, with which the United States had a murkier relationship. GFWC president Dorothy Houghton praised Egypt’s interest in Western thought as well as its refusal “to be vassals of the

West.” She remarked on the attitude of superiority Western nations held toward the

Middle East and lamented that Middle Eastern countries “are receiving no genuine

84 For a discussion of white women’s tourism in the postwar era and its contribution to engendering international foreign relations, see Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). For historiographic overviews of the place of women in the scholarship of international relations, see Murphy, “Seeing Women, Recognizing Gender;” Rosenberg, “Gender.”

85 Houghton, “Together We Serve America,” p. 9. See also GFWC, “Building World Peace: The International Program of the GFWC” program pamphlet (Washington, DC: GFWC, [1947-1950]), GFWC, Buck Program Records, Box 4, Folder 8.

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friendship or sympathy from either side. They are extending their hands toward America seeking mutual friendship and moral cooperation. The offer is for America to take or leave.” Houghton warned that “Upon the decision depends to a great degree the stability, prosperity and security of the Middle East and of the Moslem World.”86 By exposing local circumstances, the tours forced clubwomen to acknowledge potential blockades to democracy in developing regions – even if that meant singling out the United States’ own foreign policy.

Such frank evaluation of U.S. foreign policy and its implications for the future of democracy abroad reveals the extent to which these tours were not necessarily about international peace-building, but were instead about evaluating and solidifying American interests in the Cold War. Clubwomen were a traveling containment policy. Based on her journeys, Houghton outlined a plan of action for the United States and its partner nations, which she believed must work together as a whole to defeat the communist menace. Building up the free world should focus on fortifying freedom’s ties in three areas: Western Europe; the Middle East and Asia; and the Western Hemisphere. Good will should play a prominent role in this coalition building, as “there is no conflict that cannot be won by good-will and negotiation.”87 When it came to good will, the General

Federation was prepared to take the lead. It led tours through Latin and South America as well as Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

86 Houghton, “Together We Serve America,” p. 11.

87 Ibid. p. 12.

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These were fact-finding missions. Houghton’s successor, Mildred Ahlgren, led the fourth international tour nearly around the world, from Hawaii to Japan, the

Philippines, Hong Kong, and Thailand, then on to India, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Greece,

Italy, Spain, and finishing in Portugal. Upon her return, Ahlgren compiled reports on the host countries covering women’s clubs, the status of women, works of the U.S.

Information Service, international exchange programs, economic conditions, agriculture, education, health conditions, and moral and spiritual values of the host countries.88

The General Federation’s success with this construction relied on the idea that women could come together merely as women and that somehow the GFWC stood above politics while building the bridges necessary to influence it. In her retelling of these trips,

Dorothy Houghton played up the GFWC’s position as an independent organization, unaffiliated with partisan politics. “Our European friends,” she told members, “could not believe that we were not a political group, not a religious group, that we had no axe to grind, but had just come out of friendly purpose to learn to know the peoples of the

European countries.”89 Based on the premise that the GFWC was indeed above the political fray, the tours cemented American clubwomen’s belief in an imagined international womanhood through interaction with women overseas. These first-hand experiences expanded clubwomen’s knowledge and, in Houghton’s words, ushered in “a new era of world understanding…in which the women are the leaders.” She declared

88 “GFWC Fourth World Cooperation Tour, 1953,” tour report, GFWC, Ahlgren President Papers, Box 1, Folder 15.

89 Dorothy Houghton, “Home Again,” Clubwoman, November 1950, pp. 2+, quote, p. 2.

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that, “no nation will ever go to war against another nation if the women know and understand and love each other.”90 Once women of the world were brought together, they would recognize the mutual support women could expect from one another; women at the grassroots would create the political will for peace.

Historian Helen Laville draws on the scholarship of Grant McConnell as well as

Frank Ninkovich to show that such apolitical self-presentation was a critical part of

American diplomacy, especially among women’s groups. McConnell argues that voluntary associations pride themselves on being outside of politics, but in actuality perform important functions as a tool of social organization, discipline, and nurturing political sensibilities consistent with the liberal democratic model. Frank Ninkovich contends that when it came to foreign relations, voluntary associations often did this through cultural exchange all the while advancing a particular set of ideals seemingly outside the politics of international diplomacy. Based on this scholarship, Laville posits that it was because of their civilian status that women’s voluntary associations could claim they represented a “higher level of authenticity” rather than mere governmental propaganda. According to Laville, “The participation of private associations in expressing the views, desires and character of the American people was a vital component of US cultural diplomacy.”91

90 Dorothy Houghton, “Wings Away,” Clubwoman, February 1952, pp. 4-5, quote, p. 4.

91 Laville, Cold War Women, p. 46. See also McConnell, “Voluntary Associations;” Frank A. Ninkovich, The Diplomacy of Ideas: U.S. Foreign Policy and Cultural Relations, 1938-1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

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Good Will Tour members were aware that they were on a particular mission about womanhood and democracy. In her memo to tour members in 1958, Mildred Ahlgren

(now director of GFWC Public Relations after her term as president earlier in the decade) advised clubwomen on their upcoming travels. What she chose to advise them on reveals her awareness that clubwomen represented both American womanhood and the American democratic system. She wanted travelers to convey (especially to foreign embassies) their femininity, their normative middle-class lifestyle, and that participation in women’s clubs threatened neither. Ahlgren reminded travelers to stress that the GFWC is “mostly composed of housewives, not career women (underline orig.),” to “be feminine in dress and manner…it seems we are thought of otherwise in some places,” and to “describe the life of a middle class USA woman – how she herself takes care of the house and children and goes to church.” Having established their femininity and their traditional family- and church-centered lifestyle, clubwomen should then discuss the benefits to society accrued through clubwork. Travelers should describe their clubs – “preferably small clubs in the interior of the USA” – the convention process, and the “feeling of unity and coordination” clubwork creates among women. In short, World Tour travelers should convey that democratic voluntary activity actually enhanced the quality of life for women and the community. The tours were technically apolitical, but clubwomen used them to make a political statement about women and democratic institutions.92

92 Mildred Ahlgren memo to World Tour Travelers, January 15, 1958, GFWC, Ahlgren President Papers, Box 1, Folder 11.

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By framing the missions as being above the messiness of politics, the tours obfuscated the political message behind the missions. Even though clubwomen presumed an essential “womanhood” could bring women from all cultures together to foster international understanding (the foundation of world peace), clubwomen simultaneously modified this essentialism with the belief that peace and prosperity would ultimately come through democratic and capitalist systems. The tours may not have espoused these ideals directly, but the very fact-finding nature of meeting other women to form bonds that would ally international women with American women brought international women into an American sphere of influence and, indeed, the American clubwoman’s sphere of influence. In this imagined international womanhood, American clubwomen figured as the first among equals. The GFWC believed in the dignity of all humankind and urged respect for all cultures, but it also privileged the American way of life. As one international travel chairman wrote members, “Never [was there] so great an opportunity for the American woman to prove to others the abundant blessings of our way of life through day-by-day practice of our democratic beliefs.”93 On these tours and in its rhetoric in general, the GFWC welcomed all international sisters and their cultures, but underlying such benedictions was an assumption that their bonds only went as far as international sisters and their cultures could be accommodated to American values.

The international convention of 1955 epitomized the GFWC’s travel tours as an exercise in cultural exchange and promotion of American values. On May 28, 1955, 350

93 Irma Rennie quoted in GFWC “International Convention Tour: Europe 1955, General Federation of Women’s Clubs” tour pamphlet (Washington DC: GFWC, 1954), GFWC, Chapman President Papers, Box 1, Folder 10.

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clubwomen departed the annual GFWC convention in Philadelphia to embark on an

“International Convention Tour.” Having spent the previous week with one thousand other clubwomen, these members then traveled to Geneva, Switzerland where they resumed their convention for an additional three days with international clubwomen.

More than 150 international clubwomen from seventeen countries – mostly Europe, but also Egypt, Liberia, India, Saudi Arabia, Peru, and New Zealand – joined the Americans in Geneva.

The two-part convention staged first in the “cradle of liberty” and later in one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities – the largest United Nations presence in Europe – captured the General Federation’s postwar maternalism. When convention chairman

Irma W. Rennie announced the international convention, she wrote to European clubs,

“You represent the home-makers of Europe. We represent the home-makers of America.

We believe your hopes and ambitions are the same as ours – the security and welfare and happiness of our families.” Although delegates would come from different backgrounds and speak different languages, they could still work to “serve freedom’s cause.” Cultural awareness gleaned from international exchange would awaken in women a sense of international sisterhood and break down barriers to peace and international freedom.

“Representing the mothers of the world,” she vowed, “with confidence in the future and trust in God, we will work for an ever-growing family of peoples who believe that humanity is greater than nationality. In the life of this family THERE IS NO WAR.”94

94 Irma W. Rennie, “Adventures in Europe,” Clubwomen, September 1954, p. 18. See also Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. II, p. 167.

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The 1955 International Convention Tour pamphlet visually illustrates the

GFWC’s commitment to building an international sisterhood among GFWC clubwomen while fostering American leadership (See Figure 1). The pamphlet cover shows two women shaking hands in greeting beneath an image of the globe and above the words

“You are the Light of the World.” The woman on the left represents European womanhood. She is dressed in traditional costume – a floor-length dress with a plaid top and trim, laced up the front, over a full skirt. The woman on the right represents

American womanhood, donning a casual, modified New Look A-line dress. Their fashion signals more than their nationality. It also signals their modern-ness. The

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Figure 1. “International Convention Tour: Europe 1955, General Federation of Women’s Clubs” travel pamphlet (Washington: GFWC, 1954), GFWC Archives, Presidents’ Papers (Record Group 2), Papers of Helen Chapman, Box 1, Folder 10. Reprinted with permission of the Women’s History Resource Center, General Federation of Women’s Clubs.

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European woman is stuck in her traditional garb, a physical symbol of her lack of political education and participation; the American woman is modern, sophisticated, and part of the times. Her hand of friendship extends more than camaraderie. She also stands to guide her European counterpart out of her traditional shell into the new era in which women welcome their responsibility as political actors. That they stand under a globe positioned on Europe and the Soviet Union with Africa to the left and South East Asia to the right and the United States nowhere to be seen underscores the role of the American woman as a woman of the world. She is comfortable leaving her homeland to engage with other cultures. She is also astutely aware of the greatest danger threatening the world – the Soviet Union looms over her – and she is prepared to meet the challenge head-on. The phrase running across the bottom of the pamphlet crystallizes this point.

American women have the opportunity to usher the world through difficult times and it is in fact their duty to (wo)mankind.95

As this image suggests, the world tours themselves were a marker of American privilege. Although an impressive endeavor, the tours were really only open to those clubwomen who could, first, afford the financial expense and, second, had the leisure time for such an activity. In 1955 the tour visited among other cities Innsbruck, Venice,

95 GFWC, “International Convention Tour: Europe 1955.” The phrase was the theme of GFWC president Helen Chapman’s administration (1954-1956). Chapman’s slogan was likely a reaction to Mildred Ahlgren’s administration (1952-1954, theme: “Preserving Our American Heritage”) and the Americanism campaign led by Sara Whitehurst to be discussed in the next chapter. Chapman renamed certain GFWC program departments to reflect this conscientious internationalism (the American Home department became the Home department) and restructured the International Relations department. This renewed focus on internationalism only lasted for Chapman’s administration. Her successor Mabel Prout renamed the Home department the American Home department, although she did initiate a “Religions of the World” division and kept the re-structured International Relations department intact.

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Rome, Paris, Brussels, and London for the cost of $1195; some clubwomen extended their trip to visit Scandinavia while others went to Egypt, Israel, and Greece as part of a tour to the “Holy Land” for an additional charge ($300 and $750 respectively).96

Although they came from all over the country, tour participants represented a small slice of the membership.97 Tour rosters show that a number of women were repeat travelers, particularly among those travelers who were involved in the leadership hierarchy like

GFWC presidents and department chairmen, although they comprised a minority of the overall roster.98 Presumably those who took the tours were financially comfortable, older women (like the majority of club members) who no longer had the same kinds of homemaking responsibilities as younger women.

The luxury of these events suggests that participants’ socioeconomic position made them ideal representatives of American life. As with the international hostess program, clubwomen’s material comforts conveyed the privilege of American democracy and freedom through consumption patterns and leisure activities. If America’s strength in the Cold War relied on physical indicators of its prosperity, then these clubwomen and

96 Ibid.

97 A roster of the 1951 sixty-member tour to Mexico and Guatemala, for example, shows clubwomen came from Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin. The 1951 twenty- member trip to Europe and Egypt included members from Arizona, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, DC. “The General Federation of Women’s Clubs Inter-American Cooperation Tours to Mexico and Guatemala, May 19-May 30, 1951” tour roster, GFWC, Houghton President Papers, Box 1, Folder 14; “General Federation of Women’s Clubs 2nd World Cooperation Tour, August 25-September 16, 1951” tour roster, GFWC, Houghton President Papers, Box 1, Folder 14.

98 “GFWC World Cooperation Tours” tour rosters, 1950-1953, GFWC, Ahlgren President Papers, Box 1, Folder 15.

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their travels stood as apt symbols. Much like Richard Nixon’s “kitchen debate” with

Nikita Khrushchev in 1959, international tours put forth a specific image of American womanhood that denoted the security and comfort of American capitalism and democracy.

As with its larger cultural exchange program, the GFWC’s international tours aimed to nurture the Americanism ethic among international clubwomen. The tours provided physical opportunity for developing in-person connections with international women to do this work. It stemmed from the GFWC’s faith that women’s shared maternal responsibilities united them in common cause and would bring international women into the American sphere of influence. So informed by their maternalist politics, clubwomen recast the means of foreign policy to include the kinds of personal relationships they believed only clubwomen could forge. As the instruments of international good-will anchored in an imagined international womanhood, the GFWC envisioned clubwomen as a vital complement to official foreign policy.

Conclusion

In March 1951, GFWC president Dorothy Houghton encapsulated the General

Federation’s gendered internationalism in a message to clubwomen. She explained that whereas women of previous generations sat at home while men fought, women of the postwar era must embrace the challenges of national security, civil defense, and protecting the democratic way of life. Women’s traditional roles as maternal protectors of the family could be extended to defend the nation against threats from within and from

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without, both at home and abroad. “It is not enough that we assure the survival of the free world,” she told her members, “We, as women, must also make sure that the world which survives is free.” Clubwomen should take up the gauntlet as only women could, promoting American interests and defending against communism through personal relationships and international activism. She warned that, “The cultural and ideological battle is just as important as the military structure in stemming the march of Communistic imperialism…We must prove to the world that freedom and democracy feed the country, clothe the naked, educate the ignorant, heal the sick, dignify the individual person and express the highest conception of human values.”99 This project had to be tackled both at home and abroad.

In the years following World War II, internationalism captured clubwomen’s attention. It had always been an undercurrent of GFWC clubwork, but postwar tensions gave it added significance. In 1945, internationalism served to build popular support for peaceful cooperation, but with the onset of the Cold War, internationalism became a means of shoring up American interests abroad and thereby protecting the nation at home. The GFWC approached its support for official U.S. foreign policy as well as its efforts at public diplomacy as women citizens. Building on its understanding of women’s maternal domestic responsibilities, the General Federation taught that clubwomen as mothers had the ability and responsibility to train citizens beyond the domestic realm.

Citizenship training had to happen in homes the world around, led by mothers committed

99 Dorothy Houghton, “Our Challenge,” Clubwoman, March 1951, p. 2.

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to American values, because no individual home would be safe unless all the homes of the world were safe.

Through its international work, the GFWC articulated its maternalist politics on a global scale. Relying on an imagined international womanhood, clubwomen reached out to women overseas in the spirit of humanitarianism, guided by the belief that all were part of God’s family and the conviction that women could uniquely make inroads among women in ways that official Establishment policy could not. Their work ultimately accentuated the limitations of this global womanhood insofar as theirs was a western international womanhood guided by Cold War politics.

Such an acknowledgement, however, does not undermine the significance of their activism. Instead it provides an opportunity for understanding how clubwomen interpreted American values for export overseas in both their support of Establishment foreign policy and their own organizational international efforts. Through its work on behalf of the United Nations and UNESCO, the GFWC argued that using clubwomen’s gendered methods of public education and civic activism would both encourage international cooperation and reveal the superiority of American values. Through its own organizational efforts at popular diplomacy – including personal cultural exchange, international philanthropy, and support of pro-American international communications – the GFWC likewise used maternalist arguments to extend clubwomen’s reach to those overseas while promoting democratic activism, self-reliance, and the free market. That anticommunism infused their internationalist maternalism serves to underscore the extent to which the Cold War defined this work.

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But internationalism was a tricky path to tread. As much as Americans generally supported their government’s foreign policy, the anticommunist political culture made them wary of relinquishing too much national power to the United Nations, or of possible communists within the State Department steering the nation towards an easy Soviet takeover. The same forces that had made world federation unpalatable by the late 1940s cast internationalism more broadly as unpatriotic. Even as the General Federation devised a gendered strategy for advancing American interests overseas, it also had to prove its anticommunist credentials at home. Without abandoning its internationalism, the organization embarked on a campaign to reassert its Cold Warrior status on the national stage. As discussed in the next chapter, the resulting “Americanism campaign” outlined an ambitious gendered strategy for reawakening core American values on the homefront.

CHAPTER 4 THE AMERICANISM CAMPAIGN: A “WOMEN’S CRUSADE”

“It behooves all of us to conduct an active campaign in order to arouse lethargic American citizens as to the dangers we face.” – GFWC Americanism Campaign Program Kit, 19521

At her inauguration as GFWC president in May 1952, Mildred Ahlgren made a passionate appeal to her membership on behalf of America’s future. Ahlgren worried that concern over the devastation wrought by World War II and the tensions of the emerging Cold War had turned Americans’ attention overseas. Ordinary citizens and their government were so invested in the fate of democracy and the revitalization of capitalist markets elsewhere that they had stopped paying attention to these same institutions at home. Ahlgren reassured clubwomen that international matters were important and members should continue to work on them; it was in an international community, after all, that the United States had the strongest footing against any aggressor. But, she warned, “we have been so busy giving aid to our neighbors that we have neglected the state of affairs at home.”2

1 GFWC, “Americanism Campaign of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs: Kit of Procedures” (GFWC: Washington, D.C., 1952), GFWC, Ahlgren Program Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 43. Hereafter cited as “Americanism Procedure Kit.”

2 Mildred Ahlgren, “Challenge of Democracy,” May 16, 1952 inauguration speech to the GFWC convention, GFWC, Ahlgren President Papers, Box 1, Folder 2, p. 4.

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According to Ahlgren, an ideological battle was underway and Americans, including clubwomen, had put so much energy into stopping communism abroad that the homefront was vulnerable to communist subversion and general decay. Grown complacent with New Deal programs and a thriving economy, Americans relied too heavily on government solutions and failed to engage their own democratic system, especially on the local level. “As citizens of a democracy we have become soft,” she told members. “We are selfish. We have neither the time nor the energy to get behind jobs in our local communities. We are more concerned with what we can buy, what we can own, what we can get for nothing.”1

What the nation needed was an “Americanism campaign” to reinvigorate the

American “spirit” – democratic activism, self-reliance, and private enterprise. The campaign charged clubwomen with becoming active in political parties, with voter education, with ascertaining the state of public education, with spreading “American” values, and with a return to religion. It retrained clubwomen’s focus from the international community to ones closer to home. It was time for clubwomen to do for their own country and communities what they were already doing for those overseas.

Ahlgren’s Americanism campaign came in 1952 at a moment of heightened anticommunist fervor in the United States. Since the Russian Revolution in 1919, anticommunism had shaped American political culture. To most Americans, communism was quintessentially un-American because it was incompatible with democracy and

1 Ahlgren, “Challenge of Democracy,” p. 6.

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capitalism. It reaffirmed Americans’ traditional wariness of a strong centralized state and state intervention in the economy, and became a convenient way to demonize initiatives that challenged traditional economic, social, and racial power structures. Although

Americans accepted the Soviet Union as an ally during World War II, they quickly renewed their hostility after the war. Believing that the Soviet Union was an aggressive power set on destroying the United States, postwar Americans became especially concerned with communist infiltration of American institutions such as the State

Department, public schools, and labor unions. Postwar anticommunism reached new levels with the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 and continued on a feverish upsurge until the mid-1950s, marked by the infamous career of red-baiter Wisconsin Senator

Joseph McCarthy.2

The General Federation participated in this political culture. It passed a resolution applauding the House Un-American Activities for its work to protect the American people from communist infiltration and another resolution supporting the ban of communism in the United States. The GFWC belonged to the All-American Conference to Combat Communism, a staunch anticommunist organization comprised mostly of veterans’ groups. The Conference, like the GFWC, was a wholehearted supporter of

McCarthy.3 Some member clubs on the local level were even more assertive in their

2 See Carter, Another Part of the Fifties; Hamby, Liberalism and Its Challengers; Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War.

3 Convened by the American Legion in 1950, the AACCC comprised fifty organizations, including the GFWC and its peer the National Federation of Business and Professional Women. “Anti-Red Congress Opens Tomorrow,” NYT, January 27, 1950, p. 14; “Dr. Poling Hails Senator M'Carthy As Symbol of

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anticommunism, sounding more like the right-wing Minute Women than the GFWC. A vocal contingent of the New York City Federation of Women’s Clubs, for example, castigated President Truman’s “appeasement” of communism in Korea with his firing of

General MacArthur.4

The Americanism campaign tapped into this anticommunist sentiment within the

GFWC and channeled it into a program focused on American citizenship and the national character. Like the Red Scare at large, the Americanism campaign warned that enemies lurked within clubwomen’s own communities. It was up to each clubwoman to embody

American values, to lead by example, and to defend her own hometown against the ever- present communist threat. It codified in an action plan the kinds of principles that informed the organization’s homemaker professionalization programs. The fight would be won or lost by every individual shaking off civic complacency and doing her patriotic duty. It put clubwomen into service of something proactive rather than reactive and made them individually responsible for national health.

The Americanism campaign made a statement about where the real battleground of the Cold War was and who the real soldiers were. Although Ahlgren continued to support international issues – she led Good Will tours, backed the United Nations, and endorsed U.S. foreign policy – her Americanism campaign identified the homefront as

America's Defense,” NYT, September 25, 1952, p. 26; “Any Peace in Asia is Appeasing, Dr. Poling Tells Anti-Red Group,” NYT, May 23, 1953, p. 2;

4 Clubwomen ultimately softened their critique, fearful that it would appear unpatriotic. Officially they only went on record as disapproving the manner of MacArthur’s termination. “Women’s Club Unit Backing M’Arthur,” NYT, April 28, 1951, p. 3; “Women’s City Club Group Protests ‘Manner’ of MacArthur Dismissal,” NYT, May 5, 1951, p. 10.

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the primary site of ideological contention. The campaign gave clubwomen a more immediate role in fighting communism. It infused clubwomen’s daily private and public lives with national meaning and wrote clubwomen into the Cold War in concrete ways.

As such, the campaign drew on two historical trends within the GFWC. First, it reasserted the value of local activism not only to clubwomen, but to the health of the nation as well. As a federation of women’s clubs, the GFWC since the nineteenth century had been defined by local activism. But World War II and reconstruction of a peaceful postwar world had taken center stage among GFWC leadership during the

1940s. Ahlgren’s Americanism campaign reminded the organization that it was through local activism that the GFWC most effectively engaged a large group of women in the civic issues of the day. It was a deliberately gendered strategy for keeping democracy vibrant at the most grassroots level and affecting social change at the smallest units of society.

Second, the Americanism campaign built on clubwomen’s historical efforts to define American values. During the Progressive era, clubwomen led Americanization projects aimed at assimilating immigrants and preparing them for American citizenship.

Although well-intentioned, such programs often had nativist undertones. By the 1920s, in large response to the backlash against the first woman’s movement, the home became the primary site of clubwomen’s Americanization efforts. This continued into the postwar era, by which point clubwomen used the home to promote democracy, self- reliance, and private enterprise as the core American values. Ahlgren’s Americanism

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campaign deliberately extended clubwomen’s role as arbiters of American identity from the home to the local community.

The Americanism campaign is useful to historians because it illuminates how anticommunist clubwomen publicly fought the Cold War. Recent scholarship has begun to uncover this work, but most of it has focused on anticommunism among right-wing women and their role in the rise of modern conservatism. Mainstream women’s organizations are underrepresented in this new literature. Studies that do include mainstream women’s groups tend to focus on the international components of their anticommunist activism, leaving the story of their national politics untold. An examination of the GFWC’s Americanism campaign fills an important gap in this growing historiography.5

In so doing, the Americanism campaign also contributes a new gender analysis of mainstream Cold War political culture. Much of the gender analysis to date examines how mainstream Cold War political culture reinforced heterosexual masculinity and marginalized dissension by tainting it with homosexuality and femininity. The Cold War demanded men of strength and virtue capable of fighting off external and internal threats.

Men susceptible to temptation or blackmail for sexual appetites unfulfilled (or perversely fulfilled) in their private lives posed a danger; the Lavender Scare that emerged alongside the Red Scare accused homosexuals – as well as those discredited as homosexuals – of communism. Within this construct of what comprised a healthy vital man, the

5 See Laville, Cold War Women; Nickerson, “Domestic Threats;” Olsen, “One Nation, One World;” Rymph, Republican Women. Abby Scher does a nice job comparing the mainstream League of Women Voters to the right-wing Minute Women U.S.A. Scher, “Cold War on the Home Front.”

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connection between gender, private (sexual) life, and public virtue was apparent.

Women’s power came from their ability to make home life a satisfying refuge complete with all the trappings of American consumerism. Family life and contained sexuality (of men and women) were as much central tenets of the political ideology as they were the domestic ideology of the postwar years.6

As this chapter shows, however, the GFWC celebrated public womanhood and women’s ability to guard against the nation’s vulnerabilities. They did so by transposing their domestic skills into the public arena. Through the Americanism campaign, clubwomen conscientiously turned their anticommunist activism grounded in their domestic life and traditional community building into a project to protect the United

States against the internal and external communist menace.

This chapter examines how the Americanism campaign gendered the

Americanism ethic at the heart of clubwomen’s postwar maternalism. It begins with a discussion of its creator, GFWC president Mildred Ahlgren, and her faith in local, public activism. It then explores how Americanism helped organize American life around ideas of individualism, religion, and the free market before considering the ways in which the campaign constructed Americanism as women’s work, effectively expanding women’s public duties without undermining the source of their domestic maternal authority. The chapter closes with a treatment of the tensions between the GFWC’s Americanism and internationalism and how maternalism struggled to reconcile the two.

6 See “Cuordileone, “‘Politics in an Age of Anxiety;” John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983); Dean, Imperial Brotherhood; Friedman, “Sadists and Sissies;” May, Homeward Bound.

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Mildred Ahlgren and the Americanism Campaign

Mildred Ahlgren was an extremely popular clubwoman within the General

Federation who embodied the organization’s postwar maternalism. She championed the home as women’s primary responsibility and the locus of female moral authority in society even as she pushed for women’s greater public (and political) participation.

Ahlgren was intensely patriotic and highly concerned about the state of American affairs while still supportive of America’s international involvement. Like many clubwomen, she was suspicious of government and government programs, a legacy of the GFWC’s conservative turn in the 1920s. Instead, she believed that in a democracy the rightful power lay with the people and charged all Americans with being informed citizens. She looked to clubwomen to lead citizen education in their homes and their communities.

Amid the anticommunist zeitgeist of the early 1950s, Ahlgren’s position had particular political meaning. It was both an expression of faith in American democracy over

Soviet-style communism and an attempt to reconfigure the relationship between the citizen and the state away from New Deal social welfare programs. Her ideas held sway with a large constituency of clubwomen, contributing to her popularity.

Mildred Carson Ahlgren’s biography is similar to many GFWC leaders. Born in

1900 in East Chicago, Indiana, part of the greater Chicago metropolitan area just across the Indiana border, Ahlgren was a devout Presbyterian of Swedish descent. Like many

GFWC clubwomen over the years, Ahlgren earned a college education at the University of Chicago, majoring in Speech. She married Oscar Ahlgren, her high school rhetoric

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and communication teacher.7 After Oscar finished Yale Law School and World War I military service, the couple moved to his hometown of Whiting, Indiana just a few miles from Chicago. The Ahlgrens had one daughter (a Wellesley College graduate married to a lawyer at the time of Mildred’s GFWC presidency). Mildred Ahlgren devoted sixteen years to her local Whiting newspaper as a journalist and belonged to various women’s press associations, including the Washington Press Club. Ahlgren joined her Whiting

Woman’s Club at the age of twenty-four, just after her marriage to Oscar. Like many clubwomen, Ahlgren cross-pollinated various clubs and civic organizations. She belonged to the GFWC, the PTA, the American Legion Auxiliary, the League of Women

Voters, the Business and Professional Women’s Club, the Advisory Board of the

National Citizens Commission for the Public Schools, and the Advisory Board of the All-

American Conference to Combat Communism. During her GFWC presidency, Woman’s

Home Companion Journal named her one of the six most successful American women in

1953.

Mildred Carson Ahlgren considered herself a political being and a public servant.

The Ahlgrens were loyal Republicans (Oscar had served in the Indiana state legislature, reaching the position of Speaker of the House before ending his tenure in government).

Reflecting on her life, Mildred Ahlgren said, “‘I come from a political background and have always been interested in Republican politics. If I had it to do all over again, I might run for Congress.’” She considered attending luncheon with the Eisenhowers at

7 They met in 1916 while Oscar taught for one year at Ahlgren’s East Chicago high school, but did not marry until after the war, law school, and his first term in the Indiana Assembly. They married in 1923 when he became Republican floor leader. Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. I, p. 139.

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the White House one of her greatest privileges. In 1984, The Washington Times gossip page reported that the only time Mildred Ahlgren contemplated voting for a local D.C.

Democrat who had been good to her ward, the voting booth fell over on her and fractured her pelvis.

She had an active life of public service after her tenure with the GFWC. She served for a time as the director of Radio Free Europe. Her work for the U.S. Savings

Bond Division of the Treasury Department earned her accolades. After Oscar’s death, she permanently left Indiana for Washington, D.C. where she remained engaged in

Washington politics. She was especially proud of her invitation to attend a church service presided by the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale in 1974 at the White House with the

Nixons. Ahlgren died in 1997 at the age of ninety-seven.8

Ahlgren’s commitment to voluntary activism and public service reflected her definition of citizenship and by extension her definition of what it meant to be an

American. From the time she came on the national GFWC scene Ahlgren prioritized women’s personal local activism, fearful that an apathetic citizenry foreshadowed the collapse of American civilization. As she moved up the GFWC hierarchy, Ahlgren

8 The above biographical sketch comes from the following sources at the GFWC, Ahlgren President Papers, Box 1, Folder 1: Mildred Ahlgren, “Sunday March 17, 1974, Church Service at the White House,” event description; Judy Maggrett, “Mildred Ahlgren…A Remembrance,” April 23, 1997; Marcie Porter, “It’s a Great Life,” Dupont East Newspaper, date and page unknown; “Mrs. Oscar Ahlgren” GFWC biographical sheet, April 15, 1980; Lake County Federation of Women’s Clubs Luncheon Program Honoring Mrs. Oscar Alexander Ahlgren, President, GFWC,” May 27, 1952 “Mrs. Oscar A. Ahlgren biography, President of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs,” [1952-1954]; Mildred Ahlgren biography press release, undated; “Mrs. Oscar A. Ahlgren biography, former President of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs,” undated; “In 1915, orators were held in high esteem, and none more so than Whiting's Oscar Ahlgren,” Northwest Indiana Times June 8, 2003. http://www.thetimesonline.com/ articles/2003/06/08/community/d64960fe5dd2896286256d3d007619af.txt. Accessed 4/28/2009.

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routinely told clubwomen it was their obligation as Americans to do for themselves rather than “Let George do it.”9 According to the monthly magazine, Ahlgren “‘was a real

American’” who worked “‘with a passion to preserve the heritage that it has been our great fortune to inherit’” and “never ask[ed] others to do what she would not do herself.’”

Tellingly this same biographical sketch added that Ahlgren was “‘a Christian woman, a devoted wife, mother and grandmother.’”10 Her public service had earned her the designation of “real American” as much as her role as mother and Christian. The former hints at the centrality of motherhood to women’s citizenship in the postwar era. The latter was the ultimate signifier of “American” in comparison to the godless communist

Soviets.

In 1952 as GFWC president, Ahlgren formalized her call to public service with the Americanism campaign. The campaign aimed to renew the “American spirit.” It was an explicitly anticommunist project based on personal, local activism. According to campaign materials, the nation was “only as strong as the local community.” The

General Federation could do as much to promote peace abroad as it wanted, but peace would crumble at the weakest link on the homefront. By building local communities, the campaign also fortified against rabble-rousers who spouted “alien philosophies of government” as well as those who exacerbated class tensions, particularly between labor

9 “Let George do it” was a popular phrase of the era – especially among GFWC club leaders – indicating that someone else would take care of it. Postwar newspaper accounts using the phrase often used it in reference to state activity. If contemporary Americans understood the phrase to mean “let the state do it,” the phrase may have had an additional appeal to clubwomen. For origins of the phrase, see H.L. Mencken, The American Language: An inquiry into the development of English in the United States, 4th ed. (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1949).

10 Unidentified speaker quoted in “Mildred Ahlgren – Why We Like Her,” Clubwoman, May 1954, p. 7.

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and management. Such language clearly targeted as un-American communists and social justice activists who challenged existing constructions of liberal democracy and capitalism. Finally, the Americanism campaign reaffirmed the basic building blocks of the nation as the home, God, and American heritage.11

The Americanism campaign was a jeremiad-turned-civic affairs program.

Communism lurked as the preeminent danger, but it only became a plausible danger amid an apathetic citizenry. Extolling democracy, self-reliance for one’s community and one’s own well-being, and private enterprise, the Americanism campaign mobilized clubwomen on behalf of what the GFWC had long identified as American values.

Inherent in this program was the centrality of faith as the originator of these values.

Overall it was a righteous mission that relied on the leadership of clubwomen well-versed in teaching the lessons of democracy and citizenship.

The Americanism campaign was at once empowering and limiting. Just like homemaker professionalization and gendered internationalism, the Americanism campaign claimed a certain type of civic power for women based on domestic duties. It appealed to clubwomen’s sense of maternal responsibility for leading their communities in a revitalization of citizenship. The campaign played on clubwomen’s self-perception as disinterested civic actors canvassing their local wards to educate the ill-informed and renew Americans’ commitment to democracy. Doing so upheld class and gender norms

11 GFWC, “Americanism Procedure Kit,” quotes pp. 3, 4.

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to which clubwomen subscribed, ultimately holding women’s civic power to a specific gendered paradigm.

Defining Americanism

To prepare women for their maternal civic leadership, the Americanism campaign included an extensive study program. It aimed to elucidate for members the “American spirit” that the campaign sought to preserve. Knowledge was imperative to members’ ability to represent Americanism in their homes and communities. Much of the program taught American values as the opposite of communist ones, including most significantly the relationship between the citizen and the state, capitalism, and religion in society. In each of these areas, the campaign lauded the individual for political and religious reasons.

It was a pointed response to the Cold War. To be American – to support democracy, to be self-reliant of the state, to uphold private enterprise – was to fight communism.

As Americanism chairman, former GFWC president Sara Whitehurst kicked off an education campaign to teach clubwomen the differences between communism and democracy, often focusing on the relationship between the state and the individual.

Under communism, one sample speech in the Americanism program kit explained, “the

State is the supreme master over the lives of its citizens.” State ownership of industry meant it economically controlled its people, which reflected the dictatorial nature of the communist state that “makes no pretense of granting freedom.” This included religious freedom, since religion under communism was “openly persecuted.” Certain institutions of democratic countries, such as labor unions and the courts, technically existed, but were

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powerless to defend against the wishes of the State and were often merely an arm of the

State. By targeting the communist state’s intrusion into private life and religious practices, its control over the economy, and its usurpation of civil society, the General

Federation reaffirmed the equation of Americanism with private institutions and actions.12

Whitehurst’s study guides left little doubt as to how communism measured up against American capitalism and democracy. In “Comparative Governments of the

World” she explained that capitalism “entrusted” wealth, land, production, trade, and labor to private enterprise. It was the economic system “of most of the modern civilized countries,” implying that those nations that did not adopt capitalism stunted their growth potential. American capitalism, which recognized and appreciated the individual, found its natural companion in democracy. According to Whitehurst, democracy was not an

“ism” like other political philosophies – it was a way of life. By contrast, communism was a “class struggle for world domination” that denied true democracy by advocating a dictatorship of the proletariat. In making such a distinction between a “way of life” and an “ism,” Whitehurst seemingly de-legitimized communism as simply an ideological fad of the moment.13

Nonetheless, the GFWC avowed, communism needed to be taken very seriously as an imminent threat to the national character because the very essence of the American

12 Ibid. pp. 49-51.

13 Sara A. Whitehurst, “Americanism Campaign of the GFWC: Comparative Governments of the World” study guide (Washington, DC: GFWC, [1952-1954] photocopy), quotes p. 1, GFWC Ahlgren Program Records, Box 1, Folder 3.

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spirit – faith – was at stake. Faith had first made democracy possible, had sustained the founding fathers in times of trial, and distinguished American democracy from atheistic communism. “It is a war between believers and non-believers,” campaign materials instructed members, “between those who believe in a cold, mercenary world, and one built on faith, which establishes a moral code for its people, which gives them hope in their hour of trouble and which is the greatest and most powerful force for good in the world.”14 Faith stood at the “moral and spiritual base” of a peaceful world order.

Without it, the world descended into dishonesty, corruption, and war.15

Clubwomen consequently needed to immerse themselves in faith not just for their own souls, but for the soul of America, and the soul of the world as well. A 1952 GFWC resolution urged members to “rededicate themselves to live and to practice the faith they profess, thus demonstrating that America’s strength is spiritual as well as material.”16

One GFWC leader implored clubwomen to remember that meetings should be both spiritual and patriotic: “We are a Christian organization and every meeting should open with a prayer or invocation or devotional of some kind,” as well as the Pledge of

Allegiance, or the Preamble to the Constitution, or the American’s Creed. Such calls

14 GFWC, “Americanism Procedure Kit,” p. 55.

15 Ibid. p. 59.

16 Sara Whitehurst, “Americanism Campaign of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs: Resolutions Pertaining to the Americanism Department” pamphlet (Washington DC: GFWC [1952-1954]), p. 5, GFWC, Ahlgren Program Records, Box 1, Folder 4. Hereafter cited as “Americanism Resolutions.”

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reinforced the intimate connection between faith and the democratic project as the twin underpinnings of women’s postwar clubwork.17

Consequently, the Americanism campaign required a return to religion. The message was a familiar one to clubwomen, as it had been a feature of postwar homemaker professionalization programs for nearly a decade. The campaign urged members to attend services at least once per week with their families. Clubwomen should combine observance with a study of how religious principles “apply to the fundamental concepts of our government,” underscoring GFWC assumptions about the relationship between faith and democracy, particularly between Christianity and democracy. According to Whitehurst, “the Soviet philosophy” of atheism sought to

“eliminat[e]… our religious way of life,” which threatened American democracy.18

Clubwomen, as the spiritual light of their homes and therefore their communities, understood the severity of this threat. Whereas Christianity valued the individual just as democracy did, Marxism only put faith in material reality without “consideration of moral, ethical, or religious” aspects of the human condition.19

The Americanism campaign also included an effort to protect the country’s spirit through cultural means. It implored members to see that American history was a requirement for all colleges and universities. It encouraged clubwomen to observe the

17 Helen Chapman, “Good Programs make a Successful Club,” Clubwoman, January 1951, pp. 5-6, quote p. 5.

18 Whitehurst, “The Fight for Freedom,” article for unknown publication [1952-1954] (photocopy), p. 1, GFWC, Ahlgren Program Records, Box 1, Folder 7.

19 Sara A. Whitehurst, “Americanism Campaign: Christmas and Democracy in America,” Clubwoman, December 1953, p. 12.

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GFWC-created Americanism week and rouse interest in Americanism by gaining proclamations of support from local and state officials. The campaign urged clubwomen to publicize this work as much as possible through local media, and the General

Federation provided press kits and sample press announcements to assist them in this publicity.

Such attention was greatly needed. Ahlgren warned that even clubwomen had devoted so much energy to learning about the affairs of the world that, “Every one of us could pass an examination on international affairs much better than we could on what is going on right in our own local communities.” Campaigns for American history and

Americanism week would sharpen clubwomen’s attention on the nation without hurting the international cause. “If you would like to build world peace,” Ahlgren told members,

“start in your own community.”20 The GFWC hoped such focus on and celebration of

American history would reawaken Americans to the glory of American traditions as well as their personal stake in national and local political issues. Its fundraising campaign beginning in September 1953 to restore Independence Hall in Philadelphia gave physical form to this devotion to American traditions: the General Federation used the actual historical building to center attention on “the struggles of our forefathers” and American greatness.21

20 Mildred Ahlgren, “Flag Day Address,” date unknown, GFWC, Ahlgren President Papers, Box 1, Folder 2

21 GFWC, “Independence Hall Restoration: Kit of Procedures” program booklet (Washington, DC: GFWC, [1952-1954] photocopy), GFWC, Ahlgren Program Records, Box 1, Folder 10, p. 2. Club reports showed great enthusiasm for this project. Clubs in Wyoming gave Independence Hall postcards to newly naturalized citizens, New Jersey clubs took over four hundred clubwomen on a field trip to Independence

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Finally, the Americanism campaign included numerous study programs that would ensure an informed women’s club. Being knowledgeable about the American political process would buttress against what the GFWC saw as a dangerous tendency to rely on government to handle daily business. “Such thinking leads to the centralization of power in government,” the campaign materials warned, and “may result in a change in the ideology of our own government.” Instead, Americans needed to preserve “our greatest heritage, representative government,” with “education, patience, tolerance, unselfishness, sacrifice, Christian fortitude, and intelligence.”22 Clubwomen should reinforce these values with study of American culture including its history, great people, art, music, and literature so that clubwomen would be invested in the heritage they were protecting. Rounding out clubs’ study programs was an investigation of labor- management tensions as a threat to national unity.23

This last study program points yet again to GFWC clubwomen’s privilege. When discussing class conflict, the GFWC referred to “labor-management tensions” as if class conflict was a problem only among organized labor. Doing so tied class identity to a certain type of work, ignoring sites of class formation outside the union shop – an increasingly inapt analysis when class identity in the postwar era had less and less to do

Hall, Kansas clubs got ninety-five schools involved in the “What America Means to Me” essay contests, and the Ladies History Class of Port Huron, Michigan held a tea fundraiser. Sara A. Whitehurst, “Americanism Campaign,” Clubwoman, January 1954, p. 12; Sara A. Whitehurst, “Americanism Campaign,” Clubwoman, February 1954, pp. 8-9; Sara A. Whitehurst, “Americanism Campaign,” Clubwoman, May 1954, p. 8.

22 GFWC, “Americanism Procedure Kit,” p. 27.

23 Ibid. p. 39.

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with types of work than standard of living. Moreover, such an emphasis on unionism wrote off people of color, who were largely excluded from unions, as well as the poor and working-class Americans engaged in non-organized work. Focusing on unions elided very real structural class inequalities, naturalizing them. Clubwomen could

“study” labor-management disputes to understand them, but because these “class tensions” happened on the shop floor, clubwomen did not need to interrogate their own role as middle-class white women in reifying inequitable class relations. Discussing class conflict in terms of unionized labor protected clubwomen’s own privileged status while glossing over real critiques of class and, by extension, capitalism.

The GFWC’s hostility toward unionism also shows its conflation of capitalism with Americanism, a common attitude in the postwar U.S. Even though millions of

Americans owed their improving standard of living to the gains of organized labor, postwar anti-unionism ran high. Americans at large feared labor radicalism would destabilize the economy like it had after World War I. They also harbored suspicion that unions were a potential breeding ground for communists. To many Americans including clubwomen, unionism represented the kind of market intervention of which they were wary. Labor unrest was not just a dispute between employee and employer, but a possible communist attempt to undermine the economy – that powerful symbol of

American freedom. According to Sara Whitehurst, labor unrest would “tear down our capitalistic system.”24 Such hostility intimidated unions into self-purging leftists and

24 Whitehurst, “The Fight for Freedom,” p. 2.

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communists from their ranks and made possible the passage of postwar anti-union legislation. Many considered unions un-American. Coming down against unions on this issue, for example, the New York State Federation of Women’s Clubs passed a resolution in 1954 opposing the closed union shop because it violated the individual’s right to work and sell his labor on the private market.25

Taken together, the components of Ahlgren’s campaign point to the General

Federation’s definition of “American” that relied on democracy and religion, personal activism, and private enterprise. Like the “100% American” programs at the end of

World War I, the General Federation’s Americanism campaign in the 1950s tapped into anxieties about shifting political circumstances and social trends.26 It accepted commonly held beliefs of the Red Scare that there were subversives in the midst undermining the health of the nation. The General Federation’s study programs aimed to awaken clubwomen to this threat and accept responsibility for eradicating it as part of its conception of women’s work.

Maternal Citizens on a Women’s Crusade

The campaign gendered Americanism by focusing on the specific contributions women made to the body politic as public actors, not just domestic ones. Two of its key

25 Resolutions of the 1954 New York State Federation of Women’s Clubs Annual Convention, Minute Book of the New York State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1952-1956, p. 180, Collection of the New York State Federation of Women’s Clubs, Gannett-Tripp Library, Elmira College. Organization hereafter referred to as NYSFWC; repository hereafter cited as GTL, EC.

26 See Delegard, “Women Patriots;” Morgan, “‘Home and Country;’” Muncy, Building a Female Dominion of Reform.

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features were a get out the vote campaign and a women’s crusade to put more women in public office. Both components aimed to increase women’s visibility in public life as public servants. The Americanism campaign did this by articulating how women brought a distinctly maternal perspective to every discussion, making an important contribution to

American institutions. Relying on women’s difference to advance their claims to public equality attempted to expand women’s public positions and responsibilities without undermining the domestic identities upon which postwar maternalism rested.

Foremost among the Americanism campaign’s extensive action plan was a get- out-the-vote (GOTV) drive to bring citizens into the democratic process. The GFWC stressed this was a bi-partisan project, that the get-out-the-vote campaign committee for each club should be evenly divided between both parties, and that, when encouraging people to register to vote, committee members should not advise people on how to vote.

Ambitiously, each club member would be responsible for getting out ten votes in addition to her own. Using classic organizing strategies, committee members should call those already canvassed again on election day to see if they voted. Clubs took the project to heart: one Maryland club reported that each member contacted 159 potential voters on election day as part of the campaign.27 Ahlgren’s plan further called for helping those who needed assistance getting to the polls. It recommended a transportation committee

“made up of women with cars” be responsible for shuttling voters to the polls.

Clubwomen should also provide babysitting to make getting to the polls easier on

27 “Public Affairs Department, Citizenship Division,” Clubwoman, May 1955, p. 48.

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mothers with young children.28 Some area clubs reported working with Girl Scouts to offer child care on election day, which had the additional benefit of reaching America’s youth and engaging them in the democratic process.29

The GFWC’s efforts were part of a 1952 GOTV project led by the American

Heritage Foundation (AHF), the non-profit that sponsored the Crusade for Freedom and

Radio Free Europe.30 With the participation of civic groups including the GFWC, the

American Legion, Boy Scouts, Daughters of the American Revolution, Girl Scouts, the

League of Women Voters, and the National Education Association, voter participation jumped more than ten percentage points over 1948, bringing in 62.7 percent of eligible voters in 1952. The AHF credited women with doing the bulk of this work. By placing voting on the same footing with the Crusade for Freedom and Radio Free Europe, the

AHF enshrined voting in the pantheon of anticommunist activism. Although the League of Women Voters had been using similar GOTV tactics (and indeed that phrase) to increase women’s voting since the Nineteenth Amendment, it had never had the results the AHF won in 1952.31

28 GFWC, “Americanism Procedure Kit,” quote p. 15.

29 Mrs. Douglas A. Johnston, “Clubs and Girls Scouts Work Together for Nation and World,” Clubwoman, February 1954, p. 12.

30 The American Heritage Foundation was incorporated for the Freedom Train, a pet project of the Ad Council. The train toured the country “selling America to Americans” and promoting ideas of democracy. Daniel L. Lykins, From Total War to Total Diplomacy: The Advertising Council and the Construction of the Cold War Consensus (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2003), p. 70.

31 Richard M. Fried, The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!: Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold-War America (New York: Oxford University Press US, 1999), p. 154; Noel Griese, Arthur W. Page: Publisher, Public Relations Pioneer, Patriot (New York: Anvil Publishers, 2001), p. 370; Estelle Sharpe, “No Glamour, Lots of Grind, Working for Ike and Adlai!,” WP, October 19, 1952, p. S1; “Huge Drive

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In part, the drive to improve voter participation was a reflection of the broader culture. Since fighting fascism in World War II, Americans considered voting an important patriotic duty that differentiated living in a democracy from living in a totalitarian state. These feelings intensified with the hardening of the Cold War when the specter of the totalitarian state assumed a definite face. The value of voting was enhanced by deliberate voter education which civic groups like the GFWC conducted. In the aftermath of the extreme politics and economic hardships of the 1930s and World

War II, postwar Americans welcomed political moderation and middle-class conformity.

At the same time, however, they feared that these very things threatened individualism and independent thought. The GFWC and others believed that voter education pushed

Americans to think critically about political debates and become discerning voters – ensuring that their political moderation and conformity were not an actual threat to democracy.32

But women’s groups also promoted women’s voter participation because they saw it as an important path for women’s advancement in American society. Despite grand expectations about suffrage, a women’s bloc did not emerge after winning the vote in

Begins to Bring Out Vote,” NYT, August 9, 1952, p. 5; “‘Get Out the Vote’ Campaigns are Expected to Result in Record Turnouts at the Polls,” NYT, November 2, 1952, p. 83.

32 “Getting Out the Vote,” NYT, August 10, 1952, p. E8; “The Large Registration,” NYT, October 9, p. 1952, p. 30.

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1920. Contemporaries worried women were “failing” to vote at all, let alone vote in the same numbers as their male counterparts.33

To women’s groups, the effects were two-fold. First, because women failed to vote in the same numbers as men, women’s voices were underrepresented in political discussions. For the General Federation, which believed women approached political issues from a distinctly maternal viewpoint, such gender disparity in politics could have tragic consequences. Some clubwomen believed that if there were more women in political power, for example, the United States would not be fighting the Korean War.34

Second, women’s groups believed that women’s failure to take up their civic responsibility helped codify their second-class status in public life. In the postwar era, women’s groups including the GFWC, the Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, and the American Association of University Women routinely challenged women’s inferior status. In addition to get-out-the-vote campaigns, these women’s groups and others supported the Equal Rights Amendment, lobbied Presidents Truman and

Eisenhower to appoint more women to government positions, and pushed for greater representation at the proverbial table. The Women’s Assembly, the collaborative national defense association comprised of these women’s groups discussed in Chapter

33 Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, pp. 102-107. Cott challenges these assertions, pointing to how fallible voter behavior studies were. She instead places women’s diminishing voter participation in context with declining male voter participation.

34 Other women’s groups did not share this interpretation. The League of Women Voters explicitly denied that there was such a thing as a “female” citizen. See Bucy, “Exercising the Franchise.” For clubwomen’s disagreement with the Korean War, see Lillian Bellison, “Clubwomen Fear Peril in Treaties,” NYT, November 15, 1951, p. 18; Sara A. Whitehurst, “Honorary President’s Address,” May 15, 1951, GFWC Convention 1951, Vol. I, pp. 171-173.

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Two was one example of the cooperative effort to gain women a say in civil defense policy.35

The General Federation took voter participation very seriously. It held a Get-Out- the-Vote contest to encourage clubs to lead voting initiatives in the 1952 election cycle.

The first-place winner, the Le-ota Club of Englewood, Colorado, won $500 from the

GFWC for its efforts. The club compiled a file of all twenty thousand eligible voters in its suburban community and determined who was or was not a registered voter; the club also coordinated town meetings prior to the election and held candidate forums. Overall, the GOTV contest was deemed a success: clubs in all forty-eight states participated with the number of voters contacted by each club on election day ranging from 100 to

47,654.36

In an age when a significant proportion of America’s black population was denied the right to vote, the GFWC’s GOTV campaign handled black disenfranchisement with kid gloves – just as it did most issues that confronted racism. Speaking from the privileged position of the white middle class, the campaign stressed that voting was an obligation of citizenship. This approach upheld black disenfranchisement to the extent that it assumed all Americans had equal access to voting and failed to address racial injustice directly. But for those who wished to critique black disenfranchisement, such a

35 Bess Furman, “Women Set Up Unit On Defense Plans,” NYT, February 2, 1951, p. 17; “Mrs. Norton Takes Post as Tobin Aide,” NYT, March 21, 1951, p. 24; “Women’s Assembly will Elect Tonight,” NYT, July 19, 1951, p. 21; “18 Women Urged for High U.S. Jobs,” NYT, November 25, 1952, p. 26.

36 Sara A. Whitehurst, “Americanism Campaign Get-Out-the-Vote Winners,” Clubwoman, March 1953, pp. 10-11.

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position could also subtly challenge white supremacy by its very assumption that all

Americans had the duty to vote and therefore should be given equal access to the franchise.

The GFWC rarely mentioned race outright in this regard, but on those spare occasions it did, it acknowledged the problems Jim Crow posed to the integrity of the electoral process. One 1954 Clubwoman article used statistics from the American

Heritage Foundation and V.O. Key’s Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups to point out that over 13 million Americans were prevented from voting in 1952. Among the barriers the anonymous author named were residence requirements, registration requirements, literacy requirements, obscure Constitutional testing requirements, and the poll tax. Per this last barrier, the author argued it hurt poor whites as well as blacks. The article, however, did not make recommendations on what an individual could do to overcome these barriers nor did the author suggest clubs take any course of action to remedy these injustices. It merely asked questions such as “Can you go, unhampered by discriminating regulations, to your voting poll and cast your ballot? Or are you one of the thousands in the United States who is bound by foolish and outmoded voting laws?” to push the white readership to confront (albeit on a very superficial level) the unequal citizenship of black

Americans.37

Some clubwomen did make GOTV efforts racially inclusive. The second-place winner of the 1952 GOTV contest, the Caruthersville Woman’s Association and Civic

37 “What’s Your Chance to Vote?” Clubwoman, October 1954, pp. 27+, quote p. 38.

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Club of Missouri, won $350 for deploying its sixty-two members to canvas the city’s four wards and register voters, even in black neighborhoods. According to the report, “In the case of ward 3, which is largely a colored neighborhood, Mrs. Kersey [head of the club] and a team of women accustomed to working with the colored population took the poll.”38 It is unclear whether these so-called “accustomed” women were white club members, or white or black club allies perhaps from either inter-racial organizations or offices that operated in those neighborhoods, or black clubwomen or black women from the community. It seems clear from the language that, at the very least, the Caruthersville club was a white women’s group “unaccustomed” to foraying into black wards of the city. Caruthersville’s clubwomen sought to include African Americans in their club’s citizenship activism, but their report underscores the position of whiteness and racial isolation from which many clubwomen operated.

It was hardly a coincidence that Ahlgren pushed voter initiatives in 1952, regardless of the GFWC’s cooperation with the American Heritage Foundation’s GOTV campaign. Ahlgren saw 1952 as a particularly important election year. It was “the most strategic election of all times, due to the challenge facing us from Communistic sources.”39 It was the first presidential election since the Korean War and Cold War tensions ran high.

But her enthusiasm for getting out the vote may also have been tied to her enthusiasm for defeating the Democrats. Ahlgren was an ardent Republican and Truman,

38 Whitehurst, “Americanism Campaign Get-Out-the-Vote Winners,” p. 10.

39 GFWC, “Americanism Procedure Kit,” p. 16.

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after all, had been accused of being soft on communism. Although she was sincere in her desire to get voters out in general – something she had been calling for since the end of

World War II – a desire to elect Eisenhower may have been an underlying motivation for her campaign. The possibility exists that she was using the GFWC to advance her partisan interests, no matter how bi-partisan the project was on paper. Even contemporaries thought a GOTV campaign could only work to the Republicans’ benefit.

Thomas d’arcy Brophy, president of the American Heritage Foundation, claimed that

Republicans would only be able to win the 1952 election with a successful GOTV campaign because registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans.40

Ahlgren’s GOTV campaign did indeed contain a message that could be read in partisan terms, but it was a message not atypical of that made by middle-class clubwomen for generations. The GOTV program kit, for example, encouraged members to canvas urban areas because political machines (code for urban, and likely pro-labor,

Democrats) could only affect the election “if we fail in our citizenship responsibilities.”

Such statements construed urban partisan political machines as a mindless special interest group anathema to a truly educated citizenry and painted high-minded civic clubwomen as the antidote. Clubwomen had used similar language about political machines to justify

– and set apart – women’s public activism since the Progressive era. Excluded from official political channels, women’s outsider status became a source of pride and public power. Donning the mantel of disinterested civic educators, clubwomen saw themselves

40 Wall, Inventing the "American Way,” p. 233. See also, “Lazy Voters Held Key to 1952 Hopes,” NYT, April 16, 1952, p. 14; “Women Held Crux of G.O.P. Victory,” NYT, August 21, 1952, p. 13.

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as responsible for injecting integrity into politics and encouraging broader participation in the democratic process. When Ahlgren reminded members that “independent voters, habitual non-voters, and members of large organizations” held the balance of power for the election, she built on a long-standing self-perception or clubwomen as sitting above politics.41

Clearly such claims to disinterestedness, however, were not without self-interest.

At the very least, this depiction upheld certain gender and class conventions. It reified white middle-class clubwomen’s role as civic watchdogs. Their moral guardianship of the democratic process was deeply rooted in gendered constructions about corrupt male politicians and machines and virtuous female civic activists. The continuation of women’s outsider status as a source of power was in many ways predicated upon a lingering belief that women’s domesticity vested them with greater virtue. Such constructions were entirely class-specific. It was middle-class clubwomen who were capable of providing this leadership.

Ahlgren was not coy about her vision for increasing women’s place in civic life.

With the get-out-the-vote campaign, Ahlgren sought to expand women’s participation in particular in the democratic process. As wives, mothers, and homemakers, women approached issues from a women’s perspective. Because of their club work, women were actually better informed than men and therefore made better voters. “There would be no question of Communism in this country,” one sample Americanism speech

41 GFWC, “Americanism Procedure Kit,” p. 16. See also Scher, “Cold War on the Home Front.”

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extolled, “if the informed women would not only go to the polls to vote, but if they would be responsible for 10 additional votes in their communities.”42

Guided by this belief, a major component of Ahlgren’s Americanism campaign was to place qualified women in public positions. This directly complemented the work the GFWC was conducting with the BPW, AAUW, and others to increase women’s presence in government. By including it as a component of the Americanism campaign, however, Ahlgren effectively framed such advancement for women as patriotic and necessary to winning the Cold War. To survive the current ideological battle the nation needed women in positions of public power. Ahlgren called for a “women’s crusade” to get qualified women on local community boards, state legislatures, and Congress, even if it was controversial to push for their placement, or went against one’s husband’s interests.43

Terming it a “women’s crusade” strategically vested this advocacy with symbolic weight. First, the term evoked the contemporary anticommunist Crusade for Freedom. It advocated placing women in government as an anticommunist tactic and staked a claim that doing so should be treated as importantly as the Crusade for Freedom. Second, the term recalled the “woman’s crusade” from the 1870s and 1880s led by the Woman’s

Christian Temperance Union, the country’s largest women’s organization of the nineteenth century. The WCTU deftly used traditional constructions of womanhood to expand a mother’s boundaries of homemaking to encompass the public sphere in defense

42 GFWC, “Americanism Procedure Kit,” p. 45.

43 Whitehurst, “Americanism Resolutions,” p. 5; Ahlgren, “Flag Day Address.”

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of her children. Like the GFWC’s “women’s crusade” of the 1950s, the WCTU’s crusade strove to gain greater public power for women based on their maternal identity.

The term carried a religious and familial connotation that simultaneously gave the

GFWC’s advocacy moral currency and legitimacy while denuding it of stridency associated with equal-rights feminism.44

Advancing women in public office needed to be a “women’s crusade” in part because pressure from women would be required to change the governing practices of men. As Ahlgren’s Public Affairs chairman wrote in 1952, “Women have permitted men to become the chief participants and selectors of our government leaders.”45 The consequences were discouraging. The GFWC’s 1954 status of women report showed that only two thousand women held high government positions. When the report was broken down by state, it became clear that some sections of the country, like the

Northeast and the Midwest, advanced women to public positions more readily than others.46 Women could not rely on men in power to make these appointments. It would be up to women to turn the tide.

Women also shared responsibility for this travesty. Sara Whitehurst, former

GFWC president and now Ahlgren’s Americanism chairman, charged that, although

“men do not want women in key places” because “they believe it is a usurpation of their

44 The GFWC did support and lobbied Congress in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment. But like their contemporaries in other pro-ERA groups such as the YWCA, few GFWC clubwomen called themselves feminists. See Lynn, Progressive Women.

45 Mrs. Carroll E. Miller, “Public Affairs,” Clubwoman, September 1952, p. 11.

46 Sara A. Whitehurst, “Status of Women,” Clubwoman, May 1954, p. 9.

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rights,” blame also lay with women for not supporting women.47 She claimed that when she ran for office, she found little support from women: believing that a woman would not win, women did not support her candidacy.48 Ahlgren shared Whitehurst’s stance.

Women, she accused, failed to support one another in politics. As a consequence, male politicians discounted women’s potential because they “never stick together.” At this critical juncture in American history, when the nation was under attack and women had the power to protect it, the time had come for women to stand as one: “United – we stick,” she told members, “Divided – we are stuck.”49

To advance the “women’s crusade,” Whitehurst recommended that women stick together by “seek[ing] out” qualified women and recommending them for public office, even pro-actively giving names for consideration when men were up for election or recently voted into office. It was so critical to promote women that “each club, district, and state federation should create an organization for the promotion of women.” Even women without specific government experience had a potential place in public office on welfare boards or budgetary boards, both of which were arenas that would draw on women’s homemaking responsibilities and expertise.50

The “women’s crusade” reveals an underlying assumption about women’s work in the postwar era. Informed by their homemaking and clubwork, women brought a

47 Whitehurst, “The Fight for Freedom,” p. 2.

48 Whitehurst, “Honorary President’s Address,” Convention 1951, pp. 172-173.

49 Ahlgren, “Flag Day Address,” p. 3.

50 Whitehurst, “The Fight for Freedom,” p. 2.

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gendered perspective to political discussions regardless of their partisan identification.

Their qualification for public office came by virtue of their gendered clubwork and homemaking, not their political affiliation. Nothing demonstrated this so much as

Mildred Ahlgren’s choice of Sara Whitehurst to chair the Americanism campaign.

Unlike Ahlgren, Whitehurst was a loyal Democrat – she had been named National

Democratic Committeewoman for the state of Maryland in 1948 and ran for Congress in

1952. It mattered little that Ahlgren the loyal Republican had tapped Whitehurst the

Democratic party insider to lead the flagship program of her administration. The theme of

Whitehurst’s presidential administration during World War II – a return to religion and the “preservation of our representative form of government” – were strikingly similar to

Ahlgren’s theme and resonated with the Americanism campaign a decade later. With their clubwork to guide them, women could protect the nation and fight communism from both ends of the political spectrum.

Ahlgren had been putting this principle to practice since her days as an Indiana clubwoman. As president of her Indiana state federation, she first began the women’s crusade on the state level. Her clubwomen conducted political science forums “with a view of trying to interest women in becoming candidates for public office. The result was that several women were elected to the Indiana legislature and a past president of the

Indiana Federation became the first woman senator in Indiana.”51 Presumably these women were affiliated with a political party, but, tellingly, their partisanship was

51 “Mrs. Oscar A. Ahlgren, Recording Secretary, General Federation of Women’s Clubs” biographical sheet, [1944-1947], GFWC, Ahlgren President Papers, Box 1, Folder 1.

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incidental to the crusade. Ahlgren believed that activism meant becoming engaged with a political party of one’s choice, but by promoting women based on education and experience, the Federation played up a notion of women’s politics that minimized differences across parties. As homemakers intimately familiar with their communities’ needs, clubwomen understood the American spirit and could protect it in ways that made them uniquely qualified to serve in public office regardless of party affiliation. As

Whitehurst would later tell members, Americanism was women’s responsibility. It was

“up to the women” to lead this crusade and preserve “the greatest form of government the world has ever known.”52

The General Federation’s GOTV efforts and the women’s crusade were civic statements about the contributions women could make to strengthen the nation. The

GOTV drive built on women’s traditional role as community activists, urging them to canvas cities and towns across the nation and bring more Americans to the polls than ever. There may have been partisan motivation behind some women’s participation, but the GFWC framed it as an exercise in democracy. Clubwomen – mainly white, middle- class, full-time homemakers with time to lead such voluntary efforts – rose to the challenge. The women’s crusade tried to transform these very identities into sources of power by showing members that women – mothers and housewives just like themselves – had invaluable skills to contribute to the body politic. What they did as clubwomen – raising the nation’s citizens and protecting its democracy – gave them a unique voice in

52 Whitehurst, “The Fight for Freedom,” p. 2.

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the halls of power. This message not only gave a virtuous undertone to promoting women’s leadership, it also imbued ordinary daily clubwork with national meaning as the stepping stone to higher civic service. Assigning clubwomen responsibility for revitalizing democracy, the Americanism campaign gendered civic activism and helped shape ideas about women’s citizenship.

Clubwomen Interpret Americanism

The Americanism campaign relied on the idea that clubwomen were the arbiters of citizenship, but it could not always control how clubwomen construed Americanism.

In general, Americanism leaned toward the Right of the broad middle ground that was postwar political culture. Club resolutions circumscribed political debate as clubwomen interpreted the bounds of proper activity through the lens of anticommunism. Such an orientation in national politics, however, threatened to undermine the GFWC’s more liberal internationalist policy. Clubwomen’s negotiation of national and international priorities during the Americanism campaign helps illuminate these tensions within postwar maternalism.

As part of the Americanism campaign, the early 1950s saw a spate of GFWC resolutions targeting communism. These resolutions reveal not only what clubwomen deemed communist threats, but also how clubwomen imagined their clubwork and the government could counter these threats. The General Federation’s resolutions would see opposition politics criminalized, free speech limited, and even the self-censoring of clubs in service of presenting a united front in the Cold War.

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These resolutions suggest that clubwomen were primarily concerned with countering communist propaganda and the extent to which they believed dissension at home fueled the communist cause. One 1951 resolution stated that the “GFWC should undertake a campaign of truth and integrity concerning the functions and current activities of government and increase the general understanding of the over-all problems which confront the U.S.A. and the whole free world to the end that citizenship responsibilities may be exercised constructively.”53 That same year, the GFWC also passed a resolution against subversive acts, urging state and the federal governments to halt “the present alarming infiltration by Communists into our national life” by punishing anyone advocating the overthrow of government for sedition and treason.54

Such resolutions, if fully enacted, would actually curb the vibrancy of the very civil society clubwomen thought they were fighting to uphold with the Americanism campaign, especially since these resolutions targeted more than actual communists. In

1952, one resolution supported censorship by placing a moratorium on public discussion of “secret” national security matters – even within the press – with non-compliance punishable by law.55 Another effectively demonized political debate warning that partisan “bickering” (note, not dialogue) “can destroy world confidence in our integrity and our leadership, and irresponsible utterances and actions on the part of our citizens

53 Whitehurst, “Americanism Resolutions,” p. 2.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

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and weaken morale and seriously affect our security.”56 Another urged Congress to legislate punishment for strikes “in essential industries in a time of national emergency

[as] a crime against the U.S. Government” without defining essential industries. It followed this resolution with one a year later urging criminalization of sympathy strikes as well.57

These resolutions were at home in Joseph McCarthy’s America. When many

Americans were becoming disgruntled with McCarthy’s theatrics – perhaps most notably demonstrated by Women Strike for Peace, a maternalist movement opposed to the arms race – the GFWC maintained its support. During the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954,

Whitehurst said that many women were “confused” about his crusade because the hearings had become a medium for venting personal opinions. “‘It’s not a question of who doesn’t like Cohn’s eyes, or McCarthy’s methods…Communism is the issue,” she told members in an impassioned speech. Whereas some Americans thought McCarthy had gone too far when he targeted the Army for harboring communists, Whitehurst endorsed his actions. “‘I don’t care where Communists are – the Army, the White House, or in the family – we must root them out.’” To emphasize her point, she drafted and her membership unanimously passed a resolution advocating the criminalization of the

56 GFWC, “International Relations: Policy, Program, Projects” pamphlet (Washington, DC: GFWC, [1951] photocopy), p. 17, GFWC, Houghton Program Records, Box 2, Folder 19.

57 Whitehurst, “Americanism Resolutions,” p. 5.

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Communist Party and membership therein in the United States.58 It was no time to be conciliatory towards communism.

The success of Whitehurst’s resolution at the height of the Army-McCarthy hearings suggests how ubiquitous anticommunism was in postwar political culture and how powerful a unifying tool it was even within one women’s organization.

Anticommunism bonded a group of women together. Even as Americans began to discredit McCarthy and his witch hunts, anticommunism was still central to how the

GFWC construed women’s work.

As happened in the broader political culture, however, this tool could also be used to crush dissent and advance a more conservative political agenda. It is difficult to ascertain how many clubwomen went along with the GFWC’s strict anticommunist policies because they were afraid to speak out and be branded a communist. Americans understood there was a political price to be paid for anything short of hawkish anticommunism or even anything sniffing of social justice. Union leaders, civil rights activists, and other reformers were routinely branded as communist. At the same time, anticommunism could make careers: Richard Nixon’s “pinking” of Helen Gahagan

Douglas won him his senate seat in 1950.

58 Sara A. Whitehurst, “Americanism Department Program Report” to the GFWC national convention June 3, 1954, GFWC Convention 1954, Vol. 2, pp. 115d-119d, quote p. 118d. See also Norma H. Goodhue, “GFWC Passes Resolution to Ban Communist Party in U.S.,” LAT, June 2, 1954, p. B1. Suggesting the strength of support McCarthy found among clubwomen was a walk-out during an address by the Denver Post publisher at that same convention two days later when he criticized McCarthy. Emma Harrison, “Women Urge Cut in Bars to Trade,” NYT, June 4, 1954, p. 28. For a discussion of how women organized against McCarthy during the same period, see Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace.

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Being tough on communism was a sensitive issue, especially for internationally- minded clubwomen. As early as 1947 Constance Sporborg, the GFWC’s leading internationalist, was called a communist by her very own New York state federation.

Giving a talk about the United Nations on the final day of the state federation’s annual convention, Sporborg warned that she would sue her accuser (an unidentified board member of the New York State Federation of Women’s Clubs) and “‘offer myself up to

New York State as a test case to stop that kind of thing [leveling accusations without proof].’”59 Sporborg’s refusal to allow such accusations to go unchallenged shows she was aware of the threat they posed to one’s personal integrity – and that of the nation.

Details of the accusation are unknown, but they were likely connected with

Sporborg’s vocal internationalism. She claimed the accusation had been made sometime in the previous two years, which corresponded with her most active clubwork on behalf of the United Nations and UNESCO. That her public retort came during a speech about internationalism suggests the link between the two and the vulnerability internationalists felt to charges of communism. For conservatives in the ranks, Sporborg’s internationalism – recall her recent March1947 motion to use UNESCO to increase understanding between the Soviet Union and the United States – appeared to accommodate the Soviet Union. Her position as a U.N. observer and UNESCO representative would have only made Sporborg appear more suspicious since many

59 Constance Sporborg quoted in Lucy Freeman, “Club Women Told of ‘Name-Calling,” NYT, November 13, 1947, p. 24; “Minutes of the Mid-Winter Board Meeting, February 4, 1948,” Minute Book of the NYSFWC, 1946-1948-1950, pp. 86-89, NYSFWC, GTL, EC; “Minutes of the Spring Board Meeting, May 12, 1948,” Minute Book of the NYSFWC, 1946-1948-1950, pp. 95-96, NYSFWC, GTL, EC.

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conservatives thought these institutions were part of a communist conspiracy to undermine national sovereignty and pave the way for One World-ism under communist dictatorship.

This suspicion even played out within the GFWC, despite the GFWC’s loyal support of the United Nations and UNESCO. At a GFWC meeting in October 1952,

Sporborg displayed a touring library of American literature to be sent to India and

Pakistan. The library was a creation of the State Department. But, because Sporborg had seen it at a UNESCO meeting and brought it to the GFWC, it became identified among clubwomen as a UNESCO project. Newly-appointed Americanism chairman Sara

Whitehurst was distressed that books were being sent overseas without GFWC screening.

She feared UNESCO could use the library to promote (implied, communist) propaganda.

She believed that, as a UNESCO partner, the GFWC would be held accountable for the library. “I’m opposed to any book going out anywhere under the name of the federation while propagandists [UNESCO] are at work on this [library],” she said. “All we need is to find one subversive book the federation is condoning and we might as well stop the entire Americanism program.” The GFWC went so far as to appoint a screening committee before the situation was clarified.60

Whitehurst’s suspicions of UNESCO were not uncommon. The Chicago Tribune, known for its conservative editorial board, accused UNESCO of being riddled with

60 Dorothea Pattee, “State Department Book Plan Stirs Federation Argument,” WP, October 18, 1952, p. 16.

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known communists.61 UNESCO also faced strong opposition from the right wing and patriotic groups. The Daughters of the American Revolution and the Minute Women

U.S.A. led the charge among women’s organizations. In 1956, the American Legion went on record before Congress urging it to end its participation in UNESCO because it had “‘been a haven for many individuals whose loyalty is severely compromised, if not submerged, by a demonstrated sympathy for communist objectives and the principles of one world government.’”62 Patriotic groups also attacked UNESCO leadership, including

President Eisenhower’s brother (often tarring him and other internationalists as New

Dealers), and accused them of undermining the U.S. constitution and promoting one- worldism.63

One-worldism was a common slur against internationalism in the postwar era.

The right wing claimed that the Washington Establishment’s internationalist policies were chipping away at American sovereignty and pushing the nation toward a form of world government (and communism). Whereas “world federation” had been appealing to many at the end of World War II – even the DAR had been an initial proponent of the

United Nations – sentiment against it hardened by the early 1950s. In 1949, women in

61 “Enemies Within the Gate,” CDT, September 26, 1947, p. 22; “Canadian Loses His Job as Propaganda Leader for UNESCO,” CDT, February 13, 1948, p. 8; “Using ‘Con-Con’ to Destroy Liberty,” CDT, March 9, 1949, p. 24; “Strange Coincidences,” CDT, January 26, 1950, p. 16; “Debates Swirled About McCormick,” NYT, April 1, 1955, p. 17; “Tribune Reflected McCormick’s Vigor and Echoed His Convictions on Politics,” NYT, April 1, 1955, p. 17.

62 J. Addington Wagner quoted in “Legion Leader Rips UNESCO as Leftist Haven,” CDT, March 8, 1956, p. 10.

63 John Fisher, “Brother of Ike Ripped as One World Backer,” CDT, May 17, 1956, p. C8; “OWI Books Aim to Steer Peace Thinking in U.S.,” CDT, May 17, 1943, p. 1; “Ike’s Brother Milton Long New Dealer,” CDT, July 20, 1952, p. 25.

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the DAR vowed to oppose it with “‘all their vigor.’”64 The right wing of the Republican

Party argued that participation in the United Nations made the United States beholden to a sovereign beside itself.65 Tribune publisher Col. Robert R. McCormick founded a group of like-minded business and civic leaders (called “For America”) devoted to a

“return to Americanism,” articulating their isolationist position as a need to “‘combat

‘super-internationalism and interventionism, one-worldism, and communism.’”66

Isolationist feelings even challenged the internationalist position within mainstream civic organizations. One letter to the editor in the Tribune expressed torment that the writer thought he would have to leave the Rotary club because it had become too

“willing to promote the idea of one worldism.” As an “American first, last, and all the time,” the writer had no choice but to leave a group that had been important to him. But

“I am not an internationalist,” he wrote, “and never will be.”67

The GFWC had to contend with members’ unease with the United Nation’s potential threat to U.S. sovereignty as well. At the 1952 national convention the GFWC was to consider a resolution reaffirming its support of the UN. The night prior to debating the resolution, a pink pamphlet from the Constitutional Alliance of Los Angeles

64 Mrs. Roscoe C. O’Byrne quoted in “Fights World Federation,” NYT, October 6, 1949, p. 28.

65 “G.O.P ‘Right Wing’ Attacks Regime,” NYT, February 12, 1956, p. 52. See also Carter, Another Part of the Fifties; Donald T. Crichtlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Hamby, Liberalism and Its Challengers; Olsen, “One Nation, One World.”

66 Frank Hughes, “‘For America’ Group Formed by 14 Leaders,” CDT, May 8, 1954, p. 3.

67 Harry G. Kellogg, “Voice of the People,” CDT, January 10, 1952, p. 20.

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circulated entitled “United Nations is Treason.”68 The Constitutional Alliance was a right-wing isolationist group that seems to have been fairly localized to Los Angeles.69

Who brought the materials to convention is unclear.

In her remarks to delegates the following morning, however, Constance Sporborg implied that the propaganda was connected to clubwomen. Though she did not “want to call any names,” proposed language to amend the resolution closely resembled the language found in the propaganda. She quickly reassured delegates that she respected those with legitimate concerns. But Sporborg went on to charge that, “There are others who are using this amount of unrest and emotion [of the Korean War and the Cold War] and the election year and many other things to bring about a sentiment for isolationism.”

These organizations “wouldn’t dare show their faces here in the hall.” She averred that the propagandists were on the Attorney General’s list of subversive organizations and

“original fascists…and others…of hate campaigns that want to keep us divided.”70

With these comments, Sporborg offered amnesty to those who had doubts about the GFWC’s internationalist policy while casting those who would stridently disagree as anti-democratic hate-mongers – the antithesis of the American clubwoman. It was a deft bit of footwork to shore up unity around the UN and the GFWC by appealing to

68 Emma Harrison, “U.N. Foes Rebuked by Women’s Clubs,” NYT, May 17, 1952, p. 8.

69 Two years earlier, fifty members of the National Constitutional Alliance protested raising the UN flag alongside the American Flag at City Hall in Los Angeles. “Boos, Hisses Fail to Halt U.N. Flag Raising,” LAT, October 17, 1950, p. A1.

70 “Support of United Nations Resolution” debate at GFWC national convention, May 16, 1952, GFWC, Convention 1952, Vol. 2, pp. 194b-214b, quote, p. 209b.

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clubwomen’s self-image as thoughtful informed maternal citizens. But concern about the

UN continued to percolate.

Anti-UN statements from clubwomen in New York suggest that this sentiment manifested more aggressively on the local level perhaps than the national one. Just weeks before the above incident at national convention, the New York City Federation of

Women’s Clubs – of which Sporborg had once been president – made its suspicion of the

United Nations clear. 250 delegates passed a resolution that called the “leadership of the

United Nations ‘Socialist-Communist,’ accused twenty-nine foreign members of the

United Nations of being spies, and asserted that ‘international interference with purely

American activities is steadily growing worse.’” According to the New York Times, the few members (perhaps even Constance Sporborg) who challenged these assertions were

“shouted down.” The resolution urged Congress “to prohibit negotiation of any treaty or executive agreement regarding Americans’ rights under their own Constitution, and block any transfer to any international organization of powers given by the Constitution to the

United States President and courts.”71 This resolution built on one passed six months earlier at the state federation convention. In late 1951, the New York State Federation of

71 “U.N. is Criticized by Women’s Group,” NYT, May 3, 1952, p. 24. This was but one part of the NYC federation’s anti-UN position. In 1950, members raucously opposed a measure of the City Board of Education to fly the UN flag alongside the American flag at city schools. In 1954, it also opposed perceived loyalty oaths among UN employees. “U.N. Flag In School Opposed by Women,” NYT, October 24, 1950, p. 19 “U.N. Flag Row Stirs Education Board,” NYT, October 27, 1950, p. 31; “Schools Tighten $200 Order System,” NYT, December 8, 1950, p. 26; “U.N. Flag Display in Schools Voted,” NYT, December 15, 1950, p. 33; “Clubwomen attack U.N. Plan Demanding Employees’ Loyalty [sic],” NYT, October 30, 1954, p. 19. See also the following entries from the Journal of the Board of Education of the City of New York, New York City Hall Library: October 5, 1950, p. 2897; October 26, pp. 3030-3033; December 7, 1950, 3361-3367.

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Women’s Clubs urged the U.S. Senate not to pass any “‘further treaties which would tend to give our national sovereignty into hands other than those of our own citizens.’”72

With these moves, New York clubwomen were trying to express support for the

Bricker Amendment without so naming it in their resolution. Sponsored by the junior

Republican senator from Ohio and Vice Presidential nominee in 1944, John Bricker, the

Amendment limited the President’s ability to negotiate treaties and clarified Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. Conservative Republicans like Bricker feared that treaties negotiated by the President could be interpreted as “the supreme Law of the Land” and interfere with local, state, and federal law. As the New York State clubwomen worried, treaties threatened to have “‘profound and destructive effect’ on American jurisprudence.’”73 If Article VI was not clarified as prohibiting such a transfer of power, the United States would subsume national sovereignty to an international power. The right wing feared this had already happened with the United Nations.

Positioned as a measure to protect the U.S. Constitution, the Bricker Amendment made headway among the same political culture that produced Ahlgren’s Americanism campaign.74 Sensitive to the popularity of the Amendment, the GFWC in 1953 passed a

72 Lillian Bellison, “Clubwomen Fear Peril in Treaties,” NYT, November 15, 1951, p. 18. In 1952, the Long Island Federation of Women’s Clubs, passed a similar resolution to NYSFWC. Emma Harrison, “U.N. Foes Rebuked by Women’s Clubs,” NYT, May 17, 1952, p. 8.

73 Bellison, “Clubwomen Fear Peril in Treaties.”

74 Although the Amendment was filed in various incarnations between 1951 and 1954, none of them made it out of the Senate – in no small part because Eisenhower opposed it as a hindrance to foreign relations. The Bricker Amendment typified the split between the Republican Right and the Republican Establishment. See Hamby, Liberalism and Its Challengers, p. 131; William White, “Bricker Fight Highlights Basic G.O.P. Split,” NYT, January 31, 1954, p. E3; “The Bricker Amendment: A Cure Worse than the Disease?,” Time, July 13, 1953. Permanent URL: www.time.com/time/magazine/article/

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resolution with language similar to that of the Amendment (but far softer than that in the

New York resolutions), contending that it strengthened the Constitution.75 At the same time, the right wing was rallying around the Bricker Amendment, including patriot groups, hereditary groups, and industry organizations. The American Bar Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Legion, the DAR, and the Minute Women were among the dozens of organizations that signed a petition urging passage of the

Amendment. Even some international groups such as Kiwanis International supported the move, as did the Minnesota state federation of the Business and Professional

Women’s Clubs. The New York City Federation of Women’s Clubs and the New York

State Federation of Women’s Clubs were the only GFWC federated clubs to sign the petition, although the Ohio, Washington, and Texas state federations all reportedly endorsed the Amendment as well. In January 1954, five hundred “Vigilant Women for the Bricker Amendment” led by Minute Women U.S.A. members brought the petition, which they said listed over 200,000 names, to congressional leaders.76

Despite their suspicions of the United Nations’ “super-sovereignty,” it would be a mistake to characterize the New York clubwomen and other pro-Bricker GFWC clubwomen as isolationists – they were Americanists. These were still GFWC federations, for the most part dedicated to the General Federation’s mission. But the

0,917,806676,00.html. Accessed 5/3/09.

75 “Constitutional Ratification of Treaties” debate at GFWC national convention, May 27, 1953, GFWC, Convention 1953, Vol. 1, pp. 225-245; “Club Women Argue Scope of Treaties,” NYT, May 26, 1953, p. 11.

76 “Club Women Argue Scope of Treaties,” NYT, May 26, 1953, p. 11; James Restons, “‘Vigilant Women’ Endorse Bricker,” NYT, January 26, 1954, p. 14.

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United Nations posed a threat to the constitution of the United States. As guardians of

American citizenship – as mothers responsible for inculcating their families and their communities in Americanism – pro-Bricker clubwomen challenged the role and reach of international institutions into their families, communities and nation. Although the

GFWC did not take so deliberate a position as these New York clubwomen – it did not endorse the Bricker Amendment – the GFWC’s passage of a resolution to limit the treaty powers of the president and to protect the sovereignty of local, state, and national jurisdiction suggest clubwomen from across the country shared similar concerns. The

General Federation had taught them that the U.S. Constitution was the keystone of

American democracy, that it was a mother’s job to teach democracy in her home and to spread it to her community – most recently with the tools of the Americanism campaign.

As maternal citizens, it was clubwomen’s responsibility to guard against any threat – even from the GFWC’s pet project, the United Nations – to the Constitution and the nation.

That federation resolutions fret about UN intervention in local, state, and federal law suggests that anti-UN sentiment was also caught up in a bigger issue: the civil rights movement. Since the formation of the UN Commission on Human Rights, civil rights activists had looked to the UN to redress racism at home.77 Such international exposure

77 Article Two of the UN Commission’s Declaration of Human Rights, passed in 1948, stated that “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind,” including race. United Nations, “Declaration of Human Rights,” http://www.un.org/en/ documents/udhr/index.shtml. Accessed 5/4/09. Although clubwomen worked to secure the Declaration’s passage, many clubwomen cherished it for its declaration of sex equality and used it as a steeping stone for the UN Commission on the Status of Women; the GFWC did not make race a signifier in its support of the Declaration. See Olsen, “One Nation, One World.”

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of internal inequality was embarrassing enough for the United States.78 But the notion that the United Nations could have the authority to legislate American race relations gave questions about the UN’s reach and the limits of U.S. sovereignty immediate form – it was no longer just an abstract bit of legalese. It was not coincidence that these discussions about sovereignty emerged at the same time as conservatives and segregationists renewed calls for states’ rights in response to a civil rights movement gaining momentum.

The GFWC supported states’ rights, reflecting both its internal attitudes toward the race issue and its overall political philosophy. Despite individual GFWC leaders’ sympathy for ending Jim Crow, in keeping with the organization’s unwritten policy to maintain federation unity, the GFWC rarely mentioned civil rights as an issue by name.

It was up to state federations themselves to handle questions of race among their clubwomen and in their own communities. A similar political philosophy informed the

GFWC’s ideas about the relationship between state and federal government. Since the

1920s, the GFWC had looked less and less to the government as a solution for local or state issues and more and more to the community – and clubwomen in particular. This

78 This type of action skirted the boundaries of acceptable political protest in a highly conformist political culture. To many, it was un-American. That race relations was a target of Soviet criticism compounded the betrayal many Americans felt over civil rights activists who turned to the UN. It also added to accusations that civil rights activists were communists. But appealing to the UN did gain civil rights a modicum of legitimacy because it became something U.S. presidents and their diplomatic core needed to consider in their Cold War jockeying. See Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights.

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position had special meaning in the 1950s amid an anticommunist political culture that eyed the expanding federal government with such suspicion.79

The Americanism campaign was an articulation of this political orientation and, as such, Americanism could join with states’ rights to protect clubwomen’s middle-class white privilege. The campaign charged clubwomen with engaging all in their community to create vibrant local democracies. The GFWC did not challenge how clubwomen racially defined their local communities. Instead, it assumed clubwomen approached their civic activism and protection of the national character with a disinterestedness descended from that of the founding fathers. As with the get-out-the-vote campaign, this position could offer a subtle critique of segregation and black disenfranchisement. The assumption could also allow clubwomen to ignore inequality all the time reinforcing their perception of themselves as true champions of American values.

The Americanism campaign gave clubwomen a means of asserting their authority over citizenship in civil society just as they did in the private family. Anticommunism was a driving force behind this activity and filtered into a multitude of conversations in amorphous ways – uniting a vast federation of women, curbing dissent, coding isolationism. But in this the campaign tapped into something deeper: how clubwomen

79 After having supported federal aid to education for a few years in the late 1940s, for example, the GFWC dropped it from its platform in 1952. The legislative chairman claimed it was because there was no interest among the membership, but Ahlgren made clear that members objected to federal aid for education and that “‘of course, we believe in states’ rights.’” Segregationists had long opposed federal aid to education fearing it would give the federal government the authority to desegregate schools. Many Americans also opposed federal aid as a violation of local control. These two positions had much in common and it is easy to see how they would become more popular among anticommunist clubwomen suspicious of federal expansion and engaged in a campaign devoted to local activism. Ahlgren quoted in Emma Harrison, “U.N. Foes Rebuked by Women’s Clubs,” NYT, May 17, 1952, p. 8.

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understood themselves as Americans, as part of a state, and what they believed the relationship between the two was. Ideally, the Americanism campaign had the power to challenge inequality, to reaffirm democracy for all whether in segregated districts or an international democracy, but to clubwomen that also meant they could interpret it in ways that upheld their own gendered class and racial privilege.

Conclusion

In a Flag Day address during her term as GFWC vice president, Mildred Ahlgren fret that Americans, including clubwomen, had become too indifferent to civic affairs and were letting government control their lives. Reflecting the antistatism inherent in anticommunism of the 1950s and dissatisfaction with the New Deal order, Ahlgren argued that the United States was “drifting into socialism by our own inertia. We are trying to get something for nothing. We refuse to take responsibility.” Americans had become so lackadaisical that even youth – the future of the Republic – had lost all sense of initiative and were growing up in a country that was happy to let the government take care of everyone. Such an attitude was the biggest threat America faced, because it eroded the American spirit. It failed to recognize that American liberty was something fought for and won every generation. In this increasingly detached democracy,

Americans failed to exert the courage required to fight that fight. Ahlgren prodded her members into service by reminding them that courage was not “built in the hour in which it is needed,” but something “built in the years preceding that hour.” How Americans lived their daily lives now would create circumstances conducive – or not – to courage in

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the critical moment. Those who had not pledged their civic spirit over the years would hardly be ready to do so when the big moment arrived.80

These sentiments reinforced Ahlgren’s patriotism and her focus on domestic (as opposed to international) politics. She knew that the nation could never “live alone” again because the “world’s problems are our problems,” but she likewise deemed that

“we can never have world peace unless we also take care of some of the problems right in our own back yards.”81 A ubiquitous phrase to be sure. But the allusion to the postwar suburban ideal called women’s attention to their domestic commitments – both to the private family and to the nation.

To give scrutiny to these intimate social relationships and structures was to practice Americanism and fight the Cold War because doing so accentuated one’s rootedness in American society and traditions. As Ahlgren reminded, “there isn’t any half way to being a 100% American.” Even political parties could not claim one’s loyalty because “we are Americans FIRST and democrats and republicans after that.”

In service to this ideal, Ahlgren preached, clubwomen must boldly become “soap box orators” on democracy’s behalf and let their fellow citizens know that the “American way of life is the BEST way.” The Americanism campaign’s extensive study program and its very call to action clearly defined for members the “American spirit” they were protecting. For Ahlgren, “Preservation of Our American Heritage” – her administration’s theme – depended upon democratic activism, self-reliance, and private enterprise. Each

80 Ahlgren, “Flag Day Address,” pp. 5, 3.

81 Ibid. p. 5.

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of these components valued the individual, the quintessential building block of American society. Each of these components respected the religious faith that guided Americans’ daily lives. Each of these components was the antithesis of communism.82

Ahlgren’s program depended upon the belief that clubwomen could lead this fight. As mothers, they were defenders of the democracy and had the knowledge and experience to teach the lessons of Americanism to those beyond their homes. So far, the

GFWC had met the goals it had set for itself since World War II: preserve democracy, promote it abroad, and protect world peace with positive international relations. But it was time to look closer to home and re-examine the state of American democracy and

American relations. The Americanism campaign gave clubwomen a plan of action for this work.

Ahlgren’s Americanism campaign itself was an attempt to engage clubwomen personally in the democratic project, calling on the specifically gendered contributions women could make to the body politic as arbiters of American identity and nurturers of the next generation of Americans. The Americanism campaign’s emphasis on advancing women in public life through the women’s crusade effectively gendered Americanism in ways that imbued maternalism with moral necessity. But it also revealed the inconsistencies in the organization’s agenda, exposed most frequently as tensions between national sovereignty and internationalism. As the next chapter demonstrates it

82 Ibid. p. 6.

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was not that these issues were incompatible, but they could only be reconciled under a maternalist rubric that eluded conventional political categorizations.

CHAPTER 5 TRAINING AMERICA’S YOUTH: MATERNAL AUTHORITY, CIVIC ACTIVISM, AND THE MODERN STATE

“We must either go back to doing more of the ‘public services’ we demand of government for ourselves in [our] Hometown or pay more for less ‘personalized’ service from remote agencies somewhere up the federal ladder. It is idle to protest about bureaucrats if we ourselves become securocrats who are willing to let the government meet more and more of our responsibilities.” – Dorothy Houghton, GFWC President, 19501

Standing in front of almost eighteen hundred clubwomen on Wednesday night,

June 4, 1958, Mrs. Joseph Colvert, president of the Homewood Junior Women’s Club of the Chicago suburb of Homewood, Illinois, accepted a floral wreath, a plaque, and a check for three thousand dollars from the General Federation and the Sears Roebuck

Foundation. It was the bi-annual awards ceremony for the Sears and GFWC co- sponsored community contest, a massive community development initiative begun in

1949. Every two years, thousands of clubs from across the country and around the world led local improvement projects, submitting their project reports as “contest entries” to the

GFWC for consideration for cash prizes. Colvert and her Homewood clubwomen had taken second place in the contest for their efforts in organizing a youth center, creating a new school district, and building a new high school for their suburban community. They

1 Dorothy Houghton, “Building Citadels of Freedom,” Clubwoman, September 1950, pp. 2-4, quote p. 4.

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were in good company; eight clubs won $22,000 that evening for the community- building work they had conducted over the previous two years.1

The community contest was a concrete example of how clubwomen accepted the

General Federation’s challenge to become personally engaged citizens, to train other citizens in the principles of Americanism, and to forge healthy democratic communities.

Through a deliberative process, clubwomen evaluated their local needs and worked with other groups to meet those needs. For clubwomen who valued personal civic engagement, these projects were an expression of good citizenship. The projects also fit nicely with clubwomen’s historical community work, which understood women’s community activism as extending their maternal authority beyond their homes into their neighborhoods.2 The contest merely provided a structure for their activism. Running every two years, the contest served to focus women’s attention on finite projects and to continually regenerate interest in community work. The enticing monetary reward for winning clubs did not hurt as an additional incentive.

But the community contest went beyond traditional municipal housekeeping. The contest was a statement about community self-reliance. When clubwomen tackled local problems on a voluntary basis, they were using their historical role as municipal housekeepers to devolve responsibility for the community from the welfare state to local

1 “Community Achievement Contest Report: Announcement of National Club Winners,” at the GFWC national convention June 4, 1958, GFWC, Convention 1958, Vol. 1, pp. 372-402.

2 See Baker, The Moral Frameworks of Public Life; Blair, Clubwoman as Feminist; Deutsch, Women and the City; Evans, Born for Liberty; Flanagan, Seeing with their Hearts; Friedman, Maternal Justice; Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work.

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citizens, particularly clubwomen. The contest was just one part of the GFWC’s bigger agenda to reassert maternal authority.

Through these community contest projects, clubwomen groomed a new kind of citizenry. As an exercise in local responsibility, the projects called for active citizens committed to the ideals of democratic activism, self-reliance for one’s own and community well-being, and free enterprise – the same ideals clubwomen promoted through the Americanism campaign. The contest projects brought together a community’s stake-holders, who decided as a community how to move forward. The projects were democracy manifest. As the catalyst for this reinvigorated local activism, clubwomen reaffirmed their dedication to community health, democracy, and an educated citizenry, especially among youth.

Clubwomen placed a premium on engaging youth in the contest as part of the

GFWC’s effort to educate the next generation in the true tenets of Americanism.

Including youth in contest projects as community stake-holders would invest them in their communities and in the democratic process. The GFWC believed that partaking in these activities would nurture faith in local control and harden youth against government welfare – something clubwomen feared was a slippery slope to communism.

Clubwomen were not merely raising citizens, they were raising a certain kind of self- reliant citizen capable of defending democracy.

Clubwomen had always conducted their maternal activism with an eye toward youth, understanding that women reared the nation’s citizens, but national anxiety over the state of America’s youth and juvenile delinquency in the postwar era gave this work

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new urgency. The supposed disintegration of the family during World War II, the sheer size of the baby boom generation, looser attitudes toward youth independence, and youth culture all increased youngsters’ potential subversion of the national character and vulnerability to communism. The GFWC’s American Home program work did nothing if not attempt to mitigate these trends by making democracy part of a youth’s home life so he would grow into a democracy-practicing adult. The community contest projects likewise sought to envelope youth into a democratic community. No matter what form clubwomen’s youth citizenship training took, it came down to bringing youth back under the protective maternal wing and putting them onto paths of productive, independent citizenship.

The General Federation’s gendered activism to train young citizens complicated the relationship between the female citizen and the state usually nurtured by the organization’s maternalist politics. Invoking their historical role as educators of

America’s young citizens, clubwomen launched a campaign against juvenile delinquency, developed the community contest project, and fought on the local level to keep youth under their maternal influence. They worked in service of the public in that they nurtured the next generation of citizens, but they generally protected their maternal authority from public infringement. Unlike their progressive forebears, clubwomen rarely looked to the state as a surrogate parent. Instead, clubwomen eyed the expanding state with great suspicion as a usurper of maternal rights.

And yet there were occasions when clubwomen believed state action was warranted to protect women’s maternal authority. When mother’s domain was attacked

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from a source besides the government – from, say, popular culture – women lobbied for state action. In defense of maternal authority, clubwomen encouraged state expansion into the private realms of home and industry, a stance seemingly inconsistent with the organization’s Americanism ethic.

This chapter examines how the General Federation’s youth citizenship training programs attempted to reassert maternal authority over youth gone astray and the ways in which this training intersected with the GFWC’s Americanism ethic. It begins with a discussion of the “Youth Conservation” campaign begun in 1944 and its evolution in the

1950s to focus more on tasks that reasserted maternal authority and less on systemic solutions to juvenile delinquency. The chapter explores the General Federation’s anti- obscenity campaign against comic books and pornographic literature as part of this transition. It then considers the community contests as an effort to rebuild entire communities according to the principles of Americanism, thereby creating healthy environments in which democratic youth could flourish. It analyzes the ways in which contest projects fostered a certain type of self-reliant citizen less dependent upon the state. The chapter closes with a discussion of the intersection of these citizenship- training projects, the Americanism ethos, and the GFWC’s vision of the social contract and the ways in which maternalism negotiated discomfort with the growth of the modern state.

“Youth Conservation,” Maternal Authority, and Popular Culture

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During World War II, the GFWC launched a number of projects aimed at reasserting maternal authority over community youth in the name of “youth conservation.” Begun as an ambitious campaign in 1944, youth conservation urged clubwomen to take steps to “preserve” America’s innocent youth and counter a perceived rise in juvenile delinquency. By the mid-1950s, the General Federation was attacking popular culture and comic books in particular as a source of youth degeneration.

Although delinquency numbers suggested actual offenders were older teenagers, the

GFWC’s youth conservation campaign treated all youth as at-risk children, no matter how young or old. Doing so reaffirmed clubwomen’s right to provide guidance to these

“innocents.” While the GFWC relied on clubwomen’s individual activism to prevent delinquency, it was not above turning to the state to help bolster clubwomen’s maternal authority over youth.

The term “juvenile delinquency” had been used in legalistic terms since the turn of the century, but it assumed new weight during the 1940s as it came to describe a

“falling short” in youth behavior. As one historian explains, “the words ‘juvenile delinquency’ characterized their subject by its failure to meet expectations – not by what it was, but by what a disappointment it was.” As opposed to words like “hooligan,”

“hoodlum,” and “hellion,” which could have been an affectionate familial term for a young troublemaker, “juvenile delinquent” had the heavy sound of legalspeak “and brought with it implications of judgment and authority.”3 Americans blamed juvenile

3 Stephen Hadju, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008), pp. 82-83.

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delinquency on the decline of religion in family life, ill-prepared parents, inadequate housing, class tensions, the stimuli of popular culture, growing exposure to violence, and general uncertainty about the future.4

As with postwar fears about the state of the American home, postwar fears about the state of America’s youth and the baby boom generation reflected discomfort with shifting social norms. So overwhelming was this new generation that it demanded physical expansion of existing housing and schools; so unprepared were American communities that the baby boomers literally broke the infrastructure. A generation constantly reshaping traditions and institutions, youth could seem threatening to Cold

War Americans worried about the future of the nation. The emerging youth consumer market underscored the distinctiveness of this demographic and the threat youth posed to traditional authority. New forms of popular and material culture geared to youth were a powerful signal of youth independence. As postwar Americans increasingly understood their position in the body politic in relation to their position in a consumerist paradigm, the expanded teen market allowed youth to buy into the social contract through consumer purchases unfamiliar to their parents’ generation. Many adults expended tremendous energy trying to decipher the meaning of all the newness and no small number of them deemed youth culture antisocial and a cause of perceived increases in juvenile delinquency.5

4 See for example “Juvenile Delinquency,” WP, November 24, 1946, p. B4.

5 For a lengthier discussion of the juvenile delinquency scare, see James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America’s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); William Graebner, Coming of Age in Buffalo: Youth and Authority in the Postwar Era (Philadelphia:

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Clubwomen shared these concerns and in 1944, the GFWC launched its Youth

Conservation (YC) campaign. Youth protection had always been a winning strategy for engaging women in public activism, but the upheavals of World War II to both family life and broader social support systems heightened clubwomen’s concern for America’s youth. Worried about the rise in juvenile delinquency, deteriorating family life, and youth’s unpreparedness to become productive workers and citizens, the GFWC’s new campaign coordinated efforts on child welfare, education, health, employment, and family life across all GFWC program departments. In many ways, the YC campaign did for youth what homemaker professionalization did for women – not coincidentally at the same historical moment – by setting standards for appropriate behavior among youth within and outside of the home.

In choosing the title “Youth Conservation” for the campaign, the GFWC deliberately imagined youth – even older teenage juvenile delinquents – as children in need of clubwomen’s maternal guidance. Doing so framed childhood as something good and innocent – something to be preserved – and mellowed contemporary paranoia about teenagers and youth culture gone awry. Among those supporting this approach was

President Truman. Reflecting on the Youth Conservation campaign in 1945, Truman wrote to GFWC President Lucy Dickinson that, “As a term and as a program, [Youth

Temple University Press, 1990); Hadju, The Ten-Cent Plague; Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). On postwar consumption and citizenship, see Cohen, Consumers’ Republic; Brian Ward, Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); May, Homeward Bound; Robert E. Weems, Jr., Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1998).

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Conservation] gets away from the negative approach indicated by the usual emphasis on juvenile delinquency…If we can mobilize all these great resources” of family, school, and church, “we will conserve our youth, and construct a stronger Nation under God.”6

Such idealization of youth was not uncommon among postwar Americans – both in spite of and because of the simultaneous fear of juvenile delinquency. Imagining youth as innocents nestled within the bosom of the loving home reinforced the postwar romance with domesticity and gave order to discomfiting social changes of the previous decades, including married women’s paid employment, economic depression, and war.

Indeed the postwar domestic ideal relied on the figure of the child as an anchor for domestic life. Popular culture’s explosion of family-centered entertainment pointed to the power the trope of the innocent youth had in such a world. Juvenile delinquency seemed so dangerous because it threatened this ideal, but at the same time, this ideal continued to be so alluring because it provided a counterpoint to the menacing juvenile delinquent.7

The General Federation collaborated with other groups on its youth mission. At the local level, clubwomen worked closely with youth service organizations, especially the Girl Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls. Clubwomen and member clubs volunteered as troop leaders or sponsored local branches of both boys’ and girls’ youth organizations. In

6 Harry S. Truman to Mrs. LaFell Dickinson, November 19, 1945, GFWC, Dickinson President Papers, Box 1, Folder 8.

7 See Coontz, The Way We Never Were; May, Homeward Bound; Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Spigel, Make Room for TV; Weiss, To Have and to Hold.

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1946, it convened a conference of women’s organizations including the American

Association of University Women, the National Council of Jewish Women, and the

Parent Teacher Association to coordinate efforts across groups on issues relating to youth conservation.8 GFWC President Lucy Dickinson also sat on the program committee of the National Conference on the Prevention and Control of Juvenile Delinquency. Borne from a 1946 national conference convened by the U.S. Attorney General with more than one thousand representatives of federal, state, and local public and private organizations including B’Nai B’rith, the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, and Boys’

Town, the program committee encouraged delinquency investigation and prevention at the local level.9

When the YC campaign began in 1944, it concentrated on both the juvenile legal system and delinquency prevention measures. Informed by national YC chairman and

New York City Magistrate Anna M. Kross – a leader in youth reform – the GFWC’s YC campaign urged clubwomen to research and reform their local and state juvenile court systems, administrations, and drug laws. As a prevention campaign, the YC leaders also asked clubwomen to study local mental health clinics, vocational education, and employment services for youth. Although some clubs picked up the gauntlet to reform

8 The organizations included the AAUW, AHEA [believed to be the American Home Economics Association], the Association for Childhood Education International, the GFWC, the Junior League, the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Education Association, the Parent Teacher Association, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. “Youth Conservation Clearing House Minutes of Meeting, March 2, 1949,” GFWC, Buck Program Records, Box 3, Folder 16.

9 Gilbert, Cycle of Outrage, p. 64; Anna M. Kross, “The Juvenile Delinquency Conference,” Clubwoman, January 1947, pp. 7-8; Genevieve Reynolds, “On the National and Local Club Fronts,” WP, December 8, 1946, p. S1; “Delinquency Program to Be Taken Up Here,” WP; Nov, 17, 1946, p. M5; “Truman Urges Fight to Halt Juvenile Crime,” WP; Nov. 21, 1946, pp. 1+.

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the juvenile court system and related institutions, many more chose to focus on delinquency prevention. Clubs more frequently reported that they devoted youth conservation initiatives to finding suitable outlets for youth time and energy and bringing youth more fully into the community. By the 1950s, clubwomen and the GFWC itself targeted most YC efforts at building and refurbishing youth centers and other recreation spaces, organizing weekend youth “canteens,” winning mental health and guidance programs in their schools to help keep youth moving in productive directions, and incorporating youth into local democratic associations such as community councils.10

The GFWC’s focus on prevention efforts over the legal system reflected the broader culture’s approach to delinquency in the postwar era. Prevention fell in line with postwar Americans’ understanding of the relationship between the healthy person and normal social behavior. If healthy psychological development produced well-adjusted democratic citizens – the assumption behind the American Home department’s postwar program work – then it stood to reason that unhealthy psychological development conversely produced antisocial delinquents. Social problems had individual, psychological roots that could be addressed on an individual basis. Experts at all levels from leading psychologists to those attending the 1950 White House Conference on

Children and Youth made such connections between psychological growth, healthy environments, and productive citizenship. Policy makers in the U.S. Children’s Bureau, the National Institute of Public Health, and even the U.S. Senate encouraged this

10 For YC reports, see the Annual Program Reports in May issues of Clubwoman, 1947 through 1960.

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interpretation from the top-down by turning policy discussions away from criminal punishment toward discussions about prevention and individual rehabilitation.11

The GFWC’s focus on prevention was also a function of clubwork. Prevention activities, like many other club activities, were usually feasible, finite projects.

Individual clubs could gain a sense of accomplishment by running youth canteens on

Friday nights. That prevention projects often involved working directly with youth may also have made them seem more like traditional women’s volunteer work (although clubwomen certainly had a proud history of institutional – including prison and legal – reform). The notion that “youth conservation” actually was a prevention initiative also leant itself to prevention programs rather than systemic reform efforts.

But the emphasis on prevention over systemic reform was also a reflection of the juvenile delinquency scare itself. First, although the media and clubwomen depicted juvenile delinquency as a national scourge, it was often a very ephemeral issue because it was used – like communism – to code unease with postwar society. Most Americans only learned about delinquency through popular culture and church sermons. Crime rates were difficult to pinpoint, with the Children’s Bureau contesting the FBI’s statistics, and increases in incidents of youth crime pointed to increased police surveillance, not necessarily greater criminal activity.12 In the absence of any real delinquency problem in

11 Jason Barnosky, “The Violent Years: Responses to Juvenile Crime in the 1950s and the 1990s” (PhD dissertation, Brown University, 2004); Edward A. Richards, ed., Proceedings of the Midcentury White House Conference on Children and Youth (Raleigh, N.C.: Health Publications Institute, Inc., 1951), p. 243. U.S. White House Conference on Children in a Democracy, Final Report, (Washington, D.C.: US Children’s Bureau, 1940), pp. 269-271.

12 Gilbert, Cycle of Outrage, pp. 64-75; Hadju, Ten-Cent Plague, pp. 84-85, 211-213.

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their hometowns, clubwomen likely turned their attention to prevention measures.

Second, the further Americans moved from World War II, the more the nature of delinquency changed from hard crime like robbery, rape, and murder to vandalism and petty theft – crimes that affected white, middle-class communities to which most clubwomen belonged. 1950s’ delinquency was a different kind of delinquency, but talked about with the same seriousness.13

There was a perceived class difference in 1950s’ delinquency that brought it closer to clubwomen’s homes than delinquency of the 1940s. Americans imagined the delinquent less as strictly a phenomenon of the lower classes as they had during World

War II and more as the negative by-product of the conformity and material success associated with the booming (suburban) middle class. A 1956 five-part exposé in

Newsday, the Long Island daily newspaper, on the “Blackboard Jungle” of Long Island’s suburban teenage crime wave exemplified the anxiety of “youth on the prowl” in growing towns where delinquency had out-paced town growth and was stretching infrastructure to the brink.14 As Washington Post columnist Malvina Lindsay argued, “comfortable” parents in “good” neighborhoods warped their children as much as “the family without money to buy groceries,” but the comfortable parents had “far less alibi for their children’s waywardness than those in slum areas.”15 If the future juvenile delinquent

13 Hadju, Ten-Cent Plague, p. 85; “Many Doubt Comics Spur Crime, Senate Survey of Experts Shows,” NYT, November 12, 1950, p. 1.

14 Tom Renner, “Long Island’s Blackboard Jungle,” Newsday (Garden City Edition), July 9, 1956, pp. 10c- 11c, Reel 297, Long Island Institute, Hofstra University. This week-long series ran from July 9 until July 13, 1956. Hereafter this repository will be cited as LII.

15 Malvina Lindsay, “Why Kids Go Bad in Better Areas,” WP, June 28, 1954, p. 8.

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came from middle-class families whose privilege kept them removed from the closer supervision of the juvenile system, clubwomen needed to look closer to home and concentrate their efforts on reaching teens who never came in contact with the juvenile system.

Youth certainly benefit from these prevention efforts, but prevention programs were also a way for clubwomen to reassert their maternal authority over youth. By bringing them into approved activities and under the direction of approved counselors, clubwomen guarded against postwar teen plagues, such as idle time, lack of supervision, and relaxing norms. The questions clubwomen were told to ask their children about after-school employment – is it legal, is it safe, what are the hours, with whom will you work – reflected this agenda.16 Youth needed clubwomen to protect them from these evils with more wholesome alternatives for their time.17

Clubwomen coupled their prevention measures with an attack on youth-oriented popular culture. In 1948, the YC director warned clubwomen that “our children’s diet of comics, radio, television and movie programs” was shaping “cultural patterns.” As such, youth popular culture became the concern of all Americans. It was “the responsibility of the citizens as well as of the producers” of such materials to know what was in them, improve questionable content, and thereby protect the quality of the young citizen.18

16 Gertrude Zumond, “Mother, I’ve Got a JOB,” Clubwoman, April 1948, pp. 12-13.

17 For example of other community efforts to channel youth into productive activities, see for example, “On Vandalism,” The Garden City News, May 19, 1955, p. 12, Reel 9, LII.

18 Stella Scurlock, “Youth’s Radio-Comics-Movie Diet is Our Job Too,” Clubwoman, December 1948, pp. 5-6, quote p. 5.

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In the late 1940s, the GFWC tried to collaborate with the film, television, and publishing industries in this effort. After convening an initial 1948 meeting with industry representatives and other civic groups including the Girl Scouts and the YWCA, the

General Federation led a national council of these lay organizations to study the media.

The council decided on standards media ought to meet – media should promote democratic ideals, mental and social health, fun, artistic merit, accurate representation of history and science, and inspire creativity in youth – and formulated goals for publicizing this work and carrying it out on the local level through media councils.19 In keeping with its belief in personal activism, the GFWC encouraged clubwomen to investigate the content of materials sold in their towns and to form community councils on youth and mass media. To help clubwomen wade through the many movies, the General

Federation’s Motion Pictures division provided movie reviews in the monthly magazine to keep clubwomen informed about which films would make good family entertainment.20

By the early 1950s, the GFWC decided to target comic books directly because they posed a threat to the national character with their glorification of sex, violence, and crime. Comics, like juvenile delinquency, represented the lowering of American standards as defined by the middle class. According to one historian, the campaign

19 “Summary of Meeting on Comics, Magazines, Radio, Television, Movies for Children and Youth of Organizations Working for Youth and Representatives of the Media,” October 29, 1948, GFWC, Buck Program Records, Box 3, Folder 16; Stella Scurlock, “Youth Conservation at MidCentury,” Clubwoman, April 1950, pp. 5-6.

20 Mrs. Dean Gray Edwards, “Movie Council Talks Shop, Makes Plans,” Clubwoman, March 1953, p. 20. See also, “Women Scan Video Shows for Children,” NYT, May 28, 1955, p. 9.

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against comics was “a kind of anti-anti-elitism, a campaign by protectors of rarefied ideals of literacy, sophistication, and virtue to rein in the practitioners of a wild, homegrown form of vernacular American expression.”21 Following the opinions of leading psychiatrists and public figures, clubwomen drew a direct link between comics and juvenile delinquency. Clubwomen, psychiatrists, and others worried that comics’ gore, horror, and perverse sexuality interfered with healthy psychological development, preventing a child’s future participation in a democratic society.

“Comics” was a catch-all phrase to denote all kinds of reading material that came in the comic book folio size, but clubwomen tended to target crime-fighting and horror stories that used gore and sex to sell books. During World War II, comics captured the war’s battleground between good and evil and superhero comics constituted ninety percent of comics published. By 1949, however, superhero comics constituted just over half of comics printed as publishers diversified their story lines and began to write more adult material for teens. A minority of these materials, far from being too salacious, actually promoted a postwar liberal (sometimes a too leftist) social vision, but crime and horror comics figured most prominently on stands. As competition between comics increased, their goriness did as well. They also took place, in the words of one historian, in “an especially macho world rife with sexual tensions” in which women were “cheap sex objects, fodder for male sadistic urges, or scheming murderous gold-diggers who corrupted men with their sexuality.”22 In addition to tempting teens into criminal

21 Hadju, Ten-Cent Plague, p. 210. See also Gilbert, Cycle of Outrage.

22 Wright, Comic Book Nation, p. 83.

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activity, social observers worried that this imagery interrupted “normal” sexual development and sabotaged youth’s ability to live in a “normal” nuclear family. Since comics reached upwards of ninety percent of male and female teen audiences alike

(“romance” comics became a burgeoning aspect of the industry in the early 1950s), they posed a threat to both boys’ and girls’ normal maturation.23

Comics captured the national imagination because they intersected with a number of different postwar discourses about American identity. On one level, comics suggested

Americans’ discomfort with and confusion over postwar gender norms – with disturbing implications for American prowess in the Cold War. Comics’ hyper-masculine men and overly-sexualized-yet-victimized women in need of male protection played into Cold

War ideals of vital American men capable of defending the homefront against the communist menace. But that hyper-masculinity (not to mention its questionable homosexual undertones) could threaten the domestic ideal of family togetherness also demanded by postwar culture as a winning strategy against communism. On another level, comics were rife with racism and (often racialized) sexual brutality, which psychiatrists feared pointed to a sort of national psychological deviancy. At a time when

Cold War liberals tried to minimize internal racism in their projections of American society on an international stage, such racism belied Cold Warriors’ messages about

American equality and hindered American movement toward racial progress.24

23 Wright, Comic Book Nation, pp. 56-64.

24 For an astute analysis of how comics intersected with postwar discourses on psychiatry, civil rights, childhood, and anti-pornography, see Friedman, “Sadists and Sissies.”

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The anti-obscenity campaign against comics was also a means of containing postwar youth independence. Comics were something children bought, unsupervised, on their way home from school or out with friends on Saturday, beyond the watchful eyes of parents. They epitomized cultural producers’ recognition of a distinct youth market segment and the growing consumer power that came with it. When Americans, including clubwomen, castigated comics, they were responding to a loss of authority over youth – consumer power, yes, but power bigger than that. That Americans tied comics to juvenile delinquency underscored how dangerous adults perceived their own powerlessness over youth really to be.

Attention crystallized around comics as the source of juvenile delinquency thanks to a series of congressional hearings in the early 1950s involving future Democratic vice presidential candidate Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. His investigations into racketeering and tax fraud in 1950 and 1951 implicated the comics distribution industry and brought questions about the relationship between comics and juvenile delinquency to the fore.

Televised nationally, the hearings drew incredible viewership: 70% of New Yorkers with televisions tuned in and Manhattan theaters held special “Kefauver hours” broadcasts for free. Kefauver solicited testimony from a variety of “experts,” including leading anti- obscenity advocate New York City psychiatrist Frederick Wertham. Although

Kefauver's expert testimonials failed to reveal any consensus regarding the affects of comics on youth, they nonetheless succeeded in publicizing “statistics” that ratcheted

Americans’ anxiety over comics, juvenile delinquency, the mental health of America’s youth, and their ability to become normal members of society. Kefauver kept the issue in

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the national spotlight, holding a series of Senate judiciary subcommittee hearings again in

1954 in Boston, Denver, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. into the relationship between comics and juvenile delinquency.25

Concerned Americans leapt into action. The GFWC, for one, launched its anti- obscenity campaign against comics in 1953 and, upon initial success, expanded the campaign to include all forms of pornography by the end of the decade. The anti- obscenity movement enjoyed support from law enforcement, social critics, psychiatrists, church groups and others. Comic book burnings were not uncommon occurrences and there were regulations or bans in over fifty localities. A group of eight retailers in the

Hudson River Valley in New York state, for example, signed a pact to stop selling crime comics believing that a spate of “petty thefts by a gang of boys” in the area had been influenced by comics; local Catholic and Protestant clergy publicly supported the move.

Even the Army implemented content regulation at its Posts.26

25 Hadju, Ten Cent Plague, p. 248; Wright, Comic Book Nation, pp. 157, 165-175. See also, “House Inquiry Set on Obscene Books,” NYT, November 30, 1952, p. 77; “Comic Book Hearing Is Set,” NYT, February 21, 1954, p. 45; “Comic-Book Hearing to Start Tomorrow,” NYT, April 20, 1954, p. 32; “Blueprint for Action,” Clubwoman, December 1955, p. 12+.

26 Certainly not everyone agreed that comics needed regulation or that there was a causal relationship between juvenile delinquency and comics. Some sociologists, psychologists, teens themselves, the ACLU, and The New York Times, to name a few, protested the attention on comics and argued that comics were not a threat to child development. Dorothy Barclay, “Army to Limit Sale of Comics,” NYT, January 18, 1949, p. 26; Hadju, Ten-Cent Plague, p. 92, 113-133; Mrs. Walter V. Magee, “U.S. Moves on ‘Comics’” Clubwoman, November 1954, pp. 17+; Wright, Comic Book Nation, pp. 98-108; “Comics, as Evils, Called Overrated,” NYT, February 20, 1949, p. 31; “Comic Book Censorship,” NYT, February 25, 1949, p. 22; “Comic Book Bill Assailed,” NYT, March 11, 1949, p. 23; “Walden, N.Y., Dealers Ban Comics on Crime,” NYT, February 15, 1952, p. 27; “Crime Comics Ban Hailed,” NYT, February 16, 1952, p. 15; “Blueprint for Action,” Clubwoman, December 1954, pp. 17-18; “Blueprint for Action,” Clubwoman, January 1955, pp. 24-25; “Blueprint for Action,” Clubwoman, October 1955, pp.10-11+.

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For its part, the GFWC wanted comics publishers to voluntarily raise their standards and clubwomen lobbied local sellers to more effectively self-regulate what they sold. Clubwomen’s actions against salacious literature epitomized the kind of personally engaged activism the GFWC constantly pushed members to undertake. Members gathered support from others in their communities and lobbied officials while simultaneously expending copious time tracking local selling habits. Clubwomen held collection drives, book swaps, and testified before legislatures. The Nebraska State

Federation of Women’s Clubs, for example, led a “Newsstand Visitation Day” during which 300 women divided into teams and visited a prepared list of newsstands carrying objectionable comics. The GFWC kept members apprised of local successes, publishing a “Blueprint for Action” section each month in its magazine from 1953 to 1955 to let readers know how some communities were successfully battling this negative influence.27

This type of civic pressure worked. In 1954, the leading industry group voluntarily brought on an industry censor “czar” and set a “clean-up code” that banned

“horror” and “terror” comics.28 According to The Wall Street Journal, by October 1955 sales of comic books had plummeted as a result of the new code to 40 million from a high

27 Mrs. Walter V. Magee, “U.S. Moves on ‘Comics;’” “Blueprint for Action,” Clubwoman, December 1954, pp. 17-18; “Blueprint for Action,” Clubwoman, January 1955, pp. 24-25; “Blueprint for Action,” Clubwoman, October 1955, pp.10-11+; “Blueprint for Action,” Clubwoman, April 1955, pp. 20-24.

28 The 1954 self-censorship enjoyed wider support among the industry than a similar effort in 1948. See Dorothy Barclay, “‘New’ Comic Books to be Out in Week,” NYT, December 29, 1954, p. 8; Hadju, Ten- Cent Plague, pp. 305-313; Emma Harrison, “Magistrate Is Made Comics 'Czar',” NYT, September 17, 1954, p. 1; Wright, Comic Book Nation, pp. 103-104; “‘Horror’ Books Banned,” NYT, September 23, 1954, p. 20; “26 Comics Concerns Sign Clean-Up Code” NYT, October 28, 1954, p. 20; “Woman to Administer Code for Comic Books,” NYT, September 17, 1956, p. 29.

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of 70 to 80 million in 1952, a loss from $96 million in 1952 to $38 million 1955.29 As one Manhattan seller explained, mothers were buying their kids’ comics and he did not want any questionable material in his store: “Really, the 2 ½ cent profit on a ten-cent comic isn’t worth the abuse I took for allegedly corrupting kids.”30 Civic pressure did change content and retail decisions.

And yet many clubwomen still pushed for state censorship even though censorship was an exercise of the type of state power the General Federation usually opposed. When it began the comic book campaign, the GFWC aimed to raise publishers’, retailers’, and parents’ consciousness about the negative influence comics had on youth so that they would self-censor content, selling practices, and purchasing habits. Even in 1955 at the height of the campaign, the General Federation impugned censorship as un-American. As the YC chairman wrote, “Legal censorship is a dangerous remedy at any time, and antipathetic to our constitutional privileges.”31 At the same time, however, that same chairman supported clubs’ work on ordinances, telling members that, “The ultimate – and only permanently effective – goal, is legislation to ban crime and indecent comics. We should have local, State and Federal laws governing publishing, distribution and sale of such magazines [italics original].”32

29 J. Howard Rutledge and Peter B. Bart, “Comic Books,” Wall Street Journal, October 5, 1955, pp. 1+.

30 Unidentified speaker quoted in Rutledge and Bart, “Comic Books,” p.1.

31 “Blueprint for Action,” Clubwoman, November 1955, pp. 22-23, quote p. 23.

32 Mrs. Walter V. Magee, “Blueprint for Action,” Clubwoman, October 1954, pp. 10-11. The GFWC even provided members with sample ordinances based on ordinances from Cleveland and Canton, Ohio, and San Diego, California. GFWC, “Suggestions for Comic Book Ordinances” information sheet (Washington, D.C.: GFWC [1956-1958]), GFWC, Prout Program Records, Box 2, Folder 4.

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The GFWC seemed to get around the thorny censorship issue by claiming that freedom of the press should not be interpreted as free license. Freedom, the GFWC intoned, “carrie[d] with it a responsibility to all our citizens.”33 In the name of protecting citizens of all ages, including youth, the press needed to curb its publications, even if forced to do so by local or state laws. When it came to comic books, juvenile delinquency, and the future of the American citizenry, clubwomen looked to the state to enforce the moral standards established by clubwomen.

Many regulation proponents walked a similar line, albeit stripped of the GFWC’s gendered perspective. The sponsor of the comics ban legislation in the New York state legislature told the New York City Federation of Women’s Clubs that “‘We have no intention of interfering with the freedom of the press, but freedom without obligation is anarchy…we should not countenance any confusion of liberty with license and we should move against those who persist in corrupting the minds and morals of children for profit.’”34 In the 1948 Supreme Court case Winters v. New York, the Court had struck down a Comstock-era New York statute that banned distribution of literature containing mainly criminal news, bloodshed or lust because this definition was too vague and was a violation of the First Amendment. The dissenting opinion from Justice Frankfurter, however, suggested that regulation could fall within the purview of law enforcement’s ability to prevent crime if causality between questionable literature and crime could be

33 GFWC, “Objectionable Publications: The Problem” information sheet (Washington, D.C.: GFWC [1956- 1958]), GFWC, Prout Program Records, Box 1, Folder 19. See also Hadju, Ten-Cent Plague, pp. 95-96; Wright, Comic Book Nation, pp. 99-100.

34 James A. FitzPatrick quoted in “Bills Ask Rebirth of Comic-Book Fun,” NYT, February 26, 1955, p. 7.

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demonstrated. His opinion gave hope to regulation proponents who saw censorship as an issue of youth protection.35

A snapshot of the Queensboro Federation of Mothers Clubs of Long Island, New

York exemplifies the type of maternal activism the General Federation prescribed for its members in the comic book campaign. In December 1948, the group requested a meeting of state officials and comics publishers to discuss the danger comics posed to America’s youth. The meeting resulted in a drafted conduct code for industry self-regulation.36 At the same time, comics were gaining attention nation-wide as the cause of juvenile delinquency. The New York state legislature passed a regulation bill in 1949, but

Governor Dewey, concerned with the First Amendment after the Winters decision, vetoed it.37 Regulation advocates had to be content with the legislature’s creation of a joint legislative committee to study the issue instead.38 Frustrated by the committee’s slow progress, the Queensboro Federation of Mothers Clubs called on Queens mothers to protest. To make their case for regulation, the group’s YC Chairman conducted a “comic survey of all current publications.” She prepared a list of 103 “good” comics, which were dwarfed by 334 “bad” comics, demonstrating the drastic need for regulatory

35 Hadju, Ten-Cent Plague, pp. 95-96; Wright, Comic Book Nation, pp. 99-100.

36 Dorothy Barclay, “Army to Limit Sale of Comics,” NYT, January 18, 1949, p. 26.

37 Douglas Daless, “State Bill to Curb Comic Books Filed,” NYT, January 14, 1949, p. 18; Douglas Daless, “State Senate Acts to Control Comics,” NYT, February 24, 1949, p. 17; Wright, Comic Book Nation, pp. 105-106; “Comic Books Curb Vetoed By Dewey,” NYT, April 20, 1949, p. 20.

38 Douglas Daless, “6 State Bills Seek Comic Book Curbs,” NYT, February 20, 1952, p. 21; “Delays Comic-Book Curb,” NYT, January 18, 1950, p. 23; “Comic Book Body Stays,” NYT, March 17, 1951, p. 24; “Comics Producers Get Censors Warning,” NYT, April 27, 1951, p. 15.

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measures.39 When the joint legislative committee finally did meet in June 1950, the

Queensboro club’s president was one of only seven witnesses invited to the closed-door session of legal and psychiatric specialists.40

The Queensboro mothers were not alone in their fight against comics in defense of children. Clubwomen across the state pushed for a ban on indecent comic books and were gratified by the gains they saw in the state legislature. After five years, two vetoes, and much publicity, regulation proponents in the state legislature managed to pass three bills restricting obscene literature.41 Just months after this triumph, clubwomen rallied to the U.S. Senate hearings on comics and juvenile delinquency in New York City and pressed their case, earning them a commendation from Senator Kefauver. Writing to

GFWC president Helen Chapman, Kefauver congratulated the GFWC on clubwomen’s successes in the comic book fight. “Like you,” he wrote, “these people from the so- called ‘grass roots’ want the Senate to know their feelings in the matter [of obscene literature] and they look to us as guardians of young America’s morals.”42

39 “Clean Comics Fight Pressed in Queens,” NYT, January 27, 1950, p. 26.

40 “Witnesses Favor Comic Book Curbs,” NYT, June 14, 1950, p. 29.

41 Warren Weaver, Jr., “25 Special Panels Named for State,” NYT, March 23, 1952, p. 78; Warren Weaver Jr., “Dewey Signs Bills on Obscene Books,” NYT, April 16, 1954, p. 23; “Delays Comic-Book Curb,” NYT, January 18, 1950, p. 23; “Comics Producers Get Censors Warning,” NYT, April 27, 1951, p. 15; “Bill to Ask Rule of Comic Books,” NYT, January 30, 1952, p. 18; “Comic Book Curbs Voted in Assembly,” NYT, March 13, 1952, p. 42; “Principal Actions Taken by the Legislature During 1952 Session,” NYT, March 23, 1952, p. 79; “Comic Book Curb Vetoed by Dewey,” NYT, April 15, 1952, p. 29; “Obscene and Other Objectionable Comics Are Targets for a Series of Albany Bills,” NYT, February 18, 1953, p. 21; “Obscene Books Ban Pushed at Albany,” NYT, March 4, 1953, p. 19.

42 Kefauver quoted in Helen Chapman, “Letters to the President,” Clubwoman, December 1954, pp. 4+, quote p. 26.

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The GFWC’s anti-comics campaign was, in the words of historian Andrea

Friedman, an attempt to “protect the privatized home from invasion by a corrupting mass media.” Corrupting comics flourished because postwar mothers had little recourse against the powerful appeal of popular culture. At a time when popular culture only too readily blamed women and their homemaking for so many of society’s failures, the comics scare gave clubwomen something else to suggest was at fault. Clubwomen’s anti- obscenity campaign exposed the limitations of postwar Momism.43

Many clubwomen turned to state regulation as the answer. Regulation would presumably support clubwomen’s moral standards for their children. This line of reasoning still contained a grain of Momism – comics had been allowed to spread and take hold among youth because some mothers were negligent – but it offered clubwomen’s moral guidance as the solution. Regulation would bring all children – even those in the homes of more derelict mothers – under the protection of clubwoman’s virtuous moral code. With its flat-out prohibition of questionable material, regulation also gave clubwomen the legal high ground in tussles with their own children over salacious stories. Regulation insulated clubwomen’s homes against the insidious invasion of an external moral code and isolated their own children from the potent pressures of popular culture just as much as regulation would do for children in the homes of negligent mothers. In turning to regulation measures, Friedman argues,

“Clubwomen’s activism dramatised [sic] the limited cultural authority of mothers within

43 Friedman, “Sadists and Sissies,” p. 223.

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their families and asserted that maternalist interventions into public policy were necessary.”44

Friedman’s analysis is accurate but possibly misleading. Her statement suggests that the GFWC’s anti-obscenity campaign was an extension of Progressive-era maternalist politics insofar as it used women’s domestic identities to leverage a place for clubwomen in state policy making. The GFWC was indeed using the comics campaign to leverage public authority based on women’s private responsibilities and it was looking to the state to validate that authority. But the GFWC was not trying to engage in state- building as its Progressive-era predecessors had done. It was turning to the state as a means of exercising maternal authority. Regulation was only one outcome of that project.

The comics campaign – like the YC campaign – in fact relied on the GFWC’s construction of active citizenship and personal responsibility for the fate of one’s own community. In defense of youth, women went to newsstands, kept tabs on what was in their communities, and worked with other community members to rid their towns of material that failed to meet clubwomen’s moral standard. The anti-obscenity campaign was an exercise in grassroots community activism, and regulation was but a means to help enforce it. To contextualize this call for state power, it is useful to consider the other kinds of youth citizenship training clubwomen conducted and what kind of state they sought to build with it.

44 Ibid.

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The Community Achievement Contest

Youth citizenship training required training entire communities in democracy, self-reliance, and private enterprise. Clubwomen could take action on education, child welfare, and child health, but true youth protection touched every aspect of community life. Virtuous young citizens needed productive outlets for time and energy, needed appropriate guidance, and needed to live in communities capable of providing both. That entailed looking beyond the quality of youth services to the quality of the community as a whole. A community that could meet the needs and interests of its own citizens was a self-reliant community, one that provided an environment conducive to training self- reliant citizens. To train their youth, clubwomen needed to train their communities to embody these same ideals: if youth needed to be surrounded by adults who shared GFWC

Americanism principles of democracy, accountability, and independence, then clubwomen needed to engage other adults in active civic participation so that youth could learn from an entire community’s example. Towns inhabited by such Americans would then become more self-reliant towns with more accountable and democratic local governance and civic groups. In short, Youth Conservation demanded the rehabilitation of entire towns and their citizenry. To guide clubwomen through such an enormous undertaking, the GFWC launched its biennial community achievement contests.

Begun in 1949 as the “Build a Better Community” contest sponsored by the

Kroger Company, the Cincinnati-based corporation best known for its grocery stores, the bi-annual contest encouraged clubwomen to lead local community improvement projects by offering prize money to winning projects. Every two years, clubs identified problem

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areas in their towns and outlined a remedy. At the end of the two years, clubs submitted their project reports to their state federations, where their reports competed for small cash prizes based on club size. Each state’s first-place winner’s project report was then sent to the GFWC, where it competed with all the other state winners for more significant cash prizes.45 In its inaugural cycle (1949-1950), 2967 clubs from all forty-eight states and

Alaska competed for the $10,000 first-place national prize.46 Claiming to prefer sponsorship of start-up initiatives, the Kroger Company ended its sponsorship in 1955, at which point the Sears Roebuck Foundation picked it up and called it the “Community

Achievement Contest.”47 Under Sears Roebuck, the essence of the contest remained the same. By 1960, nearly 7500 clubs – almost half of all member clubs – were competing for the prize.48

45 Judges evaluated projects on a point system that valued community participation, deliberative evaluation, results, and sustainability; beginning in 1958, national judging included site visits. Judges at the state and national level were usually “experts” in community work, most often academics and heads of non-profits. “Build Freedom with Youth,” Clubwoman, May 1952, pp. 10-11; Dr. Howard McClusky, Jean Ogden, Richard W. Reuter, and Mildred White Wells, “The New Look in Community Achievement” contest judges panel at the GFWC national convention June 16, 1960, GFWC, Convention 1960, Vol. 2, pp. 681- 683.

46 Of the 2967 clubs to enter the contest in 1949, 297 clubs had 150 or more members, 1038 clubs had between 51 and 150 members, and 1632 clubs had up to 50 members. Of the 1949 entries there were: 424 youth projects, such as starting a fund to build a youth center; 379 conservation and beautification projects, such as creating and caring for parks; 241 health projects, such as blood banks, immunization clinics, and home health inspection programs; 171 library projects, which included creating or refurbishing libraries or mobile libraries; 127 education projects, including school improvements, establishing kindergartens, and redistricting plans; 117 government projects such as sewer systems, voting projects, tax education; 106 community centers; and miscellaneous projects, including fine arts projects. Mrs. Hiram Cole Houghton, “Build a Better Community Contest,” Clubwoman, May 1949, p. 15.

47 Beginning in 1955 with Sears’s sponsorship, the contest extended to international affiliates in 48 countries. “Women Widen Contest,” NYT, January 28, 1955, p. 13.

48 In keeping with Americanism’s belief in the sanctity of the free market, even voluntarism was a competition. In 1960, nine state federations had one hundred percent of its clubs participate in the contest, and each state federation won five hundred dollars from the Sears Roebuck Foundation for their feat. The

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The contest formalized clubwomen’s volunteerism by giving it a distinct structure and purpose. Clubwomen conducted surveys, held community forums, and met with different community groups to pinpoint problem issues and come up with solutions.

Such systematic evaluation and activism built on the long tradition of women’s club work dating to the nineteenth century.49 To assist clubwomen in their planning stages, the

GFWC sent clubs a checklist booklet to help members survey their towns’ needs. The booklet asked members to evaluate every aspect of their communities, including schools, health, government, religious institutions, cultural activities, recreation facilities, housing, parks, roads, municipal services, planning and zoning, professional services, business, transportation, welfare, tourism, conservation, safety, and youth. Under each topic, the booklet asked wide-ranging, specific questions. Under the health topic, for example, the

General Federation asked: “Are hospital facilities available to all segments of the population?,” “Are there enough doctors (one for every 800 people)?,” were there

“precautions to assure pure water?,” and whether there were adequate sanitary laws and immunization programs. The booklet left clubwomen with no doubt about the type of

nine states were Pennsylvania (926 clubs), New Jersey (445 clubs), Kentucky (unstated), West Virginia (245 clubs), Arkansas (109 clubs), Vermont (73 clubs), Wyoming (59 clubs), Delaware (40 clubs), Rhode Island (33 clubs). States also won awards for having the highest number of clubs participating: Pennsylvania (926), Illinois (598), New Jersey (445). Chloe Gifford, “Presentation of Community Achievement Contest Winners,” GFWC national convention June 16, 1960, GFWC Convention 1960, Vol. 2, pp. 696-700.

49 The literature on women’s community club and social work is extensive. For a sampling, see Baker, “The Domestication of American Politics;” Boylan, The Origins of Women’s Activism; Flanagan, Seeing with their Hearts; Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in Reform; Lebsock, “Women and American Politics, 1880-1920;” Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work.

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thorough investigations members ought to be conducting and the breadth of work they could do.50

Through the contest, clubwomen built literal and figurative communities. After careful survey, evaluation, and discussion, they embarked on projects that physically changed the structure of their communities. But they also engaged other community members in their work and nurtured community spirit. Such work was especially important in places experiencing dramatic demographic changes associated with booming postwar development. As new buildings went up, as new housing brought in huge numbers of people, clubwomen scrambled to provide the services new communities needed.51 With the contest, they conscientiously assumed responsibility for these real and imagined communities and re-made the citizenry into members of a more energetic body politic.

Consider the 1958 project directed by the contest-winning Homewood Junior

Women’s Club from the southwest Chicago suburbs of Homewood and Flossmoor,

Illinois. As growing suburbs of a major metropolitan area – their population had nearly tripled since the end of World War II – Homewood and Flossmoor were commuter towns

50 GFWC, “Community Check List of Assets, Needs and Possibilities for Improvement” Program Booklet (Washington, D.C.: GFWC, [1958-1960]), quotes p. 2.

51 Historians have shown how invaluable women’s unpaid labor was in building postwar communities, particularly in the expanding suburbs. See Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows; Douglas, Where the Girls Are; Robyn Muncy, “Cooperative Motherhood and Democratic Civic Culture in Postwar Suburbia, 1940-1965,” Journal of Social History 39, No. 2 (Winter 2004), pp. 285-310; Murray, Progressive Housewives, Philips, “Unity in Diversity’?”

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without fully formed identities of their own.52 Nothing captured this more than the fact that they lacked a local high school. Children who had been friends for years were split up and sent to three different districts. The split districts meant that, according to one

Homewood clubwoman, “‘Teen-agers do not have an interest in their own community activities.’”53 Concerned with the impact this had on their children, the Homewood

Junior Women’s Club joined with the local League of Women Voters and ten other civic groups to petition and win Homewood-Flossmoor its own school district.54 Mrs. Joseph

Colvert, president of the Homewood Juniors, claimed that the hardest part of the project was “acquainting commuters with their own community,” but they succeeded.55 With their neighbors, clubwomen began lobbying local residents in October 1956 – setting a state record by garnering signatures of 8,400 of the 11,000 residents – and won approval

52 In 1957, the southwest suburbs accounted for 64% of the city’s new construction and most new single- family housing sold for $18,000. “‘World Port’ Aids Growth of S. Suburbs,’” CDT, March 31, 1957, p. SW1. For more on postwar suburban expansion, see Cohen, Consumers’ Republic; Becky Nickolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Thomas Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, Revised Edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

53 Baryle W. Sprinkel quoted in “Youth Center at Homewood Goal of Club,” CDT, January 3, 1957, p. S2.

54 Supporters of the move included the Homewood village board of trustees, the Lions Club, Young Republicans, a local Board of Education, the PTA, LWV, and homeowners associations. Newspaper reports reveal that the idea of a new district had been in the works for at least two years, but legal challenges necessitated a new drive in 1956. Emmett Curme, “Flossmoor Area School Plan Pushed,” CDT, May 23, 1954, p. SW A1+; Emmett Curme, “Seek to Form School Area for Homewood,” CDT, October 24, 1954, p. SW2; Irene Powers, “Women Put Town in Spotlight,” CDT, April 30, 1958, p. A7; Irene Powers, “Homewood Junior Women’s Club Wins $3,000 Prize,” CDT, June 5, 1958, p. C1; Thomas Rivera, “Homewood-Flossmoor High is Pride of Area,” CDT, October 13, 1960, p. S1; “School Sought for Homewood and Flossmoor,” CDT, October 15, 1954, p. 5; “Plan New Bid for Separate Prep District,” CDT, December 26, 1954, p. SW1+; “Seek Merger of 2 Suburbs in High School,” CDT, September 30, 1956, p. SW2; “Homewood Club One of Finalists in $60,000 Contest,” CDT, April 11, 1958, p. A5.

55 Mr. Fred Foy quoting Mrs. Joseph Colvert, “Announcement of National Club Winners,” Community Achievement Contest banquet at the GFWC national convention June 4, 1958, GFWC, Convention 1958, Vol. 1, pp. 392-393.

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from the county for the new district, elected a school board in April 1957, and even brought in a new superintendent for a “school that isn’t there” that July.56

The new school spoke to the specific postwar needs of many American communities – physically and educationally. The new District 233’s $3.5 million school comprised of three separate buildings opened in 1959 with a capacity for 1500 students.

The plans called for a second building phase in 1962, suggesting the sheer scale of postwar community growth – no small part of it from the now-teenaged baby boomers.

(Experiencing similar infrastructural shortcomings, two other southwest Chicago suburbs opened new schools to meet the demands of expanding class sizes the same month as

Homewood-Flossmoor.) Reflecting the pressure for academic excellence during the Cold

War and what soon-to-be-elected President Kennedy would call the race for the New

Frontier, 125 Homewood-Flossmoor residents and its new superintendent designed a curriculum geared toward the 75% of its students who expected to go to college.

Students took six academic courses – compared to five at neighboring schools – zero study halls, and offered advanced math and science courses; those interested in extra studies could take advantage of an early morning (8:15 a.m.) class.57

The new school seemed to incorporate many of the General Federation’s ideals of an active adult and youth citizenry. A plaque on the building’s entryway challenged,

56 Mary Cone, “School That Isn’t There Names Head Man,” CDT, July 11, 1957, p. S11. See also Mary Beatty, “3 New Area Schools are Set for Influx,” CDT, September 6, 1959, p. SW4; Sheila Wolfe, “Talks Set on School Asset Split,” CDT, October, 24, 1957, p. S4; “School Sought for Homewood and Flossmoor,” CDT, October 15, 1954, p. 5; “Homewood, Flossmoor, School Tax Boost OKd,” CDT, August 19, 1957, p. 17; “Third Ballot on Education Tax Hike OK’d,” CDT, August 29, 1957, p. S10; “Slate Meeting in Homewood,” CDT, February 23, 1958, p. SW5.

57 Thomas Rivera, “Homewood-Flossmoor High is Pride of Area.”

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“Let here prevail the greatest expectations for youth who learn and adults who guide that graduates will contribute more than their share to a free society.”58 Students took seriously their responsibility for a democratic community. When Superintendent William

O. Woodworth asserted that the “heart of the school spirit lies in the student government,” he referred to the sophisticated student executive council, supreme court, senate, and society council that governed the school and built leadership skills among individual students. The system of self-governance was so effective, Woodworth boasted, that discipline problems were virtually nonexistent.59 Parents liked to think such upright behavior extended to teen social life outside of school. When teens requested an after-prom party in 1960, the PTA, women’s clubs, and Kiwanis, happily obliged. As one PTA mother glowed, “When the youngsters themselves can see the dangers of all night unsupervised picnics or night-clubbing and do something about it we certainly don’t have to worry about the future generation.”60

According to Fred Foy, local Detroit celebrity and 1958 contest award ceremony emcee, these clubwomen had done nothing less than “carv[e] something out of the anonymity of their own suburban situation.”61 The new school grounded teens in their neighborhoods in ways attending schools in other districts could not. Clubwomen complemented this localism by reviving and running a teen center that was “jumping”

58 Ibid. p. S1.

59 William O. Woodworth quoted in Rivera, “Homewood-Flossmoor High is Pride of Area,” p. S1.

60 Mrs. R.O. Bodell quoted in Thomas Rivera, “A Night to Remember – Schools’ First Prom,” CDT, June 9, 1960, p. S1.

61 Foy, “National Club Winners,” Convention 1958, p. 390.

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most Friday nights at the Veterans of Foreign Wars local headquarters.62 Reflective of youth conservation goals and Americanism principles, the Homewood Juniors brought local youth into the project as stake-holders: five hundred teenagers attended a planning meeting, and elected their own student board to cooperate with the adult committee. Foy applauded the Homewood Juniors, comparing them to yesteryear’s pioneers who created community where before none had existed. Clubwomen, he praised members, were shaping the new suburban frontiers into vibrant hometowns.63

Postwar economic growth affected many communities, not just major suburban areas, and women’s clubs pieced together disparate contest projects to meet these changing needs. A new DuPont nylon plant on the Nanticoke River spurred the Acorn

Club of Seaford, Delaware to compile and distribute a telephone directory to connect the residents of the burgeoning community. The club also raised funds to build its own local hospital; with its larger population, the club felt it could no longer rely on the nearest hospital twenty-two miles away. Finally, the club established a kindergarten because there were not any publicly funded kindergartens in rural Delaware.64 Postwar industrial growth was re-shaping communities of all sizes in all locations and women’s clubs tried to bridge the gap between the services available and the services needed.

62 “Youth Center at Homewood Goal of Club,” CDT, January 3, 1957, p. S2;” Irene Powers, “Women Put Town in Spotlight,” CDT, April 30, 1958, p. A7.

63 Foy, “National Club Winners,” Convention 1958, p. 390.

64 Mrs. M. Burton Meyer, “Delaware Reports,” Reports from State Presidents on “Build a Better Community Contest” at the GFWC national convention May 31, 1950, GFWC, Convention 1950, Vol. 2, p. 6.

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Clubs sometimes used the community contest projects to hold government accountable for failing to meet basic needs, but many more clubs used the contest to seek alternative community solutions to government.65 Clubwomen in Midway, Kentucky, a small city about thirty miles east of Frankfurt, for example, used the community contest project to convince the fiscal court that the county needed a Department of Public Health

– something they had been trying to do for six years.66 Such projects reverberate with the echoes of Progressive-era clubwomen who had been victorious in securing minimal public health and welfare measures and shaped the formation of the modern welfare state.

More typical, however, were projects that relied on individual and communal volunteerism like those developed by the forty-three-member Cumberland Woman’s

Club in the southeast corner of Kentucky’s coal mining region. For their 5000-resident town, the clubwomen hired a kindergarten teacher at $150 per month, equipped a new school building, led a clean-up campaign, built a town pool and a road in the park, and helped get a bond issue passed for a bridge and sidewalk to the new school.67 Rather than look to the state, this club looked to its own philanthropy to address local needs.

Clubwomen were indeed drawing on a long tradition of female activism, but in ways that

65 In general, for contest reports, see transcripts from the “community achievement contest” banquet at each annual GFWC convention between 1949 and 1960, found in the GFWC archives under “GFWC Convention Proceedings and Transcripts (year)” as well as community contest reports sporadically throughout Clubwoman magazine.

66 Mrs. Lewis Piper, “Winners’ Remarks: Kentucky” to the Community Achievement Contest banquet at the GFWC national convention May 16, 1956, GFWC, Convention 1956, Vol. 1, p. 371.

67 Mrs. Joseph Page, “Kentucky Reports,” reports from State Presidents on the “Build a Better Community Contest” at the GFWC national convention May 31, 1950, GFWC, Convention 1950, Vol. 2, pp. 46-47.

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harkened back to women’s traditional voluntary philanthropy – a departure from

Progressive-era clubwork that was more social justice- and welfare-state oriented.

Consider, for example, how contest projects creatively combined volunteerism with local financial sponsorship in ways that ultimately reinforced the philanthropic – as opposed to public welfare – ideal of community problem-solving. The thirty young mothers of the Payson Junior Woman’s Club of Payson, Arizona, a 1500-resident ranching community ninety miles north of Phoenix, initiated a health campaign to bring medical facilities to their region. In addition to training in first aid to help with emergencies since the nearest hospital was over seventy dirt-road-miles away, the clubwomen also set out to raise $40,000 for a health clinic. After raising the first

$11,000, the bank of a neighboring town agreed to give Payson a $20,000 loan if it could meet a monthly $237 loan payment. To meet the payment, the clubwomen established a

“buck a month” club with 237 residents. Local businessmen donated many building materials, which cut the cost by almost ten percent.68 In a similar scenario, the Glenrock,

Wyoming women’s club secured the old city hall rent-free for one year and renovated it into a medical clinic equipped with surplus Army and Navy material. One clubwoman, a registered nurse, volunteered her services for free for one year and another clubwoman volunteered her clerical assistance. The local oil companies donated $250 per month to cover expenses and the CIO union promised the income for a doctor. The club raised

$1000 to fly potential doctors in for interviews and, after his hire, he moved into the

68 Foy, “National Club Winners,” Convention 1958, pp. 385-387.

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second floor of the old city hall.69 Significantly, when both of these projects called on local philanthropy, they involved local business institutions. Doing so invoked a sort of corporate paternalism that displaced the need for public welfare to address community shortcomings while strengthening the GFWC’s commitment to Americanism principles of civic activism, self-reliance, and free enterprise.

Such projects built community spirit and infrastructure, but the majority of contest projects – like the Homewood Juniors’ of Illinois – specifically focused on youth. The winning 1952 project from the seventy-five-member Junior Women’s Club of Chagrin

Falls, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, for example, turned its attention to the “community of

722 Negroes of Chagrin Falls Park,” located on the edge of Chagrin Falls, technically in the neighboring township. The Juniors reported that “the Park” had few paved roads, no public transportation, inadequate housing, schools, and recreational facilities. According to the contest project report, “the youngsters [of Chagrin Falls Park] had no experience in assuming responsibility. There was drinking, promiscuity, narcotic usage and actual gun warfare. The club members realized that these young people, refused access to desirable

‘white’ recreation spots, had developed a gnawing desire to ‘belong.’”70 The report stated that the clubwomen, “without any sense of superiority or spirit of do-good

69 Mrs. H. T. Person, “Winner’s Remarks: Wyoming” on the “Build a Better Community Contest” at the GFWC national convention May 31, 1950, GFWC, Convention 1950, Vol. 2, pp. 16-17.

70 “Building Freedom Contests Develops Lasting Projects,” Clubwoman, September 1952, pp. 16+, quotes p. 16.

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sentimentality,” worked with the youth to build a recreation center and in the process destroyed “color barriers and overc[ame] mutual shyness.”71

In the absence of adequate infrastructure, the white clubwomen of this Ohio suburb assumed responsibility for providing a disadvantaged black community with healthy outlets for its youth. Channeling black youth into (white) clubwomen-approved activities at the “wholesome [recreation] center,” white clubwomen became the surrogate guardians to black youth. That Chagrin Falls clubwomen stepped into a different community to conduct its work – seemingly without involvement of the black teens’ parents or local black women’s clubs– underscores the position of authority and privilege from which GFWC clubwomen operated.72

The General Federation’s attitude toward African-American communities in the community development contest mirrored its attitude toward these communities in its get-out-the-vote campaign and other projects that opened the door to civil rights. In general, the GFWC applauded white clubwomen’s work on behalf of black communities, believing as it did in the importance of healthy communities to producing healthy citizens

– black or white. The community contest provided a way for clubwomen to do this kind of work. And yet, reports give little indication that local white clubwomen worked with

71 Ibid, p. 24.

72 Ibid. p. 16.

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local African-American women, even black clubwomen, frequently presenting projects as the Chagrin Falls members had: white women working in defense of black youth.73

When it came to the color line, contest project reports suggest that white clubwomen ultimately upheld segregation, evidenced by the many projects of the

Women’s Country Club in Jasper, Alabama. Concerned that many of the 700 African

Americans at the local black school came from as far as fifteen or twenty miles away with little breakfast and no lunch, the Women’s Country Club equipped the school with a lunchroom, making these students eligible for federal aid. Without irony, the club’s May

Keyser reported that the clubwomen “showed the Negro women how to paint and clean up the [school] building.” The clubwomen then “made a contribution” to the lunchroom at the white primary school. They also lobbied boards of education to raise a bond issue for a new white junior high school, “to enlarge the old high school for white children,

[and] to build a new junior and senior high for Negroes.” The careful attention Keyser gave to describing what her club did for both communities seemed to naturalize the racial division.

Although many clubwomen likely would have developed contest projects around youth on their own, the GFWC and contest sponsors restructured the contest over the course of its first decade in ways that encouraged clubwomen to use the contest as part of youth citizenship training. When the contest began in 1949 as the “Build a Better

73 And yet community development was one area that the GFWC reached out to black women’s groups at the national level. It invited the National Association of Colored Women to its inter-organizational community development conference in 1956 that aimed to spur other groups to lead similar community improvement initiatives to the GFWC’s Build a Better Community Contest. Buchholz, “The Ruffin Incident,” pp. 67-69.

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Community” contest, it encouraged clubwomen to become community leaders. But in its second cycle (1951-1952), the contest was renamed the “Build Freedom with Youth” contest, which charged clubwomen with bringing youth, aged twelve to twenty-one, into all stages of the contest project. When the Sears Roebuck Foundation began sponsorship in 1955, the contest became the “Community Achievement” contest, with an emphasis on involving all members of the community, including youth. The initial contest lacked the specificity of later contests; its goal was for clubwomen literally to build better communities by responding to housing, educational, and other needs of rapidly changing postwar cities and towns. The second contest concentrated on getting youth involved in community building. This desire points to larger social concerns about the size of the youth demographic, youth culture, and its potential subversion of postwar norms. The third contest, begun in 1955, pushed clubwomen to involve all community members – but especially youth – in their projects, to collaboratively evaluate a community’s needs, and to respond as a collective. With this inclusivity, the General Federation framed the contest as democracy incarnate. More than help a specific community need, the

Community Achievement contest would help the nation by training citizens in democratic community building. Over the first decade of the contest, then, the GFWC enlarged it from a clubwomen’s activity to a traditional maternalist activity (shepherding youth), to a strategy for saving America by including all youth and adults in democratic activism.

No matter the contest cycle, youth always figured prominently in contest projects.

For the first Build a Better Community contest (1949-1950), it made sense that

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clubwomen who strongly identified as mothers would embark on contest projects that benefit their local youth. But after 1950, youth truly took center stage. While youth continued to be the recipients of clubs’ activism, under the Build Freedom with Youth contest (1951-1954) and the Community Achievement contest (post-1955), youth became part of the project process as well. After 1955, youth would be even more incorporated into community projects as equal stakeholders among all community groups, symbolizing its new role as a legitimate constituency in the community.

Retooling the community contests over the 1950s to be more inclusive of youth as a partner in the democratic process did more than extend ownership of the community to teens: it also warded against troubling trends that distracted teens from their parents’

America. As the GFWC character education chairman made explicit, new social tensions resulting from population increase and moral decadence made youth character even more important. She told clubwomen, “We must find the way to engender in [youth] the urgency to do right. The traits of honesty, sincerity, trustworthiness and moral consistency need constantly to be instilled by precept and example.”74 The contest built on the General Federation’s other program work that likewise attempted to focus wayward teen energy back on that which the GFWC deemed truly important: the

American spirit. The contest became an opportunity to develop “in young people deeper devotion to America” and to provide “better opportunities for them to participate with adults in serving their communities and their country.”75 Framing the contest as

74 Mrs. J. L. Lush, “Educate to Understand the World We Live In,” Clubwoman, October 1952, p. 10.

75 “Build Freedom with Youth Contest,” Clubwoman, May 1951, pp. 10-11, quote p. 10.

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democracy manifest, youth would come to understand that “the advantages of our way of life as contrasted to life in a totalitarian state.” By trying to bring youth back into the fold, clubwomen attempted to reassert moral authority over their youth and their communities.76

But clubwomen needed to make sure the “fold” could reinforce the Americanism lessons clubwomen taught youth. “The adult of today,” GFWC vice president Chloe

Gifford lampooned in 1956, “wants a guaranteed minimum wage, a social security number, academic tenure, Blue Cross, and a pension plan.”77 Gifford’s words painted the picture of Americans grown lazy, secure on government supports that fostered mediocrity and dulled the drive for individual achievement. The community contests, by contrast,

“ignited new citizenry” and solved the problem of “human indifference.”78 As the

Washington Post’s Malvina Lindsay wrote of the winning projects in 1958, the community contest directly mitigated dangerous trends in American culture. Although some social ills the contest tackled would exist in any era, Lindsay argued, “many were the result of today’s shifting population, spread of industry, trend toward bigness, loss of

76 “Build Freedom with Youth, 1951-1952” Contest Booklet, p. 1, AKW Papers, SL, Box 2, Folder 9.

77 Chloe Gifford, “Second Vice President” Executive Committee Reports to the GFWC national convention My 15, 1956, GFWC, Convention 1956, Vol. 1, pp. 17-20, quote p. 20. Clearly Gifford targeted gains workers made during the New Deal that, by 1956, were available to women as well as men. But, given the GFWC’s hostility to unions and the dominant construction of industrial unionism as having a male “face,” her words contain a gendered critique. Describing the lazy American in such terms would reaffirm the virtue of women’s clubwork as an antidote to such (male) complacency.

78 Richard W. Posten, “Remarks on the Community Achievement Contest” at the GFWC national convention May 16, 1956, GFWC, Convention 1956, Vol. 1, pp. 345-346.

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individual identity and responsibility.”79 Clubwomen fought against these trends to restore (broadly interpreted) community health – something that was imperative to maintaining high American ideals against dangerous communist infiltration. Sick communities bred disaffected citizens vulnerable to communist propaganda. But healthy communities produced healthy Americans unsusceptible to communist ploys.

For clubwomen, the triumph of the contest projects lay not in that the work happened – many civic groups such as women’s auxiliaries or Kiwanis were engaged in local philanthropy – but in that clubwomen believed they reinvigorated community-wide

Americanism while solidifying their standing in the community.80 The GFWC made this clear in 1955 when it stated that the purpose of the contest was “to encourage the meeting of community problems at the community level, to strengthen the women’s clubs’ position in community leadership and to aid in making their work of even greater service to their communities.”81 Indeed, it was because of clubwomen’s ability to achieve all this that they enjoyed Sears Roebuck’s sponsorship. The foundation had chosen to support the General Federation because “a Woman’s Club can serve effectively to improve any community. It is unequalled as the rallying point around which all groups in a community can unite to solve local problems.”82

79 Malvina Lindsay, “Home Town Ills Test U.S. System,” WP, June 5, 1958, p. A14.

80 For an example of local volunteerism, see Tina Vicini, “Do-It-Yourself Projects Help Fund Campaign,” CDT, July 22, 1956, p. SW3.

81 Ruth B. Gay, “Community Achievement Contest,” Clubwoman, September 1955, pp. 13+, quote p. 13.

82 Ibid.

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Their activism was good business for women’s clubs and communities alike.

According to one Illinois club leader, the contest drew new membership while it improved localities. During the 1959-1960 contest cycle, twenty-nine new clubs joined the Illinois Federation of Women’s Clubs and twenty-five of them entered the community contest. From the 620 women’s clubs that competed that cycle, Illinois communities gained ten new hospitals; twelve hospital additions; eight new doctors, one dentist, five medical centers and clinics; three new fire houses; thirty-five new community buildings or additions; twenty-six new parks with thousands of dollars of equipment; nineteen new swimming pools; two new school districts; nine new school buildings; six library referendums, eleven new buildings or additions, equipment, and books; forty community councils or similar organizations; and fourteen complete community development programs.83 The contest brought in new members and galvanized veteran clubwomen, yielding impressive community gains.

Behind such tangible results, however, was an even more impressive intangible outcome. According to the Illinois leader, the greatest accomplishment of the contest was the “gradual change from attitudes of apathy and complacency to an interested, civic minded, cooperative, and unified citizenry [underline original].”84 Materially improving a community was something any group with enough money could produce, but improving a community’s attitude was a true accomplishment. As this Illinois contest

83 Mrs. Clark, Proceedings from the 65th Annual Convention of the Illinois Federation of Women’s Clubs (1960), p. 3, from the IFWC/Mary Houde Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Box 10. Hereafter this collection will be cited as IFWC.

84 Ibid. quote p. 5.

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chairman explained in 1960, community development referred to “the quality of the community life as a whole. It means civic unity, pride, interest, and responsibility toward solving problems,” and “improved skills in group decisions and leadership. It puts the people first in importance [underline original].”85

The community contest made such work women’s work. The methods for the contest were ones that any community expert recognized – surveys, town meetings, and utilizing expert resources – but they needed implementation from mothers who understood such philanthropy to be part of something bigger: the quality of America’s citizens and her very national character. It was women’s clubs, in the words of the president of Sears Roebuck, that had proved “the ideal organization for community self- help” because “they cut across all lines in a community and they are vitally interested in all aspects of community life. They have taken the leadership in uniting other groups to solve local problems.”86 The community contest gave clubwomen a concrete framework for their maternal activism that trained youth citizenship while restoring accountability, self-reliance, and democracy to the local level.

Citizenship Training and the Social Contract

The community contest captured the ambivalence postwar Americans had toward the modern state. With the community contest the General Federation deliberately set out

85 Ibid. quote p. 1.

86 Charles H. Kellstadt “Comments on the Community Achievement Contest” read by James C. Worthy at the GFWC national convention June 16, 1960, GFWC, Convention 1960, Vol. 2, pp. 694-695, quote p. 694.

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to wean Americans off their reliance on government for services that local communities could themselves provide. Club leaders believed that the contest would restore the appropriate balance between public and private welfare. Although it would not necessarily roll back New Deal programs, it would invigorate Americanism and lessen the potentially dangerous repercussions of New Deal social welfare. But the contest was only the most prominent manifestation of the General Federation’s attempts to mediate shifting state responsibilities. Behind these projects was an immense faith in the private sector. According to the GFWC, the public sector provided defense and infrastructure, but it was not responsible for solving every problem. To expect that the state should or could do so undermined the tenets of Americanism and the national character. In that direction laid communism. The community contest reflected this intellectual commitment.

Indeed, the General Federation enjoyed corporate sponsorship because the community contests advanced this political position. When Kroger president Joseph A.

Hall first announced the contest in 1949, he said Kroger would sponsor it because it was a program of self-help. “‘At a time when there is such a marked tendency to refer even local problems to the state and federal government, the self-reliant, self-supporting character of the Federation program is particularly worthy of praise. It illustrates the freedom of opportunity which is the heart of our free enterprise system.”87 This same admiration drew the Sears Roebuck Foundation to sponsor the contest beginning in 1955.

87 Joseph A. Hall quoted in Dan Markel, “‘Build a Better Community’ Drive Launched,” Pittsburgh Sun- Telegraph, January 26, 1949, p. 2, GFWC, Buck President Papers, Box 1, Folder 3.

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Speaking before the 1956 convention, Sears Roebuck Vice President (and former Under

Secretary of Commerce of the United States) James C. Worthy congratulated clubwomen’s American spirit – that “genius for self-help” and solving problems without

“interference from or dependence on government or other external agencies.”88

Theirs was a deliberate alliance between business and civic groups to promote

“self-help.” The GFWC belonged to the National Council for Community Improvement

(NCCI), an affiliation of sixty civic organizations and corporations including Prudential

Insurance, the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce, and the J.C. Penney Corporation. In

1948, the NCCI began pilot programs in six states to encourage local community councils that brought together similar players on the local level to address local needs.89

The goal was to “form organizations to get more local jobs done ‘at home’” rather than turn to “Washington to get hand-outs.” According to NCCI chairman J.C. Penney

(of the department store chain), such localism strengthened the nation by correcting for dangerous leftist (i.e. communist) politics. In June 1954, the NCCI announced it would expand the program to all forty-eight states. “We’ve been living in a fool’s paradise for twenty years,” Penney declared, referring to the New Deal’s social welfare programs, and

“we’ve been going soft. We’ve got to quit paying people for not working.” Ostensibly a nonpolitical organization, the NCCI clearly had roots in anti-New Deal politics.

88 James C. Worthy, “Greetings” before the Community Achievement Contest Awards at the GFWC national convention May 16, 1956, GFWC, Convention 1956, Vol. 1, p. 337.

89 Bess Furman, “Urge Communities Mold U.S. Welfare,” NYT, May 26, 1948, p. 3. For more on NCCI priorities, see its newsletter, “Community Cooperation,” from January to April 1949, New York Public Library.

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Although it did not sponsor any local initiatives directly, it strove to “bring about individual participation and cooperation in community projects.”90

This was practically a verbatim recitation of the GFWC’s own goals for the community contests. Indeed, the NCCI sponsored the GFWC’s 1956 “Build a Better

Community” conference to which the GFWC invited community builders from each state.91 The GFWC’s alignment with such corporate-friendly philanthropy reinforced its association of free enterprise with the American spirit and resistance to government social welfare programs. Although unstated, it also preserved gender dynamics upon which maternalism rested: corporate paternalists looking to full-time homemaker wives for community volunteerism solidified gendered division between family and work life.

The General Federation’s favorability toward private enterprise could be measured by its relationship with the National Association of Manufacturers, an industry group that opposed government market intervention. The GFWC repeatedly invited

NAM to speak at the GFWC national convention, where NAM received very warm welcome and propagated its pro-enterprise agenda in ways that sounded very similar to the GFWC’s own calls for active citizenship. GFWC President Mabel Prout introduced the NAM president in 1957, for example, as having worked “diligently throughout his business career for the preservation of America’s traditional values.”92 In his address,

90 “Drive on to Spark Local Enterprise,” NYT, June 24, 1954, p. 22.

91 Ibid; “Community Work Urged,” NYT, January 19, 1956, p. 39.

92 Mabel Prout, “Remarks Introducing Ernest Swigert of the National Association of Manufacturers” at the GFWC national convention June 6, 1957, GFWC, Convention 1957, Vol. 2, p. 520.

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NAM’s president warned clubwomen about the size of welfare programs, the continued expansion of which courted “disaster.”93 The following year, a NAM vice president urged convened delegates to get personally involved in public affairs because

“government today touches almost every facet of our personal, professional, and business lives.” The government determined your taxes, your crops, and even co-signed your mortgages. He expounded that clubwomen’s local work was necessary because “the battle for economic and political freedom will be won or lost in the community, in the city block, among the voters in each house and apartment building.”94 Such speeches met with enthusiastic applause.

The GFWC’s pro-enterprise stance found specific expression in resolutions and program work. It portrayed unions as un-American because they interfered with an individual’s right to work freely and was on the record in opposition to closed union shops.95 The General Federation often had industry representatives write as experts on topics for the monthly magazine, guaranteeing a specific viewpoint of industry and economics.96 The organization also had an Industry division in its Public Affairs department that encouraged study of labor/management tensions and local industry.

Clubwomen usually translated that instruction into support of local industry. In 1951, the

93 Ernest Swigert, “Freedom’s Challenge to American Women” address to the GFWC national convention June 6, 1957, GFWC, Convention 1957, pp. 520-534, quote p. 529.

94 Charles Sligh, “Public Affairs: A Do-It-Yourself Job” address to the GFWC national convention June 4, 1958, GFWC, Convention 1958, Vol. 1, pp. 262-245.

95 “Closed Shop Resolution,” debate at GFWC national convention June 24, 1947, GFWC Convention 1947, Vol. 1, pp. 47-48.

96 For example, Paul G. Hoffman, “What do taxes mean to you?” Clubwoman, February 1948, pp. 12+.

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division chairman noted that twenty-seven states actively worked on this program agenda. New Jersey reported that more than sixty clubs had toured local plants, and

Connecticut reported that at least one hundred members had been on each of its four plant tours; Ohio clubwomen went on tours as well. Clubs did not report working with unions.97

GFWC leadership did not shy away from declaring preference for private enterprise and individual ingenuity, setting the tone for the entire organization. In 1952,

GFWC president Dorothy Houghton of Red Creek, Iowa informed Illinois clubwomen that she was personally “against federal aid to education, federal aid to housing, federal aid to anything and everything.” When they gave her hearty applause, she went on: “I believe in individual enterprise, getting ahead by our own energy, our own thrift, our own ambition.”98 Houghton left little doubt as to how she felt about current debates over public programs – nor how other clubwomen who were committed to the Americanism ethos ought to feel as well.

Houghton’s comments underscore what was at stake with federal programs.

Proposals for various forms of federal aid to housing and education were responses to systemic crises (e.g. shortages, inadequate state funding, inequality).99 But Houghton, by emphasizing her belief in individual ability and responsibility, advocated personal actions

97 “Department Reports: Public Affairs, Industry Division,” Clubwoman, May 1951, p. 25.

98 Dorothy Houghton, “Together We Serve America,” speech before the Illinois Federation of Women’s Clubs, May 6, 1952, Minutes of the IFWC state convention, Vol. 1, p. 130, IFWC, Box 8.

99 For contemporary understandings of these issues see for example “Truman’s Statement on Housing, and Aide’s Two-Year Building Plan,” NYT, February 9, 1946, p. 2; “Federal Aid Held Vital to Schools,” NYT, January 24, 1945, p. 14.

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as a solution to structural shortcomings in housing and education. Such rhetoric equated structural shortcomings with personal shortcomings. It implied that those who worked hard would overcome any disadvantage and, conversely, that federal assistance policies would deter individual ingenuity and ambition. Rather than help people, these policies actually hurt them. This was bad for the individual, but it was also bad for society. To an organization that congratulated individual entrepreneurship for American success, the cost of government programs to the nation would be great indeed.

Discourse about taxes also reflected clubwomen’s fiscal and moral opposition to growing state programs. When it came to taxes, the General Federation at the national level usually encouraged members to study the tax system to know exactly what their money was paying for. As shown in chapter two’s discussion of the 1959 gasoline tax, clubwomen understood their taxes within a consumerist paradigm. Not only did this mesh well with rising postwar consumerism, it also fell in line with clubwomen’s self- perception as responsible consumers planning both the family and the government budget. For most clubwomen, taxes were a necessity. Certain services such as education, protection for the most vulnerable populations, and national security were legitimate expenses. But for many clubwomen, government programs (i.e. social welfare) that tax dollars paid for were a misuse of the public’s money. These programs paved the way for ever-larger government and posed a threat to personal liberty.

One Indiana club leader made this explicit. Complacent citizens had allowed government programs to lull them into a state of acceptance regarding expanding government. More programs meant more taxes, which she saw as a threat to democracy.

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“The power to tax is vicious; it is tyrannical; it can destroy,” this leader told Indiana clubwomen. Those who could tax could control all aspects of the government. It was up to citizens to “promote the American way of life and stop seeking the easy berth.”100 If she could have done, she and her fellow Hoosiers would have taken away the engine that made the tax/social welfare cycle run: the income tax. In 1958, fearing that the

Eighteenth Amendment was a blank check for taxation, that progressive tax rates were based on the “principle of decreasing rewards for increasing work” that contradicted the

American work ethic, and that progressive taxes were communist, Indiana clubwomen went on record in opposition to the state and federal income tax.101

New York clubwomen showed that such attitudes were not the province of their

Midwestern colleagues. In 1951 the New York State Federation of Women’s Clubs endorsed a resolution to reduce the income tax to five percent of national income and to permit borrowing only during war or national emergency. The resolution’s language was remarkably similar to legislation filed that year by conservative Republican Sen. Robert

Taft of Ohio.102 New York clubwomen also advocated the anti-union “right to work” position and, in a somewhat extreme bid for greater fiscal transparency, opening all

100 Mrs. Clarence E. Benadum, “Problems in American Government,” Indiana Clubwoman, November 1949, p. 5, GFWC Indiana Federation of Clubs archives, Indiana State Library, Box 7.

101 Indiana Federation of Clubs, “Call to Convention for May 13-15, 1958,” GFWC Indiana Federation of Clubs archives, Indiana State Library, Box 11.

102 Mrs. Rowland F. Davis, “Newsletter,” to the NYSFWC June 4, 1952, President’s Folders, Mrs. Rowland F. Davis, NYSFWC, GTL, EC; “Buying Levy Urged to Cut Income Tax,” NYT, February 2, 1950, p. 21.

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welfare spending – including the welfare rolls – to public scrutiny.103 The NYSFWC soundly defeated federal aid to education when it came up for a vote in 1948, again in

1952 when only eight delegates supported the plan, and again in 1956.104

New York City-area clubwomen’s response to a city proposal to fluoridate the water supply in the mid-1950s elucidates the fiscal and moral uncertainty clubwomen felt toward the modern state. Following the recommendation of the U.S. Public Health

Service, New York City Mayor Wagner proposed fluoridating the water supply in 1955.

Although New York City clubwomen were initially inclined to support fluoridation, they reportedly became increasingly concerned by the implications of the state “medicating the water supply.” Such a “drug delivery system” erased any personal choice in the issue, veering towards communism. It seemed a foolish use of taxpayer dollars to pay for something only a few needed and could receive in other ways (fluoride tablets). In May

1955, the New York City Federation of Women’s Clubs (NYCFWC) voted to oppose fluoridation and their colleagues in the Long Island Federation of Women’s Clubs

(LIFWC) joined them by unanimous vote in January 1956.105

103 The New York City Federation of Women’s Clubs even passed a resolution requiring a two-year residency before becoming eligible for home relief, veterans’ assistance and old-age funds. “Clubwomen Favor Curb in City Relief,” NYT, May 8, 1948, p. 13.

104 “Mrs. Rowland F. Davis to Members, June 4, 1952,” President’s Folders, Mrs. Rowland F. Davis, NYSFWC, GTL, EC; “Minutes from the 1948 NYSFWC convention,” Minute Book of the NYSFWC 1946- 1948-1950, p. 114, NYSFWC, GTL, EC; “Minutes from the 1952 NYSFWC convention,” Minute Book of the NYSFWC 1952-1956, p. 36, NYSFWC, GTL, EC.

105 See “Transcript of the Stenographic Record of the Public Hearing on the Question of Fluoridation of New York City’s Water Supply, held before the Board of Estimate of the City of New York, March 6, 1957” (New York: Board of Estimate, 1957) referred to hereafter as “Hearing, 1957.” “Women’s Club Federation Fights Fluoridation of the Water Supply,” NYT, May 7, 1955, p. 19; “Fluoridation Opposed: L.I. Women’s Unit Says it is contrary to Freedom,” NYT, January 21, 1956, p. 23; “Women’s Clubs Group Vetoes Fluoridation,” The Garden City News, January 26, 1956, p. 4, Reel 9, LII.

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Significantly, NYCFWC clubwomen were not united in their opposition to fluoridation, suggesting the broad middle ground of postwar political culture and the fluidity of attitudes towards the modern state. At a New York City hearing in 1957, clubwomen attempted to testify for both sides of the issue, both claiming to represent the legitimate viewpoint of the NYCFWC. Led by Constance Sporborg, the GFWC’s ace on international affairs and former presidents of the NYCFWC, a contingent from the

NYCFWC contended that the resolution had been forced on an unprepared delegation at the 1955 meeting. Sporborg argued that an unofficial poll of NYCFWC clubwomen had since shown that the majority supported fluoridation for all the reasons many maternalist clubwomen would: fluoridation improved the health of all children, especially those with the least access to regular care. Such a stance was a logical extension of their

Progressive-era maternal activism that looked to the state to provide services the less fortunate could not afford or access.106

By contrast, local antifluoridationists argued against the growing powers of the state.107 Both the NYCFWC’s and the LIFWC’s resolutions opposing fluoridation spoke to this; as the former warned, “mass medication of community drinking water was

106 It is difficult to surmise which group really held the majority opinion, but the antis had the official backing of the NYCFWC.

107 For examples of national anti leaders’ arguments, see Greater New York Committee Opposed to Fluoridation, Broadside (New York: Greater New York Committee Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc., 1964), Greater New York Committee Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc., Hall-Hoag Manuscript Collection, Hay Library, Brown University. See also Gretchen Reilly, “‘This Poisoning of Our Drinking Water’: The American Fluoridation Controversy in Historical Context, 1950-1990” (PhD dissertation, George Washington University, 2001).

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‘contrary to the fundamental freedom of America.’”108 The 1957 hearing revealed neighborhood community councils, Republican groups, homeowners’ associations, some parents’ groups, local affiliates of the American Legion, taxpayers associations, religious groups and many women’s groups opposed for similar reasons.109

Tellingly, most of the opposition to fluoridation came from Long Island – specifically, Queens – groups. It was in growing communities like these where conservative principles made headway among the broad middle ground of American life.

Heavily influenced by the anticommunist zeitgeist, these suburbanites expressed strong anti-New Deal sentiment while reaping the rewards of policies that promoted their postwar prosperity such as the GI Bill and the Federal Housing Administration’s subsidies.110 Local control as a measure of personal liberty so informed Long Island clubwomen’s politics that the LIFWC had recently withdrawn from the New York State

Federation of Women’s Clubs when new bylaws mandated GFWC membership to all state federation members; the LIFWC contended the new regulations impinged on its right to choose its member clubs as it saw fit and would force on the LIFWC positions with which its local membership disagreed.111

108 “Fluoridation Opposed,” NYT, January 21, 1956, p. 23.

109 “Hearing 1957.”

110 See Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006; McGirr, Suburban Warriors; Nickolaides, My Blue Heaven; Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis.

111 “L.I Women’s Clubs Quit State Group,” NYT, May 19, 1951, p. 26.

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But there was another element to be found in Long Island clubwomen’s opposition to fluoridation not heard from their allies: fluoridation was also state usurpation of maternal authority. Forcing a drug through the water system violated clubwomen’s right to raise their children without state infringement. Mrs. George

Conway of the LIFWC made this clear at a City hearing in March 1957. She chided the

U. S. Public Health Service and the City for thinking mothers would not give their children needed medicine (fluoride) on an individual basis. She decried the “paternalistic attitude” that would force an entire population to consume a drug just because the government did not believe mothers were capable of administering it themselves. She testified, “We resent the implication that our Government loves our children more than we do and is more concerned for their welfare. If we are incompetent in this respect, can we be trusted in any other? Should our Government agencies not also extend their supervision over the meals we serve in our homes and the hours at which we put our children to bed?”112 Although fluoridation may provide an ultimate good, it set a dangerous precedent for state action that undermined their maternal authority, their perceived basis of power.

In their resistance to fluoridation, these clubwomen made an argument for limited government and an argument for the sanctity of the private home that reinforced one another. Clubwomen spoke of themselves as taxpayers and mothers and the expanding state as a threat to both identities. Here was the type of gendered antistatism that

112 Conway cited in “Hearing, 1957,” p. 253. See also Charles G. Bennett, “City Hears Pleas for Fluoridation: U.S. and State Proponents Face Noisy Opposition at Council Hearing,” NYT, January 27, 1956, p. 1.

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characterized so much of the postwar General Federation’s citizenship training. It stemmed from a firm commitment to private enterprise, volunteerism, and maternal leadership exhibited in countless programs, articles, and even the community contests themselves. It declared private actions and institutions more American than state ones – and did so from the perspective of the mother who dwelled within one such private institution and whose private actions reared the next generation of citizens. That it came from a small contingent of conservative suburban clubwomen – a group that had recently disaffiliated with the GFWC for what amounted to a club version of antistatism – does not diminish antifluoridation as a compelling example of clubwomen’s ambivalence towards the postwar state. On the contrary, it suggests how thoroughly questions about the responsibilities and limitations of the state permeated postwar life.

The General Federation and the Shifting Middle Ground of American Politics

With such arguments the GFWC very much reflected the unsteady middle ground of postwar political culture. Riding a wave of postwar prosperity, Americans embraced a centrist political culture that narrowed acceptable forms of state activism to those programs that benefited the growing middle class rather than those more social justice- oriented programs that had defined the New Deal. Within this milieu, many Americans condemned as communist those who challenged traditional liberal democratic institutions, limiting economic and political dissent. The Cold War culture further divided American society into anticommunists versus subversive threats to the nation.

The General Federation was at home in this political environment: it was tough on

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communism and voiced skepticism at programs that expanded government or interfered with the private market and individual liberty.

At the same time, however, the General Federation identified legitimate arenas for state action. Although the GFWC strongly supported the Hoover Commission’s recommendations for dramatic bureaucratic downsizing in the 1950s, it also lobbied for creation of a cabinet-level Consumers’ Bureau and a national academy for diplomatic training. The former, the GFWC contended, would protect the all-important economy through consumer education and protection and the latter would prepare future statesmen for the intricate politics of the Cold War. Even while it argued states’ rights to reject federal aid to education, the GFWC wanted extensive youth services available through the schools including guidance counseling and vocational training – priorities which would give greater responsibility for youth to the state. Though it did not necessarily ask the state to pay for them, the organization also wanted improved health facilities for the most vulnerable citizens, especially the mentally ill and mentally or physically handicapped children. On the surface, these priorities suggest lingering Progressive-era commitment to state action on behalf of vulnerable citizens and seem incongruous with the GFWC’s frequent calls for limited government and social services.

The GFWC claimed, however, that this type of state exercise was necessary to winning the Cold War. For the most part the progressive message that had driven GFWC support of similar efforts decades earlier was absent in the 1950s. With the exception of facilities and services for the most vulnerable, these were projects aimed at training a new

Cold War citizenry. Unlike its peer mainstream women’s organizations such as the

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League of Women Voters or the Young Women’s Christian Association, the GFWC was not advocating an expansion of social services or social justice with these proposed initiatives. It was outlining ways the state could assist in implementing clubwomen’s vision for a more robust citizenry prepared to defeat the communist threat. The General

Federation sought to harness the state – much as it tried to do during the comic book campaign – to uphold its own ideas about Cold War citizenship. It was a matter of national security.

When it came to national security the General Federation, like most Americans, voiced few reservations about state power. Club leaders saw no inconsistency between its calls to curb social programs for fear of ceding individual liberty to a too-powerful state and its calls for unparalleled military, diplomatic, and economic strength. This meant a highly trained and sophisticated military (including mandatory military training for men at age eighteen – an arguable violation of personal liberty if such an argument was ever to be made), an aggressive presence abroad through trade and economic policies, and loyalty to the United Nations. Those institutions and policies deemed necessary for America’s survival were in many ways placed above the political fray.

Club leaders urged lower taxes and debated social welfare while ignoring the rise of the military-industrial complex with entire industries, economies, and populations dependent upon federal spending.

These different interpretations of state responsibilities suggest the extent to which the Cold War muddied traditional political categories. Fearful of encroaching communism, the GFWC leaned towards the Right on domestic issues such as social

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welfare, tax policies, and other market interventions. The Americanism ethos routinely upheld the rights of private property over social justice, which had the added benefit of fortifying white middle-class clubwomen’s social and economic privilege. In this, the

General Federation trended more conservatively than its mainstream peer women’s organizations.

Yet its internationalism situated the GWFC clearly outside the conservative camp.

Most conservatives saw internationalism as part of the communist conspiracy toward

One-Worldism. Most clubwomen, by contrast, saw military and diplomatic policies as critical to combating communism. They believed that the Americanism ethos could only be spread as far as American influence extended. In this, the General Federation resembled its mainstream peer women’s organizations. Democracy, self-reliance, and free enterprise guided GFWC activism in both the national and international arenas, but required different structural preconditions to flourish. The organization’s strategy for stopping the communist threat was neither Right nor Left, but a shifting response along the undefined middle of the postwar political spectrum.

Maternalism captured this fluidity. Maternalism relied on maintaining clubwomen’s moral authority over those in their care and could be accommodated to different scenarios. In most of the GFWC’s domestic programs – homemaker professionalization, the Americanism campaign, and community contests – this often translated into hostility towards the state. But this stance was not absolute. Clubwomen looked to the state at times to enforce their maternal authority, as happened during the comics campaign. In the GFWC’s international programs – support of the UN and

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American foreign policy, grassroots outreach, and philanthropy – this was more nuanced.

Internationalism demanded a strong state to promote American interests overseas, but the

GFWC continued to define Americanism in ways that privileged private actions and institutions. Maternalism provided tremendous flexibility for a wide range of programs in pursuit of training citizens – whether they were within the home, down the street, or overseas.

Conclusion

Clubwomen nurtured citizens in the tenets of Americanism with the understanding that the next generation would keep the nation strong against any internal or external threat, communist or otherwise. Juvenile delinquency revealed a shocking erosion of moral character and clubwomen focused their attention on its causes, especially popular culture, in ways that would eliminate the threat by bringing youth back under protective maternal guidance. In some of their program work, clubwomen were very deliberate about their youth citizenship training, seen in the Youth Conservation program. Other program work took a more expansive approach to youth citizenship training, as happened with the community contests. Here clubwomen tried to energize entire communities in Americanism so that youth would be enveloped in democratic civic relationships that would reinforce more pointed program work. Both approaches reaffirmed clubwomen’s self-perception as community leaders and keepers of the nation through their actions on behalf of youth.

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Guarding their maternal authority as protectors of youth and country usually reinforced clubwomen’s suspicion of the modern state. The welfare state made

Americans soft and ill-equipped to handle the trials of the Cold War. Americans accustomed to a paternalistic state would be susceptible to communist infiltration. This vulnerability made it imperative that clubwomen promote the principles of the free market, individual liberty, accountability, and democracy. The social welfare state set the wrong example for the next generation of citizens. Youth would be lulled into a false sense of security, be unprepared to care for themselves, and be unaware of the erosion of liberty until it was too late. Clubwomen needed to be vigilant against this menace.

And yet, as seen in the comic book campaign, when it came to protecting their youth, clubwomen eagerly used the state apparatus to reinforce mother’s moral authority.

Clubwomen made fiscal arguments against state market intervention and moral arguments against state private intervention, but not when the state could be used to promote a vision of America consistent with their own values. There was room for the state after all, but it was not in New Deal programs or other social justice measures. It was in upholding a mother’s prerogative.

CONCLUSION

“Ours is a call to action – to mobilize the woman power of the General Federation in a dynamic program of ‘Responsible, Responsive Citizenship’ in all affairs of public interest and concern. Beginning where??? With YOU, in your community – the action point of democracy. There it is made and there it will be kept.” – Katie Ozbirn, GFWC President, 19601

When Katie Ozbirn from Oklahoma City delivered these words in her inaugural address as president of the GFWC in June 1960, she captured the agenda that had guided the General Federation since the end of World War II. For the previous fifteen years, the

GFWC had encouraged its members to protect democracy and preserve the American spirit. That Ozbirn’s speech also covered in detail international tensions and perceived

Soviet victories in the Cold War – the USSR had recently launched Sputnik, kicking the space race into high gear – highlighted why women’s activism was so important. As

GFWC leaders had told members time and again for more than a decade, American supremacy in the Cold War relied on personal commitment to democracy and active citizenship. As mothers and community leaders, clubwomen were poised to instill this commitment in those in their care.

For the General Federation, the source of women’s civic power was the home. It was mother who raised healthy, vital Americans versed in democratic citizenship. Such training prepared family members – especially youth – to become part of a broader

1 Katie Ozbirn, Inaugural Address as GFWC President, June 17, 1960, p. 3, GFWC, Ozbirn President Papers, Box 1, Folder 2.

277 278 democratic community, whether a local, national, or international one. Women’s public activism was an extension of what they did within the home. According to the GFWC, woman’s civic works from community improvement to voter drives to international philanthropy were outgrowths of a woman’s desire to nurture and protect those within her domain.

The GFWC’s strategy relied on the belief that women were first and foremost figurative if not literal mothers of their communities, a strategy that resonated with postwar America’s idealization of domestic life. The General Federation took pride in self-identifying as an organization of mothers and homemakers. It was not unlike the vast majority of contemporary Americans who believed that women’s primary obligation was to their domestic responsibilities. At a time when married women with young children (a target demographic of women’s clubs) was the fastest-growing sector of the labor force – indicating that American women increasingly engaged in activities besides full-time homemaking, whatever their reasons – the GFWC’s maternalist politics reasserted the priority homemaking and motherhood should have in women’s lives.

It was this shared identity among women that gave these maternal citizens their power. According to the GFWC, women could connect with other women because of their role as caretakers. It gave them a unique drive for community health at all levels.

As mothers, women were compelled to improve conditions and keep children safe. They interpreted this broadly to include not just physical safety, but emotional, economic, and political safety as well. It was on behalf of those in their care that clubwomen led voter drives and debated national policy issues. On an international level, shared maternal

279 identity united women from diverse cultures. It led clubwomen to believe that the conditions for international peace – understood as American victory in the Cold War – could be spread woman by woman, mother by mother, at the grassroots in ways that official (male) diplomacy could not.

The GFWC’s construction of gendered citizenship both contributed to and challenged cultural attitudes about women’s influence in society. Trends in psychology, sociology, and even popular culture blamed home life for individual perversions and social ills. Guilt was laid most frequently at the neurotic mother’s feet for being too strong or too weak, for dominating or for coddling, warping children’s psychological development and their ability to function normally in a democracy. Her neuroses crippled her husband as well, making him vulnerable to advances from communists and other subversives. The General Federation accepted the premise that the seeds of social health were planted in the home and played up ideas about mother’s influence on those around her. But the GFWC focused on the positive outcomes well-trained patriotic mothers could have on those within their domain, contending that without maternal guidance, the nation was doomed. Through its homemaker professionalization efforts and related program work, the GFWC claimed to give clubwomen the skills they needed to provide strong yet healthy leadership within the home and outside of it. The General

Federation kept mother at the center of national health, countering the image of the neurotic mother with the image of the responsible, patriotic one.

The GFWC’s postwar maternalism was both ideology and strategy. In one sense it was a set of beliefs about women’s domestic and civic roles based on gender identity

280 and familial responsibilities. All of the organization’s program work operated within this paradigm. As mothers, clubwomen trained citizens in the home, forged the way for international peace favorable to Western interests, and revitalized democracy and community participation. What clubwomen did at any level of society could not be separated from their maternal responsibilities. In another sense, maternalism provided justification for women’s entrance into virtually any field by dint of the special skills they brought as mothers. Clubwomen were adept at manipulating their gendered citizenship to leverage a greater public voice for themselves in all manner of debates. Ideology and strategy complemented each other.

The GFWC’s Americanism ethic was at the heart of its postwar maternalist agenda. Club leaders considered Americanism the essence of national values: democracy, self-reliance, and free enterprise. It was the General Federation’s recipe for winning the Cold War. By promulgating Americanism, clubwomen believed they were training a Cold War citizenry, bolstering the American spirit, and mitigating subversive influences. Spreading Americanism was akin to a religious calling. It aimed to rouse to action a lazy population grown soft on New Deal programs, thereby delivering the nation from an atheistic communist menace.

With the very articulation of Americanism, clubwomen declared themselves arbiters of the national character. It was the ultimate assertion of maternal authority.

Invoking their responsibility for educating the citizenry, the GFWC claimed the right to define what constituted American not only within their own homes, but in civic realms as well.

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Club leaders presented Americanism as an articulation of national values when it really was an interpretation of them. The General Federation discussed it not as an “ism” but as a disinterested ethos, a pure description of the American spirit as intended by the founding fathers. As practiced through homemaker professionalization, international affairs, and local activism, however, Americanism clearly advanced a particular ideal of the self-reliant citizen flourishing in a world of democracy and free markets. The

GFWC’s affinity for private enterprise, its belief in volunteerism, and its distrust of leftist politics all supported private institutions and actions as more American than state ones.

Americanism was hardly politically neutral.

This interpretation of American values suited the General Federation on a variety of levels. First, it pointed to the organization’s right-leaning political orientation that had emerged in the 1920s when it began to eschew social justice issues. Second, it benefited clubwomen’s overall class and racial privilege, which could be threatened by an interventionist state. Third, it endorsed the kinds of private spaces and relationships in which maternal authority thrived and were the locus of women’s perceived power.

Because the GFWC’s strategy hinged on protecting maternal authority, however, it left room for a slightly more nuanced analysis of the modern state than a strict reading of Americanism would imply. If women’s power came from the influence they had over those in their care, women needed to keep these spaces free from encroaching authorities.

Most often this translated into a politics suspicious of state activism and social justice as interfering with private realms. At times, however, the state could protect maternal authority by curtailing other influences – such as popular culture – which threatened it.

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The GFWC’s was a sort of gendered antistatism: its antistatism was a function of the extent to which the state hindered or enhanced clubwomen’s sense of power and their moral vision for America’s citizenry.

The Cold War further complicated the General Federation’s attitude toward the modern state. Victory in the Cold War required military, technological, economic and diplomatic supremacy. The General Federation embraced exercise of state power in pursuit of this advantage whether at home or abroad. In this respect, clubwomen were devoted Cold Warriors. Yet the GFWC never lost sight of the Americanism ethos. In its foreign affairs programs, international outreach, and philanthropy, the General Federation promoted democracy, self-reliance, and free enterprise as quintessential American values.

Clubwomen advanced this ethos among global networks of women, steadfast in the belief that women’s shared bond of motherhood disposed them to accept these values as the most conducive avenue to peace and prosperity.

This maternalism defies easy categorization. Americanism may have suggested sympathy with the Right on national politics, but the GFWC then framed these same principles in ways consistent with Cold War liberalism on international issues. Both approaches provided clubwomen means of fighting the Cold War. As women working together, leading their communities and training citizens in the Americanism ethic, clubwomen at home and abroad could awaken interest in democracy, self-reliance, and free enterprise. It was not a question of being Left or Right, but of being mothers nurturing and protecting those in their care and saving America from her enemies.

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In this way, the GFWC’s maternalism was its own politics. It assumed a shared desire among all women to promote peace and security. It brought women together into one organization regardless of political affiliation or even regional loyalty. Using the language of motherhood, the General Federation deftly forged a construction of gendered citizenship that seemingly de-politicized its platform into “women’s work.”

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APPENDIX A MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION1

Founded in 1890 and incorporated by Congressional charter in 1901, the General Federation united a vast membership within an extensive hierarchy while allowing for local autonomy. Per a “universal membership” by-law change in 1950, any individual clubs affiliated with a state federation automatically affiliated with the national GFWC and vice versa.

According to its federal charter, the only stipulations for GFWC club membership were that the club comprise women only and have no partisan screening process. There were, however, different levels of membership: active, associate, and junior. In the 1950s, the GFWC routinely claimed eleven million members, but this figure included all active and associate members in the United States (about 5.5 million) and international membership (5.5 million); it is worth noting that this inflated membership figure is made even more inflated because some women held membership in two or more organizations affiliated with the GFWC. At its height in 1955, the GFWC claimed 859,015 dues-paying members.

Active. Active membership applied to clubs paying per-capita dues to the state federation (amount determined by the states) and the GFWC (twenty-five cents per member as of 1949). Active member clubs could be independent women’s clubs, national organizations paying per capita dues to the GFWC, or international women’s clubs paying per capita dues to the GFWC.

Associate. Associate membership was reserved for organizations. Associate members paid dues based on association size. U.S.-based organizations paid $25, international organizations paid $10, and individual international clubs paid two dollars if they sent non-voting delegates to the annual convention and ten dollars if they sent a voting delegate to the annual convention. In 1953, the following organizations held associate membership in the GFWC: American Cancer Society, Inc, Women’s Field Army; American Jewish Congress, Women’s Division; Auxiliary to the American Osteopathic Association; Camp Fire Girls, Inc; Girls Clubs of America, Inc; Girl Scouts, Inc; Gold Star Wives of America, Inc.; Ladies Auxiliary to the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States; National Kindergarten Association; National Society, Daughters of the British Empire in the U.S.A.; Needlework Guild of America; Osteopathic Women’s National Association; Service Star Legion, Inc; Ukrainian National Women’s League of America; Union de Mujeres Americanas, Inc.; Women’s Auxiliary to National

1 Compiled from Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. II, pp. 262-272. 285 286 Chiropractic Association; and the member organizations of the General Federation Council of International Clubs (see below).

Junior. There could also be a distinction between “junior” clubwomen and “senior” clubwomen. Created by the by-laws in 1932 to attract younger members (when the founding first generation of clubwomen was passing), the Junior Department encouraged federation work among clubs with members ages seventeen to twenty-four, but many clubs designated juniors as women well into their thirties. Junior clubs could either be auxiliaries of existing women’s clubs or their own independent clubs. Clubwomen repeatedly debated whether junior status created a sort of second-class citizenship within the GFWC, but many juniors resisted “graduating” to “senior” women’s clubs, since they had built their club friendships among the juniors. Eventually the GFWC removed age restrictions on junior membership.

International Clubs, 1953: Argentina India American Women’s Clubs of Buenos Aires American Women’s Club, Bombay Contemporary Study of Buenos Aires Bombay Presidency Women’s Council 20th Century Club, Buenos Aires Time and Talent Club, Bombay Guild of Service (Central), Madras Australia American Women’s Club of Delhi Brisbane Woman’s Club Federated Association of Australian housewives Iran Karrakatta Club American Women’s Club of Tehran American Women’s Club, Sydney Iran International Women’s Organization New South Wales Women Justices’ Association Sydney Women’s Club Italy New South Wales Federation of Infants and Nursery Federazione Italin Donne, Turin Schools Lithuanian Club, Rome

Austria Japan Union of Administration Women Japanese-American Women’s Round Table, Tokyo Vienna Woman’s Club Shinsei Yokosuka Women’s Society Viennese Old Ladies’ Home Club Women’s Club of Tokyo Ikuno Ward Tenth Day Women’s Club, Osaka Belgium American Women’s Clubs of Antwerp Korea American Women’s Clubs of Brussels Federation of Korean Women’s Associations Seoul Woman’s Club Brazil Woman’s Club of Rio de Janeiro Latvia Latvian Women’s Club Canada American Woman’s Club of Calgary Lebanon Woman’s Canadian Club Beirut American Woman’s Club American Women’s Club of Montreal Montreal Women’s Club Lithuania American Women’s Club of Toronto Lithuanian Club of the Baltic Women’s Council in Baltic Woman’s Council in Canada N.Y. American Woman’s Club, Vancouver Woman’s Club of Winnepeg Malaya

287 Women’s International Club, Kuoka China Taipai International Woman’s Club, Formosa Mexico Associacion de Universitarias Mexicanas Colombia Club Internacional de Mujeres American Women’s Association of Barranquilla Club Feminino de Monterrey American Woman’s Club of Bogota Woman’s Club, Monterrey

Costa Rica Netherlands U.S.A. Women’s Club, San Jose Unie van Vrouwljke, Vrijwilligers, Amsterdam Cuba Nederlandsche Vrouwenclub, Amsterdam Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club Dames Leemuseum Club, The Hague Woman’s Club of Havana Woman’s Club of Aruba, N.W.I. Aruba Dames Club, N.W.I. Czechoslovakia Czechoslovak National Council of Women in Exile New Zealand Otago Women’s Club, Dunedin Denmark Pioneer Club, Willington American Women’s Club of Denmark Taranaki Women’s Club, New Plymouth

Egypt Norway Cairo Woman’s Club American Woman’s Club of Oslo

Estonia Pakistan Estonia Woman’s Club All Pakistan Women’s Association American Women’s Club of Karachi Europe Federation of American Women’s Clubs Overseas Portugal American Women of Lisbon Finland Woman’s Committee of the League of Tuberculosis Peru War Invalids of Finland American Women’s Literary Club, Lima

France Republic of the Philippines American Woman’s Group of Paris National Federation of Women’s Clubs of the Club Feminin de Paris Lyceum Philippines Club Feminin de Liaison Franco-Americain Centro Escolar University Woman’s Club Club Feminin de Liaison Franco-Americain, Nantes Fortnightly Club of Manila Club des Nutritionnistes, Marseilles Artacho Women’s Club Better Home Woman’s Club, Santiago Germany Cuyo Woman’s Club American Women’s Club of Berlin Ilaga Woman’s Club Allied Women’s Club, Frankfort Mactoc Woman’s Club, Naujan Baltic Women’s Council Monday Afternoon Club, Baguio Lithuanian Club Rosales Woman’s Club German-American Woman’s Club of Munich Munich Woman’s Club Saudi Arabia Landesverband Schleswig Holsteinischer Abquiq Woman’s Club Hausfrauen, Kiel Woman’s Club of Nurnberg Military Post Sweden American Women’s Club of Stockholm Great Britain Estonian Women’s Club, Goteberg American Women’s Club, London Electrical Association for Women, Bristol Switzerland

288 Malvern Ladies’ Luncheon Club American Women’s Club of Zurich Rosemary Club, Malvern Jamaica Federation of Women’s Clubs, B.W.I. Union of South Africa Jamaica Woman’s Club, B.W.I. Empire Club, Durban Greece Martha Washington Club, Johannesburg American Women’s Organization of Greece Association of Graduates of the Educational Uruguay Association American Women’s Club, Montevideo Association of Greek University Women Constantinople College Alumnae Association Venezuela Greek Federation of Women’s Clubs San Tome Women’s Club Greek Women’s Home Economic Association Hellenic-American Women’s Club U.S. Territorial Clubs Junior Women’s Group of Greece M. Eleanor Brackenridge Club Canal Zone National Union of Greek Women Balboa Woman’s Club National Women’s Organization, ‘Spitha’ Cristobal Woman’s Club Patissia Greek Ladies’ Association Gamboa Woman’s Club Public Health Nurses Association Pedro Miguel Woman’s Club Union of Intellectual Women of the Dodecanese Working Girls’ Center Hawaii Zappidon Association Hilo Woman’s Club Kalavetra Club of Women Territorial Society of Daughters of the British Morfoticos Society, Patras Empire of Hawaii National Union of Civilian War Victims, Drama We, The Women of Hawaii Progressive Women’s Union of Crete Mokihana Club Women’s Association, ‘Friends of the Police,’ Woman’s Club of Maui Piraeus Maui Hawaiian Women’s Club Women’s Club of Tripolis Puerto Rico Honduras Woman’s Civic Club of Puerto Rico Federation of Honduras Women’s Association British Honduras Federation of Women

APPENDIX B GFWC GOVERNANCE1

The GFWC governed by a constitution, by-laws, and resolutions, which members could change by vote at national conventions. For more information on the history of the organization’s structure, see Mildred White Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. I.

Most of the leadership positions were held by veteran clubwomen who had worked their way up the hierarchy from local member clubs through state federation positions and GFWC chairmanships. There was not a lot of turnover within the bureaucracy. The same women frequently rotated chairmanships in different departments and leadership names remained relatively constant in the post-World War II years.

Officers. Beginning in 1950, convention delegates voted every two years (every three years before 1950) for their GFWC president, three vice presidents, treasurer, and recording secretary. Although there was occasionally competition for “entry-level” officer slots (the third vice president, treasurer, and secretary), by the time candidates worked their way up the ladder to the higher-level leadership positions, they ran unopposed. By-laws stipulated that members could only hold one office at a time and no two officers could come from the same state. Elected officers did not hold the same position twice. The elected officers and the Director of Junior Clubs (an appointed position) comprised the GFWC Executive Council, which advised the president between Board of Directors meetings.

Chairmen. Each GFWC president appointed department program directors, who appointed chairmen to the specialized divisions within each department. The postwar Public Affairs department, for example, included divisions on citizenship, the status of women, and legislation. Most divisions and departments carried over from one GFWC presidential administration to the next, but each president tweaked the departments to suit her particular interests.

Board of Directors. Each of the officers sat on the Board of Directors along with the president of each state federation and the chairman of each program department and department division chairmen.

State Federations. Each state had its own federated structure to mirror that of the national federation, with president, three vice presidents, recording secretary, and treasurer. The state president represented the state federation at the GFWC Board of Directors. The six state officers represented the state federation at national convention.

1 Compiled from Wells, Unity in Diversity, Vol. I, pp. 351-393. 289 290

Staff. The GFWC employed a small staff, including an executive director, executive secretary, legislative director, and magazine staff. Headquarters are in Washington, D.C.

Annual Convention. In the post-World War II era, delegates met at an annual convention. Representation at convention corresponded to club size. Clubs with fewer than fifty members sent one voting delegate, clubs having between fifty and one hundred members sent two voting delegates, and clubs sent one additional voting delegate for every one hundred additional members thereafter. State federations sent delegates until 1950 by- law changes, at which point states lost proportionate representation and were represented instead by the six state officers that corresponded to the national GFWC officers. All clubwomen were welcome to attend convention.

290 291

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island Gordon Hall and Grace Hoag Collection of Dissenting and Extremist Printed Propaganda, Part I, 1926-1999

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Adorno, Theodor W., Frenkel-Brunswik, Else E., Levinson, Daniel J., and Sanford, R. Nevitt. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper and Row, 1950.

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Theses and Dissertations

Barnosky, Jason. “The Violent Years: Responses to Juvenile Crime in the 1950s and the 1990s.” PhD dissertation, Brown University, 2004.

Buchholz, Corinna A. “The Ruffin Incident and Other Integration Debates, 1890-1902.” MA thesis, Sarah Lawrence College, 2000.

Bucy, Carole Stanford. “Exercising the Franchise, Building the Body Politic: The League of Women Voters and Public Policy, 1945-1964.” PhD dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 2002.

303 Delegard, Kirsten Marie. “‘Women Patriots:’ Female Activism and the Politics of Anti Radicalism, 1919-1935.” PhD dissertation, Duke University, 1999.

Mathews-Gardner, A. Lanethea. “From Woman’s Club to NGO: The Changing Terrain of Women’s Civic Engagement in the Mid-Twentieth Century United States.” PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, 2003.

Morgan, Francesca Constance. “‘Home and Country’: Women, Nation, and the Daughters of the American Revolution, 1890-1939.” PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1998.

Nickerson, Michelle. “Domestic Threats: Women, Gender, and Conservatism in Cold War Los Angeles, 1945-1966.” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2003.

Olsen, Margaret Nunnelley. “One Nation, One World: American Clubwomen and the Politics of Internationalism, 1945-1961.” PhD dissertation, Rice University, 2007.

Phillips, Julieanne Appleson. “‘Unity in Diversity?:’ The Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Middle Class in Cleveland, Ohio, 1902-1962.” PhD dissertation, Case Western University, 1996.

Reilly, Gretchen Reilly. “‘This Poisoning of Our Drinking Water’: The American Fluoridation Controversy in Historical Context, 1950-1990.” PhD dissertation, George Washington University, 2001.

Scher, Abby. “Cold War on the Home Front: Middle Class Women’s Politics in the 1950s.” PhD dissertation, New School for Social Research, 1995.