Out of the Archives
Cornelia Fort was an unlikely candidate to be the first American woman to die on active military duty. Born into a wealthy family in Nashville, the oldest of five children. A debutante. Sarah Lawrence graduate. Member of the Junior League of Nashville. Destined for a quiet life.
But Cornelia Fort wanted to fly, and fly she did. She took her first flying lesson in 1940, shortly after her father died. She soon became first female flight instructor in Nashville.
Long before Food Network, there was Julia Child.
When The French Chef debuted on WGBH 38 years ago this February, it was more than just one of the first cooking shows on American television. The French Chef introduced Julia Child – a true American original – to a wide American audience that, looking back, was eager to embrace a more sophisticated approach to cooking. Until her death in 2004, Julia Child remained one of the best-known and loved women in America, and the kitchen from her home in Cambridge, MA, is now on display at the …
Next up on our schedule of serialized reading is Chapter Two of The Volunteer Powerhouse, entitled “New Roles for Debutantes.” It explores the first decade of The Junior League and brings to light several traditions and core principles that remain vital threads in the Movement’s fabric even today.
We are given an in-depth portrait of the energetic and strong-willed Mary Harriman, who was intent on not living the life of the stereotypical sheltered rich girl by doing something meaningful with her life – and convincing her peers to do likewise. While commuting to Barnard one day in her horse-drawn carriage known as a sulky — or floating in a lake on her parents’ 20,000-acre estate in Orange County, N.Y. on another (reports conflict as to the timing of her idea)–she is said to have mused exuberantly that she and her fellow debutantes would go to work in the settlements on New York’s impoverished Lower East Side, work she had heard about in a lecture by Louise Lockwood.
Chapter Two of The Junior League: 100 Years of Volunteer Service, entitled “Igniting the Junior League Movement,” is next up in our handy online curriculum of required reading.
The chapter covers the years 1911 to 1919, when the last lacy frills and stiff corsets of the Victorian era were giving way to an earnest and increasingly respected band of female activists greatly influenced by the rise of the Settlement House movement. Out of the stir arose the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts, the Camp Fire Girls, the Kiwanis Club, and the …
BP’s catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf got us thinking about The Junior League’s trail-blazing legacy in environmental advocacy.
It took only a quick look through the archives to uncover several examples of brave work by various Leagues to call attention to an ecological hazard that threatened the livelihood of a community or the health of its inhabitants. But few of them better illustrate the collective power and enduring impact of a group of women united behind a single cause than the documentary film “Fate of a River: Apathy or Action,” …
Over the years, The Junior League has been the subject of two books definitely worth a read, The Junior League: 100 Years of Volunteer Service and The Volunteer Powerhouse.
Loaded with important history, profiles of inspiring women, and compelling coverage of significant accomplishments with great relevance to The Junior League of today (and an occasional bit of juicy trivia), the titles are increasingly tough to get your hands on, so we decided to serialize them, chapter by chapter, here on connected to make them more accessible to members.
Given the Junior League’s rich history and its knack for meticulous record-keeping, we thought it would be fun to introduce a new component to Connected. Dubbed “Out of the Archives” and featured in each issue, this article will bring to light significant events in the history of the Junior League and endeavor to explain how they reflect the context of their time.
In 1901, 86 years before Congress formalized Women’s History Month and 19 years before American women were given the right to vote, a young New York socialite named Mary Harriman had an idea unusual for her class and time: that women had an important role to play as civic leaders. The result was the start of an all-women volunteer organization called The Junior League, now with 160,000 members in 292 independent Leagues in the U.S., Canada, the UK and Mexico.
