News from the Archives – News from the Iowa Women's Archives

Kerber Grant Recipient’s Work Will Feature Political Activist Edna Griffin

Edna Griffin, known as the Rosa Parks of Iowa, has gained deserved attention over the years for her civil rights activism, especially for her role in the effort to desegregate the lunch counter at Katz Drug Store in Des Moines. Her actions resulted in a successful suit against the store under Iowa’s 1884 Civil Rights Act. At the Iowa Women’s Archives, where Griffin’s papers are held, visitors come in looking for her picture or hoping to glimpse her FBI file. Dr. Melissa Ford, Associate Professor of History at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, wanted to dig deeper.

Dr. Ford is a scholar of Black American history and a recipient of the Linda and Richard Kerber Travel Grant, which assists scholars in traveling to Iowa City for their research. Ford’s research focuses on the intersections of race, gender, and class in the social movements of the Midwest. Her most recent book, A Brick and a Bible: Black Women’s Radical Activism in the Midwest During the Great Depression won the 2023 Illinois State Historical Society Certificate of Excellence. Building on her previous work, she plans to write a series of short biographies on Black activists entitled Their Examples Will Inspire Us: Five Black Communist Women. Edna Griffin will be one of the five.

Ford also knew of Griffin initially for her boycott of and suit against Katz Drug Store, but she also knew that her political activism went far beyond the boycott and into labor unions, peace activism, and organizations like the Progressive Party, which was the first political party in the United States to nominate a Black woman for Vice President.

Black and white portrait of a smiling Black woman with an afro. — Portrait of Edna Griffin from the Edna Griffin papers, Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries.

During her time at IWA, Ford dug into the Edna Griffin papers and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (Des Moines Chapter) records, to find out about Griffin before and after the famous State v. Katz case went to the Iowa Supreme court. Through a close reading of her FBI file, interview transcript, and Progressive Party materials, Ford found an activist who never tired. Even in the 1980s when she was over 70 years old, Griffin was arrested protesting nuclear weapons.

Ford says the sources she found in IWA and Special Collections & Archives were “immensely helpful” in contextualizing Griffin within Black Des Moines in the 1950s and the peace activism movement. But her favorite find the Archives was personal. Ford has a connection to Iowa. Her father had been politically active in Des Moines in the 1970s. While reading a newsletter from Griffin’s papers, she spotted the name of an organization he had been in and realized she and Edna Griffin were just a few “degrees of separation” away from each other!

We loved having Dr. Melissa Ford at the Archives and can’t wait to read her fresh and in-depth take on the life of Edna Griffin and four other Black woman activists!

Kerber Grant Recipient Ezra Temko Delves into Gender Parity in Politics at IWA

A man sitting at a table with archival boxes and a laptop, holding up a black and white image of a woman

Every year, the Linda and Richard Kerber Travel Grant allows researchers from across the country to come to Iowa City and use the Iowa Women’s Archives’ collections. Ezra Temko, is the grant’s first second-time winner. He first visited the IWA in 2018 as a PhD candidate in Sociology from the University of New Hampshire, where his research investigated gender representation in politics. Temko’s interest in Iowa was peaked when he learned that in 2009, it became the only state in the U.S. to require gender balance for state and local boards and commissions. Through personal interviews and his research at IWA, he discovered that the law’s underpinnings went back decades. IWA collections like the Iowa Women’s Political Caucus records and Governor Ray’s Commission on the Status of Women records played a central role in contextualizing his dissertation research. Here, Temko says, he found local stories that he could find nowhere else, like this one that Temko related from A Political Dialogue: Iowa’s Women Legislators Oral Histories:

“[ Joan] Lipsky was president of the Cedar Rapids AAUW. Her local school board was all men, and had a policy of having outgoing board members resign the summer before the elections, with the board appointing someone who could then run as an incumbent, giving them an advantage. They only appointed men, and when they appointed an incompetent man, Lipsky ran against him and lost. She then formed a coalition that put political pressure on the board to appoint a woman in 1958, and subsequently the coalition put pressure on the city council and county board to appoint women to their boards and commissions, something the local governments resisted. (Lipsky later ran for and served in the state legislature.)”

Now five years later, Dr. Ezra Temko is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and he’s extending his dissertation research into a digital humanities project that will place Iowa’s political gender balance history into an online format. Temko wants a timeline that will move beyond the theoretical and transport users into the events and happenings that built up to Iowa’s 2009 law. But while developing the timeline, he found gaps in his original research. To successfully transform his dissertation into an online interactive experience, he needed more detailed stories to hook new researchers, and more images to illustrate them. So, it was back to IWA!

Over a six days of research in the IWA, Temko revisited collections he’d seen in 2018 like the Johnie Hammond papers and spent more time with the papers of politicians like Minnette Doderer and Beverly Hannon who battled sexism inside and outside of the state legislature. Temko found that women confronted the sexism that frustrated their work in different ways. Some leaned into the Iowa legislature’s women’s caucus to find solidarity, others pursued alternate routes. Temko’s favorite archival find from IWA was a picture with little holes from the Beverly A. Hannon papers. Hannon, a senator in the state legislature, had put pins into pictures of other legislators who frustrated her.

Temko’s timeline is not yet available online, but thanks to his week in the Iowa Women’s Archives, he’s feeling optimistic that he’ll soon be unveiling a digital resource that will introduce a new audience to half-century long story of board and commission gender balance in Iowa.

Women, Disability, and Reparative Description in IWA

Image of Judy Hoit with crown and sash that reads "Handicapped Woman of Iowa 1991."

The following post was written by IWA Student Specialist, Abbie Steuhm.

In the process of creating a LibGuide on women and disability for the Iowa Women’s Archives (IWA), I discovered a trove of artifacts from disabled women and disability advocates. However, this did not come easy as the history was hidden by its description.

I began my process by simply locating finding aids with the words “disability, disabled, disabilities,” etc. This yielded a handful of sources about disabled women and disability advocates from around the seventies and eighties, but not much more than that. However, I came across an idea when I read through the finding aid of Elizabeth D. Riesz. One folder in Riesz’s collection was titled “Johnson County Association of Retarded Citizens,” which made me realize that I was using the wrong language in my search. By using the outdated language listed by the National Center on Disability and Journalism, I pulled in significantly more sources than in previous searches.

Letter from the Arc of Johnson County soliciting donations — **Arc Donation letter from the Elizabeth D. Riesz papers**

While I was able to discover more sources, a new problem emerged. These collections use outdated and inaccurate language to describe disabled people, making them not only harder to find but also perpetuating harmful stereotypes. Many archives and libraries are reanalyzing their collection descriptions in what is called “reparative description.” Archivists like Annalisa Moretti from Harvard’s Houghton Library have been incorporating disability studies into their descriptions to replace harmful language and bring out hidden disability history. Using Moretti’s and other archivists’ experience and disability studies, I embarked on a reparative description project in the IWA.

The organization from Elizabeth D. Riesz’s collection was found in several other collections, such as the Ruth Salzmann Becker papers. I began by researching the Johnson County Association, finding that they renamed themselves to the Arc of Southeast Iowa. On the organization’s website, they state that they “stopped recognizing the acronym ARC or ‘Association of Retarded Citizens’” to take on “a descriptive meaning for ‘The Arc’…representing a bridge in services.”

Newspaper article about Mrs. Don Alt titled "Director of Community Relations: 1966 Easter Seal Chairman Named" — **Newspaper article about Easter Seals Iowa from the Greenberg Family papers, 1966**

Knowing this, I changed the folder title in Riesz’s collection from “Johnson County Association of Retarded Citizens” to “Arc of Southeast Iowa.” This way the harmful language is removed, and researchers coming from Arc can discover Riesz’s collection. I did the same process with the Greenberg Family papers and the Welch and Angrick papers. Both these collections included folders titled “Polk County Society for Crippled Children and Adults,” and my research found that the organization took on their early nickname “easter seals” as their new name becoming “Easterseals Iowa.”

Not every collection had a simple solution. When I came across the “Blosser Home for Crippled Children” name in the Marie Tener Havel papers, I found that building would later become a women’s home, leaving behind its previous occupation. Since there is no modern alternative to this name, my only choice is to leave it as is. If I were to change the name of the home, then I would be erasing its history as a home for children with disabilities. This case showed how we cannot change every word in these descriptions, and that the words we use in descriptions now hold weight.

Image of several children with disabilities attending day camp in Wapello County Iowa

Another instance of this issue occurring was with the Judy Herron Hoit papers. Hoit was a pageant winner, wheelchair user, and disability advocate. One of her most notable achievements was winning the Handicapped Woman of Iowa Pageant in 1991. The term “handicapped” is currently being replaced with “disabled” and other disability-specific terms. However, like in Marie Tener Havel’s collection, the pageant was a one-of-a-kind event that is no longer held. To preserve history, the name itself must remain as is.

My reparative description project allowed me to make significant changes to the IWA’s collections, as well as bring to light some forgotten disability history. It also revealed the issue of repairing names and titles that use harmful and outdated language. While we cannot change every description, we can encourage the use of modern language and disability studies to our researchers so that they know how to properly describe disability history. As archivists, we should also continue our work in reparative description and do our own research on how to properly describe various topics without relying on our biased assumptions. This way, we try to prevent the harm caused by inappropriate description.

Kick Off Women’s History Month with the Iowa Women’s Archives

The Iowa Women’s Archives (IWA) will kick off Women’s History Month with an event at the Iowa City Public Library! The Purpose of the Pelvic: A Historical Analysis will bring Dr. Wendy Kline, the Dema G. Seelye Chair in the History of Medicine at Purdue University, to discuss the history of the pelvic exam and the insights that history offers into questions of gender, medicine, and power.

The Purpose of the Pelvic: A Historical Analysis

Where: Iowa City Public Library, meeting room A OR Iowa City Public Library YouTube livestream

When: March 24, 2022, 4:30 – 6pm

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires as reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact the Iowa Women’s Archives in advance: 319-335-5068.

Ever since the introduction of the pelvic exam as a gynecological procedure in the late 19th century, consumers and doctors have struggled to define the boundaries between preventive health and sexual impropriety. In the early twentieth century, for example, cancer awareness programs were stymied by the failure of the press to print particular words deemed “inappropriate,” such as “uterus, cervix, discharge, bloody, or menses.” And despite the emergence of second wave feminism in the 1970s, discomfort around discussing female sex organs remains a major problem, even leading to a congresswoman getting banned from speaking on the House floor after using the term “vagina” in 2012. This shaming of women’s reproductive anatomy takes a toll on all women, who have picked up the cue that they, too, should remain silent about their bodies. Researchers have documented the impact this silencing has had on women’s care, including a lack of basic anatomical knowledge and the importance of routine gynecological care. In a 2017 U.S. study, for example, only about half of women surveyed about cervical cancer screening felt they knew the purpose of the routine pelvic exam.

Speculum, Box 63, Emma Goldman Clinic (Iowa City) records, Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa.

This talk suggests that the pelvic exam is more than just a medical procedure; it is a window into a deeper, more meaningful set of questions about gender, medicine, and power. From gynecological research on enslaved women’s bodies to practice on anesthetized patients, the pelvic exam as we know it today carries the burden of its history. By looking through that window, we can begin to understand why the pelvic exam remains both mysterious and contentious.

Wendy Kline, PhD, Dema G. Seelye Chair in the History of Medicine at Purdue University, is internationally recognized for her scholarship in the history of medicine, history of women’s health and the history of childbirth. She is the author of three major books: Coming Home: How Midwives Changed Birth (Oxford University Press, 2019); Bodies of Knowledge: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Women’s Health in the Second Wave (U. of Chicago Press 2010); and Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom (U. of California Press, 2001). Her current book project, Exposed: A History of the Pelvic Exam, is under contract with Polity Press. She has appeared in the Netflix documentary, Sex, Explained, as well as the PBS documentary, The Eugenics Crusade, and will appear in the Showtime documentary, Pharma, in 2023. Her research has been funded by major fellowships, including a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar fellowship, a British Academy Fellowship, and a Huntington Fellowship. Kline is also a professional violinist. You can learn more about her at www.wendykline.com.

Enterprising Women: Three Profiles from the Fellows Family papers

Graduation portrait of Clara Conrad, 1903

The following post was written by IWA Student Specialist, Avery Porter.

Clara Conrad entered the Graham Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1902. She was the first student to enroll in the new program and the only person in her class. A full graduation ceremony was held in her honor a year later proclaiming her as one of the first graduates from a professional nursing program in Iowa. Her daughter, Frances Hogle, and granddaughters, Ann Fellows and Carol Fellows, would also go on to have momentous adventures of their own.

Frances Hogle, the daughter of Clara Conrad Hogle, earned both a Bachelor and Master of Arts from the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa). She used her degrees to teach in rural Iowa for years before moving to Texas with her husband Kenneth Fellows. While there she worked as a pianist for the local Methodist Church and was the society editor for her husband’s paper, the Alice Echo. In 1999, she wrote an autobiography describing her life and the adventures she had while exploring the world. She and her husband spent much of their time traveling, especially after retirement. They traveled around the United States regularly and often took cruises everywhere from Alaska to Russia.

From left to right: Ann Christenson, Kate Dale, baby Maggie Dale, and Frances Hogle, 2000.

Ann Fellows, the eldest child of Frances Fellows, had the same interest in exploring the world as her parents. After returning to her mother’s alma mater to get a degree in Political Science in 1958, she moved to New York City and worked at Time Magazine as a clerk. In the summer of 1960, she participated in Operation Crossroads Africa to improve roads in Sierra Leone. Then she returned to the Midwest to work at the Lake County Public Library in Indiana. A few years later the travel bug hit again, and Fellows moved to Australia to work overseas. When she returned from that trip, she married John Christenson and lived in Rockledge, Florida. The couple moved to Minnesota, which they called home for many years, and eventually settled in Iowa City, Iowa to be closer to their adult children. There Ann Fellows Christenson joined 100 Grannies, a non-profit organization that is dedicated to green energy and has their records housed at the Iowa Women’s Archives.

Carol Fellows in Kalamath Falls, Oregon at the Merle West Cancer Treatment Center, 1997.

Carol Fellows, the second daughter of Frances Fellows, made strides into the medical field like her great grandmother Clara. In 1972, she graduated with a MD from the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. She excelled in the jobs she took, even getting Intern of the Year at her position at the Rose Medical Center in Denver, Colorado. She moved to Capser, Wyoming where she became the first radiation oncologist in the state. While there she co-founded the Central Wyoming Cancer Center and Hospice Program. She served as the center’s first director for almost ten years. A career change came when Fellows decided to leave the medical field and become the chief of Staff to Mike Sullivan, the then Governor of Wyoming, in 1987. Two years later the call of the medical field returned, and she moved to Kalamath Falls, Oregon to found the Merle West Cancer Medical Center (now Sky Lakes). Even after retirement in 2005, she rose to leadership in her local Rotary Club and worked on volunteer projects relentlessly.

These are just a few of the adventures found of the Fellows Family papers. The papers cover the lives of these four wonderful women and their extended family as they live through major world events and everyday achievements. From the American Civil War to running an award-winning paper, this collection is full of adventure.

Women Safe After Dark? The Beginnings of Take Back the Night at the University of Iowa

On September 12, 1979, an advertisement for a rally appeared in the campus newspaper, the Daily Iowan. The outline of a woman with bows and arrows, shooting into the night sky was accompanied with the promise, “Friday evening at 8 p.m., the women of Iowa City will have a chance to support each other in a move to reclaim the freedom that comes from being unafraid.” September 14^th, 1979 would be Iowa City’s first major Take Back the Night Rally. The rally inspired hundreds of women to attend, spawned weeks of angry debate in the Daily Iowan, and started a tradition of rallies against sexual violence in Iowa City that continues over forty years later.

Flyer for the first Take Back the Night event in Iowa City, summer of 1979

The term Take Back the Night had been coined just two years earlier in 1977 when activist Anne Pride used it as the title of a memorial at an anti-violence rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The phrase became a rallying cry for women sick of being afraid to walk alone at night and tired of rapists getting away with their crimes. The movement spread quickly, and by the summer of 1979, Iowa City had already had one small rally protesting a local spike in violence against women. After this, Iowa City women formed a committee, supported by the University’s Women’s Resource and Action Center, to plan a larger rally “for women to assert their right to safety on the streets and in their homes.”

The rally took place from 8:00 to 10:00 pm at College Green Park, near the downtown, which had become a hot spot for rape, attempted rape, and sexual harassment. The Rape Victim Advocacy Program provided maps of the area to attendees marking over 100 reported incidences of sexual violence from January 1978 to March 1979.

In response to this reality, Take Back the Night’s schedule had strong themes of education, self-expression, and self-defense. The planning committee included other organizations like a local chapter of NOW and the Rape Victim Advocacy Program and the University of Iowa’s Taekwondo Club to provide self-defense tactics to women in attendance. Local artists also inspired attendees with songs like “Fight Back” by Holly Near with powerful lyrics:

“Some have an easy answer

Buy a lock and live in a cage

But my fear is turning to anger

And my anger is turning to rage

And I won’t live my life in a cage – no!”

A map of Iowa City shows reported incidences of sexual violence over 14 months from 1978 – 1979.

In an event full of rage, perhaps the most infuriating part was a play: “Rape on Trial.” The scene was set as a courtroom with judge, lawyers, and jury. The victim took the stand, detailing a truly awful crime in which a rapist broke into her home and force himself upon her. The characters framed her as an unreliable witness, criticizing her actions like wearing a nightgown and sleeping with the window open on a hot day, while the rapist was valorized for his civic engagement, career, and status as a father. The audience was then privy to the jury’s deliberations during which the jurors say “I think she’s lying,” and “I don’t think that we should ruin this poor man’s life or his whole career for that matter.” The jury found him not guilty. For the women watching, it must have been an emotional, angering experience.

The first major Take Back the Night rally in Iowa City was a success with an attendance of about 500 women, over 300 of which stayed to march after the rally. However, the coverage after the event hinged on something else entirely: the committee’s decision to make Take Back the Night a women’s-only event. Men who approached College Green Park on the night of September 14^th were approached by groups of women and given cards stating: “Given the nature of rape and sexual abuse, the presence of men here will make some women uncomfortable. Men sensitive to this issue will demonstrate their concern by not attending this rally which has been organized by women for women. Thank you for your cooperation.” The Rape Crisis Line sponsored an alternate event for men who supported Take Back the Night at the Wesley House downtown.

Cards were given to men who approached the rally, asking them to keep the space for women only.

The women handing out cards were described by some as “guards” and by others as “para-military.” One person even complained to the police. On September 17^th the Daily Iowan published an editorial by Michael Humes title “Taking Back Everyone’s Night.” Humes recognized that the rally did let men stay after receiving the card, but then complained about the “exclusionary intent” and accused Take Back the Night of “identifying all men with rapists.” Over the next two weeks, Take Back the Night’s supporters, the Humes camp, and many others in the middle consumed the Daily Iowan’s editorial page with a debate over whether the rally’s planners had been unfair to men. As Jane Vanderbosch insightfully said her letter to the editor, “It is somewhat ironic to realize that Humes’ ‘rage’ was not ‘denied.’ It covered a good portion of the editorial page, as did his ‘possible resentment.’ Neither the rage nor resentment of the 500 women who attended the rally was given much coverage.”

But their rage would continue to be heard in Take Back the Night rallies, and will be again this week on April 26^th, 2022 when a Take Back the Night rally will take place on the Pentacrest starting at 6pm. All are encouraged to attend.

Kittredge Cherry and Audrey Lockwood: A Love Story

This post was written by IWA Student Specialist, Abbie Steuhm.

The LGBTQ+ community has grown in incredible size and visibility in the last decade. The legalization of same-sex marriage in the U.S. in 2015 was a colossal milestone for LGBTQ+ rights, and it has arguably helped in the normalization and acceptance of LGBTQ+ people nationwide. However, one may wonder about the lives of queer couples before this milestone. What did they do when they wanted to take their relationship to the next level? Did they just live together? Did they even believe in the concept of marriage? Kittredge Cherry and Audrey Lockwood’s forty-seven years together as a married lesbian couple helps answer these questions.

Cherry and Lockwood met as students at the University of Iowa.

Reverend Kittredge “Kitt” Lynne Cherry and Audrey Ellen Lockwood were both born in 1957, with Cherry living in Iowa and Lockwood living in Wisconsin. The two graduated from the University of Iowa together in 1979 with Bachelor of Arts degrees. The couple then lived together in Japan, with Cherry on a studying-abroad scholarship and Lockwood beginning her career in business, before returning to the U.S. and settling in San Francisco, California. It was in San Francisco that Cherry and Lockwood became involved in the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), one of the few Christian churches that welcomed the LGBTQ+ community. The two are now living together in Los Angeles, where Cherry continues her work on LGBTQ+ and spirituality via her blog Q Spirit.

It was in 1975 during their freshman year that Audrey Lockwood and Kittredge Cherry locked eyes with one another for the first time—and certainly not the last—while attending the University of Iowa. Lockwood reminisces on their meeting in her short article “My Summer of Love,” noting how her and Cherry “managed to get ourselves out of Burge Dorm and into the Stanley all girls’ dorm sophomore year, where we fell madly in love, as we watched beautiful sunsets from our room on the 10th floor overlooking the Iowa River.”

That love continued to flourish even as the couple traveled to Japan and then to Los Angeles, California, where Cherry was ordained as a minister for the MCC. Together, the couple advocated for LGBTQ+ rights, particularly LGBTQ+ rights within the Christian church. Cherry has written many books and articles about LGBTQ+ people’s spirituality and sexuality within the Christian church, from Hide and Speak: A Coming Out Guide (2006) to The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision (2014). One of the earliest articles Cherry was involved in was the 1989 Los Angeles Times article, “Marriage Between Homosexuals is Nothing New for Some in S.F.,” where Cherry gives the proud statement that she still lives by to this day:

“I don’t think we need the state to tell us our marriage is real. I think our marriage is just as real now as if it were legally recognized.”

Despite legal marriage equality being decades away, they were married by the Metropolitan Community Church in 1987.

Same-sex marriage at this time was illegal, and most churches refused to even marry same-sex couples in spirit, but Cherry and Lockwood found a wonderfully willing ministry through the MCC. In 1987, Lockwood and Cherry were married, and they lived together happily as one of the few lesbian couples who were proudly “out” during the time. Despite not being legally married, Lockwood and Cherry nevertheless vowed their commitment to one another under their own beliefs and religion. They lived together for the next forty years until their marriage was legalized after the Obergefell vs. Hodges decision in 2015. They continue living happily ever after in Los Angeles to this very day.

It was no doubt a long road that Cherry and Lockwood traveled to get to where they are now along with the rest of the LGBTQ+ community. Cherry and Lockwood’s photobooks gives wonderful detail and insight into the history of the LGBTQ+ community, from every cat adopted and protest marched in the fight for same-sex marriage. Such a long, winding history, and yet Lockwood still remembers her time in the University of Iowa dorms. In the last lines of her article “My Summer of Love,” Lockwood says:

“To this day I can still see the view from 10th floor Stanley, as we listened to the Brandenburg concertos, Chopin nocturnes, and David Bowie singing ‘Oh You Pretty Things.’”

Civil Rights Trailblazer June Davis Donates Papers to IWA

This post is by Archives Assistant Heather Cooper.

The Iowa Women’s Archives recently received the first installment of a new collection of personal papers from Norma June Wilson Davis. Davis, who later became an administrator at the University of Iowa, was at the forefront of the student civil rights movement in Atlanta, Georgia, in the early 1960s. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1940, Davis recalled that she realized she was different at a young age and resisted expectations that she sit at the back of the bus or drink at the water fountains marked for African Americans’ use when she went into town with her mother. Primarily known as “Norma” prior to her marriage, Wilson moved to Atlanta in 1957 to attend Spelman College and was part of a community of students from several Black colleges and universities who were inspired to organize their own protest movement after the first student sit-ins took place in Greensboro, North Carolina. Wilson was a central figure in what became known as the Atlanta Student Movement (ASM). Announcing their presence on the civil rights stage, representatives took out full-page advertisements in several newspapers, outlining their grievances and objectives. In “An Appeal for Human Rights,” Atlanta students declared that “Today’s youth will not sit by submissively, while being denied all of the rights, privileges, and joys of life. … [W]e plan to use every legal and non-violent means at our disposal to secure full citizenship rights as members of this great Democracy of ours.” As chair of the ASM’s Action Committee, Wilson played a major role in organizing the rallies, picket lines, economic boycotts, and sit-ins that swept Atlanta and the region from 1960 to 1961. The IWA is honored to preserve the papers of N. June Davis in our repository.

From “An Appeal for Human Rights,” March 9, 1960

Macon News, December 7, 1960. Norma Wilson center.

Although her name is far less known than some other civil rights activists, Wilson was a trailblazer in the student movement. Readers are likely familiar with the “Freedom Rides” organized by James Farmer and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) in 1961 – a campaign to challenge segregation in interstate travel and accommodations. Six months before Farmer organized the first so-called “Freedom Rides,” Norma Wilson and other members of the ASM led their own effort to challenge segregation in facilities for interstate travelers. In 1960, Wilson and two other students boarded a Greyhound bus on the Atlanta-to-Jacksonville route. When the bus stopped at a station in Macon, Georgia, they tried to dine in the all-white cafeteria and were subsequently taken into police custody. Davis recalled, “So, we went to the police station and the police chief and I talked and I said, ‘You know we haven’t broken any laws.’ And he said, ‘We don’t serve you.’ And I said, ‘The Supreme Court just said you will.’ So, he left the office and went out, conversed with some people, and found out I was right.” One newspaper noted that it was “the first such integration attempt reported in Macon.” Davis remembered that, after reading about the bus station confrontation in the newspaper, James Farmer called ASM leader Lonnie King and said, “’I like the idea of the rides that you took. I think I’m going to call them Freedom Rides.'” “And that,” Davis said, “is how the Freedom Rides were born.”

Wilson and her colleagues were not actually arrested in Macon, but arrest was a regular occurrence for students and others who participated in sit-ins and other public demonstrations. The President of Spelman College actually sent letters to parents to inform them that students’ participation in demonstrations “on the desegregation front” could lead to arrest and time in jail. Wilson was sentenced to time in a number of different facilities, including two weeks in a work camp where male prisoners worked on a chain gang and female prisoners picked crops and worked in the kitchen or laundry. Davis recalled, it was “not a safe situation … for the women.” Following one of Wilson’s arrests, the Dean of Women at Spelman telegrammed Wilson’s mother: “REGRET DAUGHTER IN JAIL. REFUSES BAIL.” Wilson and others often refused bail and organized a “jail without bail” campaign in order to pack the jails and “hopefully strain the financial resources of the county.” It was another attempt to use economic pressure to force change. Two years before Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Wilson and other participants in the “jail without bail” program issued a public statement from the Atlanta city jail: “[T]he only way we can achieve our freedom is by being willing to endure and suffer the hardships that are encountered in the achievement of freedom. I only wish that each of you were here to share the darkness of this room, this hard bunk, the smell of the place, and the filth, but yet the light of freedom is slowly slipping in.”

This blog highlights just a few moments in June Davis’s story. This first installment in our new collection of Davis’s personal papers includes fascinating material from her years in Atlanta, including correspondence and a journal from her time in jail, original newspapers and movement publications, and the transcript of an oral history about her work in the ASM. We look forward to receiving and exploring more material that sheds light on Davis’s life and work in Iowa. After moving here with her family in 1968, Davis continued to be a community activist, serving, for example, on an advisory committee that investigated racism in the Iowa City school system. Davis also had a long career at the University of Iowa, where she worked in Residence Services, Finance and University Services, and the Office of Affirmative Action.

Kick off Women’s History Month with the Iowa Women’s Archives

The Iowa Women’s Archives (IWA) will kick off Women’s History Month with an event at the Iowa City Public Library! Welcoming the Immigrants: Refugee Resettlement in Jewish Iowa will bring Dr. Jeannette Gabriel of the Schwalb Center for Israel & Jewish Studies at theUniversity of Nebraska-Omaha to Iowa City. In her talk, Gabriel will use IWA resources to examine the impact of WWII refugees on Iowa’s Jewish Communities. The event will take place 4:30 – 6pm simultaneously at the Iowa City Public Library, Meeting Room A and online, livestreamed on the ICPL’s YouTube channel.

Dr. Jeannette Gabriel will speak at IWA’s Women’s History Month event.

The Iowa Women’s Archives has long held strong collections in Jewish history, including the papers of one of our founders, Louise Rosenfield Noun and the papers of Joan Lipsky, the first woman to represent Linn County in the Iowa General Assembly. Lipsky had a strong interest in preserving the history of women like her own Jewish ancestors who immigrated to Iowa. She gave $50,000 to IWA to establish the Jewish Women in Iowa Project and hire Jeannette Gabriel as its project archivist. For three years, Gabriel worked closely with potential donors around the state to bring Iowa’s Jewish history to the University of Iowa.

Today, thanks in part to her work, the IWA has 50 collections documenting Jewish life in Iowa including the papers of Gusti Kollman, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria who settled in Mt. Vernon Iowa, and the records of the Shaare Zion Synagogue and Mt. Sinai Temple in Sioux City, that offer a window into one of Iowa’s largest Jewish communities of the mid-20th century.

Welcoming the Immigrants is part of a semester long schedule of events celebrating Anne Frank and Jewish life in Iowa. This larger program, The Anne Frank Tree: Taking Root in Iowa, will culminate April 29th 2022 on the Pentacrest with a planting ceremony for a sapling propagated from the immense horse chestnut tree that grew in the courtyard behind the annex where Anne Frank and her family hid for 761 days during World War II. It will be only the 13th Anne Frank Tree planted in the United States. For a full schedule of this semester’s Anne Frank Tree events, see the project’s website or contact the Obermann Center.

Welcoming the Immigrants: Refugee Resettlement in Jewish Iowa

Where: Iowa City Public Library, meeting room A OR Iowa City Public Library YouTube livestream

When: March 1, 2022, 4:30 – 6pm

Disability Rights in the Elizabeth Riesz Papers

The following post was written by IWA Student Assistant, Abbie Steuhm.

The Disability Rights Movement has seen great progress and recognition in recent years; however, as with most social movements, the historic past for disabled people is one of severe discrimination and offensive, prejudiced, and even racist language.

On January 30, 1972, Anthony Shaw, M.D. published an article titled “’Doctor, Do We Have a Choice?’” in The New York Times, where he discussed guiding parents in their decision about whether to allow their infant born with Down Syndrome to have life-saving surgery, or to let them die. In his article, Shaw shares how he knew many other physicians who were parents of children with Down Syndrome and how “almost all have placed them in institutions,” remarking that “couples who are success-oriented and have high expectations for their children are likely to institutionalize their mentally deficient offspring rather than keep them at home.” Shaw continues his prejudiced commentary by adding that “although most parents allow the necessary surgery, many of them would be relieved to have their [child] die.”

However, through scouring the IWA, a common thread in history can be found: if there is a public forum, people will use it to express their own beliefs. Which is exactly what happened with Shaw’s New York Times article. Social workers, employees of state health departments, and average people wrote to the editor to address Shaw’s disturbing prejudices with their own life experiences.

Mrs. Ethel H. Basch, a social worker and mother of a child with Down Syndrome, replied, “Some of the things that Dr. Anthony Shaw said… made me hopping mad… It has been my experience that the physician is the last one to offer supportive help for the parents of defective children…”

Japanese translation of Riesz’s book, First Years of a Down’s Syndrome Child

Dennis R. Ferguson, an employee of the Connecticut State Department of Health, replied, “I draw a very distinct difference between abortions and postnatal euthanasia. I cannot accept Dr. Shaw’s posture that parents of handicapped children have the legal and/or moral responsibility of determining whether this human being lives or dies.”

Shaw’s article may appear as an oddity considering its placement within the Elizabeth D. Riesz papers. Elizabeth Riesz, born 1937, was a teacher, educational consultant, and advocate for services for disabled people. Her own daughter Sarah, born 1972, had Down Syndrome, which made Riesz realize how little resources there were for parents of children with Down Syndrome. Instead of following Shaw’s statement on placing children in an institution, Riesz raised Sarah at home. Sarah would later be among the first students with disabilities to be integrated into the Iowa City public school system.

Elizabeth Riesz would continue her advocacy, becoming the president of the Association for Retarded Citizens (ARC) of Johnson County (1977-1982) and traveling to Osaka, Japan to speak about disability resources and programs, with some of those programs being implemented in Japanese schools. Riesz would also go on to create the Let’s Cook!: Healthy Meals for Independent Living cookbook. This cookbook, designed for people with disabilities who live independently, gives a variety of nutritious recipes from Apricot Curry Chicken to Smothered Porkchops, along with clear instructions, large photo illustrations, and meal planning and preparation advice. In the cookbook’s introduction, Riesz shared how her daughter had three heart problems along with Down syndrome “that caused her to grow slowly and left her physically weak.” But Sarah grew up strong and healthy, and in her teenage years, Riesz and Sarah’s father “loved coming home from work on Mondays! That’s the day of the week that Sarah cooked… for our family.” Sarah’s recipes would become the foundation for the cookbook, and her meals are eaten and loved by many.

Example recipe from Let’s Cook! employs large print and step by step guides to cooking

So, why would one find Shaw within Riesz’s collection of achievements and work for disability rights? Shaw’s article was published in 1972, the same year Sarah Riesz was born. Instead of finding resources, programs, and a supportive community for her newborn daughter, Elizabeth Riesz instead found an article published in a popular newspaper from a doctor tasked with performing surgeries on children like Sarah, discussing his encouragement of parents to euthanize their children born with Down Syndrome, as the only other supposed option was institutionalizing the child. Faced with such heavy-handed discrimination from the very people who are supposed to help save children like Sarah, Riesz went against all odds and created her own programs and resources. Riesz raised her daughter at home, supporting her throughout her life. Riesz then shared her achievements with those in Iowa City and even Japan. Shaw’s article serves as evidence to what disabled people faced within the medical system and their daily lives. Elizabeth and Sarah Riesz are truly inspirational for not only proving Shaw incredibly wrong, but also working to improve their own lives and the lives of disabled people during a time where disabilities were grounds for death.