Child star Shirley Temple died yesterday (Feb 10, 2014). After retiring from theater, she became active in the Republican Party at which time she attended various fund raising events.
She also served as U.S. Ambassador to Ghana from 1974–1976, was Chief of Protocol of the United States from 1976–1977, and was U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1989–1992.
This essay by Kären Mason, Curator of the Iowa Women’s Archives, was originally written for Akashic Books.
Chautauqua was an eagerly anticipated event in towns across the United States in the early 20th century. Huge tents were erected and a variety of speakers, performances, and children’s activities took place over the week the Chautauqua was in town. Red Oak, Iowa even constructed a permanent Chautauqua Pavilion in 1907, which is still standing and reputed to be the largest covered pavilion west of the Mississippi.
Many women lectured or performed on the Chautauqua circuit. Some, like Marian Elliot Adams, the main character of Unmentionables, lectured on women’s reform issues. Women’s suffrage was a popular topic in the years leading up to 1920, when the 19th Amendment at long last gave women the vote. Chautauqua provided an important venue for reformers to reach audiences all across the country.
The big story at the Libraries this year has been our Special Collections department’s ascendancy to social media superstardom. Here in Digital Research & Publishing, we’re happy to hook our wagon to that stardom for promoting the Libraries’ digital initiatives to the 18,000 (and counting!) followers at the UISpecColl Tumblr, and to loan our multimedia expertise to film and edit their YouTube video series. Here’s to even more public engagement success in 2014!
Digital projects featured on Tumblr:
As the nation marks the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s death, we’re celebrating the 54th anniversary of his 1959 visit to the University of Iowa campus. Not yet an official presidential candidate (coverage of his trip only made page 6 of The Daily Iowan, which instead led with some student workers’ two-day strike for a food allowance raise), Kennedy still drew a healthy audience of 1,500 to a reception at the Iowa Memorial Union. He rounded out the visit watching a home football game the following day, where he “cheered for Iowa, but prayed for Notre Dame.”
View additional Kennedy photographs from the Michael W. Lemberger Collection
View the Nov. 24th 1959 edition of The Daily Iowan
The libraries and archives that feature historic mustache images — from NYPL to the Smithsonian to our own Special Collections — are kicking into high gear in honor of Movember, so we thought we’d join in. Stealing from In tribute to the Library of Congress’ collection, we present some of the great mustaches of the Iowa Digital Library. Special thanks go to Wendy Robertson for her mustache-searching expertise.
Personal favorite:
Mustache manuscript:
“I have not been idle, nor has my beard been growing for nothing. Had it not vented its energies this way, it would assuredly have struck towards the table, with the intention of growing through it, like the dead Emperor’s that was found sitting in the mausoleum. Seriously, it is a curious & hopeful coincidence, at any rate, that my cough has continued to grow better & better, though my beard is but of a month’s existence. I cannot afford to confine myself to the moustache &c., as you do; for I have, or have had, a regular cough, which you have not. Moustaches may do well enough for occasional coughs; but the cough proper demands the whole hairy investment.”
Reach out to your book-loving friends by sharing a reading-themed eCard, featuring images from Iowa Digital Library.
Remembering Iowa City’s tornado of 2006 and floods of 2008, via Iowa Digital Library. Here’s hoping for a less extreme 2013…
Today is the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in the Brown v Board of Education, making separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The Daily Iowan story is in the May 18, 1954 issue.
The ruling did not affect Iowa because segregation of schools had been illegal since 1868.
“Our first public schools were for “white” students only. But in 1868, eighty-six years before Brown versus State Board of Education, Topeka—which struck down separate schools for blacks and whites in 1954—Alexander Clark Sr. successfully sued the City of Muscatine so his daughter, Susan, could attend the white elementary school. This was the same year that Iowa became the first northern state to guarantee black men’s right to vote.”
—Letters to a young Iowan [excerpt], Hal S. Chase
Just one year after the landmark Supreme Court ruling, Iowa students elected an African American woman, Dora Lee Martin, as homecoming queen. This election was touted in state papers as demonstrating tolerance at the University, such as this excerpt from the Sioux City Tribune-Journal.
You can read more about Dora Lee Martin in a previous blog post, Queen of the campus.
New at Iowa Digital Library:
University of Iowa College of Medicine Historical Photographs
digital.lib.uiowa.edu/com
featuring dozens of images documenting the study and practice of medicine at the UI and its surrounding area
From the Szathmary cookbook collection, a rhyming recipe from an 1860 English cookbook:
A Paradise pudding
If you’d have a good pudding pray mind what you’re taught
Take two pen ‘sworth of eggs when they’re twelve for a groat
Take of the same fruit which Eve once did cozen
When pared & well chopp’d at least half a dozen
Six ounces of bread (let your maid eat the crust)
The crumb must be grated as fine as fine dust
Six ounces of sugar won’t make it too sweet
Some salt & some nutmeg to make it complete
To these you may add if you are willing and handy
Some good lemon peel & a large glass of brandy