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Nine women whose lives have contributed to West Virginia history are profiled in these collected essays. These women have made significant contributions to history as: midwife, physician, journalist, photographer, educator, musician, civic activist, and social reformer. The stereotypical image of a powerless, barefooted, uneducated girl is proven to be distorted and false. The profiles instead provide alternative ways to view women who were in harmony with as well as in opposition to the role expectations of their society and times. These essays are not intended to commemorate the death of renowned historical subjects. Instead, they celebrate the lives and contributions of ordinary women by showing that greatness is not easily defined and that history is also the experiences of people in our own neighborhoods, many of whom are women. The nine women are: Susan Dew Hoff, Clara Cogar Bender, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Fannie Holroyd, and Catherine Bliss Enslow. Photographs of all nine women are included. (APG)
This collection of essays chronicles the contributions of 14 West Virginia women active in individual and group endeavors from 1824 to the present. Because the achievements of these women are absent from previous histories of West Virginia, their stories constitute missing chapters in the state's history. Some of these women made contributions in traditional feminine roles while others achieved success in professional and public fields. The lives and careers of these West Virginia women prove that they have not been merely passive observers of history, but active participants in the process. Although not all the women are West Virginia natives, they have all had a share in the state's development. They merit recognition in West Virginia history, not just to correct an imbalance in historical writing, but to provide positive examples to other women. The women chronicled are: Livia Simpson Poffenbarger; Aunt Jenny Wilson; Val Sayre Hammond; Mary Elizabeth Behner Christopher; Elizabeth Kee; Naomi M. Garrett; Ann Kathryn Flagg; Rebecca Tendael Wood Littlepage; Agnes Greer; Anna Maria Reeves Jarvis; Minnie Holley Barnes; Gertrude Humphreys; Genevieve Starcher; and Ruth Ann Musick. One organization, the West Virginia Farm Women's Club, is also included. A bibliography follows each biography, and black and white photographs are included. (APG)
Local teachers and ministers extolling the virtues of hard work and loyalty to God and country. Veterans' groups and women's clubs promoting the military fighting radicalism, and equating business and patriotism. Industrial leaders gaining legal as well as moral influence over national domestic policy. Such scenes might seem to be lifted from a Sinclair Lewis novel or a Contract with America publicity video. But as John C. Hennen shows in this piercing analysis of early-twentieth-century American political culture, from 1916 to 1925 "Americanization" became the theme—indeed, the script—not only of West Virginia but of the entire nation. Hennen's interdisciplinary work examines a formative period in West Virginia's modern history that has been largely neglected beyond the traditional focus on the coal industry. Hennen looks at education, reform, and industrial relations in the state in the context of war mobilization, postwar instability, and national economic expansion. The First World War, he says, consolidated the dominant positions of professionals, business people, and political capitalists as arbiters of national values. These leaders emerged from the war determined to make free-market business principles synonymous with patriotic citizenship. Americanization, therefore, refers less to the assimilation of immigrants into the national mainstream than to the attempt to encode values that would guarantee a literate, loyal, and obedient producing class. To ensure that the state fulfilled its designated role as a resource zone for the perceived greater good of national strength, corporate leaders employed public relations tactics that the Wilson administration had refined to gain public support for the war. Alarmed by widespread labor activism and threatened by fears of communism, the American Constitutional Association in West Virginia, one of dozens of similar organizations nationwide, articulated principles that identified the well-being of business with the well-being of the country. With easy access to teacher training and classroom programs, antiunion forces had by 1923 rolled back the wartime gains of the United Mine Workers of America. Middle-class voluntary organizations like the American Legion and the West Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs helped implant mandated loyalty in schoolchildren. Far from being isolated during America's transformation into a world power, West Virginia was squarely in the mainstream. The state's people and natural resources were manipulated into serving crucial functions as producers and fuel for the postwar economy. Hennen's study, therefore, is a study less of the power or force of ideas than of the importance of access to the means to transmit ideas. The winner of the1995 Appalachian Studies Award is a significant contribution to regional studies as well as to our understanding of American culture during and after World War I.