Juliet Stuart Poyntz (née Points) '07 is unique among Barnard alumnae of her generation for the radical path she chose in life. Her fate sharply separates her from most American women of her age, and especially from her classmates at Barnard. Apart from this, her unconventional life and its mysterious end make a fascinating story that is inextricably tied with the historical circumstances in which she lived.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska on November 25, 1886, Miss Points entered Barnard College in September 1903, at the early age of sixteen. Some time before that, Points’s family moved to Jersey City, New Jersey. While studying at Barnard, Points took a very active part in many aspects of college life, in particular student government. The college yearbook (The Mortarboard) and the student newspaper (The Barnard Bulletin) list her as Freshman Class Treasurer, then as President of the Sophomore Class, later as Secretary of the Barnard Union, and finally, as the President of the Undergraduate Association and the Chairman of the Student Council during her senior year. Points’s other commitments included, at various times, the post of editor-in-chief of The Mortarboard, and membership in Kappa Kappa Gamma fraternity, the Philosophy Club, the Classical Club, the Athletic Association, the Christian Association, and the Sophomore Dance Committee. She even acted a part in a Class of 1907 play entitled Casting the Boomerang, where she portrayed “Mrs. Hypathia Bargiss, a lady possessed of ancestors, aspirations, and a hobby.” The play was presented in Brinckerhoff Theatre (today the Minor Latham Playhouse) on November 17 and 18, 1904. In 1905, Points took part in Barnard's third annual Greek Games, where she recited the “Invocation to the Gods” and was tied for first place in wrestling. Points also spoke in the Interclass Debate pitting the Class of 1906 against the Class of 1907. The statement debated was the following: “Gladstone's policy in the Transvaal in 1881 was justifiable.” Points was the first and principal speaker on the affirmative side, which prevailed in the contest. As final evidence of Points’s popularity and her strong and charismatic personality, she was voted “Most Popular in College” and “Most Popular in 1907” according to the 1908 Mortarboard. The legend next to her photograph in the 1907 Mortarboard reads, “At her command the palace learned to rise.”

Points’s concern with social equality was apparent early on. In a letter to her best friend and classmate Sophie Parsons Woodman '07 about the latter’s proposal to create a “senior society” at Barnard, Points writes:

At the conclusion of her college career, Juliet Stuart Points was the valedictorian of the Class of 1907, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Points’s valedictory provides evidence of her commitment to take on an active role in society in order to fulfill her aspirations and realize her ideals--something that was not expected of women at that time. She commended Barnard for teaching its students to apply their academic learning to the realities of life: “We have been trained to place our knowledge continually in the frame of the real world around us. We must know the Actual and with that knowledge visions and false idols disappear and we see Truth unabashed and unafraid.” She also spoke about the importance of friendships formed in college, which are “founded on a community of interests,” as opposed to the colder, more pragmatic relationships that one would often encounter in the outside world. Although she was referring to the common academic interests of college students, perhaps this remark explains in part why Points was later attracted to feminist circles, then to trade unions, and finally to the Communist Party: all of these movements, fighting on the side of oppressed social groups, were indeed founded on a “community of interests,” which bound their adherents with a shared ultimate purpose. At the conclusion of her speech, Points appealed to her classmates never to give up the struggle for their goals. However, she chose to keep her speech abstract rather than express her political views:

By the time of her graduation from Barnard in June 1907, Points’s own interests had evolved considerably. Having progressed from suffragism to feminism (see below), she now embraced the causes of trade unionism, labor rights, and socialism, at first concentrating primarily on female workers. During her studies in England, Points, concerned with the labor question, wrote an introduction to a collection of essays about seasonal unemployment entitled Seasonal Trades. For two years after graduating from Barnard, she held the position of “Special Agent for the U.S. Immigration Commission,” working in Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Utica (New York), Lawrence (Massachusetts), and many other cities. Points called this time “the glad two years or less when I broke away from the respectable middle classes and found my proper level in the slums with the lowest of the low delightful immigrants.” This job was perhaps Points’s first exposure to the hardships of immigrants who were struggling to make ends meet, and also to the socialist ideas which had become popular among some of the immigrants. It is no wonder that Points, who yearned for social justice, sympathized with the tenets of socialism, which promised to remedy the ills of the capitalist system and to improve the lives of workers. In 1912, she announced to her former classmates in a letter to the Class Book, “I am still a woman’s suffragist or worse still a Feminist and also a Socialist (also of the worst brand).” The New York Times reports that Points first became associated with the Socialist Party as early as 1909.

Soon after her graduation, Juliet Stuart Points returned to Barnard as a teacher. In 1909-1910, Points was an assistant to History Professor James T. Shotwell, well-known for his liberal and pacifist views. The course they taught was entitled “Continental European History, Modern and Contemporaneous.” In 1910, Points received her A.M. degree from Columbia University. 1913-1914 found her once again back at Barnard, again assisting Professor Shotwell in his European history course. Between her two stints of teaching at Barnard, Points had gone to England as the first Scholar of the American Federation of Woman's Clubs, studying economics, sociology, anthropology and other subjects at the London School of Economics (1910-1911) and Oxford University (1911-1912). She had also traveled from England to France, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, and Holland, later writing in her Class Book that she had “met many very interesting people everywhere and had most illuminating experiences.” Upon returning to New York, Points continued her studies at the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1912-1913). In 1913, she married Dr. Friedrich Franz Ludwig Glaser, an attaché at the German consulate in New York and a Communist. (Contrary to convention, she insisted upon keeping her maiden name and never used her husband’s surname, although she did change the spelling of her own surname to “Poyntz” at about this time.) It remains to be speculated whether her marriage to a man who held Communist views might have drawn her closer to that ideology, or whether her interest in leftist movements might have attracted her to Glaser.

What is known with certainty, however, is that for a number of years before her marriage to Glaser, Points had been a radical herself, establishing and becoming the first leader of the Barnard Chapter of the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York State in 1907. An article in The Barnard Bulletin relates that the club’s founding members numbered about ten or fifteen and were “much abused” (indeed, the Suffrage Club is not mentioned in the Mortarboard published in 1907), yet only a few years later, in 1912, the Suffrage Club could boast “one hundred and one highly respected members.” In December 1912, the club held its first open meeting, at which Juliet Points spoke about the weakness of the suffrage movement, which she believed lay in its narrow scope. The movement focused only on obtaining political power, Points explained, while it was necessary to make social and economic gains as well in order for the newly-acquired political power to be of real use. Points called on college women to revive the spirit of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, when women were allowed a fuller share in social life, and also to fulfill their duties as wives and mothers. Points also spoke for the creation of what we now know as women’s studies, maintaining that every woman’s college should offer a course on the position of the woman in modern social and economic life. In April 1914, Poyntz (as she now spelled her name) published an article on a similar topic in the Barnard Bear, in which she reflected on the progress of the suffrage movement at Barnard. She recalled the early days of the Barnard College Chapter of the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York, when “it required considerable courage [...] to take a decided stand for woman suffrage [...] even in such an enlightened institution as Barnard College,” since “the intrepid few who composed it [the club] were distinctly made to feel by the rest of the college that they were regarded as ‘queer,’ as lacking in balance and altogether abnormal.” Poyntz then explained that the suffrage club had recently decided to become a feminist club, widening the scope of its mission to include not only the question of obtaining the vote for women, but also the “economic, social, and moral advance of women, the development of the feeling of independence and responsibility in all women and the creation of wider opportunities for women in the economic, social and political field.” In her article, as in her earlier speech, Poyntz advocated the creation of college courses on the woman’s social and economic position and on the history of the woman’s movement, which she said were necessary in order to educate students about the suffragist cause and the broader feminist cause.

On February 28, 1915, Juliet Stuart Poyntz spoke at a Socialist-sponsored meeting devoted to the celebration of Woman’s Day, held at Pabst’s Coliseum in Harlem. The question of the day was defined simply as “Woman,” and Poyntz addressed the audience from the point of view of “The Feminist”--other speakers being announced as “The Voter,” “The Working Woman,” “The Father,” etc. Later that day, Poyntz gave a speech at another Woman’s Day meeting, held at a casino in the Bronx. Around the same time, Poyntz was also a member of the Executive Committee of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, as well as an investigator for the American Association for Labor Legislation, having taken up the latter job in 1914. By 1917, Juliet Stuart Poyntz was also active in the Ladies’ Waist and Dressmakers’ Union, Local No. 25 of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), where she held the post of education director.

According to The New York Times, Poyntz later became the head of the Labor Research Department at the Rand School of Social Science, located at 7 East 15th Street. In 1919 and 1921, she published two articles in The Nation (where Freda Kirchwey '15 was then an Associate Editor), one entitled “Industrial Peace and War,” and the other an unsigned piece entitled “The World and the Practical Man.” In the first article, Poyntz examined the turbulent relationship between labor and capital, regretting that the National War Labor Board, which acted as an arbiter in of worker-owner disputes during World War I, might be abolished, and with it would disappear “the one institution, imperfect though it may be, which embodies for the worker some hope of economic justice, and which assures to the harassed public the preservation of the machinery of industrial peace.” Poyntz’s second article was an argument for the superiority of “idealists” over “practical men” in their ability to run the affairs of the world, if given a chance. “They [the practical men] have had their way in the world and not the visionaries and the idealists and the enthusiasts,” Poyntz observed, “and it is they who have brought the world to its present pass.” Poyntz went on to show that the practical men have been unable to govern effectively, have led the world into war, and have driven the economy into a state of disarray. As Poyntz concluded, “The trouble with the practical man is that it is never the obvious that appeals to him; that, lacking vision, he all too often fails in all he undertakes.”

The New York Times further reports that Poyntz was one of the founding members of the American Communist Party, which came into existence between 1919 and 1921, and was listed in New York Police Department files as one of the “ten principal Communist leaders of the United States.” In the years that followed, Poyntz tried to engage in conventional politics in order to represent the interests of workers more effectively. She ran for office four times as a Communist candidate: in 1924, for Assemblyman from New York’s 20th District; sometime in the 1920’s, for New York City Alderman; in 1928, for Attorney General of New York State (polling over 10,000 votes); and, finally, in 1931, for Assemblyman from New York’s 3rd District. She was never elected. Benjamin Gitlow, himself a prominent American Communist, wrote in his 1948 book The Whole of Their Lives that Poyntz was a delegate to several consecutive American Communist Party conventions starting in 1926, and was a member of the Party’s Central Executive Committee, besides being on New York’s District Executive Committee. She had even gone to China on a Comintern (Communist International) mission.

The subsequent events in the life of Juliet Stuart Poyntz are known with much less certainty. She is mentioned in at least five published books, two of which are memoirs by ex-Communists, one scholarly, and two largely derivative of the memoirs. It appears that Poyntz dropped out of the U.S. Communist Party in 1934 in order to work for the OGPU, the Soviet secret police. Benjamin Gitlow maintains that Poyntz was assigned “to gather scientific information in the United States in the fields of chemistry and physics.” She went to Moscow in 1936, in order to receive further instructions from the Soviet authorities. It seems that while there, Poyntz witnessed the purges instigated by Stalin, in which people she had known and worked with were killed, and she returned to the U.S. disillusioned and unwilling to continue spying for the OGPU. She told some acquaintances about her plans to write a book in which she would expose the Communist movement. A friend of hers, Mrs. Marie P. MacDonald, later recalled that Poyntz was unwilling to reveal her reasons for breaking with Communism, and it was agreed that as a condition of continuing their friendship, they would not discuss that subject. What happened next is much less clear.

On one evening in early June of 1937, Juliet Stuart Poyntz walked out of her room at the American Woman’s Association Clubhouse at 353 West 57th Street. She was never seen or heard from again. The New York Times, which carried a few stories several months later related to her disappearance, reported that her room looked just as if she had expected to return that same night; she had not taken any extra clothing with her, and all her luggage remained in the room.

It is virtually certain that Poyntz was murdered by the OGPU. The Soviet secret police was prompt in eliminating anyone who knew too much about its workings, especially if that person had shown signs of disillusionment and even intended to reveal its activities to the public. Several rather comprehensive accounts exist of Poyntz’s death, all of them based on the story told by Benjamin Gitlow. According to his version, the OGPU used Poyntz’s former lover, a man named Shachno Epstein, the associate editor of the Yiddish daily newspaper Freiheit and an OGPU agent himself, to lure Poyntz out for a walk in Central Park. “They met at Columbus Circle and proceeded to walk through Central Park,” Gitlow writes. “ [...] Shachno took her by the arm and led her up a side path, where a large black limousine hugged the edge of the walk. [...] Two men jumped out, grabbed Miss Poyntz, shoved her into the car and sped away.” As the assassins supposedly reported later, they took Poyntz to the woods near the Roosevelt estate in Dutchess County, and killed and buried her there. “The body was covered with lime and dirt. On top were placed dead leaves and branches which the three killers trampled down with their feet.”

However, Gitlow’s description of the abduction and murder, like the rest of his book, The Whole of Their Lives (1948), is saturated with flowery and overly dramatic details which make it seem less than perfectly credible. His trustworthiness is further undermined by his obvious lack of knowledge about the basic structure of secret police work. In light of such inaccuracies, we have reason to doubt his account of Juliet Stuart Poyntz’s abduction and murder, especially the details, and therefore the subsequent accounts based upon it, e.g., On a Field of Red (1981) and Women in Espionage (1993).

Nonetheless, New York Times articles from the years immediately after Poyntz’s disappearance at least support Gitlow’s claim that Poyntz was murdered by agents of the OGPU. According to the articles, Carlo Tresca, anarchist and leader of New York’s anti-fascists, voluntarily appeared before Francis A. Mahony, acting chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney General’s office, then before a federal grand jury, in order to provide information in support of his claim that Poyntz “was ‘lured or kidnapped’ to Soviet Russia because she broke with her associates and ‘knew too much’.” The newspaper never reveals the name of Poyntz’s abductor, which Tresca gave to the legal authorities, but the description which Tresca shared with the correspondents sounds similar to that of Shachno Epstein: the agent is described as having “been an editor of a Communist foreign-language newspaper in this city,” “an intimate friend of Miss Poyntz,” in “the service of the [Russian] secret police,” and a person in whom Poyntz “had absolute confidence.” Tresca knew Poyntz well, and had connections with other OGPU agents in the U.S., and therefore was likely to know or suspect the truth about Poyntz’s disappearance, or at least about the identity of the person used as a lure in her abduction. Therefore, it is grimly unsurprising to read in the Times that Tresca himself was murdered in January 1943. It seems plausible to this researcher that, when Poyntz was about to give compromising information about them, the OGPU got rid of her, and when Tresca, in turn, exposed the OGPU murderers of Juliet Stuart Poyntz and the details of their plot, the OGPU eliminated him as well.

Of all Poyntz’s colleagues in the Communist underworld, undoubtedly the most famous was Whittaker Chambers, who would later shake the nation with his public allegations against Alger Hiss. The murder of Juliet Stuart Poyntz apparently made a deep impression on Chambers just as he was contemplating a break with the Communist Party. In his classic memoir, Witness (1952), Chambers writes that after learning of Poyntz’s murder and several other similar cases, he determined to arrange his flight from the Party with great care, “using against the conspiracy all the conspiratorial method it had taught me.”

On October 26, 1944, over seven years after her disappearance, Poyntz was declared legally dead by Surrogate Judge James A. Foley in New York City. Letters of administration on Poyntz’s $10,500 estate were awarded to her sister, Eulalie Poyntz McClelland of Frederickstown, Ohio, as sole next of kin.

Juliet Stuart Poyntz was a suffragist, a feminist, a trade unionist, a socialist, and a Communist. Her passion for justice led her to renounce the ideology to which that passion had earlier led her--Stalinist Communism. However, it proved impossible for her to extricate herself from the grip of the Stalinist OGPU, who were not as concerned with justice as they were with self-preservation and revenge--which meant ruthlessly punishing those who had expressed dissatisfaction with them and their methods. In the larger historical scheme of things, Juliet Stuart Poyntz was but one of many victims of the Stalinist purges of the 1930’s that liquidated thousands in Russia and around the world, including one of Barnard’s own.

SOURCES

•Cave Brown, Anthony, and Charles Brown MacDonald. On a Field of Red: The Communist International and the Coming of World War II. New York: Putnam, 1981;
•Chambers, Whittaker. Witness. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952;
•Gitlow, Benjamin. The Whole of Their Lives: Communism in America--A Personal History and Intimate Portrayal of Its Leaders. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971 (originally published 1948);
•Mahoney, M.H. Women in Espionage: A Biographical Dictionary. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1993;
•The New York Times, 1937-1949 (many items);
•Poyntz, Juliet Stuart. “Industrial Peace and War.” The Nation, February 15, 1919, pp. 246-247;
•Poyntz, Juliet Stuart.“The World and the Practical Man.” The Nation, August 17, 1921, p. 164;
•The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, v. 5 (1919-1921);
•Sione, Patrizia, ed. “Relief Work.” The Triangle Factory Fire. Last updated March 3, 2002. Retrieved March 14, 2002 from the World Wide Web: <http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/narrative5.html>;
•Weinstein, Allen. Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case. New York: Knopf, 1978;
•Application for Examination for Admission to Barnard College, submitted by Juliet Stuart Points, September 1903; The Barnard Bulletin, January 4, April 4, and May 2, 1904; The Barnard Bulletin, December 18, 1912; The Mortarboard 1905-1908; ALS, Juliet Stuart Points to Sophie Parsons Woodman, n.d. [ca. 1906]; Points, Juliet Stuart. “Valedictory.” In Woodman, Sophie Parsons, ed. Commencement Week Speeches: Barnard College Class of 1907; Poyntz, Juliet Stuart. “Suffragism and Feminism at Barnard.” The Barnard Bear, April 1914, pp. 3-4; Report and Register of the Associate Alumnae of Barnard College, 1910-1915; and Woodman, Sophie Parsons, ed., 1907 Class Book, 1912-1917. (Barnard College Archives)

contributed by Irina Vodonos '02

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Contemporary Barnard College, like many American colleges and universities, prides itself on its population of international students. In the fall of 2007, Barnard could boast an undergraduate population that represented 45 foreign countries. But before World War I, there was hardly a foreign student to be found on the Barnard campus. During the academic year 1907-1908, for instance, Acting Dean William T. Brewster reported that four foreign students were registered at Barnard: one from England, one from Germany, one from Russia, and one from China. While it is not certain that these were the first four international students at Barnard, it is virtually certain that the fourth student, Kang Tung Pih (pinyin: Kang Tongbi) was the very first Asian student to study here. She was also the beloved second daughter of the late 19th-/early 20th-century Chinese political reformist Kang Youwei. The records concerning Miss Kang in the Barnard College Archives, though scant, reveal fascinating details about her obscure yet intriguing life.

Kang Tung Pih’s exact date of birth is in dispute. According to Kang Youwei’s personal journals, she was born in 1880, most likely to his first wife, Chang Yün-chü. The English translator of these journals and author of K’ang Yu-wei: A Biography and a Symposium (1967), Lo Jung-Pang, maintains that Miss Kang was actually born in 1887; this is supported by her 1905 application for the Barnard entrance examination, which states that she was born in late 1887. To complicate matters, Miss Kang’s date of birth is listed on her Barnard transcript as 5 February 1888. It is possible that these discrepancies have something to do with the incongruity between the Chinese and Western calendars.

In any case, it is certain that she was a native of Guangdong (Canton) province in southern China, yet because her father was an elite scholar and personal advisor to the Qing Emperor Guangxu during the Reform Movement of 1898, Kang Tung Pih grew up in Beijing in the midst of the emperor’s court. Her father’s program for reform included melding the best of Chinese tradition with the useful aspects of Western government and culture, in addition to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy for China. While his tenure in the court was brief, Kang Youwei’s advocacy of modernizing China through political and social reform was already well underway by the time of the Reforms of 1898. For example, Kang Youwei was vehemently opposed to the traditional practice of foot-binding. He refused to bind the feet of his own daughters, thus freeing them to lead physically active lives, unlike most of their noble peers. No doubt, her father’s decision also helped to mold Kang Tung Pih’s independent, activist character–a radical departure from the accepted social deportment expected of women of her stature.

Unfortunately, the height of Kang Youwei’s influence in the Chinese government lasted only about 100 days (hence the alternate name of the Reform Movement of 1898: The Hundred Days Reform), before the Empress Dowager Cixi was able to stage a coup, wresting power over the court from the Emperor Guangxu. With the emperor under house arrest, ruling in name only, the 1898 Reforms had effectively failed. The Empress Dowager then used her influence to order the execution of prominent reform supporters in the court. Kang Youwei’s own brother was among those executed, but Kang Youwei managed to escape his death sentence by fleeing China. Thus began the Kang family’s sixteen years of life in exile.

Kang Youwei first went to Hong Kong, then Japan, and later Canada. It is known that Kang Tung Pih was sent to Hong Kong to visit relatives around that time, but whether she stayed there or lived with her father in Japan and Canada is unknown. Even in exile, with a price on his head and the occasional hired assassin on his trail, Kang Youwei continued to travel around the world to lobby publicly and privately for his program for a constitutional monarchy and social reform in China; Kang Tung Pih and her older sister Kang Tung Wei would often accompany him on these trips. Besides the Mandarin of the imperial court and the Cantonese of her birthplace that she already spoke, Kang Tung Pih also studied English, French, Italian, and Hindi, in order to better represent her father’s cause around the world, and possibly also to interpret for him on occasion.

Kang Tung Pih arrived in the United States in August 1903, with the dual purpose of studying and generating overseas support for her father’s Reform Party. Despite her young age, her father clearly recognized her independent spirit and devotion to reform in China. Kang Youwei composed this telling verse for his daughter:

 

Zora Neale Hurston is one of the most prominent literary figures of the Twentieth Century, owing to her extraordinary contributions to fiction and anthropology, as well as her major role in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's. Her popularity has only increased in the years since her passing, and she was an important influence on other notable African-American writers such as Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison. Hurston was born sometime between 1891 and 1901 (most likely the latter date) to Reverend John and Lucy (Potts) Hurston in Notasulga, Alabama. At the age of three, she moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, where her father became the town’s first mayor. Eatonville was the first African-American township to be incorporated into the United States, and living there during her childhood affected the rest of her life, as she developed the idea at an early age that African-Americans could lead separate and sovereign lives apart from other ethnic groups. Because she lived in an all-black community, in her early youth Hurston never witnessed the brutal racism that most African-Americans experienced at that time, especially in the South. Thus, her perspective on racial issues was considerably different from other African-American writers of her generation.

In 1910, Hurston's entire life changed when her mother became fatally ill. As one of eight children in her family, she often felt overlooked by her father and second in priority to his job as Mayor of Eatonville, whereas her mother had always encouraged and inspired her personal growth. As she writes in her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road

Zora's mother's funeral was the last time Hurston's entire family was together. Two weeks later, Hurston moved to Jacksonville, Florida with her older sister Sarah, and was forever separated from her childhood family and friends:

After living with her sister for a few years, Hurston left to become a maid to a traveling Gilbert and Sullivan troupe. From this point on, Hurston was destined to lead a nomadic life, never settling in one place for more than a few years. She traveled around the South with the troupe for a short period of time, ending up in Maryland, where she decided to attend Morgan Academy, an historically all-black preparatory school (now known as Morgan State University in Baltimore); she graduated in 1918. In the same year, she applied and matriculated at Howard University in Washington, D.C., which was the start of her higher education. Out of economic necessity, Hurston also held many odd jobs such as manicurist and maid, but, as was her character, she never held one job for long before she felt the need to find another. She also began to take her writing more seriously at this time, and succeeded in publishing her first story in the University's literary magazine, Stylus. About writing, Hurston felt that:

Hurston attended Howard University from 1918 to 1924, without completing her undergraduate requirements, as she was constantly involved in other things such as her series of jobs. By 1924, she decided that she was ready for yet another change. She left school to seek her next calling, living on the meager earnings received from the short stories she sold with ever more frequency to various magazines. Soon she was befriended by the editor of Opportunity (an African-American journal), who encouraged her to move from Washington to New York City, then as now the literary capital of the United States. Following her advice, Hurston was once more on the move, settling in New York City at the height of the Harlem Renaissance.

Upon reaching the big city, Hurston was almost immediately discovered by Annie Nathan Meyer, one of the founders of Barnard College. Meyer was extremely supportive of Hurston's zest and talent in numerous areas, and offered her a scholarship to the college. Hurston gladly accepted, and thus in the fall of 1925 she began her studies at Barnard, feeling:

Similar to when she was at Howard, at Barnard Hurston was never solely a student, but engaged in numerous other activities. She became personal secretary to one of the most popular and highest-paid writers of her time, Fannie Hurst, who was greatly impressed after reading one of Hurston's short stories, “Spunk.” Thus Hurston became Hurst's protégé, and was greatly influenced by her throughout her years as her secretary. Another extremely important influence in Hurston's life during this period was Franz Boas, her professor in the majority of the anthropology classes she took at Barnard and Columbia. By his ideas and his example, he inspired her in the anthropological quests which she was to embark on in the years ahead.

On February 29, 1928, Hurston finally received her undergraduate degree, becoming the first African-American student known to have graduated from Barnard. Although she was not permitted to reside in the dormitories, and may have confronted many other obstacles while at Barnard, she never complained about racial prejudice at the College:

As Alice Walker stated in the 1975 Helen Rogers Reid Lecture at Barnard College, Hurston “went to Barnard to learn how to study what she really wanted to learn: the ways of her own people, and what ancient rituals, customs, and beliefs had made them unique.” She was never set back by her color, but rather immersed herself in the study of her people's culture. The same year that she graduated from Barnard, Hurston wrote the following:

She graduated from Barnard with a major in English (not anthropology, as is often said) and a minor in geology. Along with her B.A., she was also awarded a fellowship by the Rosenwald Foundation for two years of anthropological work at Columbia University.

Franz Boas became her mentor during her two years of graduate study at Columbia, after which she once again felt the urge to try new things and see new places. She decided to return to the South, and in 1931 traveled primarily in Florida to collect experience and knowledge of the African-American folklore which she so highly valued. In the years following her research, she was also a drama instructor at Bethune-Cookman College in Florida. But Hurston never lost touch with her alma mater. In 1932, she contributed her expertise in African-American folk songs, dances, and rituals to the drama Black Souls, produced by Annie Nathan Meyer as a benefit for Barnard.

1934 brought the publication of her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine. The story takes place in a small all-black Florida town, much like Eatonville, and draws heavily on the anthropological and folkloric research that had occupied her during the four previous years of her life. Her second book, Of Mules and Men (1935), also focuses on the African-American culture in which she had always been immersed. When appearing as guest of honor at a 1935 meeting of the Barnard Club of Bergen County, New Jersey, Hurston described her experiences collecting folklore for Of Mules and Men and autographed copies for the Barnard alumnae and guests who were present.

Her largest literary success, however, came in 1937 with the publication of Their Eyes Were Watching God, the most autobiographical of all her works. This novel about two fictional characters, Teacake and Janie, was also greatly inspired by her childhood, as one of Janie's husbands is actually the mayor of the non-fictional Eatonville, as was Hurston's father. Speaking of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston said, “There is no book more important to me than this.” Janie is nomadic, much like Hurston, and she has three different husbands, the first two of which intensely dissatisfy her. This parallels Hurston's own love life, which included two divorces.

In the same year, 1937, Hurston was awarded two Guggenheim fellowships, which she used to travel to Jamaica, Haiti, Bermuda, and Honduras. In each country she collected more folklore, which continued to inform and inspire her writings, including her fourth book, Tell My Horse (1938), which relates to Haitian vodun ceremonies. The following year, another of her books was published, Moses, Man of the Mountain, a story of the emancipation of the Hebrews, emphasizing aspects which she felt appealed most to African Americans. Though these later books were only mildly well-received, she did have one last literary success: her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. Published in 1942, it presents a vivid picture of her wanderings, starting in the South and continuing throughout the Americas.

Immediately preceding the publication of her autobiography, she was on the writing staff of Paramount Studios in Hollywood, after which she lived on a house boat in Daytona Beach, Florida, where she continued to do free-lance writing. Hurston's fame, however, began to dwindle with the progress of the civil rights movement, as her views were not in accordance with the majority of those in the movement. A Utopian, Hurston felt that African-Americans could attain sovereignty apart from whites. As explained by her biographer, Robert Hemenway:

Zora’s standard for comparison was always the Eatonville of her childhood, a proud, self-governing, all-black village that felt no need of integration and, in fact, resisted it so that an Afro-American culture could thrive without interference. She never quite acknowledged that there were few Eatonvilles [...] In her last years her personal political test failed to acknowledge either the diversity of the Southern black experience or the need to react against the tyranny that would characterize their life.

During the congressional race of 1946, Hurston worked for the campaign of Grant Reynolds, the Republican candidate running for the seat representing the 22nd District (Harlem), New York City. The National Chairman of the Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training (which would later succeed in lobbying President Truman to desegregate the U.S. military), as well as a student at Columbia University Law School, Reynolds was a moderate figure on the issue of integration, closely allied to the labor leader A. Philip Randolph. His opponent in the race was the one-term incumbent Democrat, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the most famous and charismatic African-American politician of the day. Hurston strongly differed with Powell's absolute integrationism, e.g., his radical position that no federal funds be granted to any institution or program that practiced segregation. But Powell won by a landslide in the general election, demonstrating how the moderate views on race espoused by Reynolds and Hurston were fast becoming obsolete. In part because Hurston never revised her political opinions to match the times, she fell into obscurity and poverty towards the end of her life.

In 1959, Hurston suffered a stroke from which she never fully recovered. The following year, on January 28, she passed away in a welfare home in Fort Pierce, Florida. Having left no money for a headstone, she was buried in an unmarked grave. In more recent years, Hurston's genius has been rediscovered and her fame revived, as her considerable accomplishments become more widely known and appreciated. In the early 1970's, Alice Walker traveled to Florida in search of Hurston's burial site, visiting places which seemed well-known even to her, a stranger, through Hurston's vivid descriptions of the area. Walker located Hurston's grave on August 15, 1973, and there erected a headstone on which she had the following words engraved:

Zora Neale Hurston, "A Genius of the South," Novelist, Folklorist, Anthropologist, 1901-1960.

SOURCES

•Boulware, Marcus H. The Oratory of Negro Leaders, 1900-1968. Westport, CT: Negro Universities Press, 1969;
•“The Desegregation of the Armed Forces.” Project WhistleStop: Harry S. Truman Digital Archive. Retrieved December 13, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://www.whistlestop.org/study_collections/desegregation/large/desegregation.htm>;
•Dickinson, Laurie. “Zora Neale Hurston.” Voices From the Gaps: Women Writers of Color. Retrieved from the World Wide Web December 19, 2001: <http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/ZoraNealeHurston.html>;
•Gallaher, Tim. “Zora Neale Hurston.” Personal WWW Page for Tim Gallaher. Updated October 8, 1997. Retrieved December 19, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~gallaher/hurston/hurston.html>;
•Hamilton, Charles V. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1991;
•Hemenway, Robert E. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1977;
•Hinton, Kip Austin. Zora Neale Hurston. Updated November 19, 2000. Retrieved December 19, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://i.am/zora>;
•Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road. New York: HarperCollins, 1991;
•Hurston, Zora Neale. “How It Feels to be Colored Me (1928).” Barnard Electronic Archive and Teaching Laboratory. Retrieved December 14, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/wsharpe/citylit/colored_me.htm>;
•Hurston, Zora Neale. Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2001. Retrieved December 13, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://encarta.msn.com>;
•Powell, Adam Clayton Jr. Adam by Adam: The Autobiography of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. New York: The Dial Press, 1971;
•academic transcript of Zora Neale Hurston '28 (photocopy); “From Coast To Coast.” Barnard College Alumnae Monthly, December 1935, p. 10; Feeny, Helen M. “Fighter Against Complacency and Ignorance.” Barnard College Alumnae Monthly, fall 1946, pp. 6-7; and Stadler, Quandra Prettyman. “Learning What She Wanted.” Barnard College Alumnae Magazine, winter 1979, pp. 16-17. (Barnard College Archives)

contributed by Stephanie Pahler '05

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It is no wonder that the autobiography of Helen Gahagan is entitled A Full Life. Talented, vivacious, and confident, she accomplished more than most women of her time in spite of considerable discouragement and hostility from those who stood in her way. Gahagan’s first achievement was becoming one of the most prominent Broadway actresses of the 1920’s, a feat all the more remarkable given her father’s steadfast opposition to her choice of profession, which lasted well into her acting career. Subsequently an opera singer successful both in the States and in Europe during the 1930’s, and a noted lecturer during the last three decades of her life, she is nonetheless best remembered as a politician, under the name Helen Gahagan Douglas. She was one of only a handful of women in the House of Representatives between 1945 and 1951 (she was the only one there in 1947), and would have been the fourth woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate, had she not lost the race to Richard Nixon, in what became known as perhaps the dirtiest political campaign in American history.

Helen Gahagan was born on November 25, 1900 in Boonton, New Jersey, where her family was living temporarily while her father, Walter Gahagan, a successful construction engineer, supervised the building of a reservoir. Helen’s paternal great-great-grandfather, William Gahagan, was of Irish descent and one of the founders of Dayton, Ohio. After learning about her heritage during a childhood visit to her Ohio grandmother, Helen became fascinated with everything connected with Ireland and liked to think of herself as being Irish, even though all her other ancestors were apparently of non-Irish background.

Helen grew up at 231 Lincoln Place in Park Slope, one of the most fashionable Brooklyn neighborhoods of a century ago (as it is today). She attended the nearby Berkeley Institute, a college-preparatory girls’ school, where she enjoyed her drama classes more than any other subjects, having dreamed of becoming an actress since age five. Helen’s father, however, was vehemently opposed to her entering the theatrical profession. As she herself recalled in the opening paragraph of her autobiography, “In his mind, actress and whore were interchangeable.” When Helen was eighteen, she had her first significant clash with her father about her plans for the future. She had failed all her high school courses that year because, as she explained to her father, she was devoting all her time to studying acting with Elizabeth Grimball, head of the drama department at the school. Walter Gahagan was enraged. After his daughter told him that she planned to act professionally and that she had already attracted the favorable attention of Brooklyn critics through her performance in the school plays, he responded with a day-long harangue, attempting to persuade his wayward daughter that her career choice was entirely wrong. He asked her if she wanted to be “just a breeding machine,” which was what, according to him, uneducated women were. “Forget about acting. Think!” Helen’s father commanded. The completion of high school and subsequent graduation from college was the only right course for Helen, in his opinion. He would send her to boarding school, where she would study until she was able to pass college entrance exams.

At first, Helen was determined not to submit to her father. However, after a day's contemplation, she recalled her mother’s admonition: “Stop arguing with your father, Helen. If it’s right for you to be on the stage, you’ll do it.” Helen decided that her resistance was only hurting her. It would be better to do as her father wished--for the time being. After graduating from college, she would be free to do as she wished--and that was to become an actress. While on the surface Helen’s decision may have resembled capitulation, in reality, she was gaining the upper hand by temporarily yielding to her father.

That year, Helen began her studies at Capen, a boarding school for girls in Northampton, Massachusetts. Although most of the graduates of Capen enrolled in Smith, Helen chose to attend Barnard. The decision was motivated not by Barnard’s location near home, but by Helen’s all-consuming desire to become a professional stage actress. There could be no better place to achieve that dream than New York, with its vibrant theatre district.

Helen Gahagan spent only two years at Barnard (1920-1922), but they were filled with a variety of activity connected directly or indirectly to the theatre. As at Berkeley, she devoted little attention to coursework, studying just enough to pass her classes. However, sometimes, she neglected to study even that much. The Minutes of the Board of Student Presidents for March 13, 1922 include a description of a special meeting convened to hear Gahagan’s plea to be allowed to participate in a play during her sophomore year despite having failed a class--which at the time disqualified a student from taking part in some extracurricular activities. After “much discussion,” the Board resolved not to except Gahagan from the rule, “as no good reason could be found for so doing.” She did take part in the Greek Games during her freshman year, portraying the central figure in the dance, the mythical hero Atys, and headed the Greek Games Advisory Committee in her sophomore year. She enjoyed debates, especially when the topic was Irish independence, which she passionately supported. She also took all the drama courses taught by the famed Professor Minor Latham, for whom the theatre in Milbank Hall was later named. In her sophomore year, Gahagan directed one of the miracle plays that were written and performed by her fellow students as part of one of Professor Latham’s classes. But her chief extracurricular activity during college was her involvement in Wigs and Cues, the amateur drama society organized in 1913. The tension between Gahagan and her father over her future career was temporarily suspended while he, satisfied that his daughter was finally receiving a college education, tolerated her continued interest in drama, as long as it was confined to Barnard productions. At Wigs and Cues, Gahagan’s most notable achievement was directing the Gerhart Hauptmann play And Pippa Dances, which had never before been performed in the U.S. The reviews in The Barnard Bulletin agreed that the play was too difficult for amateur student actresses, as well as too challenging for the audience. However, the Barnard critics praised Gahagan’s direction and outside reviewers pointed out that the production preserved Hauptmann’s lyricism and the complex metaphorical nature of the play. In addition, as a sophomore, Gahagan acted in a humorous play which was staged by Wigs and Cues in honor of the freshmen and in which her sister Lillian (then a freshman) also took part.

However, what ultimately propelled Helen Gahagan from attending a college on upper Broadway to starring in Broadway shows was the play she co-authored with her Barnard classmate and friend, Alis De Sola ’24, who later became a noted playwright and screenwriter. The one-act play, written as a term paper for Professor Ethel Sturtevant’s class on “Epic and Romance” in the spring of 1922, was entitled Shadow of the Moon and was based on an episode from an Irish epic. Elizabeth Grimball, Gahagan’s former acting teacher at the Berkeley Institute, agreed to produce the play, casting her as the fairy queen, one of the two main characters. The performance was attended by Harry Wagstaff Gribble, a playwright whose work had been recently produced on Broadway. He offered Gahagan the lead role in another play of his, Shoot, soon to be staged by a professional theatre, which she accepted, and which catapulted her, by way of yet another production, John Cromwell’s Manhattan, to her Broadway debut. Gahagan’s performance in Manhattan had attracted the attention of one of the major New York producers of the 1920’s, William A. Brady, who offered her the principal role in a play he was producing on Broadway, Dreams for Sale. Once again, Gahagan agreed, knowing that if she did not take this chance, her dream might never come true.

Her father tolerated her participation in college shows, but when he learned that she was about to star in a professional play, he was infuriated. Gribble offered to intercede on Gahagan’s behalf, attempting to convince her father that a brilliant future awaited his daughter in the theatre. The argument lasted late into the night, while Gahagan listened to it from her room two floors above, falling asleep to the sound of her father’s “No!” which, as she recalled, “could be heard down the block.” The next evening, September 13, 1922, when Gahagan was in her dressing room at the theatre, preparing to go on stage for the opening of Dreams for Sale, Brady told her that unless she signed the five-year contract (to which Walter Gahagan had also been staunchly opposed the night before), the curtain would not go up. Gahagan hesitated, but finally decided, “If I didn’t assert myself now, I would never be independent of my father.” She signed the contract and made her Broadway debut. She woke up the next morning and read the headline in The Brooklyn Eagle: “Helen Gahagan Becomes Stage Star Overnight.” She never returned to Barnard as a student.

Her father saw her act that night but persisted in his critical attitude. “He didn’t seem angry, but he wasn’t pleased either,” Gahagan recalled “The ride home was funereal.” Although he was unable to force his daughter to reconsider her career choice, Gahagan’s father still attempted to keep her life under his control, at least to some extent. He required that the family chauffeur drive her to the theatre for each performance and take her home as soon as the curtain fell. He proposed that if she would put her newly-earned income into a savings account, he would match the amount while she could continue to draw her allowance. And when his daughter went to have lunch with Leopold Stokowski, a famed conductor, at his country estate, her father instructed a family acquaintance to lecture her on the danger of becoming involved with men like Stokowski, who, according to the acquaintance, “collect[ed] beautiful women.” The pressure was no doubt difficult to withstand, especially because Gahagan genuinely loved her father. However, instead of remodeling herself according to his wishes, she carried on with her theatrical career. Walter Gahagan remained saddened by his daughter’s disobedience and unreconciled to her stage career until several years later (1925),

In 1927, Gahagan decided to leave the theatre, where she was prospering, and become a professional opera singer. Since few people begin voice training at the late age of twenty-six, everyone except her mother and her voice teacher, Madame Cehanovska, considered it a bad idea. Gahagan plunged into voice study with her usual determination, stimulated rather than deterred by the discouragement. After two years of intense training, she sang in Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany, receiving mostly favorable reviews, despite the fact that, at the time, it was unusual for an American opera singer to gain approval in Europe. When Gahagan abandoned her European singing tour in 1930 to see her father, who had advanced cancer, she returned to the theatre to star in Tonight or Never, where she portrayed an opera singer and thus had a chance to display both her acting and singing abilities. Her co-star was Melvyn Douglas, who would soon become a well-known stage and film actor. They married in 1931, but Gahagan kept her maiden name. “I’ll keep the good old Irish name. I was born Helen Gahagan and I’ll die Helen Gahagan,” she declared to reporters. Walter Gahagan had passed away before his daughter had a chance to tell him that she and Douglas planned to get married. Soon after the wedding, the couple moved to Los Angeles, where Gahagan had fewer opportunities to perform, either as a stage actress or as a singer. She disliked the Hollywood atmosphere and had no desire to remake herself into a movie actress; cameras made her uncomfortable and the lack of a live audience made her performance worse. She did, however, make one film for RKO, She (1935), based on H. Rider Haggard’s fantasy novel, in which she starred as a cruel alien goddess. (Though unsuccessful at the time of its release, She is now considered a cult classic.) By the late 1930’s, Gahagan was spending much of her time at home caring for her two young children, Peter and Mary Helen. She also found herself free to learn more about the world around her, including politics, which hardly concerned her before.

It was Gahagan’s husband who first introduced her to politics. He was already involved in political activity, having helped found a Hollywood committee to aid Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War and the Hollywood division of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee. He was also a part of the Motion Picture Democratic Committee. Both Douglas and Gahagan joined the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and, together with over fifty other well-known personalities from the movie world (including Edward G. Robinson, Groucho Marx, and Ira Gershwin), signed the “Declaration of Democratic Independence,” which called for a U.S. boycott of goods produced in Nazi Germany. Gahagan herself was made aware of the real state of affairs in the world when she went to Europe in 1937 to give a series of concerts. She performed in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Austria, leaving the latter two countries so horrified by the evidence of widespread support for the Nazis and other omens of the coming war that she cancelled her engagement to sing in Austria the next year. When Gahagan returned to the States, she was shocked to learn that a considerable number of Americans were unaware of what was going on in Europe, and that some even favored Hitler. In addition, the plight of the migrant farmers (or, derogatorily, “Okies”), six thousand of whom were entering California each month to seek refuge from the Dust Bowl, seemed to her a pressing issue that was not being adequately addressed, either by the government (state and federal) or by her fellow Californians. Greatly disturbed by the situation abroad and at home, Gahagan was assumed progressively more active roles in politics, particularly in the Democratic Party, which she had joined soon after Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933. Gahagan became an ardent supporter of FDR’s policies and began a warm friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt. The First Lady served as Gahagan's political mentor, similar to the way Elizabeth Grimball had been her theatrical mentor and Madame Cehanovska her musical mentor. After Mrs. Roosevelt’s death in 1962, Helen Gahagan wrote a book entitled The Eleanor Roosevelt We Remember, a photographic memoir, which was well-received.

In 1944, urged by the Roosevelts and out-going incumbent Thomas Ford, she decided to run for Congress as the representative from California’s Fourteenth District. This district, which encompassed a large part of downtown and South-Central Los Angeles, was traditionally Democratic, the vast part of its population composed of poor minority groups. At first, it was doubtful whether the wealthy Gahagan, who had never set foot in her district before campaigning, would find favor with the constituents. Gahagan’s campaign strategies included meeting with district residents in neighborhood homes and referring to herself as Helen Gahagan Douglas, in order to associate herself with her husband’s military service and acting fame. She won by a narrow margin, and went on to serve three terms in Congress (1945-1951). Her years there were marked by her participation in the Foreign Affairs Committee and her appointment to the American delegation to the United Nations in 1946 by President Truman, but most of all by her support of labor and minorities and her persistent outspokenness against the disregard of civil liberties that was becoming more rampant as the Red Scare gained momentum after the end of the World War II. Douglas’s friends in Congress included Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and other representatives concerned with civil rights.

Increasingly confident of her abilities as a politician and feeling that she had enough support among Californians, Douglas decided to run for senator at the end of her third term in the House, in 1950. Although she was not the preferred candidate of the Democratic political machine, had little funds to spend on her campaign, and was given limited and largely unfavorable press coverage, she won the June primary, defeating her opponent, Los Angeles Daily News editor Manchester Boddy, by a wide margin. Now she had to face a much more serious opponent: the Republican candidate, Congressman Richard M. Nixon of California’s 12th District.

The Senate campaign was undoubtedly the most difficult battle that Douglas had ever waged. The achievements of her youth--becoming a professional actress and singer, and excelling at both occupations--had been in artistic fields and could be accomplished through a combination of talent and hard work. The campaign to get elected to the House of Representatives had been a challenge of a different sort, although Douglas’s acting skills did help her make speeches that won audiences over. Perhaps most of all, the private encouragement and public support provided by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt had played a critical role in getting her elected. In addition, Douglas’s 1944 campaign staff, well-trained and -organized, had been handed down to her by Ford, who had also endorsed her candidacy. She had also been tremendously helped by the fact that her district had the highest percentage of registered Democrats in California, and that her own progressive views and her concern with the lower economic strata of American society coincided with the needs of her constituents.

The race for the Senate was different. This time, Douglas had to have the backing of the majority of voters statewide, who had very diverse political views. Not only Republicans, but many Democrats as well were alienated by her leftist outlook and her ardent support of FDR’s social welfare policies. Historical circumstances were likewise inauspicious for Douglas. President Roosevelt, who would have publicly supported her candidacy, had died. The Korean War, in which the United States fought Communist North Korea backed by the Soviet Union and China, had broken out in the summer of 1950. Fear of Communism permeated American society. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy had begun his accusations against “liberals, Communists and queers.” In January 1950, Alger Hiss, on trial for allegedly spying for the Communists, was found guilty of perjury and sent to jail. In this atmosphere, those who did not participate in “Red-baiting” or who espoused liberal views were likely to be charged with supporting Communism, and often were.

However, Douglas’s most formidable obstacle was Richard Nixon himself, who was willing to use any unscrupulous tactic to sully Douglas and glorify himself. In the 1950 contest, he relied heavily on Red-baiting, as could be expected, given Douglas’s liberal record and his own involvement in the investigation of the Alger Hiss case and other proceedings of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Nixon was cautious never to call Helen Douglas a Communist directly, but his transparent innuendoes were more than enough to make the point. Nixon referred to Douglas as the “Pink Lady,” a term he picked up from Manchester Boddy, Douglas’s rival in the Democratic primary earlier that year. Now the label stuck, and its meaning was reinforced when Nixon widely circulated a sheet of pink paper listing some of the bills on which Douglas had voted the same as left-wing New York Congressman Vito Marcantonio. The “Pink Sheet,” as it came to be known, described the content of those bills in a way that cast Douglas as anti-American, subversive, and a Communist sympathizer. The “Pink Sheet” pointed out that Nixon had voted opposite to Douglas and Marcantonio on all of the occasions listed and labeled the two “the Douglas-Marcantonio Axis,” identifying them with America’s adversaries during World War II.

Nixon also ran a telephone campaign, in which anonymous callers asked voters, “Did you know that Helen Gahagan Douglas is a Communist?” and then hung up. In addition, Nixon (himself of Quaker background) managed to win over California’s Catholic Church, taking advantage of the Catholics’ fear of Communist atheism. The Archbishop of Los Angeles instructed all his parish priests that on the four October Sundays preceding the election, they were to give sermons about the infiltration of the U.S. government by Communists and, while they were not to name anyone, they were given a list of candidates the Archbishop did not favor. Many priests told worshippers that “the woman” running for high public office should not be elected. Meanwhile, Nixon’s supporters positioned themselves outside many churches, handing out the “Pink Sheet” and other literature to worshippers. In the final days of the campaign, Nixon’s office put out vast numbers of leaflets that promised a chance to win “valuable prizes” such as electric clocks, coffee makers, and butter dishes to those who answered the phone with “Vote for Nixon” instead of “Hello” on the day of the election.

Other methods employed by the Nixon campaign were even more sinister. Fear of Communism in 1950 went hand in hand with anti-Semitism, since many of the leaders of the Russian Revolution were Jewish, and many American Jews were known to have a leftist or progressive outlook. Nixon’s aides decided to investigate the rumor that Douglas’s husband was Jewish, and that his real surname was not Douglas. They managed to uncover that he was, in fact, half-Jewish, and that his last name was Hesselberg, which a theatre producer persuaded him to change in the late 1920’s. Soon, Nixon began deliberately “slipping” in his public speeches, calling his rival “Helen Hesselberg,” before “correcting” himself.

Nixon’s strategy of steadily showering his opponent with accusations put Douglas on the defensive. She was forced to explain in public that Nixon was misinterpreting her votes and to repeat over and over that she was not a Communist. He said little about himself and his own platform; rather, his campaign concentrated on portraying Douglas in the worst possible light and casting himself as the exact opposite. And she, too, engaged in name-calling. She referred to Nixon as “pee-wee” and “Tricky Dick”--the latter a label invented by the Democratic paper The Independent Review that stuck to Nixon, just as “Pink Lady” had stuck to Douglas. Many years later, Douglas wrote, “There’s not much to say about the 1950 campaign except that a man ran for the Senate who wanted to get there, and didn’t care how.” Nixon won by a 3-2 margin, victorious in all but four California counties. The tide of conservatism in that year was so overwhelming that Douglas’s own 14th District elected a conservative Republican to replace her in Congress.

After her defeat in 1950, Douglas did not retire from political life, although she never again ran for a public post. She went on study tours to the Middle East and Latin America in the 1960’s, headed the U.S. delegation to Liberia to celebrate the inauguration of Liberia’s President Tubman in 1964, visited the U.S.S.R. as part of a group of prominent American women (also in 1964), served on the board of numerous organizations such as National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) and the Peace Pledge Campaign, lectured extensively on foreign-affairs issues, and lent her support to many Democratic candidates. The last major election that she was involved in was George McGovern’s presidential campaign in 1972. In the meantime, Richard Nixon abandoned his California constituents after serving only two years of his six-year Senate term, in order to run for the vice-presidency in 1952, finally making his way to the White House in 1969.

During the last two decades of her life, Douglas finally received appropriate recognition for her achievements. She received three honorary degrees--from Indiana State University, Marlboro College in Vermont, and Dartmouth College, and was appointed to serve on the board of the Harlem School of the Arts and the advisory council of the Columbia School of Social Work, among other institutions. In addition, throughout her busy life, Douglas found time to maintain relations with Barnard College. In January 1923, she came back to the college as one of the judges for the annual performance of miracle plays, having directed one herself in her student days. The Barnard Bulletin followed her theatrical career for some time, and the Barnard Alumnae Monthly featured an interview with Douglas in 1934 and an article on her in 1940, in addition to celebrating her 1944 election to Congress. In 1945, during her first year in Congress, a dinner in her honor was given by the Washington, D.C. Alumnae Club, and she, in return, invited the alumnae to come hear her first speech in the House. In 1953, Douglas, together with over 150 other former students of Minor Latham, attended a reception in honor of her former drama professor. And finally, on May 16, 1979, fifty-seven years after she dropped out, Helen Gahagan Douglas returned to Barnard College to accept the Barnard Medal of Distinction, an award given by the College each year during its commencement ceremony to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to advancing women’s participation in public life. Douglas was seventy-eight, frail, and in pain due to her long-time battle with breast cancer (she had had a mastectomy in 1972) which had by then spread to her left lung and hipbone. The speech introducing Douglas enumerated her truly formidable and wide-ranging accomplishments: “Broadway actress, opera singer, film star, Congresswoman […], Ambassador to the United Nations, biographer, lecturer, wife, mother, grandmother.” A New York Times article related that “as she painfully limped to center stage with the help of a cane and the support of an escort,” the audience “burst into long, loud applause and rose to its feet to salute the courage.”

In the end, Helen Gahagan Douglas managed to triumph over the two men who were her chief adversaries in life: her father, Walter Gahagan, and her opponent in the senatorial race, Richard Nixon. Against the wishes of both, she persisted in her ambitions. In her clash with Walter Gahagan, her victory was unambiguous: against his violent protest, she dropped out of college to pursue a successful acting career, earning acclaim for her talent. In the case of the Douglas-Nixon battle, her triumph is not so evident. Certainly she lost the vote, and never again ran for public office. But she did prevail over Nixon in a way that was much more important than political victory. During the campaign, she never resorted to the devious and unprincipled strategies that he utilized against her. Douglas herself recalled that, as election day neared and she began to realize that she would lose, her main concern was not to become bitter about it. “I didn’t want Nixon’s defeat of me to take anything more away from me than my place in Congress,” she wrote. When she learned that she had lost, she was glad to find herself “free, uninjured, whole. Nixon had his victory but I had mine.” As she had done more than thirty years earlier when her father pressured her to finish high school and go to college, she appeared to succumb and lose the battle, but inwardly she remained true to herself. When the Watergate scandal unfolded in 1973 and 1974, a popular button read, “Don’t Blame Me. I Voted for Helen Gahagan Douglas.” Both before and after the scandal, journalists repeatedly questioned Douglas about her opinion of Richard Nixon and about the 1950 Senate campaign. However, she rarely made statements on Nixon until after his resignation, and when she did, her words were dignified and reserved. “I refused to make capital of his downfall,” Douglas explained in her memoir. “It wasn’t the time to say, ‘And by the way, look at what he did to me.’ […] I couldn’t take pleasure from the distress of our country.”

Helen Gahagan Douglas’s health continued to deteriorate after the commencement ceremony at Barnard, and the following year, on June 28, 1980, she died at the Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital in New York City. According to her husband, the last distinct words she uttered, evocative of her life-long independence and self-confidence, were, “Leave me alone. I’m all right.”

SOURCES

•Asbury, Edith Evans. “Helen Gahagan Douglas Gets Ovation and Medal as Barnard Hails 6.” The New York Times, May 17, 1979, p. B3;
•Douglas, Helen Gahagan. A Full Life. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1982;
•“Douglas, Helen Gahagan, 1900-1980.” Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress. Retrieved July 29, 2002 from the World Wide Web: <http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=D000454>;
•Hollywood Anti-Nazi League for the Defense of American Democracy. “Declaration of Democratic Independence [1939].” In Our Own Backyard: Resisting Nazi Propaganda in Southern California, 1933-1945. Last updated December 7, 2000. Retrieved July 29, 2002 from the World Wide Web: <http://library.csun.edu/spcoll/exhibitions/Backyard/declarat.htm>;
•Mitchell, Greg. Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas--Sexual Politics and the Red Scare, 1950. New York: Random House, 1998;
•“Nixon, Richard Milhous, 1913-1994.” Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress. Retrieved July 29, 2002 from the World Wide Web: <http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=N000116>;
•Robinson, James A. “Richard M. Nixon Biography.” Encyclopedia Americana: The American Presidency. Grolier Incorporated, 2000. Retrieved July 30, 2002 from the World Wide Web: <http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/ea/bios/37pnixo.html>;
•Scobie, Ingrid Winther. Center Stage: Helen Gahagan Douglas: A Life. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992;
•“Owen Davis.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 249, Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, 3rd Series. Farmington Hills, MI: The Gale Group, 2002;
•Program for Barnard College Greek Games, April 9, 1921, p. 4; The Mortarboard 1922-1924; The Barnard Bulletin, November 4 and December 16, 1921; Minutes of the Board of Student Presidents (B.O.S.P.), March 13, 1922; Neer, Imogene. “Shadow of the Moon: An Incident From the Old Irish Legend Dramatized by Helen Gahagan and Alice De Sola.” The Barnard Bulletin, May 19, 1922; The Barnard Bulletin, October 6, 1922; January 12 and May 11, 1923; Barnard College Alumnae Monthly, March 1934, pp. 10-11; April 1934, pp. 8-9; January 1940, p. 7; February 1945, p. 12; April 1945, p. 20; and January 1954, p. 12. (Barnard College Archives)

contributed by Irina Vodonos '02

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On her application to Barnard College in 1925, Virginia Hall wrote that she was interested in a career with the diplomatic service and in foreign trade. "Both vocations would bring me into contact with many interesting persons and give me the opportunity to make use of foreign languages," she wrote. What she could not have known then was that her interest would lead her to become one of the Allies' most valuable and courageous spies in occupied France during World War II, and the only American civilian woman to receive the Distinguished Service Cross during the war.

Born April 6, 1906, in Baltimore, Md., Hall was the fifth and youngest daughter of Edwin and Barbara Hall. Her father was an adventurer who ran away to sea as a young man on one of his own father's clipper ships. Later, he married and settled in Baltimore and continued to travel with his family. According to Hall's college application, she had visited Belgium, France, Switzerland and Italy before she was a teenager.

Her trips abroad and her father's influence instilled in her a love for languages and cultures; she excelled in French, German and Latin while a student at Roland Park Country Day School in Maryland. She also was involved in high school dramatics, athletics and student government. She started college at Radcliffe and transferred to Barnard in 1925 (the same year famed writer Zora Neale Hurston transferred to the College from Howard University).

Though Hall would demonstrate her intelligence, language skills, and courage later while working as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency) she was only a C student at Barnard, even in courses she called her favorites, French and math. And she failed physical education because she didn't bother to show up for class.

In her first semester at Barnard, Hall took a course on government from Professor Raymond Moley, the political science expert who in the 1920s prepared studies on criminal justice for New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hall clearly enjoyed his teaching since she enrolled in two more government courses taught by Moley in the spring of 1926. (Moley went on to become Roosevelt's national advisor and speechwriter during his presidency; he coined the term, "The New Deal.")

Despite middling grades, she continued her love for languages and interest in foreign affairs, and after a year on the Barnard campus she persuaded her family to allow her to study overseas, first in Paris, then in Vienna. When she returned to the U.S. in 1929, she opted for Washington, D.C. and took courses in French and economics at George Washington University. During her time in the nation's capitol, the future began to take form for Hall.

By 1931, she began what she hoped would be a career in international relations as a clerk with the American Embassy in Warsaw, earning a salary of $2,500 a year. She spent the next few years serving in Estonia, Austria, and Turkey.

In Turkey, Hall endured a personal tragedy that almost ended her dreams. On a hunting expedition, a shotgun slipped from her grasp and discharged; a bullet struck her in the foot. When medical help finally arrived, gangrene had already developed. Virginia's leg was amputated to save her life and she was fitted with an artificial limb. As a result, her future friends in the French underground would refer to her as 'la dame qui boite' or "The Limping Lady."

The accident cut Hall's career short in the State Department. Secretary of State Cordell Hull noted that she would be a "fine career girl in the Consular Service," but rejected her appeal to become a career Foreign Service Officer because of her artificial limb. Hall left the State Department in 1939.

When war broke out, she was already in Paris and joined the French Ambulance Service Unit as a private second class. When France fell to Germany, she fled to England and began working as a code clerk at the U.S. Embassy.

The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) recognized her talents for languages and recruited her, training her in communications, security and weaponry. Her first SOE assignment was to help set up resistance networks in unoccupied France, where she posed as a reporter for the New York Post and sent reports freely, describing the small town's shortages and deteriorating living conditions.

Soon she began espionage work. Out of an apartment in Lyons she established contact with the French underground and began assisting in the return to England of downed American aircrews and escaped prisoners. She continued to write as a "reporter." When the United States entered the war she became an enemy alien in Nazi-occupied France and was forced to conduct business from bistros and restaurants while eluding Vichy and Gestapo officers.

When North Africa was invaded in November 1942, the sudden presence of countless German troops in Vichy forced Hall to leave the country. "She crossed the Pyrénées mountains in the dead of winter on foot with help from a Belgian Army captain, two Frenchmen and a Spanish guide. Following a brief incarceration in the border town of San Juan de Las Abadesas by Spanish authorities, she was soon released at the behest of the American consul, according to Dr. Dennis Casey of the Air Intelligence Agency.

After what she called "a dulling few months in Madrid" operating again under the cover of being a reporter, this time for the Chicago Times , Hall asked SOE to transfer her back to France where she could better assist the war effort. She returned instead to England for training as a wireless operator, and moved to the American Office of Strategic Services. (The OSS was founded and headed by Major General "Wild Bill" Donovan, a World War I hero who earned his nickname as a star quarterback on the Columbia University football team; Donovan graduated Columbia Law School in the same class as FDR)

Before long, Hall began her second tour as a spy in France under the code name "Diane" (one of many she took), setting up sabotage and guerrilla groups and supplying each with arms, money and rations. Shortly before D-Day, to avoid being identified by Nazi radio direction finders, Hall and her team changed locations regularly, sometimes even sending reports from the attic of the home of the local police chief.

Then, in a daring action, she disguised herself as a peasant woman, donning heavy woolen clothes and filling her dresses to make her look much larger. She herded goats up and down the roads near the village of Chambon-sur-Lignon to spy on German troop movements and activities. The danger she faced during that time cannot be overstated as the Gestapo was intent on capturing the "lady with a limp," whom they regarded as "the most dangerous of the Allies' agents in France."

Between July 14 and Aug. 14, 1944, despite increasing efforts by the Germans to find her, "Diane" transmitted 37 messages to London with information on German troop movement and activities. She was the first one to report that the German General Staff was relocating its headquarters from Lyon to Le Puy. During this same time, she met another OSS agent whose code name was "Henri." He was Lt. Paul Goillot, and 13 years later, at the age of 51, Hall married him.

In the final days of the German occupation, her teams destroyed bridges, derailed freight trains returning to Germany, downed key telephone lines and took more than 500 prisoners. "The German retreat was anything but smooth and without incident thanks to Hall's groups and others like them," said Casey.

For her heroic efforts, Hall was the only civilian American woman during World War II to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by President Harry S. Truman. Donovan had asked the President to present her the award personally at the White House, but Hall declined the offer, suggesting it would make future intelligence work impossible since she was "still operational and most anxious to get busy." Instead, Donovan himself presented her the award, the nation's second highest military award for bravery after the Medal of Honor, on Sept. 27, 1945, in his office at the OSS in Washington. Today, the cross as well as her passports and telephone suitcase can be found in the CIA museum in Washington.

After the war, Hall accepted numerous overseas assignments with the CIA. Following her marriage to Goillot in 1957, she and her husband worked together at CIA headquarters. In 1966 when she turned 60, the mandatory retirement age, she turned in her agency badge.

Sixteen years later, she died in Baltimore, where she was born. During the National Women's History Museum 2002 exhibit, "Clandestine Women: The Untold Stories of Women in Espionage" which honored all women intelligence officers who served the U.S. throughout its history, Virginia Hall's story was among the most prominent.

"What comes to mind when I think of Virginia? Her ability to organize and get people to do things. She had several people working under her during the war, and was able to accomplish a lot in spite of her leg," says Elizabeth McIntosh, who worked at the CIA at the same time Hall was there and wrote Sisterhood of Spies. "I've always admired that ability in her to get things done as well as how her language skills worked for her throughout her life."

Additional quotations on Virginia Hall Goillot:

"Although well known to the Gestapo and under constant threat of capture, she organized, armed, and trained three battalions of French Resistance forces. She directed them in sabotage operations against the German army. At great personal risk, Hall also transmitted radio messages to Allied troops in the critical weeks after the invasion of Normandy."

--Nora Slatkin, then-Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in her speech entitled, "Women in the CIA" to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations in 1996.

"Outstanding among SOE's first agents in France was an American newspaperwoman from Baltimore, whose cover as the accredited correspondent of the New York Post was a valuable one. Her name was Virginia Hall. She was a tall woman with bright red hair, an artificial foot, which she named Cuthbert, and a remarkable ability to improvise."

--Patrick Howarth, who worked for the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War and wrote about his experiences in the book, Undercover (1980).

"Virginia Hall in my opinion­--and there are many others who share it--was one of the greatest women agents of the war."

--Denis Rake, SOE agent”

SOURCES

•Casey, Dennis. "Limping Lady Begins Spy Career In Early 1940's": HQ AIA/HO Kelly AFB, Texas; Air Intelligence Agency, HQ United States Air Force Air Intelligence Agency at Kelly Air Force base Public Affairs Office, 102 Hall Blvd, Suite 234, San Antonio, TX 78243-7036; DSN 969-2166 or (210) 972-2166;
•Central Intelligence Agency Museum. "Virginia Hall's Distinguished Service Cross WWII (Courtesy of Lorna Catling)". Retrieved December 21, 2004 from the World Wide Web: <http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/facttell/textonly.htm>;
•"Clandestine Women: The Untold Stories of Women in Espionage." The National Women's History Museum. Retrieved December 21, 2004 from the World Wide Web: <www.nwhm.org/home/spyexhibit.htm>;
•Haines, Gerald K. "Virginia Hall Goillot: Career Intelligence Officer," Prologue 26 (winter 1994);
•McIntosh, Elizabeth. Sisterhood of Spies. New York: Dell Publishing, 1999;
•"The Other Agents--Virginia Hall." The Women of the Special Operations Executive. Retrieved December 21, 2004 from the World Wide Web: <http://www.64-baker-street.org/agents/agent_others_virginia_hall.html>;
•"The Other Agents--Virginia Hall: CIA Speech." The Women of the Special Operations Executive. Retrieved December 21, 2004 from the World Wide Web:
<http://www.64-baker-street.org/agents/agent_others_virginia_hall_cia_speech.html>;
•Slatkin, Nora. "Women in CIA." Speech to Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, May 15, 1996;
•Yellin, Emily. "Hero and Villain: Contrasting Wartime Roles for Women." International Herald Tribune, June 10, 2004;
•Yellin, Emily. Our Mothers' War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II. New York: Free Press, 2004;
•Freshman Interest form and academic transcript of Virginia Hall, on microfilm; and The Mortarboard 1927. (Barnard College Archives)

contributed by Jo Kadlecek

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Diana Chang was born in New York City to a Chinese father and a mother of Chinese and Irish descent. Soon after, her family moved to China, where Ms. Chang spent the majority of her childhood and adolescence. She lived in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II and attended the Shanghai American School, before matriculating at St. John’s University, Shanghai in 1941. Leaving after one year, she took a position as an editorial and feature writer at the English-language Shanghai Evening Post in 1943 on the recommendation of a friend who knew she was interested in writing. Ms. Chang later described her weekly piece in the paper as “chatty, personal, and feminine”. She resigned from the paper after eight months for “political reasons”, which she elaborated as follows: “I resigned my ‘position’… because of the Japanese supervision. No Japanese were in the office, so at first – in my naiveté (I was 17 or 18 at the time) I thought the paper was run by the three or four men I took to be white Protestants engaged in putting out the newspaper” (letter to author, 7/20/07). Her family later returned to New York City, where she entered Barnard College in the fall of 1946, as a transfer to the Class of 1949.

Ms. Chang chose to major in English, focusing on British and American poets. Soon after entering her first year at Barnard, Ms. Chang’s poem “Mood” was published in the Modern Poetry Association’s Poetry, the most prestigious poetry journal of the time, founded by Harriet Monroe in 1912. Ms. Chang's literary talent was no secret at Barnard; she was chosen in May 1947 to read an original poem at the Undergraduate Association's Tea in honor of the retiring Dean Virginia C. Gildersleeve. Ms. Chang's original poem, “Spring Comes Too Intricately” was published in the campus literary magazine The Bear, as the winning entry in a literary contest sponsored by the magazine. In Ms. Chang's yearbook profile, alongside her interest in golf and yoga, her classmates note her status as a published poet. In May 1949, she graduated from Barnard cum laude, and shortly after was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

After graduation, Ms. Chang traveled to France on a Fulbright fellowship to study French symbolist poetry at the Sorbonne. After returning to New York, she held editorial positions at various publishing firms, and began working on her first novel, The Frontiers of Love, published to critical acclaim in 1956. She went on to publish five additional novels and three volumes of poetry between 1959 and 1991. Over the years, Ms. Chang kept her connection with Barnard, occasionally publishing articles in the alumnae magazine. “Typewriters and Trees” chronicles her experience in an artist’s colony in New Hampshire, and “I See the City” is a photo-essay featuring images by noted photographer Rollie McKenna and excerpts from Ms. Chang’s novel, A Woman of Thirty (1959). Ms. Chang returned to Barnard in 1979 as an Adjunct Associate Professor of English, teaching creative writing and an interdisciplinary class called “Imagery and Form in the Arts”. Of her time spent teaching at Barnard, Ms. Chang says:

Advertisement for The Frontiers of Love from The Barnard Alumnae Monthly, November 1956 (Barnard College Archives)

Ms. Chang is considered to be the first published Asian-American novelist, and her works have received a great deal of scholarly attention. With the growing contemporary interest in Asian-American literature, her novel, The Frontiers of Love, is now regarded as one of the earliest works in that genre. However, categorizing Ms. Chang’s work is not simple. Only two of her novels, including The Frontiers of Love, feature protagonists of Chinese heritage, while the others include self-described “WASP” characters. In this respect, Ms. Chang’s work is comparable to that of the African-American novelist James Baldwin, whose work also features protagonists of various ethnic backgrounds. Both authors are influenced by their ethnic identity and its role in society, but not limiting themselves or their work to that issue allows them to explore other questions of identity. Baldwin examines matters of his homosexual identity in Giovanni’s Room (1956), which features white protagonists. Similarly, Ms. Chang doesn’t let her ethnic identity prevent her from exploring in her novels what she sees as the more universal problem of individual identity, whether Asian or otherwise. In her introduction to the 1994 edition of The Frontiers of Love, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim writes:

 

Little-known Beat Generation poet Elise Nada Cowen '56 was born in 1933 in Long Island, the daughter of wealthy Jewish parents. The family later moved to Bennett Avenue in Washington Heights. Admitted to Barnard College in October 1951, Cowen began her studies the following spring. While at Barnard, she took up Fren read Rimbaud in the original.” It was at Barnard that she first earned the nickname Beat Alice, having fallen among a loose-knit group of anti-establishment artists and visionaries known to outsiders as beatniks. One of her first acquaintances at college was the Beat poet and novelist Joyce Johnson '55, who later portrayed Cowen in two of her books: Come and Join the Dance, which told of Johnson and Cowen’s experiences in the Barnard and Columbia Beat community; and Minor Characters, Johnson’s memoir of the Beat generation. In the latter work, Johnson introduces Cowen as follows:

All of Cowen's close friends marveled at her morbid brilliance and comic irreverence, expressed not only in poetry, but in numberless gestures and passing remarks. For instance, Leo Skir recalls the time, after spending one day at his apartment during one of her rootless periods, Cowen announced her intention to pack her bags and go out to look for a job. Skir noticed that she was wearing toreador pants. “I don't think you should wear toreador pants for a job interview,” he told her. “I'll change in the ladies’ room in the subway,” was her reply.

Elise Cowen’s years at Barnard were apparently turbulent; Skir and Johnson both recall that she was in and out of mental hospitals during that time, receiving treatment for depression and anxiety. Her poems speak of intense psychological and emotional suffering:

Cowen lived alone in a women’s boardinghouse near the Barnard campus during her freshman year, where she read and wrote poetry tirelessly. Her favorite poets at that time were T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Dylan Thomas, all of whom she could recite from memory. Skir recounts that she stole books from libraries and bookstores because she said it was “the only moral way to get books.” After taking time off due to mental illness, she returned to Barnard, taking up residence in the back room of a Russian woman's apartment.

Like many women in the male-centered Beat scene, Cowen became a public figure through her relationship with a male poet, in this case, Allen Ginsberg. Having met through Cowen’s philosophy professor, Alex Greer, Ginsberg and Cowen dated throughout the spring and summer of 1953. Ginsberg later referred to her as an “intellectual madwoman”. Later that year, as their romantic relationship tapered off, Ginsberg embraced his homosexuality and gave Cowen the fame of being his “last” girlfriend.

The memory of this brief relationship with Ginsberg plagued Cowen for the rest of her life. Suffering the anguish of a love for him that could not be reciprocated, she continued to desire his attention long after their affair had ended. As Joyce Johnson puts it, “Elise was a moment in Allen’s life. In Elise’s life, Allen was an eternity.”

One of Cowen’s poems illustrates this gulf:

After her graduation from Barnard in February 1956, Cowen and her lover “Sheila” (pseudonym) moved into an apartment with Ginsberg and his lover, Peter Orlovsky. Cowen worked as a typist in New York for a time, and after she was fired, moved to San Francisco to become further immersed in the fertile Beat scene that was beginning to develop there.

She lived in San Francisco with an alcoholic Irish painter in a rooming-house. Cowen supposedly spent a lot of time in a bar called “The Place” during this period. She became pregnant, and, unable to procure an early-term abortion, underwent a hysterotomy and returned to New York City, where she lived briefly with Leo Skir. After another trip to California with a new partner named Keith, she returned permanently to New York, where Allen Ginsberg helped her find a new apartment.

As her prolific writing continued to go unknown and unpublished, Cowen suffered ever more severe psychological breakdowns, ending up at last in Bellevue Hospital for two weeks of treatment for hepatitis and psychosis. When she checked herself out (against doctor’s orders), she returned to her parents’ apartment on Bennett Avenue in Washington Heights, New York City.

Elise Nada Cowen jumped through her parents’ sitting-room window to her death on February 1, 1962.

After her death, Cowen's parents destroyed a large portion of her writings. But her friend Leo Skir preserved a number of her poems, submitting them over the years for publication in The Evergreen Review as well as in Women of the Beat Generation, including the following, believed to be her last poem:

SOURCES

•The Cosmic Baseball Association. “Elise Nada Cowen... Beat Generation Poet / 1933-1962.” Last updated December 24, 1996. Retrieved October 17, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/cowen7.html>;
•Filreis, Alan. “Elise Cowen (1933-1962).” Retrieved October 17, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/cowen.html>;
•Knight, Brenda, ed. Women of the Beat Generation. Berkeley, CA: Conari Press, 1996;
•Skir, Leo. “She Was Beat with Allen Ginsberg: Elise Cowen: A Brief Memoir of the Fifties.” Evergreen Review, October 1970. Retrieved October 17, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/people/041497pe.htm>;
•Report of Barnard College Committee on Admissions, October 1951 and The Mortarboard 1954. (Barnard College Archives)

contributed by Rachel Greer '02

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Born in Mexico City, Maria de Lourdes Hinojosa was the youngest of four children. When she was one, her father moved the family to the United States, and Hinojosa spent her childhood in Chicago. At the time she attended Barnard College, Hinojosa resided in Washington Heights, the populous and culturally rich Manhattan neighborhood in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge. Ever since childhood, she has visited Mexico at least every other year, to spend time with numerous in-laws, cousins, aunts, uncles, and her hundred-plus-year-old great aunt. "I can't let go of Mexico," she writes in Raising Raul, her memoir. "It's part of who I am." During her freshman year, Hinojosa participated in the Barnard College Dance Department's Program of Dance Works in Progress, in which she choreographed and danced a piece called "Intrusion" with one of her peers. In 1985, Hinojosa earned a bachelor of arts degree in Latin American Studies with minors in political science and women's studies, graduating magna cum laude.

Hinojosa's career in broadcast journalism began immediately after college, when she took a position as a production assistant for National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. In 1987, she joined the staff of WCBS-Radio as a producer. Among the shows she produced while at CBS: Where We Stand with Walter Cronkite, The Osgood File, and Newsbreak. From 1988 to 1989, she worked as a producer and researcher for CBS This Morning. From 1990 to 1997, she worked for National Public Radio and WNYC-Radio as a general assignment correspondent covering issues in the New York area as well as the rest of the nation. In 1991, Hinojosa worked for WNYC-TV as the host of New York Hotline, a live, prime-time call-in show discussing current and public affairs. During this time, she also hosted Visiones, a Latino-oriented public-affairs talk show on WNBC-TV in New York. Hinojosa continues her affiliation with NPR to this day, anchoring Latino USA, a weekly national program reporting on news and culture in the Latino community. In May 1997, Maria Hinojosa joined the Cable News Network, where she reports regularly as the network's New York-based Urban Affairs Correspondent.

Among the historical events of our time that Hinojosa has covered on location are the Crown Heights conflicts of 1991 and the 1995 trial of ten accused conspirators in the first attack on the World Trade Center. While covering the latter event for NPR, Hinojosa received a request from an American literary group to cover the first American book fair ever held in Havana, Cuba. On her last day in Cuba, she traveled to the countryside to visit one of the rural sanatorios, where AIDS patients are kept under quarantine by the Cuban government. There she met a teenage husband and wife named Javier and Mireya, members of the anti-establishment rockero subculture who had deliberately injected themselves with AIDS-tainted blood, hoping by this means to secure a life of comfortable confinement inside a sanatorio. In the fourth chapter of Raising Raul, Hinojosa describes her interview with the pair:

There is no doubt that Hinojosa's intrepid spirit will continue to guide her where few other American journalists are prepared to venture, a path that in time will only increase her journalistic stature.

Maria Hinojosa has received many awards and honors in the course of her career. In 1991, she won the Top Story of the Year Award as well as a Unity Award from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists for her NPR story about gang members entitled Crews. Also in 1991, she won an Associated Press award for her coverage of Nelson Mandela's release from prison for WNYC Radio. In 1993, she received both the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Radio Award and the New York Society of Professional Journalists Deadline Award for her NPR report Kids and Guns. In 1999, she received the Ruben Salazar Award from the National Council of La Raza. Named in honor of the journalist killed by a policeman's tear gas projectile in 1970 while covering a Chicano march in East Los Angeles, the Ruben Salazar Award is given each year to an individual who has dedicated his or her life to promoting a positive portrayal of Latino historical, political, economic, and cultural contributors to U.S. society. The same year she was named one of the 25 Most Influential Working Mothers in America by Working Mother magazine. In 1995, Hispanic Business magazine named her one of the 100 most influential Latinos in the United States. Also in 1995, Hinojosa received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for “Manhood Behind Bars,” a story for NPR that documented how jail time has become a rite of passage for men of all races.

1995 saw the publication of Maria Hinojosa's first book, Crews: Gang Members Talk with Maria Hinojosa, which was based on her award-winning NPR report. Hinojosa's critically-acclaimed memoir, Raising Raul: Adventures Raising Myself and My Son, her reflections on life, career, and motherhood, was published in 1999 by Viking.

SOURCES

•Hinojosa, Maria. Raising Raul: Adventures Raising Myself and My Son. New York: Viking, 1999;
•“Latino USA Host Maria Hinojosa Wins NCLR's Ruben Salazar Award.” Latino USA: Press Release, July 7, 1999. Retrieved October 17, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://www.latinousa.org/pressrelease/mhinojosa.html>;
•“Maria Hinojosa.” CNN.com: Anchors & Correspondents. Retrieved October 17, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://www.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/hinojosa.maria.html>;
•A Program of Dance Works in Progress (1980); The Mortarboard 1985; and Barnard Honors Supplement 1985. (Barnard College Archives)

contributed by Donald Glassman

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One of Barnard's most prominent alumnae authors, Edwidge Danticat '90 has to date published three novels as well as numerous articles and an acclaimed memoir, Brother, I'm Dying (2007). Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1969, she was raised by her aunt while her parents resided in New York City. This early period in her life was extremely important to her cultivation as a writer, leading her to develop a love and regard for Haitian culture which she has carried with her throughout her writing life. At the age of nine, while still living in Haiti, she wrote her first story in her native Kriol and has been writing ever since.

At twelve years of age, she moved to New York and was enrolled in a magnet school in Brooklyn that prepared students for medical careers. Wishing his daughter to become self-sufficient and successful, her father encouraged her to be a nurse, but her inherent love for the written word could not be suppressed. Writing was her only solace and means of expression during her high school years, when she was extremely shy and found it hard to adjust to the new culture and language confronting her. In her last two years of high school, some of her articles were published in local newspapers, and the ideas for her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory began to germinate in her mind.

In the fall of 1986, Danticat entered Barnard College, where her skills as a writer were nurtured and refined. Her father's goal for her to become a nurse was never realized and instead she focused even more intensely on writing. Balancing a full-time course of studies with her on-campus job at the Office of Admissions, Danticat nonetheless found time for her most beloved activity, writing. She presented the first part of Breath, Eyes, Memory in her creative writing class at Barnard, and by the end of her senior year she had completed the first seventy pages of what was to become her debut novel. She graduated from Barnard magna cum laude with a B.A. in French in May 1990, counting among her honors the Helen Prince Memorial Prize, the Howard M. Teichmann Writing Prize, and membership in Phi Beta Kappa.

Danticat went on to graduate school at Brown University, where she continued to improve her craft. One result was her senior thesis, the final version of Breath, Eyes, Memory. The manuscript was promptly discovered by Soho Press, and her graduation from Brown with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing coincided with the publication of Breath, Eyes, Memory in 1994. This innovative novel, which draws on the lives and stories of four generations of Haitian women, was instantly well-received and hailed as a landmark representation of Haitian culture from a new and refreshing perspective. As Jordana Hart wrote in The Boston Globe:

One year later, Danticat's second book was published by Soho Press. Entitled Krik? Krak!, this collection of short stories (some of which were conceived and written during her years at Barnard) gives readers a look into the lives of Haitians and Haitian-Americans--especially focusing on women--during times of political unrest and upheaval. The relationships between women across divisions of age and class are at the core of her fiction. Danticat feels personally moved to give voice to these women because, as she states in one of her interviews, “In Haitian culture women are taught to be silent, but I must write. To Haitian women I say 'Kimbela,' which is Creole for 'Hang in there.'” In her epilogue to Krik? Krak! she writes:

Praise for Krik? Krak! matched, if not exceeded, that earned by her first book. In 1995, Danticat received the Pushcart Short Story Prize for “Between the Pool and the Gardenias” from Krik? Krak! and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Krik? Krak! She was also awarded the 1995 Woman of Achievement Award from Barnard College, and selected as one of the twenty best young American novelists in 1996 by Granta. Following the extraordinary recognition earned by her first two books, her third, The Farming of Bones, appeared in 1997. This novel explores the economic, political, and social situations leading up to the 1937 massacres in Haiti on orders of the dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo.

In 1998, one year after the publication of The Farming of Bones, Danticat appeared as a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss Breath, Eyes, Memory, which had been selected for “Oprah’s Book Club”. Danticat's appearance with Oprah simultaneously brought her celebrity status and a much broader audience than her works had previously enjoyed. Meanwhile, her literary stature was confirmed by the 1999 American Book Award for The Farming of Bones.

Aside from writing three books since her graduation from Barnard and Brown, Danticat has also taught creative writing at New York University and worked with Jonathan Demme (creator of the film versions of Beloved and The Silence of the Lambs) on Courage and Pain (1994), a documentary about her native land. She remains closely connected with Barnard, having returned as a distinguished guest speaker on multiple occasions, including the 1997 Helen Rogers Reid Lecture on the topic of “Migration and the Literary Imagination”. Most recently, Krik? Krak! was distributed to the entering class of 2005 as summer reading, and Danticat spoke and read excerpts from the book as part of the 2001 New Students Orientation Program.

In 2000, Edwidge Danticat received the high honor of being asked to write the foreword to the new HarperCollins edition of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston '28. Most recently, one of her short stories was selected for inclusion in Mothers Through the Eyes of Women Writers: A Barnard College Collection. This anthology of stories written by Barnard alumnae and compiled by the College's current president, Judith R. Shapiro, focuses on intergenerational relationships among women of many cultures. Now at the height of her literary career, Danticat continues to inspire new readers through her ability to illuminate the harmony and the conflict between different cultures in the same land. But at the root of her art will always be her passion for the delicate craft of writing, for as she observes in Krik? Krak!:

SOURCES

•Atanasoski, Neda. “Edwidge Danticat.” Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color. Last updated February 23, 1998. Retrieved November 9, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors.EdwidgeDanticat.html>;
•Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007;
•Danticat, Edwidge. Brother, I'm Dying. New York: Soho Press, 1994;
•Danticat, Edwidge. Krik? Krak! New York: Soho Press, 1995;
•Danticat, Edwidge. The Farming of Bones. New York: Soho Press, 1998;
•"Edwidge Danticat.” Authors and Artists for Young Adults. Vol. 29. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 1999. Retrieved November 5, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://www.galegroup.com/freresrc/blkhstry.danticat.htm>;
•“Edwidge Danticat.” The New York Immigrant Achievement Awards: 2000 Honorees. Retrieved November 9, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://www.ailf.org/notable/iaa/ny2000/danticat.htm>;
•Hart, Jordanna. “Debut Novel Reveals Haiti's Heart.” The Boston Globe, August 12, 1994, p. 53;
•Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: HarperCollins, 2000;
•Kerlee, Ime. “Edwidge Danticat.” Emory University: Postcolonial Studies. Last updated December 20, 2000. Retrieved November 9, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Danticat.html>;
•“Oprah’s Book Club: Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat.” Oprah.com. Retrieved November 9, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <http://www.oprah.com/obc/pastbooks/edwidge_danticat>;
•Shapiro, Judith R., ed. Mothers Through the Eyes of Women Writers: A Barnard College Collection. Berkeley, CA: Conari Press, 2001;
•Barnard College Graduates Honors and Awards, October 25, 1989, February 14, 1990, and May 16, 1990; and The Mortarboard 1990. (Barnard College Archives)

contributed by Stephanie Pahler '05

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