Womansight: News for North Texas Women, Volume 2, Number 1, June 1981 Page: 4
6 p. : ill. ; 39 x 30 cm.View a full description of this newspaper.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
I
CELEBRATING TEXAS
“We Fly” “We Shock Society” “We Enrich” “We Love Children”
Suzanne Martin
The rich and fertile Texas soil has often been
turned to unearth a buried history of pioneers,
adventurers and common people. But last month
in San Antonio the opening of the exhibit "Texas
Women — A Celebration of History," showed that
some historic ground had gone unexplored —
until now. Combining photographs, artifacts,
documents and diary excerpts, this one-of-a-kind
exhibit tells a long overdue "herstory" of the
struggle, work and accomplishments of Texas
women.
A woman served as chief of the North Texas
Kadohadacho Indians in about 1686.
Sarah Cockrell built the first iron bridge
across the Trinity River in Dallas in 1872.
In 1877, black laundresses in Galveston went
on strike for higher wages.
Mabel Doss Day Lea of Coleman County got
a stiff law passed in 1883 which outlawed fence
cutting.
In 1913, Dallas nurse May Smith borrowed
Red Cross tents and set up a "baby camp" on
the grounds of Parkland Hospital. She persuaded
doctors and nurses to voluntarily treat malnour-
ished and desperately ill infants, and the Dallas
Federation of Women's Clubs raised money for
supplies. Soon a temporary building replaced
the tents.
In 1929, 16 years later, Smith* finally per-
suaded Dallas businessman Tom Bradford, Sr. to
contribute $100,000 for a proper children's
hospital. Bradford received due credit for his
contribution. The Bradford Memorial Hospital
for Babies is now a part of Children's Medical
Center in Dallas. And when Smith died in 1938,
she was known as "Mother to 55,000 Dallas
babies."
“Ridicule is a great power,
and it is this potent
weapon that is most used
by our enemies of the
movement. The cry of
‘short-haired women and
long haired men’ is a bug-
bear to scare foolish
women with.’’
Mrs. Margaret Watson,
Secretary of the Texas Equal Rights Association, 1894
The stories go on, with representative women
from every part of the state. In all, the exhibit
reveals the contributions of more than 100 Texas
women. And those make up only a fraction of
the total number of women the project discov-
ered.
The creation of the exhibit, the first of its kind
in the nation, is now as much a part of Texas
history as the stories the exhibit unveils. Four
years ago Travis County Commissioner Ann
Richards toured the Institute of Texan Cultures
in San Antonio. She came away asking why so
few women were included in the displays, and she
took the question to the Texas Foundation for
Women's Resources in Austin. From there Rich-
ards and the foundation enlisted Mary Beth
Rogers as project director and Ruthe Winegarten
as research director and curator.
“The time has come to
dispense with this starry-
eyed babes-in-the-woods
twaddle about suffragists.
l/l/e went up against and
helped to break the most
ruthless and powerful
machine that had ever
fastened its tentacles on
Texas and the United
States, and we knew what
we were about; we had to
know!”
Elizabet Ney was the first in an illustrious line of Texas women who created massive sculptures glori-
fying Texas heroes. A renowned sculptor from Bavaria, Ney settled in Texas in 1874, where her un-
conventional lifestyle and advanced ideas made her a controversial figure. Many of her statues are
now in the United States Capitol Building and the Texas Capitol Building.
Minnie Fisher Cunningham, 1940
WOMANSIGHT JUNE 1981
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Newspaper.
Womansight, Incorporated. Womansight: News for North Texas Women, Volume 2, Number 1, June 1981, newspaper, June 1981; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1484048/m1/4/: accessed June 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.