The Archive Alcove

Month: March 2025

Jane Addams Lectures at Grinnell (1906)

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On March 24, 2025

In 2024-25

Jane Addams made several visits to Grinnell, because of her close ties to leaders of the Social Gospel movement at the college (such as Carrie Rand, George Herron, President George Gates,and Edward Steiner).

In 1906, Addams gave a lecture on “The Rise and Development of the Social Settlement Idea” at the Congregational church, which also served as a local fundraiser for the Uncle Sam’s Club, which received the proceeds from the ticket sales for the sold-out event.  Newspaper coverage noted that this might be audiences last chance to hear from Addams because her growing list of duties and responsibilities were such that she would have to “retire from the stage” (i.e. be unable to lecture widely in the future).  Addams discussed the origins of the settlement movement in Whitechapel London, begun by students at Oxford and Cambridge, and focused heavily on her own work at Hull House in Chicago. Adams emphasized that settlement houses stood for “high moral, political, and educational ideals” which she juxtaposed with the “tin-pan Americanism” that animated nativists and their calls for assimilation. Addams also detailed some of the programming at Hull House: study classes, social clubs, a kindergarten, a labor museum, a music school, a theater program, a gymnasium, a coffee house, and gardens (serving a communities made up of more than 25 nationalities).

In true Grinnell fashion, Jane Addams also combined a class visit with her lecture, attending a course taught by her friend and colleague, Prof. Edward Steiner.

 

Grinnell-in-Star Wars

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On March 17, 2025

In 2024-25

In the spring of 1986, a Grinnell alumnus gave a talk in support of Regan’s controversial Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), commonly known as “Star Wars.” After dutifully reporting the contents of the talk, the S&B ended the paper with a satirical page describing how the college was launching its own “star wars” initiative.  The context for this spoof (that may be lost on those of us  who were not on campus in 1986), was the awarding of the large Sloan Foundation grant (relating to technology), the creation of the new Technology Studies program, and in turn, its creation of a new study program in Washington, D.C., which would become known as Grinnell-in-Washington (a program that ran until the 2010s). Fear not: the political science department was not abolished, the observatory was not turned into a missel silo, and Bob Cadmus never wielded a shotgun on campus.

Link to full-sized pdf:    Grinnell in Star Wars

Amelia Earhart’s Visit to Grinnell

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On March 10, 2025

In 2025-26

On a crisp October evening in 1936, an unusually large crowd gathered in the Congregational Church in Grinnell to hear Amelia Earhart deliver a lecture on “Aviation Adventures.” Originally scheduled for Herrick Chapel, the college event was moved to the Congregational Church since it could seat many more people and was used for such keynote gatherings (including graduation).

Billed as “the world’s premier aviatrix,” Earhart was touring the country in the wake of two unprecedented flights the year before: one was as the first person to fly solo across the Pacific from Hawaii to California (in January) while the other entailed the first solo (non-stop) flight from Mexico City to Newark, NJ (in May). Just a few years’ earlier, she had gained international fame as the first woman pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

In the Fall of 1936, Earhart was making preparations for her most ambitious project yet: to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe (flying solo, with just one companion, a navigator). To fly that distance, Earhart needed a different kind of plane, and was spending the Fall modifying a newly acquired Lockeed 10-E Electra (pictured here) that would be used to make the voyage the following summer.

Grinnellians were eager to make the most of this visit. The college library, in Carnegie, dedicated a “corner stall [that] will feature literature by and concerning the famous flyer.” And a special reception was held, after the talk, in the women’s Quandrangle drawing room–an event that was for “Grinnell co-eds and faculty women only.” Recently appointed a faculty member, herself, Earhart had joined Purdue University in 1935 to help them develop a new program in aviation (that she hoped would spread to other schools, opening up new opportunities for a rising generation of women and men).

Amelia Earhart’s plane disappeared the following July, n route from New Guinea to Howland Island.  Since it was during the summer, we don’t know much about how the campus reacted to the news of her disappearance.

What’s in a Name?: A Grinnell Artist Names a Mountain

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On March 3, 2025

In 2024-25

Mount Booker near Lake Chelan (1903) 29″ x 42″ (Collins Memorial Library, U. Puget Sound)

Abby Williams Hill ’07, who has been featured before, was one of the most prominent artists to come out Grinnell. Her collection of landscape paintings, from the early 1900s, portrayed the national parks and western landscapes to a wide public audience, being exhibited at the World’s Fair in St. Louis in 1904, and then published in serial form (subsidized by railroad companies eager to promote western tourism).

Hill was painting one particularly arresting peak, in the Cascades in 1903, when she was surprised to learn that no one knew of a name for that specific mountain.  She wrote to the U.S. Geological Survey, which reported back (to their own surprise) that it was one of the few peaks that had not been assigned an official place name, a toponym, in their records. So they gave Hill the opportunity to choose its official name. She wrote back saying that she would like it to be named after Booker T. Washington, someone she admired deeply. Only a few years earlier, Hill had taken her four children on a whistle stop tour of Progressive America, visiting prominent reform sites such as Jane Addams’ Hull House, in Chicago, and Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute, in Alabama, where she spent a considerable amount of time in the company of both Booker and Margaret Murray Washington.

When interviewed by a New York newspaper about the name choice, Hill explained:

Here was a glorious monument not made by the hand of man but carved by the Almighty. What could be more fitting than to name it for one of the most truly great men of our times… When we look at Mt. Booker let us be thankful for Booker Washington’s life, for what he did to solve seemingly impossible problems… His influence like the stream from the mountain will go on through the ages to bless and help mankind.

Naming a mountain after an African American stirred some controversy in the press, , as Grinnell’s local newspaper, the Herald, explained:

This aroused negro-phobia into activity. The name became a red rage for anti-negro venom. Choice epithets easily imagined, fell in a shower of mud around her [Abby Hill]; an effort was made to change the name. The Government at Washington was consulted but only to learn that the name was given by authority, was a matter of record, and could not be changed.

In Grinnell, Booker T. Washington was a widely admired figure, invited twice to speak to the Grinnell community, and the subject of many talks and papers on campus during this period.

 

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