History on Display: The National Civil Rights Museum
Because we are heading into the Martin Luther King holiday weekend here in the United States. I thought it was an appropriate time to re-run my post on our visit to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis in the spring of 2024. It turns out that I didn’t write one. With questions of institutionalized violence, resistance, and civil rights in the headlines and in our hearts I still think it’s the right subject for today’s post, so I’m going to have to dig back into my notes/memory to tell the story I should have written then.
The National Civil Rights Museum, built around the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, is rightly described as a sacred space. The exhibits use a brilliant blend of space, light, music and photographs to immerse viewers in familiar stories–the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, the student sit-ins of 1960, and the freedom rides of 1961— and those less well known. (Perhaps only less well known to those of us who were not directly affected by the events or the need for them.) The museum ends with the room in which Dr. King died–the atmosphere when we were there was reverent.
I strongly urge you to visit the museum if you have the chance. I came away both proud of those who fought for civil rights and ashamed that the need had existed.
Beulah Henry, aka “Lady Edison
Beulah Louise Henry (1887-1973) was one of the most prolific inventors of the 20th century, although she had no training in mechanics or engineering. She became known as “Lady Edison” for the number of inventions she produced. None of them were big or world-shaking. Instead she invented children’s toys and devices that made daily life easier.
She created her first prototype for an invention when she was nine: a belt with holder attached that made it possible to read a newspaper when your hands were full. As with many of her later inventions, it was the result of observing a problem—in this case seeing a man struggling to read a newspaper while carrying his groceries.—and looking for a solution.
Patent drawing for her ice cream freezer
Henry received her first patent in 1912 for a vacuum sealed ice-cream freezer that needed very little ice to work—a major improvement since ice was in short supply before freezers became widely available for home use. A year later, she received patents for a handbag and an umbrella with interchangeable covers, allowing a woman to coordinate them with her outfits (Which sounds like a nuisance to me.)
Creating the invention and getting the patent was the easy part; getting someone to make her inventions was harder. In 1920, Henry and her parents moved to New York from their home in North Carolina to give her access to model makers, patent attorneys and retailers.
After Henry pounded lots of pavements and knocked on lots of doors, she founded her own company to make her parasol. Despite all the men who had said it wouldn’t work and wouldn’t sell, the product became a success and her rate of innovation picked up.
Henry focused next on toys, drawing her inspiration in part from watching children in New York’s playgrounds. Among other things, she created a core structure of springs made stuffed toys more flexible and durable, a spinning top to replace dice in board games and the ““Kiddie Clock” which helped children learn to tell time.
From toys, she moved to typewriters. Her first typewriter patent was the “protograph,” a device to attach to a typewriter that produced four copies without messy carbon paper. As was often the case, the final product seemed simple, but the engineering challenge was complex. The device had to work smoothly with hundreds of typewriter models that were on the market, as well as standard paper and ink ribbons. Henry received another twelve patents for improvements to typewriters. She then created the first bobbinless sewing machine, aimed at commercial rather than domestic seamstresses.
Throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s, Henry and her team averaged more than two patents a year. In 1941, when the United States entered the war, Henry put her patent development process on hold and joined a machine shop as part of the war effort, where she directed her innovations to the question of material shortages
When reporters interviewed her about her successes, “Lady Edison” told them she just looked at something and though “There’s a better way of doing that.” By the end of her career, Henry held a total of 48 patents—she received a 49th posthumously. Far more patents than any other woman at the time. She is credited with over 100 inventions.
Hotbed
I’ve been fascinated by the women reformers and activists of the Progressive Era for a long time. They are some of my favorite historical shin-kickers.[1] They made the world a safer, better place for women, children, blue collar workers, and immigrants, often at great personal cost. I’ve been thinking about them a lot lately.
Which led me to finally read Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club that Sparked Modern Feminism by Joanna Scutts. Hotbed is the story of Heterodoxy, a not-entirely-secret social club for radical women that met regularly for 25 years. They named themselves Heterodoxy because they were not brought together by a single issue, with the possible exception of the belief that women were fundamentally equal to men. (Though they disagreed even on issues of feminism, a word they helped introduce to a broader public through lectures and publications.)
Scutts traces the big arc of the organization, from its foundation on a Saturday afternoon in 1912 through the early years of the Second World War. She gives us the stories of individual members and, to my surprise, those of women who were not members of Heterodoxy but were involved in individual campaigns alongside members. She takes us deep into Heterodoxy’s involvement in the labor and suffrage movements, and the way World War I created divisions in both movements over the questions of pacifism and patriotism. She also looks at other issues that engaged the energies of individual members, including modernist art, birth control, the right of married women to continue to work, and experiments with family structure, childcare, and living arrangements
I will admit, I found the book overwhelming at times: so many people doing so many things. (It helped to read it in small bites and give my brain a chance to digest it.) But it is well worth reading if you are interested in the foundations of modern feminism, activism at the beginning of the twentieth century, or kick-ass women.
If you decide you would like to look at the same period and many of the same events through the lens of a single life, I strongly recommend Rebel Cinderella by Adam Hochschild, the story of Rose Pastor Stokes.
[1] As defined by me, shin-kickers are people who push society’s boundaries and make them bend. Who sit where they aren’t supposed to sit, speak up when the world wants them to be quiet, and study things people tell them they can’t study. Who find their voice or kick open doors. Not always comfortable to be around ,but incredibly important.