Barbie and Ruth
Back in March, Stacy Cordery made a comment that stuck with me:
“As a classroom professor and a woman’s biographer, it had been clear to me for years that female entrepreneurs are largely missing from history. Most of us can name at least a handful of Gilded Age or Progressive Era captains of industry (or robber barons; take your pick). But few of us teach our students about women of vision and grit who overcame the odds in the overwhelmingly masculine world of business.”
I’ve been thinking about women entrepreneurs and how their stories are told ever since.
I decided to start with Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World’s Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her by Robin Gerber, which at 250 pages was a little less daunting than Cordery’s own biography of Elizabeth Arden.*
Barbie and Ruth is definitely the story of a woman who was a successful entrepreneur, but the title is too small for its subject. Ruth Handler (1916-2002) didn’t just create Barbie, she created Mattel, which became the largest toy company in the world under her leadership. She introduced revolutionary changes in how toys (and ultimately other consumer goods) are sold. (She was also indicted by a federal grand jury, along with several other Mattel executives , on charges of conspiracy, mail fraud, and giving the Securities and Exchange commission false financial statements. She pleaded no contest. And left the company. )Several years after leaving Mattel, inspired by her experience of breast cancer, Handler founded a second successful company that created lifelike protheses for breast cancer survivors marketed as Nearly Me. She was fond of saying “I’ve lived my life from breast to breast.”
I have mixed feelings about both the book and Handler. In Gerber’s hands, Handler is a charming steamroller—which I suspect is an accurate depiction. I was bothered by the time Gerber spent on Handler’s failings as a mother—which I have no doubt is accurate. But I wonder whether a biographer of say, Walt Disney (1916-1966), would spend the same amount of time assessing Disney’s success or failure as a parent.**
At some level, the book felt more like a leadership case study than a biography. Perhaps it’s time for someone to write a Big Fat Biography of Ruth Handler. (Not me, though.)
*Normally I wouldn’t hesitate to dive into a Big Fat Biography on an interesting subject, but my reading commitments have gotten a little overwhelming in recent months. I did it to myself by taking on the challenge of reading my way through the various history and heritage months on top of reading wildly and widely in pursuit of my possible book topics. I have no regrets, but occasionally I have to acknowledge limitations of time and energy. (Some of you who know me in real life are gasping to hear me admit this.)
**It would be easy enough to answer the question. But I’m not prepared to drop everything and read a biography of Disney—the best of which qualify as Big Fat Biographies. At least not right now.
The Exodusters
In 1870s, after the failed promise of equality and opportunity under Reconstruction had ended, thousands of formerly enslaved Black Americans headed to Kansas and other Western states, hoping to take advantage of the opportunity to own land offered by the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave 160 acres of federal land to anyone who agreed to farm it.. The large-scale migration, which came to be known as “the Great Exodus,” predated the better-known Great Migration from Mississippi to Chicago by a quarter century. The people who participated in it were called “Exodusters.” Between 40,000 and 60,000 Black Americans left the South and migrated westward. Some were part of organized efforts to establish black settlements. Most settled in Kansas.
Why Kansas?
In part, the choice was practical. Getting to Kansas was simpler and less expensive than traveling further west or north, though still daunting .
There was also an emotional element to the choice of Kansas as the New Promised Land. Between 1855 and 1859, “Bleeding Kansas” was the site of violent conflicts in which abolitionists, supporters of slavery and free staters literally fought over whether the state would allow slavery or not. The most well known of these incidents was the raid led by John Brown against pro-slavery settlers on Pottawatomie Creek. In many ways it was a dress rehearsal for the civil war that would follow. The events gave Kansas the aura of holy ground for many Black Americans. As one made from Louisiana wrote in a letter to the governor of Kansas, "I am very anxious to reach your state, not just because of the great race now made for it but because of the sacredness of her soil washed by the blood of humanitarians for the cause of black freedom."
The migration began in 1873, when Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, calling himself the “Moses of the Colored Exodus,” led the people he called “Exodusters” from Tennessee to found a small African-American town in Cherokee County called “Singleton’s Colony.” The gradual exodus turned into “Kansas Exodus Fever” in 1879, following political changes in Louisiana that threatened to escalate violence against former slaves. By early March, about 1500 “exodusters” had passed through St. Louis to Kansas. Thousands more crowded the wharves on the banks of the Mississippi waiting to get passage on a northbound steamboat. Many arrived in St. Louis with no resources and no idea how they would get across Missouri into Kansas. St Louis clergy and businessmen organized committees to collect food and funds to help them on their way.
Roughly 6,000 Black Americans arrived in Kansas in the spring of 1879, most of them from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Other Exodusters made their way to Oklahoma, Colorado, Ohio, Nebraska, the Dakotas, New Mexico, Arizona and Montana . The exodus began to slow down by early summer, but continued through the 1880s. By 1880, the Black population of Kansas had grown to some 43,000..
***
An interesting side note: Although much of what we know about the Great Exodus comes from newspaper accounts of the Exodusters on the move—accounts that are laden with the racist language of the period even when sympathetic to the cause of the migrants, we also have first hand testimony from some of the Exodusters themselves in interviews taken as part of a n 1880 Senate investigation into the cause of the migration. These interviews are an earlier counterpart to the better-known Works Progress Administration interviews with formerly enslaved peoples recorded during the Great Depression. In addition to their personal testimony, many of the witnesses brought additional evidence to the stand in the form of letters and affidavits from other community members. Who knew? Not me.
Looking Forward to Juneteenth
Photo credit: Carol M Highsmith. Library of Congress
On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger read General Order No. 3, which announced the emancipation of enslaved people in Texas, from a balcony in Galveston Texas, or so the story goes. It was two and a half years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation went into effect and 2 months after the Civil War had ended. Even if the enslaved people of Galveston had already heard the news, without the presence of Union troops to enforce it, the proclamation was largely theoretical at that moment.* I assume I don’t have to tell you that the anniversary of that event is now a federal holiday.
I’ve been thinking about Juneteenth a lot lately. Over the last few years, I’ve come to think of Juneteenth and the Fourth of July as bookends, marking out a space of time to think about the unfinished promise of the American Revolution, a promise we are still struggling to fulfill. More so today than ever.
One of the questions Clint Smith grapples with in the section on Juneteenth in his amazing book, How the Word is Passed, is the perception that Juneteenth is only a “Black thing.” One of the participants in the celebration in Galveston, a white Civil War re-enactor who has played the role of General Granger since 2015, summed up what I believe: “…it’s not ‘a Black thing,’ it’s an American thing. This is the final bit of freedom for all of us. And that’s just so important.”
Back in February, when I was reading my way through Black History month and visiting the George Washington Carver Museum in Austin, Texas , I told myself that we needed to find a Juneteenth celebration to attend—the same way we seek out Memorial Day services.** That didn’t work out. On Juneteenth I’m going to be headed to Minnesota to attend my college reunion. Unless there is a Juneteenth celebration in the Minneapolis airport, I’m going to miss out.
I think it is particularly important to mark that moment today. Since I won’t be attending a Juneteenth celebration in real life,*** I plan to re-read Annetter Gordon-Reed's equally amazing On Juneteenth on the plane.
If you attend a Juneteenth celebration, I’d love to hear about it.
*It is worth remembering that the Emancipation Proclamation only emancipated enslaved people in the rebelling states. Slavery was not abolished in the United States as a whole until the 13th Amendment was passed in December, 1865. Even then, there was a cross-your-fingers-behind-your back clause that allowed involuntary servitude as a a criminal punishment.
**We attended an excellent one this year in the Chicago suburb of Blue Island. It had a small town feel in all the best ways. Highlights included:
• Two elderly members of the local American Legion post served as the color guard—an interesting change from the more familiar use of Boy Scouts. It may have been an expedient decision, but it added depth from the first moment of the service.
• A roll call of all Blue Island residents who had died in foreign wars since the Spanish American war, read by the American Legion chaplain. Each name was followed by the silvery peal of a small bell. I choked up even though I knew none of them.
• An open invitation at the end of the service to anyone who had lost a soldier in the wars to lay a rose at the foot of the flag pole.
• Taps. Always a part of these services. Always heartbreaking.
But I digress.
***Probably. Though the Minneapolis airport could surprise me.