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Early LGBTQIA+ Publishing and Civil Liberties During America’s “Lavender Scare”
Documentation of LGBTQIA+ communities prior to the Stonewall riots of 1969 can be sparse. During the immediate post-World War II period, all manifestations of non-heterosexuality were under deliberate government attack within the era’s overall attempt to find and root out all “un-American activities.” Through a series of measures—the U.S. State Department purging employees with “homosexual…
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Princeton Meets the Near East: John Van Antwerp MacMurray’s Ambassadorship in Turkey
By Diana Dayoub ’21 The connections between Princeton and the Near East are not self-evident. My tentative effort to uncover some link between the North American university I consider home now and the part of the Orient where I was born and raised seemed almost futile until I discovered the John Van Antwerp MacMurray Papers…
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Clothes Make the Woman: William H. Walker’s Critiques of 1890s Fashion and Feminism in Life Editorial Cartoons
In the 1850s, women’s rights activists attempted to popularize a new fashion, known as “bloomers” because of one of its best-known advocates, Amelia Bloomer. The summer of 1851 saw scores of women wearing these loose-fitting pants inspired by Turkish pantaloons. Suffragettes were some of the most passionate enthusiasts of the new style, but soon felt…
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Fighting for the World’s Children: Henry R. Labouisse’s Service in UNICEF
By Diana Dayoub ’21 For development is not just roads, power plants, stepped up production in industry and agriculture. Development is people, beginning with the child. —Henry R. Labouisse at the Inaugural Meeting of the UNICEF Executive Board
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Princeton Alumni in the Service of the Refugee Cause: Henry R. Labouisse’s UNRWA Legacy
By Diana Dayoub ’21 UNRWA’s unpopularity with the people it works for, and the governments it works with, is in direct contrast to the popularity of the man from Wilton, Connecticut who heads it. —Princeton Alumni Weekly, February 10, 1956 With the number of displaced persons reaching a record high since the 1940s and with…
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On Display: The Public Lives of 20th-Century American Women
By April C. Armstrong and Amanda Ferrara, exhibition curators Men, especially political leaders, are usually assessed on their professional records. Women, no matter how professional they may be, are often judged on their personal lives. –Brenda Feigan Fasteau and Bonnie Lobel, New York Magazine, December 20, 1971 Visitors to Mudd Library will notice a new…
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“Just friends; friends, that’s what matters in life:” the President and the Secretary of State
By Daniel J. Linke Curator of Public Policy Papers The Mudd Manuscript Library notes the passing of former President George H. W. Bush, who, though a Yale alum, is represented within our collections via the papers of his long-time friend and political ally, James A. Baker III ’52. Baker, among other roles, served as…
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“Make This World Safe for the Babies”: The Liberty Loan Committee’s Appeal to American Women
Exactly a century ago this summer, the United States began borrowing money from its own citizens. World War I brought with it the need for dramatic increases in government spending, and appealing to patriotism was one way to find the funding. The Liberty Loan Committee, one of the largest committees in American history, organized highly…
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Electing an American President
With the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections just around the corner, we’ve been having fun answering the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration’s #ElectionCollection challenges on Twitter. The timing also seemed right to put some of our elections-related memorabilia on display here at Mudd. Our lobby exhibit case now holds a variety of elections-related materials from…
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“The Man Who Was Right Too Soon”: Nuclear Test Ban film
By Sarah Robey [We recently digitized a campaign film from the Adlai E. Stevenson Papers, located in our Public Policy Papers. The film, “Nuclear Test Ban,” was produced as a televised campaign program for Stevenson’s 1956 presidential bid against Dwight D. Eisenhower. The film speaks to an important transitional moment in the American encounter with nuclear…
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