Chicago History | Fall 2020

CHICAGOHISTORY

FALL 2020

CHICAGO HISTORY THE MAGAZINE OF THE CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM • VOLUME XLIV, NUMBER 2

CONTENTS

4

Sylvia Pankhurst, the East London Suffragettes, and the Chicago Strikers Katherine Connelly

18 30

Practitioners of Progress Brittany Hutchinson

Separatism and Equality: Women at the University of Chicago, 1895–1925 Anya Jabour

DEPARTMENTS

3 48

From the Editors Making History Timothy J. Gilfoyle

CHICAGO HISTORY Director of Communications Laura Herrera Editors Heidi A. Samuelson Esther D. Wang Designer Bill Van Nimwegen Photography Timothy Paton Jr.

Copyright © 2020 by the Chicago Historical Society Clark Street at North Avenue Chicago, IL 60614-6038 312.642.4600 chicagohistory.org ISSN 0272-8540 Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life.

CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY OFFICERS

Walter C. Carlson Chair David D. Hiller Chairman Emeritus Daniel S. Jaffee First Vice Chair Mary Lou Gorno Second Vice Chair Mark D. Trembacki Treasurer Tobin E. Hopkins Treasurer Emeritus Denise R. Cade Secretary Gary T. Johnson Edgar D. and Deborah R. Jannotta President HONORARY T R U S T E E

The Honorable Lori Lightfoot Mayor, City of Chicago

TRUSTEES

James L. Alexander Catherine L. Arias Gregory J. Besio Michelle W. Bibergal Denise R. Cade Paul Carlisle Walter C. Carlson Warren K. Chapman Rita S. Cook Keith L. Crandell Patrick F. Daly James P. Duff A. Gabriel Esteban Lafayette J. Ford T. Bondurant French Alejandra Garza Timothy J. Gilfoyle Gregory L. Goldner Mary Lou Gorno David A. Gupta Brad J. Henderson David D. Hiller Tobin E. Hopkins Philip J. Isom Daniel S. Jaffee Gary T. Johnson Ronald G. Kaminski Randye A. Kogan Judith H. Konen Michael J. Kupetis Robert C. Lee Ralph G. Moore Stephen Ray Douglas P. Regan Joseph Seliga

Cover: A group of Chicago suffragists pose with signs that read “Votes for Women,” c. 1910; John Becker, photographer

Steve Solomon Samuel J. Tinaglia Mark D. Trembacki Ali Velshi Gail D. Ward Monica M. Weed Jeffrey W. Yingling Robert R. Yohanan

Josephine Baskin Minow Timothy P. Moen Potter Palmer John W. Rowe Jesse H. Ruiz Gordon I. Segal Larry Selander Paul L. Snyder

HONORARY LIFE TRUSTEE

TRUSTEES EMERITUS

The Honorable Richard M. Daley The Honorable Rahm Emanuel

Bradford L. Ballast Matthew Blakely Paul J. Carbone, Jr. Jonathan F. Fanton Cynthia Greenleaf Courtney W. Hopkins Cheryl L. Hyman Nena Ivon Douglas M. Levy Erica C. Meyer Michael A. Nemeroff Ebrahim S. Patel M. Bridget Reidy James R. Reynolds, Jr. Elizabeth D. Richter Nancy K. Robinson April T. Schink Jeff Semenchuk Kristin Noelle Smith Margaret Snorf Sarah D. Sprowl Noren W. Ungaretti Joan Werhane

LIFE TRUSTEES

David P. Bolger Laurence O. Booth Stanley J. Calderon John W. Croghan Patrick W. Dolan Paul H. Dykstra Michael H. Ebner Sallie L. Gaines Barbara A. Hamel M. Hill Hammock Susan S. Higinbotham Dennis H. Holtschneider C.M. Henry W. Howell, Jr. Philip W. Hummer Edgar D. Jannotta Falona Joy Barbara L. Kipper W. Paul Krauss Fred A. Krehbiel Josephine Louis R. Eden Martin Robert Meers

The Chicago History Museum gratefully acknowledges the support of the Chicago Park District on behalf of the people of Chicago.

List as of October 22, 2020

F RO M T H E E DI TORS I

lthough 2020 has been history-making in its own right, at the Chicago History Museum we remain dedicated to sharing Chicago stories and recognizing historical milestones that made a difference in the lives of many Chicagoans. Just over one hundred years ago, the world was faced with a different pandemic, nations were recovering from war, and many women were engaged in a fight for the right to be a part of the political decision-making process with their vote.

Given the breadth of their experiences, women’s activism took many forms. In Chicago, women from different backgrounds worked to reform society by seeking economic and political empowerment, racial equality, and equity in education and in the workplace. Women in the city organized and participated in workers’ strikes, established clubs and professional organizations that specifically supported Black women who were denied opportunity elsewhere, and strived for equality in education. These issues and efforts propelled many to also campaign for suffrage.

In the articles of this issue, we center the stories of women whose lives and work would be lost to history without the research of contemporary historians. Focusing on the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, you’ll read about three different groups of women who had their own struggle with being treated equally, fairly, and even humanely, as they fought not only to challenge the status quo but to live and thrive in their own lives.

First, you’ll read about Sylvia Pankhurst, an English suffragist whose militant activism led to her imprisonment on more than one occasion. On a tour of North America, she spent time in Chicago just as thousands of women garment workers were striking for improved working conditions and a living wage. The lessons she learned about the collective working-class struggle in Chicago, and the relationships she forged while in the city, helped her when she returned to England in fighting for the vote.

Our second article centers the experiences of Black nurses, many of whom were prevented from entering the nursing profession due to white supremacy in the medical field. The article explores the history of Black women’s relationship to medicine, from forced experimentation on enslaved women to free Black women not being compensated for their nursing work. In the end of the nineteenth century, Black nurses were beginning to carve spaces for themselves in the medical profession, including the first graduating classes at Provident Hospital in Chicago.

Finally, women attending the University of Chicago from 1985 to 1925 were led by Dean Marion Talbot and Assistant Dean Sophonisba Breckinridge, who worked to make the university a hospitable coeducational institution where women were taken seriously as scholars. They promoted women’s educational equality and protected women’s separate spaces in order to foster women’s intellectual achievements and female group solidarity in the face of a sometimes-hostile male student body.

As you read these articles, connections to the present remain apparent. Even as we recognize the hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, we remember what the vote did and did not accomplish and that the fight for an equitable society occurs on many fronts.

A

From the Editors | 3

Sylvia Pankhurst, the East London Suffragettes, and the Chicago Strikers Chicago in January 1911 gave Sylvia Pankhurst an extraordinary insight into the condition of workers in America and informed new ways of organizing.

Katherine Connelly

n March 1916, the Australian writer Miles Franklin, most famous for her novel My Brilliant Career, sent a letter from war-weary London to her friend Alice Henry. In her letter, she recalled “traipsing around Chicago with you”: the two women were deeply involved in the Chicago labor and feminist movements and had together edited the Chicago-based Women’s Trade Union League publication, Life and Labour.1 Franklin, now on an extended stay in Britain, told Henry that she had recently sought out and written an article about the work of antiwar, socialist suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst in East London.2 Franklin’s letter testifies to “half forgotten” socialist feminist transatlantic friendships that helped inspire Pankhurst to radically change the nature of the British militant suffragette movement, with far-reaching political and personal consequences.

Franklin’s article on Sylvia Pankhurst detailed her visit to what she described as “the dark pit of London’s East End”; the poverty in that part of the city had only been exacerbated by the war.3 Pankhurst showed Franklin around the various projects initiated by the East London Federation of Suffragettes, now rechristened the Workers’ Suffrage Federation. Franklin described Pankhurst’s home, and headquarters of the organization, on East London’s Old Ford Road, as a “tumbledown house” with an “impoverished meeting hall” at the back where a costprice restaurant, selling food on a not-for-profit or “at cost” basis, allowed people to access cheap meals (which were surreptitiously made free to the very poorest). She saw what had been the Gunmakers’ Arms pub, opposite a gun making factory, which Pankhurst transformed into the “Mothers’ Arms,” providing a nursery run according to Montessori principles, a home visiting center, free medical care and advice, and free milk and baby food.

I

“Socialist feminism hangs, suspended and fragile, in half forgotten memories.”

—Sheila Rowbotham, Hidden from History (1973)

4 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst was born May 5, 1882, photographed here c. 1911. Opposite: Seal of the National Women’s Trade Union League from a July 18, 1911, letter from the Chicago Women's Trade Union League to Agnes Nestor.

Sylvia Pankhurst | 5

A group of children in London’s East End play with Jim, Sylvia Pankhurst’s dog.

From the Mothers’ Arms they walked to the toy factory that Pankhurst set up to provide decent employment to women who had been thrown out of work by the wartime restructure of industry. Pankhurst persuaded old friends she had met at art school to train the women.

Franklin observed that the toys were “in great demand” and sold to such fashionable department stores as Marshall and Snelgrove, Liberty’s, and Gamages.4 On top of all this, Franklin noted that Pankhurst also edited a weekly newspaper, The Woman’s Dreadnought.

What Franklin observed in East London in 1916 was the result of a project started in 1912. In the autumn of that year, Sylvia Pankhurst tried to change the character of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the foremost militant suffragette organization in Britain founded by her mother and sister, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, in 1903. Concerned with the increasing elitism of the leadership, which explicitly marginalized workingclass women and placed emphasis on individual acts of militancy, Sylvia Pankhurst went to East London to establish branches which would put working-class women at the center of a campaign for their political rights: I wanted to rouse these women of the submerged mass to be, not merely the argument of more fortunate people, but to be fighters on their own account, despising mere platitudes and catch-cries, revolting against the hideous conditions about them, and demanding for themselves and their families a full share of the benefits of civilization and progress.5 6 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

This decision inevitably created tension between Sylvia Pankhurst and her mother and sister. In January 1914, Sylvia Pankhurst and the East London branches were expelled from the WSPU by Christabel Pankhurst, who, Sylvia later recalled, informed her that “a working women’s movement was of no value: working women were the weakest portion of the sex.”6 Henceforward, the East London Federation of the Suffragettes (ELFS) operated as a separate organization. The difference between the two groups would be starkly revealed when the British government entered into the First World War in August 1914. The WSPU suspended the struggle for women’s political rights; it became vociferously jingoistic, proclaiming the preservation of the British state and its empire of primary importance. Although the ELFS continued to campaign for votes for women, the destitution in East London occasioned by the war ensured that the organization’s priority became the establishment of welfare schemes of the kind Franklin witnessed. The ELFS (later the Workers’ Suffrage Federation, then the Workers’ Socialist Federation) soon adopted an explicitly antiwar stance and was a precursor of the British Communist Party.

The developments of 1912, then, had far-reaching consequences for the women’s and socialist movements in Britain. Very little, however, has been written about why Pankhurst chose to act at that particular moment, what her organizational models might have been, or the fact that Pankhurst began the venture collaboratively.

Two separate suffrage organizations emerged in London due to their ideological differences, the National Women’s Social and Political Union (above), undated, and the East London Federation of Suffragettes (below), 1915.

Sylvia Pankhurst | 7

Pankhurst would later recall that in the autumn of 1912, while trying to find a headquarters in East London, she “set out with Zelie Emerson down the dingy Bow Road.”7 Zelie Emerson became a leading figure in the East London campaign, and in early 1913 she and Pankhurst were imprisoned together, went on hunger strike, and endured the torture of forced feeding for weeks on end.

Research into Zelie Emerson’s story, and Pankhurst’s relationship with her, takes us on a journey back to the labor movement in Chicago, to Miles Franklin and a group of women who learned from and supported each other. That story was lost to historical accounts of the suffrage movement, and uncovering it provides fascinating insights into Pankhurst’s actions from the autumn of 1912.

For three months at the beginning of 1911, Sylvia Pankhurst embarked on the first of two lecture tours of North America—the second followed a year later at the beginning of 1912. She had written The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905–1910, a book which provided its author with the opportunity of telling the dramatic story of the campaign during the course of which she herself had twice been

imprisoned. The book betrayed none of Pankhurst’s disagreements with the WSPU leadership, which, prior to 1912, she had only expressed privately; she later reflected, “I would rather have died at the stake than say one word against the actions of those who were in the throes of the fight.”8 Sylvia Pankhurst’s tours of North America were extensive. In total, she spoke in nineteen different American states as well as Washington, DC, and toured parts of Canada. She spoke to state governments, university students, audiences of thousands in the largest venues in town, and small gatherings in private homes.9 Her aim was to win support for the suffragettes, which meant justifying their use of militant tactics—something that was not yet a feature of campaigns in the United States.

Pankhurst made her argument by rotating three lecture topics: the history of the women’s suffrage campaign; conditions for women in prison, of which she had personal experience; and conditions for women at work, which Pankhurst had extensively researched and intended to publish a book on. Surveying the history of the campaign allowed her to show that decades of peaceful campaigning had proved inadequate.

Some suffrage activists used tactics like attacking property, which led to prison sentences. While in prison, they used hunger strikes as another form of protest. Here, Pankhurst recovers from a hunger strike she went on while imprisoned in 1913.

8 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

While in Chicago in 1911, Pankhurst toured a jail where strikers had been incarcerated. From left to right: D. Curran, Tom Conroy, James Moriarty, Zelie Emerson, Olive Sullivan, Elizabeth Belmont, and Sylvia Pankhurst.

Discussing prisons enabled her to show the extent of government repression of the campaign. Finally, the experience of women workers proved that women’s inferior political status contributed to wider social problems, particularly in the form of poverty wages for women workers who were paid far less than their male counterparts. All this, Pankhurst charged, justified taking militant action to achieve political change.10 However, to her great frustration, Pankhurst discovered that her audiences, frequently comprising suffragists from privileged backgrounds, while quite prepared to accept that terrible conditions might prevail for women in the “old country,” believed that these ills were not present in modern America.11 Although Pankhurst had cautiously tried not to be seen as meddling in American politics, she was necessarily drawn into confronting an assumption that modern capitalism would cure social problems by itself and render women’s representation unnecessary. Pankhurst directly challenged this view, telling an audience “composed of well-gowned women and intelligent men of standing” in Oakland, California: Here in America you always say the conditions are not so bad with you—but I want you to know that they are probably worse than you think. Your laws are not what they ought to be for the protection of women workers.12

In support of her argument, Pankhurst sought to find out what life was like for the vast majority of Americans.

Thus, on the third week of her 1911 tour, when she was in Chicago, the local press reported that “on Miss E. Sylvia Pankhurst’s tour through the American states, she will devote considerable time to the inspection of the condition of the American working classes as compared to those of Great Britain.”13 Chicago in late January 1911 afforded Pankhurst an extraordinary insight into the condition of workers in America. A strike wave, which began in 1909 with “the uprising of the 20,000” mostly immigrant, Jewish women workers in the sweatshops of New York, spread to the clothing workers of Chicago in September 1910. When the Hart Schaffner & Marx clothing factory imposed a wage cut, workers there walked out on strike and inspired thousands of other garment workers to do the same. During one of their demonstrations, a striker held up a placard proclaiming “We are Striking for Human Treatments,” which summed up their grievances. Paid poverty wages, which were now being further reduced, the largely female workforce complained that the foremen got bonuses if the workers produced over a certain amount, leading to greater exploitation and exhaustion. Those in a position of authority exercised a “petty tyranny” over their workers, supplemented with “abusive and insulting language,” and Sylvia Pankhurst | 9

a system of docking wages for such apparent misdemeanors as “liberal use of soap in washing hands.”14 The Chicago strikers faced severe repression. Police beat and arrested picketing workers and shot two strikers dead.15 Once arrested, the strikers were held in the notorious police court cells at Harrison Street. In addition, the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) explained that the employers themselves played a role in increasing the physical violence and intimidation: The brutality of the police is not merely the brutality of some of the men on the force, but it is the brutality of the thugs, of the private detectives and the special agents hired by the employer.16 On January 14, 1911, after nearly four months of industrial action that had been sustained through the bitterly cold winter, the United Garment Workers Union negotiated, without consulting the strikers themselves, for the employees at Hart Schaffner & Marx to return to work as arbitration had begun. When Pankhurst arrived into Chicago by train late at night on January 18, 1911, there were still around 30,000 workers from other firms on strike whose positions were now fatally undermined (and two weeks later the Union would call off the strike, leaving these workers without the safeguard of an agreement).17 It was at this juncture that Pankhurst encountered the garment workers’ struggle. On January 21, she went to Harrison Street to see the cells in which the strikers had been incarcerated. The visit had a profound effect upon her. A reporter from the Chicago Daily News recorded her immediate response: “Wherever I have gone in America I have been assured that suffragettes would never receive the treatment here that they receive in England,” said Miss Pankhurst, “but”—then a sigh—“I think there would be little difference if they incarcerate girls in these cells.” 18 Later that day, Pankhurst fired off an article to the Chicago Tribune describing the “exceedingly foul” air in the cells, the “fearful stench everywhere,” the overcrowding, and the scant bedding that was never changed. In her conclusion she reiterated what she had told the reporter from the Chicago Daily News: Whilst I have been in America I have constantly been told that had the suffragets [sic] been fighting for “votes for women” in this country, they never would have been subjected to the treatment which they have received in England, but some of the facts I learned this morning have led me to feel that reformers all over the world have an almost equally hard fight before them.19 10 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

Above: Exterior view of Baskin store, at the Hart Schaffner & Marx building, 336 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, c. 1929; Raymond W. Trowbridge, photographer. Below: Attorney Levy Mayer, Joseph Schaffner, and Harry Hart walk across a street in Chicago, 1910.

This pamphlet, titled “Statement on the Strike of the 35,000 Unorganized Garment Workers of Chicago,” was published by the Women's Trade Union League of Chicago, c. 1910.

Sylvia Pankhurst | 11

Women garment workers on strike in Chicago, c. 1911. One striker holds a sign that reads “We are striking for human treatments.”

She recalled that this was where “some of the women and girls who had been picketing in the garment worker’s [sic] strike” had been locked up and that had it not been for union organizations paying bail money “they would have been obliged to continue suffering this terrible form of confinement.”20 The way the striking garment workers were treated in Chicago proved that conditions in British prisons and factories were not exceptional, nor were they the quirks of an older, more conservative nation; rather, they were typical of modern capitalism.

Throughout the rest of her tour, Pankhurst drew on what she had seen at Harrison Street in Chicago to refute the idea that women in America received better treat12 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

ment than in Britain. In Ottawa, she described Harrison Street as “the worst jail I have visited on this continent,” while she frankly told a reporter in Detroit: Another thing that annoys me terribly is to hear about the wonderfully good conditions existing in this country for women. Why, I never saw anything worse in London than the way the garment workers in Chicago suffered.21 Speaking in Boston in February 1911, Pankhurst “mentioned various unsatisfactory conditions which she had observed (in Chicago prisons, for instance), which called for women to take their share in the State

House-keeping.”22 The poor conditions suffered by women workers in the garment factories and the repression they faced when they challenged them demonstrated to Pankhurst that women needed a voice in America just as much as women in Britain.

Harrison Street not only provided Pankhurst with a powerful argument for women’s suffrage in America, it was also the site of her first meeting with her future friend and collaborator Zelie Emerson. It was Emerson and a fellow member of the Chicago WTUL who took Pankhurst to Harrison Street and told her about the strike.23 Zelie Passavant Emerson was born in 1883 into an extremely wealthy family in Jackson, Michigan. Her mother, Zelie Passavant, from a prestigious philanthropic family, was a friend of Andrew Carnegie—it was widely rumored that they had wanted to get married. Emerson’s father, Rufus Emerson, who had made a fortune from wood pulp, died when his daughter was just thirteen years old. Young Zelie Emerson, with an income reportedly of $10,000 a year, seemed destined to live a privileged life in “society” revolving around appearances in expensive clothes at lavish balls and social functions.24 It was a life that Emerson judged “aimless and rather silly.”25 Instead, Emerson was concerned with social justice.

Wanting to help working-class women, she felt she could not do so without herself experiencing their hardships. In July 1910, Emerson moved to Chicago where she lived in the Northwestern University Settlement House and took a series of working-class jobs: she worked behind a toy counter in a big Chicago department store during the Christmas shopping season, she became a “scrubwoman” cleaning floors in a restaurant, and she washed dishes in a hotel kitchen.26 And then, two months after she moved to Chicago, the garment workers’ strike broke out.

Emerson threw herself wholeheartedly into supporting the strike. It was a colossal task: there were around 45,000 workers on strike, many of them with families to support, including young children—there were 1,250 babies born to striking families. The WTUL judged that they supported more than 100,000 people in the strike. That support became even more crucial as the months wore on and strikers had to contend with the freezing winter.27 If we examine what Emerson did in Chicago in 1910–11 and what Emerson and Pankhurst would do in East London from 1912, striking parallels emerge.

During the strike, Emerson was the “Chairman” of the Rent Committee, which supported strikers who could not afford to pay their rent. In effect, a rent strike was declared for the duration with the Rent Committee putting pressure on the landlords not to evict. In this they were remarkably successful—three months into the strike the Inter Ocean reported, “Miss Emerson said that only one case of eviction for non-payment of rent has come under her notice so far.”28

Above: Undated photographic portrait of Zelie P. Emerson. Below: Pankhurst (left) and Emerson (right) during her visit to London in 1914.

Sylvia Pankhurst | 13

A group of Chicago suffragists pose with signs that read “Votes for Women,” c. 1910; John Becker, photographer.

After Pankhurst established the East London branches of the WSPU in 1912, these suffragette groups tried to organize a rent strike as a way of protesting for their political rights. A leaflet they issued, titled “No Vote! No Rent!,” which sought to reassure women that they would not be penalized for taking action, drew directly on Emerson’s experience in Chicago: A couple of years ago the garment workers of Chicago, in America, were obliged to strike against rent, as well as against sweated employment, because they could not pay. . . . There was only one eviction in Chicago; there will be no evictions in London when women begin the “No Rent” strike for the vote . . .29 The Chicago experience allowed for the East London suffragettes to try to use the tactics of collective workingclass struggle to win political emancipation. The WSPU leadership was well aware that this tactic would alter the character of the movement, and it was used as a reason for separating the organizations. The minutes from the East London groups’ first meeting after their expulsion 14 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

from the WSPU recorded that although the WSPU had no objection to the “No Vote No Rent” strike, they “said it was impossible to work it through their organisation because their people are widely scattered & because it is only in working class homes that the woman pays the rent.”30 Although plans for the rent strike had to be abandoned at the outbreak of war as the ELFS’s priorities changed, the relief schemes they now adopted—and which Miles Franklin observed in 1916—were likely also indebted to Emerson’s experience in the Chicago strike.

In addition to her role on the Rent Committee, Emerson also worked on the huge relief efforts during the garment workers’ strike. Shortly after the strike ended, Emerson coauthored a study with the radical economist Katharine Coman explaining that the creation of commissary stores, which bought wholesale to keep prices down, ensured “nearly 32,000 people were at least kept from starving.”31 A system was developed whereby strikers with families were provided with tickets that could be exchanged at the stores for a regular supply of food proportionate to their family size. Emerson herself was responsible for the WTUL restaurant run along

similar lines for single strikers at 1014 Noble Street.32 At Noble Street, Emerson recalled that the thoughtfulness of the strikers for one another was exhibited to a marked degree. When asked to take a second sandwich many would say, “I had breakfast this morning; give it someone who needs it more than I.”33 For babies, who were unable to eat the food, a milk fund was established that ensured the daily distribution of 2,000 quarts of milk.34 It should perhaps come as little surprise that when Pankhurst began to establish cost-price restaurants in East London operating like those in Chicago, based on food tickets, we find that Zelie Emerson was involved. In her war memoirs, Pankhurst recalled that though Emerson had left London in spring 1914 on account of her health, by autumn, Zelie Emerson had scurried back to us from the United States, eager to be in the thick of it. She was stirring me up to do something for our old Bow Road district. Presently she was ladling out soup in Tryphena Place, Bow Common Lane, an unsavoury neighbourhood, her black eyes frowning intent, and her red lips pursed—her little plump figure hurrying, scurrying.35 Likewise, when Pankhurst established a milk center and clinic for babies, which had also been a feature of the Chicago relief scheme, “Zelie Emerson persuaded us to let her organise another in [East London’s] Bethnal Green.”36 Zelie Emerson and her experience of labor organizing in Chicago had a huge impact on working-class women’s activism in East London. But what of Pankhurst’s impact in Chicago and Emerson’s decision to make the journey to East London in the first place?

Pankhurst’s public condemnation of the treatment of the striking garment workers at Harrison Street had been warmly received by the WTUL, which included her among the “English friends” who deserved a “special vote of thanks” for her “challenge to the social conscience, as well as an indictment of the industrial conditions of Chicago.”37 Although Pankhurst was feted by the Chicago suffrage movement in 1911—she was the guest of honor at a luncheon provided by the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association and delivered a three-hour lecture in the Music Hall in the Fine Arts Building—it would be among the women labor organizers that Pankhurst found support in her more challenging tour a year later.

Militancy remained controversial in America. In January 1912, Catharine Waugh McCulloch, vice president of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association, wrote furiously to a Wisconsin suffragist that association with Pankhurst could only discredit their struggle:

I am not convinced that the English women who throw stones [and] go to jail help our cause. They did not reach the goal as fast as did the women in Cal[ifornia] and Wash[ington] and those women did not act like tomboys.38 Tensions were further heightened when, on March 1, 1912, the WSPU coordinated a mass window smashing campaign in London’s fashionable West End, in response to the government’s sabotage of a women’s suffrage bill.

Emmeline Pankhurst was arrested and charged with conspiracy while, to escape capture, Christabel Pankhurst fled in disguise to Paris. Sylvia Pankhurst, still touring in America and desperately worried about her mother, found speaking engagements canceled and sympathy in short supply.

And yet it was at this moment that members of the WTUL in Chicago began to organize in Pankhurst’s defense. Miles Franklin recalled: When Sylvia Pankhurst had to abandon her lecturing tour when the news of a violent eruption of window smashing was cabled over, a few of us with the office of “Life and Labor” and The Women’s Trade Union League as a starting point, tried to get up a “fair play” meeting for her, but as with Sodom and Gomorrah, there were not enough of us to save the situation.39

Chicago police put a woman into the back of a police wagon during the garment workers strike, 1910.

Sylvia Pankhurst | 15

act as they did in the cause of the vote.”43 A few weeks after this, she was organizing a new kind of suffragette campaign with Sylvia Pankhurst in East London.

Pankhurst had kept her criticisms of the WSPU’s elitism quiet for years, unsure how to turn criticism to positive effect. Through Zelie Emerson, Pankhurst found in the Chicago garment workers’ strike new ways of organizing, which placed working-class women at the heart of the struggle for their own emancipation. This socialist feminist network from Chicago to East London, although now a “half forgotten memory,” changed the course of history.

Dr. Katherine Connelly edited and introduced E. Sylvia Pankhurst, A Suffragette in America: Reflections on Prisoners, Pickets and Political Change (London: Pluto Press, 2019) and is the author of Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire (London: Pluto Press, 2013). She is a lecturer at the London centers of The College of Global Studies, Arcadia University, and Lawrence University and is the author of the blog “A Suffragette in America” (asuffragetteinamerica.com).

Chicago’s La Salle Hotel at the northwest corner of Madison Street and LaSalle Street, 1910; Charles R. Clark, photographer.

Although unable to arrange Pankhurst a meeting, Franklin and a WTUL colleague, Mary Anderson, joined the WSPU and thus sided with Pankhurst in the midst of the controversy, or, in Franklin’s words: “recognizing a great hero before she gets into the monument form and becomes encrusted with the dust of ages.”40 It was also around this time that Zelie Emerson began campaigning for women’s suffrage. In late March 1912, Emerson was listed as a speaker at a suffrage meeting in Chicago’s La Salle Hotel.41 A few days later, Emerson was photographed by the press participating in quite a personal dispute over women’s suffrage. A Mr. William Murray, a store owner on Milwaukee Avenue, was in the process of tearing down a second large “votes for women” banner (he had previously taken down a smaller one), which had been erected by his wife while he was sleeping, when he was confronted by his wife, “reinforced by Miss Zelie Emerson, the ‘scrubwoman heiress.’”42 The women won the argument and the banner stayed up.

In autumn 1912, Emerson was campaigning in Michigan’s ultimately unsuccessful referendum on women’s suffrage. She clearly had not forgotten Sylvia Pankhurst and the English suffragettes; at a meeting on September 21, 1912, she told a Michigan audience “of conditions in England and why women were moved to 16 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

I L LU S T R AT I O N S | Illustrations are from the collection of the Chicago History Museum unless otherwise noted. Page 4, ICHi-067680A. 5, Library of Congress, Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897‒1911. 6, International Institute of Social History, IISG BG A32/665. 7, top: International Institute of Social History, IISG BG A32/450; bottom: International Institute of Social History, IISG BG A32/525-6. 8, International Institute of Social History, IISG BG A10/719. 9, DN-0056469, Chicago Daily News collection. 10, top: ICHi-082464; bottom: DN-0056060, Chicago Daily News collection. 11, ICHi066955. 12, ICHi-067059. 13, top: Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection, item 2014687785; bottom, International Institute of Social History, IISG BG A10/732. 14, ICHi-177285. 15, DN-0056132, Chicago Daily News collection. 16, ICHi-071816.

F U RT H E R R E A D I N G | For more on Sylvia Pankhurst, see Rachel Holmes, Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020) and Shirley Harrison and Richard Pankhurst, Sylvia Pankhurst: The Rebellious Suffragette (Sapere Books, 2018). On the suffrage movement in the UK, see E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905-1910 (Good Press, 2019). On labor strikes in the US, see Erik Loomis, A History of America in Ten Strikes (The New Press, 2020).

ENDNOTES 1. “Letter from London: Miles Franklin to Alice Henry,” in Miles Franklin, A Gregarious Culture: Topical Writings of Miles Franklin, collected and introduced by Jill Roe and Margaret Bettison (St Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press, 2001), 63.

2. Although it remained a derogatory term in the US, the British militants proudly adopted the term “suffragette,” coined in 1906 by the Daily Mail newspaper.

3. Miles Franklin, “The Babies’ Kits: Miss Sylvia Pankhurst’s Work,” in Franklin, A Gregarious Culture, 70; for Pankhurst’s firsthand account of the effect of the First World War on East London, see E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Home Front: A Mirror to Life in England During the First World War (London: The Cresset Library, 1987).

14. Women’s Trade Union League of Chicago, Official Report of the Strike Committee: Chicago Garment Workers’ Strike, Oct 19–February 18, 1911 (Chicago: The League, 1911), 8.

15. Philip S. Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement: From Colonial Times to the Eve of World War I (New York: Free Press, 1979), 353.

16. WTUL, Official Report, 9.

17. Foner, Women, 353–54.

18. Chicago Daily News, January 21, 1911, 1.

19. Chicago Tribune, January 22, 1911, 7.

20. Ibid.

21. Ottawa Citizen, February 11, 1911, 1; Detroit Free Press quoted in Woman’s Journal, April 8, 1911, 107.

During the Strike of the Chicago Garment Workers,” The Survey, vol. 25, 1910–1911, March 4, 1911, 946.

29. “No Vote! No Rent!” leaflet [1913], Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst Papers, 231, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam (henceforward ESP Papers).

30. Minute book of the Council of the East London Federation, January 27, 1914, 206, ESP Papers.

31. Emerson and Coman, “Co-operative Philanthropy,” 944.

32. Described by Emerson as “a little Polish Bakery” (Emerson and Coman, “Cooperative Philanthropy,” 945), it is now part of the Northwestern University Settlement—the organization that Emerson joined on arrival in Chicago!

4. Franklin, “The Babies’ Kits,” 73.

22. Votes for Women, April 21, 1911, 472.

5. E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (London: Virago Limited, 1977), 417; on the WSPU leadership’s increasing elitism, see Katherine Connelly, Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire (London: Pluto Press, 2013), 27–30.

33. Emerson and Coman, “Co-operative Philanthropy,” 945.

23. Inter Ocean, January 22, 1911, 7; Chicago Daily News, January 21, 1911, 1.

34. Ibid., 946.

6. Pankhurst, Suffragette Movement, 517.

7. Ibid., 417. Some American newspaper reports (for example, Detroit Free Press, Feb. 15, 1913, 2) suggest that Emerson was in America over the autumn, not traveling to London until November.

However, whether or not Emerson was present in the search for an East London headquarters that autumn, what is certain is that by the winter of 1912–13 she was deeply involved in the East London suffragette campaign.

8. Ibid., 316.

9. For the only detailed study of Sylvia Pankhurst’s tours see Katherine Connelly, “Introduction” to E. Sylvia Pankhurst, A Suffragette in America: Reflections on Prisoners, Pickets and Political Change (London: Pluto Press, 2019), 1–62.

10. Ibid., 29–33.

11. Ibid., 40.

12. Oakland Tribune, March 12, 1911, 33.

13. The Inter Ocean, January 23, 1911, 1.

24. For one of many reports of Emerson’s family and wealth see Evening Sun, February 3, 1912, 4. $10,000 in 1912 is roughly equivalent to $268,000 today (according to the CPI Inflation Calculator at https://www.in2013dollars.com/).

25. Daily Arkansas Gazette, January 31, 1912, 11.

26. Ibid.

27. WTUL, Official Report, 3, 35. See “Chicago at the Front: A Condensed History of the Garment Workers’ Strike,” Life and Labour, January 1911, 9; for an assessment of the importance of the WTUL’s role, see Colette A. Hyman, “Labor Organizing and Female Institution-Building: The Chicago Women’s Trade Union League, 1904–24,” Women, Work and Protest: A Century of US Women’s Labor History, ed. Ruth Milkman (Boston, MA, and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 26–27.

35. Pankhurst, The Home Front: A Mirror to Life in England During the First World War, 44.

36. Ibid.

37. WTUL, Official Report, 30.

38. Catharine W. McCulloch to Ada Lois James, January 29, 1912, Ada Lois James Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society Library and Archives.

39. S.M.F. [Stella Miles Franklin], “Mrs. Pankhurst in the United States,” Life and Labour, December 1913, 365.

40. Ibid.

41. The Inter Ocean, March 25, 1912, 3.

42. Chicago Tribune, April 4, 1912, 3.

43. News-Palladium, September 21, 1912, 7.

28. Inter Ocean, December 12, 1910, 3; by the end of the strike, this figure was revised to four evictions, though Emerson judged that “two of these could have been prevented if the advice of the committee had been taken,” Zelie P. Emerson and Katharine Coman, “Co-operative Philanthropy: Administration of Relief Sylvia Pankhurst | 17

The only known photograph of Mary Seacole, likely taken for a carte de visite by Maull & Company, London, c. 1873.

18 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

Practitioners of Progress The accomplishments of Black nurses, in defiance of the abject racism and sexism they faced, changed the course of the medical industry in Chicago.

Brittany Hutchinson

Introduction

In her 1857 autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, Mary Seacole recounts her experiences while applying to serve as a nurse with the British War Office during the Crimean War in 1854. Seacole, a Jamaican-Scottish woman, hoped to join the staff of nurses accompanying Florence Nightingale to Turkey but was met with rejection in each attempt. Having met the qualifications—training in both Western and West African medicine, a letter of support, and an eagerness to serve—Seacole wondered of the rejections: “Was it possible that American prejudices against color have some root here?”1 In stark contrast to Nightingale, who received support from the secretary of war and was assigned a fleet of nurses, Seacole funded her own travel to Crimea and began treating soldiers.

Seacole’s observation illustrates the prevalence of racism that also exists in the United States and particularly in medicine.2 Within the context of who was allowed to formally function as a nurse, outside of the domestic sphere, white women alone were granted access. As early as 1775, nurses were included as part of pseudo-formal medical treatment teams when, at George Washington’s request, the Continental Army enlisted women to assist physicians in the care of twenty thousand soldiers.3 The Red Cross “desegregated” their hiring policies in 1917 but resisted hiring and actually utilizing the services of Black nurses until December 1918, when eighteen Black nurses were elected to integrate Army bases at Camp Grant and Camp Sherman in Rockford, Illinois, and Chillicothe, Ohio, respectively.4 The decision to integrate did not reflect an evolution of beliefs regarding race; rather, it was an act of forced attrition after the influenza pandemic created a drastic shortage of white nurses available for service with the Red Cross and Army Corps of Nurses.

The ways in which Black nurses, specifically in Chicago, navigated barriers set before them must be considered through the context of radical Black feminism and application of critical race theory. The specific purpose of using these two frameworks when discussing

the role and history of Black nurses is to examine their nuanced experiences as they relate to race and gender in the United States. In navigating the obstacles generated by white supremacy and patriarchy, Black women were and still are required to consider their position as women and as Black people as an aggregated identity, as opposed to two separate focal points. In applying these frameworks to history, Black feminist thought centers the realities and experiences of race and gender, while critical race theory identifies and calls out the inherent racism in the external circumstances found in larger social environments. The significance, both cultural and historical, of the labor performed by Black nurses in Chicago is contextualized by examining the material and social conditions they had to negotiate.

This article seeks to establish the path created for and

by Black women leading up to the pivotal role that Black nurses played in Chicago in 1918–19. This year is one of the most significant in American history, and centering the interpretation of this period through the work of Black nurses provides an important perspective that broadens our understanding.

Soldiers at Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois, shovel snow in 1918, the first year of the influenza pandemic that infected millions worldwide.

Practitioners of Progress | 19

Black Women and the Medical Industry in the United States

The relationship between Black women and Western medicine is complex and nuanced in the ways in which violence infiltrates their interactions, both as patients and as practitioners. In regard to Black women as patients, specifically in the United States, this history is especially brutal.

In addition to the nonconsensual collection of Henrietta Lacks’s cervical cancer cells, which were later used to establish the HeLa cell line,5 one of the most infamous examples of the medical exploitation of Black women lies with the so-called “Father of Modern Gynecology,” nineteenth-century physician J. Marion Sims.

Sims is credited with discovering a surgical treatment for vesico-vaginal fistulas, a complication which sometimes develops following traumatic birthing experiences.

Sims’s innovation was long heralded without acknowledging or accounting for the fact that this feat was accomplished by conducting experimental surgeries on enslaved women, without their consent or the use of anesthesia. One “subject,” an enslaved woman named Anarcha, endured more than thirty of these surgeries.6 Only three of the women who were subjected to years of torture in the name of medical science were ever identified by name in his writings. Sims became a wellrespected figure in the field of gynecology and was memorialized due to his discoveries. His cruel and dehumanizing experiments were documented and widely known within the medical industry, but the prevailing notion was that Black bodies and the pain inflicted upon them was of collateral value to Sims’s reputation and work. The result of those notions was the women’s stories being occluded from the historical record and public memory. It was not until 2018 that Sims’s actions were met with any consequence, albeit posthumously. A monument in New York honoring Sims was finally removed after years of protesting.7 However, other monuments remain in states such as Alabama and South Carolina, and the legacy of Sims’s and others’ dehumanizing treatment of Black bodies continues to live on in present-day medical practice.

In a 2015 study, it was discovered that nearly 50 percent of white medical students and residents believed that Black people had thicker skin and were therefore unable to feel as much pain as their white counterparts.8 The same study concluded that this belief could be the cause of disparities in patterns of prescribing pain medicine to patients who sustained bone fractures. White patients were likely to receive higher and more frequent doses of pain medication than Black patients.

Additionally, Black patients were less likely to be prescribed opioids to treat severe pain.9 In care rendered specifically to women, recent studies have revealed that Black and Indigenous women are four times more likely 20 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

to die due to complications associated with childbirth than white women.10 This disparity is often attributed to racial bias in medical practitioners. Black patients report being treated coldly by medical staff or having their concerns ignored, like in the case of tennis champion Serena Williams, who experienced shortness of breath following the birth of her daughter and had to repeatedly insist to her doctor to check her lungs for blood clots. When they finally obliged, it was discovered that Williams did, in fact, have several blood clots in her lungs.11

This uniform was worn by a student at Michael Reese Hospital’s School of Nursing located on Chicago’s Near South Side, c. 1905.

Harriet Tubman (left, c. 1868) and Susie Taylor (right, date unknown) contributed to Civil War efforts by serving as nurses to Black soldiers in the Union Army.

Black Women as Practitioners

The history of Black women as medical practitioners is as extensive and complicated as their experiences as patients. The history of inhumane medical practices carried out against African Americans may have been the impetus for Black Americans to enter the healthcare field, many of whom were Black women. A well-founded, and frequently reinforced, sense of distrust of white doctors spread throughout Black communities across the country.

Black medical practitioners, of course, would not only serve as trusted professionals, but often would act as agents of societal shifts with regard to race relations.

African American women’s largest point of access to practicing medicine begins within the institution of slavery. The work associated with nursing was initially viewed as another form of labor that befell African American women. During the Civil War, women like Susie Taylor and Harriet Tubman famously worked as the first African American nurses to be employed by a government entity. Both women treated Black soldiers only

and were severely underpaid compared to white nurses; Taylor received no compensation at all, and Tubman was denied military pension for her service.12 By the end of the Civil War, Black women who felt compelled to enter the nursing industry found that any of their knowledge of medical practices and experience in performing the work associated with nursing was not enough, and formal apprenticeship opportunities were rarely made available to them. It was during this time that the responsibilities associated with nursing were starting to undergo the process of professionalization, which ultimately instilled and formalized in the medical profession racial and cultural biases, generating yet another bastion of white supremacy.13 Formal training became the preferred access point for starting a nursing career, especially after 1873, when the Bellevue Hospital School of Nursing in New York became the first nursing program to be founded in the United States. These earlier years saw some, albeit limited, access to nursing programs for Black Americans.

Practitioners of Progress | 21

Access to Nursing Programs

For many African Americans, access to higher education was difficult enough, but for women who were able and intended to receive formal training, the opportunity to enroll in a nursing program proved to be especially elusive. Among predominantly white institutions, nursing programs routinely denied admission to Black applicants solely based on their race or the covertly racist suspicions of their intellectual capacity or professional standards.14 White hospitals in the South directly and explicitly banned Black women from entering their programs, while northern hospitals adhered to strict racial quotas to manage the number of Black students who were able to enroll. In 1879, Mary Eliza Mahoney of Boston became the first African American woman to complete formal training at the New England Hospital for Women and Children. Mahoney, born to formerly enslaved parents, worked at the hospital for more than a decade, as a cook, a janitor, and finally as an unofficial nurse’s assistant before being admitted to the program.

At the time of her enrollment in 1878, she was one of forty-two students accepted for admission. The majority of the trainees dropped out of the notoriously challenging program, leaving only Mahoney and three other women to graduate. Despite meeting these high standards, Mahoney found it difficult to find work as a nurse in hospitals due to the racial discrimination she experienced and was resigned to work as a private nurse, mostly for wealthy white families.15 With access to higher education being rigidly gatekept, the necessity for institutions dedicated to the educational advancement of Black Americans led to the establishment of nursing schools in areas like Chicago that had larger populations of Black residents. Most training programs for Black nurses were affiliated with Historically Black Colleges

A group of nurses in front of Provident Hospital and Training School, c. 1918. Originally located at Twenty-Ninth and Dearborn, this was the hospital’s second location at Thirty-Sixth Street.

22 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

Mary Mahoney, born in 1845, was the first African American woman to complete nursing training at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston.

and Universities (HBCUs), beginning in 1886 at Spelman College (formerly Spelman Seminary).16 The majority of the nearly 2,800 nurses who graduated from these 36 schools prior to 1928 came largely from the 10 largest: Lincoln School for Nursing, New York City, (1898); Freedmen’s Hospital Training School, Washington, DC, (1894); Dixie Hampton Training School, Hampton, Virginia, (1891); Provident Hospital Training School, Chicago, Illinois, (1891); Hubbard Hospital Training School, Nashville, Tennessee, (1900); The Hospital and Training School of Charleston, South Carolina, (1897); Mercy Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, (1895); St. Agnes Hospital, Raleigh, North Carolina, (1896); Flint-Goodridge Hospital, New Orleans, (1896); and Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama, (1892).17 Black owned and operated hospitals like Provident Hospital in Chicago and Mercy-Douglass Hospital in Philadelphia and HBCUs were revolutionary entities in the education of Black healthcare professionals and in the treatment of Black patients. Creating new pathways into the industry would prove invaluable for African Americans’ survival in the United States.

The first convention of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses was held in Boston in 1909, one year after the association was founded.

Access to Professional Organizations

Professionalization of nationwide nursing standards and practices began at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It was during the world’s fair that a consortium of nursing superintendents met to hold the first meeting of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses (ASSTSN), which would later become the National League of Nurses (NLN). This governing body, in observing the constant fluctuation of standards among nursing programs, set its aims to increase admission requirements, advocating for better living and working conditions for students and increased access to professional development opportunities. The Nurses Associated Alumni of the United States, which would change its name to the American Nursing Association (ANA), was formed under the ASSTSN as a society dedicated to advancing the practice of nursing.18 While neither the ANA nor the NLN held strict policies that directly barred Black nurses from joining, membership

was extended only to those who had been accepted already into a state-level organization. In effect, the state organizations in the North that covertly practiced discrimination, and state organizations in the South that explicitly upheld “whites only” policies, were able to prevent many Black nurses from joining either the ANA or NLN. This system of racial exclusion continued until the NLN offered individual memberships in 1942, allowing Black nurses to circumvent discrimination against membership.19 In a similar fashion to that of the Black women’s club movement in the fight for suffrage, Black nurses sought to develop leadership opportunities among themselves and established professional organizations dedicated to serving the needs of Black nurses caught in the crosshairs of white supremacy and patriarchy. In 1908, Martha Franklin, called the first meeting of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses with the intention to “achieve higher professional standards, to break down discriminatory practices, and to develop leadership among Black nurses.”20 Practitioners of Progress | 23

Provident and the Rise of Black Nursing Programs

While seeking to transition from her career as a teacher in Chicago, Emma Reynolds expressed her frustration with the area hospitals refusing to admit her to their nursing programs due to her race. Her brother, Reverend Louis Reynolds, enlisted the help of his friend Dr. Daniel Hale Williams to use his connections to find a suitable program for her.21 In 1889, Dr. Williams first met with other Black doctors to identify and convince a program in the city to admit Miss Reynolds. Dr. Williams and his colleagues came to fully conceptualize not only the barriers that Black women faced in seeking entry into the medical field, but also the limitations that plagued their own careers as Black medical practitioners within white hospitals. Despite being on staff at many of the area hospitals that they approached, Black doctors had very little influence within these organizations. Reynolds and Williams then determined that establishing a new nursing program for African Americans was the best course of action, as it would both create educational opportunities for Black women, but also attempt to

shield them from hostile white supremacist learning environments. Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses was founded in 1891 by Dr. Williams as the first Black owned and operated hospital in the United States. Two years later, Emma Reynolds and three other women became the program’s first graduating class.

Twenty-one years after Mahoney’s historic graduation in Boston, Jessie Sleet Scales became the first Black woman to break into public nursing. After graduating from Provident Hospital in 1895, Scales’s contemporaries urged her to abandon her aspirations of securing a public nursing position, citing the immovable nature of the very same unrepentant racial discrimination that derailed Mary Mahoney and every Black nurse’s career. Her persistence proved worthwhile as she was offered a job effectively integrating the New York agency of the Charity Organization Society (COS) in 1900. The first COS facilities opened in the United States in the late 1800s and provided social services, including medical intervention, to urban centers with high poverty rates. The COS, still operating as an agent of white supremacy and anti-Blackness, hired Scales

Emma Reynolds (left) graduated from Provident Hospital’s Nursing School in 1893, two years after the hospital opened its doors with the help of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (right).

24 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

Provident Hospital’s graduating class of 1904, pictured in the 14th Annual Report of Provident Hospital and Training School, 1905.

on a conditional basis for two months. Within those two months, Scales was required to complete the unique prerequisite task of persuading African American New Yorkers to seek treatment for tuberculosis. The aforementioned distrust of the medical industry compounded with myriad other factors, many a result of various forms of racism, had resulted in high rates of untreated tuberculosis infections within African American communities in New York.

Scales’s success resulted in the COS granting her full employment, which she maintained for nine years; perhaps more importantly, it proved that Black nurses were paramount in increasing access to dignified and trustworthy healthcare to Black Americans.

Nurses in 1918–19

The years 1918–19 brought about significant historical events in Chicago that created intersections of experiences in which the role of the Black nurse was integral. The spread of an especially aggressive strain of influenza first

arrived in Chicago in spring 1918 but caused the most damage that fall. For African American communities in the city, the devastation of the virus combined with the material conditions of racism prompted a cultural and professional response from Black healthcare workers.

The African American population in Chicago experienced exponential growth in 1918 due to the first wave of the Great Migration. Black people from southern states moved north to escape the dangerous realities of racism, only to find that northern cities like Chicago participated in southern-born structural racism, but they also generated new systems of racial oppression that were uniquely northern. The city’s new residents found that segregationist notions regarding residential, professional, recreational, and educational spaces were aggressively enforced. The designated Black neighborhood, pejoratively referred to as the “Black Belt” and situated between Twelfth and Seventy-Ninth Streets and South Wentworth Avenue and South Cottage Grove Avenue, Practitioners of Progress | 25

Map of Chicago showing 1499 influenza deaths and 789 pneumonia deaths for the week ending October 26, 1918, from a report written by John Dill Robertson, Chicago’s Commissioner of Health.

26 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

This announcement warning against symptoms of influenza was published as part of an educational series from the Department of Health in Chicago, fall 1918.

was home to the majority of the more than fifty thousand people who relocated between 1915 and 1920.22 Residential spaces were often larger apartments that were divided into tiny “kitchenette” units. Many of the buildings only had one bathroom per floor that all residents had to share. In addition to the conditions within the housing structures, the neighborhoods themselves did not receive adequate city services. The city’s reaction to the onset of the fall resurgence of the 1918 influenza was focused on white neighborhoods, and so city officials not only abandoned African Americans but blamed them for the consequences of racism that they were left to face.

The conditions present in African American communities were considered optimal for the spread of communicable diseases such as influenza, but it was discovered that African Americans did not become infected with the virus as frequently as other populations. However, in the instances of infection, Black Americans on average were less likely to receive adequate medical care. In an effort to address the inequity, the Chicago Defender hired A. Wilberforce Williams as the resident health expert.

Williams, a prominent Chicago physician, began publishing his column “Talks on Preventative Measures, First Aid Remedies, Hygienics, and Sanitation” in 1911, covering topics that at the time would have been considered taboo. Dr. Williams’s column cycled through a variety of topics until the fall of 1918 when his focus shifted to discussions about influenza. The first of his influenza columns provided general information regarding standard symptoms and methods to prevent illness. As the pandemic progressed, his writings about the shortage of doctors and nurses reflected the chaos within the community, as he warned readers of the damage and consequences of calling multiple doctors in a state of panic, thus further overwhelming healthcare workers.23 Black nurses worked alongside physicians like Dr. Williams and community leaders to educate Black Chicagoans on how to best prevent becoming infected with influenza.

Their efforts were not limited to medical advice, Black medical professionals lobbied city officials to increase sanitation efforts and infrastructure in Black neighborhoods, which often did not receive adequate access to city services.

At the time, social and medical beliefs had been shaped by doctrines which asserted that not only were African Americans at fault for the conditions in American ghettos, but their poor health and intemperance were “race traits.” Statistician Frederick L. Hoffman purported in his 1896 article, “Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro,” that African Americans as a race were destined for “extinction” due to their worsening overall health, which he held was a biological fact rather than an effect of living conditions, and were prone to moral and behavioral inferiority. Hoffman’s writings also suggested that Black people were not fit for emancipation and were better suited to enslavement.24 Hoffman’s article, which was written with the intent to argue for the uninsurability of Black people, impacted generations of medical and societal beliefs about Black Americans.

The summer of 1919, commonly referred to as the Red Summer, marked a wave of violence against Black people in several cities across the United States. The “Race Riot” in Chicago, which would more accurately be described as widespread acts of violence against Black Chicagoans at the hands of white Chicagoans and the police, spread across the city’s “Black Belt,” leaving nearly forty people dead, several hundred injured, and more than one thousand without shelter—the most heavily affected being African Americans. The violence began with the murder of Eugene Williams after he unknowingly drifted across an invisible “color line” into the unofficially designated white-only side of the Twenty-Ninth Street beach. The week-long stretch of brutality against African Americans was more than a period of civil unrest. A staff of ten physicians, three interns, and fifteen nurses worked Practitioners of Progress | 27

Police escort African Americans with their belongings from Forty-Eighth Street and Wentworth Avenue, where race riots occurred, 1919.

tirelessly at Provident Hospital, located in the city’s “Black Belt.” Only one other hospital, Fort Dearborn, reported treating a Black victim, while the vast majority of victims, more than one hundred patients and all of them Black, were treated at Provident.25 Black medical professionals found themselves disproportionately overwhelmed and with little or no intervention from their white counterparts.

The first Black owned and operated hospital in the United States came to fruition in part because of Emma Reynolds’s determination to become a nurse, Jessie Sleet Scales’s tenacity to make her a pioneer in culturally competent healthcare, and Mary Eliza Mahoney’s diligence to break the barrier. The triumphs of Black nurses, in direct defiance of the abject racism and sexism that they faced, changed the course of history. The years 1918 to 1919 proved to be a pivotal point in American history as the suffrage movement, World War I, the 1918 influenza pandemic, and the Red Summer of 1919 converged and shook the country to its core. While the effects of the aforementioned events were felt across the United States, the direct experiences of Black nurses in Chicago are uniquely situated in the absolute center of this intersection in American history.

28 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

Brittany Hutchinson is an assistant curator specializing in cultural history at the Chicago History Museum.

I L LU S T R AT I O N S | Illustrations are from the collection of the Chicago History Museum unless otherwise noted. Page 18, Wikimedia Commons. 19, DN-0069735, Chicago Daily News collection. 20, ICHi-067588. 21, left: Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress; right: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ61-1863. 22, top right: Wikimedia Commons; bottom left, ICHi-040212. 23, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library. 24, left: The Provident Foundation; right, ICHi-021719. 25, ICHi030235. 26, ICHi-176187. 27, ICHi-176190. 28, ICHi-177143.

F U RT H E R R E A D I N G | For more on the history of racism in medicine, see Deirdre Cooper Owens, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology (University of Georgia Press, 2018); Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (Anchor, 2008). For more on Henrietta Lacks, see Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 2011). For work by Mary Seacole, see Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, ed. Sara Salih (Penguin Classics, 2005).

ENDNOTES 1. Mary Seacole, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, ed. W. J. S. (London: James Blackwood, Paternoster Row, 1857), 73. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/ seacole/adventures/adventures.html#VIII 2. Indigenous and enslaved Black women also performed these duties often within the scope of their own cultural medical knowledge and practice. Regardless of the source and application of their medical knowledge, Indigenous and Black cultural medical practitioners were explicitly discredited, and traditional practices were demonized through white supremacy often via Christianity. See Dennis W. Zotigh, “Native Perspectives on the 40th Anniversary of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act,” Smithsonian Magazine, November 30, 2018. Accessed October 20, 2020. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/ national-museum-americanindian/2018/11/30/native-perspectivesamerican-indian-religious-freedom-act/; Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: “The Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 330–34.

3. “The History of Nursing in the United States,” National Women’s History Museum. Accessed September 20, 2020. https://www.womenshistory.org/resources/ general/history-nursing-united-states 4. Marian Moser Jones and Matilda Saines, “The Eighteen of 1918–1919: Black Nurses and the Great Flu Pandemic in the United States,” American Journal of Public Health 109, no. 6 (June 1, 2019): 877–84.

5. Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (New York: Crown Publishers, 2010).

6. Meagan Flynn, “Statue of ‘Father of Gynecology,’ Who Experimented on Enslaved Women, Removed from Central Park,” Washington Post, April 18, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ morning-mix/wp/2018/04/18/statue-offather-of-gynecology-who-experimentedon-enslaved-women-removed-fromcentral-park/ 7. Flynn, “Statue of ‘Father of Gynecology.’”

8. Kelly M. Hoffman, Sophie Trawalter, Jordan R. Axt, and M. Norman Oliver, “Racial Bias in Pain Assessment and Treatment Recommendations, and False Beliefs About Biological Differences Between Blacks and Whites,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (April 2016): 4296–301. https://www.pnas.org/ content/early/2016/03/30/1516047113.full 9. Joshua H. Tamayo-Sarver, Susan W. Hinze, Rita K. Cydulka, and David W. Baker, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Emergency Department Analgesic Prescription,” American Journal of Public Health 93, no. 12 (December 2003): 2067–73. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pmc/articles/PMC1448154/ 10. Centers for Disease Control, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities Continue in Pregnancy-Related Deaths,” September 6, 2019. Accessed September 15, 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/ 2019/p0905-racial-ethnic-disparitiespregnancy-deaths.html 11. Maya Salam, “For Serena Williams, Childbirth Was a Harrowing Ordeal.

She’s Not Alone,” New York Times, January 11, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/ 2018/01/11/sports/tennis/serenawilliams-baby-vogue.html 12. “Susie King Taylor,” National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/people/ susie-king-taylor.htm; Sarah H. Bradford, Harriet: The Moses of Her People (New York: Geo. R. Lockwood & Son, 1886), 95. https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/harriet/ harriet.html 13. Mark D. Davis, “We Were Treated Like Machines: Professionalism and AntiBlackness in Social Work Agency Culture,” master’s thesis, Smith College, Northampton MA, 27–37. https:// scholarworks.smith.edu/theses/1708 14. Darlene Clark Hine, “The Ethel Johns Report: Black Women in the Nursing Profession, 1925,” Journal of Negro History 67, no. 3 (1982): 212–28.

15. “Mary Eliza Mahoney Biography: The First Black Nurse.” https://www. jacksonvilleu.com/blog/nursing/ mary-eliza-mahoney/; Kelly Spring, “Mary Mahoney,” National Women’s History Museum, 2017. https://www. womenshistory.org/educationresources/biographies/mary-mahoney

16. Nancy Hayward, “The History of Nursing in the United States,” National Women’s History Museum. https://www.womenshistory.org/resource s/general/history-nursing-united-states 17. Anna B. Coles, “The Howard School of Nursing in Historical Perspective,” Journal of the National Medical Association 61, no. 2 (March 1969), 105. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC2611690/pdf/jnma005160005.pdf 18. “History of the National League for Nursing, 1893 2018,” National League for Nursing. http://www.nln.org/docs/ default-source/default-documentlibrary/nln-timeline-june-2020.pdf?sfvrsn=2 19. “National League for Nursing Hosts Inaugural Conference Celebrating Leadership Role of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in Nursing Education,” National League for Nursing, April 2, 2018. http://www.nln.org/ newsroom/news-releases/newsrelease/2018/04/03/action-coalitionto-increase-diversity-in-nursing-bystrengthening-hbcus 20. “Hall of Fame,” American Nurses Association. https://www.nursingworld.org/ ana/about-ana/history/hall-offame/inductees-listed-alphabetically/ 21. “History - Provident Hospital,” The Provident Foundation. https:// provfound.org/index.php/history/ history-provident-hospital 22. Christopher Manning, “African Americans,” Encyclopedia of Chicago. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory. org/pages/27.html 23. A. Wilberforce Williams, “Talks on Preventative Measures, First Aid Remedies, Hygienics, and Sanitation: Spanish Influenza- Things We Must Do,” Chicago Defender, October 19, 1918, 16.

24. Frederick L. Hoffman, “Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro,” Publications of the American Economic Association 11, no. 1–3 (1896): 1–329.

25. “Hospitals Have Busy Night with Victims of Riot: Provident Treats 100; Colored Nurses Save White Chief,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 29, 1919, 3.

Practitioners of Progress | 29

Separatism and Equality: Women at the University of Chicago, 1895–1925 During Marion Talbot and Sophonisba Breckinridge’s tenure, women students at the University of Chicago enjoyed both educational opportunity and female community.

Anya Jabour

hen the University of Chicago opened its doors to women, it offered them unprecedented opportunities to enjoy a rich intellectual and social life. Madeline Wallin, a political science graduate student who arrived in 1892, prized the chance to obtain higher education at the pioneering coeducational university, which admitted women and men “on equal terms.”1 Alice Lloyd, who came to the university in 1901, described an intellectually exciting atmosphere, full of extracurricular opportunities such as lectures, concerts, and plays. Her account also suggests the importance of relationships among women, who remained a conspicuous minority on campus. When she attended a lecture on “Railroad Management and Operation,” she was relieved to see another female student there. “I made haste to ask her to

W

Students studying in the reading room of Ida Noyes Hall, which was built in 1916 and originally served as a clubhouse and gymnasium for women students, 1932; photograph by Capes Photo.

30 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

let me sit by her since we two seemed to be the only women who aspire to being railroad presidents. She cheerfully granted my request saying that she was beginning to feel quite alone.”2 Marjorie Preston Schulz, a math and science student who received her BA from the University of Chicago in 1912, described much more frequent contact with male students in her letters to her aunt, including frequent field trips with both male and female students to study geological features. Schulz enjoyed being part of a mixed group in which men and women treated one another as physical and intellectual equals rather than as romantic interests, criticizing another female student as “boy crazy.”3 Elizabeth Boykin Wells, Class of 1924, likewise characterized male-female interactions as friendly and informal rather than romantic or sexual. Recalling that the media painted campus as “a den of iniquity,” she asserted, “I personally never saw any of the iniquity … at the University, the excitement was in the classroom.”4 Spanning four decades, these female students’ descriptions of their time at the University of Chicago coincided with Marion Talbot and Sophonisba Breckinridge’s tenure as Dean of Women and Assistant Dean of Women, respectively.5 For thirty years—from Breckinridge’s arrival on campus in 1895 until Talbot’s retirement in 1925— Breckinridge and Talbot promoted women’s educational equality and protected women’s separate space at the University of Chicago, fostering both women’s intellectual achievements and female group solidarity. Their joint administration made the University of Chicago far more hospitable to women students than other coeducational universities, where the lack of a separate female community combined with a rowdy male subculture made women students outcasts rather than equals.6 Their combined efforts, according to one admiring student, laid the groundwork for “the unique intellectual and social freedom that the women of the University enjoy.”7

Marion Talbot (left) and Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge (right) stand together on the steps of Green Hall following the convocation ceremony on June 15, 1909.

Separatism and Equality | 31

collegians at other coeducational institutions, regarded coeducation as desirable only insofar as it provided opportunities for heterosexual romance.12 One story, “Reverie of the Unkissed,” related the sad tale of a graduating senior who had thirty-three months of “steadfast work” to her credit, but no boyfriend. “The Rubaiyat of a Co-Ed” described coursework as dull and difficult and expressed the putative female author’s preference to have a full dance card than to join an honor society. The final stanza read: And when at last, oh, Senior, they shall bless You with Diploma and Commencement Dress, If any one shall ask why I’m Not there, Say, “We take Ph.B.—She’s M.R.S.”13

The Board of Editors as listed in the first volume of the University of Chicago’s yearbook, Cap & Gown, 1895.

The opening decades of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of coeducation as the dominant model of higher education in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. Yet, as Mary Ann Dzuback points out, whether in single-sex or coeducational settings, gender remained a central issue in higher education.8 Two major challenges to women’s full participation in campus life on coeducational campuses were men’s hostility toward the female students they insisted on calling “co-eds” and parents’ concerns about feminine modesty.9 At many coeducational schools, predominantly maleedited student publications became an outlet for men to express their ambiguous, if not outright hostile, attitudes toward women students.10 At the University of Chicago, one such publication was the school yearbook, the Cap & Gown, whose editors and contributors were mostly men.

The Cap & Gown’s depictions of women as scholars were consistently negative, ridiculing “the class know-it-all” who wore spectacles and monopolized the library.11 Men who wrote for the Cap & Gown preferred to think of female students’ presence on campus as indicative of their desire to find a husband rather than to seek knowledge. Their contributions suggested that they, like male 32 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

The cumulative message of contributions like these was that women on campus, unless they were amenable to men’s advances, were unwelcome interlopers.

At the other end of the spectrum, some observers of university life worried that female collegians would be too receptive to men’s attentions. One anonymous letter writer, identified only as “A Southerner,” complained that permitting students to dance the tango at university functions endangered young women’s morality, and university administrators worried endlessly about “the relations of our boys and girls to one another.” As at other coeducational schools, parents and guardians expected the school to act in loco parentis and, in particular, hoped that the dean of women would protect their daughters from the dangers of city life and coeducation.14 Immune to both male collegians’ criticisms and prudish parents’ concerns, Breckinridge and Talbot made women students’ academic lives the centerpiece of their work. They proposed that “every (woman) student make a plan” with three aims: 1. To become as efficient as possible a human being.

2. To become as efficient as possible as a citizen.

3. To become as efficient as possible in some line of expert service.

These gender-neutral guidelines encouraged female students to think of themselves as serious scholars equal to men.15 Countering the image of women students as mere “co-eds,” Talbot also insisted on referring to the female collegian as a “University woman.”16 In the opening decades of the twentieth century, coeducation still appeared to be a “dangerous experiment” to many observers.17 Many schools imposed restrictive rules about male-female interaction, including women-only curfews and complicated student conduct codes dictating when, where, and how closely male and female students could walk together. Such guidelines enforced a sexual double standard and emphasized feminine modesty rather than female intellect. In sharp contrast to

their counterparts at many coeducational institutions, Breckinridge and Talbot imposed remarkably few rules, and they applied them to both male and female students.18 According to one admiring student, the two female administrators were determined “to sweep away restrictions, and to leave the women free to work out their intellectual gifts.”19 Before Breckinridge arrived at the University of Chicago in 1895, her former mentor at Wellesley College, Alice Freeman Palmer, had played an important role in establishing a place for women on campus as the university’s first dean of women. With Assistant Dean Talbot, also a former member of the Wellesley faculty, Palmer established residence halls for women students and pressured the president to appoint women faculty.20 Thanks to Palmer and Talbot, the University of Chicago was at the forefront of the national movement to professionalize women’s administrative positions, allowing them to advocate for women rather than to supervise their behavior.21 Following Palmer’s departure and her own promotion to dean of women, one of the ways Talbot advanced the status of women on campus was to secure fellowships for women interested in graduate study. One of these was Sophonisba Breckinridge, a Wellesley graduate originally from Lexington, Kentucky, who arrived at the University of Chicago in 1895. To help Breckinridge finance her education, Talbot hired her as her assistant both in the dean’s office and in the women’s residence halls. After Breckinridge, who earned her MA (1897) and PhD (1901) in political science and her JD in law (1904), was unable to attain a faculty position, Talbot helped her secure a teaching position in the new Department of Household Administration, which Talbot founded and chaired, and finagled her appointment as assistant dean of women.22 Breckinridge shared Talbot’s commitment to advancing women’s intellectual opportunities at the University of Chicago. Although she had job offers as dean of women at other schools, she later explained, “it seemed to me that the university presidents were at that time more concerned with the outsides of their women students’ heads than with their ‘gray matter.’”23 Rather than accepting a position that would require her to enforce propriety, she continued her “team work” with Talbot to ensure women’s equal educational opportunities and their full access to the benefits of university life.24 Committed to equal educational opportunities, Breckinridge and Talbot blunted the impact of the university’s short-lived experiment with sex segregation.

Alice Freeman Palmer (above) was the University of Chicago’s first Dean of Women. Marion Talbot (below) in 1892, before serving as head of the Department of Household Administration and Dean of Women.

Separatism and Equality | 33

Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge was dean of the College of Arts, Literature and Science, and the Samuel Deutsch professor of Public Welfare Administration at the University of Chicago.

As at other coeducational institutions, the proposed system of sex-segregated classes at the University of Chicago came in response to male administrators’ and faculty members’ concerns that female students were outpacing their male classmates and reflected broader concerns about coeducation in turn-of-the-century America. Despite vigorous opposition from Chicago clubwomen, university alumnae and faculty, and the dean of women, in 1903 the University of Chicago adopted sex-segregated classes for students in the Junior Colleges (freshmen and sophomores).25 Despite her opposition to this policy, Talbot used it to obtain an official administrative post for Breckinridge, who previously had served as her clerical assistant.

During the University of Chicago’s experiment with sexsegregated classes, from 1903 to 1907, Breckinridge served as dean of the Junior College of Arts (Women), while Talbot served as the dean of the Junior College of Science (Women).26 Breckinridge and Talbot attempted to transform imposed segregation into voluntary separatism by 34 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

treating the separate colleges as campus organizations akin to other women’s groups. At the first meeting of the Arts College, for instance, Breckinridge spoke “of the new experiment of the separate small colleges acting as constituent parts,” thus indicating that the new women’s colleges were in no way subordinate to the men’s colleges. She also urged those in attendance to organize an executive committee, thereby mimicking the first meetings of women’s voluntary groups, which typically drew up constitutions and elected officers at their first gathering.27 Subsequent gatherings of the group were similar to those of campus clubs. The Arts College organized intercollegiate basketball tournaments; listened to visiting lecturers speak on a variety of educational, literary, and artistic subjects; performed a Greek play; and exhorted members to uphold academic integrity. The college also engaged in social reform activities, holding a joint meeting with the Science College to discuss woman’s suffrage, organizing a field trip to Hull House, and raising money for the University Settlement.28 Ultimately, the new system did not last. By 1908 the requirement of sex-segregated classes had become a “pro forma” policy, and in 1909 the university’s faculty voted to discontinue the separate college meetings.29 After the experiment with separate junior colleges ended, Breckinridge advanced to assistant dean of women, and Talbot continued on as dean of women.30 The two women continued their “team work” as partners in providing education “on equal terms” to women students at the University of Chicago.31 Breckinridge and Talbot encouraged female students to take their studies seriously. They advised students who had not yet decided on a major, directing them toward required courses, general education requirements, and electives. Both women also helped female students apply for scholarships and fellowships. Talbot urged the upper administration to divide resources equitably between male and female students, while Breckinridge offered “kindly interest and encouragement” to scholarship applicants and promising students, writing them letters of recommendation and referring them to the university’s loan fund when scholarships were not forthcoming.32 Breckinridge had a particular affinity for academic advising. Urging students to eschew purely “vocational” courses, she favored coursework “of a serious and consequential character,” insisting that a college curriculum should be comprehensive enough to prepare women for further professional study and allow them take advantage of emerging professions, such as home economics and social work.33 Female students at the University of Chicago imbibed Breckinridge and Talbot’s precepts about the importance of education and regarded both women as inspirational role models. “Women like you and Miss Breckinridge are

Exterior view of the University of Chicago Settlement (above), located at 4630 Gross Avenue (now McDowell Avenue). University of Chicago president Harry Pratt Judson (below), c. 1907.

a terrific challenge to us who have been privileged to come under your influence,” a former student remarked in a letter to Talbot, adding that she hoped to follow their example in her own work as a teacher.34 Indeed, emulating Talbot and Breckinridge, many women graduates of the University of Chicago became educators and administrators in later life.35 Breckinridge and Talbot promoted female group solidarity as well as women’s intellectual achievement at the University of Chicago. One of the most important elements of promoting women’s status at the University of Chicago was the house system. While most coeducational institutions eventually provided some residential accommodations for women students, the house system at the University of Chicago went well beyond merely housing women students. As Breckinridge put it in a memorandum for President Harry Pratt Judson, “From a very early period in the history of the University, the Women’s Houses have been recognized as agencies for the accomplishment of definite and highly important purposes.”36 Women’s residences promoted both group identity and self-government, or what Breckinridge and Talbot Separatism and Equality | 35

called “unity, liberty, [and] equality.”37 When Talbot first arrived at the university in 1892, no residence halls had been constructed, and she had to accommodate the first group of women students in Hotel Beatrice, hastily constructed to house visitors to the World’s Columbian Exhibition, slated for the following year. By 1893, thanks to women’s donations, female students had three residence halls: Foster, Kelly, and Beecher. Green Hall followed in 1898, and additional women’s halls were constructed in 1909 (Greenwood), 1917 (Drexel), 1918 (Woodlawn), and 1919 (Kenwood).38 Talbot and Breckinridge carefully supervised the planning, construction, and decoration of all the women’s halls. With the exception of Woodlawn, all the women’s halls had their own dining rooms, where residents took their meals together. Each hall also provided common space for residents to entertain visitors or socialize with each other. Most rooms were single rooms, simply but carefully furnished with sturdy wood chairs, desks, bureaus, and bookcases. Residents had free rein to decorate their rooms as they wished. Most students covered their walls with banners, artwork, photographs, clippings, and mementos. Lavishly embroidered pillows, lace curtains, and pretty bedspreads further personalized each room.39 Breckinridge devoted several pages of her memoirs to describing the task of furnishing Green Hall, where she served as head from 1907 to 1941. The attention she lavished on the details of décor was not frivolous; rather, by ensuring that the women’s residence halls were comfortably and beautifully outfitted, Breckinridge and Talbot intended to send a message about women’s equality.

There would be no secondhand furniture in the women’s halls, and there would be no second-class status for women students at the University of Chicago.40 Women’s residences also promoted a strong sense of group identity, or “house spirit,” among residents. Each hall had its own distinctive character and held its own special events. House rituals such as holiday parties and postgame teas encouraged an inclusive community of women students, since no official house events excluded any resident.41 While residents planned their own entertainments, heads of halls also promoted socializing by assigning “heads of tables” to facilitate dinner conversation and by encouraging students to “linger in the parlor” after dinner to sing or dance.42 Residents indicated their pleasure in house activities and demonstrated their “house spirit” by their enthusiastic participation, their later reminiscences, their personal photo albums, and the many photos, short stories, and poems they submitted to the Cap & Gown celebrating residential life. As one student-authored history of the house system explained, the women’s residence halls were intended “to produce bonds of association” 36 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

Beatrice Hotel at Fifty-Seventh and Dorchester was built in 1891.

Though later demolished, the hotel served as the first University of Chicago women's dorm; photographer Al Henderson.

among students.43 Indeed, dormitory friendships and house activities were an important aspect of women students’ lives. Male contributors to the Cap & Gown expressed dismay that female collegians seemed to prefer the tame entertainments of the women’s halls, such as fudge parties, to illicit activities such as drinking alcohol.

But the women themselves valued their house friendships highly. One 1904 letter from a former resident of Beecher Hall to “My dear Girls” still there, for instance, exclaimed: “I have thought of you and Beecher Hall many times, and wondered what new girls took the vacant places.”44 Decades later, one former Foster Hall resident fondly recalled the pleasures of communal living. Even a quarantine for scarlet fever in 1916 did not dampen her enthusiasm; rather, she reminisced, the students amused themselves by producing a newsletter they dubbed “The Fumigator”!45 Green Hall resident Hedwig Loeb kept a photograph album of residential life in 1899–1900, documenting both daily life and special occasions. Some photos featured bathrobe-clad students on their way to the communal bathrooms, holding dress-up events such as a Japanese tea party, and engaging in a vigorous snowball fight. Others showed students, singly and in pairs, quietly mending clothing or reading books in their rooms.

Yet another depicted a group of students piled on and near a room’s single bed enjoying homemade fudge.

Several documented amateur theatricals with women taking on both male and female roles and evidently poking fun at the misunderstandings that occurred

From Hedwig Loeb’s photograph collection, a decorated dorm room at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (above) and, in the University of Chicago's Green Hall dormitory, from left: Hannah Loeb, an unidentified woman, and Grace Still, c. 1900.

between the sexes. Nearly all of the photos in Loeb’s album depicted women interacting with one another with easy intimacy and pleasure.46 Dormitory life on a coeducational campus allowed university women to create a female community similar to that at women’s colleges; indeed, one historian has dubbed the University of Chicago a “Western Wellesley.”

Given that both Breckinridge and Talbot had ties to Wellesley—and that both women enjoyed long-term same-sex relationships resembling so-called “Wellesley marriages”—this is perhaps not surprising. Women’s residence halls at the University of Chicago, like those on the campuses of women’s colleges, fostered women’s relationships.47 The most unique aspect of the women’s residences at the University of Chicago, however, was the “house system” and its guiding principle of self-government.

Under the house system, residents of each women’s hall drew up constitutions, elected officers, voted on new Separatism and Equality | 37

Prom night at Foster Hall (for those who did not attend the prom). Helene Cadmus is standing to the left of Ludin Quinlan, who is in the first row with one leg showing, c. 1900.

memberships, and assumed responsibility for enforcing whatever rules the current house agreed upon.48 There were remarkably few rules in the women’s residence halls. Talbot intended to promote personal freedom, limited only by “intelligent choice, consideration for others, [and] a determination . . . to choose a path not only worthy of the University but conforming to one’s own best ideas.” In practice, what this meant was that students should agree on what activities might “interfere with the rights of others” or “be a source of discomfort for others.”49 Self-government was strikingly successful in the women’s residences at the University of Chicago.

Although the university president periodically expressed concern about anonymous (and often unverified) complaints about female students’ behavior, women students consistently responded by reaffirming their commitment to self-government. “There is a genuine group feeling which demands mutuality of comfort and convenience and privileges,” one Green House member explained.

“There are no proctors, no rules, no paternalism upon which one may shift the responsibility. It is ours and we accept it and make the most and the best of it.”50 38 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

The house system promoted unity, equality, and liberty for women students at the University of Chicago— within limits. As Breckinridge learned in summer 1907, the university’s commitment to education “on equal terms” did not extend to racial equality. During the summer vacation, Breckinridge, then head of Green Hall, was also in charge of Kelly Hall in Talbot’s absence. On the opening day of the summer quarter, Georgiana Simpson, an African American student, arrived on campus. Although few in number, Black students had lived in the university’s residence halls—including one of the women’s residences, Beecher Hall—during previous terms. Simpson, “unaware that she presented anything in the way of a problem,” arrived at Kelly Hall with the appropriate paperwork from the registrar indicating that she had been assigned a room there. However, the hall’s assistant head was concerned that Simpson’s presence might cause controversy among the hall’s summer residents, most of whom were white southerners. She asked Breckinridge to intervene.51 Breckinridge met with Simpson, who she described as a “very able and learned ‘woman of color,’” the following day. “I agreed that she had every right to stay,”

Jerome Beecher Hall, located at 5848 S. University Avenue and seen from the west, was completed in 1893; architect Henry Ives Cobb.

Breckinridge later recalled. Breckinridge decided to install Simpson in Green Hall, where she herself resided and could advocate for the Black student. She informed Green Hall residents of the situation the following day and invited the white residents to move if they objected.

The next day, Georgiana Simpson moved in.52 Both at the time and in her later memoirs, Breckinridge defended her decision. Although five students left Green Hall, she explained to the university registrar, their places were promptly filled by other students. Breckinridge insisted that the situation had created no unusual difficulties. “Miss Simpson was thoroughly well-bred[,] a scholar and a lady,” she recalled many decades later.

Moreover, according to the principles of house government, only house members determined membership in the house, and of the residents who objected to Simpson’s presence, only one was a house member.

Thus, after the initial flurry of relocation, “life went on as usual.” Breckinridge considered the matter settled.53 She was wrong. “I was summoned to the President’s office” the following Thursday, she later recalled. “Pres.

Judson told me that the halls were for white students and Miss Simpson must leave. I pointed out that the

announcements distributed by the University with reference to the Houses said nothing of this but he was immovable.” Ignoring the lack of any written policy and counterfactually claiming that African Americans “had been uniformally [sic] excluded from the Halls” since the university’s founding, President Judson insisted on Simpson’s expulsion, and Talbot reluctantly instructed Breckinridge to comply with the president’s directive.54 Although Breckinridge and Talbot bowed to the president’s authority, they also criticized his decision. Talbot urged President Judson to clarify the “conditions of residence” in future publicity to avoid other “delicate situations” of this nature. Breckinridge, taking comfort in the knowledge that both Talbot and Green Hall house members had supported Simpson, continued to advocate for African Americans on campus, although with limited success. “I make as big a fight as I can when there is discrimination as there is in our dormitories,” she wrote to Black civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois in 1914, but she made little headway. Despite “a very keen sympathy on the part of many members of the faculty for our colored students,” the university administration steadfastly refused to provide policy to help faculty, staff, and students to navigate “the negro problem.” It was not until 1924 that Breckinridge and others managed to convince President Judson’s successor, Ernest D. Burton, to allow Black students to live in the university residence halls.55 Although their advocacy for racial equality encountered resistance, Breckinridge and Talbot continued to promote gender equity at the University of Chicago. In part because of her commitment to the house system, Talbot was adamantly opposed to the exclusive sorority system.56 Instead, she promoted women’s clubs, which, like the house system, were intended to promote “liberty, equality, and unity.” Under Talbot’s rules, admission standards for women’s clubs at the University of Chicago had to be unrestrictive, based on the club’s purpose.

Between 1900 and 1925, most women’s clubs were dedicated to social, literary, or educational purposes. The Esoteric Club, for instance, existed “principally for private social purposes,” the English 12 Club was intended “to promote fellowship among women of literary tastes,” and the Mortar Board promoted and rewarded academic achievement.57 A few women’s clubs, such as the Settlement League and the Equal Suffrage Association, were explicitly devoted to reform and politics.58 By sponsoring and guiding women’s clubs with democratic membership rules, Talbot and Breckinridge attempted to ensure that all women on campus had equal access to social opportunities.

The wide appeal of the women’s clubs was apparent in the rather bemused coverage in the Cap & Gown. Male contributors were baffled at women’s commitment to club work, which limited their availability as romantic Separatism and Equality | 39

Students lounge in the grass together. The women were likely members of the Esoteric Club, c. 1905.

40 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

Three women students, likely members of the Esoteric Club, canoe on the Rock River during an outing to Oregon, Illinois, September 23, 1914.

interests. A 1907 cartoon on “campus types” included the “Club Girl,” who roamed campus to recruit new students. The image depicted two rather stern figures, with another “disdainful person” in the background. “That is a Mortar Board, or maybe it is Dean Talbot. At this distance it is hard to tell which,” read the caption.59 The Cap & Gown depicted club members as unattractive and overly serious. Clubs that emphasized scholarly achievement or evinced feminist principles received special criticism. A 1918 contribution, forthrightly titled “Snubbing the Women’s Clubs,” criticized each of the clubs in turn, but Esoteric received special attention for its adherence to the guidelines established by the deans of women and its alleged aim to produce bluestocking spinsters. “Breck[inridge] says they’re the best on campus,” the description began.

But aside from that, it is said to be a campus organization duly registered at the Dean’s office, and meeting regularly on Monday nights. . . . As a rule, its members are highly moral, respectable young women, capable of furnishing satisfactory family shrubbery and scholastic records. And we would

advise any mother’s daughter to immediately don the scotch cap, the rimmed spectacles and the flat shoes upon entering college, for such is the short cut to membership in the Esoteric.60 The Cap & Gown’s depiction of the Esoteric Club as a group of stuffy scholars with no sense of fun contrasts sharply with snapshots of club members collected in a student scrapbook. With shirt sleeves rolled up to their elbows, the young women in a 1914 photo seized paddles and skimmed across the Rock River in the small town of Oregon, Illinois, south of Chicago. In one of many pictures of club members at the seashore, women donned bathing costumes that, while undoubtedly cumbersome with their full bloomers and puffed sleeves, did not prevent them from swimming. Photographs also show club members holding mixed-gender gatherings.

One depicts club members seated on the grass beneath a tree, enjoying a picnic with male friends, another documents a softball game in progress at the “Island” at Eagle Lake in Kansasville, Wisconsin, and still another records “The Esoteric Houseparty” at Lakeside, Michigan, in May 1909. Although both men and women attended Separatism and Equality | 41

Exterior view of (left to right) Hutchinson Hall, Mitchell Tower, Reynolds Club, and Leon Mandel Assembly Hall at the University of Chicago, c. 1901; Barnes-Crosby Company, photographer.

these events, there were (female) chaperones, and women continued to engage in single-sex activities.

Another photo from Lakeside shows a group of young women, their arms casually flung over one another’s shoulders, who identified themselves as “The Eating Eight!” Another image, from a waterfront picnic, shows two women seated together, holding hands, while behind them a mixed-gender group gathers in a rowboat.

Women and men also interacted casually with one another; one picture shows a man and a woman building a sandcastle together. At the same time, however, some women clearly preferred one another’s company. One series of photos from spring 1908 repeatedly depicts two women holding hands and gazing into one another’s eyes, another shows three nightgown-clad young women having a slumber party, and yet another shows a group of women laughing heartily at the sight of one attempting to ride another piggyback. Much like women’s residences, the Esoteric Club sponsored amateur theatricals and held all-women dances and other single-sex gatherings.61 With lighthearted good times like these, it is small wonder that, despite men’s criticisms, college women continued to devote time and energy to their clubs, which allowed them to foster same-sex relationships even as they adapted to changing cultural mores on college campuses that encouraged greater emphasis on heterosexual dating.62 42 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

In addition to promoting student self-government and women’s clubs, Talbot and Breckinridge also sought to promote unity and equality by offering social opportunities to all women affiliated with the university, including those who resided off campus. This was especially important since the university’s residence halls could accommodate only one-third of those who requested space.63 The earliest example of this impulse was the Woman’s Union, organized in 1901.64 In addition to providing space for communal dining and social gatherings, the Woman’s Union engaged in “the big movements of the day”—especially labor reform—in conjunction with other women’s organizations and civic and charitable groups both on and off campus, including the Settlement League and the Woman’s Athletic Association on campus and the Consumers’ League and the Young Women’s Christian League off campus.65 In addition to offering social opportunities and introducing members to social reform, the Woman’s Union also ensured equality through separatism. In 1904, when the all-male Hutchinson Commons agreed to serve lunch to women during the summer, the university president suggested that the Woman’s Union might stop serving lunch, but the group unanimously voted to retain a special lunchroom for women. 66 Separate women’s institutions were preferable to second-class status in men’s.

This was the guiding principle for the construction of the first nonresidential building for women, Ida B. Noyes Hall. One of the ways that the University of Chicago fell short of its promise of education for women “on equal terms” with men was in its athletic facilities. Like many other coeducational institutions, the University of Chicago made stingy provisions for women’s athletics. Barred from the university gymnasium, women conducted physical education classes and athletic exercises in a series of temporary locations from the university’s founding until 1903, when they at last gained access to Lexington Gymnasium—but only because men had moved to new facilities in Bartlett Gymnasium. In 1909, Talbot complained to President Judson that the dilapidated gymnasium’s “repellent and unsafe” bathing and dressing rooms were entirely inadequate and clearly inferior to the men’s facilities.67 Women’s opportunities for social interaction also lagged behind men’s as male alumni endowed the school with buildings such as the Reynolds Club and the Hutchinson Commons, which excluded women.68 University women finally attained a women’s building dedicated to social and athletic activities when industri-

alist La Verne Noyes donated the funds for a women’s club building in memory of his late wife, Ida B. Noyes.

Talbot and Breckinridge both closely scrutinized the architectural plans and supervised the construction of Noyes Hall to ensure that the building would be located in a prominent location—adjacent to the Midway—and that its design and furnishings would be “expressive of the twentieth century woman.” 69 When completed, Noyes Hall was a highly visible and permanent marker of women’s inclusion at the University of Chicago and a potent symbol of their right to be on campus.70 Esther Jacobs, who heard Talbot speak at the 1915 dedication of the building, still remembered Talbot’s exact words ten years later. “I recall your statement that at the University of Chicago the women did not come in at the back door. We held our heads a bit higher and thrilled the more to the University’s message because that was true.”71 Noyes Hall provided women students with equality in the form of comparable facilities. It also promoted women’s group identity by providing a place for both resident and nonresident students to gather. In addition to

Marion Talbot attends the cornerstone laying dedication ceremony for Ida Noyes Hall, located at 1212 E. Fifty-Ninth Street, designed by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge and completed in 1916.

Separatism and Equality | 43

Procession of men and women graduates at the University of Chicago’s 1903 convocation on June 16, 1903.

facilities for athletics—including playing fields, a swimming pool, and a billiards room—Noyes Hall also provided a cafeteria and dining room, a reading room, and space for clubs to meet. Elizabeth Boykin Wells lived off campus. She later recalled how much she relished exchanging the “delapidated [sic] old Y.W.C.A. at 800 South Michigan” for “the elegance and grandeur of Ida Noyes Hall.”72 The building also provided a space for gender-integrated social gatherings, held, naturally, under the supervision of the dean of women. Like her counterparts at other universities, Talbot was in charge of women’s social lives; unlike most deans of women, Talbot also had authority over all social events at the University of Chicago. As a 1907 witticism in Cap & Gown put it, “Man proposes but Dean Talbot disposes.”73 Because Talbot regulated all social activities, not just women’s behavior, she helped to shape a code of student conduct at the University of Chicago that differed markedly from that of other coeducational campuses, where women’s lives were hemmed in by restrictive rules and men developed a hedonistic subculture. In the process, she helped create an atmosphere in which women, not men, were the standard; rather than female “co-eds” adapting to a men’s campus, men had to adapt to women’s codes of behavior. Much as men on campus might deride Talbot’s policies and prefer the all-male settings of Hutchinson Commons and the Reynolds Club, if they wished to interact with college women, they had no choice but to abide by her guidelines and adapt to the atmosphere of women’s spaces. By enforcing a common code of conduct on men and women, separate facilities promoted gender equality.74 Under Breckinridge and Talbot’s direction, separatism and equality were mutually reinforcing at the University of Chicago, allowing women to benefit from coeducation 44 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

without running the gauntlet of second-class status.

Women students praised the deans of women for their “broad-minded policies” and credited them with developing “an ideal of mature and positive dignity for University women.”75 Thanks to Talbot and Breckinridge, early women students at the University of Chicago enjoyed both educational opportunity and female community.

Anya Jabour is Regents Professor of History at the University of Montana. Her most recent book, Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women's Activism in Modern America (University of Illinois Press, 2019), received the Illinois State Historical Society's Award of Superior Achievement.

I L L U S T R AT I O N S | Illustrations are courtesy of the University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center, unless otherwise noted. Page 30, apf2-04208; 31, apf102249. 32, Cap & Gown, volume 1. 33, top: apf1-09046; bottom: apf1-08132; 34, apf1-02240. 35, top: CHM, ICHi-020998; bottom: Wikimedia Commons. CHM; 36, apf200665. 37, top: apf2-08990; bottom: apf2-08986. 38, apf402818. 39, apf2-00667. 40, apf4-03769. 41, apf4-03767. 42, CHM, ICHi-019092. 43, apf2-04105. 44, DN-0000602, Chicago Daily News collection, CHM. F U RT H E R R E A D I N G | For more on the history of women in higher education, see Stephanie Y. Evans, Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850‒1954: An Intellectual History (University Press of Florida, 2008); Lynn Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era (Yale University Press, 1990); Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (Yale University Press, 1986).

For work by Marion Talbot, see The Education of Women (Franklin Classics, 2018). On women at the University of Chicago, see Ellen Fitzpatrick, Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform (Oxford University Press, 1990).

E N D N OT E S 1. Unless otherwise specified, all archival references are to materials held at the Special Collections Resource Center, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago. See Madeline Wallin to Mother, December 12, 1892, January 15, February 25, 1893, and Madeline Wallin to Father, November 13, 1892, all in Folder 4, Madeline Wallin Papers; Monica Mercado and Katherine Turk, “On Equal Terms”: Educating Women at the University of Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Library, 2009).

2. Alice Lloyd Diary, November 5, 6, and 21, 1901; see also November 2, 9, 14, 16, 19, 22, and 28, 1901.

3. Marjorie to Eva, May 7, 1911; see also April 16 (“boy crazy”), 23, 30, May 14, 1911, Marjorie Preston Schulz Papers, Box 1, Folder 1.

4. Elizabeth Boykin Wells, “From the Class of 1924,” 1 and 3, Student Ephemera, Box 1, Folder 6.

5. Both women had several titles during their tenure; these were the titles they held at the time of Talbot’s retirement in 1925. The abbreviations MT and SPB in the notes refer to Marion Talbot and Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge.

6. On the trials of coeducation in the US, see especially Ruth Bordin, Women at Michigan: The “Dangerous Experiment,” 1870s to the Present (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999); Geraldine Joncich Clifford, ed., Lone Voyagers: Academic Women in Coeducational Universities, 1870–1937 (New York: The Feminist Press, 1989); Charlotte Williams Conable, Women at Cornell: The Myth of Equal Education (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1977); Lynn Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), chap. 2; Leslie MillerBernal, Separate by Degree: Women Students’ Experiences in Single-Sex and Coeducational Colleges (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2000); Jana Nidiffer, “Crumbs from the Boy’s Table: The First Century of Coeducation,” in Women Administrators in Higher Education: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, eds. Jana Nidiffer and Carolyn Terry Bashaw (State University of New York

Press, 2001), chap. 1; and Rosalind Rosenberg, “The Limits of Access: The History of Coeducation in America,” in Women and Higher Education in American History, ed. John Mack Faragher and Florence Howe (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 107–29. For more positive assessments of coeducational institutions, see Andrea G. Radke-Moss, Bright Epoch: Women & Coeducation in the American West (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2008); and Susan R. Strong, Thought Knows No Sex: Women’s Rights at Alfred University (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008).

On Great Britain and Canada, see Paul Axelrod, Making a Middle Class: Student Life in English Canada during the Thirties (Montreal and other cities: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1990); Carol Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities, 1870–1939 (London: University College London Press, 1995); Paul Axelrod and John Reid, eds., Youth, University and Canadian Society: Essays in the Social History of Higher Education (Kingston, Montreal, and London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989); Catherine Gidney, “Dating and Gating: The Moral Regulation of Men and Women at Victoria and University Colleges, University of Toronto, 1920–60,” Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 41, no. 2 (Spring 2007), 138–60.

On women at the University of Chicago, in addition to Gordon, Gender and Higher Education, chap. 2, see esp. Jana Nidiffer, Pioneering Deans of Women: More than Wise and Pious Matrons (New York and London: Teachers College Press, 2000); Ruth Bordin, Alice Freeman Palmer: The Evolution of a New Woman (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993); Ellen Fitzpatrick, Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Fitzpatrick, “For the ‘Women of the University’: Marion Talbot, 1858–1948,” in Clifford, Lone Voyagers, 87–124; and Monica Mercado and Katherine Turk, “On Equal Terms”: Educating Women at the University of Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Library, 2009).

7. Genevieve Blanchard, “Marion Talbot,” English 4B, January 28, 1919, Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 2.

Some studies of British and Canadian coeducational schools also call attention to the importance of women’s separate space and all-female organizations. See for instance Axelrod, Making a Middle Class, 117–19; and Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex, 123–24, 189–92.

8. Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, “Putting the ‘Co’ in Education: Timing, Reasons, and Consequences of College Coeducation from 1835 to the Present,” Journal of Human Capital, vol. 5, no. 4 (Winter 2011), 377–417, esp. 379; Mary Ann Dzuback, “Gender and the Politics of Knowledge,” History of Education Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 2 (Summer 2003), 171–95.

9. See note 6.

10. Axelrod, Making a Middle Class,117; Sara Z. Burke, “New Women and Old Romans: Co-education at the University of Toronto, 1884–1895,” Canadian Historical Review vol. 80, no. 2 (June 1999), 219–41; Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex, 197–98; Radke-Moss, Bright Epoch, 105–8.

11. “Student Etiquette,” Cap & Gown, 1900, 301.

12. On women’s availability as marriage partners as a contributing factor to their acceptance in coeducational universities, see Radke-Moss, Bright Epoch, 104–8.

13. “Reverie of the Unkissed,” Cap & Gown, 1900, 289–90; “Rubaiyat of a Co-Ed,” Cap & Gown, 1908, 494.

14. “A Southerner” to MT, n.d. [ca. 1896]; and James Angell to MT, December 5, 1919, Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 1; see also Ralph Drury to Registrar, August 25, 1900, and Unsigned Copy to Ralph Drury, September 1, 1900, Presidents’ Papers, Box 41, Folder 2.

15. N.d., Talbot Papers, Box 5, Folder 10.

16. “The University of Chicago,” Cap & Gown, 1938, 17.

17. Bordin, Women at Michigan: The “Dangerous Experiment.”

18. See for example Axelrod, Making a Middle Class, 108–9; Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? 192–96; Gidney, “Dating and Gating,” 147–148; RadkeMoss, Bright Epoch, 109–10.

Separatism and Equality | 45

19. Genevieve Blanchard, “Marion Talbot,” English 4B, January 28, 1919, Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 2.

20. Bordin, Alice Freeman Palmer, 233–44.

21. Nidiffer, Pioneering Deans of Women, 5–14, 33; “The Dean of Women and her Function,” n.d., Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 1.

22. Anya Jabour, Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women’s Activism in Modern America (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2019), 84–88.

23. Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge Autobiography, Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge Papers (hereafter SPB Autobiography). An edited and annotated version is available: Anya Jabour, “Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge (1866-1948): Memoirs of a Southern Feminist,” in Southern Women in the Progressive Era: A Reader, eds. Giselle Roberts and Melissa Walker, 9‒43 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2019).

24. MT to Harper, November 16, 1903, President’s Papers, Box 38, Folder 16.

25 Nidiffer, Pioneering Deans of Women, 43–44; Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era, 115–17.

26. MT to William Harper, January 23, 1902, November 16, 1903, April 20, 1904; and William Harper to MT, April 23, 1904, President’s Papers, Box 38, Folder 16.

27. Arts College Minutes, Autumn Quarter, 1906 [summarizing 1905 activities], Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 9.

28. Arts College Minutes, 1906–1909, December 19, 1905, January 9, April 27, October 23, and November 5, 1906, and April 14, May 12, and October 13, 1908, Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 9.

29. “Statement Concerning the Subject of Providing Separate Instruction for the Sexes in the Junior College,” Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 13; Arts College Minutes, June 8, 1909, Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 9; see also Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era, 117.

30. Mercado and Turk, On Equal Terms, 29.

46 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

31. MT to William Harper, November 16, 1903, President’s Papers, Box 38, Folder 16.

32. For quotation, see Annie Blair to SPB, June 17, 1914, Sophonisba P. Breckinridge Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter SPBP-LOC); see also MT to William Harper, December 1, 1896, March 11, 1904, Presidents’ Papers, Box 38, Folder 16; and MT to Hutchins, June 8, 1940, Talbot Papers, Box 3, Folder 9.

33. Mary Snow to SPB, July 31, [1914], SPB to Mary Snow, n.d. [1914], SPBP-LOC. 34. Mollie Carroll to MT, June 16, 1925, Talbot Papers, Box 2, Folder 1.

35. Louise Green to MT, [April 29, 1925], Talbot Papers, Box 2, Folder 1; and Elizabeth Williamson to SPB, May 18, 1934, SPBP-LOC. 36. SPB, “Memorandum with Reference to the Place of the Womens’ [sic] Houses and and [sic] Halls of Residence in the Life of the University,” Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 15.

37. MT to William Harper, September 11, 1898, President’s Papers, Box 41, Folder 7; and SPB, “Memorandum with Reference to the Place of the Womens’ [sic] Houses and and [sic] Halls of Residence in the Life of the University,” Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 13.

38. Marion Talbot, “Women’s Houses of the University of Chicago: Their Origin and Meaning,” Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 13.

41. See for example “Green Hall Good Times,” Cap & Gown, 1917, 93; and “Green Hall,” Cap & Gown, 1920, 149.

See also R.W.P., “Notes on Green House,” July 15, 1925, Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 13; Green Hall Account Books, Talbot Papers, Box 5, Folder 4.

42. R.W.P., “Notes on Green House,” July 15, 1925, Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 13.

43. R.W.P., “Notes on Green House,” July 15, 1925, n.d., Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 13.

44. “A Hot Time in Foster,” Cap & Gown, 1907, 478–79; “About Georgia Eliot Jones and Others,” Cap & Gown, 1908; Daisy Wood to “My dear Girls,” January 31, 1904, Folder 2, Shirley Farr Records.

45. See photo and description at http:// photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy? one=apf4-02818.xml.

46. Originals in Hedwig L. Loeb Papers, Box 5; for digital versions, see Hedwig Loeb Photograph Album at http://photoarchive. lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy?keywords=Hed wig+Loeb. Other halls provided similar opportunities. For amateur theatricals and cross-dressing at Foster Hall, see http://photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/db. xqy?one=apf4-03178.xml; http:// photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy? one=apf4-02818.xml; and http:// photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy? one=apf4-02977.xml.

39. University of Chicago Official Announcement No. 8, “Room and Board in the Dormitories for Women”; and “Equipment of Student’s Bed-Room,” both in Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 13.

For images of the interiors of Green Hall in 1899–1900, see http://photoarchive.lib. uchicago.edu/db.xqy?keywords=Hedwig +Loeb; for Beecher Hall in 1900, see http://photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/db. xqy?one=apf2-00670.xml.

47. For first quotation, see Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era, 89; for second quotation, see Patricia Ann Palmieri, In Adamless Eden: The Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 99. On Breckinridge and Talbot’s relationships, see M. J. Deegan, “‘Dear love, dear love’: Feminist Pragmatism and the Chicago World of Love and Ritual,” Gender and Society, vol. 10 (1996), 590–607; and Jabour, Sophonisba Breckinridge, chap. 10.

40. On SPB’s attention to décor, see SPB Autobiography. For her tenure as Head of Green Hall, see Marion Talbot to President Judson, August 20, 1907, and August 27 [1907]; Judson to MT, August 22, 1907, President’s Papers, Box 38, Folder 16; and George A. Works to SPB, October 10, 1940 and June 24, 1941, SPBP-LOC.

48. MT to President Harper, May 14, 1896, Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 3; and Marion Talbot, “Women’s Houses of the University of Chicago: Their Origin and Meaning,” [April 1933], Box 4, Folder 13; see also Constitution of Green House, December 13, 1898, Talbot Papers, Box 15, Folder 4; MT, “Information and Suggestions for the

Heads of Women’s Houses,” Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 13; and “Regulations for Dormitories,” President’s Papers, Box 41, Folder 9.

49. MT, “Information and Suggestions for the Heads of Women’s Houses,” Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 13.

50. Notes on Green House, Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 13.

51. SPB Autobiography; see also MT to H. P. Judson, June 30, 1907, Presidents’ Papers, Box 38, Folder 16; and “Georgiana R. Simpson,” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 29, no. 2 (April 1944), 245–47.

52. SPB Autobiography.

53. SPB Autobiography; and SPB to Dr. T. W. Goodspeed, June 20, 1907 (copy), Talbot Papers, Box 5, Folder 16.

54. SPB Autobiography; SPB to Dr. T. W. Goodspeed, June 20, 1907 (copy), Talbot Papers, Box 5, Folder 16. See also relevant materials at https://www.lib. uchicago.edu/collex/exhibits/integratinglife-mind/social-question-round-one/.

55. MT to H. P. Judson, June 20, 1907, H. P. Judson to MT, June 22, 1907, Presidents’ Papers, Box 38, Folder 16; SPB to Edith Abbott, June 28, 1907 (“negro problem”); SPB to W. E. B. DuBois, August 6 and 19, 1914, SPBPLOC; and Ernest D. Burton to SPB, May 8, 1924, Presidents’ Papers, online at https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/collex/exhi bits/integrating-life-mind/social-question-round-two/.

56. See for instance, MT to President Harper, November 19, 1894, March 5 and May 14, 1896, Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 3.

57. Presidents’ Papers, Box 30, Folder 15; see also Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 3.

58. “University Settlement,” clipping, Chicago Record, December 9, 1896, Wallin Papers, Box 1, Folder 17; Edith Rider to MT, January 6, 1907, Presidents’ Papers, Box 31, Folder 3.

59. “Campus Types,” Cap & Gown, 1907, 445–46.

60 “Snubbing the Women’s Clubs,” Cap & Gown, 1918, 232.

61. There are more than 100 pages of scrapbook photos of the Esoteric Club

between 1900 and 1915 in the University of Chicago’s Photographic Archive, online at http://photoarchive. lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy?keywords= Esoteric+Club.

62. For male criticism, see Cap & Gown, 1914, 480. On same-sex and heterosexual relationships on campus, see especially Lisa Lindquist Dorr, “Fifty Percent Moonshine and Fifty Percent Moonshine: Social Life and College Youth Culture in Alabama, 1913–1933,” in Manners and Southern History, ed. Ted Ownby (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2007), 45–75; Sherrie Innes, “Mashes, Smashes, Crushes, and Raves: Woman-to-Woman Relationships in Popular Women’s College Fiction, 1895–1915,” NWSA Journal, vol. 6, no.

1 (Spring 1994), 48–88; and Heather Mulliner, “Between the Lines: Friendship, Love, and Marriage in the Progressive-Era Correspondence of Robert and Louise Line,” (M.A. Thesis, University of Montana, 2012), chap. 1.

On women’s same-sex relationships at the University of Chicago during Breckinridge and Talbot’s tenure there, see https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/ collex/exhibits/closetedout-quadrangleshistory-lgbtq-life-university-chicago/ womens-relationships-early-university/.

63. John Moulds to Ernest Burton, March 29, 1923, Presidents’ Papers, Box 41, Folder 8.

64. “The Woman’s Union,” reprinted from the University Record, February 1904, p.

2, and Woman’s Union Minutes, April 1, 1903, both in Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 6; see also “The Woman’s Union,” Cap & Gown, 1904, 122–23.

Gordon, Gender and Higher Education, 98–99, misdates the origins of the Union but offers a good summary of its activities.

67. For quotation, see MT to Judson, February 10, 1909, Talbot Papers, Box 5, Folder 2. See also Axelrod, Making a Middle Class, 111; Burke, “New Women and Old Romans,” 227, 229–30; Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex, 33–35; Jo La Pierre, “The Academic Life of Canadian Coeds, 1880–1900,” in Gender and Education in Ontario: An Historical Reader, eds. Ruby Heap and Alison Prentice (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1991), 303–28, esp.

310; and Joan Paul, “Agents of Social Control: The Role of Physical Educators as Guardians of Women’s Health, 1860–1960,” in Women Administrators in Higher Education, eds. Nidiffer and Bashaw, chap. 8, esp. 189–90.

68. MT to Judson, February 10, 1909, Box 5, Folder 2; and MT, “Erection and Furnishing of Ida Noyes Hall,” Talbot Papers, Box 5, Folder 3; see also Mercado and Turk, On Equal Terms, 28–29.

69. For quotation, see MT to Mr. Heckman, July 12, 1913, Talbot Papers, Box 5, Folder 3; see also MT, “Erection and Furnishing of Ida Noyes Hall,” Talbot Papers, Box 5, Folder 3; and Mercado and Turk, On Equal Terms, 29.

70. Burke, “New Women and Old Romans,” 229–30.

71. Esther Jacobs to MT, June 8, 1925, Talbot Papers, Box 2, Folder 1.

72. Elizabeth Boykin Wells, “From the Class of 1924,” 2–3, Student Ephemera, Box 1, Folder 6.

73. Cap & Gown, 1907, 450.

74. “Special Rulings on Social Affairs,” index cards, Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 1.

75. Louise Green to MT, [April 29, 1925; and Helen Hughes to MT, June 7, 1925, Talbot Papers, Box 2, Folder 1.

65. Woman’s Union Minutes, April 1, 1903 (quotation), January 11 and 27, 1904, March 16, 1904, November 8, 1905, October 10, 1906, all in Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folders 6 and 7.

66. Woman’s Union Minutes, June 8, 1904, Talbot Papers, Box 4, Folder 6. I have not been able to determine the end date of the Union. Membership declined between 1904 and 1905. Talbot’s records about the group end in 1908.

Separatism and Equality | 47

M A K I N G H I S T O RY I

Banking in Chicago: Interviews with Michael Moskow and Rick Waddell Timothy J. Gilfoyle

ew careers better illustrate the diversity and transformation of banking and finance in Chicago than those of Michael Moskow and Rick Waddell. Moskow’s career spans both the public and private sectors, including stints as a university professor, corporate executive, and high-level federal official as deputy secretary of labor, assistant secretary of housing and urban development, and deputy United States trade representative. Most recently, and for more than a decade, Moskow has been the vice chairman and distinguished fellow on the global economy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. During the course of his career, Moskow was confirmed by the US Senate for five positions in the federal government.1 Waddell, by contrast, joined Northern Trust Corporation in 1975 straight out of college. He never left. Waddell eventually held fourteen different positions at Northern Trust, most notably heading the bank’s departments of commercial banking, strategic planning, and wealth management. In 2006, he was named president and chief operating officer of Northern Trust, serving until 2015. Although their paths never directly crossed, their careers did. Waddell was a Class A director on the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Board of Directors from 2009 to 2014.2 And from 1994 to 2007, Moskow served as the eighth president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

In 1938, Michael H. Moskow was born in Paterson, New Jersey.3 By then, the “Silk City,” as Paterson was often called, had lost much of its manufacturing economy, but nevertheless “was often referred to as a working-man’s town,” according to Moskow. “The ethnic composition was roughly a third Italian, a third Jewish, and roughly the same number of African Americans and other minorities. It was a rich mixture of people.”4

F

48 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

Michael Moskow (left) received the 2016 Harold Washington Making History Award for Distinction in Public Service. Rick Waddell (right) received the 2019 Marshall Field Making History Award for Distinction in Corporate Leadership and Innovation.

Michael Moskow as a boy with his parents and sister in a seated family portrait. Moskow credits his father with shaping his values of charity and hard work.

Moskow’s parents, Jacob and Sylvia Edelstein Moskow, were part of a large extended family. “Both my grandmother and my aunt lived with us for a significant period of time,” remembers Moskow. “My six cousins and my sister were actually quite close growing up in Paterson. It was a tight-knit community, and we all lived within six or seven blocks of each other. ”5 Moskow’s parents’ community outreach shaped his later commitment to public service. “My father was always involved in charities, mostly Jewish charities—the YMHA, YM-YWHA, Israeli bonds,” Moskow recounts. “There were a lot of different charities that he was involved in, and at the state level there was on organization of Jewish leaders in which he participated.”6 Frederick H. “Rick” Waddell was born in 1953 and raised in Fox Chapel, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.7 He was the second of five children born to Robert and Sally Heinz Waddell, an insurance agent and homemaker, respectively.8 Waddell spent his entire childhood and teenage years in Fox Chapel, first attending local public schools and then Shady Side Academy for his final two years of high school. “Shady Side had a boarding program, and even though I lived literally five minutes away, I decided to be a five-day boarder,” explains Waddell. “It was one of the best things I ever did.”9 Waddell describes his upbringing as upper-middle class. “My dad was an insurance salesman and eventually he and his brother owned an agency that their father had started with Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance,” describes Waddell. “He was in the life insurance business, and he was pretty good at it.”10 Waddell initially thought he would follow his brother to Washington and Lee University in Virginia, but during a tour of college campuses he visited Dartmouth College. “My dad and I went to Boston, drove up to Hanover, and I came up the hill,” remembers Waddell. “There’s a big quadrangle with white buildings, Dartmouth Row, the Hanover Inn, and the Baker Library.”

Entranced by the autumnal beauty, Waddell turned to his father, and said “Dad, this is where I want to go to school.”11

Waddell as a student at Dartmouth College, where he majored in Political Science.

Making History | 49

In contrast to Waddell, Michael Moskow attended Paterson public schools— PS 20 for elementary school and Paterson Eastside High School—before leaving to attend Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he earned an AB in economics and was a member and president of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.12 After graduating from Lafayette, Moskow served in the army for six months and was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant in 1960.13 Then he returned to his alma mater and taught history and English at Eastside High School for a year before entering graduate school.14 At the University of Pennsylvania, Moskow moved rapidly through the doctoral program in business and applied economics.15 In 1965, he completed his PhD, writing a dissertation that was later published as Teachers and Unions: The Applicability of Collective Bargaining to Public Education (1968).16 Before and after completing his doctorate, Moskow was an assistant professor of management and economics at the Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University) from 1963 to 1967 before becoming an associate professor of economics at Temple University from 1967 to 1969.17 At Dartmouth College, Waddell majored in political science and briefly considered law school, but by his senior year “I wanted to get out on my own,” he explains. “I wanted to be independent, so I wanted a job.”18 So, Waddell began interviewing with bank recruiters who came to campus.

He vividly recounts his interview with Lee Hall. “I remember walking in because it was kind of startling that this guy had a gray, dark gray flannel suit, three-piece, with a Phi Beta Kappa chain and key across his midriff, and he was smoking a cigar. Today, nobody would ever do that.” The interview had an unusual conclusion. Most interviews ended with “We’ll get back to you in two weeks,” Waddell reminisces. Hall was different. “He said if you want to learn more about Northern Trust, please write me a letter.”19 Waddell did just that and quickly received a response from Hall: “I enjoyed our conversation and we’d like to have you come to Chicago and interview for a full day.” Waddell panicked and called his father. “I don’t have any money,” he told his father. “I can’t afford a plane ticket and hotel and meals.”20 Waddell’s father laughed. “Rick, they’re going pay for your plane ticket, put you up in a nice hotel, buy you dinner, and they’re going to take you out to the airport in a cab,” explained Waddell’s father. “They’re going to pay for all of that.”21

Moskow as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his PhD.

Waddell started working for Northern Trust right out of college.

50 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

“I was so naïve,” Waddell now admits. “I went on the interview and I was extended a job offer, and that’s how I got to Northern Trust.”22 An equally serendipitous event changed Moskow’s career trajectory. While attending the Thirtieth American Assembly on “Challenges to Collective Bargaining” at Arden House in Harriman, New York, in 1966, Moskow had an informal conversation with John Dunlop at the resort’s bar.23 Dunlop, then a preeminent labor economist, the chair of the economics department at Harvard University, and a future secretary of labor (1975–76), was impressed

by Moskow.24 Shortly thereafter, Dunlop invited the young economist to participate in a project sponsored by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Then in 1969, Moskow was offered a position as a senior staff economist at the US Council of Economic Advisers in Washington, DC, and a year later as the executive director of the Construction Industry Collective Bargaining Committee (CICBC).25 According to Moskow, Dunlop set up the CICBC. “You had high inflation in the construction industry in those days,” he explains. “Wages were going up 20 percent, construction prices going up 15 to 20 percent a year, a serious problem. So, the government was trying to do all kinds of things to keep construction prices and wages down.”26 Moskow’s public service appointments impressed Temple University officials. They awarded Moskow with several one-year leaves-of-absence. Then it was renewed again. And again. “After I was there seven-and-a-half years, I just couldn’t in good conscience keep the leave,” admits Moskow, “so I just gave it up.”27 Waddell moved to Chicago after graduation in the summer of 1975. He briefly lived in the Mies van der Rohe–designed 910 North Lake Shore Drive before marrying his wife, Cate—“the best thing I got out of my Dartmouth education was my wife,” emphasizes Waddell. They lived at 46 East Oak Street for a few years while she worked at Price Waterhouse.28 “I was in the commercial banking training program, which was a rotational program,” explains Waddell. “After three or four stints in various parts of the bank, you were deemed to be a commercial lending officer.”29 Northern Trust enjoys a long history in Chicago. The bank was founded 1889

by Byron Laflin Smith with financial support from leading Chicago businessmen such as Marshall Field and Philip D. Armour. Under the tutelage of Solomon A. Smith, the founder’s son, who led the enterprise from 1914 to 1963, Northern Trust was one of the few banks that grew during the Great Depression—deposits increased from about $50 million in 1929 to $300 million in 1935. By the 1960s, deposits totaled nearly $1 billion. At the start of the twenty-first century, Northern Trust was Chicago’s third-largest bank, responsible for more than $1.3 trillion in assets under custody, 9,300 employees worldwide and almost 6,000 in the Chicago region.30 As a premier money manager for wealthy families, by the early twenty-first century, the Chicago bank had approximately twenty percent of the nation’s richest families as clients.31 Waddell recounts that his first assignment was in banking and corporate services in which he learned about the various banking products for corporations. “After about a month and a half I just loved it, and they were giving me lots of work,” explains Waddell. He suggested that his three-month assignment be extended to two years. “They said great, we would love that,” recounts Waddell. “And it ended up being four.”32 During those years, Waddell also enrolled as a part-time MBA student at Northwestern University, earning his degree in 1979.33 By the early 1970s, Moskow was one of the nation’s leading government labor economists. In 1971, he was named deputy under secretary of labor,

Interior view of Northern Trust Company, Chicago, September 15, 1932.

Making History | 51

and, shortly after, the assistant secretary of labor for policy, evaluation, and research.34 Moskow’s work attracted the interest of officials in other federal departments. From 1973 to 1975, he served as assistant secretary for policy development and research in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), from 1975 to 1976 as director of the Council on Wage and Price Stability, and from 1976 to 1977 as under secretary of labor.35 While working at HUD, Moskow developed a direct cash assistance program to replace the construction of high-rise public housing projects.

“Instead of giving the money to a firm to build housing or to subsidize an owner of housing,” Moskow explains, “we would be giving it to the individual and let the individual go out and look for housing in the marketplace.” The program was “criticized severely,” but with the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, Democrats began supporting the program. Direct cash assistance became the foundation for the voucher program known as Section 8 housing. According to Moskow, the program was “a key inflection point to change the direction of housing policy in this country.”36 In retrospect, Moskow considers this to be his most historic contribution.

Direct cash assistance, now called vouchers, were intended to address racial segregation in American cities.

The vouchers, according to Moskow, “are very effective, and they have a lot of benefits in terms of longtime earnings for people in the family as well.”

He admits that some of this was 52 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

Moskow worked with multiple US presidents, including President Richard Nixon, pictured here.

Moskow and his family moved to Chicago in 1977.

timing. “I happened to be at the right place at the right time. If someone else was there, they may have recommended block grants.”37 Eventually Rick Waddell caught the attention of William Osborn, the figure most often credited with transforming Northern Trust into a global financial company. In 1992, seven percent of Northern Trust’s earnings originated from international operations; by 2007, thirty-five to forty percent came from outside the US, with twenty-five to thirty percent of employees being international.38 From 2003 to 2006, Waddell was placed in charge of Corporate & Institutional Services at Northern Trust. Waddell explains that the two primary business units at Northern Trust are the wealth and institutional businesses.

“They’re each about half in terms of revenues and profitability of the bank,” Waddell explains.39 This proved to be his stepping stone to being named president and chief operating officer in 2006, then chief executive officer in 2008, and chairman in 2009. Waddell was only the ninth CEO in the 125-year history of Northern Trust Bank.40 Waddell built upon the strong foundation created by his predecessor William Osborn. Under Osborn, Northern Trust focused primarily on institutional and corporate clients even as the bank expanded globally. By 2005, managing money for high-net-worth Americans still generated about half of Northern Trust’s $1.3 billion in trust fees. More revealing was that Northern Trust was the world’s ninth-largest money manager and custodian of more than $1 trillion in overseas pension, government, and other institutional funds.41 This continued under Waddell: “I think the part that I’m most proud of is the growth that we have maintained and accelerated. That includes our footprint with new offices during my tenure in Amsterdam, Riyadh, Manila, Tempe, Limerick, Seoul, Beijing, and Melbourne.”42 At the moment Waddell was beginning his rapid ascent up the Northern Trust career ladder, Michael Moskow was at a crossroad in his career. He briefly considered returning to the academy when his government service ended in 1977. But he had already learned that working as a government economist was a sharp departure from the academy. “In government you’re working on five different things at the same time, a lot of little projects,” explains Moskow. “You’re also working a lot more with other people in government—a lot of committees, a lot of task forces,” he adds. “You write something, it’s being reviewed by someone else, or you’re reviewing someone else’s work.” Moskow realized the difference affects one’s career path. “If you stay in government too long, you get out of the habit of doing research, doing serious research, and it can take you a long time to write an article,” Moskow admits, “You’re accustomed to having other people do things for you.”43 Instead, Michael Moskow elected to enter the private sector. From 1977 to 1991, he moved into a variety of senior management positions at several Chicago companies. The first was Esmark, “the old Swift & Company,” explains Moskow. “They formed a holding company and diversified.”

Esmark’s holdings included Vickers Energy with gasoline stations, TransOcean Oil for oil exploration, Playtex for personal products, and Vigoro for fertilizer. “We acquired some other things when I was there,” Moskow points out. “At that point, Esmark was in a diversification mode”44 Moskow then moved to Northwest Industries. “This was an opportunity to run my own business, the chemical business.”45 For two-and-a-half years, from 1982 to 1984, Moskow ran Velsicol Chemical, a firm originally founded

by Chicagoan Joseph Regenstein in 1931.46 Moskow was later named to senior level positions at Dart & Kraft and Premark International, a spinoff from Dart & Kraft.47 Making History | 53

But the world changed. “Over the years, we learned that unrelated diversification is not a good idea,” Moskow now admits. “Related diversification, where you have a common distribution system, or common research facilities, or common administration, where you can eliminate a lot of overhead and consolidate operations, can be very beneficial financially. But unrelated, it’s hard to see the real benefits of it.”48 Moskow points out that this marked a sea change in Chicago’s economy. “Every Chicago company I worked for— and I worked for four—they were all highly diversified,” he states. “None of them exist today.”49 In 2006, the year Waddell was named chief operating officer, Northern Trust was selected to provide a variety of services to China’s multibillion-dollar National Social Security Fund (NSSF). The NSSF was China’s first institutional retirement fund to invest in foreign equities markets and certain foreign currencies. Since Northern Trust had consulted with the NSSF since 2002, the bank was well-positioned to provide global custodial advice, investment compliance monitoring, and various performance measurement services.50 Waddell took advantage of that relationship. He explains that Northern Trust’s service on behalf of the NSSF was “an integral part of Northern Trust’s overall growth strategy for the Asia-Pacific region.” In the three years prior to taking on the NSSF as a custodial client, Northern Trust had doubled their custodial assets in Asia. “We are poised for the next phase of rapid growth in Asia to capitalize on the opportunities around the region,” Waddell stated at the signing ceremony.51 Northern Trust also adopted a unique approach to global expansion.

Waddell explains that the bank was historically regarded as a client-driven institution. That reputation even extended to overseas expansion efforts.

When asked what motivated Northern Trust to move into a new market, Waddell quickly summarizes: “It was a client.” He retrospectively acknowledges that, “almost all of that growth was driven by some client or prospective client coming to us and saying if you had a presence here, we’d do a lot more business with you.”52 Northern Trust’s profit-center also differed from other banks. Whereas most financial institutions relied on commercial or consumer lending, Northern Trust historically concentrated on custody and money-management fees, a conservative approach that provided lower but steadier revenue and was less vulnerable

Waddell meeting President Barack Obama.

54 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

to economic downturns. Under Waddell’s leadership, long-term growth remained consistent and total assets under custody, administration, or management tripled between 2012 and 2017 to $18.6 trillion.53 In 2015, Northern Trust posted a ten percent return after years in the single digits, thanks in part to expansion at home and abroad.54 In 1991, Moskow returned to government service when President George H. W. Bush appointed him deputy US trade representative (USTR), a position with the rank of ambassador. Moskow was charged with overseeing the aircraft, semiconductor, and steel industries, as well as negotiating with China, Japan, and Southeast Asian countries.55 Moskow compares it to going back to graduate school.

“Suddenly you’re learning about the airplane manufacturing business in France, in Germany, and in the United Kingdom, and how that relates to the US, Boeing, and in those days, McDonnell Douglas,” he offers as just one example. “Then you’re learning about Japan, the country, and what the culture is, and how they’re keeping our products out, and which of our products are important to try and get in there. It was a huge learning experience.”56 The job was also intense. “I was at the Fed for thirteen years and I was at USTR a year and a half,” Moskow summarizes. “If I’d have been there thirteen years, I would have been burned out in five or four.”57 After a brief sojourn as a faculty member at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management from 1993 to 1994, Moskow was named the eighth president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (Chicago Fed) in 1994. His thirteen years at the Chicago Fed marked Moskow’s longest tenure at any institution in his career.58 Moskow considers his most significant contribution was his work as a member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve System’s most important monetary policy-making body.59 Moskow was a forceful advocate of the Federal Reserve publishing long-term projections on economic growth, inflation, and unemployment. The Federal Reserve’s leadership was greatly resistant to the proposal. “People wanted us to have inflation targeting, but they didn’t want to talk about the unemployment side,” remembers Moskow. “I felt the way to ease into targeting was to do a projection of inflation, first of all, but at the same time do a projection of unemployment and a projection of economic growth, and that would over time evolve into a form of inflation.”60 Moskow also instituted Fresh Start to address his concerns regarding the internal culture of the Chicago Federal Reserve. By 1997, Moskow was convinced that the Chicago Fed suffered from “a very authoritarian, top-down culture,” according to Moskow. “I just felt we had to be more open, we had to be more transparent, work together, and get ideas from people.”61 Not only did the program succeed, but “after a few years we didn’t really have to talk about Fresh Start anymore, it became part of our DNA.”62 Waddell also marshaled Northern Trust through the financial crisis, now known as the Great Recession. Most notably, Northern Trust was one of only two banks in the S&P 500 Index that did not lower its dividend during

Exterior view of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 1923; photographer Kaufmann & Fabry Co.

Making History | 55

Waddell (left) at the Making History Awards ceremony in 2019 with fellow award recipient W. Rockwell Wirtz.

2007–2008.63 Waddell attributes three factors to Northern Trust weathering the Recession: “sound strategy, financial flexibility, and a strong management team.”64 A key part was the business model of Northern Trust in which seventy-five percent of revenues originated from asset servicing, custody, investment management, and fiduciary services; only twenty-five percent came from deposits and commercial lending. “At most banks it’s the other way around,” Waddell points out. Consequently, “the vast majority of our revenues were fee-based, and that’s a very stable, steady revenue stream.”65 Waddell also emphasizes Northern Trust’s historically conservative financial strategy. “I prefer ‘financial flexibility’” as a descriptive term, states Waddell.

Northern Trust avoided investing in the structured products and hedging strategies that led to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. “Our assets are very liquid, very short duration, and get a lower return; we understand that,” explains Waddell. In the end, “these very profitable fee-based businesses that help offset that,” and provided, in Waddell’s words, “financial strength, liquidity, and tons of capital.”66 Other analysts concur that Northern Trust’s deep capital foundation and stable revenue sources enabled the bank to weather the financial storm.67 Finally, Northern Trust benefitted from having “a very seasoned management team.” “I didn’t know what a subprime loan was,” admits Waddell.

“But we had a team of people, and we worked through some very tough times with clients.” As evidence, Waddell points out that Northern Trust accepted funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program in the fall of 2008 and then paid it back less than a year later with a fifteen percent return to the US taxpayer on a double-A rated credit. “TARP should go down as one of the great investments by the federal government,” declares Waddell. “It saved the banking system and it saved the US economy.”68 Since leaving the Chicago Fed, Moskow has devoted most of his energies to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs where he serves as vice-chairman and senior fellow on the Global Economy.69 In addition to running the Global Economy Roundtable, Moskow has been active in expanding the Chicago 56 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

Council’s outreach. “We’ve had task forces,” Moskow points out, “which have been very influential in both Republican and Democratic administrations.”70 Most notable were a series of reports on agriculture and food security. In 2016, legislation came before Congress, Moskow adds, that “encompasses many of our recommendations.”71 While Moskow was helping the transformation of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Waddell and Northern Trust overcame the Federal Reserve’s decision to stimulate economic growth by slashing interest rates to near zero during the Great Recession. The policy crushed returns on the traditional conservative investment strategy of Northern Trust. “We were earning nothing,” laments Waddell. “In fact, we were rebating money to our investment clients because the rates were so low.” The Federal Reserve policy hurt Northern Trust in the short term, forcing the bank to downsize, become more efficient, and lay off employees. Between 2014 and 2017, Chicago’s share of Northern Trust’s total workforce dropped from forty-four to thirty-six percent.72 “It was tough,” he now admits.73 But in the end, Northern Trust’s foundation held; a recovering stock market lifted income from fees tied to asset values and annual revenue rose twenty-seven percent between 2012 and 2016.74 And from 2007 to 2017 Northern shares outperformed other bank stocks and fetched a higher priceearnings multiple than most.75 Both Waddell and Moskow have been active in multiple civic and philanthropic enterprises. Moskow chaired the Japan America Society of Chicago, the Economic Club of Chicago, and the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.76 He served as a director of World Business Chicago, the Chicago Workforce Investment Council, and the National Futures Association. A trustee emeritus of Lafayette College, Moskow also maintains a connection to Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board. In the past, he has served on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations and Northwestern Memorial Foundation.77 Waddell is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Art Institute of Chicago, Northwestern University, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He also serves on the Global Advisory Board of the Kellogg School of Management and is an executive advisor to the Metropolitan Planning Council. Waddell is a member of the Board of Directors of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Chicago Urban League, and the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago. He is vice chairman of the Commercial Club of Chicago and serves as chairman of its Civic Committee.78

Waddell at a Day of Caring event in support of the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago.

Making History | 57

Lester Crown (right) presents Moskow his Making History Award in 2016.

Waddell speaks with pride regarding Northern Trust’s strong philanthropic tradition. The company historically attempts to donate approximately one to two percent of its pretax profits to charities annually. In the decade before 2014—effectively the Waddell years at Northern Trust—the company gave more than $120 million in support of nonprofit organizations.79 Moskow and Waddell will be remembered for protecting and advancing the legacy of their primary institutions. Moskow remains one of only nine presidents in the 106-year history of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.80 Waddell similarly points out that in the more than 131-year history of Northern Trust, only ten individuals have served as chief executive officers.81 Moskow recognized that the Chicago Fed suffered from “a very authoritarian, top-down culture” when he began his tenure. He quickly instituted changes.

“You look around and it’s amazing, it catches on, it really did,” smiles Moskow. “I was very proud of that.”82 Waddell echoes Moskow. Not only is Northern Trust the only bank of any size that has been in Chicago more than one-hundred-and-thirty years, “I’m very proud of the fact that on my watch, we kept that legacy and we kept it because of our strategy and because of our culture.”83 58 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

Timothy J. Gilfoyle teaches history at Loyola University Chicago and is most recently the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Urban History (Oxford University Press, 2019).

I L L U S T R AT I O N S | Images courtesy of awardees, unless otherwise noted. Page 51, HB-01354-C, CHM, Hedrich-Blessing Collection. 55, CHM, ICHi-000233.

F U RT H E R R E A D I N G | Biographical information on Moskow appears in “Michael H. Moskow,” Wikipedia, last updated June 1, 2020, accessed September 25, 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_H._Moskow; Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, “Michael H. Moskow,” 2020, accessed September 20, 2020, https://www.chicagofed.org/ people/m/moskow-michael-h; and “Experts: Michael H. Moskow,” Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2020, accessed September 23, 2020, https://www.thechicago council.org/experts. A useful summary of Michael Moskow’s work in the federal government can be found in Michael H. Moskow biography, Finding Aid, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum, February 2011, accessed March 28, 2016, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/guides/findingaid/Moskow,_Michael__Papers.asp. Moskow’s publications are important in understanding his economic philosophy. Begin with Michael H. Moskow, Teachers and Unions: The Applicability of Collective Bargaining to Public Education (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, Industrial Research Unit; distributed by University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968), and see his publications when he was president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago at: https://www.chicagofed.org/ people/m/moskow-michael-h. Biographical information on Rick Waddell appears in Harry Kraemer, “Rick Waddell’s Thoughts on Leadership,” Harry Kraemer Blogpost, March 4, 2018, accessed April 22, 2019, https://harrykraemer.org/2018/03/04/rickwaddells-thoughts-on-leadership/; Neil Munshi, “Rich Waddell: Faith, Family, Friends . . . and Then the Company,” Financial Times, January 19, 2016, accessed April 22, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/b9e8460a-b61a-11e5-b147-e5e5bba42e51; “Waddell to Retire after 9 Years as Northern Trust Chairman; Board Elects O’Grady as Successor,” Business Wire, November 13, 2018, accessed February 10, 2019, https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181113006009/en/Waddell-Retire-9Years-Northern-Trust-Chairman; “News Release: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Announces Two New Directors, Re-election of a Director, Re-appointment of a Director, Board Chair and Deputy Chair,” Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, December 21, 2015, accessed April 22, 2019, https://www.chicagofed.org/utilities/newsroom/ news-releases/2015/2016-new-chicago-fed-board-directors. For an interview with Rick Waddell, see Steve Daniels, “What’s Next for Northern Trust’s Recently Retired CEO,” Crain’s Chicago Business, March 1, 2018, accessed April 22, 2019, https:// www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20180301/ISSUE01/180229885/rick-waddell-stepsdown-as-northern-trust-ceo

Making History | 59

E N D N OT E S 1. Biographical information on Moskow appears in “Michael H. Moskow,” Wikipedia, last updated June 1, 2020, accessed Sept. 25, 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_H. _Moskow; Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, “Michael H. Moskow,” 2020, accessed Sept. 20, 2020, https://www.chicagofed.org/people/m/ moskow-michael-h; “Experts: Michael H. Moskow,” Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2020, accessed Sept. 23, 2020, https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/ experts; Dennis Rodkin, “Sale of the Week: Moskow’s Retreat – Winnetka,” Chicago Magazine, June 22, 2009, accessed April 19, 2016, http://www.chicagomag.com/ Radar/DealEstate/June-2009/Sale-of-the-WeekMoskow-rsquos-Retreat-mdash-Winnetka/ 2. Biographical information on Waddell

5. Moskow, interview.

6. Moskow, interview.

(Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967), iii, 8, available on Google Books, accessed September. 24, 2020,

7. Rick Waddell, oral history interview by

https://play.google.com/books/reader?id

Timothy J. Gilfoyle, May 16, 2019,

=ZrJkMLxqg5cC&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA3.

deposited in the collections of the

Also see “Visitors to the Bargaining

Chicago History Museum (hereafter

Table: Papers From the American

Waddell, interview); Harry Kraemer,

Assembly,” Monthly Labor Review 89,

“Rick Waddell’s Thoughts on

no. 12 (December 1966), 1385.

Leadership,” Harry Kraemer Blogpost, March 4, 2018, accessed April 22, 2019, https://harrykraemer.org/2018/03/04/ rick-waddells-thoughts-on-leadership/.

24. “John Thomas Dunlop,” Wikipedia, last updated April 25, 2020, accessed September 24, 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

8. Munshi, “Rick Waddell.”

John_Thomas_Dunlop.

9. Waddell, interview.

25. Moskow biography.

10. Waddell, interview.

26. Moskow, interview.

11. Waddell, interview.

27. Moskow, interview.

12. Moskow, interview.

28. Waddell, interview.

13. Michael H. Moskow biography, Finding

29. Waddell, interview.

Aid, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library 30. Mark R. Wilson, “Northern Trust Co.,”

appears in Neil Munshi, “Rick Waddell:

and Museum, February 2011, accessed

Faith, Family, Friends . . . and Then the

March 28, 2016, https://www.fordli-

in The Encyclopedia of Chicago, eds.

Company,” Financial Times, January 19,

brarymuseum.gov/library/guides/

James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin

2016, accessed April 22, 2019,

findingaid/Moskow,_Michael_-_Papers.asp

Keating, Janice L. Reiff (Chicago:

https://www.ft.com/content/b9e8460

(hereafter Moskow biography).

University of Chicago Press, 2004),

a-b61a-11e5-b147-e5e5bba42e51; “Waddell to Retire after 9 Years as Northern Trust Chairman; Board Elects O’Grady as Successor,” Business Wire, November 13, 2018, accessed February 10, 2019, https://www.businesswire.com/ news/home/20181113006009/en/Wadd ell-Retire-9-Years-Northern-TrustChairman; “News Release: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Announces Two New Directors, Re-election of a Director, Re-appointment of a Director, Board Chair and Deputy Chair,” Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, December 21, 2015, accessed April 22, 2019, https://www.chicagofed.org/utilities/ newsroom/news-releases/2015/2016new-chicago-fed-board-directors.

3. “Michael H. Moskow,” Wikipedia.

4. Michael H. Moskow, oral history interview by Timothy J. Gilfoyle, June 7,

937–38, accessed May 1, 2019, 14. Moskow, interview.

http://www.encyclopedia.chicago

15. “Michael H. Moskow,” Wikipedia.

history.org/pages/2795.html.

16. Moskow, interview; Michael H. Moskow,

31. Adrienne Carter, “Northern Trust’s New

Teachers and Unions: The Applicability of

Wanderlust,” Business Week On-Line,

Collective Bargaining to Public Education

April 11, 2005, accessed October 1,

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania,

2007, http://www.businessweek.com/

Wharton School of Finance and

magazine/content/05_15/b3928118_mz

Commerce, Industrial Research Unit;

020.htm.

distributed by University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968).

17. Moskow biography.

18. Waddell, interview.

19. Waddell, interview.

20. Waddell, interview.

21. Waddell, interview.

22. Waddell, interview.

23. Moskow, interview. On the conference

32. Waddell, interview.

33. Munshi, “Rick Waddell.”

34. Moskow biography.

35. Moskow biography.

36. Moskow, interview.

37. Moskow, interview.

38. Chicago Tribune, October 17, 2007. For more on William Osborn, see Timothy J. Gilfoyle, “The Making of Millennial Banks: Interviews with Norman R.

2016, deposited in the collection of the

(October 27–30, 1966) and Moskow’s

Chicago History Museum (hereafter

attendance, see Lloyd Ulman, ed.,

Bobins and William A. Osborn,” Chicago

Moskow, interview).

Challenges to Collective Bargaining

History 38, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 66–72.

60 | CHICAGO HISTORY | Fall 2020

39. Waddell, interview.

40. Joe Cahill, “Northern Trust’s Biggest Asset: Dependability,” Crain’s Chicago Business, October 20, 2017, accessed April 22, 2019, https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20171020/ISSUE10/ 171029999/northern-trust-showscontinuity-as-o-grady-takes-ceo-role; “Waddell to Retire after 9 Years as Northern Trust Chairman.”

41. Carter, “Northern Trust’s New Wanderlust.”

42. Steve Daniels, “What’s Next for Northern Trust’s Recently Retired CEO,” Crain’s Chicago Business, March 1, 2018, accessed April 22, 2019, https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/ 20180301/ISSUE01/180229885/rick-

Security Fund,” WallStreet & Technology, October 12, 2006, accessed September 15, 2020, https://www.wallstreetandtech.com/asset-managementnorthern-trust-becomes-global-custodian -for-chinas-social-security-fund/d/did/1258099.html.

67. Cahill, “Northern Trust’s biggest asset: dependability.”

68. Waddell, interview. Also see “Northern Trust,” Wikipedia.

69. Moskow biography; Rodkin, “Sale of the Week.”

52. Waddell, interview.

70. Moskow, interview.

53. Cahill, “Northern Trust’s biggest asset: dependability.”

71. Moskow, interview.

54. “#15 Frederick Waddell, Chairman and CEO, Northern Trust,” Chicago Magazine, March 2016, accessed April 22, 2016, https://www.chicagomag.com/ ChicagoMagazine/March-2016/Power50/Frederick-Waddell/.

55. Moskow biography; “Michael H. Moskow,” Wikipedia.

72. Steve Daniels, “How many layoffs and where? Northern Trust launches cost-cutting plan,” Crain’s Chicago Business, October 18, 2018, accessed April 22, 2019, https://www.chicagobusiness.com/ article/20171018/NEWS01/171019839/ northern-trust-launches-cost-cuttingplan-mum-on-number-of-jobs-hit.

73. Waddell, interview.

waddell-steps-down-as-northern-trust-ceo.

56. Moskow, interview.

43. Moskow, interview.

57. Moskow, interview.

44. Moskow, interview. Also see “Vickers Petroleum,” Wikipedia, last updated May 20, 2020, accessed September 24, 2020, https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_Petroleum 45. Moskow, interview.

46. Moskow, interview; “Velsicol Chemical Company,” Wikipedia, last updated August 13, 2020, accessed September 23, 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Velsicol_Chemical_Corporation.

47. “Keynote Speaker Biography,” BMO Fixed Income Perspectives, 2011, accessed April 19, 2016, http://www.bmocm.com/conferences/showContacts.aspx?id=336;

58. Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, “Michael H. Moskow,” 2020, accessed September 20, 2020, https://www.chicagofed.org/people/m/ moskow-michael-h; Moskow biography; “Michael H. Moskow,” Wikipedia; Rodkin, “Sale of the Week.”

59. “Michael H. Moskow,” Wikipedia. For more on the Committee, see Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, “Federal Open Market Committee,” last updated September 16, 2020, accessed September 25, 2020, https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomc.htm.

74. Cahill, “Northern Trust’s biggest asset: dependability.”

75. Cahill, “Northern Trust’s biggest asset: dependability.”

76. “Suzanne Kopp, Michael Moskow,” New York Times, February 10, 2008, accessed September 21, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/fa shion/weddings/10kopp.html.

77. “Michael H. Moskow,” Wikipedia; Moskow, interview.

78. “Waddell to Retire after 9 Years as Northern Trust Chairman,” Business Wire.

79. “Northern Trust,” Wikipedia.

Moskow biography

60. Moskow, interview.

80. Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, “Michael H. Moskow.”

48. Moskow, interview.

61. Moskow, interview.

81. Waddell, interview.

49. Moskow, interview. Also see “Vickers

62. Moskow, interview.

82. Moskow, interview.

63. John Engen, “M&T Bank’s Bob Wilmers Is Too Sharp to Fail,” Institutional Investor, February 20, 2012, https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/art icle/b14zplk6bk4lpm/mt-banks-bobwilmers-is-too-sharp-to-fail.

83. Waddell, interview.

Petroleum,” Wikipedia.

50. “The National Social Security Fund of China Appoints Northern Trust As Custodian,” Global Custodian, October 12, 2006, accessed September 15, 2020, https://www.globalcustodian.com/thenational-social-security-fund-of-chinaappoints-northern-trust-as-custodian/.

51. Tim Clark, “Northern Trust Becomes Global Custodian for China’s Social

64. Waddell, interview.

65. Waddell, interview.

66. Waddell, interview.

Making History | 61