It is nice to look at all the people that were like, they tried to stop us, but that was not the whole story. And what i am about is about telling the whole story. So let me take you back to a time before women could vote. 1898 and your name is. Unice randall girls are considered so unimportant in the small town where you are born, but you are not even written into the ledger that lifts the birth. I just want to warn you, there is a little bug that zoom has where it overheats when you are doing a large broadcast. So you will hear a loud fan now and then, nothing is wrong, its just a fan. It will stop and 20 seconds. Everybody knows about it, nobody knows what to do. T is listed as a bug they are like, we are working on it. That does not help me, but im glad they are working on it. Sowhat i want to consider is important is the little town, but she is not written into the birth ledger. She finds out she does not exist when she goes to get married. Imagine her surprise. Up on a farm in massachusetts. She has no electricity on her farm, but that is no big deal. Thats all people lived in her town. Her father has are married off. He knows who she will married and what she will do. The big compromise was that she got to go to high school. Does pretty well, i have seen her report cards. She decides she wants to go to art school. An issue withes this, but she does something that for her generation is remarkably courageous. She decides to get on the bus, make a new plan, and she decides to go to the big city and go to art school. Hermother supports it, mother is in favor, but her father is not happy. Boston, which is the nearest big city. In boston she starts art school and runs out of money. At this point she is about to come back in disgrace and world war i breaks out. For mostot good news people because guys have to go over and fight the war. But its really good news for women and the minorities, who otherwise would not have been hired and a whole bunch of different jobs, and suddenly there are all of these companies with openings, eunice goes in and says, i need a job, and the nearest place that was hiring was a company. There is no reason you would have ever heard of it. They made radio receivers and they made equipment for hand radio. Eunice has become interested in hand radio as a kid. For no apparent reason. She was always different. She loved to crochet, she loved to knit and she loved hand radio. Today that would not be regarded as particularly different, but back then it was like, she likes to play basketball. , whate likes to crochet is she . She was eunice, thats what she was. And she decided that she was interested in hand radio, so she went to her brothers farm, because he did have electricity, and she taught herself mores code. Only have more time i will tell you more. Her when she got a job at that Manufacturing Company that made radio receivers. They looked at her like, what do you know about this. She was like, i have been doing morse code for years. As ans able to get a job address meant. Being ahead of her time she did not want to be a draft to men, she wanted to be called a draft lady, so she was. She did technical drawing. Put ahe war ended she Radio Station. It was 1920 and commercial radio was lots of things. I just got done giving talks was notie in pittsburgh the first Radio Station. That is a mess. Worked at one of the first Radio Stations. She was by all accounts the first radio announcer, the first woman radio announcer in the east. She may have been one of the first in the entire united states. 1919. Es on the air around contrary to the myth that the republic was going to fall if women were broadcasters, the republic did not fall and people loved her. Allwas getting fan mail over the place, and marriage proposals. And she became very popular. She also became very versatile. In the early days of broadcasting you had to be. This was 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923. All radio is live and she is doing the news. Shes playing the music, shes announcing, she is doing transmitter maintenance. You name it and eunice did it. She did those reports. A police would send over reports of stolen cars and she would announce them on the news. Not show up,ts did as often happened in live radio, eunice saying in church. So when a guest did not show up, the announcer was expected to start singing. Fortunately eunice could sing, and so she did. Had atory short, eunice very popular, very successful radio career until 1925. In 1925 the company she worked for went bankrupt, as often happened in the early days of broadcasting when everything was a volunteer activity and anyone who has ever run a volunteer organization will tell you, some people help, some people just want to read the benefits. There were a lot of people reaping the benefits and not a lot of people paying the bills. The company went under and eunice did not latch on anywhere else. In time she was married, it turned up her marriage ended in divorce, that in those days women were supposed to marry, so she married. Bottom line, she stays involved in amateur hand radio and she stays involved in drafting. She continues to be an expert. She also stepped up a number of hand radio networks. She teaches the blind how to use hand radio. She does conferences all over the country or she becomes a role model for women in radio. And she becomes completely forgotten when she dies in 1982, no one knew who she was. Servantter, your humble is trying to find out, who were my mothers, who were the people that were on the radio in the early days . And i look in the books, lots of nothing. And i might, that cant be right because i was the first woman in the history of Northeastern University in boston to ever be on the radio, and that was in 1968. There had to be somebody before that. And that sent me on a quest, which like i said, became my lifes work. Along the way i met a woman, i dont have time to tell you her story, but i will at some future point, but i met a woman who told me her on as a broadcaster. Im like, who is your aunt, she said, eunice randall. Im like, never heard of her. Story ofells me the how she has been trying for years to get someone to tell eunice is story. So i started looking through old newspapers and im like, this is wrong on so many levels. She was the first woman in the east and her reward is to be completely forgotten . Wrong answer. I am going to take this on and i did. And i have spent the past four decades telling you this story all over telling eunice is story all over. It led to my book, division. Llstars in visible stars the second edition came out in 2014, and im proud to tell you that eunice is now in a whole bunch of history books. Eunice will never be forgotten again. Thank you and good night. But it should not have been that way. And that led me to wondering who else was forgotten. So in addition to eunice, that led me to look for other. Roundbreaking women time does not permit all of them here today, and i found the story of marie zimmerman, who was the first woman to own a Radio Station in 1922. Also completely written out of history. Then i found the story of birth the. Bertha brainard was born in 1890 , and she grew up in orange, new days, and back in those the early 1900s, the options for women were pretty limited. She decided that she wanted to be an actress. Back then teacher, nurse, secretary, actress and then he got married really young. And she decided, actress, that would be good, except world war i breaks out. She does not go to work in a factory. To drive a car, which was also unusual for women. I wrote a chapter in the book about that. Eunice and how to drive and sewed did bertha. Bertha decided she would help her country by driving. She drove an ambulance for the red cross during world war i. After the war she tries to become an actress and its not happening. Its harder than it looks, particularly if youre in orange, new jersey, which is not hollywood. Show so she decides that may be something she can do with her interest in theater because this new mass media has come on and its called radio. A lot of Radio Stations are coming on the air in 1921, 1922, and she is listening, and the programming shes hearing is really amateur. She says, im a good speaker, i know theater, i can put these two things together. I could do a show about theater. I could do reviews and interviews with stars. Actors and actresses come to new york, and she proposes to a , long gonenew jersey and hard to find, but a pioneer in the station, she proposes that she is going to a theater show where she interviews people from the stage, she interviews movie stars, etc. , etc. They put her on and people loved the idea. Her program is called broadcasting broadway, and it leads to her getting a following. Ultimately, the republic does not fall because there is women on the air. Fairness, then reason a lot of women were not allowed on media in the early days is not just sexism, it has to do with the fact that the urban early carbon microphone made to sell like this unless you had a deep voice to begin with. I have heard in some early transcriptions from eunice randall, she had a really resonant voice. She wouldve sounded good in any era. And the truth is that she was the to sound so relevant to audience that they loved her. Same with Bertha Brainard. The audience look forward to who she would interview. She had a really good year for what the public wanted. Gradually, even though she was andle, her station moser up she moves into management where she gets asked to audition the talent. This is going to put her in good standing. Because the Company Gets Bought by nbc. Which, in the early days it is thecalled nbc, just like First World War was not called the First World War, it was called the great war. As i tell my students, nobody knew there was going to be a second war, so was called the great war or the world war. By its not called initials yet because it wasnt famous. It was called the National Broadcasting company. Cbs, the columbia broadcasting system. In 1934, thenlong in 1943 you finally get what becomes abc, the american broadcasting company. As out of the remnants of second nbc network. Theres nbc red, nbc blue, way too much detail, let me move on. The truth is that Bertha Brainard suddenly finds himself picking talent not just for company nbc. Or the and shes really good at it. She ends up becoming a Program Manager for the network. No woman has ever done this before. She picks some really big hits. Some of you heard of a program called the goldbergs. Bertha brainard was the one who picked that show. Of aof you may have heard sing a famous singer. Bertha brainard heard her singing and said, put them on the network. The metropolitan opera. Not oprah, the opera. All joking aside for how she got the name, but never mind. , and that could be an urban legend, but the truth is that bertha knew that as much as she might not like opera, a lot of other people did. And because most people back then did not have a ton of books, they did not a ton of money, they werent going to the opera. So she said why not have a special program where we make the opera available. Some people will like it and some people wont. It gives people the chance to vicariously experience. Being wealthy. She did a whole bunch of other stuff. Years with nbc, she got a number of famous start on the network. Auditioning them and giving them their shows. She finally retired due to poor health and she got married. She was married with a job before then because either you married or you had a career. The result guy from an Advertising Agency who had a crush on persons forever any could not say anything. He was still married. And then he gradually started wetting bertha know he kind it was interested in her. She was focused on her job. ,he retires, they get married and a couple of months later she dies of a heart attack. Was not a story with a happy ending. Latert, a couple of years nbc writes their history for variety magazine, guess who they never mention . I was outraged when i read that. My research, ig was like, and this is the thinks she gets. 25 years and its a first Woman Network executive and they dont include her. They decided, you are totally correct. The story is written by the winners. I am not saying anything against men, i married to one, i got nothing against the men, but i do have something against history that was not inclusive. Writing out minorities because you happy to be white is not accurate. Writing out women because you are a guy is not accurate. I am always about telling the whole story. The fact that bertha was written out just irritated mean. And i made sure that she was prominently mentioned in my book. Stuff sure that there was on her wikipedia entry that was accurate. This becomes something that a lot of people start doing in the 1980s and 1990s. Why it took so long, who can say. So that is Bertha Brainard, one of the first women, if not, the first woman to be a network executive. There was one other, her name was judith waller. If i ever get to her i will talk about her. Another woman who is worth talking about had a little different experience. It may be because she was perceived by the culture as being beautiful. She was kind of like a model. And that was not what she asked for. One of the things women could be was this. Catherine was born in a little town in texas in 1898. She lived to see society change. He hether was wealthy, was a doctor. Im not saying they were rich, but he had the money to send her to good schools. To be anwanted actress, she got to go to really good performing arts schools. And she got to advance herself in that way. She went out to hollywood and she actually was in some silent movies. Lying if i said she was the star, she wasnt, but she was able to carve out a name for herself. She also did stage acting. She did a number of performances all over the country. She kind of settled in the midwest because she married a guy from the midwest. They got divorced years later but at the time she relocated to the midwest because thats where he was. The midwest, in st. Louis, they were desperately looking for radio actors and actresses. As i said in radios formative years, everything is live. Tape has not been invented. So if you want to do a show, you will show up at the studio and do it live. And there was a big need for live performers. The networks are professionalizing it. Air using the biggest names. , they smaller cities needed talent. Catherine was like, ive got talent. I could make a few bucks. So she applies to a station in , and she called k wk went on the station that is still around called km opecs in st. Louis. Kmox in st. Louis. She wanted to do more. She was very interested in current events. There was a myth that men will listen to women doing news. Like, becausewas why . She proposed the idea of doing what today we would call human interest. Human interest is stories where there are interviews of people and it tells an emotional story, may be sad, or you bond with the characters. And she proposes this. Because she is a woman it is decided that they will call the show, news from a womans eyes. Just go witho this. Get stories that nobody else gets. Cbs takes notice of her and hires her to come to new york and do news on the cbs radio network. This is a bigger deal than we might think. There are two women doing news back then in the entire united states. Dorothy thompson is one and we will talk about her some other time. Imagine you are a little grow growing up and you turn on the radio and there is catherine. What she was doing by todays standards would be considered gendered. But there is nothing to compare it to. She is doing news. So its considered soft news, that she actual covers actual news. She covers a Death Penalty case and a bunch of other interesting stories. She is a really good storyteller. She does Something Else that has not been done by anyone, male or female. She embraces a new industry, the airline industry. She embraces aviation and she starts using airplanes to get their talks. She becomes known as the flying reporter. She flies all over the united. Tates when world war ii breaks out she flies all over the world. She goes to europe and reports for newspapers and for radio. Becomes a syndicated columnist writing about news. Knows fashionable, she shes attractive and decides to make it work by being a fashion person and showing a woman can report the news, get out there, go to 22 countries, interview newsmakers and still look good while she is doing it. Catherine had a long and successful career. She wrote a book, she wrote a bunch of short stories. If you google her you will find all kinds of stuff. I know because i helped to write some of it. But in some cases it was others because people in texas are proud of her. She was a local girl who made good. Firstherine is one of the news women to be a woman, thats a redundant thing, but im doing this live. First female commentator is what i was trying to say, along with dorothy thompson. The onebrings me to other person i am trying to talk about. I want to talk about somebody africanamerican. In this universe, america still segregated. In a parallel universe, there are black women writing for black newspapers. There are black Baseball Players playing in black baseball leagues. The white audience, by and large, is unaware of all of this. Which is kind of unfortunate. Some wonderful female reporters were africanamerican. I am starting to tell their stories as well. One of them was a radio announcer named martha jean, the clean steinberg. Her real name was jones but her married name was steinberg. She kept the name. And martha jean never planned on going into radio. Radio with segregated back when she was growing up, nobody would have hired her, except for a performer. You have to come in the back but welcome to the world under segregation. She did not want to be a singer. She wanted to be a nurse, but there were not a lot of black schools that taught nursing. Unfortunately there were a lot of options. So she decided to become a model. And by some accounts she did seven years. She thought modeling was more of a possibility. The industryor her is starting to change by the 1940s when she is growing up. The first black formatted Radio Station goes on the air in 1948 in memphis. It is owned by white people but its the first station to have an allblack format, martha jean sees a possibility. She knows about fascism and a whole bunch of other stuff. She auditions and she gets the gig. She has a really nice voice. The audience loves her. She has a very sexy voice. Not intending to, but she kind of does. Ladiess like her, the like her, she becomes a very popular dj on w d i a in memphis. Her profile is elevated. Contest at the station because everybody in those days has to have a radio name. They decide she will be Martha Jean Mcqueen. Some people say she was tall for a woman but walked in a very regal way. Other people say it was a radio contest and they picked the name and Martha Jean Mcqueen just rhymed, and there you have it. Martha jean mcqueen gets divorced in 1962 and decides radio is a great occupation. She is going to continue in radio. She leaves memphis, get the job in detroit and eight black station. Black themed radio is sweeping the country. Legendary. She is more than just playing the hits. She has a very soothing and calming voice, and she starts doing some news stories. She starts taking on some of the events of the day, including the fight for racial justice. Forbecomes the spokesperson ending segregation and for promoting racial equality. It you are thinking, its the sixth its the 1960s, what do you mean she is trying to end segregation. Is still de facto segregation. Just because brown versus the board got past, does not mean the entire universe said, lets integrate. Its still going on today. And martha jean sees that detroit is about ready to explode. There is a lot of anger and resentment. Martha jean is a role model. She gets out there and creates calm among the audience. She gets the audience to do volunteer work. She gets the audience to become involved in projects to make detroit better. In becomes a real name keeping the city in a positive place, and someone that the black community can talk to. Now she starts experimenting with talk shows. Her whole thing is she reaches out to lou she calls the forgotten people. The people who did not feel like they had a voice, and she became their voice. Years later, she decides that andwants to be a minister, she becomes one. She starts a congregation. Now she is broadcasting religious programming or she is playing a lot of gospel music, but she is still a legendary broadcaster in a city that thinks of her as someone who brings peace and calm. Years later she is still doing that. She died in the year 2000. To this day there are people not for herr her, days playing the hits, but her days screaming, to a city that needed it. Those are just a few of the people i can talk about. I could go on for hours, and i ,robably shouldnt, so i wont but i hope i have been halfway interesting. Let me just say that what i want to do is to continue promoting the names of the people that have been forgotten. What i want to keep doing is promoting the allies who were there for us. And also the people who tried to stop us. Because the truth is, when youre determined calming your unstoppable. 1980 i started a radio consulting business doing Market Research and management consulting. With, athat i worked guy that i worked with said to me, you will never succeed at that, you will never be anything, you should just give up. It was in a more profane manner, but thats basically what he said. Three years later i won the award for radio consultant. I was the first woman to win it and i am not tooting my own horn. I am just saying, there are so many stories out there that deserve to be told. I was 55 years old. I live back for my phd and got it at 64. I am 73 now and still young and cute. I am still out there, seeking out the stories of the women who have been forgotten, the women who contributed to our lives. It possibleo made for us to be who we are today. We told their stories then and now. There are future stories that we can tell. And i hope we will tell them. Thank you. Watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. From 1965, a film produced by the center in atlanta, miracle in tonga. Travel to the island to immunize the population against smallpox using a new jet injector gun. The population of approximately 70,000 had been isolated from smallpox. But in the 1960s, it was feared that increased world travel, trade and tourism put the population at risk. On may 8, 1980, the 33rd World Health Assembly declared the world free of smallpox. This film is part of the u. S. National libraries collection. Far out in the south pacific, thousand miles north of new zealand is the reach of tonga. Rises apart from others. For centuries, its people have been relatively isolated, with only occasional visitors and a small trade for bananas. Imes are changing in tonga new markets have opened in asia
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