Women Who Shaped Texas Tech: 2015 Edition!

Last March we told you about our Women’s History Month exhibit, “The Women Who Shaped Texas Tech,” celebrating several women whose influence on Texas Tech University is still felt today. The exhibit has received several new additions for 2015 who we’d like to share with you!

The first of this year’s celebrated women is Lucille Graves (above.) 40 years ago she sat down with one of our oral historians for an oral history interview to share her story as the first African American student at Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University.) Having already received her bachelor’s degree in 1961, Graves tried to attend Texas Tech to receive her masters. Yet she was repeatedly refused entrance on the grounds that its charter stipulated that the university was established for white students only. With the help of the NAACP, she confronted the university and was at last admitted after a phone call from Texas Tech President R. C. Goodwin himself. Soon Tech saw a peaceful, non-violent integration of the traditionally white college. Graves was also the founder of Mary and Mac, the first black private school in Lubbock, Texas, in 1955. She chose the name of her school after the children’s nursery rhyme on the reasoning that “This poem depicts the act of boys and girls in their desire to become useful in this society.”

Faye Bumpass is also featured in the exhibit. She received her bachelor’s (1932) and master’s (1934) from Texas Technological College, then went on to teach Latin and Spanish in Texas high schools until 1941, serve as a visiting instructor in Spanish during the summer at Texas Tech, travel to Latin America to teach Latin and English as a second language (primarily in Lima Peru,) and acquire a Doctor of Letters (1948) from San Marcos University. Returning to Texas Tech in 1957, she became an assistant professor in both English and Foreign Languages, wrote several textbooks on bilingual education, and testified before Congress in May 1967 about bilingual education. In 1969, she became one of two women to acquire the Horn Professorship, TTU’s highest faculty rank and one previously held only by male professors.

Another Shaper of Texas Tech, Mary Jeanne van Appledorn, studied both piano and theory at the University of Rochester’s prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where each year she was awarded the George Eastman Honorary Scholarship, and in 1948 received her Bachelor of Music with Distinction in piano. She subsequently received her Master of Music Degree (Theory) from Eastman in 1950 and accepted a position at Texas Technological College that fall. She earned a Ph.D. (music) from Eastman in 1966 while teaching at Tech courses ranging from undergraduate music theory to graduate composition courses. Her list of chairmanships, composition commissions, and other honors are too many to list here. Suffice to say that in 1989 she received TTU’s prestigious Horn Professorship. Dr. van Appledorn held the distinction of being one of the longest serving faculty members at Tech (58 years!), and her papers are held in our University Archives.Mina Marie Wolf attended the newly established Texas Technological College where she received her B.A. in chemistry in 1932. While in graduate school at the University of Texas, she was discouraged from pursuing a career as a chemist by a faculty member due to the difficulty of finding jobs in that field for a female. So she returned to Texas Tech in 1935 to get her M.S. in Foods and Nutrition, and, after a brief stint away from Lubbock, she returned to TTU in 1940 to serve as associate professor in the foods and nutrition department of Home Economics, picking up her Ph.D. in Nutrition and chemistry from Columbia University (1942) along the way. Mina married Arch Lamb in 1941, and together the couple left a lasting impression on Texas Tech through their support for the college and its students. Dr. Lamb was a member of numerous professional and local campus organizations, taught Red Cross nutrition and canteen courses during World War II, and also served on the Lubbock Food Ration Board. TTU honored her as a Piper Professor for her teaching and work with undergraduate students, and just before her retirement she donated $10,000 towards a new laboratory for assessment of nutritional status in humans. Yet in an interview in 1990, she stated that her proudest accomplishment was establishing the federally funded Women, Infants and Children (WIC) supplemental food program at the Lubbock Children’s Health Clinic where she had volunteered for 18 years.

Ophelia Powell-Malone is our final Woman Who Shaped Texas Tech. She holds a unique place in Texas Tech history as the first African American to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. After transferring from Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, to attend Texas Tech shortly after the college integrated, she became a home economics major. Receiving her degree in 1964, Malone went on to become a teacher in New Mexico, then a dietitian at Langston University and at nursing homes in Lubbock and Houston. Mentor Tech chose Powell-Malone as one of two trailblazing individuals to honor in the naming of their program, which was established in 2002.

If you’re curious about the archival collections of these women, or of those honored last year, why don’t you give our helpful Reference Staff a call? They’d be happy to help you out!

by B. Lynn Whitfield, University Archivist

Women of Texas Music

Mary Jane Johnson (photo courtesy of Texas Monthly™)

March is Women’s History Month, and in recognition of that the Crossroads Music Archive at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library has curated an exhibit entitled The Women of Texas Music.

The most prominent musician among those featured is Mary Jane Johnson. Counted among the great dramatic sopranos and considered one of opera’s premiere interpreters, Johnson has toured North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Among her many heralded interpretations, that of Minnie in La Fanciulla del West stands out. It has been heard on stages around the world including the Teatro Communale in Bologna, the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, on tour in Japan with La Scala, and with the Santa Fe Opera Festival. Her career went to the next level when she appeared with Luciano Pavarotti in a televised performance as Musetta in Puccini’s La Boheme with the Opera Company of Philadelphia.

Susan Grisanti, known as the “First Lady of Classical Guitar in the Southwest,” was a recognizable figure in Lubbock, Texas music for over four decades. A gifted guitar instructor, she taught over 5,000 students during her career and served as a resident house musician at local Lubbock institutions. The Crossroads Music Archive contains the materials donated after her death in 2013. In fact, the “Susan Grisanti Memorial Fund” was established to help preserve her music legacy at the Crossroads Music Archive.

Beginning in the 1950s, the Hancock Family helped usher in the era of modern Lubbock Music. The family has participated in notable bands from The Roadside Playboys to the Texana Dames. The Dames was an all-female trio, with mother Charlene Hancock and siblings Traci and Conni Hancock. Their career spanned some 25 years. The Dames music varied from cumbia to country, and was a favorite for dancers.

The Heart Beats were an all-female garage rock band based in Lubbock and founded around 1966. They were led by drummer and lead vocalist Linda Sanders, along with younger sister Debbie Sanders (guitar), Debbie McMellan (bass guitar), and Jeannie Foster (guitar and keyboards.) They attracted nationwide attention in the summer of 1968 when they won the battle of the bands on the popular ABC-TV variety show Happening 68, hosted by Mark Lindsay and Paul Revere of Paul Revere & the Raiders.

The materials documenting the lives and careers of musicians both female and male can be found at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library. In fact, our always-helpful Reference Staff would be happy to arrange for you to view them yourselves.

– by Curtis Peoples & Robert Weaver

The Women Who Shaped Texas Tech University

March is Women’s History Month, and so we’re sharing with you selections from the Texas Tech University Archive’s exhibit, The Women Who Shaped Texas Tech. Our University Archives, whose staff works beside us here at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, serves as the institutional memory for Texas Tech University (TTU). Their collections range from administrative and faculty records, to publications, photographs, and video and audio materials.  The legal, fiscal, administrative, intellectual, and cultural and social aspects of student life are all documented. No small part of these materials concern women’s history at Texas Tech, and that’s where this exhibit, which will be displayed for the forseeable future in the SWC’s Formby Room, comes in.

Student life lies at the heart of women’s history at TTU, although not all of it revolved solely around academics. Just look at the photograph above from 1957. It depicts three freshmen students posing with their “Fish Caps.”  Part of the freshmen tradition was the purchasing and wearing of the “Fish” or “Slime” cap. The caps, or beanies, bore the student’s last name preceded by the word “Slime” along with their year of expected graduation, their room number, and their residence hall. Sometimes a fraternity or sorority name was added.

Administrators were also key figures in the history of women at Tech. Elizabeth Howard West, the First Head Librarian of the University from 1925 to 1942, was a great champion of establishing and maintaining strong libraries and archives in the state of Texas. Her road to Tech was an impressive one. She began her library career as a cataloger at the Texas State Library in 1906. West also worked as an assistant at the Library of Congress, and went on to serve as the Texas State Library archivist (1911-1915), the director of the San Antonio Library (1915-1918), and finally was elected State Librarian in 1918, making her the first woman department head in the Texas state government. Once at Tech, she diligently pursued the construction of a separate library building in order to properly provide for researchers’ needs. As a result, the first free standing library building on the Texas Tech campus, named after Governor James V. Allread, was completed in 1938. West didn’t stop her advocacy at libraries. She also founded the Lubbock chapter of the American Association of University Women.

Those familiar with Tech’s campus may have run across Doak Hall. Built in 1934 under its original name, Women’s Dormitory No. 1, it was later renamed to honor Mary Woodward Doak. She was the first Dean of Women at Tech, and among her many contributions outside of student residential life was a presentation to colleagues after a trip to the British Museum in 1928 that spawned the idea of establishing a museum at Texas Tech, an institution that still thrives to this day.

This is a picture of Margaret Watson Weeks, the first Dean of the School of Home Economics. She helped organize TTU’s Home Economics Club in 1925, established the Home Economics Loan Fund, and helped form the Double Key Honor Society in 1930 as well as the first Texas chapter of the Phi Upsilon Omicron National Honor Society in 1938. Weeks successfully orchestrated the construction of the Home Economics Building addition in 1952, and was one of the organizers of the Women’s Recognition Service ceremony which ran from 1932-1947. Like Doak, one of the dormitories was named in her honor in 1957.

Let’s end with something a bit wackier: Tech Tips, a publication of the Association of Women Students designed to acquaint female students with TTU activities and traditions. Here are a few of the pearls of wisdom contained its “Watch your Ps and Qs” section:

• Never break a date with one man for another. Once you’ve picked him, you’re stuck with him.
• If you get a lemon of a date, be a peach about it.
• When they ask you to go coking, don’t order a double fudge sundae with nuts.

Advice not exactly modeled after the philosophies of second-wave feminism, but still amusing. All issues of Tech Tips from 1942-1975 have been digitized and placed online, along with a host of other University Archives materials. The University Archives’ tumblr  shares entertaining examples from their collections as well. And, as always, those who’d like to see more can always contact our helpful Reference Staff to arrange a visit.

Anson, Texas’ Cowboys’ Christmas Ball

This drawing is used annually in Texas Cowboys’ Christmas Ball promotions. It depicts the instrumentation described by Larry Chittenden in his poem, as well as depicting dancers performing a quadrille.

The Texas Cowboys’ Christmas Ball is a nearly unbroken Texas musical tradition held every December in Anson, Texas (in Jones County, roughly 25 miles northwest of Abilene). The event began with a grand ball thrown at Anson’s Star Hotel in 1885 in honor of the cattlemen of the region. William Lawrence “Larry” Chittenden attended that night and was so impressed by the festivities that he immortalized them in poetry. “The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball” was first published in the Anson Texas Western in 1890 and subsequently in his Ranch Verses of 1893. He describes his Ranch Verses as being “born in the idle hours on a Texas ranch.” Chittenden’s ranch on which he lived for almost two decades was located seven miles outside of Anson. For more information, check out the Texas State Historical Association’s biography of Chittenden.

Chittenden’s “The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball” was dedicated “To the Ranchmen of Texas,” and paints a vivid picture of a holiday celebration. He describes the hotel as being “togged out gorgeous” and decorated with candles, mistletoe, and “shawls” (which many have interpreted as blankets placed at the windows to insulate the hotel better). Lead by “Windy Billy,” who sang and called the dances, the crowded Star Hotel saw a very “lively gaited sworray” that evening in 1885. Chittenden even describes the original instrumentation: bass viol, fiddle, guitar, and tambourine.

Larry Chittenden

Though the hotel would be lost to a fire in 1890, Chittenden’s poem immortalized the spirit of a cowboy Christmas celebration for generations to come. Many folklorists reprinted his words through the years (including John Lomax first in his Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads in 1910. Lomax eventually attended the Ball in 1939). Even to this day we see the Chittenden’s poem in pop culture. Anson Texas would see some Christmas celebrations similar to the ball held irregularly in the early 20^th century, but it wasn’t until 1934 that the Texas Cowboys’ Christmas Ball was reborn.

In 1934, an Anson schoolteacher and local folklorist named Leonora Barrett helped stage the first re-enactment of the 1885 ball in the school’s gymnasium. Once again, people from Anson and surrounding communities joined in to celebrate the Christmas season. Sadly, Chittenden passed away in September of 1934 and would never get to see the ball reborn. Barrett insisted that the reincarnation of the ball retained the original dances, music, and customs of the first ball. This tradition, which includes men removing their hats on the dance floor and women only allowed to wear skirts, is kept to the present day.

Photo from the Frank Reeves Collection (http://ow.ly/rOf5t). We believe this to be a rare image of Cowboy Christmas Ball founder, Leonora Barrett at one of the 1930s balls.

Barrett, along with Hybernia Grace (another local historian), meticulously researched the conditions surrounding the original ball and worked diligently to preserve as much local history as possible. For example, another tradition kept to this date is one suggested by Mrs. Ophelia Keen nee Rhodes, whose father owned the Star Hotel in the 1880s. She wrote a letter to Barrett that was then published in the Anson newspaper Western Enterprise of December 19, 1935. Keen remembers that one of the early Christmas balls celebrated a wedding, and so at the ball each year, you will see a newly-wed couple lead the grand march at the beginning of the ball. The grand march is one of eight dances that are traditionally performed at the Ball; others include the Paul Jones, the Virginia Reel, a polka, Schottische, two step, waltz, and ‘put your little foot’.

Several couples dancing at the Ball in the late 1940s or early 50s. The Texas Cowboys’ Christmas Ball Association members emphasize that the event is a recreation of an 1885 celebration, and therefore have rules about dress. Men must not wear hats on the dance floor, nor should they wear spurs. If women are on the dance floor, they must be in skirts but no split skirts are allowed. Because of the spirit of the event, many participants attend in period attire. Notice in this picture the attempt for historically accurate western clothing. But also notice the many onlookers in the background; pioneer hall has plenty of seating for those who just want to watch the festivities and not dance or dress up.

Soon after its rebirth, the Ball became part of the Texas Centennial festivities in 1936, and in 1938 Anson residents danced on the lawn of the White House during the National Folk Festival. The Ball was expanded from one night to three, with a parade of historic vehicles even being featured in the late 1930s. Because of the Ball’s continued success, Barrett helped to copyright the reenactment, as well as creating a board of directors, who are now known as the Texas Cowboys’ Christmas Ball Association. Pioneer Hall was built in 1940 as a permanent home of the three day festivities. The Hall was designated a historic site (and the Ball a historic event) by the Texas Historical Commission in 2010, after 75 years of re-enactments.

From the 1940s up until the 1990s, few records exist of the ball. We know it was a successful event based on newspaper articles, as well as the few surviving photographs, film reels, and one amazing ledger. The Southwest Collection is proud to house the original ledger started by Leonora Barrett in 1934 on the occasion of the first re-enactment. Each year she details noted guests, hosts, broadcasts made by radio stations, the leaders of the grand march, and other pertinent details. The ledger was kept updated until 1994 and is one document that allows scholars to see the completely unbroken tradition.

The ledger that Leonora Barrett started with the first re-enactment of the Cowboys’ Christmas Ball in 1934 and was kept until 1994. This is the first page of the ledger, which details some of the earliest Cowboy Christmas Ball activities and participants. The original ledger is kept in the Southwest Collection, and the Texas Cowboys’ Christmas Ball Association displays a facsimile copy at the ball each year. (Click on the image for a larger version!)

The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball was reborn in a sense in the early 1990s, when Michael Martin Murphey began performing in Anson as the annual headliner. In 2010, Murphey began donating his materials to the Southwest Collection’s Crossroads Music Archive. It was also at this time that he put the archive in touch with the organizers of Anson’s Texas Cowboys’ Christmas Ball. In 2014, Texas Tech professor emeritus Paul Carlson’s book on the Ball will be published through Texas Tech University Press.

Cowboy singer and songwriter Michael Martin Murphey has been the annual headliner at Anson’s Cowboys’ Christmas Ball since 1993. Here he performs one of tunes with his daughter, Sarah.

Though the music has been electrified and grown beyond four instruments, and historical dress is not required, attending the ball is still a festive step back into an older tradition. Each year, the ball is held on the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday prior to Christmas. If you would like to attend this year’s Cowboys’ Christmas Ball, it is this weekend! December 19th, 20th, and 21st. Michael Martin Murphey will be performing on the final evening.  For information on tickets, times, and directions, visit the Texas Cowboys’ Christmas Ball website.

by Elissa Stroman, Southwest Collection Audio/Visual Department