PINK THREADS by Elisabeth Griffith

At 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, June 12, 1929, Republican First Lady Lou Henry Hoover hosted a small tea in the Green Room of the White House. It was the last in a series of parties welcoming the wives of newly elected members of Congress to Washington and introducing them to Washington society. Of the eight women serving in Congress in June 1929, five Republican and three Democratic representatives, seven were widows. The husband of Mary Norton (D-NJ) was not included.

As regular readers know, LOOSE ENDS includes your responses to past PINKS. This may be my favorite element of this enterprise, to connect and learn from you. My MOTHERS DAY (5.10) essay, about its history and the mifepristone case, continues to provoke responses. A reader in New jersey pointed out that the president has been unusually silent on mifepristone, angering his anti-abortion supporters, while HHS has cut $800 million from maternal and infant health programs.

Note: Another speech worth recalling and repeating. I once taught a public speaking class for high school freshman. After we studied Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, we took a field trip to the Lincoln Memorial to recite it on the spot. Inscribed inside the memorial are Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural (“with malice toward none”).

Note: As faithful PINK readers know, there are maybe six essays I revise and reprise annually, because I believe those topic are worth revisiting. Before Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, in 1968, Memorial Day was called Decoration Day and celebrated on May 30, rather than the third Monday in May.

From Sacagawea to Ma Ingalls, Annie Oakley, Grizzly Mamas and Trad Wives Note: My initial idea about PINK THREADS was to link these snippets of women’s history to the dates they occurred. Mostly I still do. But emphasizing dates can be off-putting to people whose teachers emphasized when over who. It’s the people that appeal to us, their ideas and actions, their heroism, humanity and flaws.

Note: I’ve written about the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision before, because it is a pillar of civil rights law. Patterns of segregation continue to divide our democracy. On a Monday in May, 1954, the Supreme Court announced its seismicdecision, Brown v. Board of Education. It declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional because it violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The unanimous decision overturned Plessy v.

Your responses to MOTHER’S DAY & MIFEPRISTONE (5.10) were more furious than fond. Someone suggested a new name for the second Sunday in May: “Out of respect for all who mother. I propose Happy Mothering be our expression. All can mother and all can father.” A few forwarded Instagram posts. Our attention was focused on the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Louisiana v.

On the second Sunday in May, American moms, grandmothers, godmothers and sometimes stepmothers are celebrated with cards, bouquets and breakfast in bed. According to the National Retail Association, the holiday has become one of the most profitable in America, with consumers expected to spend $33.5 billion. Celebrating maternal fertility has been a spring ritual across centuries, cultures and continents. Women have been prized for their capacity to bear children and secure survival of the species.

The struggle to advance civil rights for Black Americans was long, hard-fought and often deadly. Small steps, even Supreme Court victories, were followed by setbacks and frequently violent resistance to federal orders to integrate schools and transportation. In the 1960s, during the centennial of the Civil War, the Confederate South clung to states rights and myths of the Lost Cause and white supremacy. In Georgia, work resumed on a bas-relief of Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E.

Dear Readers: Just for fun, a reprint of an earlier PINK about an American girl icon. In late 1929, Edward Stratemeyer hired Mildred Augustine Wirt, a twenty-five-year-old journalist, to write the first Nancy Drew book. He gave her the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, a three-page plot summary, the direction to create “an up-to-date American girl” and the heroine’s name.