It's not until you sit down to write for publication that you realize what makes a subject important to you.
Here's what I just sent in about my series--Three Women Firsts-- for the Durham Arts Council show that opens tomorrow:
Why this series
Dipika Kohli created this series of “women firsts” to recognize the remarkable work Ethel Price, Juanita Kreps and Pauli Murray did to inspire other women to rise to their fullest potential.
Rooting through the history section of the Durham Public Library, Dipika found a book chronicling the history of Watts Hospital. Dipika first arrived in Durham in 1991 to attend the North Carolina School of Science & Mathematics, which was converted from Watts Hospital, so immediately she was intrigued. Ethel Price’s story defined the theme. Here was a woman bent on achieving her personal goals, despite societal mores of her time that kept most men at work and women at home. Like Price, Juanita Kreps and Pauli Murray also questioned the notion that it was a given for women to stay at home. They attained posts of such prominence in their careers that they set clear examples for other strong, capable women who might otherwise have rested their ambitions.
Dipika returned to Durham this spring after 10 years in Seattle and Southwest Ireland, where she developed her artistic voice. "I like to keep things simple and uncluttered," she says. "I draw with really basic materials. Marker. Paper. To tell the truth, I think people overconsume. Keeping my drawings simple is one way I can say: 'Hey, you don’t need to have a lot to be a lot.’ So I’m in pursuit of a modern aesthetic of beauty. I look for what emerges in the distillation. In the clutter reduction. And the attenuation of noise.” She has shown her large-scale Sharpie drawings also at the Seattle galleries Form/Space Atelier (2009) and Vermillion (2008).
Pauli Murray
Pauli Murray was a lawyer, educator, writer, and the first African American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1977. Murray lost her parents in her early years, and was raised by relatives in Durham. Entering the priesthood was a way for her to challenge sexual discrimination in the Episcopal Church. But this was only one of her many achievements. Murray received law degrees from Howard University and University of California, and worked as a deputy attorney general of California in the 1940s. She worked in private practice before going for a doctorate in law at Yale University. She finished in 1965, making history by becoming the first African American to be awarded a J.D.S. degree from the university. Almost a decade later, she earned another degree, this time a master’s degree of divinity, from Yale. After becoming ordained, she served in churches in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Pittsburgh until her retirement in 1984.
Juanita M. Kreps
Juanita M. Kreps was a prominent economist who grew up in a poor Kentucky coal-mining community. During what would be an illustrious career, she rose to the highest level of government, becoming the nation's first female commerce secretary. This was when Jimmy Carter was president. Dr. Kreps, a Duke University professor who specialized in labor demographics of older people and women, said that she did not consider herself a women's liberationist. But throughout her career in business, academia and government, all spheres traditionally dominated by men, she repeatedly broke gender barriers and campaigned to improve women's opportunities for meaningful employment outside the home. She died July 5, 2010, in Durham, N.C.
At a televised news conference with Carter after he named her commerce secretary in 1976, she was asked to respond to the President-elect's claim that it had been difficult to find qualified women to fill Cabinet posts.
"I think it would be hard to defend the proposition that there are not a great many qualified women," she said. "We have to do a better job of looking."
Carter smiled, then said, "I think she said she disagrees with me."
Ethel (Clay) Price
Ethel Clay was born on October 2, 1874, in New York City, the daughter of Henry de Bois-fueillet Clay and Harriett Field Clay. After graduation from Notre Dame Academy in Baltimore, Maryland, she entered the Watts Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1895, alongside four other young women. She alone completed the work of her class to become the first Watts graduate in 1897.
As a charter member of the District Nurse and Relief Society, she also served as an advocate for proper patient care for low-income individuals suffering from tuberculosis. From this society stemmed the Greensboro Nursing Council, the Guilford County Sanitarium, and much of the city’s extensive health program. Price died on October 26, 1943.
