Thoughts on women's opportunities and women's rights in higher education
Winston explains what it was like to be a female graduate student at University of Chicago in the late 1920s. According to Winston, the number of women pursuing graduate work was quite high at that time and she describes her interaction in living experiences with women from different fields. Moreover, she does not recall that the female students were overly concerned with issues of women's rights at that time, in part because they were enjoying opportunities that allowed them mobility and stability. Later in the interview, Winston notes that she did not see herself as a feminist or as a "trailblazer" and her comments here are indicative of her belief that women's opportunities were not highly restricted during those years.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Ellen Black Winston, December 2, 1974. Interview G-0064. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- ANNETTE SMITH:
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Were there other women at the University of Chicago?
- ELLEN WINSTON:
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Yes. There were other women at the University of Chicago. In fact, we had
several women in the general group at the time I was there. Some were
ahead of me, some came at the same time and some came a little later,
before I left the University. I don't remember any difference between
the men and women students. Actually, that was the period when women
made up a higher proportion of those getting advanced degrees than has
been true for the last couple of decades. That was sort of the heyday
for women students, really, certainly in the fieldsin which I was
interested. I was very lucky, too, because at that time they had very
strong faculty in cultural anthropology and that was one of my related
interests. I also was living in Green Hall during the first period,
which was really four and a half quarters when I was there.
I went in the summer and stayed through the three winter quarters and
then stayed through the middle of the second summer, when I went back
home to get married. But I lived in Green Hall during that period, which
was the graduate women's dormitory.
- ANNETTE SMITH:
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This was in the late 1920's?
- ELLEN WINSTON:
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Yes. I went to Chicago in the summer of 1927 and this was from the summer
of '27 until the middle of the following summer. Sophronisba
Breckinridge was the head of Green Hall. And of course, Sophonisba
Breckinridge was great on women's rights and pushing back the horizons,
and that sort of thing. And the Abbott sisters . . .
- ANNETTE SMITH:
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Grace Abbott and . . .
- ELLEN WINSTON:
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. . . were there at the time. So, there was a nice climate, as it were.
Besides, this residence hall was a very good thing for someone coming up
from the South, who hadn't had too much experience. We had a marvelous
group of women, women in all fields, who were living in the hall. The
dinner table conversation was really quite challenging. The first
quarter, or maybe two quarters, I don't remember, I sat at Miss
Breckinridge's table. because she always presided over the dining room
hall for dinner at night. And of course that conversation was always
interesting. She more or less, I think, picked the people at her table.
Then after that I headed up a table myself and I could more or less
control some of the directions of the conversation. But you know, I
remember friends in education, in home economics, in biology, in
chemistry. We had a great mixture and it really was great fun.
- ANNETTE SMITH:
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These were sort of formal sessions?
- ELLEN WINSTON:
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Oh, the dinners were quite formal. You started with soup and whoever was
head of the table served, you know, and we were really quite precise in
our manners.
- ANNETTE SMITH:
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You were expected, when you were head of the table, to bring up
certain topics of conversation?
- ELLEN WINSTON:
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Yes. And then, you know, we celebrated birthdays and that sort of thing,
so it was really a very good experience. I did a little tape for the
University of Chicago a couple of years ago. The man who came down to do
it was somewhat surprised that I didn't do more running around in terms
of meals. But we had three meals a day at Green Hall, you know, so, you
automatically went back there normally instead of going out with the
other students, even at lunch time.
- ANNETTE SMITH:
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You ate with the other women students, then, most of the time?
- ELLEN WINSTON:
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Yes, who were normally not in my field. After all, there were not too
many of us and I was the only one who was living in Green Hall during
that period.
- ANNETTE SMITH:
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Did you talk much about women's roles, women's rights at these? Were
women as a conscious group much of a topic of conversation?
- ELLEN WINSTON:
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Not as I remember it. But you see, these women weren't having any real
problems.
(laughter)
You have to remember that. They were in school in a period when
there really weren't as many problems for women as have developed since
then. And these were all graduate students, they were women who had good
jobs or would be getting good jobs. They didn't have to worry about some
of the things that disturb women today. Although, even today, I think
that when women have the proper qualifications, they are not having so
much trouble. My concern is with the women who want the opportunities
but haven't been willing to put themselves through the mill of
experience and academic training. There is quite a difference.