Women's struggles, achievements chronicled in WVU library collection

May 3—Consider the patriarchy and the Republic.

Consider how long it took for us to get there—some later than others.

Consider that, for many, it still isn't as easy as it might look, in the telling.

In 1974, nearly 200 years after the Founding Fathers signed America's governing document decreeing that all men are created equal, other legislation was inked.

Legislation, which granted women in the U.S. the right to apply for a credit card under their own name—finally.

Just one more achievement in a watershed year for the cause, it was.

The deal of that decade is just one more part of the backdrop for the "West Virginia Feminist Activist " collection housed at the state's flagship university.

You'll find said collection in the West Virginia and Regional History Center, which is part of WVU's Downtown Library Complex on the university's main Morgantown campus.

The center is hosting an open house for the collection from 2-4 p.m. May 17.

Visit wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu and type "feminist activist collection " in the search field to learn more.

Curators and organizers eventually want to take the collection on the road, but particulars are still being set for that sojourn.

In the meantime, there's May 17. There's history.

There's Billie Jean King v. Bobby Riggs, and Roe v. Wade, occupying the same atmosphere.

While the fight for women's rights was often viewed in the marquee close-up of a national urban lens, just as much work was being done in West Virginia and across Appalachia.

For every Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem and Shirley Chisolm in New York City or Washington, D.C., there was somebody's grandma or ex-wife or divorced mom in Morgantown or McDowell County who tried to shove chauvinism aside—and not because they wanted to change the world, necessarily.

Women here revisited textbooks for GEDs and college degrees.

They donned helmets with lamps, so they could go underground and carve coal, for their Appalachian version of the American dream.

Were they "feminists " in the sociological sense ?

Or, where they simply Mountain State matriarchs getting it done because they were the only ones in the household who could, or would ?

How about both, Jessica Wilkerson replied, as she answered those questions—with a question.

Wilkerson is an associate professor of history of WVU. She teaches courses on women's rights and working-class issues in Appalachia and America, where the country roads and city thoroughfares always intersect.

She is also one of the founding organizers of the Feminist Activist collection and talked about its purpose and motivation when it opened eight years ago.

The fight for women's rights, the academic chronicled, wasn't just led by white-collar professionals from suburbia and uptown.

As she noted, women across Appalachia, white and Black, shouldered more than their share in the cause.

"There's an image of white women burning bras and marching in city streets, " she continued.

That's the popular culture perception, though, she said. What really happened was way-more nuanced and way-more complicated.

"The women's movement unfolded everywhere in the United States and fundamentally changed society, " she said.

"The very notion of what constituted the most pressing 'women's issues' was contested."

What's most pressing about the feminist-activist collection, as Wilkerson and others have said, is its organic, on-the-ground, scope.

Posters. Newspaper clippings and candid photographs.

Programs, books authored by the organizers and legal pads scrawled with ideas, notes and outlines, practically leaping from lined pages in their urgency and immediacy.

A first draft of this particular history, in the heart of this particular moment: credit cards accepted.

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