|
From the Archives: An occasional look at Barnard history through the achievements of alumnae and faculty, and historic events...
Agnes Ernst Meyer, '07, Pathbreaking Journalist, Advocate for Education, and Philanthropist She Was A Barnard Trustee for Two Decades, and Continued Her Writing and Intellectual Passion as the Wife of the Publisher of The Washington Post
Trustee Agnes E. Meyer, ca. 1940 (?). From The Barnard Alumnae Magazine, June 1949, p. 12. Credit: Barnard College Archives |
Long before the late Katharine Graham, chair of the Washington Post Company, rose to prominence in the publishing world, her mother, Agnes Ernst Meyer, had forged her own remarkable journalism career. Like many Barnard alumnae, Meyer's commitment to writing, education, and political activism began during her student days at Barnard College and continued throughout her life, even after her daughter became publisher of The Washington Post .
Today, Agnes Ernst Meyer's early history can be found in the Barnard Archives, providing a unique glimpse of the young woman who grew into her role as journalist, mother, philanthropist and wife of banking and publishing millionaire Eugene Meyer.
Born in 1877 in New York City to German Lutheran immigrants, Agnes entered Barnard in 1903 on a scholarship to study math. She soon grew bored with math, however, and turned her attention instead to philosophy and literature.
During her senior year, she met the young educator John Dewey, whom she credited with instilling in her the 'seeds of a social conscience" that would lead to her involvement in many causes, including education reform. Meyer graduated in 1907 and became the first woman reporter for The New York Morning Sun newspaper.
"That was in the days when they were famous for
 Trustee Agnes E. Meyer, ca. 1934. From The Barnard Alumnae Monthly, February 1934, p. 10. Credit: Barnard College Archives
|
their sense of humor and they took me on as a joke," she said in the February issue of the 1934 Barnard College Alumnae Magazine . "They sent me to all the places where a man would have been thrown out. But it was grand! When my husband bought The (Washington) Post , it gave me no sense of owning the Post , but when I landed that (first) job I thought I owned The Sun, and the earth and moon, too."
Three years after she started at The Sun , the Boston Herald ran the February 13, 1910, headline, "Banker Marries Writer." It reported that friends of Eugene Meyer and Agnes Elizabeth Ernst were "surprised to learn that the couple had been quietly married yesterday and had started on a trip around the world."
Soon after, Meyer was pregnant with the first of five children (Katharine was number three), but she scoffed at traditional female roles. In fact, Meyer returned to graduate school with a fervor that sometimes caused her to forget to go home to nurse her baby.
She spent the next four decades developing her intellectual and community concerns while continuing to travel and write on education, social problems and political issues for the Post. Meyer, like others in her social position, was able to freely pursue her interests as her children grew. But she noted in the 1934 interview that her children mattered more to her even as they matured into adulthood.
"It is fashionable to say that a mother is free to live her own life when her children are grown up, but that is when they really need her most," she said. "A good nurse can handle them when they are little, but when they face adult problems they need their mother's friendship."
Trustee Emeritus Agnes E. Meyer receiving degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from President Grayson Kirk, Columbia University Commencement, June 4, 1957. Credit: Barnard College Archives |
Her eldest daughter, Elizabeth, studied music at Barnard from 1932-1933, and that same year, Meyer began her term on the Board of Trustees for Barnard, which she served until 1955. Once, when a journalist asked her if she would send other children to Barnard, she answered, "My dear, I never send my children anywhere. I have brought them up as individuals, capable of their own decisions. Elizabeth went to Barnard because she found there the particular thing in music she needed."
In addition to her leadership contributions at Barnard, Meyer became an active crusader for educational reform nationwide. As a member of the President's Commission on Higher Education during World War II, she urged New Yorkers in a public speech to support federal aid for schools as a national defense measure. The day after her speech, the New York Herald Tribune published a story based on her remarks, reporting that five million young men were rejected for military service because they were educationally or physically handicapped, and citing Meyer's call for change.
"We are again undertaking a vast rearmament program--it is obvious that education at all levels from the lowest to the highest is essential for the achievement of national defense," she said.
As she advocated for the promotion of education in her writing, campaigning and speaking--all while raising Katharine, Elizabeth and their three other siblings--her political involvement rose, too. She spoke against Senator Joseph McCarthy and his "red-baiting allies" as a threat to academic freedom. She led recreational campaigns and social reform efforts in Westchester County for underprivileged families, wrote literary reviews, lectured on college campuses, challenged Americans to become "global citizens," enjoyed friendships with Thomas Mann and Adlai Stevenson, studied Chinese art, and hoped that American children would grow up to be "a composite of citizen and scientist."
Though Meyer's daughter, Katharine Graham, would win the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for her autobiography, Personal History , Agnes was the veteran writer in the family. She penned countless articles, interviews, speeches, letters, editorials and published two books, Out of These Roots: Journey Through Chaos (1944) an anthropological report for improving community life and moral education, and Education for a New Morality (1957) where she considered the horrific possibilities of an atomic world. A third book, "Chance and Destiny," remains unpublished in her extensive file at the Library of Congress.
When she died in 1970, newspapers across the country ran her obituary, and the fall 1970 issue of the Barnard Alumnae Magazine published "several interesting reminiscences of her life," according to archivist, Donald Glassman. (The issue is still available in the Archives as well as Barnard Library.) Of her five children, only one is living: Ruth Epstein, who was the Meyers' youngest child.
By establishing the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, Meyer's mission for improving education continues to affect the country today, especially each spring in Washington D.C. when a public school teacher is honored with the Agnes E. Meyer Outstanding Teacher of the Year award. Believing in the importance of teaching excellence, the couple also established a permanent fund in 1958, the Agnes and Eugene Meyer Fund, to support the work of Barnard professors. Like so many Barnard women, her impact is ongoing.
-Jo Kadlecek
Quotable Quotes from Agnes Meyer:
"It certainly must have been a relief for the women of the country to realize that one [Eleanor Roosevelt] could be a woman and a lady and yet be thoroughly political."
"Once the pursuit of truth begins to haunt the mind, it becomes an ideal never wholly attained."
"Tension is a prerequisite for creative living."
"The children are always the chief victims of social chaos."
"We are all motivated far more than we care to admit by characteristics inherited from our ancestors which individual experiences of childhood can modify, repress, or enhance, but cannot erase."
Sources for the Article:
Alpern, Sara. "Agnes Elizabeth Ernst Meyer." Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 8: 1966-1970. American Council of Learned Societies, 1988. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2004.
http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC
Boston Herald. "Banker Marries Writer." Feb. 13, 1910.
Bugbee, Emma. "Mrs. Eugene Meyer: An Interview." Projections section of Barnard College Alumnae Monthly, February, 1934, p. 10-11.
Meyer, Agnes. "Work and Marriage: An Address." Given at the Barnard College Vocational Conference at Barnard. Dec. 3, 1958.
New York Herald Tribune. "Mrs. Meyer Urges Federal Aid to Schools as Defense Measure." October 1948.
For information about the Barnard Archives, please contact Donald Glassman, dglassman@barnard.edu
|
