Laura Bragg, 1881-1978

Laura Bragg WWP

Bragg at age 85. Photo credit - College of Charleston Special Collections @ Wikipedia

A museum director and educator, the first woman in the US to run a publicly funded art museum.



Laura Mary Bragg was born in Northbridge, Massachusetts. At the age of 6, she contracted scarlet fever that caused her an incurable hearing loss, for which she compensated by reading lips and having an exceptional memory. She was home-schooled by private tutors until high school and afterward attended Simmons College, earning a degree in library science. At 25, she started to work as a librarian, first in Maine and then at one of the libraries in New York City.

In 1909, at the age of 28, Bragg began her career at the Charleston Museum in South Carolina. She started as a librarian and soon got promoted to curate books and public instruction. In this position, she developed the first educational program of the museum, which was the first in a southern museum to welcome all visitors, regardless of their race. Bragg saw herself as a social missionary, believing that a museum is not only a visitors’ attraction but a teaching tool that should be available to everyone, including those who are unable to visit it. To execute her ideas, she developed traveling school exhibits that became known as “Bragg Boxes” – wooden boxes opened into a display set of local natural history or cultural history. The boxes were distributed to all the schools in the region, white and black, urban and rural. The Bragg Boxes had an immediate success and were incorporated in other museums as well.

In 1921, 40 years old Bragg was named the director of the Charleston Museum – the first woman in the US to run a publicly funded art museum. Under her leadership, the museum had weekly opening hours for black visitors. She expanded the museum’s field by creating connections with the American Alliance of Museums, where she was later appointed as a board member. In 1931, Bragg added public reading rooms to the museum and established the first free library in Charleston, in which she served as a trustee and librarian.

Bragg received national acclaim for her work at the Charleston Museum, and in 1930 she was asked to become the director of the Berkshire Museum. At the time, the museum had exhibited a small family collection, and Bragg developed it into an educational institute. She expanded the exhibitions, turned its yard into a sculpture gallery, and hosted performing artists. Within a year, the museum had doubled the number of visitors. After nine years, she retired from directing the museum and returned to Charleston to work as an educator at the museum’s library.

Bragg’s interest in art and education expanded outside her work in the museums. In 1920, she was a part of the Charleston Renaissance, alongside artists such as Alice Ravenel Huger, DuBose Heyward, and Josephine Pinckney, and co-founded the Poetry Society of South Carolina, the Southern Museum Conference, and the Southern States Art League. Bragg died at the age of 97 in Charleston.

Learn more about Bragg and other pioneer women of Charleston in one of these guided tours:

7 Gibbes St Laura Bragg

7 Gibbes St. was the home of Laura Bragg and Isabel Heyward. They ran a poetry critique group there with Josephine Pinckney, Helen von Kolnitz Hyer, Elizabeth Miles, and Elizabeth Myers in the years leading up to the formation of the Poetry Society of South Carolina.

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“The principle of museum work is progressive installation. A finished museum is a dead museum.”

“The principle of museum work is progressive installation. A finished museum is a dead museum.”

Fun Facts

  • She had several romantic relationships with women and two long partnerships, one with her assistant.
  • She had an interest in Biology, and in 1914, while working at the Charleston Museum, she published an article titled "Preliminary List of the Ferns of the Coast Region of South Carolina North of Charleston."
  • She is included in the first edition of Women in America, published in 1923.
  • Many of her papers are preserved by the South Carolina Historical Society.
  • She worked on collecting and documenting prehistoric and historic pottery and researched unknown enslaved potters.

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7 Gibbes St Laura Bragg

7 Gibbes St. was the home of Laura Bragg and Isabel Heyward. They ran a poetry critique group there with Josephine Pinckney, Helen von Kolnitz Hyer, Elizabeth Miles, and Elizabeth Myers in the years leading up to the formation of the Poetry Society of South Carolina.
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Activism & Feminism

Adelina Otero-Warren, 1881-1965

A suffrage leader, educator, and politician. The first Latina to run for US Congress and one of the first’s women to serve as a government official in New Mexico.

Adelina “Nina” Otero Warren was born near Los Lunas, New Mexico. Her family was among the early settlers in New Mexico, and her parents were part of the Hispanic elite. When she was 2 years old, her father was killed by an Anglo squatter. A few years later, her mother married an English businessman, and she grew up in a multicultural environment. She was influenced by her mother, who was an advocate for social and educational developments and served as the director of Santa Fe’s Board of Education. At 16, the family relocated to Santa Fe, where she became a socialite. At the age of 26, she married Lieutenant Rawson D. Warren, a cavalry officer who was nine years older than her. Though the marriage did not last long, she kept her x-husband’s last name and called herself a widow, so she would not be stigmatized as a divorced woman.   At 31, Nina moved to NYC to keep house for her brother. There, she became active in Anne Morgan’s settlement house, working alongside the famous suffragist Alice Paul and organizing crafts programs for working-class women. Two years later, her mother died, and Nina returned to Santa Fe to take care of her half-siblings. Upon her arrival, she started working for the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. Soon she became the first Mexican-American state leader of the Congressional Union in New Mexico, raising support from the Spanish-speaking community as well as from the English-speaking community. Using her family connections, she was a successful lobbyist for voting in favor of the Nineteenth Amendment, and she had a key role in its ratification in 1920. In 1922, at the age of 41, Nina ran as the Republican Party nominee for New Mexico to the US House of Representatives – The first Latina to run for the US Congress. During her campaign, she spoke Spanish and advocated for the improvement of education, health care, and welfare services, as well as for the preservation of Hispano heritage and culture. Ultimately, she lost the election by less than 9%, probably because it was discovered that she was a divorcee, not a widow. In 1917 Nina was appointed as the Santa Fe Superintendent of Instruction – one of the first women to serve as government officials in New Mexico. In her 12 years in office, she worked tirelessly to improve the education of Hispano. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Adrienne-Rich-WWP
Literature & Poetry

Adrienne Rich, 1929-2012

An award-winning American poet, essayist, and feminist thought influencer, who was called “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century.”

During her long and productive career, Rich published more than 30 books of poetry and essays. In her writing, she explored issues of gender, racism, consumerism, class privilege, and politics. She was considered a radical figure in Second Wave Feminism, yet she was accepted by the institutions, won many awards, and is now considered a classic. The first one was for the collection of poetry, which she published at 22. The same year she graduated from Radcliffe College. Adrienne Cecile Rich was born in Baltimore, MD, and over the years she taught English, poetry, and creative writing at several institutions, including Swarthmore College, Columbia University, City College of New York, and Scripps College in Claremont. Among her most influential works, were two texts that dissected heterosexuality and motherhood as socially constructed institutions. In both cases, she provided a critical perspective toward every woman’s freedom to choose. In the case of Compulsory Heterosexuality, for example, she presented the notion of Lesbian Continuum as an alternative way of thinking about the variety of relationships between women. Both in her poetry and her non-fiction writing, the honestly spoke of taboos, like that of motherhood. In her book “Of Woman Born”, she points out to the difference between motherhood as an experience and an imposed political institution. Her mother was a concert pianist who put her career aside to raise her family, while her father developed his career as an academic. Rich embodied the feeling that she was the benefactor of her mother’s sacrifice. When awarded the 1973 National Book Award, she declared that she accepted it on behalf of all women and shared it with her fellow nominees, Alice Walker and Audre Lorde. In 1997 she refused the National Medal of Arts, she did so to express her critique of the Clinton administration. Her famous quote from the refusal letter stated: “art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage”. By her thirties, she was married and had three children. After her husband’s suicide, she had a relationship with novelist and poet Michelle Cliff. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Agnes Macphail WWP
Politics & Leaders

Agnes Macphail, 1890-1954

A Canadian politician. The first woman elected to the House of Commons of Canada.

Agnes Campbell MacPhail was born in Proton Township, Ontario, Canada, to a family of farmers. At 14, she wanted to attend high school, but her parents wanted her help on the farm. After receiving permission to further her education, MacPhail went to study at the Owen Sound Collegiate School for a year before transferring to Stratford Normal School, graduating with a teaching certificate. While teaching at several schools in Ontario and Alberta, she became active in the Ontario agricultural co-operative movement, joining the political and social organization United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) and the United Farm Women of Ontario. She also began to publish a column in the Farmer’s Sun newspaper. Following the amendments to the Elections Act that passed two years earlier, Canadian women could vote in national elections for the first time in 1921. Macphail decided to represent the farmers in her region and ran as a member of the Progressive Party of Canada, representing the district of South-East Grey. When elected, she became the first woman Member of Parliament (MP) in Canada and served for 19 years. In 1924, Macphail felt that the Progressive Party did not protect and promote the interests of farmers and industrial workers, and she co-founded the Ginger Group. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the group allied with various agrarian, labor, and socialist groups to found the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), with Macphail serving as its first president. The organization lobbied for the nationalization of key industries and called for the formation of a welfare state to provide universal health insurance, pensions, and unemployment insurance. Throughout her tenure as MP, Macphail promoted various social issues, advocating farmers’ rights and also women, immigrants, miners, prisoners, and other marginalized groups. In 1936, she contributed to the formation of the investigative Archambault Commission, which concluded with overall prison reform; in 1939, she founded the Elizabeth Fry Society of Canada, which assisted women and gender diverse people in the justice system. In 1940, at the age of 50, she lost her seat in the House of Commons, and for the next three years, she wrote for various newspapers, lectured throughout Canada and the US, and worked for the CCF. In 1943, she returned to politics and won the provincial election to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. Alongside Rae Luckock, Macphail became one of the first two women members of the Ontario Legislature and was the first woman sworn in as an Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP). She lost her seat in the 1945 elections but won it back three years later. In 1951, her final year in this role, she worked for the passage of the Female Employees Fair Remuneration Act, the first equal pay legislation in Ontario. Shortly after, she lost her seat. She continued to promote issues she believed in, mainly women’s status and social rights. In 1954, she was offered an appointment to the Senate by Prime Minister Louis St-Laurent, but she died before receiving the position. She was 63 years old. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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Literature & Poetry

Alice Dunbar Nelson, 1875-1935

A poet, journalist, playwright, and political activist. Associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Alice Ruth Moore was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of a Creole seaman and a former enslaved black seamstress. After graduating high school at 14, she attended a teacher-training program at Straight University, and at 17, she began teaching at an Elementary school in New Orleans. She became involved with activism at the Phyllis Wheatley Club and wrote for the Woman’s Era Club newspaper – the first newspaper created for and by African American women. In 1895, she published her first collection of poems, essays, and short stories titled “Violets and Other Tales.” That same year she moved to NYC, where she helped establish the White Rose Mission – a settlement house for colored girls. Furthering her education, she took courses at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Her writings for the Woman’s Era newspaper caught the attention of the poet and journalist Paul Laurence Dunbar, and in 1898, after two years of correspondence, she moved to live with him in Washington, DC, and they got married. Their relationship fertile their writing but was also disruptive and abusive. He raped her before they got married, and after three years of violent behavior, she left him and moved to Wilmington, Delaware. There, Dunbar taught at various institutes, including Howard High School, the Hampton Institute, and the State College for Colored Students. She never stopped studying, and at 32, she received her M.S degree from Cornell University. In 1913, Dunbar worked as the co-editor and writer for the A.M.E. Review – the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s newspaper. She met poet and civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson, and they got married in 1916. Although she was always involved in political activism, supporting the women’s rights movement and working toward the empowerment of women of color, it was only in 1918 that Dunbar-Nelson was appointed to an official role in the movement as a representative of the Woman’s Committee of the Council of Defense. In 1920, she became the co-editor of the progressive black newspaper, the “Wilmington Advocate.” In that same year, she published a literary anthology, aiming at black readers, titled “The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer.” At 45, Dunbar-Nelson was a successful and popular writer, consistently publishing articles, columns, and essays in newspapers as well as in academic journals. Dunbar-Nelson became a speaker at various events, including the 1928 American Negro Labor Congress Forum in Philadelphia. After she moved with her husband to Philadelphia in 1932, her health declined, and two years later, she passed away at the age of 60. Dunbar-Nelson is a representative of the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her writing is characterized by complex understandings of race, gender, and ethnicity. In her work, Dunbar-Nelson explored issues that she dealt with as a woman of color, especially her mixed-raced experiences, not belonging here or there. She wrote about her perspective of education opportunity, workplace environment, and social oppression, inspiring generations of black writers to come. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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