Queer Places:
Barnard College (Seven Sisters), 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
White-Meyer House, 1624 Crescent Pl NW, Washington, DC 20009
Seven Springs Farm, 64 Oregon Rd, Mt Kisco, NY 10549
Kensico Cemetery, 273 Lakeview Ave, Valhalla, NY 10595, USA
Agnes
Elizabeth Ernst Meyer (née Ernst; January 2, 1887 – September 1, 1970) was an
American journalist, philanthropist, civil rights activist, and art patron.[1][2]
Throughout her life, Meyer was engaged with intellectuals, artists, and
writers from around the world. Meyer's marriage to the financier Eugene Meyer,
son of Marc Eugene Meyer, provided her with wealth and status that enabled her
to influence national policy, such as social welfare programs.[2]
Meyer lobbied for the creation of the Department of Health, Education and
Welfare and for the U.S. government to provide federal aid to states for
education.[3]
President Lyndon Johnson credited Meyer for building public support for the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which for the first time
directed federal assistance towards school districts that served children from
low-income families.[2]
She advocated for equal employment and educational opportunities, regardless
of race. Meyer's investigative journalism showed the inequities of racial
segregation in schools in the Washington metropolitan area.[2]
The purchase of The Washington Post in 1933 gave Meyer and her
family the capacity to affect American opinion for several generations.
Daughter Katherine Meyer Graham (June 16, 1917 - July 17, 2001) led the newspaper during the coverage of Watergate
Investigation that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard
Nixon and earned the paper a Pulitzer Prize.[4]
During Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist campaign in the 1950s, Meyer
delivered speeches that characterized the campaign as a threat to academic
freedom.[5][6]
Meyer was an active patron and supporter of the arts,[7]
who with her husband contributed paintings by Paul Cézanne and Edouard Manet,
sculptures by Constantin Brâncuși, and watercolors by John Marin to the
National Gallery of Art in Washington.[8]
Meyer was born on January 2, 1887, in New York City to Frederick Henry
Ernst and Gretje Lucia "Lucy" Schmidt, who were first-generation German Lutheran immigrants.[1][5]
As a girl, her family moved to Pelham Heights, which was then a rural village
(now part of Pelham, N.Y.) in Westchester County.[9]
The family then moved back to the city, where Agnes went to Morris High School
in The Bronx.[5]
As an adolescent, she clashed with her father about her ambitions. Ernst
attended
Barnard College over the objections of her father, getting her tuition
from a scholarship and part-time jobs. She began cultivating lifelong
friendships with intellectuals.[1][10]
Her interest in education and philosophy brought her under the spell of
Columbia professor
John
Dewey, and they would both have a major effect on American
public education in later decades.[11]
Ernst met her future husband
Eugene Meyer, who was 11 years her senior, in an art gallery while she was
at Barnard.[3]
Ernst graduated in 1907,[3]
then continued her studies at the
Sorbonne in 1908-09, where she encountered
Edward Steichen,
Auguste Rodin,
Constantin Brâncuși, and
Gertrude Stein and
Leo Stein.[1][9]
She returned to the United States from Paris in 1910 and married Eugene in
a small Lutheran wedding. At that time, Eugene was established in his career
as an
investment banker and was financially well off.[1]
Meyer and Eugene had five children together.[20]
Their oldest daughter
Florence Meyer (1911–1962) was a photographer and married to actor Oskar
Homolka.[21]
Elizabeth Meyer Lorentz (1913–2001) was an author who was married to
Pare
Lorentz.[19]
Eugene "Bill" Meyer III (1915–1982) was a physician and medical professor.[22]
Katharine Graham (1917–2001) was the publisher of The Washington Post.
Ruth Meyer (1921–2007) married William A. Epstein.[19]
Shortly after graduating from
Barnard, Meyer was hired by the old
New York Sun as one of the newspaper's first woman journalists.[1]
Katharine Rhoades,
Marion Beckett and Meyer were known as "The Three Graces" of the
Alfred Stieglitz art circle.[12]
Meyer met
Charles Lang Freer, the Detroit industrialist and collector in 1913 at a
Chinese painting exhibition. Over the years, together they studied and
collected Chinese and other
Asian art. When Freer died before the
Freer Gallery of Art was completed, Meyer and her husband took over making
the final decisions.[19]
During the 1993 renovation of the Gallery, the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer
Auditorium was remodeled and dedicated to them.[19]
In 1915–1916, she created and published the literary art magazine
291 with
Alfred Stieglitz,
Marius de Zayas, and
Paul Haviland.[8]
Its second issue featured a full-page printed version of Mental Reactions,
the earliest example of visual poetry in America, in which Meyer's poem is cut
into individually trimmed blocks of pasted-down text and strewn across the
page.[8]
Her husband
Eugene Meyer, after resigning as
Chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1933, purchased the bankrupt
Washington Post, to which Agnes frequently contributed articles about
the problems of veterans, migrant workers, overcrowded schools, and African
Americans.[3]
After World War II, she wrote Out of These Roots: The Autobiography of An
American Woman.[13]
In 1917, the Meyers relocated to Washington, D.C., and for the next sixteen
years Eugene had a series of positions within the federal government,
including
Chairman of the Federal Reserve (1930–33).[3]
Eugene and Agnes Meyer lived in the
Meridian Hill Park section of Washington.[23]
The Meyer family first leased, in 1929, and then bought, in 1934, property on
Crescent Place.[24]
The property, now known as the
White-Meyer House, is on the National Register.[24]
In 1919, the Meyers built a mansion on the Seven Springs Farm in
Westchester County, New York. The house had over 60 rooms, two wings for
servants, 15 bedrooms, and three pools, including an indoor pool cased in
white marble from Italy.[25]
The estate overlooks Byram Lake, and is at the point where the towns of
North Castle,
New Castle and
Bedford meet.[26]
Meyer was chairwoman of the Westchester County Recreation Commission for
eighteen years (1923–1941).[13]
Meyer had a twenty-year-long friendship with
Thomas
Mann[27][28]
She helped to create an active social life for him during his exile to the
United States,[29][30]
by introducing him into elite social circles in New York and Washington. In
1938, she secured a position as lecturer in the humanities for him at
Princeton University.[30][31]
In June 1945, she wrote a five-part series for the Post titled
"Orderly Revolution."[14]
It was a glowing tribute to a young
Saul
Alinsky, who was then an obscure community organizer in
Chicago.
He was also a frequent visitor to the
home of the Meyers in Washington, and to their estate in
Westchester.[15][16]
During Senator
Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist campaign in the 1950s, Meyer delivered
speeches that characterized the campaign as a threat to academic freedom. She
spoke at the convention of the
American Association of School Administrators in
Atlantic City, New Jersey, calling his behavior an affront to the dignity
of a free people.[5]
Speaking at the Barnard Forum, Meyer argued that "security is not an aim in
itself," that without freedom it "reduces life to that of the prison."[17]
Her gender politics were more traditionalist and typical of the decade,
however, seen when she wrote an article for the
Atlantic Monthly in which she asserted “Women have many careers but only
one vocation – motherhood. . . . Women must boldly announce that no job is
more exacting, more necessary, or more rewarding than that of housewife and
mother. Then they will feel free to become once more the moral force of
society through the stabilization of the home.”[18]
Meyer's investigative journalism showed the inequities of racial
segregation in the Washington metropolitan area schools.[2]
President
Lyndon Johnson credited Meyer for building public support for the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which for the first time
directed federal assistance towards school districts that served children from
low-income families.[2]
Meyer lobbied for integration of public schools and an end to racial
discrimination in employment. Meyer advocated for the creation of the
Department of Health, Education and Welfare and the United States government
providing federal aid to states for education. Lyndon B. Johnson credited her
with having the most influence over his education policies.[3][13]
On November 17, 1956, Agnes E. Meyer addressed the
National Council of Negro Women in Washington D.C.[1]
Throughout the 1960s she continued to dedicate her time to improving public
education through the creation and financial support of several not-for profit
organizations.[1][3]
In 1944, with her husband she created the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer
Foundation to provide funding for civic activities, particularly those related
to improving public education.[1]
In 1958, Meyer with her husband co-founded the Agnes and Eugene Meyer Fund
to provide support for professors of her Alma mater,
Barnard College[1]
and provided funding to the
New School for Social Research.[3]
The next year, she founded the Urban Service Corps a program to offer
mentoring to school children in Washington D.C. In 1960.[1]
Meyer founded the National Committee for the Support of the Public Schools and
was the chairwoman until her death.[1]
At the age of 83, Meyer died of cancer at Seven Springs Farm.[3][13]
While living, Meyer was honored by receiving 14 honorary degrees, and
awards from the
Women's National Press Club,
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),
AFL-CIO, and
National Conference of Christians and Jews.[13]
After Meyer's death, the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation donated Seven
Springs Estate to Yale University. Later it was incorporated as a nonprofit
conference center. In 1984 the property went to Rockefeller University, which
continued to use it as a conference center.[26]
The Washington Post established the Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher
Award in 1983 to recognize exceptional teachers. More than 500 teachers in the
Metropolitan Washington area have received this honor in her name.[32]
The
Library of Congress holds the Agnes Elizabeth Ernst Meyer Papers which
includes her diaries, correspondence with family, friends, and her career as
an author and social activist, her speeches, and an unpublished manuscript for
a memoir.[5][13]
My published books:
BBACK TO HOME PAGE
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_E._Meyer