Schlesinger Library Presents Nine Awards For Achievement

Calling it "one of Radcliffe's most valuable and valued assets," president Horner last night helped celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of women in America.

Nine Citations for Lifetime Achievement went to women who have achieved distinction in their respective fields. Pulitzer-prizewinning author Eudora Welty said she was "thrilled" to receive the award.

Welty spoke about her writing and her childhood, saying that writing "is your own wish-it has to do with your imagination, which speaks to you as a child."

She added, "I was brought up with a respect for the truth. I was quite a grown girl when I found out that there many people who don't tell the truth. But I've learned to tell the difference."

"My career picked me out," said Dr. Mary S. Calderone, a noted physician who founded the Sex Education and Information Council of the United States.

Caldeorne cited the "scientific illiteracy of our population" and added that, though she started medical school at age 30 after she had already had a child, "It never occurred to me there were things I couldn't do because I was a woman."

Jean E. Fairfax of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education fund, added that "Black women must combat racism as well as sexism." She described her life as "one of fighting" and spoke of her grandmother's march with the first suffragettes and of her mother, one of the first Black graduates of the University of Kansas.

Another honoree who overcame racial prejudices was Dr. Chine-Shiung Wu, a nuclear physicist from Columbia University who came to the United States from China in 1936 Wu said. "A scientist's life is really wonderful."

Seven of the nine honorees attended the ceremony. Absent was artist Georgia O'Keeffe, a painter whose works hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney museum, and more than 40 other museums.

Author and historian Barbara Tuchman 33, who won Pulitzer in 1963 and 1971, was also unable to attend, due to illness.

The other recipients were Lucy S. Howorth, a Mississippi lawyer and women's rights advocate, Esther Peterson, a well-known consumer rights advocate, and Dr. Helen B. Taussig, '21, a pioneer in pediatric cardiology.