Continuing with our theme of covering Women’s History Month, this post is about a little archive of the Tulsa Women’s Club. I found that it hadn’t been digitized at all yet, so I scanned as many items as I could during an incredibly busy week at Special Collections! This post is rather picture heavy, so I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
While working on this post, I discovered that a few years ago, a previous GA wrote about the Tulsa Women’s Club, with a ton of in-depth information about its history, which you can read here. Let’s take a closer look at what these women accomplished!
Check out the letterhead!
This early letter commemorates a Mrs. J.R. Ebright who died on January 28th, 1919.
During this time frame, the name bounced back and forth between ‘Tulsa Woman’s Club’ and ‘Tulsa Women’s Club’ and this president seemed to favor ‘Woman’ for some reason. Generally, everyone else used ‘Women’s’ instead.
Many of the papers in the collection concerned annual reports for diffent clubs and committees. These letters demonstrate the variety of their clubs and give you an idea what being a member entailed.
From the historian’s report covering the scrapbooks…
I’m always partial towards historians
…to the Literature Department’s membership…
The Literature Department
…to the Psychology Department’s speakers…
The Psychology Department
…to the Telephone committee’s problems with phone number changes…
Telephone committees would look so differently today!
…to the Varied Arts Department and their name change…
Any guesses about what the ‘Varied Arts Department’ covers?
…you can see how these women covered as many aspects of their daily lives as possible. It looks like a woman could join as many or as few departments as she wanted to. Membership in the Tulsa organization also included membership in the Oklahoma State Federation of Women’s Clubs as well. 
They bought a house on Admiral Blvd to serve as Club House and, as this Treasurer’s report shows, they had saved quite a bit of money in 1949!
$10k in savings in 1949!? That’s fantastic!
The equivalent amount today would be $104,000! So what did they do with that money?
Birthday cakes and yarn dolls
They made charitable donations to several local organizations, like Hillcrest Hospital’s polio ward to bring patients birthday cakes and yarn dolls…
I bet there were lots of happy little girls at the end of this project
…or performed acts of service like sewing doll clothes for the Salvation Army’s Christmas presents program.
Quintessential 1950s Housewives
They donated money to the March of Dimes…
Yes, tuition was once ‘only’ $275 per semester!
and funded scholarships for members attending TU.
That’s an impressive club! I only scratched the surface of this collection, too, which means they probably did quite a lot more than what you see here.
If you’d like to see the this collection or one of the many others we hold, please contact us at speccoll@utulsa.edu for arrangements. We are currently open only to TU students, faculty, and staff by appointments made at least 24 hours in advance. You are also welcome to browse our Catalog and Digital Collections and request photocopies or digital scans of materials through the same email. Kelsey and I fulfill requests as quickly as possible, but especially large requests or a high volume of requests may take us up to 4-6 weeks. We are happy to help you as best we can and we hope that you stay safe and healthy!