Every time I visit Washington DC, I like to venture into a museum. Just one a visit. I am blessed to go often, so I have this luxury. Last week I visited the Museum of American History. I intended to see the display of First Lady gowns. I was so intrigued how the fashions of the first ladies reflected the culture and style of the times they lived and entered the whirlwind life of the White House. The colors of the gowns seemed more to reflect the first lady’s individual personality. From the modern grey of Eleanor Roosevelt
to the bright scarlet of Laura Bush.
The colors said quite a bit about the ladies.
There were not many more exhibits dedicated strictly to American Women. A few single displays were here and there. But it just seems there should be more since women have made up a bit more of the population. I didn’t see a mention of the spies that helped during the Revolutionary War. Civil War? No mention of any women. Wait I’m corrected. There was one teeny tiny mention of one woman. Mary Edwards Walker. Dr. Mary Walker to use her professional name.
Dr. Walker is the lone woman recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. A vocal advocate for women’s rights and abolitionism, she became a doctor of medicine in 1855 from the Syracuse Medical College. Walker did this in her early twenties. When the Civil War broke out, she was denied a position as a surgeon because of her sex; she volunteered as a nurse in a temporary hospital in the capital. The Ohio Regiment appointed her temporary surgeon until she was captured by the Confederates. She and other War Department Medical personnel were traded for Confederate medical officers in 1863. While she worked as a doctor, she raised a few eyebrows by wearing a blue dress resembling an officer’s jacket, blue trousers with a gold stripe, a felt hat, and green sash that designated her as a surgeon (Williams). When she returned from the prison camp, she became Medical Director of a women’s facility in Louisville, Kentucky.
“Commended by Major Generals William T. Sherman and George H. Thomas for meritorious service, President Andrew Johnson awarded her the Medal of Honor on November 11, 1865.”(Williams)
The story doesn’t end there. In 1917, Congress reconsidered the qualifications of the Medal and stripped her name from the list along with several others because she had been a civilian employee of the government not a member of the armed service. She refused to return her medal and wore it until she died in 1919. In 1977, the efforts of her family caused a re-evaluation of her deeds by Congress and her name was restored to the list of honorees.
Now I know that women have only been recognized to have the right to vote for less than 100 years, but I just have to wonder why there has only been one woman awarded this medal. Women have served in the military officially since 1917-18. According to History.org, “During the last two years of World War I, women were allowed to join the military. 33,000 women serve[d] as nurses and support staff officially in the military, and more than 400 nurses die[d] in the line of duty.”
One hundred and twenty-three soldiers received the Congressional Medal of Honor for actions in WWI alone according to the list of Medal Honors Recipients on the Military History website. Medal winners have been awarded for seven other wars and campaigns. These do not include the four sections for WWII and two sections for Vietnam.
It is hard to believe in the conditions of Korea and Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq that no women did anything that would warrant the same consideration as the men.
“Changing the Face of Medicine | Mary Edwards Walker.” U.S. National Library of Medicine. June 03, 2015. Accessed June 27, 2018. https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_325.html.
Williams, Glenn. “Dr. Mary Edwards Walker.” CMH News and Features, March 2, 2016. Accessed June 27, 2018. https://history.army.mil/news/2016/160200a_maryEdwardsWalker.html.