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- [00:00]
Tracy V. Wilson
This is an iHeart podcast. Everybody knows Shaq, but off camera, he's just a regular guy.
- [00:08]
Shaquille O'Neal
People never believe me when I say I'm just like them. I take out the trash, do dishes, and I struggle with moderate obstructive sleep apnea, or osa. And a lot of adults with obesity also struggle with moderate to severe osa. You know those scary breathing interruptions during sleep, the loud snoring, choking and daytime fatigue? I knew I had to talk to my doctor. Don't sleep on the symptoms. Learn more at don'tsleeponosa.com this information is.
- [00:33]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Provided by Lilly, A medicine company.
- [00:35]
Holly Frey
Listen to your elders, honey. You might know them from their viral videos. But now the old Gays are pulling back the curtain with their podcast Silver Linings with the Old Gays. Brought to you in partnership with iHeartRuby Studio and Veev Healthcare. Hosts Robert, Mick, Bill and J share their favorite pride, memories and the importance of celebrating all year long in honor of Palm Springs Pride. So check out Silver Linings with the Old gays on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:04]
Cal Penn
Hey audiobook lovers. I'm Cal Penn.
- [01:06]
Ed Helms
I'm Ed Helms.
- [01:07]
Cal Penn
Ed and I are inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with our new podcast, Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
- [01:16]
Ed Helms
Each week we sit down with your favorite iHeart podcast hosts and some very special guests to discuss the latest and greatest audiobooks from Audible.
- [01:25]
Cal Penn
Listen to Hearsay on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow earsay and start listening on the free iHeartradio app today.
- [01:34]
Lowe's Advertisement Voice
Want Black Friday prices without the crowds? Lowe's gets it. Shop their early Black Friday deals and beat the rush. $99 is all you need to grab a select 7 foot pre lit artificial Christmas tree for the holidays. And don't sweat what gifts to get dad. They have up to 40% off select tools and accessories going on now. That's how Lowes celebrates Black Friday. Early selection varies by location while supplies last.
- [02:01]
Holly Frey
Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
- [02:12]
Tracy V. Wilson
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
- [02:15]
Holly Frey
And I'm Holly Fry.
- [02:17]
Tracy V. Wilson
Back in the summer, we got an email from listener Ed about our episode on electrical engineer Edwin Howard Armstrong. And in that email, Ed said that he was waiting with bated breath for an episode on a woman aeronautical engineer. So we ran our episode on mathematician and aerospace engineer Mary Winston Jackson as a Saturday classic. After we got that email and I also started looking for ideas that might lead us to a new episode on that theme. I have finally gotten to that episode today with aerospace engineer Mary Golda Ross. She was the first Indigenous woman in the United States known to have become an engineer just for the purpose of expectations management. If you are really looking forward to hearing about some extremely cool feats of aerospace engineering, we don't actually have a lot of detail about the specifics of her work as an engineer because a lot of it was and still is classified, or if not actually classified, like very highly secretive.
- [03:26]
Holly Frey
Mary Golda Ross was born on August 9, 1908. She was the second child born to William Wallace Ross, Jr. Known as Biscuit and Mary Henrietta Moore Ross. Her other siblings were Francis, Curtis, Billy, Charles and Robert. And her family and people close to her called her Gold in her professional life. Later on, people called her Mary. That is what we will also do.
- [03:51]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah, it felt a little overly familiar to call her a name that was really her family and community's name when we aren't part of the family or the community. Mary's great, great grandfather was John Ross, who was principal chief of the Cherokee Nation for 38 years. He died in 1866, which was decades before Mary was born. But his life and his work and the period of history that he lived through all had an enormous impact on her and her family and the rest of the Cherokee. He was principal chief leading up to and during their removal from their ancestral homeland in and around the Southern Appalachian Mountains and the deadly forced march westward that came to be known as the Trail of Tears and the establishment of the Cherokee Nation in what's now Oklahoma and then the U.S. civil War. That was a lot. And trying to cover all of it would take at least a whole episode, probably more than one part of an episode. And it is a story that's simultaneously very complicated and culturally very important to the Cherokees. So while we are not going to talk about all of the details of that earlier history, we are going to touch on some of the connecting points between Mary Golda Ross's life and that of her ancestor.
- [05:09]
Holly Frey
Mary was born in Park Hill, Oklahoma. Park Hill is south of Tahlequah, which was established as the Cherokee capital in 1839. John Ross helped build this capital, which serves as the capital of the Cherokee Nation. Today. Tahlequ, Okinawa, is also the capital of the United Katua Band of Cherokee Indians, who are largely descended from people who moved west prior to the Trail of Tears. A third federally recognized Cherokee tribe is the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians who are largely descended from people who remained in the Appalachian Mountains during the removal, which has its capital in Cherokee North Carolina.
- [05:49]
Tracy V. Wilson
So there are three distinct but also related Cherokee tribes that are federally recognized today. But when Mary was born, at least from the US government's point of view, the Cherokee government had been dissolved. This was part of both the lead up to Oklahoma becoming a state and the federal government's overall policy toward indigenous people and nations. That policy was one of allotment and assimilation. Starting in 1887, the US had passed a series of laws that broke up reservations and dissolved indigenous governments and institutions, even though in many cases the United States had signed treaties with those governments. This process was still ongoing when Mary Golda Ross was born, but it's clear that she and her family thought of themselves as Cherokee.
- [06:40]
Holly Frey
This included the way she described her education. Quote, I started with a firm foundation in math and some qualities that came down from my Indian heritage. I had a great deal of curiosity, interest, willingness to study, to do research and to learn, to try out new ideas, and most of all, to work.
- [07:00]
Tracy V. Wilson
Education and learning are culturally important to the Cherokee. And another of John Ross's efforts had been the establishment of male and female seminaries in Tahlequah. And those seminaries opened in 1851. These were some of the earliest institutes for higher learning west of the Mississippi River. And these seminaries continued to operate until they were dissolved under those assimilationist laws that we just mentioned. A teacher's college called Northeastern Normal School was established on the site of the female seminary in 1909.
- [07:35]
Holly Frey
The earlier existence of the seminaries and then the establishment of the teachers college meant the public schools in Tahlequah were known to be particularly good. Mary's parents recognized that she had an aptitude and a love for learning, and she skipped a grade in elementary school in Park Hill. So they eventually sent her to live with her grandparents in Tahlequah so she could take advantage of the schools there. Tahqua and Park Hill are only about five miles apart, which is not far at all by today's transportation standards. But in the nineteen teens and twenties, it probably felt like a much bigger deal.
- [08:12]
Tracy V. Wilson
Mary graduated from high school at the age of 16. By that point, the normal school had become Northeastern State Teachers College, and she continued her education there. She later told interviewers that when she was enrolling, she was asked what she wanted her major to be, and she didn't really know what that meant. So when she was asked the clarifying question of what's your favorite subject, she said it was math. She had loved math from a very early age and described it as feeling like a game to her. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in math as well as teaching qualifications on July 19, 1928. Northeastern State teachers College is now Northeastern State University.
- [08:55]
Holly Frey
After graduating, Ross started teaching science and math at rural public schools around Oklahoma, and for a year she served as principal at a school in Osage. All of this was during the Great Depression, and she was usually boarding with school administrators and other teachers. She started to wonder if she could find a career that would allow her to earn more money and maybe see.
- [09:18]
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- [09:20]
Holly Frey
So she took the civil service exam in 1934, and she was hired as a statistician at the Bureau of Indian affairs in Washington, D.C. in 1935.
- [09:31]
Tracy V. Wilson
She worked as a statistician for about a year. Then the Bureau of Indian affairs told her that they needed her experience as an educator out in the field, and she was assigned to be a student advisor at the Santa Fe Indian School in New Mexico. This school had been established in 1890 under the federal boarding school program which separated indigenous students from their families and their cultures in an effort to, quote, assimilate them into white society. In other words, this school was established as part of a whole effort at cultural genocide. President Joe Biden issued a formal apology for the boarding school program in 2024. That followed years of investigations and reports, including the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, which released two volumes of reports on this in 2020 and 2024. We talked about this system in more detail in our two part episode on the Fort Shaw Indian School girls basketball team which came out in 2017, and in our three parter on Jim Thorpe, which came out in 2020 when Ross.
- [10:38]
Holly Frey
Was hired to work at the school. Federal policy toward Indigenous people and nations had shifted again away from assimilation and allotment and toward what is sometimes known as the reorganization period after the Indian Reorganization act that was passed in 1934. Multiple factors led into this shift, including the large numbers of Indigenous people who had served in the US military during World War I and the publication of the Merriam Report, formally titled the Problem of Indian administration in 1928. This was an incredibly critical report on the federal government's policies toward Indigenous people, including the boarding schools.
- [11:21]
Tracy V. Wilson
The Miriam Report called for widespread reforms. Some of the reforms that were put in place afterward included the repeal of unjust laws that had targeted indigenous people, the passage of the Indian Reorganization act that we just mentioned, and an end to the overall policy of allotment. The Indian Reorganization act was part of what became known as the Indian New Deal, which was focused on both helping Indigenous nations recover from the Great Depression and preserving Indigenous cultures and ways of life and Indigenous lands and tribal sovereignty. These kinds of reforms also connected to the boarding schools, and when Ross was working at Santa Fe Indian School, its focus was shifting toward one of self determination and autonomy for the Puebloan students who studied there. Ross also advised students at other schools in the area.
- [12:16]
Holly Frey
During her summers, Ross went to Colorado State Teachers College, now the University of Northern Colorado, to pursue graduate studies. Over the span of six years, she completed the necessary coursework for a master's degree in mathematics. She was also fascinated with space and interested in the idea of sending objects or even people into space. So even though it didn't count toward her master's degree, she also took classes in astronomy.
- [12:44]
Tracy V. Wilson
Mary Golda Ross career had a huge shift after the start of World War II, which we will get to after a sponsor break.
- [12:56]
Holly Frey
Listen to your elders, honey. You might know them from their viral videos, but now the old Gays pull back the curtain on their podcast Silver Linings with the Old Gays brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Veeve Healthcare For a very special bonus episode. Hosts Robert, Mick, Bill and Jahsay talk about how pride has evolved over the years and their favorite memories, all in celebration of Palm Springs Pride because pride should be celebrated all year round. Listen to these fabulous friends swap stories exploring how queer life has evolved over the decades and the silver linings they've collected along the way. Each episode dives into hot topics from safe sex and online dating to untangling Gen Z lingo, as well as insights on how music, art and fashion show up in queer culture. So check out Silver Linings, a show about how pride ages like fine wine. Available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [13:57]
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- [14:58]
Holly Frey
This episode is brought to you by pbs, Home of Ken Burns Ken Burns films aren't just documentaries. They're national events. And the American Revolution is the one you've been waiting for. When you hear American Revolution, you probably picture the familiar tea crates dumped into the Boston harbor, famous founders signing documents in Philadelphia, redcoats marching into battle in neat lines. But here, Ken Burns and co directors Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt take us so much deeper. They bring us into a revolution that was bloody, difficult and unbelievably consequential. People whose names you know and people you've never heard of put their lives on the line and changed the course of human history. History America's fight for independence lit a spark. It became a driving force for liberty around the world that still burns today. The founding generation understood the weight of what they were creating. George Washington called his fight the cause of mankind. And they knew how much they risked, how much they gave to win the war. John Adams captured that in a letter to his wife Abigail, writing, quote posterity, you will never know what it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. The revolutionary generation was thinking about the future, about us. And now you can think about them in an entirely new light. With the American Revolution, Ken Burns and his team give us the vast, complicated, transcendent origin story of the United States in a way only they can. And we are left with a deeply human, deeply relevant story about our nation's founding. A story that belongs to us all. Stream the American Revolution on the PBS app. Don't miss it.
- [16:37]
Tracy V. Wilson
Question for all the gamers out there, are you seriously going to miss out on Alienware's biggest gaming sale of the year? These are Black Friday prices, so it's not just another sale. This is some pretty big bang for your buck. You know, it's Alienware with some of the most advanced engineering out there, with systems at the top of reviewers lists. And what about a gift for yourself? Gift yourself a new Alienware 16 Aurora gaming laptop. This thing's got performance at the absolute next level with Intel Core processors. And even better, you can get it during Black Black Friday starting at $899.99 plus you can save on all kinds of Displays and accessories like the Alienware 32.4K QD OLED gaming monitor for ultimate visual fidelity. These really are incredible deals on PCs with otherworldly performance. So visit alienware.com deals soon and grab what you can before their biggest sale of the year goes dark. There is some fuzziness in people's accounts of how Mary Golda Ross made her way to California in 1942. Some of them say that her father really encouraged her to go, and others say that she was visiting a family member or a friend and then sort of fell in love with California. Obviously it could have been a combination of all of this and whatever the details were. In 1942, she was hired as a Mathem research assistant at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in Burbank, California. Her colleagues there knew her as Mary Ross.
- [18:14]
Holly Frey
This is almost certainly a job that was open to her because of World War II and the number of men who had either volunteered or been drafted into military service. Her job as a mathematical research assistant likely would have been much like that of a human computer, including the hidden figures who were part of the space program after the war was over. So using a slide rule and a calculating machine to do complex computations that probably would be handled by a machine today.
- [18:43]
Tracy V. Wilson
Okay, I said at the top of the show that we don't have that much detail about the specifics of Mary Golda Ross work because a lot of it was and still is classified. And that is why we keep saying things like almost certainly and likely. And a lot of what we are about to say has been repeated across a lot of writing about Ross. But I haven't like verified it with official documents from Lockheed or anything. But one of the things she's said to have worked on during World War II was the P38 Lightning. This was a twin boom aircraft. So it had the main central fuselage and wings, and then it had these two auxiliary structures or booms that stretched back from the wings to the tail assembly. Each of these booms had its own engine, and the P38 had four machine guns and a 20 millimeter cannon. Altogether, this created a very fast, maneuverable and powerful aircraft. It was described with terms like two planes, one pilot. Germans allegedly called it Der Gabelschwandteufel, or the Fork tailed devil.
- [19:53]
Holly Frey
The P38 was propeller driven, and today's jet engines are much, much faster. But at the time it set records reaching speeds of more than 400 miles an hour. Early models had some issues, though. At those high speeds, the tail could become unstable, and it had the potential to stall in steep dives. These issues could cause the pilot to lose control and even crash. And one of Ross's projects at Lockheed was helping to fix those problems.
- [20:23]
Tracy V. Wilson
After the war was over, a lot of the women who had moved into jobs that had previously been held by men were forced back out of this part of the workforce. But Ross continued working at Lockheed, and Lockheed also sent her to the University of California Los Angeles Extension School to continue her education and to train her to be an engineer. So this suggests that Lockheed saw her as a highly valuable employee. She studied mathematics as it related to engineering, as well as aeronautics, missile mechanics, and celestial mechanics. She became a registered professional engineer in 1949, making her the first known indigenous woman to become a engineer. The specification of aerospace engineer did not really exist yet, but that is what her studies really added up to.
- [21:15]
Holly Frey
Earlier, we talked about education being important to the Cherokee, and that included making sure children had access to education regardless of their gender. But when Ross moved into advanced studies in engineering and math, she was often the only woman in the room. In interviews later on in her life, she talked about feeling like the men didn't want to associate with her at all. She'd sit on one side of the room and they would sit on the other, but she said she was able to hold her own with them, and sometimes she could do them one better. But she didn't want the fields of engineering and math to stay this way. She started advocating for more women to become engineers and mathematicians and for these fields to be more open to women. And this included becoming a charter member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society of women engineers in 1952.
- [22:08]
Tracy V. Wilson
By that point, she'd bought a house in Los Altos, California. She made this purchase in 1951, and she lived in this house for the rest of her life. It had an apricot tree in the backyard, and every year she would make sulfur dried apricots and give them to friends and family as gifts. The sulfur in this extends the shelf life of the apricots, and it helps keep them soft. In interviews later on, a family member also said that she had a fig tree and gave figs as gifts. She was also fond of painting in her spare time.
- [22:41]
Holly Frey
Ross's home purchase was connected to her job. She had been transferred to the newly established Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, which was headquartered at Lockheed's Sunnyvale campus. A number of articles about her also say that this was when she became part of Lockheed's advanced development projects, or skunk works, and that she was the only Woman on an elite team of 40 engineers. The name Skunk Works reportedly comes from the Li' l Abner comic strip where the Skunk Works, spelled with an O instead of a U, was a foul smelling rundown factory on the outskirts of the town of Dogpatch. Reportedly, one of the Lockheed facilities was next to a plastics factory and it smelled very bad.
- [23:26]
Tracy V. Wilson
This is something else that's tricky to pin down, though. The Skunk Works division's whole purpose is to work on highly secretive and classified projects. Eventually the finished product can become public knowledge, because I can't just indefinitely hide the existence of something like the US military's first jet fighter, but the details of the development process and who worked on what can still really be a secret. And so can some of the specifics of those finished products.
- [24:00]
Holly Frey
This was alluded to when Ross made an appearance on the game show what's my line? On June 22, 1958. So on the show what's My Line panelists had to ask yes or no questions to try to figure out the occupation of a guest. Ross's occupation was described on screen as designs rocket missiles and satellites and then in parentheses, lockheed Aircraft. After panelist Dorothy Kilgallen correctly guessed that Ross's job was related to designing missiles, she asked a follow up question about how big the missiles were, since an earlier question had been whether the product Ross worked on was bigger than a tank. Moderator John Charles Daly shut down this conversation by saying, quote, Ms. Ross isn't free to discuss anything about it. She's in advanced designs now and can't talk about what she's working on.
- [24:54]
Tracy V. Wilson
So here are some things various articles have said that Mary Golda Ross worked on while working at Lockheed Martin after the war. Rockets that carried either payloads or human beings. The study of water pressure and ocean waves and how those would affect vehicles and missiles that were launched from submarines. The orbital dynamics of the Agena rocket, which was used as part of NASA's Gemini program. Submarine launched ballistic missiles, including the Polaris and Trident missiles.
- [25:27]
Holly Frey
She was definitely a contributor to NASA's Interplanetary Flight Handbook, Volume 3, which was published in 1963 that included maps, graphs and tables to be used in interplanetary missions to Mars and Venus. Various sources have quoted her as saying that she wanted to be the woman behind the first woman in space.
- [25:50]
Tracy V. Wilson
In 2023, Mary Golda Ross's relative, Gail Ross gave an interview with PBS News Weekend in which she said that if so much of Mary's work had not been classified, she would have earned a Nobel Prize. Gail Ross also said similar things in other interviews, and an also similar sentiment has been attributed to Dr. Norbert Hill, who was one of Ross's friends and colleagues and was the former Executive director of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society when he said this. Other people who worked with and were mentored by Mary Golda Ross also described her as being of the same caliber as the Nobel laureates they had similarly worked with.
- [26:38]
Holly Frey
Mary Golda Ross retired from Lockheed in 1973, and we'll get to how she spent her life after her retirement after we pause for a sponsor break. Listen to your elders, honey. You might know them from their viral videos, but now the Old Gays pull back the curtain on their podcast Silver Linings with the Old Gays, brought to you in partnership with I Hearts, Ruby Studio and Vive Healthcare. For a very special bonus episode, hosts Robert, Mick, Bill and Jahsay talk about how pride has evolved over the years and their favorite memories, all in celebration of Palm Springs Pride because pride should be celebrated all year round. Listen to these fabulous friends swap stories exploring how queer life has evolved over the decades and the silver linings they've collected along the way. Each episode dives into hot topics from safe sex and online dating to untangling Gen Z lingo as well as insights on how music, art, art and fashion show up in queer culture. So check out Silver Linings, a show about how pride ages like fine wine. Available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [27:52]
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- [28:53]
Holly Frey
This episode is brought to you by pbs, home of Ken Burns Ken Burns films aren't just documentaries. They're national events. And the American Revolution is the one you've been waiting for. When you hear American Revolution, you probably picture the familiar scenes. Tea crates dumped into the Boston harbor, famous founders signing documents in Philadelphia, redcoats marching into battle in neat lines. But here, Ken Burns and co directors Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt take us so much deeper. They bring us into a revolution that was bloody, difficult and unbelievably consequential. People whose names you know and people you've never heard of put their lives on the line and changed the course of human history. America's fight for independence lit a spark. It became a driving force for liberty around the world that still burns today. The founding generation understood the weight of what they were creating. George Washington called his fight the cause of mankind, and they knew how much they risked, how much they gave to win the war. John Adams captured that in a letter to his wife Abigail, writing, quote, posterity, you will never know what it cost present generation to preserve your freedom. The revolutionary generation was thinking about the future, about us. And now you can think about them in an entirely new light with the American Revolution. Ken Burns and his team give us the vast, complicated, transcendent origin story of the United States in a way only they can. And we are left with a deeply human, deeply relevant story about our nation's founding. A story that belongs to us all. Stream the American Revolution on the PBS app. Don't miss it.
- [30:33]
Tracy V. Wilson
Question for all the gamers out there, are you seriously going to miss out on Alienware's biggest gaming sale of the year? These are Black Friday prices, so it's not just another sale. This is some pretty big bang for your buck, you know, It's Alienware with some of the most advanced engineering out there, with systems at the top of reviewers lists. And what about a gift for yourself? Gift yourself a new Alienware 16 Aurora gaming laptop. This thing's got performance at the absolute next level with Intel Core processors. And even better, you can get it during Black Friday starting at $899.99. Plus you can save on all kinds of displays and accessories like the Alienware 32.4K QD OLED gaming monitor for ultimate visual fidelity. These really are incredible deals on PCs with otherworldly performance. So visit alienware.com deals soon and grab what you can before their biggest sale of the year goes dark. Even without knowing the details of Mary Golda Ross's work at Lockheed Martin, it is clear that she was brilliant as a mathematician and an engineer and that her work there was important to the US Aerospace industry, spanning military applications and space exploration. After she retired from Lockheed, she stayed in Los Altos, California, and she did a lot of work trying to open doors for women and Indigenous people in the fields she had spent her whole career working in.
- [32:07]
Holly Frey
In 1977, she became a founding member of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. This organization wanted to increase college enrollment and graduation rates for Indigenous students. We said earlier that Ross was the first Indigenous woman known to become an Engineer in the US and by the 1970s, women and indigenous people were still extremely underrepresented in the sciences and engineering. So another goal was addressing this disparity and making these fields more accessible to women and Indigenous people. This organization exists today as ACEs, that is spelled A I S E S. That's a nonprofit that works to provide academic, professional and cultural support to Indigenous peoples from North America and the Pacific Islands who are preparing for careers in STEM fields.
- [32:59]
Tracy V. Wilson
Ross also participated in the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, which was established in the 1970s as well. This was an intertribal organization of Indigenous nations that had valuable energy related resources on their lands, so things like uranium, natural gas and oil. This council worked to help Indigenous nations protect these resources from exploitation and protect themselves from exploitation, really, with a focus on retaining their rights and resisting encroachment by non Indigenous people and business interests and on sustainability. The Council also worked to improve the relationship between the federal government and Indigenous nations when it came to these resources.
- [33:44]
Holly Frey
In 1992, Ross was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council hall of fame. In 2001, sculptor Lawrence F. Kenney created a sculpture of her using steam bent wood panels made from white oak. In addition to a photorealistic image of her face, the panels include a number of references to her life and her work as a mathematician and engineer. This was part of a commemoration of the centennial of the 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.
- [34:17]
Tracy V. Wilson
In 1989, Congress passed legislation to establish the National Museum of the American Indian within the Smithsonian Institution, which was signed into law by President George H.W. bush. We talked about this a little bit last year in our episode on George Gustav High, whose collection became part of this museum. Ross was a huge supporter of this museum. She said that it would tell the, quote, true story of the not just the story of the past, but an ongoing story. Her support included bequeathing more than $400,000 to the museum's endowment in her will.
- [34:58]
Holly Frey
When the museum opened in 2004. Ross was 96 and she attended the opening ceremonies in a dress that her niece had made for her. This dress was in the design of a traditional Cherokee tear dress, which Ross had never worn before. The tear dress has its own history and connections to the Cherokee nations re establishing itself as a nation.
- [35:21]
Tracy V. Wilson
Earlier, we talked about indigenous governments and institutions being dissolved during the allotment and assimilation phase of federal policy toward Indigenous people. The Indian Reorganization act of 1934 had encouraged indigenous nations to reform those governments. The Cherokee Nation met to elect a new principal chief in 1938, and then that was confirmed by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941.
- [35:49]
Holly Frey
Then in the late 1960s, Virginia Alice Stroud, enrolled citizen of the United Katua Band of Cherokee Indians, was participating in pageants for Indigenous women. She was crowned Miss Cherokee Tribal Princess in 1969 and Ms. National Congress of American Indians in 1970 and then Ms. Indian America in 1971. Elements of these pageants included contestants, knowledge about their tribes and wearing of traditional dress. But the Cherokee tribes living in Oklahoma didn't have a specific style of traditional dress. Before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, their clothing hadn't evolved into a culturally specific style. And once they were introduced to trade goods from Europe, many had adopted European style clothing. So contestants in these pageants often wore buckskin garments that were associated with other tribes and nations, which could be true of contestants from other tribes as well.
- [36:50]
Tracy V. Wilson
So a lot of people in Oklahoma increasingly felt this was inappropriate. So Principal Chief W.W. keillor of the Cherokee Nation appointed a committee of Cherokee women to develop a culturally appropriate dress that had roots in the Cherokee homeland of what's now North Carolina, Georgia or Tennessee. After extensive research, their starting point became a 19th century dress that was a family heirloom and had belonged to a committee member's grandmother or great grandmother.
- [37:22]
Holly Frey
With the exception of the neck opening, all of the pieces of a tear dress are squares and rectangles. These aren't cut. They're typically created by making a notch in the selvedge edge of the cloth and then tearing it to the other side to make a perfect square. The seams where some of these pieces fit together are gathered, creating a stand up ruffle that sits on the outside of the dress. There are decorative bands at each shoulder, around each sleeve and around the upper part of the skirt, just above a flounce. It's a practical dress that a person could work in with buttons up the front to also make it easy to breastfeed children. Tear dresses for children normally button up the back.
- [38:03]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. It would make sense if the name tear dress comes from this tearing to create the square and rectangular pieces. But a couple of the sources that I read about this said we don't actually know like who started calling it that or where they got the name from. In addition to being worn by Virginia Alice Stroud in a pageant contest next, this dress became increasingly associated with the Cherokee in Oklahoma by being recreated as costumes for the Trail of Tears outdoor drama that was staged for the first time in Tahlequah, Oklahoma in 1969. Today, this dress is recognized as women's traditional dress by the Cherokee in Oklahoma. There's a video with a lot more detail about this on the Cherokee Nation's YouTube page. This is in a talk by Tanya Hogner Weavel, who has the designation of Cherokee National Treasure and is Education director at the Cherokee Heritage Center.
- [38:59]
Holly Frey
Mary Golda Ross dress was green with darker green and a pattern of stars on the decorative bands. Her dress had these bands at the shoulders and around the skirt, but not on the sleeves. She also wore it with a belt at the waist. When she wore it to the opening of the Museum of the American Indian, it was part of a three day First Americans Festival attended by 20,000 indigenous people from all over the Americas, including a procession down the National Mall to the museum's entrance.
- [39:29]
Tracy V. Wilson
Mary Golder Ross died on April 29, 2008. A public celebration of her life was held at the Cherokee Tribal Council Chambers in Tahlequah. The tribal council had been planning to honor her on her 100th birthday, but she died a few months before that at the age of 99. Her ashes were interred at Ross Cemetery in Park Hill, which is also the burial place of many of her other family members, including John Ross. Her grave marker has her name and the dates of her birth and death and the words she reached for the stars.
- [40:05]
Holly Frey
Wilma Mankiller, who was principal chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1985 to 1995, is quoted as saying of Mary, quote, there's no woman I've ever met who is more intelligent, more compassionate and just a great lady. I still have an image of Mary leaning down to listen to young students who had the hope of a career in math and science. She was an optimist who saw the unlimited boundaries of the human potential. Mankiller also said, mary made us all so proud to be Cherokee. When we came into a room or were at an event with her, we all stood a little prouder in her presence since.
- [40:44]
Tracy V. Wilson
You getting choked up got.
- [40:45]
Holly Frey
Me choked up, sorry.
- [40:48]
Tracy V. Wilson
In 2001, Ross was depicted in a painting titled Ad Astra per Astra, meaning to the stars from the stars by Cherokee artist America Meredith. This title is a play on the Latin phrase Per aspera ad astra, or through hardships to the stars, which is a motto that's used a lot. This artwork depicts Ross in a red dress, wearing pearl earrings and a string of pearls around her neck, all of which she is shown wearing in various photos of her from her life. She's standing next to a body of still water and that water reflects the landscape around it and the starry night above. And there's an RM81 Agena rocket in the sky. This painting incorporates elements of Cherokee cosmology relating to the Pleiades. And there's also a seven pointed star symbolizing the seven clans of the Cherokee and text in the Cherokee language.
- [41:44]
Holly Frey
In May of 2018, the Oklahoma City School Board renamed Jackson Enterprise Elementary School to Mary Golda Ross middle school. On August 9th of that year, in commemoration of her 110th birthday, she was honored with a Google doodle.
- [42:00]
Tracy V. Wilson
In June of 2019, the US Mint issued a Native American $1 coin featuring Mary Golda Ross. On the reverse side, she's holding paper and a slide rule. And there is also an astronaut and an Atlas Agena rocket taking off and an equation representing her work. This coin was meant to honor not just her, but all indigenous peoples contributions to the space program, including those of Chickasaw astronaut John Harrington and Osage and Cherokee flight controller Jerry C. Elliott High Eagle. Jerry C. Elliott High Eagle was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for computing the trajectory that enabled the astronauts aboard Apollo 13 to return safely to Earth. The astronaut on this coin is outfitted in a way that Harrington would have been for spacewalks that he undertook while serving on the International Space Station.
- [42:58]
Holly Frey
Because so much of Ross's work is still classified, designers had to work with a NASA engineer to figure out an equation that would make sense to include. The one that's shown is connected to interplanetary space travel involving gravity, distance and speed of an orbiting body.
- [43:16]
Tracy V. Wilson
I really love that they were like, we need an equation to go on here.
- [43:19]
Holly Frey
We need a science grown up.
- [43:21]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. We know so little about her exact work that we need you to help us come up with one that's appropriate it. In April of 2022, a statue of Mary Golda Ross was unveiled at the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City. This is a life size statue and she is holding a model of an Atlas Agena rocket and a slide rule wrapped in a scroll. There is a quote by her on the base which is we are taking the theoretical and making it real. She was also inducted into the Oklahoma hall of fame in 2023. I think she sounds so interesting and we'll talk more on Friday with the behind the Scenes, I suppose.
- [44:03]
Holly Frey
Do you have listener mail?
- [44:05]
Tracy V. Wilson
I do. This is from Cynthia. It's a correction Cynthia wrote and said hi Holly and Tracy. I'm a longtime listener and look forward to your podcast. Every evening it gets me through my least favorite chore of all time, making lunches for my kids, followed by the sideways a colon and parentheses smiley face. Tonight I listened to your episode regarding Ghost Towns. I heard a small error. You mentioned the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints founder Joseph smith served an eight month mission to Hawaii in 1864. Founder Joseph Smith was actually martyred in 1844. It was his nephew, Joseph F. Smith, Hyrum's son, who served a mission in Hawaii. It is an easy mistake as they both have the same name. Mostly I'm just sending the correction because I've always wanted a reason to write in and say how much I enjoy and appreciate you. Since I'm here, I would love to request an episode on the origins of the International Phonetic Alphabet. As a choir teacher, this is something I use on a regular basis and I'm curious as to how it came to be. I have no current pets because my husband can't have them in the house, but I'll send a few animal pictures from some of the 43 national parks we have visited in the last few years and then got a follow up saying hi, forgot to add my name on the email I just sent, but you probably got it from my email address. Anyway, thanks again, Cynthia. I sure did mess that up. But I had also in a different part of the episode, I had realized that I had messed it up related to something else and that it would be confusing. So I just took that confusing part out note because it was kind of an aside. It wasn't actually related to what we were talking about while the missions to Hawaii were related. So I should have caught that. I'm very sorry. Thank you for sending that note to us. And then, boy, we have some very cute animal pictures. One of them is a horse with just a stunning desert and I think kind of butte background. In the background of it. A mountain goat. I love that too. It has only been within the last, I would say five years of my adult life that I have actually seen a mountain goat doing the thing that they do on the near vertical rock faces. I've seen, you know pictures of that but I was at a zoo and was like wow. I did not realize that it was quite that dramatic. So I love these animal pictures. Anybody? I'm not sure what the first picture is of. It looks like. It could be maybe a marmot or maybe a badger. It is would be easier if I could see what the animal's tail looked like. Anyway, thank you so much Cynthia for that note in these pictures. As I just said, if you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast or at history podcast@iheartradio.com and you can see subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Tracy V. Wilson
This is an iHeart podcast.