The Girl Scouts of the USA

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[SPEAKER_02]: This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host, Kelly Theresa Pollock.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app so you never

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[SPEAKER_02]: Tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen to.

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[SPEAKER_02]: In 1912, Savannah Native, Juliet Gordon Low, having just returned from England, supposedly called her cousin, Nina Pape.

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[SPEAKER_02]: and exclaimed, come right over!

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[SPEAKER_02]: I've got something for the girls of Savannah for all of America and for the world, and we're going to start it tonight.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Whether or not that fateful phone call actually happened, the first report of it showed up 16 years later, low did hold the first meeting

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[SPEAKER_02]: forming a troupe of 18 Savannah girls.

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[SPEAKER_02]: A year earlier, low had befriended British Army officer, Sir Robert Baton Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts Association, which had spread throughout Europe and the United States.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Low became involved in the sister organization, the Girl Guides,

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[SPEAKER_02]: In Savannah, low combined her experiences with the girl guides in Scotland and England with her wealth and social connections to build the girl scouts of the USA to become a bigger organization than the other various girl groups like the campfire girls, which were already in existence.

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[SPEAKER_02]: By 1917, First Lady, Edith Wilson, served as the honorary president, as did every First Lady after her, a sign of the prominence of the organization.

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[SPEAKER_02]: In 1918, the Girl Scouts produced a 20-minute silent movie, The Golden Eglit, which followed a girl named Margaret Ferris, somewhere in the USA,

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[SPEAKER_02]: who joins the girl scouts, and after learning valuable skills saves the day by giving first aid to a telegraph operator who was robbed.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And sending a message for help, VMware's code.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Her golden eagle award is pinned on her by Julia Gordon-Low herself.

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[SPEAKER_02]: The film, which you can still watch on YouTube and Vimeo, ends with a screen reading.

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[SPEAKER_02]: If you believe the Girl Scouts are making good, why don't you start a troupe, right to headquarters for information how to do it?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Much of the film highlights Margaret's time at Camp, which, from early on, was an important

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[SPEAKER_02]: meant to, quote, restore the girl to her pioneer heritage, unquote.

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[SPEAKER_02]: By the 1930s, the Girl Scouts were focused on establishing permanent camps.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Operating 575 of them by 1932, with over 50,000 Girl Scouts attending the camps each year.

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[SPEAKER_02]: One of the ways that the Girl Scouts funded these campoutings was, of course, through cookie sales.

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[SPEAKER_02]: In the Girl Scout magazine, the American Girl, a local Chicago director published a cookie recipe in July of 1922, encouraging the girls to bake and sell the cookies door to door.

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[SPEAKER_02]: In the 1930s, troops turned to commercial bakeries for production of the cookies, with the Greater Philadelphia Council being the first to sell commercially baked cookies in 1934.

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[SPEAKER_02]: By 1936, the National Girl Scouts began licensing commercial bakeries for the National

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[SPEAKER_02]: and within a year, more than 125 council's reported cookie sales.

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[SPEAKER_02]: In the 1940s, the Girl Scouts launched a campaign for a millionaire more by 44.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And, indeed, in the 1944 annual report, the Girl Scouts noted that they had reached a million Girl Scouts by July of that year.

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[SPEAKER_02]: including the troops in the United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Panama.

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[SPEAKER_02]: That million included 26,000 black girl scouts, who had to fight for their right to participate, especially in the south, but also in other regions.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It also included girls in Japanese American incarceration centers.

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[SPEAKER_02]: In 1953, the Girl Scouts of the USA bought the Savannah House in which Juliet Gordon Low was born.

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[SPEAKER_02]: The purchase and restoration was funded by both the National Campaign and Grassroots Fundraising.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Since 1950, the Girl Scouts had a policy that national events could only be held in places

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[SPEAKER_02]: where all participants had equal access to restaurants, lodging, and meeting centers.

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[SPEAKER_02]: A policy that was adopted after a national convention was held in Long Beach, California, a city whose hotels refused to house the black troops.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Savannah in 1956 was equally unwelcoming to the black girls and women, which should have precluded a national event

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[SPEAKER_02]: Thus, the Girl Scouts called the 1956 opening a regional event, allowing it to go forward.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Black and white Girl Scouts had to visit the home separately, and the sleeping quarters were closed down to ensure that Black troops did not sleep there.

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[SPEAKER_02]: The birthplace was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1965,

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[SPEAKER_02]: and Girl Scout troops continue to make pilgrimage to the spot.

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[SPEAKER_02]: You can also hold your wedding at the Julia Gordon-Low birthplace for a $3,000 venue rental fee.

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[SPEAKER_02]: The website notes that Julia Gordon-Low herself celebrated her wedding reception in the home.

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[SPEAKER_02]: where the happy couple, quote, stood under a marriage bell of flowers, unquote, in what they describe as a joyful celebration.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Not noted is how unhappy the marriage itself was, or that it nearly ended and divorced.

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[SPEAKER_02]: The Girl Scouts of the USA currently claims 2.5 million members, more than 1.7 million girls,

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[SPEAKER_02]: along with more than 50 million Girl Scout alums.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Those alumni include 60% of the women in the 116th Congress, and all three women who have served as Secretary of State of the United States.

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[SPEAKER_02]: In June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, the Girl Scouts published an anti-racism pledge on their website.

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[SPEAKER_02]: As of this recording, there is still pledge posted on the page that begins, Girl Scouts of the USA is an anti-racist organization.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Joining me in this episode is Dr. Amy Farrell.

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[SPEAKER_02]: The James Hoops called Well Memorial Chair and Professor of American Studies and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies at Dickinson College.

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[SPEAKER_03]: and author of Intrepid Girls, the complicated history of the Girl Scouts of the USA.

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[SPEAKER_03]: Where the things are going To tell you, I adore you

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[SPEAKER_02]: Amy, thanks so much for joining me today.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's wonderful to be here.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It was really fun to read about the Girl Scouts and to learn about this history.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to ask a little bit about how you got started on writing this book.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I believe you've written several books before, so, you know, why did you choose this topic now?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks very much, Kelly, for asking that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I actually, one of the great things about teaching at Dickinson College is that the college is really in my colleagues really encouraged me and all of us to follow our passions in terms of our writing interest.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I had finished my book that shame and I.

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[SPEAKER_01]: was looking for a new project and I knew there'd been something in the back of my head along for a long time.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I had been a Girl Scout in the 1970s and it was an extremely important experience for me.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I was always looking about and seeing that there really hadn't been that much written about the Girl Scouts, especially as compared to the Boy Scouts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I wanted

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[SPEAKER_01]: to simultaneously reflect on what that experience meant to me and why it was so powerful.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But then how that little bit of my life fit into a bigger picture of this organization and especially this organization within US history.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So that was really my interest in getting started with it.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So, this is obviously not a memoir, but it is a personal history.

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[SPEAKER_02]: At least parts of it are a personal history for you.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Could you talk a little bit about that as researcher, thinking about your own memories as a form of archive?

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[SPEAKER_02]: How you think about that work with that as you're doing this research?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's really an interesting question because that was, that was actually really key for me, I and anyone who picks up the book quickly will see this, I was a bullied child in the in the 1970s very sensitive and

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[SPEAKER_01]: just didn't really function very well in in kind of group settings and things were not going while for me personally as an eight-year-old and then within a few years I found the Girl Scouts and so I always looked back on this organization that had given me

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[SPEAKER_01]: confidence and a really outlet for deep curiosities and allowed me to achieve without feeling like I was taking up too much space.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But I also knew as a historian and someone who has studied

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[SPEAKER_01]: race and class and body politics that no organization is just, you know, I wanted to go back and look at that in particularly my experience as as a white woman and as a white feminist.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Thinking through, how do I, how do we learn what we know?

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[SPEAKER_01]: How do we learn?

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[SPEAKER_01]: How do we learn to be, and especially the phrase that kept coming back to me is I was thinking about this, how do we learn to be confident, but how do we learn to be innocent?

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[SPEAKER_01]: How do we learn that we decide that we don't have responsibility, or even cultural responsibility, if not personal

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[SPEAKER_01]: So really for me, I thought back on my own experiences, one of my best friends still is one of my Girl Scout friends from that time.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So sometimes I would check in with her, do I might like off on this memory?

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[SPEAKER_01]: But I also,

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[SPEAKER_01]: wanted to retrace, especially a lot of our experiences when we travel to, I was from Ohio, when we took this big and it really took so much organization and money and time, we took this big pilgrimage down to the Julia Gordinlow birthplace in Savannah.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I wanted to retrace that because that was a very powerful experience.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And we learned nothing about slavery and slave men.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We learned about fancy houses and we sort of imagine ourselves as Scarlet O'Hara.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I actually, while the book is by, by no means a memoir, there is a threat through it where I'm putting my own experience into that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And that trip is the one place where I actually stop.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and really use that trip as the moment of archived and it was actually working with Dickinson's students.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I found through one of my archival trips to Ohio.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We found the old scrapbook from my troop and we found the materials from what we called the Girl Scout Plantation where we stayed.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then with my students we actually found the records from that plantation.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and laid over what my experiences were in the 1970s with the history of that space, that still gives me, I just have to really pause when I think about that moment of doing the research and of writing about that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So you're right, Kelly, it's not a memoir, but there are places

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[SPEAKER_01]: How did it shape who I am?

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[SPEAKER_01]: How did it shape the absences of what we know?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And for that reason, I think for those people who were girl scouts or who experienced anything similar to this, I'm hoping it gives people when I went to reflecting on their own lives.

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[SPEAKER_02]: In my previous life, I was a really just study scholar, and I felt some of my really just studies antenna tingling when you were writing about pilgrimage and the myth making around Julia Gordon-Low.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I wonder if you could talk about some about her as an important figure in sort of the mythos of the Girl Scouts and that myth making peace started so early.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's really interesting because for listeners who don't know Julia Gordon low is is the woman who's credited with founding the Girl Scouts of the USA.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She was a white southern woman born in 1860, so right in the cusp of the Civil War in Savannah to a slave holding family.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She got married.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It was an unhappy marriage.

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[SPEAKER_01]: They almost got divorced.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She's married to a

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[SPEAKER_01]: He dies before they get divorced and after a struggle, a legal battle, she actually inherits his estate as well.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She returned to the United States after she's had this experience working with Robert Baton Powell, who is the founder of the Boy Scouts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so she comes back and decides she's going to start the Girl Scouts here in the United States.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It turns out there actually were a lot of different people in this kind of progressive era of the United States who were starting girls groups, some of them even called Girl Scouts, but she was able to use her society ties, her wealth and really a very strong, powerful personality as well to forge and to sort of claim the ownership of founding the Girl Scouts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: The reality is, I think Girl Scouts are indebted to her in so many ways.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, she is the founder, but the reality was that from the beginning, she was marshalling the work and the ideas and the energy of so many different women.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So the Girl Scouts quickly becomes an organization of professional women and of volunteer women, as well as all the girls who are part of it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I say that because we often think of it as like the singular founder, but the reality is she was the force, the initial force, but it was a movement.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, that's often the language that she used that was made up of so many different women who were part of this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But the Girl Scouts organization from the time that she died in the late 1920s really immediately

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[SPEAKER_01]: picked up on the kind of power of her personality and created a mist surrounding her.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know, so some of the very early books and remembrances about her became then like the root of almost every kind of popular book about Julia Gordon Laws.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, it's interesting to me because in some ways, I replicate that because I start with her story.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But what interests me is really how the story about her has transformed.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It is the organization has maintained a focus on her, and on that personality.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But it has changed sort of what it is meant, so that in the early days,

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was, there was a lot of skepticism about why she, you know, that she was almost divorced, that she was childless.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And the story of her divorce just was nowhere in those early stories.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It was all about her being a sweet child.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Her parents came to kind of stand in for the happy heterosexual marriage, a marriage between North and South, which was really important to the Girl Scouts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Her mother was from Chicago, her father from Savannah,

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[SPEAKER_01]: And the fact that she was childless was sort of seen in the stories, I think, is something sad in her life, and that's why she embraced all these girls, all these girls were her daughters.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But then over time that changed, you know, as I think, especially in the 1950s, there was concern that maybe she was being seen as a lesbian.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the reality was,

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[SPEAKER_01]: She, after she became a widow, she didn't have much to do with men.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, she really, she enjoyed being in her uniform with her stats and hat, and she really hung mostly with other women.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And all of a sudden, then the story of that unhappy marriage gets highlighted.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I would, I, I surmised it's because even though that's not such a pretty story, it showed that she was heterosexual and that she just had this kind of

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[SPEAKER_01]: tragic marriage.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And now I would say jumping forward decades, you know, she sort of pictured as a kind of badass woman that she's look at her.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She was, she was actually deaf and one year and then both the year she had a severe hearing impairment.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She, you know, had this divorce, she fought her husband and look at what she did.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, she was just able to to manage all of that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's interesting though, but I think

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[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of the organization, the part that is not so easy just to sort of shape shift is the story of the enslavement and that her family came from, were family that enslave people in the home she grew up with there would have been enslave people and then people who were servants after the war but within that era of reconstruction when they really were being stripped of any rights that they had been given, you know, that they had been granted immediately after the war,

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[SPEAKER_01]: And that story, it's a little difficult sometimes to square up.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this heroic story with that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I say, you know, in my work, I want us to linger on that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know what to think about what we do with heroes or heroines who have not just like, oh, that's a little bit of a problem, but it's like, it's a fundamental part of her story.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And that her money came from enslavement and her money also came from,

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[SPEAKER_01]: Indigenous genocide because her mother's families were all sort of quote unquote founders of Chicago and made their wealth from pushing out Indigenous peoples in that area so.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, for me, I'm like, let's not, it's not part of the story.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's a fundamental part of this story.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But it's also, it's fascinating how that story has shifted over time and how, you know, how do we try to say, oh, we just didn't know about that story, or we just didn't think about that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I asked us to kind of linger on that and say, did we really not know that or what is the definitive choice to say something doesn't matter?

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[SPEAKER_02]: So, the Sceners may be thinking, we've got an organization founded by women to empower girls and give them experiences and we're talking about, you know, this badass woman.

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[SPEAKER_02]: This all sounds a little bit like feminism, but as you talk about in the book, they very deliberately do not use the word feminist or feminism.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Can you talk some about that dynamic and what the Girl Scouts are sort of trying to do here?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, that for me was one of the most interesting things and it really started with my reflecting on my own experience in the Girl Scouts because as I said, I was a bully kid, I was experiencing sexual harassment at school and and I was also being told as a girl, you know, really don't don't take up too much space, you know, etc.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Girl Scouts gave me a safe space from all that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I could take up space.

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[SPEAKER_01]: There were no boys there who were who were tormenting me.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean it was, but what I noted immediately was this that we never called that feminism.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely not.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean that was just not part of the story of what.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying that that's not going to be true in any truth because different truths are different.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But in my truth, in the 1970s, height of second

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[SPEAKER_01]: And what I found in doing this research is that that has been true from the origins of the Girl Scouts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That when Julie Gordon Low came back to the United States, really she was bringing back the Girl Guides with her from England.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But she changed the name pretty quickly to Scouts because she said, hey, girls, just like that better.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I would argue looking at the material that it was about wanting

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[SPEAKER_01]: to take up space next to boys and claim that word of scout, which was much more active, masculineist, sort of evoked the scouts out west, fighting the Indians, the scouts in India, et cetera, in the country of India, the British scouts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But she would never claim that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know it was just this is just something that's better.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She herself was never a suffragist.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She thought that

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[SPEAKER_01]: the entire time, and even then up, you know, into like the 1990s when I was able actually to interview the woman who had been the CEO of the Girl Scouts Francis Hesselbein.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She said, I said, well, what about feminism?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And she just nodded her head, no.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like she didn't even say she was like, we never used that word.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She wouldn't even say it to say we never used the word feminism.

24:25.165 --> 24:27.248
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's about,

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[SPEAKER_01]: saying, we want this space for girls, and we want this space for women, but we are not going to step over a line that is going to scare people with that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And it's also about the fundamental, I would argue, especially originating whiteness of the organization, that it was something

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[SPEAKER_01]: white girls of certain kind of class standings, especially kind of the kind of middle-class ethos, to take up some space as long as they didn't go too far.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And without claiming that were too then when they really came under fire, when the Girl Scouts came under fire, for basically believing too much in democratic rights and civil rights and in girls' rights.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm thinking

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[SPEAKER_01]: In the red scare of the 1950s when they were accused of being communist, they could say hey, we're just a girls organization like we're just a nice girls organization that wants to do good things for girls, you know, we're not we're not feminists.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I think one of the things I reflect on in the book is that has given this organization the ability to access many girls' lives and women's lives who would probably have otherwise not been part of it.

25:48.281 --> 26:00.617
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember when I was talking to one colleague who, you know, has become this amazing scholar and she said, my family would have never let me join the girl scouts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But it also came with great risks and great consequence because it meant that the very fact that we often don't take Girl Scout seriously, do you know?

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[SPEAKER_01]: We don't take Girl seriously.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We think it's a silly organization.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying myself, I'm saying sort of the general ethos about it that girls and women are still encouraged not to step over a line, that it's fine for you to have this much, but don't go that far.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and even to the extent to which there have not been for the most part very explicit conversations about reproductive rights, which are so fundamental, to the ability of girls to be able to function in the world.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's about claiming that space of safety, but it comes at great loss for girls' lives.

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[SPEAKER_02]: is some of the more surprising parts of your book are the existence, not just existence, the sort of pushing Girl Scouts into the Japanese internment camps, into Indian boarding schools, into these places that are really terrible moments in our history.

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[SPEAKER_02]: But where I think it's, again, something we have to sit with, right, like this is a terrible moment.

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[SPEAKER_02]: This is pushing a type of culture on to these people.

27:22.590 --> 27:33.733
[SPEAKER_02]: And yet, some of these girls who were in a Girl Scout troop in a Japanese internment camp probably had good experiences, like wrestling with that duality.

27:34.557 --> 27:56.228
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, and that's why in the end, the title of the book is the complicated history, because one of the things that's interesting when I started the research, there really wasn't that much archival research on, or archival materials available in the Girl Scout Archives on the Japanese American incarceration centers, all the internment camps.

27:56.208 --> 28:03.038
[SPEAKER_01]: But there was a lot on Native Americans, on Indians, and within those files, and often filed under diversity.

28:03.539 --> 28:07.324
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was sort of a sense of, like, see, we've always been diverse.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I, I really needed to immediately say, we need to, I need to stop here, because this isn't about who's welcomed in.

28:16.979 --> 28:19.903
[SPEAKER_01]: This is about pushing out into,

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[SPEAKER_01]: into these spaces that have been in some of really the darkest parts of U.S. history.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so in the American Indian boarding schools, Girl Scouts were not just the own, they were not the only organization that are all sorts of organizations, the YWCA Girl Reserves, other organizations that the Red Cross had organizations

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[SPEAKER_01]: And the same with the internment camps, but Girl Scouts really explicitly saw in the terms of the Indian schools saw their job as civilizing and one of the things that was probably like the most convoluted was that the Girl Scouts would take things that they identified as

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[SPEAKER_01]: Things that were indigenous, so like the ability to know how to build a fire or to actually be able to sleep outside and know how to live with nature or how to do beadwork or how to do any kind of different kinds of woodworking crafts and tell the girls who are at these schools.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, that's not Indian stuff, that's girl scout stuff.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like you're actually one of your very, you're very much a girl scout.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You're just like Pokohontis was actually off in the language there.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But here's the, the other part of it that just gets more complicated in terms of like on the ground how this worked out is that within some of the Indian schools I found

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, records from girls who spoke positively about the experience, and also from moms who if they did live close enough that they could visit the schools who wanted to be part of those of those activities.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think it shows the extent to which people use the means available to them.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so the extent to which Girl Scouting provided a way that especially within so many of the Indian schools there was such an attempt to eradicate Indian ways that Girl Scouts were a space where actually

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[SPEAKER_01]: They could practice, you know, their various skills.

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[SPEAKER_01]: In the schools where clothes were in such shortage, they had access to a uniform, you know, on another set of clothing that might have been interesting or at least just another set of clothing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And they also sometimes got to leave the schools to go on outings, just like I got to go on the big trip down to, you know, down to Georgia.

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[SPEAKER_01]: They got to go to, you know, out camping or out doing things, actually leaving the school.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And the same was true, you know, as soon as Roosevelt put in the order to incarcerate people of Japanese descent, Girl Scouts got involved immediately and actually made an agreement with the U.S. government that they would help to organize troops within the camps.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And, in fact,

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[SPEAKER_01]: Someone actually just asked me one of my students just asked me I don't understand where these white girls who went into the troops kind of like going into help and I said no these were there might have been some white leadership teams who I know there were sometimes who went into the camps but

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[SPEAKER_01]: within almost all of the incarceration centers and they even started in the assembly centers where people were often brought first to like these race tracks that had been turned into make-shift prisons and then people were sent off to these faraway camps.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Interestingly, many of the

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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I would want to say many but there was a sizable number of girls who had already been Girl Scouts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Girl Scouts were something that were already part of Japanese American life within Los Angeles, within San Francisco.

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[SPEAKER_01]: These were already part of life.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So for many girls, in fact some of the oral histories I read that were so poignant of the very few things

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[SPEAKER_01]: And they were excited to start the troops like it was something that was the tiniest bit positive within just horrific environments.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it was the same thing that it provided an outlet.

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[SPEAKER_01]: for girls to actually have access to be with each other and often spaces within the camps that were as the so crowded and overcrowded there was like an you know often spaces that were actually carved out for Girl Scouts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: They sometimes were able to take trips to actually leave the camps, so it was actually really poignant in terms of reading some of the oral histories.

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[SPEAKER_01]: One in particular, a woman who said the interviewer asked her, was there anything anything good about the camps and she said it was all horrible, it was all horrible, she just recounts one horrible thing after another.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then she pauses and says,

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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, actually, I really remember fondly my girl scouts that there was an older, like a teenage girl who who led her troop, they were able to take trips.

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[SPEAKER_01]: They had fun.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it was like actually a little moment where they played and had laughs.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so I wouldn't say any of that excuses, the culpability of this organization, especially when we saw the extent to which

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[SPEAKER_01]: the girls were really asked to do just this convoluted thing where they were acting as their own prisoners.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know like wearing their girls got uniforms and welcoming in new prisoners coming in on the trains, but they themselves were prisoners.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I just thought this is really convoluted and pretty horrific, but I really had to look at that and go, but these are some of the only good experiences that these girls had.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and created friendships that they will still, they still as adults, rely on.

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[SPEAKER_02]: We, of course, can't talk about the Girl Scouts without talking about cookies.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So whenever you could just talk a little bit about the cookies not just as cookies, of course, but as this sort of symbol and the real economic power that these cookie sales had that they're funding these trips that people are going on at one point, these cookie sales to buy a plantation, like, you know, can you just sort of reflect on the cookies?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.

34:51.649 --> 34:59.102
[SPEAKER_01]: It was really early in girl scout history that individuals troops started to basically have big sales.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's the early like 1922.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We have one of the earliest records, but it could have gone before that individual troops doing this where they would make cookies and sell them.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, I just, we just tried at home making that original recipe.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It didn't come out so well, but whatever.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Now it's just kind of curious about it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But starting in the 1930s and then certainly really picking up in the 1940s, the GSA started to make contracts with commercial bakeries.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And those the cookies were really much more standardized.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Though even to this day, if you get cookies from different parts of the country, they often even though they're standardized recipes, they will taste slightly different because they will be coming from different bakeries.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But they were early on away for troops to make money.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so the interesting thing about it,

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[SPEAKER_01]: Many people would say, you know, like, well, how horrible I'm buying these cookies and it's just going to a national organization and paying, you know, these big salaries of someone in the national organization, the reality is that really the money from those girls go cookies stays within the troop and within the local council.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So,

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[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like my trip to Savannah was from Akronohio.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't have, I remember, we had a lot of car washes too, but otherwise was mostly funded with Girl Scout sales.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Girl Scout cookie sales.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So.

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[SPEAKER_01]: The flip side of that is that it kind of maintained wealth where it was already because girls generally with sell cookies within their own communities.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So those communities that had money would be able to buy more cookies and those that didn't know cookies.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It really dependent upon people having a

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[SPEAKER_01]: homes to store the cookies.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So my mom, for instance, who really was not a big volunteer by any means, I think she was feeling guilty because I was so active in the Girl Scouts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She became Cookie Mom one year and our entire family room, which was actually a pretty big room.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it wasn't, it was a modest enough house, but it was a really big room.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It was just entirely filled with cookies and really took a lot of

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[SPEAKER_01]: bookkeeping on her part to figure that, you know, to figure that out and for a troop of 40 people, everyone getting these, you know, huge amounts of boxes.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So if you didn't have someone who had a house or a space that could take in these cookies,

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[SPEAKER_01]: you just didn't have access to that money making ability.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So some of that is a little different now.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think that there has been some attempt to sort of figure this out among, you know, not so much the sharing of money among troops, but especially figuring out the story and of cookies, but that's still an issue.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But it is big business.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And it's millions and millions of dollars of a business that's really being fueled by girls who become the entrepreneurs in an early age.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And that's interesting.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And Girl Scouts are very proud of that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That they teach

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[SPEAKER_01]: girls how to do sales, how to be responsible.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I also think depending upon the trip again, girls really do learn that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So for instance, within my own experience of it, we really made all the plans to do that big pilgrimage, which meant in retrospect, our leaders worked so hard because they probably had to watch us do it all and then they had to make sure

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[SPEAKER_01]: But here's the deal about cookies is cookies are sweet, right?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I mean, they're literally sweet, but they're also cute.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think there are another way that Girl Scouts have been able to tow this line.

38:51.166 --> 38:56.971
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a little bit like, it's really a little bit like the not calling themselves feminist.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, on the one hand, it was just a brilliant marketing thing.

38:59.994 --> 39:03.377
[SPEAKER_01]: Like compared to, what do Boy Scouts, so I don't even know what they sell.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But Girl Scouts have this item.

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[SPEAKER_01]: it's hugely popular, it's symbolically popular.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But it's also something sweet and something cute.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So for instance, the language about the Girl Scout Council in South Carolina buying what was the Girl Scout Plantation where I stayed, it was like literally cookies buying the plantation, like the sweetness buying the plantation.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think symbolically,

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[SPEAKER_01]: it has worked in very powerful ways to both fundamentally finance an entire corporation, but also give cover of something that's just just very sweet.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's not dangerous at all.

39:52.518 --> 40:00.807
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, in fact, if you see girls in your, you know, now so much of it is digital, but if you see

40:00.787 --> 40:09.337
[SPEAKER_01]: talk about a knock, a quiet knock on my door, as an adult, and seen that the neighborhood is swarming with girls selling girls cookies.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And that's, I think many people have had that experience in sort of think of that with a smile.

40:16.385 --> 40:21.891
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot more incredible detail in this book, but I want to encourage people to just go buy the book.

40:22.031 --> 40:24.634
[SPEAKER_02]: So can you tell listeners how they can get a copy?

40:25.576 --> 40:30.744
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you can, I would encourage you to go to your local bookstore and pick up a copy.

40:30.944 --> 40:32.466
[SPEAKER_01]: It should be available everywhere.

40:32.506 --> 40:38.054
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also available online through all the big sources that we know about online as well.

40:38.194 --> 40:40.678
[SPEAKER_01]: So it would be available anywhere at this point.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Is there anything else you want to make sure we talk about?

40:44.577 --> 40:59.556
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the only thing I would want to end with is just for us to think about, I think a lot of times we don't think about these organizations that again seem sweet and also because they're about a child and girl children.

41:00.037 --> 41:07.366
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't think of the extent to which they have shaped US culture and really imperial culture as well.

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[SPEAKER_01]: What are the tentacles of this?

41:09.669 --> 41:11.732
[SPEAKER_01]: What work has this done?

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[SPEAKER_01]: and what have been people's experiences with it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Because one thing we didn't talk about too, but that I really traced throughout the book is the extent to which Girl Scouts were really at the center of the battle over the color line.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So while Girl Scouts didn't

41:27.828 --> 41:33.097
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, they always explicitly said they were welcoming to everyone that was not really true.

41:33.117 --> 41:46.961
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know, and so had very explicit policies to limit African-American membership and the extent to which black girls and women have really been fundamental to really fighting for inclusion?

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think that

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[SPEAKER_01]: looking at this organization, we can see the complicated ways that that happens, in ways that can be discounted or dismissed to under this kind of guys of innocence.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, the extent to which I would say, very brave African-American women, girls, and some white women and girls, really at the fore of, of insisting that an organization live up to its

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[SPEAKER_01]: And that to me was one of the really powerful, you know, powerful threads through my own my own study of this, especially as someone who grew up in a white troop in a white world that that just wasn't kind of an innocent thing that happened, but those lines were being police by this organization.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And who was fighting for a different way of imagining, you know,

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[SPEAKER_02]: Amy, thank you so much for sticking with me.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It was just a joy to learn about the Girl Scouts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Really enjoyed it.

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[SPEAKER_03]: I hear him calling you Yet they are in calling you

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[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to Unsung History.

43:36.081 --> 43:39.605
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43:40.086 --> 43:45.573
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43:46.193 --> 43:52.281
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