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Barbara Egger Lennon: Teacher, Mother, Activist with Tina Brakebill

Barbara Egger Lennon: Teacher, Mother, Activist with Tina Brakebill

Sat Oct 24 13:30:00 2015

The Museum is pleased to announce that Tina Brakebill, author and Illinois State University instructor, will be delivering a talk about her most recent work—Barbara Egger Lennon: Teacher, Mother, Activist—on Saturday, October 24 at 1:30 pm in the Governor Fifer Courtroom. This program is free and open to the public.

Through her research, Brakebill has made it her mission to “[amplify] the previously unheard voices of so-called ordinary women as a means to further our understanding of historical forces.” Staying true to that mission, Brakebill’s close look at the life of Lennon, a native of Switzerland but an honorary Bloomingtonian, seeks to address the tenuous intersection between a Midwestern woman’s duties to her career, her children, and her ideals. In 1920, Lennon ended an almost 20 year career in public education to get married. Within three years, her husband was dead and she was left to raise and provide for an 18-month old child alone. As described by the author, “Those challenges reinforced her belief in the need for social and political change. For the next several decades, her activist role rivaled her responsibilities as mother and teacher.” As mother, educator, and political activist, Lennon “helped to launch the first local teachers union, worked with the Bloomington Trades & Labor Assembly, aided in the founding of Bloomington’s first Civil Liberties Union, lobbied as an officer for the Women’s Trade Union League, and electioneered for local, state, and national Democratic candidates.”

Through the lenses of Lennon’s story, Brakebill’s talk will emphasize the realities of past and present women in the public sphere and hope to draw attention to the “more static reality of assumptions regarding women’s family responsibilities.”

The book Barbara Egger Lennon: Teacher, Mother, Activist (Westview Press, 2015) will be available for purchase in the Cruisin’ with Lincoln on 66 Visitors Center at the price of $20.00 plus tax. A book signing by the author will directly follow the program.

For more information about this program, please contact the Education Department via email at education@mchistory.org or by phone at 309-827-0428. Free parking will be available at the Lincoln Parking Deck located one block south of the Museum on Front Street.

Date/Time

Saturday, October 24, 2015
1:30 pm - 2:00 pm

Cost:

Location

McLean County Museum of History 200 North Main Bloomington IL 61701 (309) 827-0428
http://www.mchistory.org

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