Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Bossier City Once Home to Real-Life Miss Moneypenny

 The character of Miss Moneypenny, made famous by author Ian Fleming in his James Bond novels and the accompanying movies, is intelligent, inquisitive, privy to confidential information, and indispensable to Bond and his director of British Secret Service boss “M”. Few may know that Bossier City was once home to a real-life Moneypenny whose deeds and accomplishments were no less impressive than those of her fictional counterpart.

Betty Wells Rathmell had a life that brimmed with travel, interesting locales, intrigue, access to people of power and influence, athletic ability and a talent for music, and included a love of family and friends and a strong Christian faith.

Born in 1937 in Washington D.C., Betty was a good student, achieving a level of academic success in high school that led after graduation to a position as a secretary with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, where she soon became known for her shorthand skills. According to her daughter Julie Kaiser, Betty was often asked to attend meetings because she was so quick with taking dictation. This in-demand skill had her in gatherings where FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was among the officials present. “She was on call 24 hours a day,” Julie said. “In places like the middle of a church service, she would be called to work.”

Away from the office, Betty’s athletic abilities took center stage for her employer, as a member of the FBI tennis team. Her prowess on the court helped win tournaments and trophies for the organization.


Betty spent nine years with the bureau before transferring to the Pentagon for a secretarial position in military intelligence with the Defense Intelligence Agency, and it was there that she met U.S. Air Force Tech Sergeant Jim Rathmell. The two would marry in 1964.

Adventures overseas were next for Betty, as she and Jim were stationed in countries such as Italy, Spain, Germany and Africa for the USAF, and the two reveled in these opportunities. They loved to travel and experience new places. Julie recounted a story from her parent’s time in Spain that demonstrated her mother’s fearless nature. The couple met a man on a motorcycle and began a conversation with him. “The next thing my dad knew, mom had hopped on the motorcycle with the man and was riding away,” she said.

After five years abroad, Betty and Jim returned to Washington D.C., and in 1969, she accepted a job offer at the White House during the administration of President Richard Nixon. This was soon followed by a promotion. Julie said her mother once mentioned to a family member how the Watergate break-in, which eventually brought down the administration, and the resulting chaos were alarming and frightening for her. But Julie did say her mom liked Nixon and the first family, even naming her daughter after the President’s daughter Julie Nixon.

One final assignment overseas to the American Embassy in Ankara, Turkey was followed by a move to Bossier City and Barksdale Air Force Base in 1977. Julie said her mother had no trouble transitioning from world traveler and intelligence work to being a mother and homemaker. “She was a wonderful mom,” Julie said.

Betty became active in church, sharing her musical talent with others by directing the children’s music programs and playing piano during worship services at retirement homes in Bossier. She also maintained her competitive edge, taking to the bowling alley instead of the tennis court. And she became a grandmother, spending lots of quality time with her three grandchildren. Betty passed away in 2013 at age 76, but left a legacy that continues to inspire. The fictional Miss Moneypenny may have some catching up to do.

If you have any stories, photos or other information relating to women of Bossier Parish who’ve made history, the History Center may be interested in adding the materials to its research collection by donation or by scanning them and returning the originals. Call or visit us to learn more. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org. We can also be found online at https://www.facebook.com/BPLHistoryCenter/

Images: 

  • First photo: Betty Wells Rathmell/family photo
  • Second photo: Betty standing next to J. Edgar Hoover with her tennis trophy/courtesy Julie Kaiser
Article by: Kevin Flowers

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Marching to the Tune of Temperance: Women and Prohibition

March is Women’s History Month. For much of history, women were encouraged to live their lives in the private, or home sphere. But the temperance movement, and prohibition, forbidding by law the sale and/or consumption of alcohol, had women as its most active proponents. Temperance was closely aligned with the women’s suffrage movement. Especially in the south, temperance gave many women, black and white, their first taste of political activism.  Bossier Parish was no exception. 


The effort to eliminate alcohol, or the “dry” movement, as it was often known, began in force in the 1840s. By 1873, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) eclipsed other national antialcohol movements, especially becoming a political power across much of the Midwest and South including Louisiana. This was especially true in the strongly Baptist and Methodist areas of north Louisiana. The Women’s Christian Temperance Unions for Black women in Louisiana and some other states were called “Sojourner Truth” departments of the WCTU, named after the famous abolitionist and temperance advocate. 


There was more to the Temperance Movement than just social views on drinking alcohol. For the women in this movement, their real battle was against the ramifications alcohol had on their lives. Women began in the movement with no voting rights, no or limited rights to their own property, and few ways to make a living on their own, even if the effects of a husband’s alcohol consumption included violence or squandering the family’s funds. Frances Willard, who became the second, and very effective, WCTU president in 1879, smartly applied the WCTU’s doctrine of “home protection” to include suffrage. It was only with political access and power that women could affect the social reforms that would, as Willard called it, “make the whole world home-like,” and safe.  



By the end of the nineteenth century, Bossier Parish had “voted out whisky” and outlawed the sale of alcoholic beverages. The editor of the “Bossier Banner-Progress,” Francis Scanland, stopped taking ads for whisky, even though, according him, they’d been offered ads for a sum of money they could have really used but they “cheerfully took our position with the women and children and prohibitionists of Bossier in their opposition to the whisky monster.” In an editorial in 1912 titled, “No more Whisky Ads,” Scanland went on to applaud other papers in surrounding parishes that were following suit and encouraged other editors to do the same. 




In the United States from 1920 to 1933, a nationwide constitutional law, the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibited the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating beverages. It did not outlaw the possession or consumption of alcohol. The Volstead Act, the federal law that provided for the enforcement of Prohibition, had enough loopholes and weaknesses to open the door to countless schemes to evade the “dry” mandate. Several of these schemes flourished in the backwoods, fields and even towns of Bossier Parish and northwest Louisiana. Reports in the local newspapers show that Bossier Parish law enforcement was kept busy tracking down the bootleggers (illegal manufacturers and distributors of alcoholic drink) and their hidden stills in the towns and remote corners of the parish. 


The WCTU saw that they still had work to do . On July 1, 1926, the “Bossier Banner-Progress” reported that Mrs. J.H. Wheeler, president of the Plain Dealing chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union remarked on the WCTU’s current purposes: 1) “To permit no weakening of the Volstead Law,” 2) “To protest against the weakening or repeal of state enforcement laws, and urge the strengthening of those not in harmony with the Volstead Law,” and 3) “To work patiently, lawfully, fairly, patriotically and prayerfully for the observance and enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment in the confidence that it will forever remain a part of the Constitution.”  To those ends, they would work to win a million members who would each sign the total abstinence pledge and had taken on the slogan, “Help Us to Hold and Enforce the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Law.” They would also enlist all governors, mayors, health directors, businessmen and other authorities to “bring to the attention of the people a realization of the disasters that would follow the return of the traffic in wine and beer.”


Of course, their assumption that the 18th Amendment would forever remain part of the Constitution, was proven incorrect in 1933, but liquor distillers’ activities were put on hold to make alcohol for war purposes. By 1945, this ban was about to lifted and Bossier WCTU women went right back into action themselves. The Bossier City chapter sent an angry telegram to President Harry S. Turman, reminding him of the of the “drunkenness, foolishness, debauchery, immorality, highway accidents, mayhem, suicide and murder” attributed to alcohol consumption, and also emphasized that with grains and sugars used in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages still at a shortage, he needed to save the grain for bread in areas facing starvation in Europe and China, and for them, the women of Bossier, he needed to save the sugar required for their canning of essential foods. The Bossier City WCTU also federated with three unions in  Shreveport and a new WCTU chapter was formed in 1947 in Haughton. As a result of their efforts some parts of Bossier did remain dry by local ordinance well after Prohibition ended. 


If you’d like to know more about Prohibition you can watch episodes of the Ken Burns documentary series “Prohibition” which is available to stream for free with your library card through Kanopy. If you need help accessing Kanopy, contact or visit us at the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center. You can also visit or contact us to peruse our oral history collection, and read the transcript of interviews that talk about prohibition. We are located at 2206 Beckett Street, Bossier City. We are open: M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. For more information, and for other intriguing facts, photos, and videos of Bossier Parish history, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok

Images: 

Article by: Pam Carlisle

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

From Bright Lights Back to Bossier City: There Was No Place Like Home for Judi Ann Mason

When Carter G. Woodson established Negro History week in February, 1926 (which became Black History Month in 1976), he wanted to provide a yearly theme to help focus the public’s attention. The 2024 theme is African Americans and the Arts, including the fields of visual and performing arts, literature, fashion, folklore, language, film, music, architecture, and culinary arts.

Judi Ann Mason was born Feb. 2, 1955, in Bossier City, Louisiana and grew up in Elm Grove, where her families’ history goes back several generations. Her father was a Baptist preacher, as was her grandfather and great-father and more generations back. She became an orphan as a teenager when her father, the Rev. Walter Mason, passed away. Her mother passed away when Judi Ann was 8. She and a sister were raised by their older sister Viola. She graduated from Parkway High School in 1973, where she was among the first African American students to attend. Bossier Parish schools did not desegregate until 1970. The very first year of integration was her sophomore year, which she spent at Bossier High School, then transferred to Parkway for her last two years.

In high school, Judi-Ann participated in choir, drama, journalism club and Future Teachers of America. As the only African-American member in many of these clubs and leadership positions, Judi Ann was already a trailblazer. She recalls classmates laughing at her dreams to attend college (saying marriage or immediately joining the workforce was the more typical plan among her peers), and they really howled with laughter when she said she planned to study speech and drama, laughingly asking, “What are you going to do, go to Hollywood?”

Judi Ann went away to college, but not too far, attending north Louisiana’s HBCU (historically black college or university), Grambling College, which a year later, in 1974, became Grambling State University, and studying speech and drama in the journalism department. While there, she saw an ad for a playwriting contest, with a prize of $ 2,500. She said, “Boy, I could sure use that money,” Mason recalled to the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1995 and penned her first play, “Living Fat,” at the age of 19. She won that American College Theater Festival’s 1975 Norman Lear award for best original comedy.

“Living Fat” was a comedy, which apparently fit with Judi Ann’s sunny personality, Lear later remembered in memorial articles. It covered the dilemma of a poor southern African-American family faced when the father, a bank janitor, came across a windfall of stolen money. It was produced in New York City while Mason was still a college student. Again, while still at Grambling, Mason wrote the play, "A Star Ain't Nothin' but a Hole in Heaven," a semiautobiographical play about an orphaned girl who leaves behind relatives in Louisiana for a broader education. Her senior year in college, it won the first Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award in 1977 for best student-written play. That amazing year Judi Ann also was chosen by Glamour Magazine for its annual list and feature article, “Top Ten College Women.”

When Judi Ann was fresh out of college, and barely 20 years old, Norman Lear hired her to work on his comedy “Good Times” when she moved to Hollywood to pursue a career in screenwriting. Later, she wrote episodes for “Sanford,” and “Beverly Hills, 90120” and co-wrote the 1996 cable TV movie “Sophie & the Moonhanger.” She became executive story editor for “A Different World,” executive story editor for “I’ll Fly Away,” and development executive and associate head writer for the NBC soap opera, “Generations,” the first soap opera to have an African-American family as main characters. She also wrote the screenplay for the Whoopi Goldberg movie, “Sister Act II: Back in the Habit.” She gained several Emmys for her television work, which sometimes based her out of New York City. As the first

African-American woman, and also the youngest woman (of any race) in so many of these roles, she inspired other African-American women and young playwrights and screenwriters after her.

Later in her career, Judi Ann Mason found her calling back home in Bossier City. The Sept 20, 2000 issue of the Shreveport Times reported Judi Ann recalling that she had hiked up to a waterfall at Robert Redford’s ranch in Utah. She realized the peace she found while sitting beside the waterfall, feeling its mist on her face, was something she’d been deeply missing that she wasn’t going to find in Hollywood. She had always maintained a home in Bossier City, and she made the decision to move back fulltime, continuing her writing projects from her Bossier home office.

Once back in Bossier, the children of some old friends asked Judi Ann if she would write a Christmas play for them to perform at their church. She wrote “Joyful, Joyful,” and the play was a hit. The kids asked her for more; she complied, and she realized she had a great love for children’s theatre and inspiring local children to find their voice and follow their dreams. Soon she’d put together an acting team called Rock Sold T4Y (Theater for Youth). Tragically, Judi Ann Mason died too young on July 8, 2009 of a ruptured aorta. She left behind two children.

Visit the History Center to look at an oral history interview with her brother Rev. Walter Mason (Sr.), one of several Baptist ministers who preached here in Bossier. To be able to present the well-rounded view of American history that Carter G. Woodson promoted, the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center is always looking to add more photographs or documents of African-American life in Bossier Parish. We can always make copies and you keep the originals. We are currently focused especially on obtaining photographs and church histories from as many African-American religious congregations in Bossier Parish as possible.

The Bossier Parish Libraries History Center is located at 2206 Beckett St., Bossier City, LA. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.


Images: 

  • Judi Ann Mason’s senior picture in the 1973 Parkway High School yearbook
  • Advertisement for “Livin’ Fat,” A Family Comedy by Judi Ann Mason at the Jubilee Theatre in downtown Fort Worth, TX. “Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dec. 29, 1995
  • Judi Ann Mason pictured in Washington, D. C. with Louisiana Fourth District Congressman Joe D Waggonner Jr, “Bossier Tribune,” Nov. 10, 1977


Article by: Pam Carlisle

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Phyllis Kidd’s Words from the Heart




The special recognition of Black history was begun by Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875 – 1950), a Harvard-trained historian whose parents had been enslaved. Dr. Woodson believed black people had a culture and tradition that scholars should investigate and artists should use as inspiration. He challenged all Americans to understand their country by seeing beyond American culture as simply transplanted British culture.


When Carter G. Woodson established Negro History week in February, 1926 (which became Black History Month in 1976), he wanted to provide a yearly theme to help focus the public’s attention. The 2024 theme is African Americans and the Arts, including the fields of visual and performing arts, literature, fashion, folklore, language, film, music, architecture, and culinary arts.


Ms. Phyllis A. Kidd was a local author and poet from Bossier City. She put her heart and soul into every word she wrote and encouraged other writers, including children, visiting schools and volunteering for Artbreak, a hands-on family festival celebrating the importance of curriculum-based arts programs. She began writing around 1994. Her inspiration to write arrived through her faith in God and heart complications that frightened her into thinking each heartbeat could be her last. She decided it was time to share some things with her two children, and she started with simply writing them letters.


Additional hardships also prompted her to write, including the loss of her job. She recognized that God gave her the desire to write about things she knew about and lived on a daily basis. She found encouragement, kindred spirits and an avenue for publication and poetry readings with the local Trapped Truth Poetry Society. Ms. Kidd’s first book of poems is suitably titled “Straight from the Heart of Phyllis Kidd” located at the History Center. Her later book, “I Still Have My Joy,” was initially typed and proofread by her friend Adrian Lee, who worked at Bossier Central Library. Sadly, Phyllis Kidd passed away in 2001 when she was only 50 years old. Her poem, “Then I Came to Myself” was read at her funeral by her sister Cynthia Kidd:


…I was almost overcome, I was almost vexed beyond belief, I was perplexed, I of all people had become fearful, I was about to give up, to succumb to the enemy, he had me going for a while, “Then I Came to Myself”


...No! No! Self-help Book delivered me, no transcendental meditation did this; it was God all the way!”


I literally took Him at His word, “Then I Came to Myself” (excerpt)


Phyllis Kidd wrote her poem I HAVE AN ATTITUDE (yes, she meant for it to be in all caps) in honor of Black History month:


I HAVE AN ATTITUDE


We are Magnificent, Resourceful, Brilliant, Suave, Arrogant, Proud and Angry, Yes!


And I Wonder Why?


We have Prodigies. We are Skilled. We are Wise. We can Excel, even after being Prohibited. And Angry, Yes!


And I Wonder Why?


We are Perceptive, Keen, Abiding, Submissive, Enduring Servitude, being of Grandeur Descent, and Angry, Yes!


And I Wonder Why?


The Long Hidden Secret is Out. We Are, We Were, We Will Again. And Angry, No!


Because I Know Why.


Her piece titled Jamil Guess What! is in reference to another poem of hers, What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? based on the time her then seven-year-old granddaughter asked her that very question.


Jamil Guess What! (excerpt)


…Who would have ever thought that I would be writing and reading poetry? One never knows what a day may bring. We don’t know what God has in store for us. We don’t know what our lives will evolve into. When you asked me the question, “What do you want to be when I grow up?”, I had no earthly idea that I was still growing. It’s amazing, for life is truly a “journey and not a destination.” I thought I had become all that I was supposed to be.


…So, Jamil, guess what, I’m an Author, or at least somewhat!


Visit the History Center to look at Phyllis Kidd’s poetry books in our collection or view her oral history transcript. (You can also access that in our online collections database.) To be able to present the well-rounded view of American History that Carter G. Woodson promoted, the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center is always looking to add more photographs or documents of African-American life in Bossier Parish. We can always make copies and you keep the originals. We are currently focused especially on obtaining photographs and church histories from as many African-American religious congregations in Bossier Parish as possible.


The Bossier Parish Libraries History Center is located at 2206 Beckett St., Bossier City, LA. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org


For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok,

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

The Green Book: A Remnant of a Segregated World

 Before the days of the Interstate, Henry Smith, Sr. was driving with his wife and two young children, Henry, Jr. and Cheryl, across country, from their home in Seattle, Washington to his and his wife’s home state of Louisiana. They planned to visit relatives outside of Baton Rouge. They had just crossed into northwestern Louisiana when little Cheryl piped up from the back that she needed to use the restroom. Henry, Sr. looked at the road signs. They were just entering Bossier City, an area with which he was well familiar, having served in the Civilian Conservation Corps on Barksdale Air Force Base and in the small Bossier Parish communities of Haughton and Plain Dealing prior to his service in WWII. Barksdale and the CCC camps had offered the all-black units some protection, but off-base or out-of-camp, he hadn’t forgotten how the black units were made to feel unwelcome and unsafe. He begged her to wait, exclaiming that Bossier City was the absolute worst place of the entire trip for them to have to make a stop. The little girl insisted she could NOT wait.

              
Mr. Henry Smith (junior), researcher and author, can tell you this story better, and how upon seeing the condition of the segregated “facilities” the white gas station attendant offered, his little sister realized she could “hold it” after all. You will have the opportunity to hear him tell this story and others at Green Book Sites in Louisiana: Remnants and Recollections of a Segregated World: A Black History Month talk and slideshow at the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center along with Kevin Shannahan, reporter and photographer. This special program will be held Thursday, Feb. 22nd, 2024 at 6pm at 2206 Beckett St., Bossier City, LA.

The “Negro Motorist/Travelers’ Green Book” was a road-travel and vacation guide for African-Americans that was published in the U.S. from 1936 to 1967, a time when segregation and suspicion toward African-American travelers meant anything from a lack of available services, to grave threats toward their safety. “The Green Book” was a directory of service providers and accommodations that welcomed African-American travelers, including hotels, motels, gas stations, and beauty salons. With a characteristic green cover, it was published by an African-American postal worker in Harlem, New York named Victor Hugo Green. The book expanded as Green gathered tips from readers and other postal workers from around the country, eventually listing more than 9,500 safe havens nationwide.


Kevin Shannahan’s images of the remnants of Green Book sites in Louisiana provide a way to explore African-American history through a photographic lens that highlights black entrepreneurship in Louisiana. His photos show the architectural and artifactual remains of these historically successful businesses that served local African American customers and those who were making safe passage to somewhere else. A reporter and photographer, Mr. Shannahan has been a resident of Natchitoches since 1994. A former Air Force officer, he taught in the Troops to Teachers Program in Red River Parish for four years and is a recently retired state employee. Kevin has a professional photography business, Kevin Shannahan Photography and is a writer and photographer for the Natchitoches Parish Journal. He is also an amateur historian with an interest in Louisiana during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras.

                  

Mr. Smith’s stories of traveling cross-country by automobile with his parents and little sister from Seattle to Louisiana in the 1950’s will vividly provide the context within which the Green Book existed, the inconveniences and perils for African-Americans traveling the roads of America in the Jim-Crow era. Currently of Bossier City, Mr. Smith was raised in Seattle, Washington. He was the Dr. James W. Washington, Jr. and Janie Rogella Washington Foundation Writer-in-Residence for June 2019 in Seattle. He is a Board member of The Gloster Arts Project of Gloster, MS, and has formerly worked as a libraryand archives technician, including for the National Archives in Atlanta, Georgia and Washington, DC. He is completing a book based on his father’s life story called The Big Picture.

Please come visit us on Thursday night February 22nd to hear Mr. Smith’s and Shannahan’s program. Or stop by anytime this month to see our black history month displays, including a small one on the Green Book that also highlights additional resources on the Green Book, such as books and videos, both digital and traditional, available for all ages within the Bossier Parish Libraries system. The Bossier Parish Libraries History Center is located at 2206 Beckett St., Bossier City, LA. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org


For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok.