may be the capital of the nation, but the District of 

 Columbia is definitely south of the Mason-Dixon line. 

 The hiring policies of the Smithsonian have been no 

 more enlightened than those of the area and the times. 



Neil Judd wrote in 1968: "My only assistant for this 

 19 11 undertaking and for the accompanying laboratory 

 work . . . was a Civil War veteran who had joined the 

 staff in 1878. ... In his later years failing health re- 

 duced the old gentleman's activities and a Negro, Charles 

 T. Terry, Jr. was employed as probational aide to mark 

 specimens — the first to break the segregation barrier 

 in our division of archaeology. P rom the beginning any 

 nonwhite assistant gradually advanced to become an 

 indispensible member of the organization. He not only 

 numbered specimens but kept our records of the study 

 collections so that any given object, if called for by a 

 visiting scientist could be brought to the laboratory with 

 minimum delay.""' Terry's name did not appear on the 

 staff lists. 



Anothei black employee, Ulysses Lyons, began as a 

 laborer in the early 1950s at $1.07 an hour. After a few 

 months and some struggle, he was able to transfer to 

 the Division of Ethnology in the Department of An- 

 thropology as a GS-2, the second-lowest rating in the 

 General Service scale. Shortly after Clifford Evans be- 

 came chairman of the Department of Anthropology in 

 1970, he hired the first black female departmental sec- 

 retary in the Museum." Sophie Lutterlough, hired in 

 1943 as the first female elevator operator, eventually 

 became a preparator in Entomology and stayed with 

 the Museum for forty years.'" At the present time, though 

 other minority groups are represented, there are no 

 American blacks on the scientific staff. 



For the first decade of the building's existence, there 

 was only one female professional on the staff — Mary 

 Jane Rathbun, the "crab lady." The geologist Julia 

 Gardner had been in the building since before the start 

 of World War 1, during which she drove an ambulance. 



but she did not get a government position until the 

 early 1920s. In 1919 Doris M. Cochran, the "frog lady," 

 was listed as an aide, but it was not until 1927 that she 

 was promoted to assistant curator. Doris Blake, the widow 

 of an eminent botanist, was a volunteer in Entomology 

 who for decades had an office in the rotunda just off 

 the fourth-floor attics. For years, especially after Dr. 

 Blake died, the two Dorises were the closest of friends, 

 and it was the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles that 

 provided office space for Mrs. Blake from 1962 on- 

 ward, when the other entomologists left the building. 



One interesting phenomenon, now slowly dying out, 

 is the tradition of the volunteer wife. Perhaps Betty 

 Meggers, who contributed so much to the anthropology 

 halls, is the type example. One wife learned to read 

 Russian so that she could make proper entries in a card 

 catalogue of species maintained by her husband. There 

 are nepotism rules, and occasionally wives work else- 

 where in the Institution if husbands work for the Mu- 

 seum. 



A very few women were added to the staff in the 

 1940s and 1950s; during the same interval, a slightly 

 greater proportion of women appeared on the staffs 

 of the affiliated organizations. Nothing changed until 

 the 1970s, when some members of the "baby boom" 

 generation began to be hired. Women scientists are still 

 very much the exception, but the eight on the present 

 Museum staff about equal the total that were on the 

 staff for the first sixty years of the building's history. 



One long-time feminine stronghold is the Office of 

 the Registrar, first formally established in 1881. These 

 people account for each specimen in the collections; 

 currently the museum is approaching 69 million spec- 

 imens. When the new building was ready, the registrar 

 moved across the Mall, since most of the new accessions 

 were of natural history specimens. For decades the 

 registrar's office was situated on the south side of the 

 building near that of the director, and it was run by 



T.ABLE 3: Scientific Staff by Department, 1964-1984 



Daw 



Off. Dir. 



Ant. 



Bot. 



Ent. 



I.Z. 



M.S. 



Paleo. 



V.Z. 



Total 



9/1964 



3 



11 



15 



9 



14 



5 



13 



15 



85 



5/1966 



12 



17 



15 



10 



16 



5 



15 



15 



105 



6/1970 



3 



16 



13 



9 



17 



7 



18 



13 



96 



4/1973 



2 



16 



19 



12 



17 



9 



18 



13 



106 



4/1974 



2 



17 



19 



12 



17 



10 



18 



14 



109 



4/1976 



7 



17 



19 



11 



17 



9 



18 



15 



113 



4/1977 



7 



17 



19 



12 



18 



10 



18 



15 



116 



4/1978 



8 



18 



19 



12 



19 



10 



18 



15 



119 



4/1979 



8 



16 



17 



12 



20 



10 



18 



14 



115 



4/1980 



5 



15 



17 



11 



20 



9 



19 



15 



113 



4/1984 



6 



16 



19 



12 



18 



8 



19 



14 



112 



140 



The Museum 



