“I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore…
If I have to, I can do anything,
I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman.”
“I Am Woman” Helen Reddy and Ray Burton

March is Women’s History Month, and at the Levine Museum of the New South, an exhibition celebrates women who changed the Queen City in the Seventies. On March 11th, the museum will unveil its newest exhibit, Purses, Platforms and Power: Women Changing Charlotte in the 1970s.

“This exhibit is really aimed at anyone who grew up in the Seventies—anyone interested in that decade,” explained Dr. Tom Hanchett, museum historian. In an exclusive interview with the Journal, he discussed the story behind the exhibit and identified some of the highlights and some of the women whose contributions are celebrated. Purses, Platforms and Power will run through January 31, 2006.

Judy Rose attended all-female Winthrop College because it was one of the few schools with a wormn's basketball team. In 1975 Rose was recruited by UNC-Charlotte to start a women's basketball program as the Title IX law had pushed the university to begin the program.

“You’ll walk through the spaces where women gathered in the Seventies. We have a dorm room and a kitchen with authentic harvest gold appliances. We have a big section on sports featuring Judy Rose. She started women’s basketball at the University of North Carolina–Charlotte,” said Hanchett.

Dr. Hanchett conceived the idea and coordinated the exhibit that celebrates the contributions local women made to the city, the nation and the world. “It’s such an important decade and when the idea surfaced we realized that no one else in the country was doing it. We also realized that 30 years have passed. Women who were activists (and in their 30s) then are in their 60s now. They’re closing up their homes, and we wanted to get their memorabilia before the dumpster did.”

The Levine Museum of the New South is a cultural phenomenon. Its mission is to provide an interactive forum that fosters an understanding and appreciation of the history of the south since the Civil War through the present, with a focus on Charlotte. Visitors are exposed to a comprehensively integrated experience of life in the south told through the stories of men and women, both black and white, local and new arrivals who helped to shape the social, economic, historical, political and religious landscape of the city from 1865 to the present. It is the only museum of its kind in the United States and is uniquely positioned to share the stories of women who changed Charlotte and, not coincidentally, American society throughout the decade of the 1970s.

In 1969 the Federal Communications Commission ruled that television stations must hire women. Janet England joined WBTV in 1977 as news co-anchor along side Bob Inman, and quickly became a favorite personality in Charlotte.

“The decade of the Seventies is when women broke into a lot of new jobs,” Hanchett pointed out. “We have a beautiful red jacket from Janet England, who was one of the first television anchors in North Carolina. We have the cap of Blandina Gray, one of the first women bus drivers in Charlotte.”

The exhibit offers a variety of scenes. There are clothes to try on. The clothing exhibit includes earth shoes, platforms, a dashiki, tye-dyed cut-off shorts, a granny dress and a macramé purse. Visitors can do some macramé, and there’s even a fully assembled Easy Bake Oven. This exhibit promises to be no ordinary stroll down memory lane.

The music features Gloria Gaynor, whose anthem “I Will Survive” still resonates with a younger generation of women; Helen Reddy; LaBelle’s enduring hit “Lady Marmalade”; Carole King; and Holly Near, a pioneer in feminist music. Says Hanchett, “I think people will come into the exhibit and see things they’re aware of and learn about things they weren’t aware of.”

Among the women featured are:

- Gladys Tillett, a North Carolina activist who helped secure the right to vote for Tarheel women. She ended her career as a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.

- Rev. Carter Heyward, a native of Charlotte, was one of the original eleven women ordained in the Episcopal Church in 1974. At that time the church hierarchy banned women from serving in that capacity. She and her colleagues were featured on the cover of Ms. magazine that same year.

- Dr. Mary Harper and Dr. Bertha Maxwell Roddey founded the Afro-American Cultural Center in Charlotte in 1974. Last year the center celebrated its 30th anniversary.

Levine Museum of the New South founders, Sally Dalton Robinson (standing) and Anne Batten

Purses, Platforms and Power: Women Changing Charlotte in the 70s celebrates the contributions of women, both gay and straight, in changing not just Charlotte, but the country and the world. Think about it: are you in a profession that your mother never even dreamed of?

“Women in the Seventies transformed American life for all of us. It’s the decade when women became television anchors, got into politics in a big way and opened the doors for today’s young women to choose almost any career path,” noted Hanchett. “It has been a real privilege to spend time with these women and to thank them for changing my world and the world of my twelve-year-old daughter, Lydia.”

For more information about this exhibition, visit the museum on the web at www.museumofthenewsouth.org.