By Sophia Scanlan, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, History PhD student

Like all great journalist collections, the recently processed Patricia S. McCormack Papers (finding aid) offer insight into both the period she covered and the way she understood the world around her. Though the collection doubtless provides ample material for mid-to-late twentieth-century women’s historians, it should also attract historians of medicine, social movements, and education, not to mention those interested in the inner workings of the newsroom.

For the scholar of medicine, this collection charts the increase in research on women’s health between the 1970s and 1980s. Amid Betty Ford and Nancy Reagan’s breast cancer diagnoses in 1974 and 1987, respectively, McCormack joined the first ladies in urging women to get mammograms, relaying the latest medical research in explainers and columns. Writing around the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973, McCormack also published scores of articles on abortion, pregnancy, and family planning writ large. She consulted a variety of sources for these stories, including male gynecologists, midwives, nuns, and Planned Parenthood fact sheets. Through both hard news stories and features, McCormack informed readers about the options available to them, including recently developed medications that could end pregnancies and various types of contraceptives, such as the birth control pill, intrauterine devices (IUDs), a new shot administered to a woman’s upper arm, and Chinese “paper pills,” where women could eat edible paper embedded with “birth control chemicals.” As debates surrounding women’s health and abortion remain ongoing in the United States and abroad, researchers today will gain fresh insights into the late-twentieth-century legal and medical discussions surrounding these issues.

The historian of social movements will gain valuable source material on second-wave feminism. McCormack covered the National Organization for Women and several well-known movement leaders, such as Betty Friedan and Karen DeCrow. In addition, she wrote many articles about women entering the workplace—a principal aim for middle-class white women in the movement.

As McCormack reported on growing numbers of women in the workforce during the 1970s, she also noted the backlash such a transition garnered from many housewives, spearheaded by figures such as Phyllis Schlafly. Those interested in the history of second-wave feminism and the conservative response to it, especially from other women, will find this collection useful.

 

Finally, the collection will also appeal to education scholars. McCormack reported on all levels of education, spanning pre-kindergarten through secondary school, college, graduate school, and adult education programs. When reporting on secondary education during the 1970s and 1980s, McCormack showed the intertwined relationship between families and schools.

A member of the Saugatuck PTA herself, McCormack reported on families’ anxieties surrounding sex education, affirmative action, and books—all topics that remain central in twenty-first-century parents’ rights campaigns. The sports historian will be interested in McCormack’s occasional reporting on college sports and physical education in schools. Scholars focusing on university history will also take great interest in reading McCormack’s articles about the rise of college tuition, the “boys network” of academia, and the increasing selectivity of these institutions in the 1970s and 1980s.

 

But what does this collection say about McCormack herself? By examining her lawsuits against United Press International, scholars might see how McCormack understood the role of gender in the mid-twentieth-century newsroom. By reading her “On Raising Children” column, scholars might see what she really thought about motherhood in the early 1960s. By flipping through her stories on diet culture, scholars might see how she related to middle-class expectations of white women’s beauty and domesticity. Whether scholars pursue these or other lines of inquiry, they will surely find rich source material for a variety of interests in the Patricia S. McCormack Papers.

 

Sophia is a member of the 2025 cohort of the Columbia University Libraries’ Graduate Student Internship Program in Primary Sources.