Posted 2:02 p.m. Friday, March 8, 2024
La Crosse Normal 1909
By Teri Holford, interim Outreach Librarian
For International Women’s Day, we turn to women at work with a “flashback Friday”.
It’s 1909 and La Crosse Normal just opened its doors.
How many women were teaching and working in the new teacher training school in Main Hall, the only building on campus?
The first senior class graduating created the first yearbook of the school. Below are photos of most of the women employed at the new La Crosse Normal school, their department, and their alma mater:
Florence Wing was the first librarian (University of Wisconsin Madison, Illinois State Library).
On page 76 of the yearbook is an essay written by senior student Ethel Oltman, Senior Class Orator and called “The Woman of Today”.
Despite the fact that it was written in 1911, Oltman’s words remain uplifting, relevant, and inspiring:
“The woman of today, then, is simply the woman of yesterday stepping out into and taking advantage of the richer opportunities of the present.”
All yearbooks have been digitized by our digitization team, and can be easily accessed online in the Murphy Library Digitization Collections.