Agnes Ernst Meyer attended Barnard College.
Mother and Daughter Journalists Agnes Meyer and Katharine Graham Shaped Journalism
With determination and perseverance, Agnes Ernst Meyer pursued a career when women weren’t encouraged to do so and became an influential journalist, philanthropist and activist for education.
Agnes Ernst is the First Woman Reporter at the New York Sun
The daughter of German immigrants, Agnes was born and educated in New York City. She won a scholarship to study mathematics at Barnard College and martriculated over her father’s objections, paying for her college education herself through scholarships and wages from part time jobs.
When she was a Barnard senior, Agnes met the young educator John Dewey, and she said that he stirred the "seeds of a social conscience" in her that led her to embrace educational reform and many other social causes. During her student days at Barnard, Agnes became firmly committed to writing, education, and political activism and this committment continued for the rest of her life
The New York Sun hired Agnes as its first woman reporter after she graduated from Barnard in 1907. In the February 1934 issue of the Barnard College Alumnae Magazine, Agnes said that the New York Sun had hired her as a joke and that "they sent me to all the places where a man would have been thrown out. But it was grand! When my husband bought The Washington Post, it gave me no sense of owning the Post, but when I landed that job I thought I owned The Sun, and the earth and moon, too."
Writer Agnes Ernst Marries Banker Eugene Meyer
In 1908, Agnes began studying at the Sorbonne where she became friends with Gertrude Stein and Edward Steichen. Throughout her life, Agnes had a gift for friendship and maintained friendships with famous and ordinary people, including Adlai Stevenson and Thomas Mann
On February 13, 1910, the Boston Herald ran the headline "Banker Marries Writer." The story underneath the headline said that friends of Eugene Meyer and Agnes Elizabeth Ernst were "surprised to learn that the couple had been quietly married yesterday and had started on a trip around the world."
Eugene Meyer was a spectacularly successful investment banker and pioneer in investment analysis. He was chairman of the Federal Reserve Board under President Herbert Hoover and the first president of the World Bank under President Harry S. Truman. He also founded Allied Chemical Company
Although Agnes scoffed at traditional female roles, she eventually had five children, one of them a daughter named Katharine who would one day marry Philip Graham and make trailblazing decisions as editor and publisher of the Washington Post. As Agnes pursued her intellectual interests and political passions, she also raised Katharine and her four other children
Agnes Becomes and Education Activist
In 1917, Eugene Meyer moved his family to Washington, D.C., where he worked in several important financial positions within the federal government over the next sixteen years. In 1933, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidency, Eugene Meyer bought the struggling Washington Post. True to her career woman tendencies, Agnes Meyer often contributed articles that criticized the Works Progress Administration and some of the other New Deal programs and she continued to write for the Washington Post even after her daughter Katharine became its publisher.
Over the next forty years.Agnes Meyer explored her intellectual and community concerns and continued to travel and write about education, social problems, and political issues. During World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Agnes as a member of the President’s Commission on Higher Education. In a public speech she urged New Yorkers to support federal aid for schools as a national defense strategy.
The day after her speech, The New York Herald Tribune published a story about her remarks, reporting that five million young men were rejected for military service because they were educationally or physically handicapped. The story underscored her call for change and Agnes herself underscored the importance of education as a defense strategy. "We are again undertaking a vast rearmament program – it is obvious that education at all levels from the lowest to the highest is essential for the achievement of national defense," she said.
Agnes Meyer is a Social Activist and Tireless Writer
During World War II, Agnes Meyer traveled through the United States and Britain investigating home front conditions and she was dismayed to discover that government hadn’t provided basic needs like food and housing for its citizens.
She wrote stories exploring the problems of veterans, migrant workers, and African Americans, and she advocated for integration, expanded social security benefits, and an end to racial discrimination. One of her better known quotes concerned the role of Eleanor Roosevelt in politics. Agnes said, "It certainly must have been a relief for the women of the country to realize that one could be a woman and a lady and yet be thoroughly political."
Agnes spoke out against Senator Joseph McCarthy and his Communist hunting allies as a threat to academic freedom. She wrote literary reviews and lectured on countless college campuses. She challenged Americans to become "global citizens" and hoped that American children would grow up to be "a composite of citizen and scientist." She tirelessly agitated for a Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and federal aid to education. By 1960, Agnes had left the Republican Party and registered as a Democrat.
Throughout the 1960s, Agnes focused her intense energies on improving public education and she created and financed the Urban School Corps. She supported the New School for Social Research and the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation which gave millions of dollars to several health and education projects.
Altogether Agnes wrote hundreds of articles, interviews, speeches, letters and editorials. She published two books. Out of These Roots: Journey Through Chaos published in 1944, was an anthropological prescription for improving community life and moral education. In 1957, she published Education for a New Morality in which she explores the horrifying possibilities of an atomic world. Her third book, Chance and Destiny sits unpublished in her extensive file at the Library of Congress.
When Agnes died of cancer in 1970, newspapers across the country ran her obituary and friends across the country and the world mourned her death. Her daughter Katharine Graham carried on her legacy.
References
Gerber, Robin, Katharine Graham: The Leadership Journey of an American Icon, Portfolio Hardcover, 2005
Meyer, Agnes E., Education for a New Morality, Macmillan, 1957
Agnes Ernst is the First Woman Reporter at the New York Sun
The daughter of German immigrants, Agnes was born and educated in New York City. She won a scholarship to study mathematics at Barnard College and martriculated over her father’s objections, paying for her college education herself through scholarships and wages from part time jobs.
When she was a Barnard senior, Agnes met the young educator John Dewey, and she said that he stirred the "seeds of a social conscience" in her that led her to embrace educational reform and many other social causes. During her student days at Barnard, Agnes became firmly committed to writing, education, and political activism and this committment continued for the rest of her life
The New York Sun hired Agnes as its first woman reporter after she graduated from Barnard in 1907. In the February 1934 issue of the Barnard College Alumnae Magazine, Agnes said that the New York Sun had hired her as a joke and that "they sent me to all the places where a man would have been thrown out. But it was grand! When my husband bought The Washington Post, it gave me no sense of owning the Post, but when I landed that job I thought I owned The Sun, and the earth and moon, too."
Writer Agnes Ernst Marries Banker Eugene Meyer
In 1908, Agnes began studying at the Sorbonne where she became friends with Gertrude Stein and Edward Steichen. Throughout her life, Agnes had a gift for friendship and maintained friendships with famous and ordinary people, including Adlai Stevenson and Thomas Mann
On February 13, 1910, the Boston Herald ran the headline "Banker Marries Writer." The story underneath the headline said that friends of Eugene Meyer and Agnes Elizabeth Ernst were "surprised to learn that the couple had been quietly married yesterday and had started on a trip around the world."
Eugene Meyer was a spectacularly successful investment banker and pioneer in investment analysis. He was chairman of the Federal Reserve Board under President Herbert Hoover and the first president of the World Bank under President Harry S. Truman. He also founded Allied Chemical Company
Although Agnes scoffed at traditional female roles, she eventually had five children, one of them a daughter named Katharine who would one day marry Philip Graham and make trailblazing decisions as editor and publisher of the Washington Post. As Agnes pursued her intellectual interests and political passions, she also raised Katharine and her four other children
Agnes Becomes and Education Activist
In 1917, Eugene Meyer moved his family to Washington, D.C., where he worked in several important financial positions within the federal government over the next sixteen years. In 1933, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidency, Eugene Meyer bought the struggling Washington Post. True to her career woman tendencies, Agnes Meyer often contributed articles that criticized the Works Progress Administration and some of the other New Deal programs and she continued to write for the Washington Post even after her daughter Katharine became its publisher.
Over the next forty years.Agnes Meyer explored her intellectual and community concerns and continued to travel and write about education, social problems, and political issues. During World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Agnes as a member of the President’s Commission on Higher Education. In a public speech she urged New Yorkers to support federal aid for schools as a national defense strategy.
The day after her speech, The New York Herald Tribune published a story about her remarks, reporting that five million young men were rejected for military service because they were educationally or physically handicapped. The story underscored her call for change and Agnes herself underscored the importance of education as a defense strategy. "We are again undertaking a vast rearmament program – it is obvious that education at all levels from the lowest to the highest is essential for the achievement of national defense," she said.
Agnes Meyer is a Social Activist and Tireless Writer
During World War II, Agnes Meyer traveled through the United States and Britain investigating home front conditions and she was dismayed to discover that government hadn’t provided basic needs like food and housing for its citizens.
She wrote stories exploring the problems of veterans, migrant workers, and African Americans, and she advocated for integration, expanded social security benefits, and an end to racial discrimination. One of her better known quotes concerned the role of Eleanor Roosevelt in politics. Agnes said, "It certainly must have been a relief for the women of the country to realize that one could be a woman and a lady and yet be thoroughly political."
Agnes spoke out against Senator Joseph McCarthy and his Communist hunting allies as a threat to academic freedom. She wrote literary reviews and lectured on countless college campuses. She challenged Americans to become "global citizens" and hoped that American children would grow up to be "a composite of citizen and scientist." She tirelessly agitated for a Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and federal aid to education. By 1960, Agnes had left the Republican Party and registered as a Democrat.
Throughout the 1960s, Agnes focused her intense energies on improving public education and she created and financed the Urban School Corps. She supported the New School for Social Research and the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation which gave millions of dollars to several health and education projects.
Altogether Agnes wrote hundreds of articles, interviews, speeches, letters and editorials. She published two books. Out of These Roots: Journey Through Chaos published in 1944, was an anthropological prescription for improving community life and moral education. In 1957, she published Education for a New Morality in which she explores the horrifying possibilities of an atomic world. Her third book, Chance and Destiny sits unpublished in her extensive file at the Library of Congress.
When Agnes died of cancer in 1970, newspapers across the country ran her obituary and friends across the country and the world mourned her death. Her daughter Katharine Graham carried on her legacy.
References
Gerber, Robin, Katharine Graham: The Leadership Journey of an American Icon, Portfolio Hardcover, 2005
Meyer, Agnes E., Education for a New Morality, Macmillan, 1957
