MID-SOUTH MEMORIES
25 years ago — 1995
The real issues facing women are being lost in the international forum outside Beijing where Chinese authorities were harassing participants, veteran feminist Betty Friedan said Sunday. The problems facing the forum were creating a diversion from the real problems of women’s empowerment, such as boosting the economic strength of women, she said. ”I think the Chinese government has disgraced itself by its treatment of women. The United Nations has disgraced itself by acquiescing to that treatment,” Friedan said. Friedan, 74, is a founder of the modern women’s movement. Her 1960s book “The Feminist Mystique” inspired housewives across the United States to begin demanding equality with men on every level, from wages to reproductive choice.
50 years ago — 1970
Memphis State University received authorization yesterday for $4 million in construction that will include a $3 million life science building and $1 million for renovation of the Administration Building. The science building will have 80,000 square feet, including a 2,000-squarefoot library. Charles Holmes, director of public information at MSU, said the three-story structure will be brick and concrete. It will have research laboratories, offices and classrooms. Memphis State is the only school in Tennessee to offer a doctorate degree in biology.
75 years ago — 1945 WASHINGTON – An avalanche of letters and telegrams from constituents wanting somebody let out or kept out of the Army put Congress members in a quandary Monday as they prepared for the first postwar session. With the reconvening of the two Houses after the Summer recess due Wednesday, lawmakers at both ends of the Capitol admitted frankly that they were undecided what to do about the ever-tightening issue: Who shall be taken into the services or kept there? The writers (of the letters and telegrams), he said, leave no doubt how strongly they feel on the question of getting long-service veterans out of uniform, or stopping the drafting of their 18- and 19-year-old sons.
100 years ago — 1920
The Mclemore Avenue viaduct, talked about for 15 years, will soon span the yards of the Illinois Central and Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroads. At a conference held yesterday morning C.N. Burch and H.D. Minor, local counsel for the two roads, assured Mayor Paine and other members of the city commission that the railroads would in the near future be ready to carry out their part of the work. The plans for the viaduct drawn by the city engineering department have already been approved by officials of the railroads.