If you explore the Women and Leadership Archives and come across the finding aid for the Rosalie Muschal-Reinhardt Papers you will discover boxes of materials, including Box 1 Folder 9 Personal Reflections. Leafing through this folder you will the find reflections of teacher, mother, wife, activist, and religious leader Rosalie Muschal-Reinhardt, who dedicated her life towards, “the elimination of Sexism, Racism, Classism, Heterosexism and Ageism in our society”². Born on June 23^rd, 1933, Rosalie knew as a teenager that she wanted to be a teacher, a wife, and a mother. She achieved all of these goals and more. 

 In 1954, Rosalie earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Business Education from Rider University. She achieved her first goal through becoming a business teacher, and teaching Confraternity of Christian Doctrine classes, providing lessons on Catholicism to youth not attending Catholic school. In July of 1955 Rosalie married Alfred “Al” Reinhardt, writing that she fell in love with a man who was, “gentle, sensitive, and treated me with dignity”. Later, Rosalie was able to fulfill her final dream of being a mother, becoming pregnant with her first-born son Alfred. Overjoyed, Rosalie writes that she, “felt so connected with life, with God, with Al, with the universe”³ . She felt that her and Al were co-creating with God, bringing new life into the world. While the birth of Alfred brought Rosalie so much happiness, it also caused one of her first moments of dispute with the Catholic Church. Rosalie went to her local parish to arrange Alfred’s baptism, a sacrament of initiation into the Catholic Church. There she was told by a priest that she had to be churched. This was a practice in Catholicism to purify women postpartum, to give thanks for the safe delivery of her child, and was officially dropped in the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council. Rosalie was shocked and firmly told her priest no, “I was co-creating with God…I would not submit myself to something (that I was dirty) that was not true”⁴ . Rosalie would give birth to three more children, Erika, Kurt, and Michael. At the age of thirty she found that she had become everything she wanted to be. Yet, she yearned for more.  

Archives can hold a wide range of items. There are, of course, documents, photographs, and copies of publications, but you’ll also find artworks, VHS tapes, toys, and CDs. Sometimes you’ll also find one of my favorite things to come across: clothing. For this post, I’d like to talk a little bit about the clothing items in the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation collection at the Women and Leadership Archives (WLA). 

The National Women’s Martial Arts Federation (NWMAF) is a non-profit organization that promotes the involvement and empowerment of women in martial arts and self-defense. Active since 1979, the NWMAF provides support to women in these spaces through their offerings of martial arts and self-defense classes and certification and professional development programs for instructors.

From the organization’s preamble: “The National Women’s Martial Arts Federation (NWMAF) is an organization of women martial artists whose purpose is to share skills and resources, to promote excellence in the martial arts, and to encourage the widest range of women to train in the spirit of building individual and collective strength. All women will be welcome regardless of lifestyle, sexual preference, race, color, creed religion, class, age, or physical condition.” 

The organization puts on an annual Special Training where women from all around the country come together for four days of trainings, workshops, meetings, community building, and fun activities. 

At the end of the 1960s, Mundelein College* was in the midst of a cultural crisis. A changing social landscape accompanied by financial and enrollment struggles pushed the college to reevaluate their educational point of view. Historian Tim Lacy writes, “Catholic women’s colleges in the United States juggled a series of sometimes competing, sometimes complementary interests. Faculty and students juxtaposed their Catholic identity, the progress of feminism in American culture, pedagogical innovation, and the increasing presence of laity in administration.”¹ Mundelein was far from the only Catholic women’s college to experience a cultural shift at the time, but the school’s reaction to this tension was particularly unique.  

In the fall of 1969, the Curriculum Committee of Mundelein College’s Faculty Senate arranged a three-day Conference on Curriculum, known as Con-Cur, for the following January. The conference was designed specifically to receive and respond to the needs of the Mundelein community. The invitation for the event strongly emphasized that this was a conference for students, faculty, and administration to share their ideas for the future of Mundelein College. Classes were suspended at Mundelein on January 15^th and 16^th, the first two days of the conference, to encourage student participation.  

The invitation for Con-Cur gives a clear idea as to what the organizers had in mind for this conference. Questions listed at the end of the invite ask, “How would you incorporate opportunities for non-cognitive learning, within or outside formal course structures?” and “How, concretely, would you structure a general education program?” Mundelein College was looking to adapt, and the school needed the input of its students to successfully evolve.  

Throughout the last academic year, a talented group of graduate students have worked at the Women and Leadership Archives as part of the Illinois History Digital Imaging Grant project. These Digitization and Metadata Assistants, all pursuing degrees in Loyola’s Public History master’s program, have worked diligently on digitizing materials from the Mundelein College* Collections, writing transcriptions, and creating metadata for the Mundelein at 90 digitization project. As their time at the WLA came to a close, they each shared a little about their experiences engaging with the Mundelein College Collections and archival work. The images and digitized materials in this post will be added to the Mundelein College Collection on the Illinois Digital Archives.

I immensely enjoyed being a part of the IHDI grant for the better part of this year. I’ve had the opportunity to scan and digitize numerous photograph collections, transcribe student publications and scrapbooks, and re-folder collections to make them more accessible to the public. Working on each of these projects has allowed me to see the project from many angles. Thus, the experience has been well-rounded and fulfilling. I encountered a variety of archival work which in turn exposed me to a potential career path. The Mundelein at 90 collection is extensive and impressive. The vast number of items displays a full picture of Mundelein’s history, which is enjoyable to behold as a student worker and as a member of the public. Through my time with the IHDI grant, I gained a great appreciation and understanding for Mundelein College.  

The May Crowning ceremony originated in the 16th century as a papal tradition and spread as a form of public veneration for the Blessed Virgin Mary until the mid-20^th century, where it reached peak popularity in the United States.ⁱ The ritual was often celebrated in schools and parishes concurrently with Mother’s Day or First Communion ceremonies to celebrate the role of women in the Church.ⁱⁱ Young women were chosen from among their peers as most deserving of the honor of placing a crown of flowers atop a statue of Mary. The ‘May Queen’ and her attendants would dress in white and process around the campus or church grounds while other students, teachers, and parents gathered to watch and sing devotional hymns.  

May Crowning ceremonies were celebrated at Mundelein College* from the early 1930s through the mid-1960s. A 1942 planning bulletin concludes, “Remember that Coronation is an act of RELIGIOUS HOMAGE… And be dressed becomingly”.ⁱⁱⁱ While in some years, Mundelein College students elected the worthiest representative from their peers to serve as the May Queen and her attendants, other years the prefect of the Sodality Club, the school’s lay religious group, was given the honor automatically.  

Students would process from the Skyscraper building to the steps of the library (later known as Piper Hall), with the May Queen and her attendants leading the procession, all wearing white or light-colored dresses, and the seniors processing behind them in graduation caps and gowns.^iv In later years, the ceremony moved to the auditorium to eliminate possibly inclement weather.^v 

I am a huge fan of the horror genre and one of my all-time favorite films is 1973’s The Exorcist directed by William Fredkin, based on William Peter Blatty’s novel of the same name (also a personal favorite). Recently, I was tasked with working on updating the WLA’s collections page when I made an amazing discovery: our archives held the collection of a major star of this film. 

Mercedes McCambridge, who often felt more comfortable being addressed simply as Mercy, is perhaps the most famous graduate of Mundelein College*. Many students who take classes in the Mundelein skyscraper today do not realize that the building’s auditorium played a crucial role in the education of an Oscar-winning actor. A few years ago, my colleague Nathan recounted the impact of Mundelein College on McCambridge’s career in another post on the WLA blog titled “Acting Up: Mercedes McCambridge and Sister Mary Leola Oliver.” At the WLA, we often speak about McCambridge’s Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, awarded in 1949 for her role as Sadie Burke in All the King’s Men. I have, on several occasions, had reason to hold her Oscar in the course of research and am always amazed by the oddly heavy trophy. It was not until I was rewatching the 1973 horror classic that I realized that I had heard Mercy’s voice before I even knew what the WLA was. This discovery sent me on a journey of researching Mercy’s storied life. 

When exploring the Edgewater neighborhood on Chicago’s north side, one would have a hard time failing to notice the Broadway Armory. This ornate, gigantic structure—first built as an ice-skating rink in 1916—takes up an entire city block. Repurposed as an armory in response to WWI and race riots in Chicago, by the 1970s and 80s the building was falling apart and barely used. What was to become of this gigantic building?  

Collegiate apparel is a booming industry, reported by Forbes in 2015 to be worth a whopping $4.6 billion dollars. Donning spirit-ware is a rite of passage for many college students, as they rush to buy new gear the moment they commit to their school of choice. This phenomenon is a continuation of a long history of representing your favorite university on your clothing, a tradition that Mundelein College* students participated in for decades. Journey through forty years of history as we ask the age-old question: who are you wearing?

Before printing your alma mater on your t-shirt came into vogue, Mundelein students found other pieces of memorabilia to show their school spirit. This group of ladies waved their goodbyes and their Mundelein pennants as they boarded an Eastern Airlines flight in 1960.