Women Come to the Front:: Journalists, Photographers, and Broadcasters During World War II

MAY CRAIG

A Southerner who made a career working for the Maine-based Gannett newspaper chain, Washington correspondent Elisabeth May Adams Craig (1889-1975) covered World War II with the same keen eye and sharp tongue that informed her daily "Inside in Washington" column for nearly fifty years. When not anchored in the nation's capital, Craig provided her Maine readership with eyewitness accounts of V-bomb raids in London, the Normandy campaign, the liberation of Paris, and other events.

Craig's devotion to the news business extended to leadership roles in the Women's National Press Club and Eleanor Roosevelt's Press Conference Association, two organizations founded to promote female journalists. The former suffragist also spearheaded countless initiatives to raise the professional status of female news correspondents in the corridors of official power and the capital press corps.

Although Craig herself singlehandedly overturned more than one military rule designed to keep women out of planes and off of ships, even she could not always convince male officials that women could "rough" it if required. Late in her career Craig noted wryly that "Bloody Mary of England once said that when she died they would find `Calais' graven on her heart" (a reference to a key French outpost lost during Mary's reign). "When I die, there will be the word `facilities,' so often it has been used to prevent me from doing what men reporters could do."


Reporters at Briefing

A Woman's Place. . . Is in
the Front Row

Harris & Ewing,
[Reporters at briefing],
November 1935
Prints and Photographs Division (44)

A Visit to Hitler's Mountain

May Craig,
"Hitler's Mountain,"
Intransit
,
August 1945, p. 18
May Craig Papers,
Manuscript Division (45)

Hitler's Mountain
Where East Meets West

Gannett Promotion of
Craig's War Work

"Where East Meets West",
c. 1944
May Craig Papers,
Manuscript Division
(46)

Original Member of Eleanor Roosevelt's Press Circle

[Craig with Eleanor Roosevelt],
November 1935
May Craig Papers,
Manuscript Division
(47)

Craig with Eleanor Roosevelt
Craig with Servicemen

Daily Bulletins from the War Zone

[Craig with servicemen],
c. 1944
Prints and Photographs Division (48)


Craig's War Reporting

[image not available online]
May Craig, "What It's Like Overseas" c. March 1945
May Craig Papers, Manuscript Division (49)


The Personal Touch

[May Craig with soldier],
c. 1945
Prints and Photographs Division (51)

May Craig with Soldier
Reporters at OWI

Review of Nazi Propaganda at OWI

[Reporters at OWI],
March 17, 1943
Prints and Photographs Division (52)

An Eye on Post-War Politics

May Craig,
"McCarthy Backers March on Capital,"
Portland Press Herald
,
November, 1954
May Craig Papers,
Manuscript Division
(53)

McCarthy Backers March
untitled cartoon

Cartoonist's View of May Craig

Sid Maxell,
untitled cartoon,
c. 1950
Prints and Photographs Division (135)




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