Aviation Pioneer Worked to Advance Women’s Rights

18 July 2012

Amelia Earhart sits inside her plane’s turbine in a 1936 silver print.

In 1935 Amelia Earhart, left, chatted with first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

A photo show of the life of Amelia Earhart, an aviation pioneer who disappeared in 1937 during a trans-Pacific flight, is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington.

Called “One Life: Amelia Earhart,” the exhibit is in recognition of the 75th anniversary of the bold pilot’s disappearance. It explains that in addition to her passion for flying and exploration, Earhart was on the faculty of Purdue University in Indiana, where she spoke out about the need to carve out places for women in aviation and higher education. She lobbied Congress on behalf of expanding opportunities for women and penned articles about women's rights for fashion magazine Cosmopolitan. She designed casual clothing for women that incorporated wing nuts as buttons and ball bearings as buckles. Because she was so tall, she made her own trousers. She expanded on her interest in aviation by testing new aircraft designs from manufacturer Lockheed.

As an early media celebrity because of her flying, Earhart was often invited to speak, especially about expanding opportunities for women beyond the home, said Frank Goodyear, the gallery’s associate photograph curator.

“I learned that Amelia was not the first woman pilot or the best woman pilot,” Goodyear said, adding that Earhart had the highest public profile in part because she was very photogenic. “She is smiling in all the photos of her in a plane.”

In 1920, the Kansas-born Earhart took her first flight with instructor Frank Hawks. In 1921, she switched to another instructor and completed flying lessons with Neta Snook, at the time the only female flying instructor in California where Earhart then lived. Shortly after, Earhart purchased her first plane and in 1922 she set an unofficial women’s flying altitude of 14,000 feet (4,267 meters).”I try to push it as high as I can. I don’t know how that will be but with the motor, the oxygen and the weather, I think we can get to 20,000 feet [6,096 meters],” she said in a 1931 interview being shown as part of the exhibit.

In 1928, Earhart was the first woman to complete a trans-Atlantic flight. She carried a bottle of smelling salts that she used when she felt herself going to sleep. Space on the Lockheed Vega was limited, so she could take with her only a few other essentials: a bottle of hot soup, three cans of tomato juice, an ice pick to open the cans, $20 cash and a toothbrush. Earhart’s publisher and eventual husband, George Putnam, helped orchestrate the flight and also planned the lecture tour that followed.

“It seems that no other phase of modern progress contrives to maintain such a brimming measure of romance and beauty coupled with utility as does aviation,” she said in an undated taped interview shown at the exhibit.

In 1929, she co-founded with other women pilots what is now called the International Organization of Women Pilots, also known as the Ninety-Nines for the number of the group’s first members. She became the first president of the group.

Her celebrity drew the attention of Eleanor Roosevelt, who wished to learn to fly. After her husband, Franklin, was elected president — and though flying was unsuitable for a first lady — Mrs. Roosevelt invited Earhart for a visit. They became good friends as they shared views on women’s rights and pacifism, Goodyear said. To partially fulfill Roosevelt’s desire to fly, Earhart gave her a ride in her own plane.

“One Life: Amelia Earhart” will be on display at the National Portrait Gallery until May 27, 2013. “It’s been a very popular exhibit,” Goodyear said.

The remains of Earhart and her copilot, Fred Noonan, were never found after the 1937 disappearance. “It is one of the world’s great unsolved mysteries,” Goodyear concluded.