Retirement Tribute for Sally Gregory McMillen
Mary Reynolds Babcock Professor of History
Delivered by Professor of History Vivien Dietzat the academic year’s closing faculty meeting, May 5, 2016
My tribute to Sally McMillenis personal as well as professional.I might put it this way:
“I [have] simply found it impossible not to admire her courage, passion, and dedication, her unyielding determination to devote her life to fighting for… women’s rights.”
“I [have] admired how she… develop[ed] a meaningful career in the public sphere, and… people flocked to her lectures. “
“I [have] admired how she…struggled to balance the joys and demands of childrearing with her… career.”
These words, in fact, are not mine.They are Sally’s, describing the subject of her magnificent biography,Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life.But they apply to author as well as subject,and reflect the feelings of all who have watchedSally in action.Like Lucy Stone, Sally McMillen “unapologetically forged her own path.”Davidson College is a different and better place because of this, and hundreds, even thousands, of students have been inspiredby Sally to seek out bold paths of their own.
Born in Pasadena but raised in Laguna Beach, Sally Gregorywent east to college-- to Wellesley -- eager to experience something new.History, her college major, was an early love.So was Bruce, whom she met on a California beach the summer before her senior year.Six days later they were engaged, and at summer’s end Bruce drove cross-country to work as a bank teller and ice cream scooper in Massachusetts while his fiancée finished her degree.[Already, Sally was inspiring bold and wonderful action.]They married the week after her graduation, moved to New York City, and Sally earned a masters’ degree in library science.Her first job was at the Coney Island Public Library.
More library work in San Francisco, her beloved children Blair and Carrie, and another family move -- to Charlotte – followed.In the South, California girl and New England graduate found her calling: the study of Southern history and, in particular, Southern women.Eager to understand the unfamiliar world in which she now lived, Sally first pursued a master’sdegree at UNCC and then a Ph.D. at Duke.
She did this full-time, with children, driving several days per week to Durham, leaving before the kids were awake but getting home soon after they returned from school.Graduate school is hard enough.Graduate school with a family is even harder.Graduate school with a family and a 6-hour commute, well, it is something only Sally McMillen could make work.
Sally entered graduate school when the relatively new field of women’s history was taking off.She joined the movement, for it was just that -- an intellectual expression of a socio-political commitment --and quickly became one of its foremost practitioners.Sally’s first publication in 1985 was an articleon breast-feeding patterns among elitewomen in the antebellum South.I can promise you that long-time subscribers to the eminent Journal of Southern Historyhad no idea what had just hit them!
Twobooks, Motherhood in the Old South and then Southern Women: Black and White in the Old South,followed.And Sally’s interests broadened.In 2002 she published To Raise up the South: The Sunday School in Black and White Churches.Meanwhile, her work on pregnancy and childbirth led her to medical history, and ultimately a course on environmental disasters that examines fevers and famines (as well as floods and fires).Fathers, too, caught her attention.With a 1994 article on antebellum dads, Sally embraced masculinity studies, this women’s historian now on the cutting edge of the newer field of gender studies.It was her two-semester course sequence on American Women, however, that pointed Sally down her most recent research path.In 2008, she published Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movementwith Oxford University Press.When her Oxford editor begged her to write a biography, she embraced the suffrage and abolition activist Lucy Stone.
Given this extraordinary scholarly output -- and I have not mentioned any of the textbooks and edited collections, as well as countless articles -- Sally has, not surprisingly,been a regional and national leader in her field.But for my remaining time, I would like to focus on her influence closer to home.
Sally joined the Davidson History Department as the MacArthur Assistant Professor in 1988.Twelve years later, she becameits chair, and was in 2003 named the Mary Reynolds Babcock Professor.I should note that Sally was the first tenured woman in the department and itsfirst (its only) female chair.Never has the History Department had so determined and enthusiastic an advocate.[Sorry, Jonathan . . .]Convinced that her field, her colleagues, and her students are simply the best, Sally has pushed, mentored, and protected each and every one of us.To this end, she was never shy about challenging the administration.[Isn’t that right, Clark?!]For when Sally thinks something is wrong, she tells you!Her students have therefore had a love/hate relationship with her famous green pen.Her colleagues could relate.In the emails we received, usually in the early morning, the bar was set high; but theideas were always constructive and generous, and signed with a trademark, and genuine, XO.
Sally has served onvirtually every major committee at Davidson.But she has not simply worked within the established structures.She has, consistently and passionately, sought to create new structures, new opportunities.Consider gender studies.On April 18, 2011, some in this room received one of those emails from Sally.It began: “I am wondering what you think about trying to make gender studies into a major?”Think, for a moment, of what you are doing on any April 18th.I am limping towards the end of the semester.But Sally, the marathoner (she ran in three!),was sprinting energetically ahead.“I would like to know if any of you might assist me in putting together an outline of a major during the summer,” she concluded. “XO, Sally.”And then . . .it happened!This year, the college will graduate the first class that has only known Davidson with a Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies.And that department is endowed by a generous gift from Sally and Bruce McMillen.
Of course, it all comes back to the students.For Sally is, first and foremost, a teacher.A Hunter-Hamilton winner, she truly LOVES teaching; every day in this job, she was happy.She earned a reputation for being hard.She gave readingquizzes, made her students “revise, revise, revise”, and liked the 8:15classhour.And yet studentsflocked to her classroom to study subjects as diverse as the Civil War and Reconstruction, the 1950s, and the settlement of the American West.Many have, effectively, majored in McMillen.
When it was recently announced that Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton would grace the back of the new $10 bill, Sally published a piece in the Charlotte Observer decrying the omission of Lucy Stone.It was yet another example of Sally’s commitment to her role as a public intellectual, another case of her trying to right, or at least draw attention to, a wrong.Sally dedicated her book about Stone to her three grandchildren with the wish, “May they always pursue justice and seek to live inspired lives.”She wanted for Conor, Sarah, and Anna what she most admired in Stone.But it is also what Sally has pursued every day in her own life, and has instilled in generations of students.This is an extraordinary legacy, and one that touches us all.