What She Said

Part II, Case 3: Professional Networks

Women's organizations were not exclusively centered on women of leisure. In addition to women's involvement in labor organizing, professional businesswomen also rallied together to support one another and the community causes that they were most interested in, like the professional businesswomen at the center of The Links, Inc. The Angel City Chapter of The Links, Inc. was founded in Los Angeles in February 1963, and since its founding, has sponsored numerous fundraising events and educational awareness projects dedicated to the culture and economic success of African Americans and other persons of African ancestry.

Earlier in the 1920s, the YWCA Business Girls League, or "Blue Triangle Club" served as a safe space for young women who came to work in Los Angeles and often left behind their community support networks. The self-governing organization maintained lunch spaces and organized recreation opportunities for young women, as well as provided a free employment bureau, help finding housing, and assistance with an array of welfare issues.

Clubs run by professional women provided networks of social support and dampened concerns centered on women working alone in the city, which was often viewed as a landscape filled with vice and debauchery. Women relied on one another in these networks. Sorosis, the first professional women’s club in the United States, was founded in 1868 in another city, New York City, by female newspaper workers who were denied entrance to the all-male New York Press Club.

Case 4, Patriotism and Loyalty, is to your right along the south wall of the gallery.

• 1

  President's Pin, Legal Secretaries Association, 1948-1950Beulah "Dickie" Garrigues Collection

• 2

  Invitation, Y.W.C.A. Business Girls League Homecoming Fall Banquet, October 1929Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) of Los Angeles Collection

• 3

  Photograph, The Links, Inc. Angel City Chapter Polynesian Fundraiser, circa 1967-1968Links, Inc., Angel City Chapter Collection

• 4

  Photograph, Two former Angel City Chapter Presidents presenting scholarship check for "Dollars for Scholars," circa 1967-1968Links, Inc., Angel City Chapter Collection