This week in National Press Club history

February 23, 1955: Female journalists, barred from the ballroom to cover luncheon speakers, are permitted to work from the balcony. Escorted from the front door at 1:00 to their places, “The Girls” (as the Washington Post headline put it that day) are taken back to the front desk and out the door at the end of the program.

February 28, 1964: Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona appears at a Club luncheon three weeks after announcing his candidacy for the presidency, and says, “we must decide what sort of people we are and what sort of world we want.” This remark did not cause the stir raised by his unprintable remark in 1974 on the Reliable Source’s Texas-style chili. The Congressional Record reports on the ensuing senatorial chili war.

February 28, 1984: Leonard Bernstein, composer, educator, music director of the New York Philharmonic, and icon of American classical music, advocates for an international nuclear weapons freeze at a National Press Club luncheon.

The History & Heritage Committee is pleased to bring this weekly feature to members on the Wire. Its other activities include constantly changing lobby displays of prominent Club speakers in many fields, panel discussions, events, and an oral history project that now includes well over a hundred interviews of key Club members.

For more information on the Committee’s activities or to join it, contact chair Gilbert Klein at [email protected]