Two “Women on the Mother Road” sessions slated for this month in Oklahoma

Two Route 66 towns in Oklahoma are hosting lectures and screenings from Katrina Parks’ “The Women of the Mother Road” website and film documentary project this month.

This first will be at 7 p.m. Sept. 18 at the Carriage House in the Overholser Mansion at
405 NW 15th St. in Oklahoma City (map here).

The second will be at 7 p.m. Sept. 19 at the Miami Public Library 200 N. Main St. in Miami, Oklahoma (map here).

Both programs are free.

Preservation Oklahoma was more details:

Called the “Mother Road” by author John Steinbeck, U.S. Route 66 stretches some 2,400 miles from Los Angeles to Chicago, symbolic of the mobility available to Americans, and an iconic highway for many travelers. Yet much of the historical perspective of the highway that passes through Oklahoma has primarily focused on men, often overlooking the experiences of women and girls. Themes of growing up, traveling, challenging gender stereotypes, confronting prejudice and pushing boundaries in a man’s world run through the new oral histories.

Project director Katrina Parks and historians Patti Loughin and Andrew Vassar will present a slide lecture and several filmed and edited oral histories. They will place archival photos and the filmed interviews in a wider historical and women’s studies context.

The presentations are funded in part by grants from Oklahoma Humanities and the National
Endowment for the Humanities.

“The Women on the Mother Road” also recently received a $25,000 cost-share grant from the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program to help fund the documentary film.

UPDATE 9/19/2017: Another “Women of the Mother Road” presentation will be at the Museum on the Square in Springfield, Missouri, at 6 p.m. Sept. 21. Local historian Jami Lewis also will give a presentation on the African American experience along the Mother Road in the Ozarks.

(Image of Lillian Redman, owner of the Blue Swallow Motel of Tucumcari, New Mexico, via 66postcards.com)