On Thursday, October 22, 2015, Mary Johnson will discuss “When Sadie Hawkins Went to College” in the Archives and History Library of the Culture Center in Charleston. The program will begin at 6:00 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
In November 1937, Sadie Hawkins Day was introduced in Al Capp’s popular comic strip Li’l Abner. According to the comic strip, in an effort to marry off his daughter, Sadie’s father held a foot race that involved Sadie chasing after men to catch a husband. Thus inspired, the other unmarried women decided the day should become an annual event.
A year after Capp introduced the event, a few colleges turned the fictional event into a campus activity, and Sadie Hawkins Day quickly spread to campuses across the United States and into Canada. One of the first colleges in the country to hold Sadie Hawkins Day activities was Morris Harvey College (now the University of Charleston), which began its annual Sadie Hawkins Day on November 11, 1938. Johnson will discuss Morris Harvey’s Sadie Hawkins Day activities between 1938 and the late 1950s, which included serving as the featured college for a Paramount short film on the event that was produced in 1951. She also will include some discussion of how other colleges in West Virginia celebrated Sadie Hawkins Day.
Johnson holds a master’s degree from West Virginia University and has been a historian at Archives and History since 2000. She has written for West Virginia History and The West Virginia Encyclopedia. She currently is the editor of the semi-annual publication of the West Virginia Historical Society, which earlier this year published her article “When Sadie Went to College: Morris Harvey College and Sadie Hawkins Day.” Johnson also serves as the society’s secretary and sits on the Commission on Archives and History, West Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church.
Lecture attendees may park behind the Culture Center after 5:00 p.m. on September 17 and enter the building at the back.
For additional information, contact the Archives and History Library at (304) 558-0230.
