Episode 1: Why Studying First Ladies Matters
Author Lisa Burns discusses why the public is so interested in first ladies and how their influence endures 235 years after Martha Washington began the role.
TRANSCRIPT
Teri Finneman: Eleanor. Dolley. Mamie. Jackie. They were the nation’s original influencers. Some were fearless, some were fragile. All left their mark on the nation’s history. In this podcast, we'll reflect on the fascinating legacies of the women forever tied to the White House. I'm your host, Teri Finneman, a journalism historian who studies media portrayals of first ladies with production editing by Bella Koscal. This is The First Ladies podcast.
Teri Finneman (0:42): Since Martha Washington assumed the role of the nation's first lady, public fascination and criticism has followed. First ladies are among the most prominent women in U.S. history yet have been vastly understudied despite their significance to history, politics, media, and celebrity culture. This podcast explores these women more in-depth by visiting with prominent authors and experts.
We begin with Lisa Burns, co-editor of the forthcoming book, Cambridge Companion to US First Ladies. Lisa, welcome to the show. Why did you become interested in studying first ladies?
Lisa Burns (1:21): Well, I sort of fell into it. When I went to grad school, I had been a reporter and I did a lot of politics and I'm like, I'm going to study presidential debates. Then I found out that like everybody and their brother studies presidential debates. So, I was taking a class on president and first lady rhetoric, and I became really interested in studying first ladies because I realized I didn't know a whole lot about them.
So, I decided to do my paper on Ellen Axson Wilson, who is actually the first Wilson wife, Woodrow's first wife. Most people only know Edith, the one who was kind of running the government while he was sick, but he had this first wife and the more I researched her, which was difficult because there wasn't a whole lot written about her, I found out that she had been an artist and she actually continued to show her artwork and sell her paintings when she was in the White House.
(2:23) So, I was like, well, she was technically the first kind of working woman in the White House, the first one to continue her career. She also worked on behalf of slum clearance legislation. It was an effort to improve the living conditions for D.C.'s poorest residents, many of whom were African American, and she was a Southern first lady. She held meetings and fundraisers at the White House, she took politicians and their wives on tours of these alleys and the shacks so they could see the conditions, including, at the time, a young Eleanor Roosevelt. And they actually passed legislation on her deathbed that was to help sort of clear the slums, although eventually it didn't work out. But I was thinking, you know, she was ahead of her time. Why have I never heard of this woman in my life?
(3:18) And I felt like I knew a decent amount about women's history, and I had never heard anything about her. So that same summer, after I took that class, I was in Austin, and I visited the Johnson Presidential Library Museum, and it was sort of the same thing. I was looking at all of this information about Lady Bird Johnson and all this incredible work that she did. And I was like, why have I never learned about this at all?
So, I decided that one, this was a topic, as I talked to my adviser, I realized it was relatively new that, you know, real scholarly study of first ladies had only started in the ‘80s, and so there weren't a ton of people doing this research, and it really was an understudied area in women's history, which was also something that I was always really interested in. So, I thought that, you know, I would devote my academic career to telling these women's stories and trying to claim their rightful place in the historical record. In some ways, maybe making sure that future generations appreciated the contributions these women have made to our society.
Teri Finneman (4:29): In recent years, as you've mentioned, there's been an increase in attention to first lady studies and programming. There's now FLARE, a national first ladies’ research organization. Showtime ran a series called The First Lady. There's a “Cooking with the First Ladies” series on YouTube. And now, obviously, we have this podcast. So, why do you think there's this public interest in first ladies?
Lisa Burns (4:50): I have to say it is great to see all of this increased interest in first ladies, but it's not really new. The press and the public, particularly media, which is what I study, they've been fascinated with first ladies since Martha Washington made the journey from Virginia to New York to join her husband who found himself in need of help with all of the entertaining he was expected to do. So, even though historians and teachers have ignored first ladies, I think, you know, there's always been this appetite for news about the president's family. First ladies have been the most prominent women in politics for many years, including periods when women were not involved in politics. They were one of the only women associated with politics.
(5:41) Personally, I think it doesn't matter that they weren't elected. They were celebrities, which oftentimes generates more press attention than if you are a politician. People care about what they wear, their favorite recipes, hence things like “Cooking with the First Ladies.” You know, what causes they support, and a lot of first ladies have been more popular than their husbands because they often transcend partisanship, now not always, but a lot of times, the things that they do, of course, are not as partisan.
Yet, at the same time, they are critiqued for everything they do, particularly by their husbands’ critics. So, I've found over the years, you know, I do a lot of speaking engagements. I'm asked to talk at local libraries, you know, community groups, museums, and the people who bring me in to speak tell me that first ladies are a really popular topic because they appeal to a pretty broad audience because, you know, when I talk about first ladies, it's a mix of history, politics, media, because that's sort of my background, celebrity.
(6:49) So, usually when I do these types of events, my biggest challenge and the same thing happens as I was preparing to come on the podcast, is usually, you know, how do I narrow down what to talk about because there are so many things we could discuss when it comes to first ladies. And so, I'm really happy to see all of this interest because with what's out there, I think we still have only kind of touched the tip of the iceberg.
Teri Finneman (7:15): This year marks 235 years since Martha Washington became the first first lady. How do you think her influence remains on the role to this day?
Lisa Burns (7:26): Well, first ladies have Martha to both thank and blame for this idea that spouses have a role in the U.S. presidency. What's interesting about politics even, you know, before the United States, if we go back to things like the royal courts in Europe, politics is not a 9-to-5 business. You know, it's not sort of your typical way of doing things. It has always relied on things like social occasions, protocol, relationship building, something that scholar Catherine Allgor calls parlor politics. So, George, as I mentioned before, learned pretty quickly that as president, he was expected to have these dinners and gatherings and salons, something that, honestly, he knew nothing about. So, he writes to Martha and is like, listen, I need you. Her plan was originally to stay at Mount Vernon and run the plantation, so that's why she makes that trip from Virginia to New York, and it fell to her. All of a sudden, now she has this job of organizing and overseeing these events.
(8:34) She could have stayed at Mount Vernon, but she didn’t, and that set a precedent that continues to this day. Now, to be honest, we no longer need the president's spouse to pick out china settings or set menus for the state dinners or manage the household. The White House has a staff full of professionals who are very competent and are the ones who really are doing the kind of day-to-day work, but the symbolism of it remains. And what I've found in my research is I think it's no coincidence that as the hostess and housekeeping duties diminished over the years for first ladies, they were expected to take on other roles such as benefactor or being a social advocate, and it allowed them to use the media spotlight to do things like call attention to worthy causes.
Teri Finneman (9:26): Yeah, so you talked about some of the changes over the years. You know, besides what you mentioned and obviously technology innovations, are there any other things that you wanted to mention as far as how the role of the first lady evolved from Martha Washington to Jill Biden?
Lisa Burns: One of the things I think is fascinating about the first lady position is that it has expanded over the years, and nothing has ever really been taken away from the duties. It's just become the sort of never-ending laundry list of expectations that we have for the women. So, it starts out with pretty much traditional female duties at the time: hostess, homemaker, wife, and mother, and of course, they're still expected to play those roles.
But then we see this expansion to things like surrogate, you know, standing in for their husband and representing him at events, campaigning, being an adviser and being recognized as an adviser to the president, being a social advocate, as I mentioned, getting into policy-making, being a spokesperson, being a trendsetter, whether they want to be or not. So, they have all these kind of things they're expected to juggle.
(10:38) Keep in mind, there is no rulebook or guidelines on how to be first lady. There is nothing written down in the Constitution. This position is incredibly informal, but it's an institution that has been largely shaped by the performances of the women who have taken on the role. Even though they aren't elected or, and I think this, for me, it's really important, they are not compensated, yet there's still this expectation that spouses will perform these various duties, and if they don't, they're criticized by both the media and the public. And so, I again, it's one of the reasons why I am so fascinated by the role that these women have oftentimes reluctantly played in our political system over the years.
Teri Finneman (11:28): When people talk about the first lady, you always hear Jackie Kennedy or Eleanor Roosevelt brought up, but in a recent piece that you wrote for the Boston Globe, you talked about how Rosalynn Carter, in particular, shaped the office of first lady. How so?
Lisa Burns: Rosalynn Carter, I think, is one of those many first ladies that, as you mentioned, gets overshadowed and often forgotten. And I think one of the things she did was really helped expand the position by being more politically active, starting with her role in the 1976 campaign. She was really the first candidate's wife to truly campaign solo on her own, and they did so mainly because Jimmy was unknown and so they spent two years traveling the country, you know, figuring out “Jimmy who” was kind of the joke at the time. So, by her campaigning on her own, that allowed them to cover more ground. It was basically just a campaign strategy. She also wasn't relegated when she did these campaign events. She wasn't just doing teas or women's luncheons, which a lot of previous candidates’ wives did.
(12:36) She went to factories and met with workers coming out of their shifts. She met with farmers. She did, and again, from my media perspective, one of the things she did was interviews with radio, TV stations, basically anybody that would have her, she would literally show up unannounced. She always carried with her a list of questions that they could use to interview her, which was, by the way, genius PR strategy because it helped her sort of frame the interview. And then, in 1980, she did the bulk of the campaigning for the Carters because her husband was busy dealing with the Iranian hostage crisis and didn't feel it was appropriate for him to be out on the road as much.
Something else that she did was she helped to professionalize the office of the first lady by working out of the East Wing instead of in the residence. All of the first ladies before her actually had their offices in the residence, and she thought, you know, this is a job that I'm doing.
(13:36) I should be working in the office with the staffers that are doing these things. She also had these weekly working luncheons with her husband, where they talked about a number of things, including policy, and it's because Jimmy considered her one of his closest advisers. This was the relationship they had in their business and in their marriage, and they didn't see any reason to change things when they came into the White House. So, Rosalynn sat in on cabinet meetings and, of course, that created some controversy about the power behind the throne and all of that, but the Carters really didn't see anything unusual about it.
Finally, really, there's her advocacy. Most people, if they do know anything about Rosalynn Carter, they think about the Equal Rights Amendment and her lobbying on behalf of that, which was pretty unpopular at the time. She also, though, did a laundry list of things: she advocated for childhood immunization, she raised money for Cambodian refugees, she brought attention to the concerns of elderly Americans and their caregivers, a topic that we're still talking about today that hasn't kind of gained a lot of traction, but is really important.
(14:46) She continued the work of Jackie Kennedy, restoring and maintaining the White House by establishing a permanent organization, the White House Endowment Trust, to renovate the White House. And I think, most notably, she helped destigmatize mental health and started a national conversation on a topic at a time when it was taboo to discuss. You know, people did not talk about mental health issues, but she went before Congress, and she testified on behalf of legislation that funded community mental health centers and encouraged mental illness to be covered by insurance, something that really has only started to happen in, you know, maybe say the last decade.
(15:33) We are so open in talking about mental health today. She was doing it nearly 50 years ago. So once again, this is someone who was ahead of her time and yet doesn't really get the credit for it. If people know of her today, they think more about Habitat for Humanity and the things that she did in her post-White House life, which I also think is an important contribution because in many ways, she kind of set a template for some of the future first ladies to follow. People like Laura Bush and Michelle Obama have talked about, you know, Rosalynn Carter's commitment to service and how they have realized they wanted to continue to use their platform even after their White House years.
Teri Finneman (16:15): You've mentioned the media a few times now. Your work examines press coverage of first ladies, as well as media relations strategies used by the first ladies. Why do you think examining first ladies through a media lens is important?
Lisa Burns (16:29): For me, it's, in some ways, of course, I'm biased, but I can't imagine – it boggles my mind that more people don't see the importance of looking at these women from a media perspective because, when you think about it, the average person gets most of their information, if not all of it, not just about first ladies, but about the world from the media, whether it's journalists, entertainment programs, social media. All of them have this tremendous amount of power to shape how we view people, events, institutions, and that's both during a particular time period and historically. So, I think to understand first ladies and their impact, you have to look at their media coverage.
(17:12) It not only gives us an account of what they did, I think it also shows how their actions were perceived by the press. So, things like whether it's newspaper articles or magazine features or TV appearances, when we look at them, it allows us to see first ladies the way the public viewed them during their tenure. So, like when I have students look at these things like articles, I say, “Imagine that you're reading this at the time period,” and I think that it helps us understand, kind of again, the contributions they made during their eras.
But you know, it's not, as I mentioned already, using a media lens is not that common. There's really sort of only a handful of us that do it, and two of us are actually on this podcast. So, the other thing, you know, related to the media relations is journalists, producers, talk show hosts, yeah, they have a lot of power to frame first ladies, but these women also have a say in shaping their own public images, and there is even less that has been written about first lady media relations and their use of strategic communication.
(18:25) So, my goal in researching it from this perspective, besides the fact that I'm a former journalist, is to really help fill the void in this scholarship. I've also found that, particularly if we're trying to relate to students, students find this lens a really interesting way to look at not just first ladies, but to look at history, to look at politics, and I find that it draws them in a bit more and gets them more engaged than kind of your typical like historical biography.
Teri Finneman: So, what were some of the key findings of your book, First Ladies and the Fourth Estate, which examined press coverage of first ladies?
Lisa Burns (19:06): Well, the first thing I discovered as I got into the project was the sheer amount of media coverage of first ladies over the years. Originally, I was going to do, you know, the entire history of first ladies and I realized that's too much. So, I focused on the 20th century originally because earlier articles were more difficult to access, and we don't have the consistency of like the same publications, so I'm like, okay 100 years is enough. I'll start with 1900, go up through 2000. Then I realized that was too much, so I was like, okay, let me narrow it down. I'll look at two major newspapers, three women's magazines and just focus on print media. There were still literally thousands of articles, and they weren't all, by the way, about Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Kennedy.
(20:01) You know, even someone going back to, you know, the earliest first ladies generated this enormous amount of coverage. So, going back to something I said earlier, it showed me that press and public interest in first ladies was not a new phenomenon and that first ladies were some of the most reported on political figures of the 20th century.
The other thing is these articles revealed how first ladies’ duties expanded over the years, as I mentioned, and how journalists responded to those changes, which, by the way, maybe not surprisingly, was not always favorable. Another interesting aspect was that it's a gendered position. Obviously, this is the spouse of the president, they're not elected and so far to date, it's only been women in this position.
(20:52) So, their coverage always tends to have this gender framing where it's related to the gender norms of the time, but sometimes, it actually questions these norms, particularly because these are very politically active, publicly active women, and it raises questions about, you know, American women's personal and political roles and how they changed and expanded over the years. And finally, probably sort of one of my biggest aha moments was that first ladies are going to be criticized no matter what they do. They're either too active or not active enough, too fashionable or too frumpy, too influential or not doing enough to help their husbands. I will admit, it was exhausting just reading this coverage, so imagine having to live that life and deal with that scrutiny and it gave me a great deal of respect and empathy for every woman who has held this position.
Teri Finneman (21:51): Absolutely, and that leads perfectly into what we're going to talk about next, because one of my favorite first lady-related stories is press secretary Liz Carpenter, who referred to managing the interests of the president and first lady, and then also the interests of the press, as the hell department, which is so fitting. You also wrote the book Media Relations and the Modern First Lady. What did you learn from producing that book and which first ladies would you say have most effectively managed media relations?
Lisa Burns (22:24): Well, there are a few key takeaways from the media relations book. First, it's important to have a clear communication strategy, and by the way, this applies to presidents and politicians in general as well as first ladies. So, for a first lady, they need to decide what they want to accomplish and where their comfort zone is, which I think is really important. Then, play to those strengths.
For example, Michelle Obama has always claimed that she doesn't like to give big speeches, but we all know she's great at them and because of that, she has been a key player in campaigns even after Obama has left the White House, her husband has left the White House. She's also fantastic on talk shows, and she's very savvy with social media. Those were her strengths, and she played to them.
(23:12) Laura Bush preferred smaller gatherings and working from a script, so she did a lot of fundraisers and things like the presidential radio address. And again, she excelled in those areas because that's where she was most comfortable, and by the way, was one of the top fundraisers for the Bush campaign.
Second thing is that you need a strong communications team that understands the media and is good at building relationships with reporters and producers. They also need to really understand the woman they're working for and have their trust. So, the press secretaries and first ladies that had the closest and best relationships were often the most successful. The best example, who you've already mentioned, my favorite, Liz Carpenter. She was a veteran newspaper reporter before she joined the Johnson-Kennedy campaign, or, I should say, Kennedy-Johnson campaign, but she came on during the campaign to help President Johnson, sorry, not president at the time, but to help the Johnsons out.
(24:19) And she knew what reporters needed and that's how she pitched herself for the job. She also knew most of them personally, which really helped because she already had those established relationships. But she also recognized once she made that switch to what many referred to as the dark side, doing public relations, that her main responsibility was presenting the Johnson administration in a positive light. So, she found a way to navigate this by – her mantra, kind of, was “be open and honest as possible” with her former colleagues. If she could tell you something, she would, and if she couldn't, she would tell you she couldn't tell you. You know, simple as that.
In addition, she and Lady Bird, who, by the way, also had a journalism degree from the University of Texas, which I think made a big difference, they devised a strategy where they would give reporters access to the first lady and Lady Bird was always doing something, so that gave reporters plenty to cover. (25:20) The result was a ton of positive copy on things like LBJ's Great Society programs, Lady Bird’s environmental conservation programs, and she also had the very successful whistle stop campaign tour in 1964 that was credited with helping LBJ win several key Southern states during the election.
So, as for the latter part of your question, the first ladies who are most effective, those were the ones who were most proactive in their media relations efforts and their communication strategies. They were the ones who often got more positive coverage. So, some of the ones that immediately come to mind: Johnson, Barbara and Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama.
(26:07) Those who were more reactive to, you know, the media coming to them and sometimes standoffish, not wanting to deal with the media, tended to have more negative coverage. So, people like Pat Nixon, Hillary Clinton, and Melania Trump really suffered from, in part, not having a really strong staff around them and not having a strategy for dealing with the media.
Teri Finneman (26:30): And then you have another book coming out next year, which will be the focus of about a dozen podcast episodes here, with the various authors from the team. What makes your upcoming book, Cambridge Companion to U.S. First Ladies unique?
Lisa Burns (26:44): I should say we have a book coming out, and I'm very excited to be working with you on it. What's great about this book is that most articles and books, other books that have been written previously about first ladies, they tend to focus on the individual women who have held the position, so they're mainly biographies. Even these larger collections tend to have, you know, each chapter is a different first lady. There are very few works that approach first ladies from a thematic perspective, that looks at the development of things like the first lady institution and the political, cultural, and social influence of these women, and that's really the thing that makes our book unique, is that we are taking this thematic approach. Each of our authors will be discussing multiple first ladies in their chapters, and that will give them a chance to compare and contrast their performances and really examine how the role has evolved over time and the influence these women have had in these different areas, whether it's their political influence, their social influence, their cultural influence.
And I think by taking this approach, one, it's not just sort of your typical biography, but it also shows just what an influence these women have had and how important this, the first lady has been to American government and American politics over the years.
Teri Finneman (28:15): So, let's talk about some of the topics that will be found in the chapters and that we'll be hearing about more in future episodes.
Lisa Burns (28:22): Well, we are covering a lot of ground in 14 chapters. Our introduction will look at the history and development of the first lady institution and the professionalization of the office of the first lady over the years. This will lay the groundwork for – our chapters that follow really are best thought of as thematic essays looking at different topics, and they can be categorized in kind of a couple different buckets.
Some of the chapters focus on the various first lady roles that we've talked about, like hostess, campaigner, surrogate, diplomat, social advocate. For example, one chapter discusses how first ladies have been both political assets and liabilities over the years. Another looks at first ladies’ influence on international diplomacy. We have a chapter looking at first lady stand-ins, which I think is really important. These are the women who were not wives, so sometimes, you know, sisters, daughters, but they performed the first lady's duties. (29:25) Because they aren't spouses, though, if you look at these other first lady collections, they often get left out and their stories aren't told, and so we're making sure that we include them in this book.
When it comes to the ways that these women have used their platform to promote causes, we have a couple chapters looking at that. One of our authors is looking at their social advocacy efforts. Another is focusing specifically on first ladies and women's rights. We also have a chapter that really interrogates the complicated relationship between first ladies, slavery, and civil rights. Now, given that both of us come from media backgrounds, I would say that our book pays more attention to first ladies’ communication strategies and image-making than your typical first lady biographies that are out there. So, we have a chapter devoted to first lady speeches. We have another looking at their use of media. One of our contributors is tracing the history of first ladies as trendsetters over the years, which of course often is related to things like their coverage in women's magazines and fashion magazines.
(30:34) And we have a chapter of representations of first ladies in film and kind of fictional representations of first ladies. So, there's some fun stuff in there that you don't find in most of the scholarship. Finally, we have a group of chapters devoted to the important role that these women have played during specific historical moments. This includes first ladies in wartime, wives who have led the nation in mourning after a president's death, and then we're wrapping up the book with a chapter that looks at legacy memorialization and public memory of first ladies. So, in all, we think this book will be a great introduction for people who are new to studying first ladies, whether it's, you know, students, researchers who are getting into it and they're looking for a place to start.
We also think that basically, you know, for a general readership, anyone who's interested in first ladies, U.S. history, women's history, politics, or even the various topics that we're touching on, we think there's a little bit of something for all of those people in the book.
Teri Finneman (31:43): Definitely. So, the book definitely covers a wide range of topics as you just said. What do you think are additional topics related to first ladies or perhaps specific first ladies themselves that still need exploring?
Lisa Burns: Well, you're right. As much as we're getting into this book, we definitely are not covering everything, and there's still so many topics to explore when it comes to first ladies. As I mentioned earlier, very little has been written about their image-making and public relations strategies, and so I'd like to see more done on that. I think it's a really sort of rich field to get more into.
And other than memoirs, we don't have any books about the women who have worked with first ladies, and it has been largely women that have worked on first lady staffs. This includes press secretaries, social secretaries, and all of the other staffers who keep the East Wing running. Their stories, we have some of their sort of oral histories in the presidential libraries and museums for the more recent administration. And I really think that, again, is a rich area that I would love to see explored and hear – kind of working for the first lady, what is that experience like and learning more about the inner workings of the White House.
(33:03) One of my personal areas of interest is museums and how they shape our collective memories and influence the legacies of public figures. I started a project about a decade ago looking at museum exhibits and kind of how do they tell the story of their administration and, obviously, I was really interested in how first ladies were represented. In some museums, they were really integrated into the narrative. Others, it was like a separate section – here's some dresses and things she did, you know, really sort of wildly different ways of looking at it.
Unfortunately, I put that project on the back burner after traveling to all the museums. They all started doing redesigns of their exhibits and so I would have had to go back. I hope to do that someday. I'm thinking now I might look for some collaborators, so I don't have to do it all on my own. But again, think about the public. You know, this is one of the main ways for people who visit these museums, this is how they're learning about first ladies, about presidents. So, what are they learning when they go to these museums?
(34:06) Speaking of legacies, and I know this is something you've looked at, first lady obituaries are fascinating. I've often used them in my research, and I think obits give us this insight into how these women were perceived during their time period and how they were remembered at their passing. These were some of the most well-known women of their eras, and this is often reflected in their obituaries. So, I think there's a book-length study that could be done on the topic. 19th-century first ladies is something that is under-studied. Thanks to the internet and the digitization of a lot of archives, researchers now have more access to their letters and personal papers, to old newspapers and magazines, so it would be great to see more people writing about sort of the pre-1900, even in some ways sort of the pre-Eleanor Roosevelt first ladies don't get sort of as much attention.
(35:03) You know, no disrespect to, as we mentioned before, Eleanor or Jackie. No disrespect to them, but there's a ton of other women who have held this position that have stories that still need to be told. And then the final area, this is one that I'm really interested in, and I hope someone starts writing about is both first lady stand-ins, but vice-presidential spouses. They are an understudied area, so I'm hoping that Doug Emhoff is prompting someone out there since we now have the first “second gentleman,” prompting them to do this study. But even before Doug, Jill Biden did a lot when she was the so-called “second lady.” I hate that term, but that's what they call them, and it really set her up for the work that she's doing now as first lady.
The same was true for Lady Bird Johnson and Pat Nixon. Both of them often stood in for Jackie Kennedy and Mamie Eisenhower respectively. So, I look at it as it's a bit like being an understudy for a role and it allowed them to really prepare for the first lady position. I think there's at least an article, but I think again, there could be a book-length work on this, I just don't have the time to write it right now, but I really hope that someone does.
Teri Finneman (36:17): Well, this is just episode one of more to come delving into first ladies further. To tie together everything we've talked about today, why do you think studying first ladies matters?
Lisa Burns (36:29): Couple of reasons. These are some of the most prominent women in U.S. history. They have intimate access to the inner workings and the highest levels of our government. They have the power to influence presidential decision-making, and they have over the years. They have a platform that allows them to call attention to social issues, to advocate for causes. They are celebrities. They're trendsetters during their eras. They took on an uncompensated and often incredibly thankless role and were subject to constant scrutiny.
And most of these women had a major impact on their eras. They were very popular during their time periods, but unfortunately, as the years have passed, many of them have been forgotten or we know one or two things about some of them, and that shouldn't be the case. I think all of their lives should be celebrated. Their stories should be told and that's what we're doing with our book and that's what you're doing with this podcast.
Teri Finneman (37:35): All right, well, thanks so much for joining us today.
Lisa Burns (37:38): Thank you.
Teri Finneman: We hope you enjoyed the show. Tune in next time to uncover more untold histories of the nation's first ladies. I'm Teri Finneman, and this is The First Ladies podcast.
Show music credit: "Winning Elevation" by Hot_Dope.