Working Title: Washington Star Twenty-Third Amendment Campaign Scrapbook, 1959-1961
Content: This 24″x18″ folio traces the newspaper’s 1959-1961 campaign for the passage of the Twenty-Third Amendment. A collage of clippings, predominantly with a Grace Bassett byline, have been laminated on non-newsprint sheets that are glued back-to-back; a few pages contain actual newsprint. Generously interspersed with the clippings is commentary explaining the role the paper played in the passage of the amendment.
The scrapbook, which is entitled, “Prize winning newspaper series by Grace Bassett, staff writer, The Washington Star, for chronicling the campaign that won the first vote for residents of Washington, D.C. 1959-1961,” was compiled by the paper to submit to competition; presumably the title was added after Bassett received an award for excellence in public affairs from the American Political Science Association in recognition of her work chronicling the road to the passage of the Twenty-Third Amendment, which extended to D.C. residents the right to vote for electors in Presidential elections.
Status: Available for research.
Note: In addition to its research value, this scrapbook is an excellent teaching tool relating to home rule and voting rights.
Background: Mary Grace Bassett (also known as Grace Bassett and M.G. Bassett), journalist and lawyer, wrote for The Washington Post, The Washington Star, and the King Features Syndicate in Washington, D.C., from 1952 to 1976. She also served as Assistant Cabinet Secretary for President Gerald Ford and as Assistant Campaign Manager for Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy.
Bassett, now in her 80s, reached out to the Historical Society as she was eager to find an appropriate home for the scrapbook, which was given to her by a Star librarian prior to the paper’s demise. She also donated an undated black-and-white studio portrait of her in her reporter’s days; in this image, unlike the head shot that ran with the award’s announcement in the May 3, 1961 Star, she’s smiling.
