The appointment of pages is one of the Senate’s oldest traditions, dating to at least the 1824 appointment of 12-year-old James Tims. Nineteenth-century pages were typically boys, but from 1907 to 1926 the Senate employed female riding pages, who carried messages and packages from the Capitol to federal buildings throughout the District of Columbia. Though no Senate rule explicitly forbade the appointment of female pages, when teenage girls applied to be pages in the 1960s, the sergeant at arms, likely unaware of earlier female pages and influenced by prevailing attitudes about the appropriate roles of girls and women, rejected their applications. He explained that the duties pages performed—carrying “heavy, bulky material,” and walking and “even running at times”—precluded the appointment of female pages. Senators challenged this discrimination, insisting that female pages should be hired. After a monthslong delay followed by a floor debate, the Senate adopted a resolution to admit female applicants to a variety of patronage positions, including pages. Soon thereafter, Paulette Desell, Ellen McConnell, and Julie Price were sworn in as Senate pages. In these interviews, the three women recall the long waiting period between being selected by their sponsoring members until the Senate formally approved their appointments; the media attention; their reception by the boy pages and the senators; and how their page experiences shaped their lives.
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Scholarly citation: "First Female Senate Pages: Ellen McConnell Blakeman, Paulette Desell-Lund, and Julie Price," Oral History Interviews, December 5, 2012, to April 15, 2014, Senate Historical Office, Washington, D.C.
Disclaimer: The Senate Historical Office has a strong commitment to oral history as an important part of its efforts to document institutional change over time. Oral histories are a natural component to historical research and enhance the archival holdings of the Senate and its members. Oral histories represent the personal recollections and opinions of the interviewees, however, and should not be considered as the official views or opinions of the U.S. Senate, of the Senate Historical Office, or of other senators and/or staff members. The transcripts of these oral histories are made available by the Senate Historical Office as a public service.
