Business and Professional Women’s Club (BPW), Crookston, 1921–1960

The Business and Professional Women’s Foundation (BPW/USA) was started in 1919 to improve job conditions and raise pay rates for working women. At the first meeting of the foundation’s Crookston chapter in 1921, over 100 women gathered. In its early years, the club donated volunteer time and money to local causes, including the Camp Fire Girls, Crookston’s Drum and Bugle Corps, and milk and medical aid for needy school children.

The Crookston BPW club supported women at local, national, and international levels. Its initial goal, after World War I, was to encourage women in leadership roles to take on economic and political problems and to assure that they reached their full professional potential. Since it was a branch of the state-wide organization, the club sent annual member dues to the Minnesota BPW’s treasury.

The BPW Club Collect, a creed written by Mary Stewart, states what members hope to achieve and emphasizes their commitment to kindness, tolerance, service, and generosity. The five symbols of the BPW emblem, representing light, health, peace, achievement, and victory, reiterate the group’s primary charitable goals.

In the 1920s, the Crookston club extended its fundraising efforts to pay for war bonds, tuberculosis Christmas bonds, and the local chapter of the American Red Cross. In 1925, it organized a student loan fund to help women continue their educations as adults. Many members were elected to public offices at local and state levels.

During the 1920s and 1930s, the Crookston BPW club provided entertainment for tuberculosis patients residing in Sunnyrest Sanatorium. In 1928 and 1929, the club also gave money to the victims of a devastating storm in Florida. They promoted plays such as Kathleen and Circus Solly (performed at Crookston’s Opera House) and contributed ticket sales to the student loan fund.

In the early 1930s, during the Great Depression, the Crookston BPW club lost the funds it had invested in failed banks. Its deposits were indefinitely unavailable, which made it impossible to pay annual dues to the BPW state treasury. Even in the midst of the crisis, in 1930 and 1931, club members sent an affidavit to the BPW/USA national office documenting their continued campaigns in local newspapers to promote club activities and attract more members.

In order to save money, the Crookston club voted in 1932 to send cards instead of flowers to ill BPW members and others in the community. The switch enabled them to save twelve dollars per month and use that money to provide milk for needy school children.

In 1934, the Crookston BPW reported spending $300 in local shops and businesses to promote the city’s economy. They also invited guest speakers to give lectures on relevant topics once a month. In 1935, a local doctor, Dr. O. E. Locken, spoke on “The Effect of the Depression on Government.” Meetings were held in different venues based on the season and rental price.

In 1936, Augusta Coss, a Crookston BPW member, donated her daughter’s subscription to Independent Woman magazine to the club’s library. This allowed it to cancel its group subscription and save the money for donating elsewhere. In 1937 and 1938, eighteen of the club’s sixty-eight members were original signers of the 1921 charter.

By 1939, the Crookston club’s members—many of whom recalled the trials of World War I—resolved that America should keep out of World War II. In February of 1941, one member presented a sketch symbolizing the International Federation of BPW. It depicted twenty candles, five of which were lit. The remaining fifteen unlit candles represented countries with BPW chapters that had been invaded or oppressed during wartime.

During World War II, the club sent clothes to war-torn nations via the BPW national office. In 1951, it honored ex-servicewomen for the roles they had played during the war. On November 6, 1956, the first Crookston BPW president, Ida Tvedten, gave a talk describing the first Armistice Day in France. The club’s second president, Mae Rideout, was honored in 1954 as “Woman of the Year.”