It’s the birthday of the organization that the ranting right likes to blame for lesbianism, abortion, Godlessness, tolerance of immigrants and dusky minorities, and a general threat to the American way of life. Yet the Girl Scouts of America (GSA) doesn’t seem to care and sails serenely and successfully on while the erstwhile conservative pet Boys Scouts have nearly collapsed in the wake of sex abuse scandals, financial mismanagement, a history racism, anti-Gay bigotry, and discrimination against women and girls. The former BSA was forced to admit Gay Scouts and leaders leading to their largest troop sponsor, the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) to abandon them. Opting to admit girls to most programs caused Fox News talking heads to explode and membership has plummeted to a fraction of boys served just a few decades ago.
On March 12, 1912 Juliette Gordon Low established the first troop of Girl Guides in America in her hometown of Savannah, Georgia. The troop included 12 girls, mostly friends of her niece Margaret Gordon, who became the first enrolled member. The following year Low changed the name of her organization to Girl Scouts of America.
Low was born in 1860. Her father, a member of an old Georgia family was soon off to war as a Confederate officer. Her mother was a Kinzie, one of the founding families of Chicago. Her mother encouraged Daisy, as she was called, in her interest in both the arts and social service. She wrote poetry, painted, and eventually became a skilled sculptor.
She grew up privileged and enjoyed the finest education available to girls of her class. She was sent to boarding school at the Virginia Female Institute and then to fashionable French finishing school in New York. She spent years touring extensively in Europe and the U.S. before marrying William Mackay Low, a wealthy Englishman in her Savannah home.
An errant grain of rice thrown at the wedding ruptured an ear drum and the following infection left her totally deaf in that ear. Childhood illness had severely damaged the hearing in the other. Despite her disability Low continued to lead an active life.
The couple settled in England, but Low returned annually for extended stays in the States. When the Spanish American War broke out, her father was commissioned a General. Low joined her mother in establishing a hospital for wounded soldiers.
Although she later returned to England, her marriage was in a shambles. She separated from her husband but for social reasons could not divorce. His death in 1905 freed her to find a new mission in life.
A chance meeting in 1911 with Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides in Britain awakened her interest in youth work. She returned to her ancestral home in Savannah and began the work.
She did not slavishly copy Baden-Powell program, which she thought did not do enough to encourage independence in young women and which kept them in an inferior status to boys. She kept her organization separate from the new Boy Scouts of America so as not to be swamped. But she defiantly took the name Scouts to emphasize parity.
Her program did not just include wholesome outdoor activity and domestic arts, but also encouraged the arts, intellectual development, and leadership skills necessary for women to establish careers and take positions of civic leadership. She also defied convention—and shocked many—by insisting that disabled girls be admitted as full members in integrated troops.
She saw her organization grow rapidly from its humble beginnings and spread across the nation. With her extensive international experience and her contact with Girl Guide and Scout movements in Europe on all sides even during the First World War she helped establish the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts after the end of the conflict.
Low died of breast cancer in her beloved home in 1927. In 1953 the Girl Scouts purchased and restored that home as the Juliette Gordon Low Girl Scout National Center. Known reverently as simply The Birthplace, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965.
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