Voss, Vivian Castleberry

Book cover with title Vivian Castleberry: Challenging the Traditions of Women's Roles, Newspaper Content, and Community Politics. Features a smaller images of a typewriter. Authors Kimberly Wilmot Voss

2023-10 | Download PDF

Voss, Kimberly Wilmot. Vivian Castleberry: Challenging the Traditions of Women’s Roles, Newspaper Content, and Community Politics. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2023, 138 pp. $90 (hardback). ISBN: 9781793650146 Reviewed by Laura Meadows, Department of Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Asheville, meadows@unca.edu.

Vivian Lou Anderson Castleberry, feminist, mother of five, longtime editor of the women’s page of the Dallas Times Herald, and later the founder of the Castleberry Peace Institute at the University of North Texas in Denton, deserves the overdue attention granted to her in Kimberly Voss’s Vivian Castleberry: Challenging the Traditions of Women’s Roles, Newspaper Content, and Community Politics. Castleberry’s editorship ran from 1956 to 1984, pivotal years in the rise and development of the women’s movement in Texas and nationally, and her coverage helped deliver the movement’s issues into the hands of everyday women and men throughout the country. Within two weeks of her retirement from the Dallas Times Herald, she had embarked on a second career of sorts in peace advocacy, traveling to the Soviet Union on several occasions and establishing a university-supported peace institute in the States. 

Voss’s book chronicles her career as an editor and peace advocate but begins her work contextualizing Castleberry’s life and times. In some measure, Voss is able to do this so effectively because of the personal access to Castleberry, her husband, and her papers she received. As the author notes, “The opportunity to stay at [The Castleberry] home was wonderful. It was a chance to see them interact together. I was also able to see her home office and go through her files before they were donated to Southern Methodist University” (p. ix). The “honor” of getting to know Castleberry and Voss’s appraisal of her personality as “warm and welcoming” color the book’s pages and create a sympathetic and winning portrait of the Dallas Times Herald tenured editor depicted throughout the book (p. 1).

Through this access and the extensive research Voss conducted, the reader gets an insight into the development of women’s newspaper pages, specifically the impact World War II had on them and the ways the pages mixed traditional coverage with increasingly feminist perspectives. Layered upon this context is a chapter detailing Castleberry’s childhood and college years and another on her family life, which provide the reader with a more personal perspective on this era of U.S. history. Overall, this section of the text offers a fascinating frame of reference for understanding the challenges Castleberry faced when she entered her role as Dallas Times Herald women’s page editor, both professionally and personally, and allows for an appreciation of the work she was ultimately able to produce. In short, her life was copy.

With a focus on people at the heart of every story, from home furnishings to reproductive rights, Castleberry began her work at the Dallas Times Herald in 1956 as a reporter. Still, within two years, she assumed the role of editor of the women’s page, which she held for twenty-eight years. Voss details this work by examining the personal dynamics of the newspaper’s staff, including Castleberry’s interactions with male editors, staff, owners, and the editorial board. This exploration of the newspaper’s personal dynamics reveals a harrowing work environment for any woman and one that Castleberry must have been incredibly savvy to navigate so successfully. Conspicuously absent, though, is much exploration of the actual stories the women’s page produced. Considering the book’s focus on newspaper content, the absence of such analysis is missed.

However, the book shines brightest in its focus on how Castleberry’s personal and private lives intersect. From her 67-year egalitarian marriage to Curtis Castleberry to raising five daughters to her interactions with male bosses, Vivian Castleberry embodied her times. Reading the history of her life allows the reader to better understand not only the mid-century newspaper industry but also the impact of World War II on societal gender dynamics, the rise of second-wave feminism, and the inevitable interactions between mass media and social movement actors.

Vivian Castleberry: Challenging the Traditions of Women’s Roles, Newspaper Content, and Community Politics is an important contribution on all these fronts. This book is an enjoyable and accessible read that will work nicely for any course focusing on women in the newsroom. Further, it highlights the life and work of an underreported subject and reveals to the reader a journalistic and feminist hero previously concealed in our history.