Jessie Bernard papers

Jessie Bernard was born Jessie Sarah Ravitch on June 8, 1903, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The third of four children, she was the daughter of Romanian Jewish immigrants, Bessie Kanter Ravitch, a homemaker, and David Solomon Ravitch (earlier Revici and later Ravage), a real-estate broker.

At the University of Minnesota, Bernard studied with several notable scholars, among them sociologists Pitirim Sorokin and Luther Lee Bernard, economist Alvin Hansen, economic historian N. S. B. Gras, and psychologist Karl Lashley. In 1923 Bernard received a B.A. in sociology and in 1924 a M.A. in sociology and economics, both degrees magna cum laude. In 1925 she married Luther Bernard. In 1927, at the University of Chicago, Jessie Bernard studied with sociologists George Herbert Mead, Robert E. Park, and Ellsworth Faris. In 1935 she earned a Ph.D. in sociology and psychology from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, where Luther Bernard was teaching.

In 1936 Jessie Bernard separated from her husband and went to Washington, D. C., to work, first as a researcher for the United States Railroad Retirement Board and the Works Progress Administration, and then, from 1938 to 1940, as an analyst for the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics in cooperation with the Bureau of Home Economics. In 1938 she joined the Society of Friends. In 1940, she reunited with her husband and took a professorship of sociology at Lindenwood College in St. Charles, Missouri.

In 1947 the Bernards came to The Pennsylvania State University where Jessie Bernard had accepted a professorship and Luther Bernard a guest lecturership in sociology. In 1951 Luther Bernard died, leaving Jessie Bernard responsible for raising their three children: Dorothy Lee Bernard (1941-), Charles Henry 'Claude' Bernard (1945-), and David Hamilton Bernard (1950-2005). In 1961 Jessie Bernard moved her family to Washington, D.C., commuting from Washington to teach at Penn State. When she retired from Penn State in 1964, Jessie Bernard was awarded the title of Research Scholar Honoris Causa.

Jessie Bernard wrote some fifteen books, co-authored or edited seven volumes, wrote twenty-five book chapters, and penned more than sixty journal articles (Lipman-Blumen 1155). Many of Jessie Bernard's books reflect her interests in family, marriage, and community. Included among these are American Family Behavior (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942); Remarriage, a Study of Marriage (New York: Dryden , 1956); American Community Behavior (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1949, rev. ed. 1962); Marriage and Family among Negroes (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966); and The Sociology of Community (Glennview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1973). In her autobiographical study, Self Portrait of a Family: Letters by Jessie, Dorothy Lee, Claude, and David Bernard (Boston: Beacon, 1978), Jessie Bernard explored the sociological and psychological dimensions of her own family.

During her career Jessie Bernard moved intellectually from social positivism to functionalism to feminism (Lipman-Blumen, 1156-57). In the years following her retirement, Jessie Bernard wrote some of her most influential books from her later perspective of feminism. Although not a feminist critique, Academic Women (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1964) set the course for an outpouring of other studies in which Bernard explored the bicultural issues raised by the Women's movement emergent in the 1960s. Some of these works include, The Sex Game : Communication Between the Sexes (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), Women and the Public Interest: An Essay on Policy and Protest (Chicago: Aldine, 1971); The Future of Marriage (New York: World Publishing, 1972); The Future of Motherhood (New York: Dial, 1974); The Female World (New York: Free Press, 1981); and The Female World in a Global Perspective (Bloomington, IN, 1987).

After leaving her academic position, Jessie Bernard continued not only to write but also to live an active professional life. From 1959-1960 she had taught as a visiting professor at Princeton University, and after she retired she accepted several other visiting appointments. These included Visiting Fellow at the National Institute of Education (1974-1975); Scholar-in-Residence for the United States Commission on Civil Rights (1975-1976); and visiting professorships at Mills College (1980), the University of California, Los Angeles (1981), and the University of Delaware (1982). She also taught women's studies classes in Washington, D. C., and accepted invitations to speak at conferences and women's programs in the United States and abroad. As evidenced in her correspondence, Jessie Bernard encouraged and supported the professional women she met on these occasions.

During her career Jessie Bernard attained leadership positions and received numerous awards. Active in professional associations, she served as President of the Eastern Sociological Society (1953), Vice-President of the American Sociological Association (1953-1954), and President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (1963-1964). In addition, she helped found the Society for the Study of Social Problems (1951) and Sociologists for Women in Society (1970s). Her many awards include the Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Association of University Women (1976) and the Distinguished Career Award from the American Sociological Association (1989). Both the American Sociological Association (1976) and the District of Columbia Sociologists for Women in Society (1978) created in her honor the Jessie Bernard Award. In the course of her career, she received ten honorary doctorates from major universities.

Jessie Bernard died in Washington, D. C., on October 6, 1996.