Offering lessons for today’s world, Nancy Evans Roles’s biography, She Found Her Voice, is about an extraordinary 20th Century educational leader and progressive feminist.
Ms. Roles’s daughter, Barbara McKinnon, highlights, through this biography, some of the trials and triumphs of the women who first espoused a progressive feminist ethic in mid-twentieth-century America. Written with warmth, buttressed with years-long research, and unsparing of details, the book follows Ms. Roles’s remarkable journey. From genteel poverty in a small town in North Carolina, Ms. Roles became a faculty member at New College, Columbia University, and was involved in the codification of John Dewey’s progressive education pedagogy.
After settling in Louisville, KY, Ms. Roles directed her attention to social justice issues, became the president of various local and state organizations –– and served on two prominent national boards. A champion of a woman’s right to explore the interconnections between her personal and her political world, she gave numerous speeches and sermons raising women’s awareness of the challenges and opportunities for intellectual freedom and activism. Married to a physician for fifty-nine years, Nancy’s private life included raising three children and becoming a regionally known Plein Air artist.
Author’s Background:
Barbara McKinnon’s social justice and ministry career began with involvement in programs developed to improve community mental health. During that period, her efforts resulted in her being listed in Outstanding Young Women of America. Through leadership in committee work, fund-raising, and direct ministry, her advocacy has supported social services for cancer patients, abused women, and the homeless. She earned her undergraduate degree in history at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and her Master of Divinity at General Theological Seminary during the inception of the feminist movement in the Episcopal Church. McKinnon is frequently called on to contribute written communications for community endeavors. Through investigating more than 20 file boxes of Nancy’s journals, letters, lectures, speeches, and artifacts, interviews with family members, friends, and contemporaries, and hours of intimate conversation, Mrs. McKinnon has been able to mine rich sources of information.
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