The United Foundation Trust and its Highest Honor, the Order of the Purple Girdle

Abstract

In this Research Files article, Maureen Flanagan Battistella documents the history of the United Foundation Trust (UFT), a secret society of women active at Southern Oregon College (SOC), now Southern Oregon University (SOU), from 1957 to 1978, through a rediscovered collection at SOU’s housed in the Archives and Special Collections. The collection includes UFT regalia and a collection of scrapbooks, minutes of meetings, and artifacts that “pro¬vide a unique and personal insight into the post–World War II lives of women academics teaching at a rural Oregon college.”