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Name: Personal History
Rating: 4.6 (15 reviews)
Author: Katharine Graham

Katharine Graham

Uncover the remarkable story of America’s leading lady of letters

4.6 (15 ratings)

27 mins

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Women's Stories Biographies Autobiographies

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Personal History
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What’s in it for me? Uncover the remarkable story of America’s leading lady of letters.

“This is a man’s world,” sang James Brown in one of his iconic tracks, released in 1966. At the time, few would have disagreed with him.

But at the same time, there were also many determined women set on changing that. One of them was Katharine Graham, the first woman to head up a major American newspaper and the brilliant media mogul who presided over the Washington Post from the mid-1960s until her retirement in 1991.

Graham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Personal History recounts her rise to the top in a fiercely competitive, male-dominated industry, in an era of dramatic social change. An intimate inside story, this is Graham’s own account of her life, from a childhood dominated by her overbearing mother to the presidency of the Post and her role in breaking one of the biggest scandals of the century: Watergate.

So how did she do it?

In these blinks, you’ll find out

why Graham almost quit her career in journalism before it had even started;
what happened when she became the first Western woman to meet the Japanese Emperor; and
how her unique leadership style kept the Post afloat and moving with the times.

When she was young, Katharine Graham had a demanding mother and wanted nothing more than to fit in.

Katharine Graham née Meyer was born into an affluent New York family in 1917. Although she enjoyed a privileged upbringing, Graham’s childhood was in many ways an ordinary one. The most remarkable influence on the young Graham was perhaps Lucy Madeira Wing, her high school principal and a woman of fiercely egalitarian views who claimed that God was female.

But at that time in her life, Graham had other things on her mind; what she wanted most of all was to fit in with her classmates.

Like many young women before her, she realized that one way of going about this was to win the attention of men at the parties and dances she regularly attended. Laughing at whatever they said was guaranteed to win their favor and, sure enough, they would find her attractive. She soon became popular among her peers.

Graham didn’t only strive for social recognition – she was also an academic overachiever, which made her schedule a hectic one. On top of classes, she joined the basketball and hockey teams, and was a member of both the glee club and the school theatre group. And if that wasn’t demanding enough, she also took piano lessons on the side!

So what drove her?

In a word, her mother. An imposing and formidable woman, Graham’s mother Agnes Elizabeth Meyer set high standards for her daughter.

Meyer’s own life had been an impressive one. An avid reader who had blazed a path into the journalistic profession long before women were widely accepted there, she was also a well-known socialite who had rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest figures of the age. Both the German author Thomas Mann and the twenty-sixth president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, were in her address book.

Meyer was a loving mother who took pride in her children’s achievements, but she was also a strict taskmaster. She expected a lot from her children – too much, perhaps.

Take Graham’s youthful enthusiasm for the novel The Three Musketeers. Her mother’s reply upon hearing her daughter express admiration for this classic historical drama? She’d never be able to appreciate it properly until she’d read it in the original French!

That was an attitude which was applied to everything Graham did.

She was expected to be both popular with her classmates and top of the class.

With expectations set so high, Graham learned to be economical with the truth. She claimed to have more friends than she really did and went to great lengths to state this white lie whenever her parents visited the school.

Graham’s first newspaper job had a steep learning curve, but she soon began enjoying her work.

If Graham’s mother had been an overly dominant presence in her early life, her father had been largely absent. Occupied by his own work, Eugene Meyer had little time for his children.

That changed when Graham went to the University of Chicago to study history in 1936. Over the following two years, she grew much closer to her father as the result of their regular correspondence.

At the end of the 1930s, Graham joined the Washington Post and began writing editorials.

At the end of her five-year stint in San Francisco, Graham decided to return home to Chicago.

But that didn’t mean start from scratch.

Graham’s husband joined the Post in 1946 and quickly rose to the top.

The war was an eventful period in Graham’s life. She met her husband Phil and, soon after, had two children. That meant change. She now took on a more domestic role while her husband’s career took precedence.

Phil Graham followed in his wife’s footsteps and joined the Post in 1946.

In 1963, Graham took over at the Post and became a sure-footed leader.

In December 1962, Graham discovered that her husband had been having an affair, and decided that their marriage was over. But before the couple could proceed with their divorce, tragedy struck: Phil committed suicide in August 1963.

Graham’s life was turned on its head.

Jetting to meetings with the Japanese emperor and helicopter flights over the jungles of Vietnam were par for the course in Graham’s new role.

Graham was now a major personality in the world of news and communication; her life was about to get a whole lot more exciting. She not only had a job she loved, but an opportunity to travel the world.

One of her first major trips came in 1965. Traveling with Osborn Elliott, the editor of Newsweek, Graham headed to Japan. It was a memorable visit. By the time she set out for her next destination, she had become the first Western woman to be granted an audience with the Emperor of Japan.

Graham’s influence grew once she started making her own changes to the way the Post operated.

Graham loved the Washington Post. But it wasn’t a blind love. Like her friends and colleagues who increasingly criticized the paper’s old-fashioned and conservative approach, she could see that the paper needed a shake-up.

It was 1969. Society was changing and so were people’s ideas – it was time for an overhaul.

Despite all her successes, Graham still faced prejudice as well as her own insecurities.

By 1969, Graham had put her stamp on the Post in her dual role as president and publisher. But despite that, she still felt unable to act with the authority these titles supposedly gave her.

In fact, she was deeply insecure.

The Post’s coverage of a dubious burglary in 1972 ended up breaking the Watergate scandal.

On June 17, 1972, a car crashed its way into the living room of a house in which a couple were having sex on a couch. On any other day, that might have been the most scandalous event to make it into the news. But another, much larger scandal was afoot that summer.

The Washington Post had begun investigating a dubious break-in that had taken place in the paper’s own backyard.

The Post continued to thrive under Graham right up to her retirement in 1991.

Weaknesses can also be strengths. Graham’s lack of authority and her reliance on the opinions of those around her might have undercut her leadership skills, but they had an important side effect – she was a great listener who knew how to take sound advice.

A good example of this is Graham’s relationship with one of her newspaper’s most important financial advisors after the Watergate scandal.

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What is Personal History about?

Katharine Graham’s autobiography Personal History (1997) is the illuminating inside story of one of the United States’ most powerful media moguls. Beginning with her at times difficult childhood, which was shaped by her demanding and brilliant mother, this Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir sheds light on Graham’s rise through the ranks of the journalistic profession, all the way to the top of the Washington Post’s hierarchy.

Best quote from Personal History

Mother set impossibly high standards for us, undermining our ability to accomplish whatever modest aims we may have set for ourselves.

—Katharine Graham

Who should read Personal History?

History buffs
Journalists
Anyone who loves inspiring true stories

About the Author

Katharine Graham was the publisher of the Washington Post from 1963 to 1979. As the first woman to preside over a major American media outlet, Graham oversaw the newspaper’s work in the turbulent years of the Nixon presidency and the Post’s uncovering of the Watergate scandal.

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