Girl Scouts of the USA's 100th Anniversary

                                       

Many girls can remember being Daisies, many moving on to Brownies, and some moving on to Girl Scouts. I know I was a Brownie for a couple of years and can remember some of the field trips and the selling of the infamous Girl Scout cookies. This month, Girl Scouts celebrates a century of its history. Beginning back in 1912 in Savannah, Georgia with Juliette Gordon Low gathering the first troop. The interesting thing I found after reading about the history of Girl Scouts was there was a mixture of religions from the start including Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, along with integrated groups of African Americans, Caucasians, Asians and other ethnicities. There were, however, about 1500 all-black Girl Scout troops found mainly in the South back in 1952. Today, the organization continues to be accepting of all races, ethnicities, and recently of gays and a transgender.

Russ Bynum's "Girl Scouts mark 100 years of narrowing the gender gap" writes of a logos appeal and the history of the Girl Scouts. The logos appeal is found with his quotations of credible and relative sources including a current Girl Scout Kathryn Hoersting to talk about what she does in her troop today, Mary Rothschild who is a historian who studies the Girl Scouts from Arizona State, Anastatia Sims who is a history professor at Georgia Southern who studies the life of Juliette Gordon Low, and Milly England who is one of the earliest Girl Scouts still alive at age 111 from her troop in 1914 in New Bedford. Another logos appeal that Bynum uses is statistics including registration numbers over the years, number of integrated versus all black troops, and number of Girl Scout cookie boxes sold and the income for Girl Scouts. Bynum also appeals to the audience by writing of a few famous celebrities who were Girl Scouts in their youth including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Venus Williams, and Mariah Carey. Bynum writes an interesting history in the celebration of the Girl Scouts's 100th anniversary.

Source:  Bynum, Russ. "Girl Scouts mark 100 years of narrowing the gender gap." The Boston Globe 4 Mar. 2012, Sunday ed., sec. Metro: B4. Print.