Personal History

Themes

• Graham's complex and often difficult relationship with her mother;
• her family's involvement with The Washington Post from 1933 onwards;
• her relationship with her husband Philip Graham;
• Graham and Phil's relationships with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, especially Johnson's appointment as Kennedy's running-mate;
• Phil's mental illness and eventual suicide;
• Graham's evolution from a housewife to the chairman of a major publishing company;
• her growing awareness of feminist issues;
• the legal battle over the Pentagon Papers;
• The Posts coverage of Watergate; and
• her relationship to the labor movement, first as an activist, then as a reporter, then with the strikes at the Post, most notably the 1975–1976 pressmen's strike.