“Reclaiming a Place in Animation History for a Female Pioneer,” The New York Times, December 13, 2022

“Earlier this year, however, the animation scholar Mindy Johnson came across an illustration — an old class photo, of a sort, depicting the usual male animators from the early 1920s. In a corner was an unidentified woman with dark hair. Who was she? The owner of the image, another animation historian, “presumed she was a cleaning lady or possibly a secretary,” Johnson said.

“I said to him, ‘Did it ever cross your mind that she might also be an animator?’” Johnson recalled. “And he said, ‘No. Not at all.’”

But Johnson wondered if it could be Bessie Mae Kelley, whose name she had discovered years earlier in an obscure article about vaudevillians who became animators.”

Read the full article here.