Lydia Maria Child

“The subject I have chosen admits of no encomiums on my country; but as I generally make it an object to supply what is most needed, this circumstance is unimportant; the market is so glutted with flattery, that a little truth may be acceptable, were it only for its rarity.” 

—Lydia Maria Child, preface to An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833)

 Born this day in 1802: Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880), writer and speaker who advocated for the rights of African Americans, Native Americans, and women; one of the first women to make a living from writing

Lydia Maria Child was born Lydia Maria Francis in Medford, Massachusetts. A teacher, novelist, and publisher of a children’s magazine, Child became a tireless champion of African Americans, Native Americans, and women. She was one of the first women in the country to make a living from writing, including writing a popular book on domestic economy and novels for children. This living was often threatened because of the bold stances she took against slavery, the unequal treatment of African Americans, and the gross injustices perpetrated on Native Americans. Unlike many abolitionists, she sought equal treatment of whites and blacks in American society. Her influential work An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833) laid out the injustices and horrors of slavery and protested the unequal educational and employment opportunities for African Americans. The outspoken work prompted many to join the abolitionist movement. But many others stopped buying her books, publishers stopped accepting her work, and she was fired as editor of a children’s magazine. Poet John Greenleaf Whittier noted that “her praises were suddenly silenced. No woman in this country…sacrificed so much for principles as Mrs. Child.” She was very influential in her day, but what is she most remembered for today? Writing the words to “Over the River and Through the Woods.” Let’s change that, femiloguers!

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Alice Paul

 “There will never be a new world order until women are a part of it.” —Alice Paul

Alice Paul raising a glass to suffrage in 1920.

Born this day in 1885: Alice Paul (1885–1977), militant suffragist and fierce proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment

What Carrie Chapman Catt did for the moderate wing of the women’s movement, Alice Paul did for its militant wing. Paul learned militant tactics from British suffragists like Emmeline Pankhurst while overseas from 1907 to 1910. These tactics included the civil disobedience that resulted in three arrests during that time.  Paul took this training back home with her in 1910. She joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), but grew impatient with what she saw as their timid approach. When she became chair of its languishing Congressional Committee in 1912, she began organizing activities that would draw much-needed public attention to the cause. The first such activity was a large-scale suffrage parade on March 3, 1913, that upstaged president-elect Woodrow Wilson’s arrival in Washington D.C. the day before his inauguration. The spectacle included 26 floats, ten bands, five squadrons of cavalry, six chariots, and around 8,000 women marchers. Half a million people attended the parade. The crowd eventually got out of hand, and groups of angry men attacked the women while the police stood by with their arms folded.

Front page of the suffrage paper Woman's Journal covering the March 3, 1913 march.

Before long Paul and NAWSA parted ways. She joined up with the Women’s Party, taking the Congressional Committee with her, and it eventually evolved into the National Women’s Party. Paul continued agitating with marches, pickets, and acts of civil disobedience—including be one of a group of women who regularly chained themselves to iron fencing outside the White House. One major accomplishment of the National Women’s Party was to keep focus on suffrage even though World War was raging. In fact, Paul criticized the U.S. for “keeping the world safe for democracy” abroad while it wasn’t exactly promoting it at home. Wilson in particular came under fierce attack until he converted to the cause.

Paul threw herself body and soul into her activism. She was arrested several times, as she was overseas, and singled out for excessively long sentences and endured abuse while in prison. In October of 1917 she was arrested for picketing and kept in solitary confinement (she was not even allowed letters). Demanding to be treated like a political prisoner, she went on a hunger strike (not her first)  for three weeks and was brutally force-fed through her nose. Public outcry led to her early release.

After passage of the 19^th Amendment, she introduced the Equal Rights Amendment (1923), which she dubbed the Lucretia Mott Amendment. The original wording of the amendment was

Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.

It was later updated to read

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

After failure of the ERA to pass in 1923, Paul also turned her attention to equal rights on the international level. She supported the League of Nations and attempted to get an equal rights treaty adopted. In 1938 she created the World Woman’s Party and served as its first president. With the arrival of World War II, the party never really got off ground, but Pau was successful in getting the preamble of the United Nations Charter to include sex equality.

The remainder of her long life Paul dedicated to the passage of the ERA. She armed herself with several law degrees (in addition to the pile of various undergraduate and graduate degrees she already had) so that she could argue for its passage with strong legal arguments.  The ERA was introduced to Congress annually for 50—count ’em, 50!—years before it was finally passed in 1972. The amendment failed to garner the required number of votes for ratification before the 1982 deadline.* Paul was also responsible for the inclusion of sex in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

“I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.”

—Alice Paul

Alice Paul was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1979.

Read more about the Equal Rights Amendment, including ongoing efforts at ratification, here.

*The ERA required ratification by 38 states, but was ratified by only 35. Blame Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.

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Lucretia Mott

“I am no advocate of passivity.” —Lucretia Mott

Born this day in 1793: Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793–1880), pioneering social reformer and founder of the U.S. women’s movement

Mott was born Lucretia Coffin in Nantucket, Massachusetts, to a Quaker family. Her father was a whaler and her mother was a shopkeeper. Their example and Quaker teachings gave Mott a firm foundation in the concept of equality between the sexes. While teaching at a Quaker school in New York State, Mott discovered, however, that Quakers preached better than they practiced: as a woman teacher, her salary was half that of the men’s.

In 1811 she married fellow teacher James Mott. The couple moved to Philadelphia and had six children.

Mott became a social reformer of the first order and radical in the depths of her reform. She was an abolitionist and advocated for equality between the races, equality between the sexes, Native American rights, religious liberty, religious tolerance, and pacifism. A woman of strong, steadfast moral convictions, Mott was a moving and effective speaker. In 1821 she was ordained a Quaker minister.  She also toured and lectured on the anti-slavery cause and, increasingly, on the cause of women. Her outspokenness and the fact that she lectured to audiences comprising both men and women (“promiscuous” audiences) often aroused anger. More than once she was threatened with mob violence.

Like many early feminists, the sexism she faced while participating—or trying to—in the abolition movement led her to believe in the equal urgency of women’s liberation.  In 1840 she and the other women delegates were denied seats at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London. It was there, screened behind a curtain in a remote balcony, that she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two women then and there decided to launch a full-scale women’s movement in the United States. The movement was formally launched in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. The Seneca Falls Convention presented the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence. Stanton, who drafted it, included suffrage for women, a radical notion even among feminists.  Mott did not initially support inclusion of suffrage because, as a Quaker, she was boycotting the vote as a pressure tactic against slavery. She later relented and subsequently opposed the fourteenth amendment because it limited suffrage to males. She believed white or black, man or woman, everyone had the same inherent right to vote, and advocated suffrage for all.

Mott remained a prominent figure in the women’s movement, attending conventions, lecturing, and writing on such topics as legal, political, and social inequality, inequality in women’s education and employment, and women’s subordination, legal and otherwise, in marriage. She, along with her husband (who wholly supported and aided her efforts) continued also in her opposition to slavery and aided fugitives on the Underground Railroad. She remained a pacifist, even as civil war loomed, advocating instead boycotts of products made by slave labor. In 1866 she became the first president of the newly formed American Equal Rights Association, which advocated equal rights and suffrage for all Americans, regardless of “race, color, or sex.”

In 1923, at the 75^th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention, Alice Paul introduced the Equal Rights Amendment, which she named the Lucretia Mott Amendment in honor of this most visionary of founding feminists. Mott was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1983.

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Martha Coffin Pelham Wright

Born this day in 1806: Martha Coffin Pelham Wright (1806–1875), founding feminist, abolitionist

Martha Coffin Wright was the sister of Lucretia Coffin Mott. Like her sister, she was both an abolitionist and suffragist. She was part of the group of women’s rights activists, including Lucretia and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who planned the first women’s rights convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. She was active in women’s rights organizations at both the state and national level. She served as secretary of the 1852 and 1856 National Women’s Rights Conventions, an officer at the 1853 and 1854 National Women’s Rights Conventions, and president of three other conventions. She also helped found the American Equal Rights Association in 1866 and the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. She was president of the NWSA in 1874.

Wright and her husband, David Wright, were both active in the American Anti-Slavery Society. They were agents in the Underground Railroad and harbored fugitives in their Auburn, New York, home. 

Wright was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2007.

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Jane Cunningham Croly

“The somewhat churlish treatment accorded to Mrs. Croly’s application for a ticket, and, subsequently, to other ladies who applied for an extension of the same privilege upon the same terms as men, suggested to Mrs. Croly the idea of a club composed of women only, that should manage its own affairs, represent as far as possible the active interests of women, and create a bond of fellowship between them.”

— Jane Cunningham Croly, A History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America

Born this day in 1829: Jane Cunningham Croly (1829–1901), journalist, feminist, pioneer of the woman’s club movement

Jane Cunningham Croly was born Jane Cunningham in Leicestershire, England, and grew up in New York state. In 1855 she moved to New York City to pursue a career in journalism. She began writing a weekly column in the Sunday Times and Noah’s Weekly Messenger. “Parlor and Side-walk Gossip” was one of the earliest instances of a woman’s department in a city newspaper. It also became what is believed the first syndicated column authored by a woman. She wrote for several other publications as well. As was the standard for women writers, she wrote under a pseudonym, “Jennie June.”

In 1856 she married fellow journalist David Goodman Croly. The couple would have four children, one of whom died in infancy. In 1860 both began working for the New York World. Croly managed the World’s women’s department from 1862 to 1872. She also wrote for the Weekly Times, and for 27 years was the chief staff writer for Mme. Demorest’s Mirror of Fashions (later Demorest’s Monthly Magazine). She also created the first newspaper shopping guide. She wrote for many other publications as well, including Godey’s Lady’s Book and The New York Times.

Although much of her writing was about fashion, she poked fun at the confining clothing of the day (as well as the more extreme fashion reforms). She devoted much of her writing to the improvement of women’s standing in society. She urged middle class women, who were freed from the more burdensome household duties, not to waste their minds on trivialities. She believed deeply that the key to women’s emancipation was financial independence and economic equality—gained through equal opportunity for employment. She believed that all other freedoms would follow, including the right to vote. She insisted that women, if they wanted equal outcomes, should put equal effort into their endeavors.

In 1868, the New York Press Club held a reception honoring Charles Dickens—and did not allow women to attend. Croly was incensed. In response she created a professional women’s association called Sorosis—the first major woman’s club in the nation.

She threw herself into the woman’s club movement. She held a national convention of woman’s clubs in 1889. It brought together representatives from more than 60 woman’s clubs to help organize their social reform efforts. The convention led to the creation of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Croly wrote a history of the movement, The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America (1,170 pages long!), published in 1898. She also founded, in 1889, the Women’s Press Club of New York. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994.

Other books by Croly include Jennie Jungian: Talks on Women’s Topics, 1869; For Better or Worse, 1875; Cookery Book for Young Beginners, 1866. See also this tribute to Croly, Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, “Jenny June,” by the Women’s Press Club of New York City.

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President’s Commission on the Status of Women

Eleanor Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy
(President's Commission on the Status of Women, 02/12/1962)

On this day in 1961: President John F. Kennedy established the President’s Commission on the Status of Women to investigate the economic, political, and legal status of women

The idea for the commission was submitted to President Kennedy in June of 1961 by Esther Peterson, the assistant secretary of labor for women’s affairs. The commission studied the condition of women’s rights in the workplace and education. It investigated federal employment policies and practices, wages, the effects of social insurance programs and tax laws on women’s income; federal and state policies on hours and wages; differences in legal treatment of men and women in regard to political, civil, and property rights and family relations; and creation of services such as job training, home services, and daycare services. Among its study committees, the commission included a committee to investigate issues particular to African American women and a committee to investiage the portrayal of women in the mass media.

Eleanor Roosevelt was named head of the commission. Its 26 members included educators, writers, women’s rights advocates, union leaders, several Cabinet members, and members of Congress (including women members!).

The report submitted the following year documented systematic discrimination against women in the workplace. It made recommendations to the federal government as well as to the private sector. Recommendations included

• vocational and continuing education
• childcare services and related tax deductions
•  equal opportunity in employment
• extensions to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to cover additional categories
• comprable work laws
• union rights
• litigating equal rights, including passage of the ERA
• encouraging women to serve in elective and appointive offices at all levels of government
• Cabinet level appointment to implement recommendations.

The recommendations were not taken up very quickly (still waiting!), but some changes were made in the years following publication of the report. At the federal level, Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Also in 1963, Washington State created the first state-level commission. Within  four years nearly all states formed their own commissions on the status of women. These commissions became advocates for women’s equality within their states. 

Follow the link for the text of Executive Order 10980.

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In Other News:

Born this day in 1897: Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine), first woman to serve in both houses of Congress.   

On this day in 1970: The National Press Club decided to admit women members.

On this day in 1985: Wilma Mankiller became the first woman chief of the Cherokee nation.

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Charlotte Forten Grimké

Born this day in 1873:  Charlotte Forten Grimké (1873–1914), abolitionist, civil rights activist, women’s rights activist, educator of freed blacks, journalist, and diarist

Charlotte Forten, a native of Pennsylvania, was born a free black to a wealthy African American family at the forefront of the abolition movement. She was educated in Salem, Massachusetts, and later became a teacher herself. She was the first African American teacher to teach white students.

Forten was an active abolitionist, raising money for the cause and contributing to anti-slavery publications such as The Liberator. With the arrival of the Civil War, she turned her attention to educating the newly emancipated. A sosphisticated and cultured woman herself, she joined an educational experiment to demonstrate to Northerners that all that stood between African Americans and achievements equal to that of whites was opportunity and education. The Port Royal Experiment, as it was called, prepared former slaves for the economic and social independence they would need following the war.

Former slaves prepare cotton for ginning in Port Royal.
Freed men and women earned wages and received and education. 

In 1862 she headed to Port Royal, South Carolina, teaching former slaves who fled their plantations upon the arrival of Union forces. She recounted her experiences, “Life on the Sea Islands,” in the Atlantic Monthly in 1864. She was a faithful diarist and left posterity a detailed account of the life she lead. Her diaries reveal the problematic intersections of race and class as well as chronicle of a society’s struggle against racism and sexism.

She left South Carolina after contracting smallpox. In 1878 she married Francis J. Grimké, an activist from another prominent abolitionist family. She continued working with freedmen and women and advocating for equality of the races. She also became active in the women’s rights movement.

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Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

—Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls Convention, 1848    

Born this day in 1815: Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), founder of the women’s rights movement in the United States. 

Elizabeth Cady received about the best education offered to women at the time—both at home and by attending Johnstown Academy and Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary. She learned in detail about the discrimination against women embedded in U.S. law while studying law books in the office of her father, Judge Daniel Cady.  

In 1840 she married Henry Brewster Stanton (with whom she would have seven children), striking the word obey from her wedding vows. The newlywed’s honeymoon was a trip to London to attend the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention. The convention’s refusal to seat the female delegation convinced Stanton that women must claim their equal rights.

Stanton began speaking and lobbying for women’s rights. In 1848 she and Lucretia Mott issued a call for a women’s rights convention. It was held on July 19–20, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York. Stanton wrote a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, for the convention. Stanton insisted on demanding suffrage for women, a radical notion even among feminists. The Seneca Falls Convention launched the women’s movement in the United States. 

In 1851 she met Susan B. Anthony, and they embarked on a lifelong collaboration to secure equal rights for women. They formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, and Stanton served as its first president.

Stanton was a driving force behind the quest for suffrage, but her quest for women’s rights were all-encompassing. Her causes ranged from married women’s property rights and rights to their own wages to custody and divorce rights to the right to ride a bicycle. She even rewrote the Bible.

She was a powerful speaker and writer. In addition to the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, Stanton drafted the Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States. It was presented by the National Woman Suffrage Association on the nation’s centennial (July 4th, 1876). She, along with Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage, crashed the centennial celebration at Independence Hall and presented the declaration to the acting vice-president. It reads in part:

The history of our country the past hundred years, has been a series of assumptions and usurpations of power over woman, in direct opposition to the principles of just government, acknowledged by the United States at its foundation, which are:
First. The natural rights of each individual.
Second. The exact equality of these rights.
Third. That these rights, when not delegated by the individual, are retained by the individual.
Fourth. That no person can exercise the rights of others without delegated authority.
Fifth. That the non-use ofthese rights does not destroy them.

The declaration goes on to list articles of impeachment against the government, much like the Declaration of Independence did 100 years before it. Stanton invoked the words of Abigail Adams (the standard-bearer and inspiration for Femilouge):

To all these wrongs and oppressions woman has not submitted in silence and resignation. From the beginning of the century, when Abigail Adams, the wife of one President and the mother of another, said, “we will not hold ourselves bound to obey laws in which wehave no voice or representation,” until now, woman’s discontent has been steadily increasing, culminating nearly thirty years ago in a simultaneous movement among the women of the nation, demanding the right of suffrage. In making our just demands, a higher motive than the pride of sex inspires us; we feel that national safety and stability depend on the complete recognition of the broad principles of our government.

In a speech delivered on her 80th birthday, well over 100 years ago,  Stanton said words that one could well speak today:

The question is no longer the sphere of a whole sex but of each individual. Women are now in the trades and professions, everywhere in the world of work. They have shown their capacity as students in the sciences, their skill as mariners before the mast, their courage as rescuers in lifeboats. They are close on the heels of man in the arts, sciences and literature; in their knowledge and understanding of the vital questions of the hour, and in the every day practical duties of life. Like man, woman’s sphere is in the whole universe of matter and mind, to do whatever she can…”

For more, visit the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers Project.

  

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