Remember the Ladies

Well, that's that.

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 19:03:34 -0400

My project is now concluded, so I won’t be doing any more posts here. I won’t be closing it down though, because this info needs to be out there, from as many sources as possible.

There are, of course, so many other fantastic women out there besides the ones mentioned here. They will most likely not be in your history textbooks, so you will have to dig deeper to find their stories. But if you take anything away from this blog, take away this: for every great feat accomplished by a man, I guarantee you that there has been a woman who did it just as well or better.

So ladies, no matter what you want to become, no matter what kind of person you want to be, no matter what ambitions you have, no matter what makes you “awkward”, “bitchy”, “weird”, or “undesirable” in the eyes of others, know that somewhere in the annals of history, there is a woman who shared your ambitions, your quirks, your passions, and your struggles, and triumphed. It’s just a matter of finding out her name.

Wangari Maathai (1940-2011)

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 17:26:00 -0400

Born in a small village in Nyeri, Kenya, Wangari Maathai accomplished a lot of “firsts” – first woman in east and central Africa to receive a doctoral degree, first Kenyan woman to become chair of a university department, and, in 2004, the first African woman and first environmentalist to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. However, Maathai is most well known for founding Kenya’s Green Belt Movement in 1977. Through her work with various civic organizations, including the National Council of Women in Kenya (NCWK), she had come to the conclusion that the root of most of Kenya’s problems were due to environmental neglect. The main platform of the Green Belt Movement was forest renewal, and Maathai spearheaded a campaign of tree-planting across the country. Maathai made a special effort to involve women in the movement by encouraging them to plant tree nurseries, paying them a small stipend for each seedling. Eventually, the movement partnered with the Norwegian Forestry Society, who helped fund the movement’s expansion. By 1986, the movement had expanded throughout Africa, leading to the creation of the Pan-African Green Belt Network. Other African countries used the organization as a model for creating their own programs to combat a wide range of issues, including hunger, water shortages and deforestation. In the late 80s, the Kenyan government under President Daniel arap Moi came down against Maathai and the Green Belt Movement for their pro-democracy position, and resorted to electoral fraud to keep the movement from gaining more power. In 1989, she led protests against the upcoming construction of a huge civic and commercial building complex in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park. The government refused to respond and construction was to be completed as planned, but the joke turned out to be on them – the worldwide media coverage of Maathai’s campaign caused foreign investors to cancel the project in 1990. Maathai continued to fight for the environment, democracy and women’s rights throughout the next few decades, despite brutal treatment by the Kenyan government and several arrests. It soon became harder and harder for them to contain her, due to her international popularity. In 2002, she was elected to Parliament; the following year, she founded the Mazingira Green Party and was appointed Assistant Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources. She passed away in 2011 due to ovarian cancer, but the Green Belt Movement is still very much alive and continues to be one of the most successful environmental movements in history.

Works by Wangari Maathai:

Unbowed: A Memoir

The Greenbelt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience

The Canopy of Hope: My Life Campaigning for Africa, Women, and the Environment

Indira Gandhi (1917-1984)

Sun, 06 May 2012 16:56:56 -0400

Indira Gandhi was the first female prime minister of India. She was the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a prominent figure in the independence movement and would become India’s first independent prime minister in 1947. Upon Nehru’s death, he was succeeded by Lal Bahadur Shastri, and Gandhi was appointed Minister of Information and Broadcasting. When Shastri died suddenly, she ran for office and won the election of 1966. She soon proved herself to be powerful speaker and clever politician, and the hostility towards her as a woman in politics caused her to develop nerves of steel (during one speech, a protester threw a rock which broke her nose; without pausing, she lifted her sari to hide her bleeding nose and continued the speech). She ordered the first development of nuclear weapons in India, and also headed what came to be known as the Green Revolution, a program to boost agricultural productivity and food security and combat the widespread malnutrition. She also reformed the country’s banking system, widening people’s access to banking facilities and providing banking service for the rural poor. After she won again in 1971, in 1974 the High Court of Allahabad declared her victory void on grounds of electoral malpractice and called for her resignation. Gandhi responded by declaring a state of emergency in order to restore order, during which a lot of members of the opposition were arrested. She lost the election in 1977, and the leader of the opposing Janata Party ordered the arrest of Gandhi and her son Sanjay, automatically expelling her from Parliament. Her arrest and trial gained sympathy from much of the public. The Janata Party dissolved in 1979, and Gandhi ran for election in 1980 and won by a landslide. In June of 1984, she implemented Operation Blue Star, a forceful raid carried out by Indian troops of the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar, with the purpose of finding and arresting rumored Sikh separatists. Later that year, she was shot and killed while walking in her garden by two Sikh members of her personal guard. Though many of her actions during her time in office remain controversial, she is still remembered as “a tigress among one hundred monkeys.”

Further reading:

Indira Gandhi: An Intimate Biography by Pupul Jayakar

Indira: the life of Indira Nehru Gandhi by Katherine Frank

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)

Sun, 06 May 2012 16:54:05 -0400

In 1961, Fannie Lou Hamer, without her knowledge or consent, was sterilized by a white doctor as part of an effort to reduce the number of poor African-Americans in Mississippi. This was just one of the facets of the institutionalized racism that Hamer and other civil rights activists faced down. In 1962, Rev. James Bevel gave a sermon in Ruleville, Mississippi that concluded by urging African-Americans to register to vote, even at the risk of beatings, harassment or lynching. Hamer was the first to volunteer. While on the bus on the way to register, Hamer led the group in hymns to lift their spirits. Soon after, she was recruited by Bob Moses, an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and began doing activist work all over the South. In 1963, Hamer and other activists were on their way back from a literacy workshop in Charleston, South Carolina when they were arrested, jailed, and so savagely beaten that Hamer needed a month to recover afterwards. In 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (“Freedom Democrats”), of which Hamer was Vice-Chair, attended the Democratic National Convention. President Lyndon B. Johnson, knowing that the Freedom Democrats’ success would lose him Southern support for reelection, tried his best to suppress press coverage of Hamer’s address to the Convention’s Credentials Committee, but many TV networks ran it unedited on late night shows, garnering public support for the Freedom Democrats. Johnson sent several Democratic operatives to negotiate with the Freedom Democrats, and as a result of the debate, the Democratic party adopted a clause which demanded equality of representation in state delegations. Hamer continued to campaign for civil rights causes and also spoke out against the Vietnam War.

Further reading:

For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer by Chana Kai Lee

Golda Meir (1898-1978)

Sun, 06 May 2012 16:51:55 -0400

Golda Meir was the “Iron Lady” years before Margaret Thatcher. Her earliest memory as a child in Kiev was of her father boarding up the doors and windows of their house for protection from anti-Semitic mobs. Her father moved to Milwaukee in 1905, and was able to raise enough money to bring the rest of the family the following year. When Meir was 14, she moved to Denver to live with her married sister. It was there that she gained knowledge of all the hot-button issues of the day, such as trade unions, women’s suffrage, and Zionism. She also met her husband there, Morris Meyerson, a sign painter and passionate socialist. In 1921, they both quit their jobs and moved to a kibbutz in Palestine. The kibbutz chose her as its representative to the Histadrut (the General Federation of Labor). In 1928, she was made secretary of the Working Women’s Council, which required her to return to the States. She returned with her two children, but not her husband (they had separated by this point). She continued to remain active in the Histadrut, working her way up to head of its Political Department. When talks of a new Jewish state began to come up, Meir, as acting head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, was the chief negotiator between the Palestinian Jews and the British authorities. She also traveled back to the United States and raised $50 million on behalf of the new state. Hers was one of the 24 signatures on the Israeli Declaration of Independence. She was made ambassador to the Soviet Union, then Minister of Labour, then Foreign Minister, and then, in 1969, the fourth Prime Minister of Israel. She resigned in 1974 due to the controversy surrounding the Yom Kippur War, but remained a beloved public figure to the Israeli people.

Further reading:

My Life by Golda Meir

Golda Meir: The Iron Lady of the Middle East by Elinor Burkett

Historical Slut: Alice Paul (1885-1977)

Thu, 03 May 2012 15:14:41 -0400

Historical Slut: Alice Paul (1885-1977):

thegreat48:

If there were any such person who could be called Queen of the Suffragists, it would be Alice Paul. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Paul became an active member of NAWSA (the National Women’s Suffrage Association). She focused on getting a…

Apparently the original post I did was terrible, so here it is again with corrections by someone who knows way more about this than me. Thank you, reblogger. :)

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964)

Wed, 02 May 2012 16:40:00 -0400

When the “East Side Joan of Arc” was just 16, she gave a speech entitled “What Socialism Will Do For Women” at the Harlem Socialist Club. This led to her expulsion from high school, which she seemed to find mildly annoying at best. A year later, she became a full-time organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and spent the next few years organizing campaigns around the country among garment workers, silk weavers, textile workers, restaurant workers, and miners. As a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920, she was active in the campaign against the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti (two Italian immigrants convicted of anarchy on flimsy evidence). She also spoke out for women’s rights, particularly birth control and suffrage. In 1961, she was made chairperson of the Communist Party of the United States and continued to campaign for Communist causes (a ballsy position to take in the early 60s). She died a few years later during a visit to the Soviet Union and was given a state funeral in the Red Square before her remains were flown back to Chicago.

Further reading:

The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life (1906-1926) by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Words on Fire: The Life and Writing of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn by Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall

Iron In Her Soul: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the American Left by Helen C. Camp

Clara Lemlich (1886-1982)

Wed, 02 May 2012 16:38:55 -0400

Clara Lemlich, a Ukrainian Jew, came to the United States when she was 17. When she arrived in New York, she found a job in the garment industry. She was not happy with the low pay, unsafe conditions and chauvinist mistreatment on the job, and was not shy about showing it. She soon became involved in ILGWU (the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union) and was elected to the executive board of the local chapter. Her shining moment came during the mass meeting held at Cooper Union in 1909 in support of the striking shirtwaist workers. The keynote speakers were leading figures of the labor movement, and the event was promising to be grand and inspiring. However, there was one slight snag – the speeches were all being given in English, which the predominantly Eastern European Jewish attendees did not speak very well. Finally, Clara Lemlich burst forth from the crowd, took the stage and gave a fiery speech of her own in Yiddish calling for a general strike. The crowd went wild. Over the next two days, about 20,000 shirtwaist workers walked out on their jobs, an event that would come to be known as the Uprising of the 20,000. Lemlich led the workers out, speaking out until she lost her voice. Later, she became involved in the suffrage movement and then in the protests of ridiculous urban food prices in the 1930s. In all of her activist work, she held her own as a strong, tough, sassy broad. No one could pull wool over the eyes of Clara Lemlich.

Further reading:

Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965 by Annalise Orleck

http://jewishcurrents.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Lemlich1.pdf - an article written by Lemlich

Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973)

Wed, 02 May 2012 16:35:57 -0400

“We’re half the people; we should be half the Congress.”

In the general election of 1916, Jeannette Rankin became America’s first Congresswoman. A Republican from Montana, Rankin’s platform supported women’s suffrage, women’s health issues, prohibition, child-protection laws, and above all, pacifism. Voting against the US’s entry into World War I made her unpopular, and her term ended in 1919. However, in 1940, she successfully ran again. She stayed strongly anti-war, saying that the enemy was not abroad, but at home, taking the forms of poverty and disease. She was the sole dissenting vote on the US entering World War II, saying, “As a woman, I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anybody else.” When her term ended in 1943, she did not go back to Congress, but stayed committed to peace and international cooperation. She came back onto the Government’s radar when she organized the Jeannette Rankin Brigade march in protest of the Vietnam War in 1968. She remained active in politics until her death at age 92.

Further reading:

First Lady in Congress: Jeannette Rankin by Hannah Josephson

Jeannette Rankin: America’s Conscience by Norma Smith

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)

Wed, 02 May 2012 16:34:16 -0400

Mary McLeod Bethune’s parents both had been born slaves. Despite their poverty, it was Bethune’s dream to go to college so she could go to Africa as a missionary. Though she did get to college, she was denied the opportunity to go to Africa, so she became a teacher instead. She moved to Daytona Beach, Florida and started the Literary and Industrial Training Center for Negro Girls. Though the school started out on a very low budget (desks were made from old crates and the juice of wild berries was used for ink), the quality of the education was excellent and rivaled the standard set for white schools of the time. Aided by wealthy white benefactors, Bethune’s school grew to 351 students in 1920. Three years later, it merged with the Cookman Institute for Men and became the Bethune-Cookman School. Teaching was not Bethune’s only contribution to history – she was also president of the Florida chapter for the National Association of Colored Women and founder of the National Council of Negro Women. In the 30s, Bethune was appointed Director of the Division of Negro Affairs, a department of the National Youth Administration. She became good friends with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (who admired Bethune so much that she requested that the segregation rules at the Southern Conference for Human Welfare be changed so they could sit next to each other) and used her access to the White House to form what would come to be known as the Black Cabinet. When she died in 1955, a columnist wrote that “she gave out faith and hope as if they were pills and she some sort of doctor.” Both her homes in Daytona Beach and Washington D.C. are designated historic sites.

Further reading:

Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World, Essays and Selected Documents, ed. Audrey Thomas McCluskey and Elaine M. Smith

Gertrude Bell (1868-1926)

Wed, 02 May 2012 16:32:28 -0400

The dashing Lawrence of Arabia learned everything he knew from Gertrude Bell. She first got bitten by the travel bug when she went to Persia to visit an uncle (he was an ambassador there). Over the next thirty years, she would prove an invaluable asset to the British Empire in Arabia and a loyal ally to the new nation of Iraq. Previously, during World War I, the British Army had hired her to lead soldiers across the deserts. When the Allies won the war and Ottoman Empire fell, Bell was asked to take charge of the political situation in the area, since she was the most physically familiar with it and was widely respected by the desert nomadic tribes. Bell was closely involved in the Iraqi administration and advised the newly crowned King Faisal on everything from cabinet appointments to flag design (she even sketched the borders of the new country on a paper napkin at tea). She was also deeply committed to preserving Iraqi cultural history and founded the Baghdad Archaeological Museum (later the Iraqi Museum).

Further reading:

Gertrude Bell: From Her Personal Papers 1914-1926

Gertrude Bell: The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914 edited by Rosemary O’Brien

Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Georgina Howell

Jane Addams (1860-1935)

Wed, 02 May 2012 16:30:55 -0400

When Jane Addams was a teenager, she loved to read, and it was partly from reading Dickens that her drive to help the needy came. Initially, she wanted to become a doctor, but after graduating from college, she decided to take a more hands-on approach. In 1889, Hull House was founded in Chicago, in a poor neighborhood mostly populated by European immigrants. Hull House was not just a shelter for the poor – it was a center for education, culture and community. It featured a night school for adults, kindergarten classes, an art gallery, a public kitchen, a playground, drama and music schools, and a library, among other programs. Addams went beyond Hull House and campaigned around the country for better housing, stricter child-labor laws and general improvement in public welfare. She focused especially on child welfare, promoting play and recreation as essential to child development. She received a lot of criticism during World War I for her commitment to pacifism and immigrants’ rights, but she stuck to her guns and eventually became the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Her work transformed social justice and left a permanent mark on the field of social work.

Further reading:

The Jane Addams Reader edited by Jean B. Elshtain

Jane Addams: Spirit in Action by Louise W. Knight

Some clarification

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:17:49 -0400

Remember, people, this is a college project. I have a deadline every week, which means some of these were done in about 15 minutes. (I am a terrible procrastinator. I’ll be ashamed later. [Get it?!?]) If you find any factual errors or syntax that doesn’t make sense, please let me know.

Also, I sometimes find myself between a rock and a hard place here, because I’m trying to present these objectively, but at the same time in a positive light (so people won’t be like “Well see, that’s why she’s not in your history textbook - she had sex a lot!”). This has proven difficult because none of these women were saints. Elizabeth Blackwell, for example, was a big supporter of eugenics. Boudicca, during the burning of Londinium, ordered the systematic slaughter of every man, woman, and child in the city. I hate glossing over things in history, but there is limited space on the hard-copy posters and I didn’t want to take up any of it with “and here are all the bad things she did [whatever “bad” means…].” That’s why I include suggestions for further reading, so people can investigate more for themselves and get the whole picture. The purpose of the posters themselves is to raise awareness and pique people’s interest. The purpose of the blog was simply to provide a space where students can go and see the posters they didn’t catch sight of. I must admit that it didn’t occur to me that anyone other than my fellow students would be following me (demonstrating my general ignorance of the internet).

There are lots of other blogs in a similar vein that you may find way better than mine. There’s a really good one called trappedinhistory that I would recommend.

Annie Smith Peck (1850-1935)

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:47:52 -0400

“Nothing to mountaineering, just a little physical endurance, a good deal of brains, lots of practice, and plenty of warm clothing.”

Annie Smith Peck was basically Indiana Jones with a petticoat. She received an excellent education as a young girl and became a professor of Latin and archaeology at Smith College. In 1892, she gave up teaching and turned to full-time mountain-climbing. She scaled many decent-sized mountains in Europe and the US, but she didn’t become well-known until she climbed the Matterhorn in 1895. She then turned her attention to the southern Americas. She climbed Mt. Orizaba and Mt. Popocatepetl in Mexico, then moved south to Bolivia and climbed Mt. Sorata. In 1908, when she was pushing 60, she became the first person to climb Mt. Nevado Huascarán in Peru. That same year, she did her bit for the suffrage movement by climbing to the top of Mt. Coropuna and unfurling a banner that read “Votes for Women.” Along the way, she lectured and wrote educational pamphlets to promote peace and cultural understanding between the Americas.

Further reading:

High mountain climbing in Peru & Bolivia : A search for the apex of America including the conquest of Huascarán by Annie Smith Peck

Annie Smith Peck, Queen of the Climbers by Marilyn Magnus

Calamity Jane (1852-1903) & Belle Starr (1848-1889)

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:45:00 -0400

When we think of outlaws of the Old West, we tend to think of people like Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp. But amidst all the testosterone were these two ladies, shooting with the best of them. Calamity Jane arrived in the West the way many people did – in a covered wagon. Both of her parents died along the way, so she became head of her five siblings, leading them to Piedmont, Wyoming. She took a variety of jobs there to support her family, and eventually landed a gig as a scout at Fort Russell. She became involved in the many military conflicts with Native Americans of the area, and she supposedly received her nickname when, in the heat of battle, she dragged a wounded captain from his horse onto hers and rode him back to the fort. Another captain denied the story, saying that Calamity Jane had never served in the military and that she was “simply a notorious character, dissolute and devilish.” In any case, she became known for being a hard drinker, a hard cusser, and a crack shot. Many a frontiersman remembered a day when Calamity Jane walked into their saloons, thundering “I’m Calamity Jane and this drink’s on the house!”

Belle Starr was considerably more refined than Calamity Jane. She was born in a respectable family and received a classical education and a ladylike upbringing, which obviously did not take (although she did dress in black velvet and ride sidesaddle while conducting her stagecoach robberies). She had two children by two different men and tried to shield them both from her outlaw life, insisting they have a proper education, which she supported by robbing stagecoaches, stealing horses and bootlegging whiskey. Two days before her 41^st birthday, she was shot in the back and killed by an unknown assailant.

Further reading:

Belle Starr and Her Times: The Literature, the Facts and the Legends by Glenn Shirley

Calamity Jane: The Woman and the Legend by John D. McLaird

Anna Shaw (1847-1919)

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:44:17 -0400

When Anna Shaw was 12, her father took up a claim of 360 acres in northern Michigan and sent his wife and five children to live there while he remained in their old home in Massachusetts. Her mother did not adjust well – she had expected a pretty farm with meadows and daisies, and instead got a small, isolated log cabin in the middle of nowhere in a harsh landscape. When Shaw was 15, she took a job teaching in an effort to support her family better financially, but the expenses kept growing. Shaw eventually moved to town in an effort to find a “money-making trade,” but was disappointed with the limited options she was given. She attended the local high school and took speaking and debating classes. Her skill at public speaking attracted the attention of a Dr. Peck, who invited her to give a sermon at his church. Her first sermon was a great success, but her family and peers disapproved of her newfound calling, and her family refused to pay for her college education if she did not abandon preaching. Nevertheless, she attended Albion College (she made the money by giving lectures on temperance) and then moved on to the Boston University School of Theology. In 1880, she became the first ordained female Methodist minister in the US. After she received a medical degree from Boston University in 1886 (Lord, what next?), she met Susan B. Anthony and became heavily involved in NAWSA (National Women’s Suffrage Association) and was elected president of the organization in 1904. She resigned in 1915 out of objection to the increase of militant tactics, such as picketing the White House. However, she continued to speak out for women’s suffrage. She died only a few months before the 19^th Amendment was ratified.

Further reading:

Toward a Tradition of Feminist Theology: the religious social thought of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Anna Howard Shaw by Mary D. Pellauer

Carrie Nation (1846-1911)

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:42:23 -0400

Carrie Nation was a temperance activist who stands out for her methods of temperance awareness, especially her habit of chopping up bars with a hatchet. Yes, that happened. Multiple times. She started her temperance career in Kansas where she set up a branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Then, she claimed, one morning she had a vision: the voice of God telling her to go to the town of Kiowa and smash all the bars with rocks. And so began her long and fruitful career of property destruction in the name of God. It was her husband who suggested that she start using a hatchet, and though he meant it as a joke, she thought it was a grand idea. She rampaged through the Midwest, often accompanying her violent visits to bars with hymns and prayers. Between 1900 and 1910, she was arrested 30 times for “hatchetations.” Along the way, she gave public sermons and lectures, and paid her prison fines by charging fees and selling miniature souvenir hatchets. She also published a newsletter, The Smasher’s Mail, and a newspaper, The Hatchet. She kept on giving her speeches right up until she died, shortly after she collapsed during a speech in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Her headstone, erected by the WCTU, reads, “Faithful to the Cause of Prohibition, She Hath Done What She Could.”

Further reading:

The Use and Need of the Life of Carrie A. Nation (her writings)

Carry A. Nation: Retelling the Life by Fran Grace

Kate Mullaney (1845-1906)

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:40:51 -0400

The Kate Mullaney House, Troy, New York

Kate Mullaney was an Irish immigrant living in Troy, New York, with her family. She became the sole breadwinner of the family after the death of her father. When she was 19, she got a job in a commercial laundry. She found herself and her coworkers working in horrible conditions – pitiful wages, long hours, and a lot of safety hazards, such as the terrible burns some of the women received from the starching machines. Kate eventually decided she’d had enough. In February of 1864, she and her coworker Esther Keegan organized about 300 women into the Collar Laundry Union, the first female union in the country. Shortly afterwards, the women of the union went on strike and held out for six days until their employers finally gave in to their demands for improved wages and workplace safety. The Collar Laundry Union gained more and more ground over the next few years, and Kate was eventually elected Vice-President of the National Labor Union. The Collar Laundry Union was dissolved in 1870, but it had lasted twice as long as other women’s unions and was a model for the Starchers’ Union and the Joan of Arc Assembly of the Knights of Labor. Kate Mullaney has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and her home is on the Women’s Heritage Trail.

Further reading:

Working Women of Collar City: Gender, Class, and Community in Troy, New York, 1864-1886 by Carole Turbin

Sarah Winnemucca (1844-1891)

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:37:41 -0400

Sarah Winnemucca was born at Humboldt Lake in Nevada. Her father was a Paiute chief. When she was a young girl, her grandfather, who was on good terms with whites, took her to Carson City to be educated, and she soon became one of the very few Paiutes in Nevada to be able to read and write in English. After the first Paiute War, Sarah and her family moved to the Malheur Reservation, which was reserved for the Paiute and Bannock people. Sarah took a job teaching and interpreting for the local Indian Agent, Samuel Parrish, who was generally liked by the residents. After four years, Parrish was replaced by William Rinehart, who refused to pay the Paiute for their agricultural labor, and conditions on the reservation greatly deteriorated. In 1878, everyone on the reservation left, and the Bannock began raiding white settlements, triggering the Bannock War. During the war, Sarah acted as an interpreter for the army and helped track the Bannock. She personally helped her father and 75 other Paiute escape from the Bannock camp. Unfortunately, when the white soldiers came to remove the Bannock to the Yakama Reservation in Washington, they didn’t distinguish between the Bannock and the remaining Paiute, and they were all taken together. Sarah devoted herself to campaigning for the right of the Paiute to return to their old reservation, Malheur. She wrote memoirs and pamphlets (she was the first Native person to publish works in English), which were noted for their eloquence. She went on a speaking tour in California, which was very well-received, and even made a trip to D.C. to argue the case for her people to federal officials. Unfortunately, while the officials promised to help, they never provided the funding. Meanwhile, the Indian agent at Malheur started a vicious smear campaign against Sarah, accusing her of being a drunkard and a prostitute. However, the military men who had served with her defended her and attested to her brave character. She continued to lecture around the country, and in her later years opened a school for Paiute children. She is a controversial figure today, but thankfully, many people still remember her as a courageous and outspoken woman, and not an alcoholic.

Further reading:

Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims by Sarah Winnemucca

Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927)

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:35:34 -0400

When Victoria Woodhull announced that she was running for President in the election of 1872, quite a few minds were blown. Not only was she the first woman to do so, but her policies were also so ahead of her time that some might consider them pretty radical even for today. There were the usual platforms for women’s activists of the day – suffrage, anti-slavery and so on – but also such scandalous ideas as sex education, short skirts, spiritualism, vegetarianism, Socialism and, the most gaspworthy of all, free love. (When she was criticized by public officials for the latter, she scoffed, “My judges preach against free love openly and practice it secretly.”) She’d already had plenty of practice at scandalizing people; her life before her candidacy was full of things that nice ladies simply did not do. She and her sister Tennessee were the first female stockbrokers in the nation and opened a brokerage firm on Wall Street in 1870, which turned out to be a great financial success. They used the money they made from their brokerage to found a newspaper, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, which reached the peak of its considerable notoriety when it featured Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto in 1871. Woodhull then turned her attention to suffrage, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee and becoming the second woman to do so (after Elizabeth Cady Stanton). Though she didn’t win the Presidential election, she stood strongly by her radical ideas, pissing people off and loving it. The world could do with a few more Victoria Woodhulls.

Further reading:

The Victoria Woodhull Reader edited by Madeleine Stern

Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull Uncensored by Mary Gabriel