Friday, February 22, 2008

Charlotte Forten Grimké

Charlotte Forten's grandfather was a wealthy businessman of Philadelphia and an organizer of the abolition movement who opposed the return of freed slaves to Africa. Her father served in the 43rd United States Colored Infantry. Charlotte, born on August 17, 1837, had private tutors and then attended public schools and graduated with honors from the Salem Normal School in 1856. In 1862 she responded to the War Department's need for teachers of newly-freed children on the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. She taught at Port Royal for two years, working with more than 2000 children and adults. Her diary reflects her delight at the great speed with which many learned, and also the great weariness at the end of day, the difficulty of creating lesson plans to meet the needs of the young students whom she describes as possessing "perpetual motion." She met Harriet Tubman who was living then in Beaufort. After the war she was a French translator for Scribner's and also worked in the Treasury Department in Washington. In 1878 she married Francis James Grimké the nephew of the famous Grimké sisters of abolitionist fame. She died on July 23, 1914.  The four women briefly noted on these blogs were born within 35 years (1803 to 1837) and can be described as women "in the beginning" who used their skills to make unique, heroic contributions for social and racial justice.  These pioneer dreamers lectured white and black audiences, they wrote and agitated and sought to put education as a universal need.  Many more women models exist and I hope you readers will add them to your lists.
 








Frances Watkins Harper

Frances Watkins was born in Baltimore on September 24, 1825, orphaned at age 2 and raised by an uncle, Williem Watkins, a self-educated minister, shoemaker, teacher and friend of William Garrison. Frances read at every opportunity; in 1850 she taught sewing at a work-study seminary near Columbus, Ohio and then taught school in Pennsylvania. Unable to return to Maryland because of the danger of being sold into slavery, she began lecturing and writing for anti-slavery societies. Her first lecture in 1854, "The Elevation and Education of our People," was delivered in states from Maine to New Jersey. She also wrote poems and stories. Her 1859 story, "The Two Offers," is thought to be the first short story by an American black. A book of her poems in 1854 sold 12,000 copies; she was the best-known black poet since Phillis Wheatley. She married an Ohio farmer in 1860; after his death in 1864 Harper turned her attention to the need for education, suffrage, temperance to fight white racial violence. She lectured mostly to women's groups in every southern state except Arkansas and Texas. In 1896 she helped organize the National Association of Colored Women and was a vice-president the next year. Harper died on February 22, 1911.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Mary Shadd Cary was born in Wilmington, Delaware on October 9, 1823 where her father was a shoemaker and property owner. The Fugitive Slave Act made life precarious for all black people so the family fled to Ontario, Canada in 1950. There she taught school and soon became embroiled in the land selling activities of the Refugee Home Society whose members were selling poor land to the black refugees who could have bought better land for less from the Canadian government. She began a newspaper "Provincial Freeman," aimed at informing the black population. It ran from 1854 to 1858, making Cary the first black woman newspaper editor. Like Maria Stewart, she was severely criticized for "unladylike conduct." and causing friction between fugitives and white missionaries. She married in 1856, and during the Civil War she helped assemble a regiment of black soldiers for the Indiana governor. Widowed in 1869, she moved with her daughter to Washington where she taught school and became principal. She, like Belva Lockwood, decided to study law. Cary and 3 white women were graduated from Howard University in 1883. It is unknown whether she practiced law. Her home on W Street, NW in Washington is a National Historic Landmark. She died on June 5, 1893.

Maria Stewart

Maria Stewart was the first American-born woman to lecture publicly when from 1831 to 1833 she delivered a series of lectures demanding freedom for slaves and also self-improvement for the free blacks of the North through education, hard work and equal opportunity. Born in Hartford, Conn., in 1803, she was orphaned at age 5 and bound out to a clergyman's family for 10 years. She educationed herself by reading in the minister's library. She married at 21, was widowed at 26; defrauded of her inheritance, she supported herself the rest of her life. She sold devotional tracts to William Garrison's paper and lectured until public outcry about the impropiety of women speaking in public became unbearable. Her speeches suggest that their content was as disturbing as her sex. She used biblical and historical women to inspire black women to fight prejudice, ignorance and poverty, for "Knowledge is Power." Further, she said that free black men of wit, talent and success had a duty to aid those still in bondage.
Stewart moved to New York and taught in public schools in Brooklyn and Manhattan. In 1852 she opened a school in Baltimore, teaching "reading, writing, mental and practical arithmetic ... for 50 cents per month" per subject. In 1863 she started a Sunday School for poor children who lived near Freedmen's Hospital in Washington where she worked as matron. College students from nearby Howard University sometimes assisted at this school. Maria Stewart died on December 17, 1879. Her writings and speeches convinced Garrison to take a militant view on emancipation.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President
Jill Norgren:. Foreword by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg. 309 pages. © 2007

Belva Lockwood seems a most unlikely candidate to run for president of the United States. But that is exactly what she did in 1884. While not the first woman to aim for this position, she was the first to mount a sophisticated campaign with an organizational base, fundraisers and national publicity.
Born Belva Bennett on October 24, 1830, she grew up in Royalton, New York, the second of five children. At age 14 she was hired to teach in a rural school at half the salary paid to a male. She met Susan Anthony at teachers meetings where they fought and lost the battle for pay equity. She married Uriah McNall when she was 18 and was widowed 4 years later. Leaving her daughter Lura with family, Belva enrolled at Genesee College and graduated with honors in 1857. Here she attended lectures on law and the Constitution.
In 1866 she and Lura moved to Washington where she taught school near the capitol in mornings and visited sessions of Congress in afternoons. Belva married Ezekiel Lockwood in 1868; their child died in infancy. Influential lawyers, impressed with her forceful, resolute personality and her determination, aided her studies and admission to the D.C. Bar in 1874. Gaining admission to practice before the Supreme Court took more than 3 years and required passage by Congress of a bill permitting women lawyers to practice in federal courts. Accompanied by friends and senators, Lockwood and 10 men were admitted to practice before the Supreme Court on March 8, 1879. The next year she successfully sponsored Samuel R. Lowery, the first black lawyer to gain the same status.
The Equal Rights Party selected Belva Lockwood as candidate for president in 1884. The platform included planks that resonate to this day. These included equal political privileges to all citizens, appointment of women to all levels of government, foreign policy of friendship with other nations and creation of a “high Court of Arbitration” to solve problems of trade. Lockwood supported citizenship for all Native Americans, pensions for Civil War veterans and families, and reform of family law. She secured a few women to run as electors and mounted a campaign tour which went from New York to California. Ballots were different for each party; Lockwood won several thousand votes and later claimed several boxes of her votes were not counted; accurate numbers are not available.
Lockwood continued her law practice, won millions from the government for broken treaties with the Cherokees. She had joined the Universal Peace Union in 1868, and was an officer and chief lobbyist for 40 years. In the early years of the century she was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Jill Norgren has written the first adult biography of this unique woman who met opposition, ridicule, and scorn with brilliant determination and humor.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Mothers of Invention
Drew Gilpin Faust, 1997. New York: Random House. 326p.

Subtitled “ Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War,” Dr. Faust has written a griping story of the lives of this group of rich (or at least well-to-do) women. The large majority of them had been brought up in the first half of the nineteenth century to be beautiful, demanding toward slaves but submissive to males of their class, ignorant of all homemaking skills yet highly proficient in dancing, entertaining, embroidery, music and small talk. White male slave owners ran the economy; women of that class had slaves to fill the tasks of wet-nurses and nannies, to cook and sew and clean
It is easy to draw similarities to the Chinese foot binding culture that allowed rich women to be hobbled in childhood and unable to walk as adults. One difference is that soon after the outbreak of war in 1861 when it became apparent that victory for the South would take more than 6 months, the American slave-owning women were suddenly directed to assume lives of active support to the Confederate cause. When plantation owners joined the army, their women were told to manage and make decisions, to feed and clothe and manage the slaves who did not desert. Letters to family members and friends, diaries, complaints to President Davis and other officials tell their stories of inability to cope and also tales of necessary decisions, including fleeing from danger. The entire elegant life style of opulence vanished as did their very homes as northern armies swept through. The great need for nurses was answered by a relatively few, for the concept of unpleasant duty was foreign to the mindset of these women and also their men. When President Davis beseeched the women to spin and weave and make homespun cloth when blockades prevented arrival of other material, many women refused, writing that homespun material was fit only for slaves.
As the war dragged on and the causalities of dead and wounded hit almost every family, the southern slave-owning women began expressing their desire for peace at any cost. Some encouraged their men to desert, as they were badly needed at home. With peace many southern women had to support their children and husbands. Many turned to teaching and writing novels and memoirs. Many turned to honoring the dead – notably the United Daughters of the Confederacy who raised money for statues and parades.
I have gained a small understanding from “Mothers of Invention” of why male legislators in southern states failed to ratify ERA in the 1980s and why these states failed to ratify the 19th amendment in 1920 which provides suffrage to women. It is true that Tennessee became the final state to ratify, but the young man who broke the tie was not returned to office in the next election. This thoughtful, well-researched book is a great choice for Women’s History Month in March and for all other months.