01-03 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Lucretia Coffin Mott
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Marge Piercy, Lucretia Mott, and Freyda Stark.
Lucretia Mott, pioneer in advocating
rights for women
Born Jan. 03, 1793, Lucretia Coffin Mott was an
early American advocate for the rights of women. Described as a tiger for
abolition, she had made her home outside Philadelphia a stop for runaway
Southern slaves.
As a revered Quaker elder minister, LCM at 47 went
to London in 1840 to attend an international abolition symposium. Staying
at the same rooming house was a new American bride, freethinking, 25-year-old
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who would later reside in Boston and upper New
York State.
The two would probably never have met in America and
would not have done more than nod hello in London had they not been unexpectedly
barred - as women - from taking part in the meetings.
Both were irate at the affront, but it gave them free
time in which to talk, marveling at how the men were posturing against
slavery as immoral while still believing they had the right to keep women
in social and legal bondage. The two women continued their friendship after
returning to the U.S. Eight years later they produced the Seneca Falls
Women's Rights convention of 1848, recognized as the birth of the formal
suffrage/women's rights movement in the United States - and the first formal
meeting in history anywhere in the world that called for women's rights.
In her Discourse on Woman (1851), Mott said
the so-called inferiority of women was because they were barred from education,
forced to work for lower wages, kept from employment opportunities, and
deprived of political rights.
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01-03 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 01- 03-1797, Madame Vestris, British actress,
opera singer, and manager noted for her stage and costume designs.
B. 01-03-1806, Henriette Sontag, noted German
operatic and concert soprano.
Born 01-03-1816, Anne Ayres organized the Sisterhood
of the Holy Communion within the Episcopal Church that required only
limited service -such as three years - rather than the lifelong commitments
of Catholic nuns.
B. 01-03-1824, Sophia Packard who with her
longtime companion Harriet E. Giles founded the Spelman Seminary, which
evolved into Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA.
B. 01-03-1841, Emily Huntington, pioneer in
the Froebelian kindergarten system in the U.S. who emphasized sewing
and cooking for girls called "cooking garden" and later with
an associate formed a "farm garden" for boys. She headed Wilson
Industrial School for Girls 1872-1892 and wrote several texts to be used
in the "cooking garden" classes. Helped form the forerunner of
the American Home Economics Association.
B. 01-03-1879, Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge,
wife of President Calvin Coolidge was a champion of the deaf. Her husband
was extremely possessive and *by presidential edict* forbade her from doing
a number of things, including cutting her hair or flying in an airplane.
After his death in 1933, she became active in civic affairs and even spoke
out for American involvement in World War II.
B. 01-03-1886, Josephine Sherwood Hull, primarily
a stage actor who won the Academy Award for reprising her role as the
sister in Harvey.
B. 01-03-1898, Zasu Pitts, great comedic actor
with more than 100 movie credits.
B. 01-03-1900, Dorothy Arzner, the only American
woman film director prominent in Hollywood during the big studio era.
DA rose through the ranks from typist to script clerk to film cutter to
the first woman film editor and assistant director until in 1927 she directed
her own movie. In 1929 she directed the first sound film for Paramount
Pictures. Most of the 17 major films she directed during the 1930s/40s
had strong women in leading roles.
Event 01-03-1900: Florence Woods becomes
the first American woman to get an automobile driving permit. "An
automobile is the simplest thing in the world to handle. I am astonished
that women seem so timid."
B. 01-03-1913, Joy Chute, author, primarily
of short stories. Usually wrote under the initials of B. J. because she
wrote a lot of boy stories. Her sister was also an author, Marchette Chute,
see WOA 08-16.
B. 01-03-1916, Betty Furness, actor, consumer
advocate, special assistant to the President of the United States for
Consumer Affairs. Known to the older generation as the woman who fought
a refrigerator door that refused to open - on LIVE TV - and lost, none
too graciously.
B. 01-03-1918, Maxene Andrew, the high lead
of the immensely popular Andrew Sisters which sold more than 60 million
records in the 1930's and 1940's and are still being imitated today. Their
most noted records were Bei Mir Bist Du Schon (1931), Rum and
Coca Cola (1944) and Don't Fence Me in (1944). Made a number
of Hollywood films. LaVerne was the contralto (07-06-1915) and Patti (02-16-1920)
the lead singer.
Event 01-03-1933, Minnie Davenport Craig was
elected Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first
woman speaker in U.S. history.
B. 01-03-1934, Carla Anderson Hills, Secretary
of the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the administration
of President Gerald Ford and U.S. trade Representative 1989-1993.
Event: 01-03-1939, hired for only one day,
Gene Cox, 13, becomes the first female page for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Event 01-03-1960: directive issued by the Israeli
government defined a "Jew" for religious registration purposes
as "a person born of a Jewish mother
who does not belong to another religion or one who was converted (to Judaism)
in accordance with Jewish law."
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QUOTES DU JOUR
PIERCY, MARGE:
"All women hustle.
Women watch faces, voices, gestures, moods. "She's the person who
has to survive through cunning."
--
Marge Piercy, Small Changes, 1973
MOTT, LUCRETIA:
"As the poor slave's
alleged contentment with his servile and cruel bondage only proves the
depth of his degradation, so the assertion of the woman that she has all
the rights she wants, only proves how far the restrictions and disabilities
to which she had been subject have rendered her insensible to the blessings
of true liberty."
--
Lucretia Mott
STARK, FREYDA:
"There is a great moment,
when you see, however distant, the goal of your wandering. The thing which
has been living in your imagination suddenly becomes a part of the tangible
world. It matters not how many ranges, rivers or parching dusty ways may
lie between you: it is yours now forever."
--
Freya Stark, 1952.
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