03-03 TABLE of CONTENTS:
1913: Women Beaten When They Dare Ask For The Right to
Vote
Old U.S. Laws Said A Girl of Seven Could Consent To Sex
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Carrie Chapman Catt and the Connecticut Women's Commission.
1913: Women Beaten When They Dare Ask For The Right to Vote
"Eight thousand
women with suffrage banners flying paraded along Washington's Pennsylvania
Avenue on March 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration,
to make the incoming president and congress aware of their cause.
"It was a parade that turned into a confrontation
and near riot. Police had given a permit for it, but they did little to
protect the women when angry men began attacking the marchers.
"Women were slapped, tripped, spat upon, pelted
with burning cigar stubs, had banners torn from their hands. Their hats
were pulled off, their clothing was ripped, and some were knocked to the
ground and trampled.
"Federal troops had to be called in from nearby
Fort Meyer. The soldiers cleared the streets, controlled the mob, and finally
restored order, and the somewhat disheveled women carried on with the parade
that got them a lot more front-page attention than they had expected."
-- Excerpted from Bill Severn's The
Right To Vote, New York: Ives Washburn, 1972.
The 1913 parade, although credited to Alice Paul,
was actually organized and directed by Lucy Burns who was the organizational
"brains" of many actions/works credited to Paul.
The 1913 parade was copied from the first American
women's suffrage protest parade held in 1910 in New York City that was
organized and led by Harriet Stanton Blatch, daughter of women's rights
pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Blatch had organized the Women's Political Union in
1908, and merged the group with Paul's Congressional Union in 1915. Blatch
soon broke with Paul - in spite of her pacifism - in order to assist the
U.S. in World War I. Paula refused to help the war effort.
A protest parade that was held in Philadelphia before the
Civil War by women involved in the abolitionist movement is believed to
have inspired Blatch. Her mother probably spoke of it.
Blatch, after traveling to England to witness the
British suffrage movement, returned to the U.S. and melded her organization
with that of Paul and Burns and thus the Paul organization took over the
idea for the 1913 parade.
The larger - and later the most influential organization
for women's suffrage, the National American Women's Suffrage, Association
was in a moribund state in 1913 as Rev. Anna Shaw - one of the great women
suffragists - proved to be an ineffectual leader. The NAWSA would soon
reelect the organizational genius Carrie Chapman Catt as president and
the Winning Plan that changed emphasis from protest to political influence
would talk shape. Catt and her lieutenants organized women county by county
throughout the nation and aided them in influencing state legislatures
and men voters who would decide if women voted.
| PRIOR DATE |
| HOME |
| WOA INDEX |
| NEXT DATE |
| RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
|
Old U.S. Laws Said A Girl of Seven Could Consent To Sex
Texas raised the age of consent for a woman from 7 to 10 in 1890. If
you think that's preposterous, you might be surprised at the history of
a girl's consent in your state.
Call your local bar association and ask... betcha
they won't knowthe answer or... if they claim they do, ask them to give
you a date when the laws were changed (and changed and changed) and get
them to give you the numbers of the bills that changed the laws.)
Until June 26, 1918, all Texans could vote except
"idiots, imbeciles,aliens, the insane, and women."
Texas women were not permitted to serve on juries
until 1954. As late as 1969, married women did not have full property rights.
(Do you know when or even IF married women have full property rights in
your state? In Florida, as late at 1966, a woman who had been married needed
her husband or ex-husband's permission to buy real estate - and barring
that, her father's or that or a judge who decided that she was competent
to make such decisions.)
And until 1972, under Article 1220 of the Texas Penal
Code, a man could murder hiswife and her lover if he found them "in
a compromising position" and getaway with it as "justifiable
homicide."
("Women, you understand,
did not have equal shooting rights," commented Molly Ivins.)
Texas was one of thefirst states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment,
which has been part ofthe Texas Constitution since 1972.
[The stats on Texas were taken
from Molly Ivins's book, Molly Ivins Can't SayThat, Can She? An
absolute treasure!]
| PRIOR DATE |
| HOME |
| WOA INDEX |
| NEXT DATE |
| RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
|
03-03 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
Event 03-03-1798: The Battle of Frauenbriin resulted in a victory
for the French over the Swiss. The outnumbered Swiss included 280 women
under the leadership of Martha Glar, 64, who is killed along with, her
two daughters, three granddaughters (the youngest is only 10), and 154
other women. The men in Glar's family also die.
Event 03-03-1879, Belva Lockwood becomes the first female attorney
admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
B. 03-03-1890, Chase Going Woodhouse
- U.S. and state official. Throughout her lengthy and accomplished
career, Chase Woodhouse moved easily between the worlds of public service
and academics. In addition to her two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives,
she was also the first woman to serve as Secretary of State of the State
of Connecticut.
She served as an economic adviser and elected official in
various governmental positions in between her several appointments as a
college professor. In her congressional career she attempted to implement
the same kind of economic policies that she recommended as a governmental
adviser.
She was professor of economics at Connecticut College
in New London, Conn., 1934-1946; Managing Director, Institute of Women's
Professional Relations at Connecticut College, 1929-1946; Personnel Director,
Woman's College, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1929-1934;
Senior Economist, Bureau of Home Economics, United States Department of
Agriculture, 1926-1928; Consultant, National Roster of Scientific and Specialized
Personnel, War Manpower Commission, 1942-1944; Chairman of New London Democratic
Town Committee in 1942 and 1943; Secretary of State of Connecticut in 1941
and 1942; President of the Connecticut Federation of Democratic Women's
Clubs 1943-1948; elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-ninth Congress (January
3, 1945-January 3, 1947); unsucessful candidate for reelection in 1946
to the Eightieth Congress; Executive Director, Women's Division, Democratic
National Committee, Washington, D.C., from February 1947 to April 1948;
and visiting expert on the staff of Gen. Lucius Clay, Allied Military Governor
of Germany, in 1948.
She was elected to the Eighty-first Congress where
as a freshman member, Woodhouse was assigned to the Committee on Banking
and Currency where she ardently worked for implementation of the Bretton
Woods agreement to establish an international monetary fund and a world
bank for redevelopment in the post-war era. She also fought for the maintenance
of war-time price controls as a protection for consumers and for more affordable
housing for returning veterans.
In one of the controversial votes of the Seventy-ninth
Congress, Woodhouse opposed making the Committee on Un-American Activities
a standing committee.
B. 03-03-1893, Beatrice Wood - U.S. avant-garde artist. BW exhibited
with the Dada movement but is best known for her ceramics. She had painted
oils for years in the Dada style before turning to ceramics in order to
match a missing teapot. In addition to pottery, she sculpted in ceramic
clay. Her ceramic sculptures were in a whimsical, sensual style. She developed
her own distinctive colors and color schemes. She lived to 105 working
and painting her pottery daily past 100.
Her home west of Los Angeles became a museum-like
during his lifetime as hundreds visited daily to view her art. Wood's ceramics
are displayed in the permanent collections of major U.S. museums, including
the Smithsonian and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as museums
worldwide. Part of her very unconventional love life became the inspiration
for the fiction novel (and movie) Jules et Jim written by Henri-Pierre
Roche.
B. 03-03-1902, Isabel Bishop -U.S. artist known for her paintings
of New York City women working as well as colorful paintings of the city
itself. A mistress of "how to catch the fleeting
moment without freezing its flight," her paintings are in many
museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art.
B. 03-03-1910, Gertrude Shilling - U.K. blue blood who made a
career of outrageous hats she wore at the Royal Enclosure at the Ascot
race meet.
After wearing a confection created by her 12-year-old
son that gained her front page notoriety, GS's hats became more and more
elaborate and theatrical. They ranged from a huge apple pierced by an arrow
to a five-foot high hutch with a pair of rabbit ears protuding from the
top. Some of her other hats were a TV set complete with cigarettes and
a rolled newspaper, a dart board, a huge daisy, a giraffe, as well as confections
of lace and feathers.
She was diagnosed with cancer when she was 59 and
for 30 years she "carried on" with her elaborate head pieces
that, she said, helped her through
B.
03-03-1911, Jean Harlow - U.S. film actor. JH was Hollywood's first
blonde sexpot. Although her film roles always posed her as being able to
hold her own with men in a worldly-wise manner, in reality she was a dependent
person who was abused. Her fatal liver ailment at age 26 resulted from
an earlier beating by a lover. Her striking, frankly sexual beauty radiated
on the screen and directors lit her with high spots to emphasize her platinum
blond hair.
B. 03-03-1938, Patricia MacLachlan, - U.K. children's author.
B. 03-03-1949, Bonnie Dunbar - U.S. astronaut. BD with a doctorate
in biomedical engineering spent 41.5 days in space in four space flights.
BD was a mission specialist with the first American space
crew to dock with the Russian space station Mir, which involved an exchange
of crews.
Dr. Dunbar was responsible for operating Spacelab
and its subsystems during one of her missions and was payload commander
in another. In February 1994, she traveled to Star City, Russia, where
she spent 13-months training as a back-up crew member for a 3-month flight
on the Russian Space Station, Mir.
Her mission training for operating Spacelab and its
subsystems included six months of experiment training in Germany, France,
Switzerland, and The Netherlands.
In 1993 she made a very generous one-time contribution
to Washington space grant scholarship program to support a promising Space
Grant scholar.
Event
03-03-1955: Clare Boothe Luce,
former U.S. Senator and Congressional Representative becomes the first
women in U.S. history to be named ambassador to a "major" country.
A Republican and wife of Time, Inc., owner, she is appointed ambassador
to Italy by Dwight Eisenhower.
B.
03-03-1962, Jacqueline Kennedy Joyner-Kersee - U.S. athlete. JKJK is
the first athlete to win back-to-back gold medals in the Olympic Heptathlons
(seven events-the 200-meter dash, 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put,
long jump, javelin throw, and 800-meter run- held over a two-day period).
In 1988 she set a new world record in the Heptathlon
and earned the title "World's Greatest Female
Athlete."
She won three gold, one silver and two bronze
medals over four consecutive Olympic Games. By 1996, past her prime and
injured with a bad hamstring, JKJK was still able to reach down inside
herself for one last attempt at Olympics glory, saying, "I
had the rest of my life to recover." She ignored the pain to
make the third longest long jump in the competition and add a Bronze as
her sixth Olympic medal.
B.
03-03-1968, Diann Roffe-Steinrotter - U.S. athlete. DRS won 1 gold
medal and 1 silver in alpine skiing at the 1992 and the 1994 Olympics.
At 17 she was the youngest skier to win a world alpine
championship. Then she was badly injured and was retiring from the sport.
Urged by Debbie Armstrong, the 1984 giant slalom gold medalist, she gradually
regained her strength after her marriage and "stormed
back to win a silver medal in the giant slalom at the 1992 Albertville
Games and a gold medal in the super giant slalomat the 1994 Lillehammer
Games, becoming the first American women to take home a gold in the event."
U.S. Ski Coach, Paul Major said of her championship
performance in Norway, "It was the most amazing
thing I've ever seen in sports."
B.
03-03-1973, Tisha Venturini - U.S. athlete. TV scored two goals, including
the game-winner at the 96 Olympic games, and her U.S. women's national
soccer team went on to win the gold.
Event 03-03-1987: Sandy Freedman is elected the first woman mayor
of Tampa, Florida. She won 177 of the city's 178 precincts
| PRIOR DATE |
| HOME |
| WOA INDEX |
| NEXT DATE |
| RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
|
QUOTES DU JOUR
CATT, CARRIE CHAPMAN:
"The whole aim of the
woman's movement has been to destroy the idea that obedience is necessary
to women; to train women to such self-respect that they would not grant
obedience and to train men to such a comprehension of equity that they
would not exact it."
-- Carrie Chapman Catt,
speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1902.
"The world taught women
nothing skillful and then said her work was valueless. It permitted her
no opinions and said she did not know how to think. It forbade her to speak
in public and said the sex had no orators. It denied her the schools and
said the sex had no genius. It robbed her of every vestige of responsibility
and then called her weak. It taught her that every pleasure must come as
a favor from men, and when to gain it she decked herself in paint and fine
feathers, as she had been taught to do, it called her vain."
--
Carrie Chapman Catt, 1902.
Connecticut Women's Commission:
"Work, for the colonial
women, was from sunup to sundown. Along with child care responsibilities,
colonial women also took charge of all food and clothing preparation. In
the late Colonial and early Federal periods, this was a particularly difficult
task for a woman with a large family. Worn out, many colonial women died
young, survived by their husbands who often remarried only to have their
second or even third wives meet with a similar end."
--
Great Women in Connecticut History by the Permanent Commission on
the Status of Women, March 1, 1986.
(Women were expected
to die from too many pregnancies right after another rather than requiring
the husband to practice any type of birth or self control. A trip to old
cemeteries is an eye-opener. Many women were buried in unmarked graves
without expensive stone markers which were usually reserved for the men
of the family. Their graves and their very existence have disappeared.
In a tour of old cemeteries, note how many men's graves appear to have
more than an ordinary space between them and other grave markers - and
most of them appear to be bachelors with no mention of any wives. There's
a good chance a wife or two is buried in that "empty" space around
the man's marker. Other times a inscription "and wife" is marked
on the back of the husband's headstone.
| PRIOR DATE |
| HOME |
| WOA INDEX |
| NEXT DATE |
| RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
|
|