06-23 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Excerpt from The History of Woman's
Suffrage, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Gabrielle Edwards.
Much has been written about the women's movement
without too much study of Herstory ... note below how some things were
going on to reform women's rights earlier than most women's studies groups
indicate - and much wider than admitted by historians. Nothing is as simple
as history portrays:
"...In the winter
of 1836, a bill was introduced into the New York Legislature by Judge Hertell,
to secure to married women their rights of property ... In was in furtherance
of this bill that Ernestine L. Rose and Paulina Wrights at that early day
circulated petitions. The very few names they secured show the hopeless
apathy and ignorances of the women as to their own rights. As similar bills
were pending in New York until finally passed in 1848, a great educational
work was accomplish in the constant discussion of the topics involved.
"Abby
Kelley was the most untiring and the most persecuted of all the women who
labored throughout the Anti-Slavery struggle. She traveled up and down,
alike in winter's cold and summer's heart with scorn, ridicule, violence,
and mobs accompanying her, suffering all kinds of persecutions, still speaking
whenever and wherever she gained an audience; in open air, in schoolhouse,
barn, depot, church, or public hall; on weekday or Sunday, as she found
opportunity. For listening to her, on Sunday, many men and women were expelled
from their churches. Thus through continued persecution was women's self-assertion
and self-respect sufficiently developed to prompt her to at last demand
justice, liberty, and equality for herself.
"In 1845, Rev. Samuel J. May said in a sermon
that women need not expect 'to have their wrongs fully addressed, until
they themselves have a voice and a hard in the enactment and administration
of the laws.'
"At Leipsic, in 1844, Helen Marie Weber - her
father a Prussian officer, and her mother an English woman - wrote a series
of ten tracts on 'Woman's Rights and Wrongs,' covering the whole question
and making a column of over 1200 pages. The first of these treated of intellectual
faculties' the second, woman's rights of property; the third, wedlock -
deprecating the custom of woman merging her civil existence in that of
her husband; the fourth claimed woman's right to all political emoluments;
the fifth, in ecclesiasticism, demanded for woman an entrance to the pulpit;
the sixth, upon suffrage, declared it to be woman's right and duty to vote.
These essays were strong, vigorous, and convincing.
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton in The History of Woman's Suffrage,
vol. 1.
06-23 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 06-23-1763, Josephine - Consort of Napoleon
Bonaparte, Empress of France and supposedly Bonaparte's great love.
However, Bonaparte divorced her to marry an Austrian princess in hopes
of a son and heir.
Event 06-23-1848: Dorothea Lynde Dix, by
courtesy of Congress, was given a special alcove in the Capitol Library
where she could lobby and confer with members of Congress regarding care
for the indigent insane. Dix was the great reformer of prisons and insante
institutions.
B. 06-23-1908, Maria Helena Vieira de Silva,
ranks as the most important contemporary Portuguese painter. Her abstract
expressionism paintings hang in major modern art museums through the world.
Lisbon, Portugal, is building a museum just to house her work.
B. 06-23-1940, Wilma Rudolph, Afro-American
runner won the 100-meter and 200-meter dashes and was the final runner
of the 400-meter relay at the 1960 Olympics, the first time an American
woman won three gold medals in track.
She set and then broke her own records after overcoming
a series of childhood illnesses that prevented her from walking until she
was eight, thanks to special exercises and her mother's massages.
Nicknamed the "Black Gazelle" for her graceful
running style, she retired from competition to finish college and then
took part in a special program to help ghetto children learn athletics
from star performers. She is a member of several track and athletic halls
of fame.
Event 06-23-1972, President Richard Nixon signs
into law Title IX of the Higher Education Act, banning sex bias in
athletics and other activities at all educational institutions receiving
federal assistance. Within a decade 500% more girls were competing in high
school sports with women's sports expanding every year. The bill, introduced
by Rep. Edith Green (D-OR) also allowed the Justice Department to file
suit at the request of the Health and Education Department.
Suits under Title IX are still being filed today and
many colleges and universities are still avoiding complying with the law.
Their rational is that to give women equal treatment it would cut into
men's sports - an argument that admits institutionalized inequality.
Before Title IX, there were so few college athletic
scholarships ever given to a woman as to be non-existent - even though
women have always paid exactly (if not more) in college tuition than men.
Women in high school and college programs used discarded equipment from
the men's programs and had to schedule their events and games for when
the men didn't need or want the practice areas.
Event 06-23-1973: Margaret A. Haywood was
elected the first woman to head the United Church of Christ and the first
black woman to lead a major U.S. denomination.
Event 06-23-1993: Ecuadorian-born manicurist
Lorena L. Bobbitt, 24, cuts off two-thirds of the penis of her sleeping
husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, 26, after an alleged sexual 23 to add a new
word to American slang. The organ is reattached in 9 hours of microsurgery
when she tells police where she threw it. A jury of nine women and three
men acquit John Wayne of marital sexual assault November 10; and Lorena
was acquitted in 1994 of malicious assault.
QUOTES DU JOUR
STANTON, ELIZABETH CADY:
"Men,
their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less!"
--The motto of the Revolution, the woman's rights publication of
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in the latter part of the 19th
century.
EDWARDS, GABRIELLE. I.:
"...
the concept of motherhood in the United States is held in high esteem,
glorified -- so much so that special-interest groups have taken it upon
themselves to destroy abortion clinics by bombing them or by harassing
their patients.
"Yet, once motherhood becomes an established
fact, women who are heads of households are denied legislation that could
remove them from a chronic state of poverty."
-- Edwards, Gabrielle I. Coping With Discrimination. New York: The
Rosen Publishing Group, 1986 and 1992.
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