07-16 TABLE of CONTENTS:
She sued a railroad for refusing
to seat her correctly
Barnett's militant editorial
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTE by
Irmgard Flügge-Lotz.Irmgard
Flügge-Lotz
She sued a railroad...
B.
07-16-1862, Ida B. Wells Barnett, noted militant black leader who often
criticized black male leaders for being too accommodating. Her basic philosophy
was that black people could only gain their equality through their own
efforts.
She sued a railroad company over its refusal to allow
her to ride first class because of her color. She won the case in the lower
courts, but in 1887 the Tennessee State Supreme Court overturned the ruling.
Her outspoken article about black school deficiencies
got her fired from her public school position in Memphis, TN. She was co-founder
of the Free Speech and Headlighter that was destroyed by a mob after
a 03-09-1892 editorial about the lynching of three black youths.
In several studies she proved that the lynching of
black men (and women) was not tied to sexual assault, but a retribution
by those who felt their white, male social structures were economically
threatened by blacks.
Black women were also lynched (or killed in other
ways and raped) with amazing regularity that even today seems to escape
historical notice.
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In one of Ida Wells' publication, she makes the
strong condemnation of the Southern lynchings:
"Not all or nearly all of the murders done
by white men, during the past thirty years in the South, have come to light,
but the statistics as gathered and preserved by white men, and which have
not been questioned, show that during these years more than ten thousand
Negroes have been killed in cold blood, without the formality of judicial
trial and legal execution. As yet, as evidence of the absolute impunity
with which the white man dares to kill a Negro, the same record shows that
during all these years, and for all these murders only three white men
have been tried, convicted, and executed.
"If the Southern people in defense of their
lawlessness, would tell the truth and admit that colored men and women
are lynched for almost any offense, from murder to a misdemeanor, there
would not now be the necessity for œthe defense that Negroes had to be
killed to avenge their assaults upon white womenil. But when they intentionally,
maliciously and constantly belie the record and bolster up these falsehoods
by the words of legislators, preachers, governors and bishops, then the
Negro must give to the world his side of the awful story.
"The question must be asked, what the white
man means when he charges the black man with rape. Does he mean the crime
which the statutes of the states describe as such? Not by any means. The
Southern white man says that it is impossible for a voluntary alliance
to exist between a white woman and a colored man, and therefore, the fact
of an alliance is a proof of force. In numerous instances where colored
men have been lynched on the charge of rape, it was positively known at
the time of lynching, and indisputably proven after the victim s death,
that the relationship sustained between the man and the woman was voluntary
and clandestine, and that in no court of law could even the charge of assault
have been successfully maintained.
"It was for the assertion of this fact, in
the defense of her own race, that the writer hereof became an exile; her
property destroyed and her return to her home forbidden under penalty of
death, for writing the following editorial which was printed in her paper,
the Free Speech, in Memphis, Tenn., May 21, 1892:
"Nobody in this section of the country believes
the old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white
men are not careful, they will over-reach themselves and public sentiment
will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very
damaging to the moral reputation of their women.
"It is not the purpose of this defense to
say one word against the white women of the South. Such need not be said,
but it is their misfortune that the white men of that section to justify
their own barbarism assume a chivalry which they do not possess. True chivalry
respects all womanhood, and no one who reads the record, as it is written
in the faces of the million mulattoes in the South, will for a minute conceive
that the southern white man had a very chivalrous regard for the honor
due the women of his race or respect for the womanhood which circumstances
placed in his power."
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07-16 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 07-16-1194, Saint Clare of Assisi, Abbess and founder of the Poor
Clare religious order of women.
B.
07-16-1821, Mary Baker Eddy - founder of the Christian Science movment.
Eddy is the only woman to found a major religion.
In 1874 she founded the
Christian Science movement after recovering from illnesses with the use
of spiritual healing. She studied the process and developed her own system
that preached that the mind is the only reality and that illnesses and
infirmities of the body are merely illusions and can be cured by mental
effort, chiefly the reading of Jesus's words in the New Testament.
B. 07-16-1836, Marietta Holley - U.S. humorist whose very popular
books featured Samantha, a level-headed women's rights advocate who served
as an effective foil for more conventional-thinking characters.
B. 07-16-1849, Clara Shortridge Foltz - U.S. reformer, attorney,
editor, and publisher who changed California's sexist laws. She had read
law and then found out California did not allow non-male attorneys.
Together with Laura D.
Gorden, they got that law changed. When she was denied admission
to a San Francisco law school, she brought suit and along with Ms Gorden
argued it to victory to the California Supreme Court.
B. 07-16-1863, Fanny Bloomfield-Zeisler, Austrian-U.S. pianist
who met with critical international acclaim in a 50-year career.
B. 07-16-1880, Kathleen Norris - highly popular U.S. author.
KN wrote 81 novels and many short stories that made her one of the most
popular writers in the U.S.
Needless to say, critics
did not approve of her, dismissing her work as "womanish," as
if half the reading public wasn't interested in women's stories.
B. 07-16-1899, Eunice Hunton Carter - U.S. attorney, secretary
of the Committee on conditions in Harlem appointed by the mayor of New
York following the Harlem riots of 1935.
Born on this date in 1907, Barbara Stanwyck who made more than 80
motion pictures and won two Emmys for her work on TV; and in 1911, Ginger
Rogers who won the academy award for her leading role in Kitty Foyle
but will forever be best known dancing partner with Fred Astair... "(Ginger
Rogers did) everything that Fred Astaire did, only she had to do it backwards
and on high heels," has become one of feminism's truisms.
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B. 07-16-1908, Frances Rappaport Horwich - a whole generation of
U.S. children were awed and helped become good citizens. As Miss Frances,
FRH treated children as if they were going to be adults, not just big pocketbooks
on her wonderful TV program Ding Dong School. (The compiler of WOAH thanks
Ms. Frances for helping raise her three children. They were mesmerized
and I thank her for helping making us all better people.)
B. 07-16-1928, Bella Davidovich - Soviet pianist who won the
stellar "Deserving Artist of the Soviet Union" award. Her mother
Lyusya was a pianist who worked as an opera accompanist.
B. 07-16-1942, Margaret Court - Australian tennis player who
dominated the sport in the1960s. She won 66 grand-slam championships, more
than any other woman and the second woman to win the grand slam of tennis
singles.
Event 07-16-1995: Retired journalist Marj Carpenter, 68, was
elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the church's highest
elected position.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
FLÜGGE-LOTZ, IRMGARD:
"I
wanted a life which would never be boring. That meant a life in which always
new things would occur... I wanted a career in which I would always be
happy even if I were to remain unmarried."
--
Irmgard Flügge-Lotz, engineer, mathematician who in 1929 became researcher
at Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt at Góttingen and developed the
Lotz method for calculating the spanwise (wingtip to wingtip) distribution
of a wing's lifting force, even for wings of diverse shapes.
After WWII she and her husband moved to the U.S. where
he was appointed professor of engineering, and she became a lowly lecturer
in engineering and research although she was by far the more important
scientist.
In 1970 she was named a fellow of the American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics and received the Society of Women Engineers
achievement award.
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