| 09-18 TABLE of CONTENTS:
The Woman Who "Bought" Your Voting Rights
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Carrie Chapman Catt.
Her Amazing Will "Bought"
U.S. Women The Vote
Event 09-18-1914: Mrs. Frank Leslie, aka Baroness
de Bazus, aka Miriam Florence Folline Leslie, died and her amazing will
changes the course of history in the U.S.:
She bequeathed $2 million to Carrie Chapman Catt PERSONALLY
to get woman's suffrage approved in the U.S.!
After legal battles that seemed to go on forever and
caused Catt to remark that the money seemed to be more of a curse than
a boon, Catt received about $900,000 - the rest eaten up by legal fees
by family members trying to break the will.
Catt put it all - every cent - into the Leslie
publicity bureau which sent suffrage material to newspapers, magazines,
and activists in a snow of information that turned a stalled movement into
an avalanche of pressure. Would U.S. women gotten the vote without Leslie's
money? Eventually, but history (read correctly) showed that even withthe
tremendous amount of pressure exerted by women, the results came down to
ONE VOTE in the Tennessee legislature. Had that one vote not been cast
for suffrage, the entire movement would have been stopped because a number
of states were poised to rescind their favorable vote. 
One must remember that lifting any restrictions on
women's freedom breaks one of the oldest of all prejudices reinforced by
almost every religion, that of men have the right and duty to keep women,
by force if necessary, as subservient slaves.
Most sources simply state the donation by a Mrs. Frank
Leslie and one is left to surmise that it was the will of pampered wife
who didn't even lay claim to her own name and used HIS money for HER causes.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Miriam
changed her name to Frank legally after she was left a widow with bankrupt
businesses. Through shrewd business dealings, she rebuilt what was left
of her husband's publishing empire into the fortune.
[Excerpts from the report of the
Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission, Inc., formed to administer the Leslie
fortune have been added to the Library
of WiiN. Just click on the entries below; it
has been divided because of its length and thoroughness.
It is a remarkble document about a remarkable event.
It is long - it is extensive. It is ACCURATE! Anything Mrs. Catt had anything
to do with was completely and totally documented and open to public review.
Anyone interested in furthering the rights of women
are urged to read the document. It is an excellent review in detail of
the entire suffrage movement of 1914-1920. One may also trace the intricate
political machinations of the willy Carrie Chapman Catt and seek to become
more politically effective by following her example.
"The Plan" as put forth by Catt is a lasting
blueprint for the political success for women's issues in the U.S. Would
that it were being followed today! Had the Catt suffragists' maneuvers
been followed in the ERA battles of the 1970s instead of the confrontational
Alice Paul method which develops no political strength, the results would
probably have been much different.]
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09-18 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS
B. 09-18-1581 (87-88?), Francesca Caccini,
aka La Cecchina, noted Italian musician whose Primo Libro (1618)
was the most extensive collection of songs by a single composer that had
been published to that date. Her opera La liberazione du Ruggiero dall'isola
d'Alcina was performed 02-02-1625 with great pomp and royal attendance
and is considered the first opera composed by a woman.. or first opera
acknowledged to be written by a woman to be performed publicly.
Event 09-18-1634: Anne Hutchinson landed in
Boston from England at age 43. She then settled in Massachusetts colony
with her husband and children and would become the first American colonial
woman exiled from her home for expressing her religious beliefs. When she
and her family were killed by Indians, the Massachusetts religious leaders
expressed pleasure.
B. 09-18-1870, Lucy Martin Donnelly, U.S. English
teacher.
B. 09-18-1905, Greta Garbo, Swedish-American
actor of the almost perfect face, and one of the great stars of cinema.
She made 24 films in Hollywood and was nominated for Academy Awards four
times. She was finally awarded a special Academy award in 1954 "for
her unforgettable screen performances." Although she retired in 1941
to live in seclusion in New York, the papparzi continued to chase her and
the gossip newspapers printed photos of her when she was in her 70s and
80s - even while swimming.
She hated making movies and condemned their superficialities
as well as the burden of being portrayed a beatiful thing rather than a
human being.
Greta Gustafsson left school at 14 to work after her
father died. A film director saw her, admired her beauty and gave her a
small part in a movie. She then studied at the Royal Dramatic Theater School
in Stockholm for two years where she met Mauritz Stiller, the foremost
Swedish film director of his time who renamed her Garbo. When he went to
the United States to work for MGM, he took her along. Garbo's fame soon
eclipsed his.
One of the few stars who were able to move from silent
films to talkies, she made The Torrent (1926), Flesh and the
Devil (1927), Love (1927), A Woman of Affairs (1929),
and Wild Orchids (1929). Garbo starred in "talkies" for
the next 14 years before walking away from movies, some say because her
box office draw was dwindling, others because she was aging and didn't
want the world to watch the process. Others noted her hatred of the Hollywood
superficiality.
The Hollywood publicists blared "Garbo Talks!"
as she starred in her first talkie, Anna Christie (1930), followed
by Mata Hari (1932), Grand Hotel (1932), Queen Christina
(1933), Anna Karenina (1935), Camille (1936), and Ninotchka
(1939). She died in New York City on April 15, 1990.
Yes, she was a lesbian rather than a bi-sexual.
Ironically, Marlene Dietrich who was brought to the
U.S. as a rival to Garbo was a bi-sexual who, in private life, also played
the rival to several of Garbo's women lovers.
"I said I wanted
to be left alone, not I want to be alone. There is a great difference,"
Garbo explained about the misquote that is
universally attributed to her.
B. 09-18-1905?, Agnes DeMille, major U.S. ballet
choreographer whose ballet Rodeo (1942) for the Ballet Russe
de Monte Carlo revolutionized ballet by using modern dance techniques and
movements from life rather than just the standard ballet movements. As
an honored Broadway and screen choreographer of legendary proportions,
she created ballets seen in such plays and movies as Oklahoma, Carousel,
Fall River Legend, Brigadoon, etc. Her greatest contributions
that revolutionized musical drama were to use American themes and folk
dancing and gestures an integral part of her choreographing, and to incorporate
dance as a part of the action, not just a diversion. Her dance routines
moved the action along and developed the story line rather than being pleasant
interruptions.
B. 09-18-1922, Catherine Fahriner, U.S. writer.
B. 09-18-1940, Nannerl Overholser Keohane -
U.S. university president. NOK was president and professor political
science Wellesly College 1981-1993 and president Duke University 1993-.
She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame (1995). She is
a member, Board of Directors, IBM.
Event 09-18-1940: Harper and Brothers published
"You Can't Go Home Again" by Thomas Wolfe. A little known
fact is that Wolfe's manuscript was a total mess, unreadable actually,
and a woman editor made it readable - as well as the rest of "his"
other "great American" novels. WOA's author has lost the citation
and the reference material as to her identity and her subsequent work which
made Wolfe a great writer - and left her very, very unacknowledged. We
would appreciate any information on the matter. Some claim that her work
was so extensive that she should be listed as co-author.
Event 09-18-1948: Dr. Leslie Swigart Kent is
elected the first president of the Oregon Medical Society, the first woman
to head any U.S. medical society.
Event 09-18-1985: The Frank G. Brewer Award,
highest honor given in the U.S. for significant contributions of enduring
value to aerospace education, was awarded Mary Jo Knouff. "Her
impressive credentials testify to her lifetime dedication to aviation and
space education. After gaining a most respectable national and international
reputation, she retired in 1985 from her position as education specialist
of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)."
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QUOTES DU JOUR
CATT, CARRIE CHAPMAN:
"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 in a speech before the National American Woman Suffrage
Association in 1902. (Is it any wonder Susan B. Anthony handpicked Catt
as her successor? Catt is Irene Stuber's person icon.)
EXCERPTS FROM LESLIE REPORT:
Excerpts from the
report of the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission, Inc., formed to administer
the Leslie fortune are to be found in the WiiN Library:
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