Women's Rights, Female Leadership
Civil War to the Present
Suffrage, Equal Rights, and Leadership in Many Reform Movements
The Suffrage Movement Culminated in 1920 with the Ratification of the 19th Amendment.
"No man is good enough to govern any woman without er consent."
In 1913 Alice Paul helped to organize a women's suffrage parade in Washington, DC. In 1917, Alice Paul started the "silent sentinel" program to picket to show support to advocate women's right to vote. Paul was arrested and jailed for illegally demonstrating in front of the White House.
"We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million
women are denied the right to vote."
Prominent Female Reformers
Ida Tarbell
“If it has taught us anything, it is that our present law-
makers, as a body, are ignorant, corrupt and unprincipled;
that the majority of them are, directly or indirectly, under
the control of the very monopolies against whose acts we
have been seeking relief. . ”
Mary Elizabeth Lease
"Kansas had better stop raising corn and start raising
hell."
Jane Addams and Margaret Sanger
She founded Hull House and was a co-founder of the ACLU. Addams was the first American female recent of the Nobel Prize for Peace and is credited with starting the profession of Social Workers.
Hull House included, "...clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a gym, a girls' club, a bathhouse, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group and a theater, apartments, a library, meeting rooms for discussion, clubs, an employment bureau, and a lunchroom."
Female Leaders in the WWII Era
Eleanor Roosevelt
Roosevelt was an early civil rights activist instrumental in dozens of African Americans being invited to the White House, The appointment of Mary McCleod Bethune to a high post in the NYA, the use of the Tuskegee Airmen overseas, and making the mall available to Marian Anderson to perform after she was denied the use of Constitution Hall because of her race.
Post White House, Roosevelt serves as a delegate to the United Nations and the chairperson of the United Nation Commission on Human Rights.
Frances Perkins
Perkins was instrumental in the creation of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the first minimum wage. She also had both a creative and supervisory role in the many of the Public Works agencies of the New Deal.
Rosie the Riveter
Rosie the Riveter was the symbol of women breaking gender stereotypes and creating new opportunities for women.
Women in the Civil Rights Movement
Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer was a civil rights activist working for voter registration and Freedom Summer through SNCC. Famer was nearly beat to death while in police custody in Mississippi
During the 1960s, Famer was key in getting black delegates seated at the Democratic National Convention..
Betty Friedan and Phyllis Schlafly
"The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive."
Schlafly was a conservative activist and founder of the Eagle Forum, author of A Choice, Not an Echo.
"What I am defending is the real rights of women. A woman should have the right to be in the home as a wife and mother."
Delores Huerta
"I couldn't tolerate seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children."
Women in Modern America
Barbara Jordan
Jordan was also a recipient of the presidential Medal of Freedom.
Sandra Day O'Connor and Sally Ride
Sally Ride was the first female astronaut and youngest astronaut to travel in space (age 32).
ERA and NOW
"Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in 1964.
NOW's statement of purpose written by Betty Friedan in 1966,
"To take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.""