One of eight children born toQuaker parents on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880) dedicated her life to the goal of human equality. As a child Mott attended Nine Partners, a Quaker boarding school located in New York, where she learned of the horrors of slavery from her readings and from visiting lecturers such as Elias Hicks, a well-known Quaker abolitionist. She also saw that women and men were not treated equally, even among the Quakers, when she discovered that female teachers at Nine Partners earned less than males. At a young age Lucretia Coffin Mott became determined to put an end to such social injustices. In 1833 Mott, along with Mary Ann M’Clintock and nearly 30 other female abolitionists, organized the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. She later served as a delegate from that organization to the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. It was there that she first met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was attending the convention with her husband Henry, a delegate from New York. Mott and Stanton were indignant at the fact that women were excluded from participating in the convention simply because of their gender, and that indignation would result in a discussion about holding a woman’s rights convention. Stanton later recalled this conversation in the History of Woman Suffrage: As Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wended their way arm in arm down Great Queen Street that night, reviewing the exciting scenes of the day, they agreed to hold a woman’s rights convention on their return to America, as the men to whom they had just listened had manifested their great need of some education on that question. Thus a missionary work for the emancipation of woman…was then and there inaugurated. Eight years later, on July 19 and 20, 1848, Mott, Stanton, Mary Ann M’Clintock, Martha Coffin Wright, and Jane Hunt acted on this idea when they organized the First Woman’s Rights Convention. Throughout her life Mott remained active in both the abolition and women’s rights movements. She continued to speak out against slavery, and in 1866 she became the first president of the American Equal Rights Association, an organization formed to achieve equality for African Americans and women.
0 Comments
Matilda Joslyn Gage was born on March 24, 1826, in Cicero, New York. An only child, she was raised in a household dedicated to antislavery. Her father, Dr. Hezekiah Joslyn, was a nationally known abolitionist, and the Joslyn home was a station on the Underground Railway. Matilda Joslyn Gage grew up to be not only an abolitionist, but a suffragist, author, and activist for Native American rights. She was adopted into the wolf clan of the Mohawk nation and argued for their non-gendered biased form of government. She married Henry Gage at 18 and had five children. One of the woman’s movement’s philosophers, she was a skilled writer and organizer, active after her children were grown. Gage joined the National Woman Suffrage Association, wrote for the Revolution, was an officer of the New York State Suffrage Association and later was president of both groups. She co-authored the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage with Stanton and Anthony. Gage’s intellectual vigor made her one of woman’s rights most able philosophers but, fearing repercussions from her anti-church stand, the movement virtually wrote her out of its own history. Gage and Stanton co-authored the “Declaration of Rights” presented at a women’s demonstration that disrupted the Philadelphia Centennial Celebration (1876), in which women could not participate. She edited the National Citizen and Ballot Box, newspaper for the National Woman Suffrage Association. Believing that Church teachings on women’s inferiority were the greatest obstacle to women’s progress, she founded the radical Woman’s National Liberal Union, published a book, Woman, Church, and State (1893) and was a prominent force in the “revising committee” of Stanton’s shocking book, the Woman’s Bible. Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias was one of America’s foremost female athletes and is particularly well-known for breaking ground in women’s golf. She was born Mildred Ella Didrecksen on June 16, 1911 in Port Arthur, Texas. She was the sixth of seven children born to a pair of Norwegian immigrants. (It should be noted however that in Didrikson’s autobiography she says she was born in 1914; all other sources, including her tombstone, cite the year as 1911. She also changed the spelling of her last name to Didrikson.) In 1915 her family moved to Beaumont and young Mildred began her amateur career in sports. Once she started playing baseball with the neighborhood boys and hitting home runs, she picked up the nickname “Babe,” after Babe Ruth. She was an athletic prodigy from childhood; there wasn’t a sport Babe wouldn’t try and excel in. She was especially good at basketball; however, Beaumont High School thought she was too small to play and only let her join the team starting her junior year. Babe’s moves on the court caught the eye of Colonel Melvin J. McCombs, the manager of the athletic program at Employers Casualty Company in Dallas. She joined the company team in 1929 and played until 1932. She won the honor of ‘All American’ every year. Ever since Babe read about the 1928 Olympics in her father’s newspapers, she decided that she would one day compete in the Olympics in track and field. Every day she would train with her sister, jumping hedges in the neighborhood. During the qualifying trials she made the cut in five events, but women were only allowed to participate in three. At the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, 21 year-old Babe Didrikson won two gold medals and one silver. She received a gold medal for the javelin throw, setting a new world record at 143 feet. The next day she set a new world record (breaking her own) of 11.7 seconds in the 80-meter hurdles to win another gold medal. After a much-debated tie for first in the high-jump (at 5’5”), the judges ruled that her technique was illegal and disqualified her; Didrikson ended up with the silver medal. Didrikson is probably best known for her achievements in golf. She won 82 tournaments over her golfing career. She took up golf in 1933 and was considered a professional because she gave advertising endorsements. At the 1938 Los Angeles Open Babe met her future husband George Zaharias, a wrestler and part-time actor from Colorado. The couple had a speedy courtship: they announced their engagement on July 22, 1938 and were married on December 23 of the same year. Zaharias eventually became his wife’s manager. Four months after they married, George surprised her by whisking her away to Australia by way of Hawaii. The vacation was well-deserved, but typical of the power couple, he lined up an exhibition for her to play golf in Australia. Babe’s sparkling reputation was international. In 1943 Didrikson was awarded amateur status as a golfer, which enabled her to play in a wider range of tournaments. Between 1943 and 1947 (when she turned professional again) she won 17 amateur tournaments in a row. It was during this time that she became the first woman to win the British Women’s Amateur Golf Tournament. In the 1940s women’s professional involvement in golf was relatively limited. George Zaharias suggested that they create a professional women’s tournament circuit. Ever the dynamic team, George worked to find financial backers while Babe worked with fellow golfer Patty Berg to co-found the Ladies Professional Golf Association in 1949. Berg was the president the first year, after which Didrikson held the position for the rest of her life. In 1950 the Associated Press voted Babe Didrikson Woman Athlete of the Half-Century. In 1953 Didrikson was diagnosed with cancer and underwent a colostomy. With characteristic resilience, she returned to enter the Tam O’Shanter “All-American” golf tournament a mere three months after the surgery. This was an important tournament for her because it was a chance to prove to spectators (and to herself) that she still had what it took to play professional golf. She rejoined the tour in the following January but it wasn’t until the Serbin Women’s Open in February that she started winning tournaments again. She won her last tournament, the 1955 Peach Blossom Open, but was forced to pack up her clubs because of crippling pain. Didrikson did not yet know that the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. After battling her disease for over three years, Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias passed away on September 27, 1956 at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Texas. Web Sites: Babe Didrikson Zaharias Web site Golf Digest The University of Texas at Austin When I first read Mary Hunt's work, back in the early 1990's, I thought she was way out there. I thought she was more controversial in her speak and her talk about the Catholic Church than Mary Daly. But from day 1, I loved her matter-of-fact ness, her way of spelling it all out, laying it on the table, telling it like it is. I thought she was pretty badass back then, just by reading her stuff. Then she came to speak at Central Michigan University, and in a small group discussion at the United Methodist campus ministry, a professor (Dr. Michael Stemmeler) asked her this: "If there are so many problems with the Bible itself, should we just do away with it all together?" Obviously the question made an impression on me. I still remember it. Who was this woman that elicited people to ask such questions? At a Christian Lesbians Out Together conference, I had a quick chance to get to know Mary a little better. I was struck by her ability to look at a problem and offer such a well thought out systematic solution that is unfailingly true to her beliefs. She's such a great thinker, and I think the way she takes on the Catholic church is also measured and well thought out. Someday, I hope she's successful (with a host of other women) in creating change in the Catholic Church. When I met her, though, what I was most impressed with was her down to earth nature, her approachable demeanor. When I was struggling in seminary with a professor who spent a whole class session talking about holy blood and never mentioning women once in any way, I emailed Mary a few times for help. That connection at that time was invaluable to me. She's an amazing woman, still a badass. Her recent article on the Catholic Church's war on women is here: http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/5908/we_are_all_nuns/ Here's her bio:Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D., is a feminist theologian who is co-founder and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. A Catholic active in the women-church movement, she lectures and writes on theology and ethics with particular attention to social justice concerns. Dr. Hunt received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She also received the Masters in Divinity degree from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley and the Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. Her undergraduate degree in Theology and Philosophy is from Marquette University. She completed Clinical Pastoral Education and is fluent in Spanish. She spent several years teaching and working on women's issues and human rights in Argentina as a participant in the Frontier Internship in Mission Program. She continues that work through WATER's project, "Women Crossing Worlds," an ongoing exchange with Latin American women. Dr. Hunt was Adjunct Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at Georgetown University for five years. She has lectured and taught at numerous institutions. For the 2000-2001 academic year she was at Harvard Divinity School as a Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life. She has taught in summer programs at Iliff School of Theology, Pacific School of Religion, and Lancaster Theological Seminary. She is the editor of A Guide for Women in Religion: Making Your Way from A to Z (Palgrave, 2004) and co-editor, with Patricia Beattie Jung and Radhika Balakrishnan, of Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World’s Religions (Rutgers University Press, 2001). She is the author of Fierce Tenderness: A Feminist Theology of Friendship (Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991), which was awarded the Crossroad Women's Studies Prize. She edited From Woman-Pain to Woman-Vision: Writings in Feminist Theology (Fortress Press, 1989) by Anne McGrew Bennett. Among her many publications are articles in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Concilium, Conscience, ReligionDispatches.org, and Mandragora. She has published chapters in books such as Feminist Theologies: Legacy and Prospect (ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether), Heterosexism in Contemporary World Religion: Problem and Prospect (ed. Marvin M. Ellison and Judith Plaskow), God Forbid (ed. Kathleen Sands), Sexuality and the Sacred (ed. James Nelson and Sandra Longfellow), Feminist Theological Ethics (ed. Lois Daly), Sexual Diversity and Catholicism (ed. Patricia Beattie Jung), and Women’s Voices and Visions of the Church: Reflections from North America (ed. Letty M. Russell, Aruna Gnanadason, and J. Shannon Clarkson), as well as entries in the Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America (ed. Rosemary Skinner Keller and Rosemary Radford Ruether). Mary is a member of the Society for Christian Ethics and the American Academy of Religion where she co-chaired the Women and Religion Section. She is an advisor to the Women's Ordination Conference. She is a member of the Editorial Board of I.B. Taurus. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her partner, Diann L. Neu, and their daughter, Catherine Fei Min Hunt-Neu. There is so much information out there about Eleanor Roosevelt. She was such an interesting woman. Did you know: She and Michelle Obama are believed to be tied for the tallest of the first ladies- both are 5'11" tall? That she took an active role in the Kennedy Administration, serving as the chair of the President's commission on the Status of Women and on the advisory council of the Peace Corps? That she was a board member of the NAACP? That she accepted the appointment by President Harry Truman to serve as the only woman among the five American delegates to the newly-created United Nations in December of 1945. She was in attendance at the historic first meeting of the institution in London, in January of 1946? That she was a strong supporter of labor unions? That she was the first First Lady to widely enter the general popular culture, which led to the highly caricatured image we sometimes see of her? That no other First Lady has published more books than she has? That she gave an estimated 1400 speeches in her life? That she purchased, ran and taught history at a school for girls in New York City? That she was co-owner of a furniture business? All of these things only scratch the surface of who she was. There is so much more. I find her fascinating. I hope you take just one of these things and do a little more research. If you only google "Eleanor Roosevelt and ________", you will come up with so much fascinating stuff. There is also some pretty good credible evidence that she was engaged in at least one lesbian relationship. The historians like to play that one down, or not mention it all together. Hazel Rowley does a great job of treating it as a matter-of-fact subject in her book, Franklin and Eleanor, an Extraordinary Marriage. See what you can find, if you're so inclined! She might inspire you, too Have fun! In a much needed break from the Civil War and Suffrage history lesson, I was in the mood for a feel-good lesbian story. So, I bring to you the bio of Rachel Maddow. While I knew she was cute and funny and all that, I did not know that she was the first openly gay American to win a Rhodes Scholarship. I guess she's smart, too! Here's a little bit more about her-- you never know whyat Maddow was born in Castro Valley, California. Her father, Robert B. "Bob" Maddow, is a former United States Air Force captain who resigned his commission the year before her birth and found civilian work as a lawyer for the East Bay Municipal Utility District. Her mother, Elaine Maddow, is a school program administrator from Newfoundland, Canada. She has one older brother, David. Her father is of Russian and Dutch descent and her mother is of English and Irish ancestry. Maddow's mother was raised a strict Roman Catholic, and Maddow herself grew up in a community that her mother has described as "very conservative." Maddow was a competitive athlete and played three sports in high school. Referencing John Hughes films, she describes herself in high school as "a cross between the jock and the antisocial girl." A graduate of Castro Valley High School in Castro Valley, California, she attended Stanford University. While a freshman, she was outed by the college newspaper when an interview with her was published by the student newspaper before she could tell her parents. Maddow earned a degree in public policy from Stanford in 1994. At graduation she was awarded the John Gardner Fellowship. She was also the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and began her postgraduate study in 1995 at Lincoln College, Oxford. In 2001, she earned a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in politics from Oxford University. Her thesis is titled HIV/AIDS and Health Care Reform in British and American Prisons (supervisor: Dr Lucia Zedner). She was the first openly gay American to win a Rhodes scholarship. Maddow's first radio hosting job was at WRNX (100.9 FM) in Holyoke, Massachusetts, after she entered and won a contest the station held to find a new on-air personality. She was hired to co-host WRNX's morning show, The Dave in the Morning Show. She went on to host Big Breakfast on WRSI, in Northampton, Massachusetts, for two years. She left the show in March 2004 to join the new Air America. There she hosted Unfiltered along with Chuck D (of the hip hop group Public Enemy) and Lizz Winstead (co-creator of The Daily Show), until its cancellation in March 2005. Two weeks after the cancellation of Unfiltered in April 2005, Maddow's weekday two-hour radio program, The Rachel Maddow Show, began airing; in March 2008 it gained an hour, broadcasting from 6 to 9 p.m. EST with David Bender filling in the third hour for the call-in section, when Maddow was on TV assignment. In September 2008, the show's length returned to two hours when Maddow began a nightly MSNBC television program. In February 2009, after renewing her contract with Air America, Maddow returned to the 5 am hour-long slot. Her last Air America show was on January 21, 2010, two weeks before its owners filed for bankruptcy. In August 2008, MSNBC announced The Rachel Maddow Show would replace Verdict with Dan Abrams in the channel's 9 p.m. slot the following month. Following its debut, the show topped Countdown as the highest rated show on MSNBC on several occasions. After being on air for more than a month, Maddow's program doubled the audience that hour. Early reviews for her show were mostly positive. Los Angeles Times writer Matea Gold stated Maddow "finds the right formula on MSNBC," and The Guardian writes Maddow has become the "star of America's cable news." Associated Press columnist David Bauder said she's "[Keith] Olbermann's political soul mate" and the Olbermann-Maddow shows are a "liberal two-hour block."She's been in People Magazine, The Guardian, and The New York Observer, and has appeared on the TV shows The View and Charlie Rose. Ok, fashionistas, this one's for you. As I've been roaming websites and scouring images of women to feature here on my site, it has occurred to me that if a woman has ever, even once in her life, had her picture taken in a dress, that is the exact picture that will be used for all posterity. This gives me images in my head of that black dress with cabbage roses that I wore to my college graduation. It was the last dress I ever wore, and someone near and dear may have commented that I looked like I was in drag. If I am ever lucky enough to be remembered in any way, please don't let anyone use that picture. As I was researching Mary Edwards Walker (whose picture in the Women in Military Service to America Memorial portrays her in a normal women's dress--even though said picture takes away from part of who she was and what she stood for), I came across the National Dress Reform Association of 1866. These women were all about fashion! They believed that the way they dressed held them back, and they created an Association to change that problem. Amelia Jenks Bloomer was part of the Association, and was also a temperance reformer, newspaper editor, and suffrage journalist, and is noted for her pioneering temperance and woman’s rights newspaper, The Lily (1849). She was one of many who wore a healthful reform dress featuring full pantaloons and a short skirt – giving the “Bloomer” costume its name. Because the New York Times picked up one of her articles in The Lily to add to its publication, the name for the dress became attributed to her. Bloomer lived in central New York and attended the famed Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention in 1848. Despite little formal education, she published The Lily,(1849) which printed articles on woman’s rights, many written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In 1850, she introduced Susan B. Anthony to Stanton, thus beginning their life-long partnership. Bloomer herself adopted the healthful reform costume to which she gave her name, and defended its use in her paper. She lectured on temperance and women’s rights, while continuing to edit The Lily, (circulation 6,000). After moving to Iowa, Bloomer sold her paper but continued her reform work as president of the Iowa Woman Suffrage Society in 1871. She died in 1894, having spent her best years as a propagandist for woman’s rights. I've posted three pictures of Bloomer, just to show you what I mean.. Margaret Cochran Corbin (1751-1800) After taking over her husband’s cannon in battle on Manhattan Island, now called Ft. Washington, New York, Margaret Corbin was badly wounded. She was the first woman to receive a military pension. Margaret Cochran Corbin was born November 12, 1751. Margaret was orphaned at a young age following an Indian attack in which her father was killed; her mother never returned after being taken captive. Luckily, Margaret and her brother were visiting their uncle at the time of the attack. He ended up adopting them. In 1772 Margaret Cochran married John Corbin. Three years after they married, John Corbin joined the militia. Instead of staying at home, Corbin decided to follow her husband to war. She earned money by cooking and doing laundry for soldiers. She also helped take care of the sick and wounded. During the Battle at Fort Washington on November 16, 1776, Corbin went with her husband onto the battlefield. Her husband was a matross, which meant he loaded the cannon. Corbin helped him with this task. After her husband’s partner was killed, he took over firing the cannon, and Corbin began loading the cannon. Her husband was also killed, but Corbin continued firing the cannon alone. Other soldiers took notice of her excellent aim. Unfortunately, so did the British who were soon targeting her with their own cannons. The British eventually won this battle but Corbin’s cannon was the last one to stop firing. Corbin was later found in critical condition She was wounded with three musket balls and grapeshot. Her jaw and chest were damaged and her left arm was almost severed. She was unable to use her left arm for the rest of her life. After she recovered, Corbin joined the Invalid Regiment at West Point. Here, she performed many helpful tasks such as cooking and laundry with the other wounded soldiers. Corbin was poor and had no way to earn a living. Because of her injuries, Corbin had trouble bathing and dressing and needed special care. On June 26, 1776 the state of Pennsylvania gave Corbin $30.00 to help with her expenses in recognition of her bravery. Still, this money did not go far. Corbin had trouble getting along with the other women in town and she was said to be unfriendly and unclean. She spent most of her time at the post smoking and conversing with soldiers. The Philadelphia Society of Women planned to erect a monument honoring Corbin as the first heroine of the Battle of New York. However, when they met with her they discovered that she was a rough woman who was poor and drank too much and decided to cancel the monument. On July 6, 1779, the Continental Congress awarded her with a lifelong pension equivalent to half of the amount a man would receive. She was the first woman to receive a pension. She also received an outfit of clothing when she joined the Invalid Regiment and later received an annual clothing allowance. Corbin remarried a fellow wounded soldier in 1782 but he died a year later. Still much in need, Corbin requested a rum ration, which was often given to soldiers. She was given this rum ration and the government even added in some back pay. Because she was well respected for her acts of bravery, many officials were compassionate and eager to help. Her needs were recorded in the correspondence between General Henry Knox and Quartermaster William Price, which later resulted in someone to help her bathe and dress. All of the help Corbin received from the government clearly indicates how highly her military contemporaries thought of her and appreciated her acts of bravery. Though Corbin never got her monument, today three commemorative plaques celebrating the Revolutionary war heroine can be found in the area near the Fort Washington battle site. Margaret Corbin’s story was passed down by local villagers and in 1926, almost 150 years later, her remains were rediscovered. Her body was identified by the wounds she incurred in the famous battle. She was then reburied with full military honors at West Point. She was the only Revolutionary War veteran honored in this way So, it seems that I have hit upon a point of interest-- at least for myself. I have been a student of history since high school, a student of women's history since college. Having a women's history focus, I have not so much focused on wars. Men's history is all about war--who did what in which war to make themselves a hero and gain respect of the nation....yadda, yadda....blah blah. Wars are about killing and generally about which guy's (or nation's) ego is bigger than some other guy's ego. Not what I choose to study. Yet, I fully believe our history will teach us how to be great in the future and how to avoid going down the same wrong paths as our ancestors. The funny thing is that as I follow these wars, especially as I follow the women who seemingly were caught in the crossfire and had to make the most of their situation, I am finding awesome stories of resilience, ingenuity, and greatness. The stories of the women in the civil war are somehow rising to the top of my list. I find them inspiring. I hope you do too. It makes me wonder what future stories we will hear about the women who serve in the military now... But, for today, more about Sally Tompkins aka "Captain Sally": Born in "PoplarGrove,"Mathews City., Va., 9 Nov. 1833, after her husband's death, Sally's mother moved the family to Richmond, where Sally lived at the outbreak of civil war. When the government asked the public to help care for the wounded of F irst Bull Run, Sally responded by opening a private hospital in a house donated for that purpose by judge John Robertson. Robertson Hospital, subsidized by Tompkins' substantial inheritance, treated 1,333 Confederate soldiers from its opening until the last patients were discharged 13 June 1865. Because the hospital returned more of its patients to the ranks than any other medical-care facility, officers tried to place their most seriously wounded men in Tompkins' care. She used her high rate of success to convince President Jefferson Davis to allow her hospital to stay open even as his orders shut down other private hospitals in the city. To circumvent the regulation calling for all hospitals to be run by military personnel, on 9 Sept. 1861 Davis appointed Tompkins captain of cavalry, unassigned, making her the only woman to hold a commission in the Confederate States Army. Her military rank allowed her to draw government rations and a salary to help defray some of her operating costs. Only 73 deaths were recorded at Robertson Hospital during its 45-month existence. Tompkins remained a beloved celebrity in postwar Richmond, active in the Episcopal church and a popular guest at veterans' reunions and Daughters of the Confederacy meetings. The war, her continued charity work, and her generous hospitality to veterans eventually exhausted her fortune. In 1905 "Captain Sally" moved into the Confederate Women's Home in Richmond as a lifetime guest, dying there 26 July 1916, in her 83d year. An honorary member of the R. E. Lee Camp of the Confederate Veterans, she was honored with a full military funeral. 4 chapters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy are named in Tompkins' honor. *somewhere it is noted that her attention to cleanliness and sanitation were the secrets to her success. It is possible that her standards were somewhere paid attention to by later doctors who adopted similar standards of cleanliness. Mary Edwards Walker, one of the nation's 1.8 million women veterans, was the only one to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor, for her service during the Civil War. She, along with thousands of other women, were honored in the newly-dedicated Women in Military Service for America Memorial in October 1997. Controversy surrounded Mary Edwards Walker throughout her life. She was born on November 26, 1832 in the Town of Oswego, New York, into an abolitionist family. Her birthplace on the Bunker Hill Road is marked with a historical marker. Her father, a country doctor, was a free thinking participant in many of the reform movements that thrived in upstate New York in the mid 1800s. He believed strongly in education and equality for his five daughters Mary, Aurora, Luna, Vesta, and Cynthia (there was one son, Alvah). He also believed they were hampered by the tight-fitting women's clothing of the day. His daughter, Mary, became an early enthusiast for Women's Rights, and passionately espoused the issue of dress reform. The most famous proponent of dress reform was Amelia Bloomer, a native of Homer, New York, whose defended a colleague's right to wear "Turkish pantaloons" in her Ladies' Temperance Newspaper, the Lily. "Bloomers," as they became known, did achieve some popular acceptance towards the end of the 19th century as women took up the new sport of bicycling. Mary Edwards Walker discarded the unusual restrictive women's clothing of the day. Later in her life she donned full men's evening dress to lecture on Women's Rights. In June 1855 Mary, the only woman in her class, joined the tiny number of women doctors in the nation when she graduated from the eclectic Syracuse Medical College, the nation's first medical school and one which accepted women and men on an equal basis. She gratuated at age 21 after three 13-week semesters of medical training which she paid $55 each for. In 1856 she married another physician, Albert Miller, wearing trousers and a man's coat and kept her own name. Together they set up a medical practice in Rome, NY, but the public was not ready to accept a woman physician, and their practice floundered. They were divorced 13 years later. When war broke out, she came to Washington and tried to join the Union Army. Denied a commission as a medical officer, she volunteered anyway, serving as an acting assistant surgeon -- the first female surgeon in the US Army. As an unpaid volunteer, she worked in the US Patent Office Hospital in Washington. Later, she worked as a field surgeon near the Union front lines for almost two years (including Fredericksburg and in Chattanooga after the Battle of Chickamauga). In September 1863, Walker was finally appointed assistant surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland for which she made herself a slightly modified officer's uniform to wear, in response to the demands of traveling with the soldiers and working in field hospitals. She was then appointed assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry. During this assignment it is generally accepted that she also served as a spy. She continually crossed Confederate lines to treat civilians. She was taken prisoner in 1864 by Confederate troops and imprisoned in Richmond for four months until she was exchanged, with two dozen other Union doctors, for 17 Confederate surgeons. She was released back to the 52nd Ohio as a contract surgeon, but spent the rest of the war practicing at a Louisville female prison and an orphan's asylum in Tennessee. She was paid $766.16 for her wartime service. Afterward, she got a monthly pension of $8.50, later raised to $20, but still less than some widows' pensions. On November 11, 1865, President Johnson signed a bill to present Dr. Mary Edwards Walker with the Congressional Medal of Honor for Meritorious Service, in order to recognize her contributions to the war effort without awarding her an army commission. She was the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, her country's highest military award. In 1917 her Congressional Medal, along with the medals of 910 others was taken away when Congress revised the Medal of Honor standards to include only “actual combat with an enemy” She refused to give back her Medal of Honor, wearing it every day until her death in 1919. A relative told the New York Times: "Dr. Mary lost the medal simply because she was a hundred years ahead of her time and no one could stomach it." An Army board reinstated Walker's medal posthumously in 1977, citing her "distinguished gallantry, self-sacrifice, patriotism, dedication and unflinching loyalty to her country, despite the apparent discrimination because of her sex." After the war, Mary Edwards Walker became a writer and lecturer, touring here and abroad on women's rights, dress reform, health and temperance issues. Tobacco, she said, resulted in paralysis and insanity. Women's clothing, she said, was immodest and inconvenient. She was elected president of the National Dress Reform Association in 1866. Walker prided herself by being arrested numerous times for wearing full male dress, including wing collar, bow tie, and top hat. She was also something of an inventor, coming up with the idea of using a return postcard for registered mail. She wrote extensively, including a combination biography and commentary called Hit, a combination autobiography and commentary on divorce in 1871, and a second book, Unmasked, or the Science of Immortality, about infidelity in 1878. In 1872 in Oswego, Mary E. Walker attempted to vote, one of many women who made the attempt over the years on the road to full suffrage. In 1890, Mary declared herself a candidate for Congress in Oswego. The next year, she campaigned for a U.S. Senate seat and, the following year, paid her way to the Democratic National Convention. She died in the Town of Oswego on February 21, 1919 and is buried in the Rural Cemetery on the Cemetery Road. Ironically, the 19th Amendment giving owmen the vote was ratified that same year. A 20¢ stamp honoring Dr. Mary Walker was issued in Oswego, NY on June 10, 1982. The stamp commemorates the first woman to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and the second woman to graduate from a medical school in the United States. In 2000, Mary Edwards Walker was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame at Seneca Falls, New York. |
DawnWomen's history geek, mom, lesbian, theologian, dreamer. Archives
February 2016
Categories
All
|