seven women who rebelled for all

[niyad]

(in honour of women's herstory month, biographies of some truly remarkable women)

(clicking on the link below will take you to a wonderful interactive site, including a walking tour of women's history in nyc)


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Seven Who Rebelled For All


1. Anna Zenger: Sustainer of Freedom



The Federal Hall Memorial building at 26 Wall Street, on the site of the city hall and jail built in British colonial times, is considered the birthplace of the Constitution's guarantee of a free press. In 1734, a local printer, John Peter Zenger, was arrested on charges of seditious libel because his paper, the New-York Weekly Journal, had offended the royal authorities. Zenger was jailed downstairs here for months while his trial was conducted upstairs. The Journal failed to appear November 18, 1734, immediately after his arrest, but resumed the next week with Anna Catharine Maul Zenger, his wife, getting the issues out on the basis of instructions her husband gave through his cell door. Under Anna Zenger's hand, the Journal carried this account in her husband's voice:


. . . . .
2. Barbara Ruckle Heck: Demander for Reform
. . . . .



Barbara Ruckle Heck (1734-1804) is called "the mother of New World Methodism." She helped to found the first Methodist congregation in America, which built a chapel at 44 John Street. The present building is the third church on the site. Born in Ireland to Lutheran parents who had fled religious persecution of Protestants in the German Palatine, Heck grew up in a community deeply influenced by John Wesley and his followers. She became a Methodist at the age of 18. In 1760 she married Paul Heck and set out with a group of Irish Palatines for the New World, settling in New York. Under the leadership of her cousin, Philip Embury, the group tried and failed to create a linen industry. A temporary stay in the city stretched to six years. Discouraged, the group lost its zeal for religion. Heck turned out to be the group's anchor. In 1766, when she found presumed observant Methodist relatives playing cards in her kitchen, she swept the cards from the table and flung them into the fireplace. She then marched the group to Embury's house, saying, "Philip, you must preach to us or we will all go to hell together, and God will require our blood at your hands." Embury countered that he had neither congregation nor preaching house. "Preach in your own house and to your own company," Heck argued. The Wesley Chapel, first in America, was built on this site in 1768. The current building incorporates timbers and stones from the original.


3. Charlotte Temple: Seizer of Imaginations



In the graveyard of Trinity Church at 89 Broadway is a flat brown gravestone with the name "Charlotte Temple" patched onto it. This is an odd literary landmark, linked to the success of an English novel, Charlotte Temple, a Tale of Truth, by Susanna Haswell Rowson, which was published in the United States in 1794. Rowson's hugely successful weeper was evidently based on the ruined life of one Charlotte Stanley, a British woman who was persuaded by a married man to elope with him to America. Abandoned after bearing his child, she died and was purportedly buried in Trinity Churchyard. Who engraved or re-engraved the stone dedicated to the fictitious "Charlotte Temple" is not known. In 2008, Trinity had the stone lifted and discovered nothing but dirt underneath. Here is the burial scene from the novel.




4. Sojourner Truth: Orator for Abolition


. . . .

One thing she was sure of – that the precepts, 'Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you,' 'Love your neighbor as yourself,' and so forth, were maxims that had been but little thought of by herself, or practised by those about her. Her next decision was, that she must leave the city; it was no place for her; yea, she felt called in spirit to leave it, and to travel east and lecture. She had never been further east than the city, neither had she any friends there of whom she had particular reason to expect any thing; yet to her it was plain that her mission lay in the east, and that she would find friends there. . . . Having made what preparations for leaving she deemed necessary, which was, to put up a few articles of clothing in a pillow-case, all else being deemed an unnecessary encumbrance--about an hour before she left, she informed Mrs. Whiting, the woman of the house where she was stopping, that her name was no longer Isabella, but SOJOURNER; and that she was going east. And to her inquiry, 'What are you going east for?' her answer was, 'The Spirit Calls me there, and I must go.'


5. Margaret Fuller: Correspondent for Equality


6. Ernestine Rose: Agitator for Property Rights



The Broadway Tabernacle at 340 Broadway was built in 1836 for a major evangelist. Until 1857, the Tabernacle, which could hold 2,400 people, was the city's main meeting hall for suffragists, abolitionists and prohibitionists. A major voice here was Ernestine Rose, recently identified by the Museum of the City of New York as one of the four hundred most influential people in the city's first four hundred years. Susan B. Anthony considered her a main foremother of the U.S. women's rights movement. Rose was a rebel from an early age. Born in Poland the child of a rabbi, she rejected an arranged marriage and sued successfully for her inheritance from her mother. She married a Christian, and came with him to America in 1836. She soon developed a reputation as a pre-eminent and fierce orator, freethinker, nonbeliever and agitator. At the New York State Women's Rights Convention, held in the Broadway Tabernacle in 1853, Rose made married women's property rights her issue. She began with widows:
. . . . .


7. Elizabeth Jennings: Challenger of Racial Bias

In 1854, Jennings became the first African American to bring a successful lawsuit against race discrimination on public transit in New York City. On a Sunday, on her way to play the organ at church, a conductor on the Third Avenue Railway line tried to eject her because she was riding in a "white-only" car. This was at Pearl Street and Chatham Square. With financial aid from her father, her lawsuit was handled by a noted white firm. She testified vigorously:

. . . .

http://www.womensenews.org/opening-the-way-seven-who-rebelled-all

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Where's Margaret Sanger?

She went to jail for our right to not be compelled to bear children.

[Horse with no Name]

3. Quite a few notables left off that list n/t

[niyad]

6. see post 5

[niyad]

5. there isn't anything stopping you from creating your own list.

[Horse with no Name]

2. Jane Adams

>>>snip
Jane Addams is remembered primarily as a founder of the Settlement House Movement. She and her friend Ellen Starr founded Hull House in the slums of Chicago in 1889. She is also remembered as the first American Woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Jane is portrayed as the selfless giver of ministrations to the poor, but few realize that she was a mover and shaker in the areas of labor reform (laws that governed working conditions for children and women), and was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

>>>>snip
In 1893 a severe depression rocked the country. Hull House was serving over two thousand people a week. As charitable efforts increased, so too did political ones. Jane realized that there would be no end to poverty and need if laws were not changed. She directed her efforts at the root causes of poverty. The workers joined Jane to lobby the state of Illinois to examine laws governing child labor, the factory inspection system, and the juvenile justice system. They worked for legislation to protect immigrants from exploitation, limit the working hours of women, mandate schooling for children, recognize labor unions, and provide for industrial safety.

All this led to the right to vote for women. Addams worked for Chicago municipal suffrage and became first vice-president of the National American Women Suffrage Association in 1911. She campaigned nationwide for Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party in 1912.

http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/adda-jan.htm

[Horse with no Name]

4. Susan Brownell Anthony

>>>snip
DESCRIPTION OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Susan B. Anthony dedicated her life to "the cause," the woman suffrage movement. The accomplishments of Susan B. Anthony paved the way for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 (14 years after her death) which gave women the right to vote. Her accomplishments include the following:

* Founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association in 1869 with life-long friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Together they worked for women's suffrage for over 50 years.
* Published "The Revolution" from 1868-1870, a weekly paper about the woman suffrage movement whose motto read, "Men their rights and nothing more, women their rights and nothing less.
* First person arrested, put on trial and fined for voting on November 5, 1872. Unable to speak in her defense she refuse to pay "a dollar of your unjust penalty."
* Wrote the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in 1878 which later became the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.
* Helped found the National American Woman's Suffrage Association in 1890 which focused on a national amendment to secure women the vote. She served as president until 1900.
* Compiled and published "The History of Woman Suffrage (4 vols. 1881-1902) with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage.
* Founded the International Council of Women (1888) and the International Woman Suffrage Council (1904) which brought international attention to suffrage.
* An organization genius -- her canvassing plan is still used today by grassroot and political organizations.
* Gave 75-100 speeches a year for 45 years, traveling throughout the the United States by stage coach, wagon, carriage and train.
* Led the only non-violent revolution in our country's history -- the 72 year struggle to win women the right to vote.
http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/anth-sus.htm

[no_hypocrisy]

7. This list includes Hedda Hopper and leaves off Emma Goldman and Helen Keller.

http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/figures.htm

[niyad]

8. again, there is nothing stopping you from creating your own list

[no_hypocrisy]

9. Good point. Seven should be a starting list.

[niyad]

10. and that is all it was intended to be--did you see the other 14 names?

[catabryna]

11. I'm looking forward to reading this later...

thanks for a most excellent link! :thumbsup:

[niyad]

15. you are most welcome

[ensho]

12. kick

nt

[Kurovski]

13. K&r

is this a regular thing now? It's a great idea, especially if it's on the weekend when people have more reading time.

[niyad]

16. as much as I can, yes, in honour of women's herstory month for starters.

[Kurovski]

14. Sojourner..."to put up a few articles of clothing in a pillow-case,

all else being deemed an unnecessary encumbrance..."

I don't think all my pillowcases would fit in a pillowcase.

I learned about Ms. Truth because there was a mural of her I would pass in Chicago on a regular basis. I think a school in that area was named after her as well.

[niyad]

17. with you on the pillowcases. she was truly amazing.

[niyad]

18. . . . .

[niyad]

19. . . . . .

[niyad]

20. . . .

[niyad]

21. . . . .

[antigone382]

22. I very much appreciate this list.

One notable woman, who I've only recently learned about, is Elsie Clews Parsons, a turn-of-the-century sociologist who taught at Columbia, pioneered one or two techniques in ethnographic research, aroused a considerable amount of outrage for briefly mentioning "trial marriage" as an alternative to Victorian mores, and advocated for access to birth control while not buying into many of the arguments of eugenics. She went on to become a notable anthropologist, with a research focus in the American Southwest, Mexico, and the Caribbean, a friend and colleague of Franz Boas, Alfred Kroeber, and other leading figures in American anthropology. As I recall, she was the first female president of the American Anthropological Association. Her penetratingly insightful criticisms of American society, and her considerable eye for detail in examining other societies, define her as an individual quite ahead of her time (I basically can't sing her praises enough). If you do another list like this in the future, I would nominate her as a worthy candidate.

It's amazing how many women played pivotal roles in the academic, political, and social transformations of history, who are virtually unknown today. Thank you for bringing some of these lesser knowns to light, and for reminding us of the significance of the better known female figures (such as Sojourner Truth) as well.