The feisty Quaker with
violet eyes…
Alice Paul
History Book Club, Rockport Public
Library
Next monthly meeting, Wednesday, July 31,
2013
Our History Book Club next meets Wednesday, July 31. We’ll read and discuss BRIC ['Brazil, Russia, India And China’ ] BRIC is an acronym for the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China combined. The general consensus is that the term was first prominently used in a Goldman Sachs report from 2003, which speculated that by 2035 these four economies would be wealthier than most of the current major economic powers. Read about any of the four countries, or all. Recently, economists have speculated that other countries, like the Philippines, Colombia, Thailand and more may overtake the BRICs, so you're welcome to read and discuss any aspect of growing economies!
We invite you to prepare a review of your book, but this is not school. If you’d rather come and simply brief us on the high points without the detailed reviews you see here, that’s fine! And if you’d like to just sit in and share in the discussion, you are most welcome.
In August (8/28) we’ll read and discuss Modern Capitalism—Capitalism Chinese Style, Capitalism in emerging economies, How Capitalism has evolved in the West—your choice.
In September (9/25): America and its wars or near wars with European powers viz.: France, Spain and England. Starts with the French and Indian War. Takes in the Monroe Doctrine. Could go all the way to the Spanish American War.
October, (10/30): History of the North Shore. This opens the way to looking at the rich history of the Gloucester fishing industry, Essex boat building, the fashionable summer resorts in Manchester and Magnolia at the end of the nineteenth century, etc.
November (11/27): Labor Movement in America 1900-2013.
There will be no meeting in December.
We meet the last Wednesday of each month. Contact me if you’d like more information.
Sam Coulbourn 978-546-7138 scoulbourn1@verizon.net
At June's meeting, held June 26th, we discussed Women's Movements for Equality 1900-2013. Here is the story of Alice Paul.....
Mary Walton, A
Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the
Battle for the Ballot, 2010. Palgrave, Macmillan: New York , NY
Imagine a country where only half
the adults have the right to vote.
Alice Paul
was a pretty, slender, frail, modest and shy young Quaker woman who came from a
family of means. Her leadership, against
tremendous opposition, propelled women into the Twentieth Century.
Her fierce determination and strong
leadership led women all over the United States
Just last
night, women in Texas
When Alice
asked an associate to do something, she asked quietly, with those “violet
eyes”… few could refuse.
Author
Walton has had a career as a journalist, with 20 years at the Philadelphia
Inquirer. Her account of this Woman’s
Crusade is fast-paced and filled with suspense.
You know that now women have the right to vote, but she shows the
fierce, brutal opposition they faced from men, and often women. It was a tough fight!
In 1907 Alice won a Quaker scholarship to a Friends study center
in Birmingham , England England . Alice
soon joined the cause of fighting for suffrage in England , marching to Parliament,
joining in huge demonstrations, fighting in picket lines, getting arrested and
jailed, starvation campaigns and force-feeding.
Alice, the Quaker from New Jersey met
Lucy Burns, an Irish-American Catholic from Brooklyn ,
and a Vassar graduate there, and the two began their friendship and struggle
for women’s right to vote.
In early
1910, Alice returned to America and at once got involved
with the cause of American women’s suffrage.
In April of that year, President William Howard Taft agreed to deliver
the welcoming speech before the nation’s largest suffrage organization. He said
“The theory that Hottentots or any other uneducated, altogether unintelligent
class is fitted for self-government is a theory that I wholly dissent
from.” The President continued to
declaim about his expectation that suffrage would be embraced by the class of
women “less desirable” rather than those who are intelligent and patriotic.
His remarks
were met with a huge “hisssssss” by the women.
What a
parade it was! Floats that showed the
progress in American womanhood; females breaking the barriers of
discrimination, fighting for their places in a man’s world; How it was here in
1840; women farmers, military nurses, college women, teachers, librarians, and
on and on, and everyone wearing purple, white and green. There was a beautiful, famous socialite (Inez
Milholland) riding an elegant horse, and trumpeters and drum and bugle
bands.
Women in New York staged a separate march of women from New York to Washington
to join the parade.
The police,
who shared the attitude of many American males toward suffrage, did a
particularly miserable job of controlling the crowds at the parade, many of
whom were roaring drunk. Fortunately Alice
had arranged with the Secretary of War to provide a company of Army cavalry,
and they cleared the path for the thousands of women marchers. When it was all over, the poor showing by
police and drunks somehow worked to the advantage of the suffrage organizers,
as it aroused public outrage and sympathy.
Alice and
her growing entourage next went directly after President Wilson, staged “silent
sentinel” pickets along the gates in front of the White House. Alice, ever the lady and the Quaker, ruled
her demonstrators with an iron hand, cautioning them never to argue or fight
with hecklers or officials.
In 1917,
Wilson, who had labored to keep the country out of war, found that we had to
fight and, with Congress, ordered troops to France to fight the Germans.
The banners
came and grew in number, as they chided the President, using his own words
against him; chiding him and America because Russia, now the budding Soviet
country, allowed women the vote; calling the President “Kaiser Wilson” because
he was sending men to fight for freedom, but women in America had not the
freedom to vote.
On the
fight went, with Alice increasing her attacks on
Wilson . Finally, women picketers were arrested and
thrown into the D.C. jail, and down to the new D.C. prison at Occoquan , Virginia Alice
was put into what would now be called a psychiatric section for a time.
The women
went on hunger strikes and were force fed; if they kept their mouths shut,
tubes were stuffed down their noses.
Author
Walton paints a graphic picture of this stage in the women’s fight for the
right to vote.
Eventually, on June 4, 1919, Congress
passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, named after the originator of America
On August 17, 1920, Tennessee
--Sam Coulbourn
-end-
Here is a fascinating video commentary on Alice Paul by Mary
Walton:
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