A Woman's Crusade

The feisty Quaker with violet eyes…

Alice Paul

History Book Club, Rockport Public Library

Rockport, MA 01966

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. 284 pp.

            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 to fight for the right to vote, and provided a template for women and men to fight for causes right up to today. 

            Just last night, women in Texas staged a lengthy filibuster, fighting against legislation that would limit women’s access to abortion in the state. Reading the coverage of that event today reminds me so much of Mary Walton’s excellent account of Alice Paul’s superb leadership in the fight to obtain the vote for women. 

            Alice was the quintessential public relations genius.  She ranks with Gandhi in his fight for independence for India and Martin Luther King, in his fight for Civil Rights.

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!

            Alice, born in 1885 in Paulsboro, NJ, grew up in a “Quaker cocoon”. She attended Quaker schools and graduated from Swarthmore College in 1905. A friendly professor pointed her in the direction of a career in social work, and she began working in settlement houses in New York City.  She experienced the struggles of the urban poor, the newly-arrived immigrants, the crime, and filth, and terrible living conditions in the Manhattan slums. Alice concluded that she was “not doing much good in the world—you couldn’t change the situation by social work.” 

            In 1907 Alice won a Quaker scholarship to a Friends study center in Birmingham, England.  There she encountered Christabel Pankhurst, as she led a drive to demand the ballot for women in 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.

            Alice began to grow first in the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NASWSA), and then established her own. For much of the next decade there was a running gun battle between these two organizations, NAWSA working to obtain suffrage in each state, and Alice’s focusing on a federal amendment to the Constitution. 

            Alice’s big public relations event was set for the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration in March 1913.  Nearly 28 years old, Alice obtained permission from the Washington, DC chief of police for her parade, right down Pennsylvania Avenue. In 1913 the concept of “marching on Washington” was almost unknown.  But Alice and her organization pulled women from suffrage organizations all over the United States.

            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 organized rail trips of women organizers all across the United States to form stronger suffrage organizations, particularly in states that had already granted women the right to vote.  There were cross-country trips by automobile, no small feat in those days.

            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, where they encountered unbelievable conditions.  Here these women, many from very comfortable family settings, found themselves assigned a cot next to a syphilitic black woman with one leg amputated and the other crawling with maggots.  They ate oatmeal with worms and maggots in it, and drank water from a bucket used by all the prisoners.  Toilets filled up and were rarely flushed.  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’s fight for women’s suffrage, who had died in 1906. 

            On August 17, 1920, Tennessee became the 36^th state to ratify the Amendment, making it a part of the Constitution. 

            Alice shortly afterward introduced a new cause, the Equal Rights Amendment, which she presented to Congress in 1923. In 1972 it passed both houses of Congress and went to the states for ratification, but failed to receive the requisite number before the deadline mandated by Congress.

          
             Alice died at 93 on July 9^th, 1977.

--Sam Coulbourn   

-end-

Here is a fascinating video commentary on Alice Paul by Mary Walton:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwFSi2fTZuQ

Recollections on Father's Day...

PRIVATE DIXON LONG COULBOURN, Army of the United States

  

Young Private Coulbourn on bivouac with Co. E, 124^th Infantry Rgt., 1917

(In third tent on right.)

            My Dad, Dixon Long Coulbourn, was busy all his life, always in a hurry, and yet he lived to be 98 years old.

            He was born in a little Virginia town on Chesapeake Bay on January 27, 1899.  His dad ran an oyster business.  The employees were all African-Americans, and I am sure some of the older ones had been slaves at one time. 

            Watermen raked up tons of oysters and brought them back to Morattico to be processed.  Black oyster shuckers worked all day, filling barrels with fresh shucked oysters, which were iced down and rushed to customers all over the eastern United States. It was hard work, and a typical shucker made $6 a week.  They piled up mountains of oyster shells. 

            America was going to war in France to fight the Germans in 1917, and young Dixon was in a hurry to join.  He enlisted in the 124^th Infantry Regiment (First Florida), and was shipped up to Camp Devens in Massachusetts, to join the Yankee Division.

            1,500,000 young men boarded troop transports and were soon fighting in France. Dixon was among them. The shells exploding near him permanently damaged his hearing, so he spent the rest of his life with very poor hearing.*

            On November 11, 1918, Armistice was declared. People went from unit to unit, announcing the news.  Dixon remembered that vividly, especially because a cook wagon came to the front lines and started cooking pancakes for the soldiers.  “Man, that was the most wonderful thing!” Dixon used to say. 

            As it has done for most men, and now women as well, combat made a lasting impression on Dixon.  He was proud of his service.  

[A note for those who despise war and demonstrate for peace: You are right-- war is bad, we should strive for peace!  But when your country calls, and needs young men and women to fight, someone has to answer the call.   ]

            When the war was over, all the soldiers returned to America, and suddenly all those young men were looking for jobs at the same time.  Dixon and his brothers went to work in central Florida, packing strawberries and trying all kinds of schemes to make a living.   Texas was gaining notice all over the country because oil wells were popping up, new refineries were being built, and workers were needed. In 1927, Dixon got himself on a freight train headed for Texas.  He made his way to Port Arthur, in the southeastern corner of Texas.  Real estate developers financed with money from the Netherlands had begun building a town here to handle shipments of locally grown rice. They located the Kansas City Southern Railways terminus here, and Dutch settlers came to live, followed by Americans. Then a huge oil discovery at Spindletop, right where all the Dutchmen were living, led to creation of several refineries here. Texaco and Gulf Oil companies were created. Families began streaming here to make their fortune in this oil boom town. 

Gusher at Spindletop, Jan. 10, 1901

Courtesy of American Petroleum Institute

            For a young man, veteran of The Great War, looking for work, this looked to be the place, and Dixon landed here.  Dixon found a job as a bookkeeper at a local grocery store.  Dixon, who enlisted in the Army before he had graduated from high school, now enrolled in correspondence courses to learn to be an accountant.  He earned his certificate.

He met a young woman at a Methodist Church social event. Katherine was the daughter of a doctor and a strong supporter of the local Methodist Church and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.  Dixon and Katherine were soon married. 

            I was born a couple of years later, in 1934, and my brother Dixon Wall Coulbourn was born two years later, in 1936.

            Dixon then began taking the test to become a Certified Public Accountant, but didn’t make it.  He took it again.  All through World War II, every year he took the test, and finally, in about 1945, he earned the “CPA” designation. We were all so proud of him!

            In 1944 my sister, Martha Louise, was born, and our parents looked at the neighborhood where we lived, just over a mile from downtown, and decided that now, with a little girl, it was time to move to more idyllic surroundings. So, in 1945 we moved to Griffing Park.  Here we had a cow pasture beyond our back door. Dixon ordered a flock of Plymouth Rock chickens from a supplier in Massachusetts, and soon we were in the chicken business. 

Dixon’s family, 1946

L to R: Dixon, young Dixon, Martha, Sam, Katherine.

            We collected the eggs each morning, and cleaned all the chicken mess up, and fed the chickens.  Dixon started his own accounting firm, leaving for work after he had made sure that we were doing our chicken chores.

            Dixon was always in a hurry.  He hurried to work, and he hurried home.  He ate each meal like there’d not be another.  The only thing he slowed down for was church. We all went to the Methodist Temple downtown every Sunday, but as soon as the sermon started, Dad would turn off his hearing aid and drift off to sleep. 

            Dixon loved gadgets.  All during the war, Army surplus items were finding their way to market, and when war ended, there was a flood of interesting gadgets, and Dad wanted to buy as many as he could find. 

            He had a friend who owned a store that sold outboard motors for boats and all kinds of appliances, from washing machines to record players. 

            Dixon bought an electric deep freezer, and then one of the new Bendix washing machines, with the window, so you could see the clothes swirling around inside.  He bought my mother an electric ironing machine (mangle), which turned out to be a total waste of money.

            When a new voice recorder came out, that you could record on a paper disk, he brought one home to try out, and took it back.  Then a wire recorder came out that made a recording on a slim silver wire on a spool.  He brought that home, and then took it back. 

            However, we were one of the last families in the neighborhood to buy a television. 

            Even though he loved gadgets, Dad was no spendthrift!

            Dad kept his accounting business until he was 73 years old, then with all of us kids with families of our own, he and mother moved to Georgetown, Texas, where he opened up another accounting business, and wrote a book, “Control Your Finances”.

            All his adult life, Dad was a loyal member of the Kiwanis Club and the American Legion.  On his 90^th birthday the local newspaper ran a front-page story of this crusty old World War I veteran.  Dad wasn’t pleased about the publicity, because he thought the fact that he was 90 years old might turn away some of his accounting business.

            Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

 NOTE: I first posted this on Dad's birthday, Jan. 27, 2012.

 *Dad had poor hearing. Now, after years of operations in and around gun turrets, jet engines and submarine diesel engines, I do, too.  Technology has improved tremendously, but still.....