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May 3

The first woman suffrage parade was held in New York City 05-03-1913. Suffrage parades were the brainchild of the daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, U.S. women's rights pioneer. Harriot Stanton Blatch got the idea from marches held by U.S. workers demanding living wages and suffrage demonstrations held in London, England.

05-03 TABLE of CONTENTS: The First Woman to Earn Her Living by Writing and the First Published Women's Right Advocate New Jersey Women's Heritage Trail Another Flash from the Past - the Good Old Days More Canadian Writers DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS QUOTE by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Rachel Felix, Susan B. Anthony, Mary Arrigo, Warren Farrell, and Natalie Clifford Barney. The First Woman to Earn Her Living by Writing and the First Published Women's Right Advocate       "To you 'gentlemen', let Lady Reason speak:       "Men have attacked women for other reasons: such reproach has occurred to some men because of their own vices and others have been moved by the defects of their own bodies, others through pure jealousy, still others by the pleasure they derive in their own personalities from slander.       "Others, in order to show they have read many authors, base their own writings on what they have found in books and repeat what other writers have said and cite different authors.       "Those who attack women because of their own vices are men who spent their youths in dissolution and enjoyed the love of many different women, used deception in many of their encounters, and have grown old in their sins without repenting, and now great their past follies and the dissolute life they led. But Nature, which allows the will of the heart to put into effect what the powerful appetite desires, has grown cold in them.       "Therefore they are pained when they see that their 'good times' have now passed them by... They do not know how to overcome their sadness except by attacking women, hoping to make women less attractive to other men. Everywhere one sees such old men speak obscenely and dishonestly. right, manuscript photo click on picture to see full size image       "They do not know how to overcome their sadness except by attacking women, hoping to make women less attractive to other men. Everywhere one sees such old men speak obscenely and dishonestly.       "But these corrupt old men, like an incurable leprosy, are not the upstanding men of old whom I (reason) made perfect in virtue and wisdom - for not all men share in such corrupt desire, and it would be a real shame if it were so. The mouths of these good men, following their hearts, are all filled with exemplary, honest, and discreet words.       "These same men detest misdeeds and slander, and neither attack nor defame men and women, and they counsel the avoidance of evil and the pursuit of virtue and the straight path.       "Those men who have attacked women out of jealousy are those wicked ones who have seen and realized that many women have greater understanding and are more noble in conduct than they themselves, and then they are pained and disdainful. Because of this, their overweening jealousy has prompted them to attack all women, intending to demand and diminish the glory and praise of such women, must like the man who tries to prove in his own work....       "As for those men who are naturally given to slander, it is not surprising that they slander women since they attack everyone anyway. Nevertheless, I assure you that any man who freely slanders does so out a great wickedness of heart, for he is acting contrary to reason and contrary to Nature:" contrary to reason in so far as he is most ungrateful and fails to recognize the good deeds which women have done for him, so great that he could never make up for them, no matter how much he try, and which he continuously needs women to perform for him; and contrary to Nature in that there is no naked beast anywhere, nor bird, which does not naturally love its female counterpart."            -- Christine de Pizan (Pisan), The Book of the City of Ladies, first printed 1405 and not translated into modern English for hundreds of years!!! A wonderful translation in easy-read-American by Earl Jeffry Richards, Persea is now available. Christine de Pisan (Pizan) is proof that women were never satisfied with the rulership of men.       Christine de Pisan (1364-1430) is considered the first woman to earn her living by writing. CdP wrote numerous poems, a biography of Charles V of France, and a number of works       The daughter of an Italian father who served as court astrologer for Charles V, CdP had exceptional opportunities for education. Widowed after ten years of marriage and with three children, CdP turned to writing for financial support.       Her first poems of the expected lost loves variety were followed by bllads, lays, and complaints that gained a wide following in various courts of Europe and the aristocracy. Her works ranged from defense of women to suggested courtly behavior and even an autobiography in answer to her mostly male critics.       Her last work, Le Diti‚de Jehanne d'Arc (1429) celebrated Joan of Arc during Joan's lifetime. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | New Jersey Women's Heritage Trail       Diane Allen, New Jersey State Senator, fought for legislation to form a Women's Heritage Trail, commemorating women and their contributions to New Jersey.       When completed, the trail will showcase key sites around the state and help to educate students and tourists, as well as encourage research. "Now the residents of New Jersey will know the other half of their history," says Allen, who has earned herself a place in women's history.       (The above statement issued when Allen was awarded one of the 2001 Good Housekeeping $2500 awards for women in government.) | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | Another Flash from the Past - the Good Old Days       In the mid 19th century, at the height of the Victorian age, London, England had approxiately 6,000 houses of prostitution (one house in every 60).       It was common for young girls, even younger than 11, to be openly offered to male pedestrians on the streets.       It was in this atmosphere - where sometimes vision was less than three feet because of the smoke from coal fires in every fireplace mixing with the thick London fog that Jack the Ripper found his victims - and killers of many prostitutes operated for dozens of years afterwards with murderous stealth. Camembert cheese is created in the modern world by French farmer's wife Marie-Fontaine Harel. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | More Canadian Writers       Canadian Margaret Gibson (b.1948) had one of her first works, "The Butterfly Ward," chosen as co-winner of the Best Canadian Short Story along with a story by Margaret Atwood. Several of her works were made into TV movies.       Kathleen Caffyn (1853-1926) Irish-born Canadian wrote under the name "Lota." She published 17 novels, most after the death of her husband. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | 05-03 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS B. 05-03-1764, Elizabeth of France - French princess, sister of King Louis XVI.       Elizabeth refused to leave her brother the king. She went to prison with him and was beheaded in the French revolution. She was lauded by Royalist and Catholic circles for "her great courage and fidelity." Other relatives including two of her brothers (the future Louis XVIII and Charles X) fled. B. 05-03-1825, Laura Matilda Towne - U.S. educator.       After the Civil War, LMT with her close friend Ellen Murray founded one of the earliest, and most successful schools for former slaves on the coastal islands of South Carolina.       She had studied homopathic medicine privately and taught school in her native Pennsylvania before volunteering to teach - and in many ways care for - a large population of former slaves of the Sea islands of South Carolina.       She taught, acted as physician, and directed relief aid and in 1862 with Murray founded the freedman's Penn School that used the same curriculum as New England schools. For dozens of years Penn School was the only education available for the black population of the islands.       Some financial support for the school which expanded to teacher training in 1870 came from a Pennsylvania freedman society and Murray's family but on the whole LMT used her own modest funds. She drew no salary.       Until her death in 1901 she acted on behalf of the black population, advising in legal matters, etc. Her school was eventually taken over by the South Carolina public school system.       (The shameful robbing of blacks of their land on one of the islands occurred 50 years after Murray's death. She had spent her life trying to guarantee blacks their rights.) B. 05-03-1844, Anna Etheridge - U.S. nurse during the Civil War.       Anna Etheridge rode into battle with the 2nd Michigan Volunteers at the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, and others.       She also rode alongside the soldiers as they charged into battle and she ministered to them as they fell. She was in as much danger as any of the soldiers. Once a soldier was killed by a shell as she was tending him. She was wounded in the hand during another skirmish. B. 05-03-1866, Georgia "George" Martin - U.S. fiction writer. B. 05-03-1869, Julia Arthur, U.S. actor.       JA scored triumphs and was the leading actor in dozens of plays from San Francisco, to New York, and to the London stage where she brought audiences to their feet with her interpretations of Shakespeare as well as deep, throbbing roles of more modern plays.       A tremendously hard worker, she respected the stage as an art form. She married a wealthy businessman and retired from the stage in 1900 only to return for a short time in 1915 to recoup his business losses and continued to act in various capacities until 1924. In 1918 she portrayed Edith Cavall in a movie.       According to biographer Claire McGlinchee "A commentator in 1899 (Lewis C. Strang) found Julia Arthur 'intelligent, cultured, sincere, and mentally independent.' Ambitious and hardworking her motto, which she carried with her always in a gold locket, was 'Laborare est orare' she was 'one of the three or four' Americans who were 'actually accomplishing something for the drama as an art.' While not, in Strang s view, a great actress, she was 'a woman of magnificent depth of feeling,' with the capacity to 'burn into the memory of the person that sees her in any role whatsoever an impression that never wholly fades away.''" B. 05-03-1892, Beulah Bondi - U.S. screen and stage character actor who received two Academy Award nominations.       Her most famous role was as Jimmy Stewart's mother in It's A Wonderful Life (1946). B. 05-03-1898, Septima Poinsette Clark - U.S. educator and civil rights activist.       Her own experience of racial discrimination fueled her pursuit of racial equality and her commitment to strengthen the African-American community through literacy and citizenship. B. 05-03-1898, Golda Meir (Goldie Mabovitch) - a founder of Israel and its only prime minister who was also a woman.       She left a legacy of peaceful negotiations and progress although she was never "soft" with Israel's enemies. Like any Jewish mother (and she saw herself in a mother-role to the nation, a view shared by many of the male leaders) she could be strict and decisive.       Golda Meir (Goldie Mabovitch) was Russian-born who emigrated to the U.S. with her family. Her mother operated a grocery store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Golda was a school teacher and did library work in Milwaukee. She became politically active in the Zionist movement and at 22 she emigrated to Israel.       Under her married name Myerson she was a signator of Israel's declaration of independence and a founder of the State of Israel. Under her Hebraized name Meier she was the first minister of labor and social security, later its foreign minister, and on February 26, 1969, became the fourth prime minister in the young nation's history. The last 12 years of her public life she secretly suffered from leukemia.       When she moved to Israel in 1923 she became active in the kibbutz movement and women's affairs. She became a power negotiator and quickly rose to prominence for her ability to communicate with foreign diplomats and leaders. B. 05-03-1899, Aline MacMahon - U.S. stage and screen character actor with a career that spanned more than 60 years. B. 05-03-1906, Mary Astor - U.S. actor.       "She was so beautiful she almost made me faint." said John Barrymore but even beyond her beauty, she was a fine actor of screen and stage appearing in more than 100 movies - and the winner of an Academy Award       She is also the creator of one of the most memorable roles on the screen, Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon.       MA began in movies at age 14 and by 1928 (age 22) she was making $3,750 a week in silent films appearing oppostie the greats of moviedom including the great John Barrymore (who became her lover).       When talkies came in, MA's career faded and she turned to Broadway. Hollywood soon discovered she had a voice as well as acting talent and lured her back but never gave her the starring roles her talent deserved.       She had to settle for B movies or supporting actress roles, one of which opposite Betty Davis in The Big Lie in 1941 garnered her the Academy Award.       How much her personal life problems - or even the enemies she made in the power structure of Hollywood - limited her screen roles it is impossible to say.       But she became an alcoholic and her sex life was out of control. In a custody suit over her daughter with her second husband, he produced her diary in which she allegedly recorded her sexual escapades. No one knows for sure because the judge had it burned as pornographic.       She had a strong dislike of Hollywood film-making and left it several times but returned because of the money. She supported her parents; her father insisted on a lavish lifestayle with a mansion and servants. When she attempted to put him on a budget, he sued her. MA wrote a best-selling biography and her novels sold well. In her 60s after yet another sabbatical from Hollywood, she was enticed into returning - in spite of being very overweight and almost unrecognizable - to play alongside Bet Davis in Who's Afraid of Baby Jane. Davis told the director to let MA "lose" as an actor. "You may learn something."       MA turned in her actor's card at the completion of Baby Jane. Her last years were spent as a virtual recluse and in ill health.       In The Big Lie MA decided to wear her shoulder-length bob in a French roll and she describes what happened next in her autobiography:       "(In discussing the roll hairdo with her good friend and co-star Bet Davis) MA said, 'Why can't we have Perc Westmore (the studio beautician) cut it to this shape?' Davis grinned and said, 'Oh, Mary, would you, would you dare? It's going to look very extreme.' I would and did, and that skull shaped hairdo became the next trend in hair fashion." B. 05-03-1912, May Sarton - U.S. poet, novelist, essayist, actor, and teacher whose introspective works were not critically recognized throughout her life. Finally she was "discovered" by the women's movement.       Her fame actually increased in her old age as she wrote several journals that recorded her last decades of living in Maine. Her journal style in some ways broke with her detached style of her earlier works.       Her longtime, non-lesbian friend was poet Louis Bogan [WOAH 08-11] who also received high critical praise but little popular acceptance for her well crafted but impersonal style.       In her journals, MS admitted her lesbianism publicly for the first time. She taught at both Harvard University and Wellesley College. B. 05-03-1915, Bette Comden - U.S. composer/lyricist collaborator.       BC, one of music's greats, collaborated with Adolph Green to create many Broadway and Hollywood greatest musicals including Singin' In The Rain and Applause.       BC and Green won the 1978 Tony for best book in The Twentieth Century, the 1970 Tony for Applause as the best musical play, and the 1968 Tony for best composer and lyricist for Hallelujah Baby! Her mother was a school teacher.       BC and Green paired together longer than any other writing team in the history of Broadway. Event. 05-03-1922: The right to vote and stand for political office for women of the Canadian Province of Prince Edward Island was validated. The general enfranchisement of women in Canada to vogte occurred 05-24-1918. B. 05-03-1922, Marina Svetlova - Russian ballerina and choreographer, Ballet Russe De Monte Carlo Event 05-03-1933: Nellie Tayloe Ross, former governor of the State of Wyoming, is the first woman named director of the U.S. Mint. Event 05-03-1933: Sally Rand shocks the nation when she dances at the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition with two fans and no clothes. (They were big - VERY big - fans. Rand's acts, like those of her sister Gypsy Rose Lee, were mostly suggestive and no actual nudity.) B. 05-03-1941, Nona Terentyevna Gaprindashvili - USSR chess Grandmaster.       She became women's grandmaster in 1961 and ruled as women's world champion 1962-1978 and USSR Woman Champion 5 times.       In 1977 NTG was the first woman to be awarded the men's international grandmaster title when she won (tied for first) in the men's Lone Pine chess tournamet.       She was so popular that a perfume fragrance was named after her. B. 05-03-1942, Vera Cáslavská - Czech gymnast. caslavska       VC won a total of 35 medals, including 22 gold medals, six of them in the Olympics to rule as the dominant gymnist in world and European championships from 1958 to 1968.       In the 1965 and 1967 world championships VC won every gymnastic event and almost did the same in the 1968 Olympics winning the four other events before being nosed out on the balance beam to win silver. She captured the gold twice at the 1964 Olympics.       VC won more individual Olympic gold medals than anyone in history. Her total of seven surpasses that of even the legendary Larissa Latynina who holds the record for the greatest total number of Olympic medals (gold, silver, bronze).       In the 1968 Olympics just before the awards presentation, the scores of Soviet gymnast Larisa Petrik were adjusted into a tie with leader Caslevska. During the traditional playing of the winner's national anthem (this time two national anthems), VC kept her head down when the Soviet anthem was played. It was not in disappointment or objection to the last minute changes although they were obviously political, but to show her objection to the Soviet invasion of her country that had just occurred. Her protest ended her career       In 1998 she Inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame. B. 05-03-1950, Mary Hopkin - U. S. pop vocalist.       Her first recorded song, "Those Were The Days My Friend" (1968) is still played regularly on radio and reflects so much of the 60s way of life. Her career, otherwise, was lackluster. Event 05-03-1979: Margaret Thatcher was advanced as Great Britain's first prime minister who was also a woman as the head of the Conservative Party. Event 05-03-1980: Genuine Risk became the second filly (young female horse) to win the Kentucky Derby. This isn't as bad as it sounds since very few fillies have ever been entered into the big time races in the U.S. In Europe and England female horses run against males as a matter of course, and win in proportion, but in the U.S. the mostly male trainers obviously have a problem... Actually, the really outstanding mares are too valuable to risk on the race track - at least that's what the guyz say. Event 05-03-1993: A U.S. health-cost study released in May finds that more than 16 percent of hysterectomies performed at health maintenance organizations are inappropriate and an additional 25 percent are of questionable benefit. This challenges the view that HMOs contain costs by limiting unnecessary proceedures (unless it mutilates women??). | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | QUOTES DU JOUR GILMAN, CHARLOTTE PERKINS:       "In our steady insistence on proclaiming sex distinction we have grown to consider most human attributes as masculine attributes, for the simple reason that they were allowed for men and forbidden to women."             -- Charlotte Perkins Gilman in Women and Economics. FELIX, RACHEL:       "I will have renters, but not owners."             -- Rachel Felix, French actor who had two children and refused to marry. ANTHONY, SUSAN B.:       "...We should be miserable but for the consciousness that we have done all in our power to help forward every measure for the freedom and equality of the races and the sexes."             -- Susan B. Anthony in an 1893 letter. ARRIGO, MARY:       "Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior - bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper - it's possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative... Of course there are those who believe that the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to her mother's impending visit."             -- Mary Arrigo in "The Whole 9 Months," Parenting magazine. FARRELL, WARREN:       "If a man ignoring a woman's verbal 'no' is committing date rape, then a woman who says `no' with her verbal language but 'yes' with her body language is committing date fraud. And a woman who continues to be sexual even after she says 'no' is committing date lying...       "We have forgotten that before we began calling this date rape and date fraud, we called it exciting."             -- Warren Farrell, in Myth of Male Power defending the human male's right of rape by interpreting women's behavior in the way a man wants to interpret it. In other words, what excites him gives him permission.       Almost every rapist says that a woman's resistance excites him - if she didn't resist why would he have to rape? BARNEY, NATALIE CLIFFORD:       "Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed."             -- Natalie Clifford Barney, U.S.-born-French author. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |