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June 23

06-23 TABLE of CONTENTS: Excerpt from The History of Woman's Suffrage, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS QUOTES by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Gabrielle Edwards. Much has been written about the women's movement without too much study of Herstory ... note below how some things were going on to reform women's rights earlier than most women's studies groups indicate - and much wider than admitted by historians. Nothing is as simple as history portrays:       "...In the winter of 1836, a bill was introduced into the New York Legislature by Judge Hertell, to secure to married women their rights of property ... In was in furtherance of this bill that Ernestine L. Rose and Paulina Wrights at that early day circulated petitions. The very few names they secured show the hopeless apathy and ignorances of the women as to their own rights. As similar bills were pending in New York until finally passed in 1848, a great educational work was accomplish in the constant discussion of the topics involved.       "Abby Kelley was the most untiring and the most persecuted of all the women who labored throughout the Anti-Slavery struggle. She traveled up and down, alike in winter's cold and summer's heart with scorn, ridicule, violence, and mobs accompanying her, suffering all kinds of persecutions, still speaking whenever and wherever she gained an audience; in open air, in schoolhouse, barn, depot, church, or public hall; on weekday or Sunday, as she found opportunity. For listening to her, on Sunday, many men and women were expelled from their churches. Thus through continued persecution was women's self-assertion and self-respect sufficiently developed to prompt her to at last demand justice, liberty, and equality for herself.       "In 1845, Rev. Samuel J. May said in a sermon that women need not expect 'to have their wrongs fully addressed, until they themselves have a voice and a hard in the enactment and administration of the laws.'       "At Leipsic, in 1844, Helen Marie Weber - her father a Prussian officer, and her mother an English woman - wrote a series of ten tracts on 'Woman's Rights and Wrongs,' covering the whole question and making a column of over 1200 pages. The first of these treated of intellectual faculties' the second, woman's rights of property; the third, wedlock - deprecating the custom of woman merging her civil existence in that of her husband; the fourth claimed woman's right to all political emoluments; the fifth, in ecclesiasticism, demanded for woman an entrance to the pulpit; the sixth, upon suffrage, declared it to be woman's right and duty to vote. These essays were strong, vigorous, and convincing.               -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton in The History of Woman's Suffrage, vol. 1. 06-23 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS B. 06-23-1763, Josephine - Consort of Napoleon Bonaparte, Empress of France and supposedly Bonaparte's great love. However, Bonaparte divorced her to marry an Austrian princess in hopes of a son and heir. Event 06-23-1848: Dorothea Lynde Dix, by courtesy of Congress, was given a special alcove in the Capitol Library where she could lobby and confer with members of Congress regarding care for the indigent insane. Dix was the great reformer of prisons and insante institutions. B. 06-23-1908, Maria Helena Vieira de Silva, ranks as the most important contemporary Portuguese painter. Her abstract expressionism paintings hang in major modern art museums through the world. Lisbon, Portugal, is building a museum just to house her work. B. 06-23-1940, Wilma Rudolph, Afro-American runner won the 100-meter and 200-meter dashes and was the final runner of the 400-meter relay at the 1960 Olympics, the first time an American woman won three gold medals in track.       She set and then broke her own records after overcoming a series of childhood illnesses that prevented her from walking until she was eight, thanks to special exercises and her mother's massages.       Nicknamed the "Black Gazelle" for her graceful running style, she retired from competition to finish college and then took part in a special program to help ghetto children learn athletics from star performers. She is a member of several track and athletic halls of fame. Event 06-23-1972, President Richard Nixon signs into law Title IX of the Higher Education Act, banning sex bias in athletics and other activities at all educational institutions receiving federal assistance. Within a decade 500% more girls were competing in high school sports with women's sports expanding every year. The bill, introduced by Rep. Edith Green (D-OR) also allowed the Justice Department to file suit at the request of the Health and Education Department.       Suits under Title IX are still being filed today and many colleges and universities are still avoiding complying with the law. Their rational is that to give women equal treatment it would cut into men's sports - an argument that admits institutionalized inequality.       Before Title IX, there were so few college athletic scholarships ever given to a woman as to be non-existent - even though women have always paid exactly (if not more) in college tuition than men. Women in high school and college programs used discarded equipment from the men's programs and had to schedule their events and games for when the men didn't need or want the practice areas. Event 06-23-1973: Margaret A. Haywood was elected the first woman to head the United Church of Christ and the first black woman to lead a major U.S. denomination. Event 06-23-1993: Ecuadorian-born manicurist Lorena L. Bobbitt, 24, cuts off two-thirds of the penis of her sleeping husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, 26, after an alleged sexual 23 to add a new word to American slang. The organ is reattached in 9 hours of microsurgery when she tells police where she threw it. A jury of nine women and three men acquit John Wayne of marital sexual assault November 10; and Lorena was acquitted in 1994 of malicious assault. QUOTES DU JOUR STANTON, ELIZABETH CADY:       "Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less!"             --The motto of the Revolution, the woman's rights publication of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in the latter part of the 19th century. EDWARDS, GABRIELLE. I.:       "... the concept of motherhood in the United States is held in high esteem, glorified -- so much so that special-interest groups have taken it upon themselves to destroy abortion clinics by bombing them or by harassing their patients.       "Yet, once motherhood becomes an established fact, women who are heads of households are denied legislation that could remove them from a chronic state of poverty."             -- Edwards, Gabrielle I. Coping With Discrimination. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, 1986 and 1992. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |