| 11-30 TABLE of CONTENTS:
League of Women Voters
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTE by
Carrie Chapman Catt.
League of Women Voters
"In 1920 and 1921, the
League of Women Voter's platform set the reform agenda far into the future:
national health insurance, unemployment insurance, state and federally
funded old-age pensions, expanded appropriations for the Women's Bureau
and the Children's Bureau, an end to child labor,maximum-hour and minimum-wage
legislation, the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infant Protection Act, pure-milk-and-food
legislation, federal aid to education, civil-service reform, full citizenship
for women (whether or not married to U.S. nationals), the participation
of women at every level of national life, the promotion of international
peace and membership in the League of Nations. U.S. Attorney General A.
Mitchell Palmer and his successors throughout the l920s - most notably
New York's Lusk Committee - condemned the League of Women Voters, and all
its works, as Bolshevik's and feared that Leaguers intended to weaken America
by destroying the family. [WiiN Ed. note: all were
Republicans.]
"In January 1921,
at the annual convention of New York's League of Women Voters at Albany
(127 of the l57 women were Republican) New York Governor Nathan Miller
invited to speak to the newly enfranchised women of his state used it in
order to attack them: 'There is no proper
place for a League of Women Voters... Any organization which seeks to exert
political power is a menace to our free institutions and to representative
government.' He condemned all their efforts
outside the two-party system, and particularly assaulted their legislative
program.
"Miller's attack resulted in a vastly increased
membership in the League, in part due to Carrie Chapman Catt's spontaneous
reply, which received front-page headlines across the country. There remained,
she stated, a minority of political men who were bitter against suffragists
'because we are women.'
" 'I do not recall
one time in history when a great reform was brought about by a political
party,' Catt said. 'The
League of Women Voters aspires to be a part of the big majorities which
administer our government, and at the same time it wishes to be one of
the minorities which agitate and educate and shape ideas today which the
majority will adopt tomorrow.'"
-- from Blanche Wiesen
Cook's remarkable biography of Eleanor Roosevelt.
[You can read more about the League of Women Voters in the WiiN
Library.]
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11-30 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 11-30-1854, Mary Eliza McDowell, social
worker and reformer. While nursing and
helping refugees from the Chicago fire, she developed a life-long interest.
Her friendship with Francis E. Willard led her into the Women's Temperance
movement, then to the development of kindergartens, became active in Jane
Addams' Hull House settlement programs.
As resident director of the McDowell settlement house
(renamed at her death) she forced reform of the habit of using open garbage
pits, and developed sanitation in the immigrant areas. She was instrumental
in the creation of the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor,
supported the labor movement, interceded in race matters, and was active
in the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, and the Urban league.
B. 11-30-1854, Claribel Cone, a pioneer physician
is better known for the art collection of French Impressionists she developed
with her sister Etta. At their deaths, the noted collection went to the
Baltimore Museum.
B. 11-30-1874, Lucy Maud Montgomery,
author of more than 20 books but none more famous than Anne of Green
Gables (1908).
B. 11-30-1919, Jane Cooke Wright, physician-pioneer
in cancer chemotherapy research.
B. 11-30-1924, Shirley Chisholm,
first black woman to serve in U.S. Congress.
Got legislation passed that guaranteed minimum wages for domestic workers.
Angered the political powers by actively seeking the presidency, winning
154 delegates. After serving seven terms, Chisholm retired from Congress
in 1982, becoming a professor at Mount Holyoke College.
B. 11-30-1929, Joan Gana Cooney, television
producer. After winning an Emmy for an
anti-poverty special in 1966, she raised the funds to found the Children's
Television Workshop which developed and produced Sesame Street,
The Electric Company, and provide home and hearth for the Muppets.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
CATT, CARRIE CHAPMAN:
"I do not recall one
time in history when a great reform was brought about by a political party."
-- Carrie Chapman Catt,
quoted by Blanche Wiesen Cook in her biography of Eleanor Roosevelt.
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