August 2020 is here and that means it is time to celebrate the hundred-year anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment on August 18th, 1920. I was planning on celebrating with a lot of in-person events, but instead, I’m celebrating from behind my computer screen in many ways. One way is by writing blog [...]
By the end of the Victorian Era, society was changing so fast that some people had a hard time keeping up, much less accepting it. From a cultural standpoint, the first two decades saw advances for women that were more rapid than the Western world had ever before seen. The status quo held on tight [...]
Isabella Tod; 19th-century women's advocate Isabella Maria Susan Tod was born on May 18, 1836, in Edinburgh, Scotland. She died on December 8, 1896, in Belfast Ireland. What she did during her 60 years on earth is quite remarkable. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia relates that her biographer, Maria Luddy, observed that her [...]
Victoria Claflin Woodhull was born on September 23, 1838, the seventh of 10 children born to Roxanna ‘Roxy’ Hummel Claflin and Reuben ‘Old Buck’ Buckman Claflin. Her mother was illegitimate and illiterate. Her father was a con man and snake oil salesman. The family lived in rural Homer, Licking County, Ohio. Life was not easy [...]
by Donna Klein continued from part 1 ... The Suffragette Gets Radical By 1903, the women’s suffrage movement saw a lot of talk but little action in Parliament. She left the ILP, and in October helped found the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), which was only open to women and focused on direct action [...]
Who was Emmeline Pankhurst? I recently saw a trailer for a new movie called "Suffragette," in which Meryl Streep portrays Emmeline Pankhurst, a political activist who championed women’s rights in Britain during the late 19th and early 20th century. I decided to find out more about this historical figure and found Emmeline Pankhurst’s story to be [...]