02-15-95 Women of Achievement and Herstory

         "So while I do not pray for anybody or any party to commit
outrages, still I do pray, and that earnestly and constantly, for some
terrific shock to startle the women of this nation into a SELF-RESPECT
which will COMPEL them to see the abject degradation of their present
position; which will force them to break their yoke of bondage, and give
them FAITH IN THEMSELVES; which will make them proclaim their allegiance
to WOMEN FIRST; which will enable them to see that man can no more feel,
speak or act for women than could the old slaveholder for his slave. The
fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing
because they do not realize it. 
         "O, to compel them to see and feel and to give them courage and
conscience to speak and act for their own freedom, though they face the
scorn and contempt of all the world for doing it! "
         -- Susan B. Anthony, 1870.  (Brought to our attention by Wendy
Brewer who said: "Makes you wanna stand up & clap, doesn't it ?  Does
me...."

B. 02-15-0000 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

         B. 02-15-1820, Susan Brownell Anthony, affectionally known as Aunt
Susan. One of the primary figures of the 19th century battle for women's
rights and became its best known spokeswoman. Elected to Hall of Fame for
Great Americans in 1950. An untiring pioneer crusader for women's rights,
women's suffrage, Negro suffrage and abolition who traveled this nation
constantly for 60 years for social justice. Her last public words: "Failure
is impossible."  The magazine _The Revolution_, which she edited along with
feminist philosopher Elizabeth Cady Stanton during the 1870s-80s,
supported equal pay for women, practical education for girls, and an eight-
hour work day.  Anthony was asked shortly before her death if all women
in the U.S. would get the vote. She said, "It is inevitable.  We can no more
deny forever the right of self-government to one-half of our people than
we could keep the Negro forever in bondage."

         B. 02-15-1836, Sarah Fuller, early advocate of teaching deaf children
to read lips rather than signing. Taught Alexander Graham Bell, inventor
of the telephone, at her Boston School for Deaf-Mutes, which later became
known a the Horace Mann School for the Deaf.

         B. 02-15-1876, Ada Everleigh who with her sister Minna operated a
brothel in Chicago, "probably the most famous and luxurious house of
prostitution in the country" from 1900-1911.  At the time there were
reported to be nearly 600 houses of prostitution in Chicago alone.  When
a reform movement closed the Everleigh house in 1911 because of their
fame (others remained open), the sisters retired millionaires.
         HIStorians gloss over the open prostitution and white/sexual slavery
of the day of pre-feminism.  The "good ole days" were not so good for
women who were totally "ruined" by rape or perceived sexual misconduct
of any kind and often had no other choice than to turn to prostitution to
support themselves since women's work seldom paid enough to survive.

Quotes du jour -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

         "Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity;
an incident of life, not all of it."
                  --Susan B. Anthony

         "Now why is it that man can hold woman to this high code of morals,
like Caesar's wife -- not only pure but above suspicion -- and so surely
and severely punish her for every departure, while she is so helpless, so
powerless to check him in his license, or to extricate herself from his
presence and control?  His power grows out of his right over her
subsistence. Her lack of power grows out of her dependence on him for
her food, her clothes, her shelter."
                  -- Susan B. Anthony, 1875.

         "Never another season of silence."
                  -- Susan B. Anthony.

         "Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing
less!" --The motto of the Revolution, the publication of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.


         (C) 1995 Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR
71902, irenestuber@delphi.com. Distribute verbatim copies freely with
copyright notice for non-profit use. Don't let anyone tell you there weren't
notable and effective women throughout history.  They were always there,
but historians failed to note them in our histories so that each generation
of women has had to reinvent themselves.