Little-Remembered Stories of Women and the Vote
If women’s news receives the coverage it deserves during the next week or so, then there will be stories about women and the vote. Headlines may read something like: “Ninety Years Since Women Were Given the Vote!”
The problem is “were given” is dead-on inaccurate; even the wording, “got the vote” does not begin to explain the battle that women suffragists waged in order for women to vote.
And why is this coming up in August? August 18, 1920 was the date on which the last vote needed to ratify the amendment was received; August 26th is celebrated as Women’s Suffrage Day, as that is the official day when the amendment became part of the Constitution.
But so much more happened before that.
Pools and Politics
Last week I wrote about baseball catcher Roy Campanella. Reading his autobiography sent me in search of who, what, when, where, and why about the end of discrimination in professional baseball.
This week I went in search of a similar answer. My July e-letter is about summer pleasures, and I started wondering what brought an end to segregation of public swimming pools. I had a vague memory of a recent book on the topic and found and ordered Contested Waters by Jeff Wiltse (University of North Carolina Press, 2007). I didn’t have to read far to come upon a telling story:
In Youngstown, Ohio in 1951 the winning Little League team decided that a fitting way to celebrate the victory was a trip to the local swimming pool. When coaches and the players and their families arrived at the pool, one player was not permitted to enter. The child, Al Bright, was asked to sit on the lawn outside the pool area. Several parents took issue with the lifeguards who were enforcing the pool’s no-negro policy.
The guards finally agreed to a concession. Everyone else got out of the pool. Little Al was put in a rubber raft and a lifeguard pushed him around the pool on the raft. Wiltse writes that Al was specifically told not to touch the water.
This was 1951…59 short years ago. How can this be? Read the rest of this entry »
American Transportation and the Catoctin Aqueduct
Today we take for granted the U.S. Interstate Highway System, our railroads, our waterway transportation methods, and the network of airlines that can take us almost anyplace at any time.
We rarely stop to think about how the story of our country hinges heavily on the types of transportation created to take people west and to bring raw materials and products east. Devising these early transportation methods required great ingenuity of the men of that day, backbreaking labor, and a lot of good luck in coping with adversity.
As early as the 1780s George Washington predicted that waterways were going to be a primary means of transportation. In 1785 he founded the Potowmack Company for the purpose of making the Potomac River more navigable, but progress in water transport was slow. Materials and people could be sent downstream easily but traveling upstream could not be accomplished without mule or man trekking on land to tow the boat. Read the rest of this entry »
What Kind of World Do We Want to Leave to Our Children?
Last night I was a guest at an event celebrating the 20th anniversary of HealthRight International (until last year the organization was known as Doctors of the World-USA), and I have switched my subjects for this week’s posting based on what I gained from the evening.
Earlier in the day I had conducted a “current events” discussion for a group in Connecticut, so I arrived at the Mandarin Oriental in New York City with heavy thoughts of the sadness and helplessness we all share over BP’s Gulf Oil spill.
My spirits lifted as the evening got underway. Though HealthRight International is doing herculean work worldwide, aiding with diseases as varied as malaria and HIV/AIDS, the speakers poignantly reminded us that “change comes one person at a time.”
Finding Hope: Beyond the BP Oil Spill
My website, America Comes Alive!, is dedicated to celebrating the greatness of this country, but the headlines of the weekend were making this difficult.
At a time when our most serious thoughts should be reserved for gratitude to our veterans and those currently serving our country, our attention has been drawn to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
“These are America’s wetlands,” said Louisiana Congressman Charlie Melancon before Congress last week as he fought back tears. Most of us could easily cry along with him. What’s going to happen to local residents affected by the spill? To the fish and wildlife? To the workers down in the area helping with clean-up? To our economy? Even with threat of a criminal suit against them, we know somehow BP won’t pay for all the costs incurred.
Small Town Parade Has Big Place in Local Hearts
Each year Larchmont–a suburban community in Westchester, New York, measuring only one square mile–celebrates Memorial Day with a parade on the Thursday evening preceding the holiday weekend. This year was no different, however, the sudden onset of thunder about ten minutes before the scheduled start of the parade gave us pause…would the event be rained out?
We waited until the last possible moment to make the five-minute walk to Village Hall on Larchmont Avenue where we like to watch the parade. As we strode quickly along, people waiting out the storm in their cars began to pop out amidst a light rain. Read the rest of this entry »
Health Care Update: 1910
This week the news was filled with stories about the passage of the health care reform bill of 2010, and it occurred to me that it might be an opportune time to look back at what was happening in health care one hundred years ago. Here’s what a glance through the New York Times during 1910 reveals:
In 1910 there were no drugs as powerful as sulfa drugs or antibiotics, but the government and the medical profession were beginning to wrestle with regulation of the medicines that existed. The 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act outlawed the sale of poisonous patent medicines and pushed for the correct labeling of all medicines, but an article on February 2, 1910 discusses testimony of Dr. Henry Kraemer, a member of the Committee on Revision of the United States Pharmacopoeia, that reveals that administrators were still hard at work trying to identify, label, and deem acceptable the medicines that existed. Dr. Kraemer points out that seventy percent of the drugs being used were “vegetable drugs” (herbal drugs) and that there needed to be standards for them. “It is not reasonable to suppose or believe that a good fluid extract or tincture can be made from a poor drug any more than to suppose that a good malt can be prepared from a poor quality of barley grains or a good extract of beef from a poor quality of meat…”
The U.S. Census: A Vital Part of Democracy
For the last couple of months, we have been reminded by the news media that the U.S. Census will be underway soon, yet few people realize how truly vital this population count is to our republic. Government by the people requires a regular effort to count the people. In essence, the U.S. Census provides a regularly updated blueprint for our democracy.
Mandated by the Constitution that a census be taken every 10 years, the U.S. government has been tallying our population since 1790. Based on the figures obtained, the government makes extraordinarily important decisions ranging from the number of seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives to how to allocate federal funds; state governments rely on census figures for planning school construction and developing social service programs; local government use them to determine important issues such as allotment of emergency services.
A Moment in Time: Education for Southern Blacks, 1940
Learning a little sometimes reveals a lot.
Tuesday night I attended a screening of a recently discovered film from 1940 that was thought to have been permanently lost. After being on a “lost films” list that is circulated in the industry, two copies of One Tenth of Our Nation were found in the extensive collection of documents, films, and photographs at the Rockefeller Archive Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
One Tenth of Our Nation was a documentary film commissioned by the General Education Board, a philanthropy created by John D. Rockefeller to aid education in the United States. It premiered at the Negro Exposition in Chicago in 1940. The subject was the state of Negro education in the South; its intent was to show both progress and continuing need.
The Ultimate Gift: A Green Goodbye
If you love stories, cemeteries are almost irresistible – every headstone has a tale to tell. Whether it’s a date, a name, a poem, or a piece of statuary that catches your eye, it is hard to avoid wondering, “Who was this?” “Where did they live?” “Why did the family choose these words to memorialize them?” or: “Why did she die so young?”
My most recent cemetery trip was to visit the former inhabitants of my hundred-and-twenty-year-old house. I never knew them but they lived here a very long time, and I knew that Henry Brevoort Towle (1864-1926) was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. One beautiful Sunday this past October, I journeyed to Woodlawn and found Henry’s grave. Of course, with Henry I found several other people who had lived in my house. My “family” expanded with this discovery.
Then last week I received an e-mail about “green burials” from Elizabeth Fournier, a mortician and funeral director in Oregon, and her information gave me pause. While I love walking through a cemetery’s park-like lanes, seeing the statuary, and reading the headstones, I never gave much thought to what lies beneath. Nor had I considered the idea that as more Americans die, community planners might have better uses for our land than more cemeteries.