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STORIES
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HEARD:
WO M E N I N A M E R I C A N H I STO RY
Edited by Jeanne L. Miller
Ventura College
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D E D I C AT I O N
To my family—Lizzie, Charlie, and Wolfie.
This is for you.
CONTENTS
D edication
vi
Introduction ix
CH. 1T H E
EIGHT MOST IMPORTANT
WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY
1
1. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
3
2. Susan B. Anthony
13
3. Rachel Carson
19
4. Harriet Beecher Stowe
25
5. Eleanor Roosevelt
33
6. Margaret Sanger
41
7. Jane Addams
49
8. Betty Friedan
57
CH. 2I M P O R T A N T
ISSUES IN EARLY
AMERICAN WOMEN’S HISTORY
65
9. Husbands and Wives in Plymouth Colony
67
10. Trial of Anne Hutchinson
75
11. Mary Hawkins and Ezekiel Fogg
77
12. Salem Witch Trials
79
13. Abigail Adams
81
14. Mary Elizabeth Munkers Estes
85
CH. 3
CH. 4
15. Conversation with a Newly Wed Westerner
91
16. Working Women
97
17. Declaration of Sentiments
103
18. Rev. John Knox Little Sermon
107
MORE IMPORTANT WOMEN
109
19. “Mother” Mary Jones (Mary Harris Jones)
111
20. Victoria Woodhull
121
21. Alice Stokes Paul
127
22. Gloria Steinem
133
NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN
139
23. Weetamoo, the Squaw Sachem of the Pocassets141
24. Sacagawea147
25. Sarah Winnemucca159
26. Wilma Mankiller169
CH. 5
MEXICAN AMERICAN WOMEN
179
27. Bernarda Ruiz181
28. Eulalia Perez185
29. Louisa Vigil195
30. Dolores Huerta203
CH. 6A F R I C A N
AMERICAN WOMEN
AND SLAVERY
207
31. Slavery209
32. Vilet Lester213
33. Sojourner Truth215
34. Harriet Tubman223
35. Ida B. Wells235
36. Rosa Parks241
CH. 7
ASIAN AMERICAN WOMEN
247
37. Chinese Prostitutes
249
38. Tokyo Rose (Iva Toguri)
259
A woman’s place in society marks the level of civilization.
— E L I Z A B E T H C A DY S TA N TO N
INTRODUCTION
After teaching U.S. Women’s History for 40 years at a California community college, I wanted an anthology that would contain the best readings
I’ve used over the years. This meant including both primary and secondary
sources. The foundation of the book is the eight women in Chapter 1. In
May 2006, Atlantic Monthly magazine had many influential historians pick
the 100 most influential people in American history. Ten of the 100 were
women; the highest ranked number 30. I believe the top eight women
from this list are the most important in American history, and all Women’s
History students should at least learn about them. I feel that talking about
people makes history more interesting. These eight women are in order of
their importance on the list. The rest of the articles are arranged chronologically in sections; the remaining women and stories in the book are not
necessarily the most important, but these are the articles that I’ve found
over the years to be the most fascinating and entertaining. I hope you
enjoy them!
The book is primarily designed for community college-level Women’s
History classes and is focused on California colleges with its emphasis on
Mexican American and Asian American women.
Many of the articles are excerpts from larger works and thus have different sections. To help navigate this, I have included explanatory remarks,
lines to indicate breaks between pages, and questions at the end of each
reading. My recommendation is that students read the questions first,
which will explain the changes between sections.
C H .
1
THE EIGHT MOST
I M P O RTA N T W O M E N I N
A M E R I C A N H I S T O RY
R E A D I N G
1
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
18 15 –19 0 2
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born
in New York. She recounts in her
autobiography Eighty Years and
More the events in her childhood
that made her such a radical
feminist. Probably the most important was the fact that her parents had 11 children; all five boys
died, while five of the six girls
survived. Elizabeth’s mother was
41 when her 18-year-old brother
Eleazar
died,
but
her
Fig. 1.1. Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Copyright in the Public Domain.
father
wanted another son, so she became pregnant seven times in the next five
years; all seven pregnancies ended in miscarriages. She finally gave birth
to another son who died at the age of four months. Elizabeth herself had
seven children. She was the top-ranked woman on the Atlantic Monthly
list at number 30. Elizabeth completed her autobiography in 1897 and died
in 1902. Here are excerpts from her autobiography that explain the rest of
the reasons for her feminism as well as her great accomplishments:
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, from Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, pp. 2, 4, 20-23, 31-32,
71-72, 79-83, 149, 452-453. Copyright in the Public Domain.
3
Fr o m E i g h t y Ye a r s a n d M o r e : R e m i n i s c e n c e s
18 15 – 18 9 7 by E l i z a b e t h C a d y S t a n t o n
From Chapter I: Childhood
With several generations of vigorous, enterprising ancestors behind me,
I commenced the struggle of life under favorable circumstances on the
12th day of November, 1815, the same year that my father, Daniel Cady,
a distinguished lawyer and judge in the State of New York, was elected to
Congress. Perhaps the excitement of a political campaign, in which my
mother took the deepest interest, may have had an influence on my prenatal life and given me the strong desire that I have always felt to participate
in the rights and duties of government.
The first event engraved on my memory was the birth of a sister when
I was four years old. It was a cold morning in January when the brawny
Scotch nurse carried me to see the little stranger, whose advent was a
matter of intense interest to me for many weeks after. The large, pleasant
room with the white curtains and bright wood fire on the hearth, where
panada, catnip, and all kinds of little messes which we were allowed to
taste were kept warm, was the center of attraction for the older children.
I heard so many friends remark, “What a pity it is she’s a girl!” that I felt
a kind of compassion for the little baby. True, our family consisted of five
girls and only one boy, but I did not understand at that time that girls were
considered an inferior order of beings.
From Chapter II: School Days
When I was eleven years old, two events occurred which changed considerably the current of my life. My only brother, who had just graduated
from Union College, came home to die. A young man of great talent and
promise, he was the pride of my father’s heart. We early felt that this son
filled a larger place in our father’s affections and future plans than the five
4 STORIES NOT YET HEARD: WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY
daughters together. Well do I remember how tenderly he watched my
brother in his last illness, the sighs and tears he gave vent to as he slowly
walked up and down the hall, and, when the last sad moment came, and
we were all assembled to say farewell in the silent chamber of death, how
broken were his utterances as he knelt and prayed for comfort and support.
I still recall, too, going into the large darkened parlor to see my brother, and
finding the casket, mirrors, and pictures all draped in white, and my father
seated by his side, pale and immovable. As he took no notice of me, after
standing a long while, I climbed upon his knee, when he mechanically put
his arm about me and, with my head resting against his beating heart, we
both sat in silence, he thinking of the wreck of all his hopes in the loss of a
dear son, and I wondering what could be said or done to fill the void in his
breast. At length he heaved a deep sigh and said: “Oh, my daughter, I wish
you were a boy!” Throwing my arms about his neck, I replied: “I will try to
be all my brother was.”
Then and there I resolved that I would not give so much time as heretofore to play, but would study and strive to be at the head of all my classes
and thus delight my father’s heart. All that day and far into the night I
pondered the problem of boyhood. I thought that the chief thing to be
done in order to equal boys was to be learned and courageous. So I decided
to study Greek and learn to manage a horse.
I learned to drive, and to leap a fence and ditch on horseback. I taxed
every power, hoping some day to hear my father say: “Well, a girl is as good
as a boy, after all.” But he never said it. When the doctor came over to spend
the evening with us, I would whisper in his ear: “Tell my father how fast I
get on,” and he would tell him, and was lavish in his praises. But my father
only paced the room, sighed, and showed that he wished I were a boy; and
I, not knowing why he felt thus, would hide my tears of vexation on the
doctor’s shoulder.
Soon after this I began to study Latin, Greek, and mathematics
with a class of boys in the Academy, many of whom were much older
than I. For three years one boy kept his place at the head of the class,
and I always stood next. Two prizes were offered in Greek. I strove for
one and took the second. How well I remember my joy in receiving
E lizabeth C ady S tanton 5
that prize. There was no sentiment of ambition, rivalry, or triumph
over my companions, nor feeling of satisfaction in receiving this honor
in the presence of those assembled on the day of the exhibition. One
thought alone filled my mind. “Now,” said I, “my father will be satisfied with me.” So, as soon as we were dismissed, I ran down the hill,
rushed breathless into his office, laid the new Greek Testament, which
was my prize, on his table and exclaimed: “There, I got it!” He took up
the book, asked me some questions about the class, the teachers, the
spectators, and, evidently pleased, handed it back to me. Then, while I
stood looking and waiting for him to say something which would show
that he recognized the equality of the daughter with the son, he kissed
me on the forehead and exclaimed, with a sigh, “Ah, you should have
been a boy!”
As my father’s office joined the house, I spent there much of my
time, when out of school, listening to the clients stating their cases,
talking with the students, and reading the laws in regard to woman. In
our Scotch neighborhood many men still retained the old feudal ideas
of women and property. Fathers, at their death, would will the bulk of
their property to the eldest son, with the proviso that the mother was to
have a home with him. Hence it was not unusual for the mother, who
had brought all the property into the family, to be made an unhappy
dependent on the bounty of an uncongenial daughter-in-law and a dissipated son. The tears and complaints of the women who came to my
father for legal advice touched my heart and early drew my attention
to the injustice and cruelty of the laws. As the practice of the law was
my father’s business, I could not exactly understand why he could not
alleviate the sufferings of these women. So, in order to enlighten me, he
would take down his books and show me the inexorable statutes. The
students, observing my interest, would amuse themselves by reading to
me all the worst laws they could find, over which I would laugh and cry
by turns. One Christmas morning I went into the office to show them,
among other of my presents, a new coral necklace and bracelets. They
all admired the jewelry and then began to tease me with hypothetical
cases of future ownership. “Now,” said Henry Bayard, “if in due time
6 STORIES NOT YET HEARD: WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY
you should be my wife, those ornaments would be mine; I could take
them and lock them up, and you could never wear them except with
my permission. I could even exchange them for a box of cigars, and you
could watch them evaporate in smoke.”
With this constant bantering from students and the sad complaints of
the women, my mind was sorely perplexed. So when, from time to time,
my attention was called to these odious laws, I would mark them with a
pencil, and becoming more and more convinced of the necessity of taking
some active measures against these unjust provisions, I resolved to seize
the first opportunity, when alone in the office, to cut every one of them
out of the books; supposing my father and his library were the beginning
and the end of the law. However, this mutilation of his volumes was never
accomplished, for dear old Flora Campbell, to whom I confided my plan
for the amelioration of the wrongs of my unhappy sex, warned my father
of what I proposed to do. Without letting me know that he had discovered
my secret, he explained to me one evening how laws were made, the large
number of lawyers and libraries there were all over the State, and that if
his library should burn up it would make no difference in woman’s condition. “When you are grown up, and able to prepare a speech,” said he, “you
must go down to Albany and talk to the legislators; tell them all you have
seen in this office—the sufferings of these Scotchwomen, robbed of their
inheritance and left dependent on their unworthy sons, and, if you can
persuade them to pass new laws, the old ones will be a dead letter.” Thus
was the future object of my life foreshadowed and my duty plainly outlined
by him who was most opposed to my public career when, in due time, I
entered upon it.
From Chapter V: Our Wedding Journey
Below, Elizabeth describes her wedding:
Thursday, May 10, 1840, I determined to take the fateful step, without
the slightest preparation for a wedding or a voyage; but Mr. Stanton,
E lizabeth C ady S tanton 7
coming up the North River, was detained on “Marcy’s Overslaugh,” a bar
in the river where boats were frequently stranded for hours. This delay
compelled us to be married on Friday, which is commonly supposed to
be a most unlucky day. But as we lived together, without more than the
usual matrimonial friction, for nearly a half a century, had seven children, all but one of whom are still living, and have been well sheltered,
clothed, and fed, enjoying sound minds in sound bodies, no one need
be afraid of going through the marriage ceremony on Friday for fear
of bad luck. The Scotch clergyman who married us, being somewhat
superstitious, begged us to postpone it until Saturday; but, as we were
to sail early in the coming week, that was impossible. That point settled,
the next difficulty was to persuade him to leave out the word “obey” in
the marriage ceremony. As I obstinately refused to obey one with whom
I supposed I was entering into an equal relation, that point, too, was
conceded.
Our chief object in visiting England at this time was to attend the
World’s Anti-slavery Convention, to meet June 12, 1840, in Freemasons’
Hall, London. Delegates from all the anti-slavery societies of civilized
nations were invited, yet, when they arrived, those representing associations of women were rejected. Though women were members of the
National Anti-slavery Society, accustomed to speak and vote in all its
conventions, and to take an equally active part with men in the whole anti-slavery struggle, and were there as delegates from associations of men
and women, as well as those distinctively of their own sex, yet all alike
were rejected because they were women. Women, according to English
prejudices at that time, were excluded by Scriptural texts from sharing
equal dignity and authority with men in all reform associations; hence
it was to English minds pre-eminently unfitting that women should be
admitted as equal members to a World’s Convention. The question was
hotly debated through an entire day. My husband made a very eloquent
speech in favor.
8 STORIES NOT YET HEARD: WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Fr o m C h a p t e r I X : T h e F i r s t Wo m a n’s R i g h t s
Convention
In this tempest-tossed condition of mind I received an invitation to spend
the day with Lucretia Mott, at Richard Hunt’s, in Waterloo. There I met several members of different families of Friends, earnest, thoughtful women.
I poured out, that day, the torrent of my long-accumulating discontent,
with such vehemence and indignation that I stirred myself, as well as the
rest of the party, to do and dare anything. My discontent, according to
Emerson, must have been healthy, for it moved us all to prompt action,
and we decided, then and there, to call a “Woman’s Rights Convention.” We
wrote the call that evening and published it in the Seneca County Courier
the next day, the 14th of July, 1848, giving only five days’ notice, as the convention was to be held on the 19th and 20th. The call was inserted without
signatures,—in fact it was a mere announcement of a meeting,—but the
chief movers and managers were Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann McClintock,
Jane Hunt, Martha C. Wright, and myself. The convention, which was held
two days in the Methodist Church, was in every way a grand success. The
house was crowded at every session, the speaking good, and a religious
earnestness dignified all the proceedings.
These were the hasty initiative steps of “the most momentous reform
that had yet been launched on the world—the first organized protest
against the injustice which had brooded for ages over the character and
destiny of one-half the race.” No words could express our astonishment on
finding, a few days afterward, that what seemed to us so timely, so rational,
and so sacred, should be a subject for sarcasm and ridicule to the entire
press of the nation. With our Declaration of Rights and Resolutions for
a text, it seemed as if every man who could wield a pen prepared a homily on “woman’s sphere.” All the journals from Maine to Texas seemed to
strive with each other to see which could make our movement appear the
most ridiculous. The anti-slavery papers stood by us manfully and so did
Frederick Douglass, both in the convention and in his paper, The North
Star, but so pronounced was the popular voice against us, in the parlor,
press, and pulpit, that most of the ladies who had attended the convention
and signed the declaration, one by one, withdrew their names and influence
E lizabeth C ady S tanton 9
and joined our persecutors. Our friends gave us the cold shoulder and felt
themselves disgraced by the whole proceeding.
Elizabeth does not describe in her autobiography one of her other
greatest achievements. After Elizabeth spoke before the New York State
Legislature, they passed the first married women’s property law in the
United States, the Married Women’s Property Act, which finally gave married women the right to own property, keep their own earnings, sue in
court, and write wills.
From Chapter XXIII: Woman and Theology
I had long heard so many conflicting opinions about the Bible—some saying it taught woman’s emancipation and some her subjection—that, during
this visit of my children, the thought came to me that it Would be well to
collect every biblical reference to women in one small compact volume,
and see on which side the balance of influence really was. To this end I
proposed to organize a committee of competent women, with some Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew scholars in England and the United States, for a thorough revision of the Old and New Testaments, and to ascertain what the
status of woman really was under the Jewish and Christian religion. As the
Church has thus far interpreted the Bible as teaching woman’s subjection,
and none of the revisions by learned ecclesiastics have thrown any new
light on the question, it seemed to me pre-eminently proper and timely
for women themselves to review the book. As they are now studying theology in many institutions of learning, asking to be ordained as preachers,
elders, deacons, and to be admitted, as delegates, to Synods and General
Assemblies, and are refused on Bible grounds, it seemed to me high time
for women to consider those scriptural arguments and authorities.
A happy coincidence enabled me at last to begin this work. While
my daughter, Mrs. Stanton Blatch, was with me, our friend Miss Frances
Lord, on our earnest invitation, came to America to visit us. She landed
10 STORIES NOT YET HEARD: WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY
in New York the 4th of August, 1886. As it was Sunday she could not
telegraph, hence there was no one to meet her, and, as we all sat chatting
on the front piazza, suddenly, to our surprise and delight, she drove up.
After a few days’ rest and general talk of passing events, I laid the subject
so near my heart before her and my daughter. They responded promptly
and heartily, and we immediately set to work. I wrote to every woman
who I thought might join such a committee, and Miss Lord ran through
the Bible in a few days, marking each chapter that in any way referred to
women. We found that the work would not be so great as we imagined,
as all the facts and teachings in regard to women occupied less than onetenth of the whole Scriptures. We purchased some cheap Bibles, cut out
the texts, pasted them at the head of the page, and, underneath, wrote
our commentaries as clearly and concisely as possible. We did not intend
to have sermons or essays, but brief comments, to keep “The Woman’s
Bible” as small as possible.
Study Questions
1. Why does Elizabeth’s father wish she was a boy, and what does she do to
try to change his mind?
2. What laws concerning women does she object to? How was she going to
fix them?
3. What was left out of her wedding ceremony?
4. What happened at the World Anti-Slavery Convention?
5. Discuss the First Woman’s Rights Convention.
*Here in Elizabeth’s autobiography, she ought to discuss the first married
women’s property law, but she does not! She testified before the New
York State Legislature in 1854 about giving legal rights to married women,
E lizabeth C ady S tanton 1 1
which the legislature finally did in 1860. This law allows married women to
own property, keep their own earnings, sue in court, and write wills.
6. Discuss The Woman’s Bible.
7. What were Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s greatest accomplishments?
12 STORIES NOT YET HEARD: WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY