Southern Ladies and Suffragists by Miki Pfeffer

Author:Miki Pfeffer [Pfeffer, Miki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV), 19th Century, Social Science, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9781626743939
Google: egkbBwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Published: 2014-11-05T02:48:39+00:00

Anthony and other prominent women stressed central themes during the Cotton Centennial: education, jobs, temperance, rights, and the need for women to unite to achieve these ends. Women needed better training to get better jobs, and they deserved the ballot as equal partners in industry and public life. Despite what the States had written, audiences clamored to hear Anthony speak, and she often linked the issues of the day. For example, to a “large and appreciative” audience at Tulane Hall, she repeated how employment had already opened up for women in the South, but they still needed “the right of equality in pay as well as in work, and that clearly could only be done by the ballot.” Men presently held the key to woman’s work, she said, because they controlled the factory, mill, store, and desk, and they continued to deny woman “the privilege of earning as much for her work as he would get himself for it.” Susan B. Anthony had none of the dilemma of southern women; she did not need to coddle southern manhood.31

The right of women to earn equal pay was Catharine Cole’s driving passion, which likely prompted her to claim that Anthony was a witty and welcome orator with an “encyclopediacal” understanding about all issues important to women. One could talk to her for hours at a social gathering, Cole declared, without her treating guests to a suffrage lecture, whereas those who could speak of only one passion were “bores.” Anthony was now in possession of many new friends “and newly converted admirers,” according to Cole, and the many social attentions prompted her to set Wednesday afternoon as reception day in her temporary residence at Magazine and Orange Streets. In Anthony’s role as alliance maker, she would later be able to build on those contacts to expand her NWSA in the South. Caroline Merrick was already a valuable asset; she would write the Louisiana section for the third volume of the History of Woman Suffrage (1876–1885). The first two volumes were included on the shelves in the literary alcove, available for women’s perusal.32

Cole was so impressed with the great champion that she measured others, especially Howe, against the “unbounded respect” Anthony commanded during her stay. She contrasted others’ gratuitous self-absorption with Anthony’s “absolutely unselfish dedication to a cause she believes to be right and good, and for the help of womankind.” Cole charged women to bury “that obstreperous thing—self” and to improve their intellect and regularly attend the Woman’s Club, where women should be able to count on help and sympathy from their peers. As May Wright Sewall had already told members, women organized clubs first out of self-sacrifice but were now working together to be worthy of that selflessness.33

Judgments always seemed to lead Cole back to her grievances with Julia Ward Howe. Apparently, she likened the Howes to those who did not put “self” aside. She took note of every time the two seemed to disregard the efforts of southern women. As an

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