Moments Captured by Robert J. Seidman

Author:Robert J. Seidman [J. SEIDMAN, ROBERT ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000, FIC019000, FIC014000
ISBN: 9781468304435
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2012-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

Holly read a small article buried in the back of the San Francisco Clarion for January 9, 1868, with equal parts indignation and curiosity; indignation for obvious reasons, curiosity because she could not fathom why Leland Stanford’s pet paper continued to find her newsworthy. Maybe she ought to be flattered that they took her so seriously?

DANCER AGITATES FOR “NEW” WOMEN OF AMERICA

Miss Holly Hughes, the dancer who only a few months ago scandalized a Bay Area audience with her brazen discourse on women’s undergarments, is back on the attack. Yesterday, in front of a scant female gathering, she urged that all local women organize for the right to vote. Miss Hughes demanded that her so-called “sisters” join a march on an unspecified date in January to protest the lack of franchise for the gentler sex. This march is to be coordinated with similar demonstrations in a few widely scattered American cities—New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia, to list the most prominent. The fiery female demagogue asked the assembled for a record turnout for the event.

Miss Hughes, who, it must be noted, has lived most of her adult life in Paris, France, offered critical—several eyewitnesses said “insulting” and “shocking”—remarks about “the passivity of San Francisco’s female population.” She stridently demanded that women “take control of their own lives,” asserting their independence from “domineering husbands and demanding families and all those who would deny us equal rights and equal status.”

She continued, “To date, no woman in the world has ever spoken her whole heart and her whole mind. The mistrust and disapproval of the vast bulk of society throttles us, as with two massive hands pressing at our throats. We mumble a few pathetic words, leaving a thousand better formulations unsaid. It is my belief that when my sex achieves its rights, there will be ten eloquent women where there is now one eloquent man.”

Near the end of her rambling and subversive discourse, Miss Hughes urged her erstwhile allies to disobey San Francisco ordinance (#324-577-5), which prohibits public protests of more than ten persons without a City-approved parade permit. Miss Hughes asserted that the permit had been applied for three times so far but the applications were rejected “for no sensible reason other than the desire to silence the City’s core of progressive women.”

She concluded with pointed hostility, “Why should we suffer the denial of citizenship? Why are we willing to face jail for our beliefs? To accept multiple insults and indignities without tears or complaint? Because we enter this contest knowing that the rules are rigged in favor of complacency, indifference and baleful ignorance. But, I promise you, dear colleagues in the struggle, they will not remain so for long.”

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