"Unladylike"
Have you seen the PBS series Unladylike? It features suffragists like Mary Church Terrell, Rose Schneiderman, and Tye Leung Schulze alongside other notables (Gladys Bentley!) <br /><br />1. Each 12-minute episode features a contemporary activist who mirrors the historical woman. <br /><br />In the Terrell segment they feature <span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span>
<div class="css-1dbjc4n r-xoduu5"><span class="r-18u37iz"><a href="https://twitter.com/MsPackyetti" dir="ltr" class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao css-16my406 r-1n1174f r-1loqt21 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">@MsPackyetti</a></span> and for Schneiderman, <a href="https://twitter.com/aijenpoo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@aijenpoo</a>. Both good choices. <br /><br />2. The voices of Lorraine Touissant & Juliana Margulies are heard throughout; eg Touissant voices Terrell while Margulies narrates -- then vice-versa for Schneiderman. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/masters/unladylike2020/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The segments are all available to watch.</a> Which ones did you watch? What do you think? </div>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1286460535567941632" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
23/07/2020
Trolley tour in the Capital Region
New York’s most compelling suffrage spokeswomen toured the state in the spring of 1908. They began in Seneca Falls and traveled from town to town by trolley. <br /><br />Through World War I, electric railways connected the cities and towns of central NY - and much of the nation.🚋 thread <br /><br />Apparently it was once possible to travel all the way from NYC to Chicago by local light rail. Woulda been a lot of stops - which is why it was perfect for a suffrage campaign. <br /><br />Harriot Stanton Blatch, Maud Malone, Charlotte Perkins Gilman & Rose Schneiderman stumped 200+ miles. <br /><br />Albany, the capitol, was a conservative town and an anti-suffrage stronghold. Mayor Charles Gaus tried to quash the gathering. <br /><br />Troy, across the river, was more welcoming.<br /><br />Kate Mullany & Esther Keegan founded the Collar Laundry Union in Troy in 1864. It was the first female union in the nation, and Troy remained a stronghold of women’s trade union militancy. The suffragists held a successful open air meeting there. <br /><br />In Syracuse they found factory workers to talk to because Harriot Blatch knew the wife of the factory owner. They spoke to the workers of the Solvay Process Company. <br /><br />When they arrived at @<a href="https://twitter.com/Vassar" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Vassar</a> College they found they were barred from campus. <br /><br />Pres. James Monroe Taylor was educating “not leaders but good wives and mothers,†and he forbade suffrage activity. Inez Milholland - later to lead marches on a white horse - was a student, and she worked with Blatch to organize a mass gathering off campus… in a nearby cemetery. <br /><br />At the cemetery, speakers included Charlotte Perkins Gilman, well-known to the Vassar students as a writer and renegade. But according to @<a href="https://twitter.com/EllenDubois10">ellendubois10</a>, “it was the passionate trade-union feminist [Rose] Schneiderman who was the star.†<br /><br />In her annual report, Harriot Stanton Blatch wrote: “This campaign fully convinced all those who took part in it that the out-door meeting is the popular method of reaching the people.†<br /><br />Thanks to @<a href="https://twitter.com/albanymuskrat" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AlbanyMuskrat</a> & Ernie Mann for local & RR info. #Suffrage100 #CenturyofStruggleÂ
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1273775600793255942">Original thread.</a>
18/06/2020
Funding, and the class politics of activism
Activism needs resources. Wealthier women provided funding that working class suffragists needed: to print leaflets & posters, rent meeting halls, and most of all to pay salaries so activists could quit their factory jobs & organize full-time. But money inevitably means control.<br /><br />Here’s how it works, then and now: imagine you’re a donor to grassroots community activists. Let’s say a group you support endorses a political candidate you dislike. As a result, you give less, or nothing. Other middle-class donors do too. Next time, the group hesitates. <br /><br />Or they don’t hesitate, but they lose funds and their impact shrinks. Ideally, they stick to their principles and build a broader base of donors so they aren’t dependent on a handful of wealthy people - but that only works if they have the ability to reach a broad base.<br /><br />Working-class suffragists didn’t have access to a broad base. The Socialist and union men who could have supported their work with lots of small donations were skeptical about the value of women’s suffrage. 👀 <br /><br />So they needed the financial support of wealthier women, who were often uncomfortable with their radical politics. Rose Schneiderman, Leonora O’Reilly, Clara Lemlich and Pauline Newman negotiated for support and control of the agenda across multiple organizations. First, WTUL: <br /><br />The Women’s Trade Union League was created in 1903 to unify working women from different trades and encourage unionization. WTUL’s members included union women, women not yet union members, and “allies†- upper- & middle class women who brought money and clout. <br /><br />In 1907, Harriot Stanton Blatch created the Equality League for Self-Supporting Women. She imagined it as WTUL's political arm; Schneiderman and O’Reilly were the star speakers. But the wealthy women squirmed at Socialism, and didn’t get the urgency of the labor struggle.<br /><br />They had never had Rose Schneiderman’s experience of making $2.16 for a 64-hour week - or $6/week if she brought her own sewing machine. Louise La Rue of the San Francisco Waitresses Union explained the disconnect as follows: “We got along fine with [the mainstream suffragists], we endorsed everything they did; but the street car strike came along, and of course we had to walk. Some of those women objected to walking. So you can just imagine how we felt about it. <br /><br />"We had to pull out from them but we thought it quite important that we should have a suffrage league, so we organized a Working Girls’ Suffrage League.†-Barbara Mayer Wertheimer <br /><br />That was in 1909. In 1911 Leonora O’Reilly and Clara Lemlich organized a New York City Wage Earners May Suffrage League - their inaugural meeting was just days before the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. (@<a href="https://twitter.com/AnneliseOrleck1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AnneliseOrleck1</a>) Unlike the WTUL or the Equality League, in the Wage Earners Suffrage League only workers could be voting members with a say in policy. #Suffrage100 #CenturyofStruggle May 10, 2020
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1259280889114132480" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
09/05/2020
Suffrage v. Socialism
In Dec 1909, Socialist suffragists convened a party conference to debate whether they should work with the mainstream suffrage groups. Rose Schneiderman & Leonora O’Reilly thought the movement was too small for purity tests, and women should be free to make alliances as needed.🧵 <br /><br />Other women, including Pauline Newman and Theresa Malkiel, disagreed. They led the Socialist Party Women’s Committee to create suffrage clubs throughout New York City. @<a href="https://twitter.com/AnneliseOrleck1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AnneliseOrleck1</a> - who describes all of this in Common Sense and a Little Fire - says thousands of women joined. <br /><br />The Socialist suffrage groups had rallies, performances, and social events in four boroughs. But Malkiel and Newman were disappointed in them, because most women who participated were already committed Socialists, and they didn’t win many new converts. <br /><br />I’ve talked about Pauline Newman before - lesbians get preferential treatment at Daily Suffragist - but I’m happy to learn about Theresa Serber Malkiel. Malkiel immigrated to the US as a teenager and went to work in the garment factories. Her book “Diary of a Shirtwaist Maker,†published in 1911, gained attention after the Triangle fire. <br /><br />See @<a href="https://twitter.com/jwaonline" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">jwaonline</a> Meanwhile, Schneiderman and O’Reilly kept organizing with the mainstream suffragists, negotiating with wealthier women for independence and control. Stay tuned! #Suffrage100Â
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1258880235468206082" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
08/05/2020
<a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/malkiel-theresa-serber" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Theresa Malkiel</a>
Serving two Gods
Rose Schneiderman and Leonora O’Reilly were featured speakers at NAWSA conventions as early as 1907. The leaders of the suffrage mainstream warmed to working class women when they saw how these fiery activists could ignite a crowd. [New thread!] <br /><br />But the middle-class suffragists grew uneasy when the speeches got too Socialist. Even the more daring suffrage groups, like Harriot Stanton Blatch’s Equality League and a group called the American Suffragettes (more on them later!) told Schneiderman and O’Reilly to tone it down. <br /><br />For a while they complied - they wanted to be part of the suffrage movement, and its leaders provided funds they needed to organize working women. But eventually they grew tired of watching their words. Frustratingly, they had nowhere else to go. <br /><br />Suffrage was almost as unwelcome in Socialist settings as Socialism was among suffragists. The men of the labor movement thought suffrage was a bourgeois distraction from the real work of revolution. Publicly the Socialist Party and the AFL supported woman suffrage, but privately they disparaged it as a waste of time. @<a href="https://twitter.com/AnneliseOrleck1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AnneliseOrleck1</a> quotes a letter to Rose Schneiderman from a man who chastised her for squandering her talent: <br /><br />“You cannot possibly serve two Gods--you cannot fill efficiently two places in two movements...<br /><br />"You either work for Socialism and as a result for equality of the sexes or you work for woman suffrage only and neglect Socialism.” <br /><br />Schneiderman and O’Reilly, along with Pauline Newman and Theresa Malkiel and a handful of others, persisted in trying to balance both causes. <br /><br />Newman - whose friends all called her Paul - pointed out that it was easy for Socialist men to dismiss the importance of the vote; they had one. In the early years of the century we can see working class suffragists continually reorganizing. <br /><br />The same cadre of women form and reform, seeking a place to be fully committed to both women and labor. They keep trying to make a way to fund their work & set the agenda without being captive to wealthy women or disdainful Socialist men. How’d that work out? Stay tuned.
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1258735604780740611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
08/05/2020
Scale of atrocity * caliber of organizing
Why do some tragedies generate change and others don’t? <br /><br />109 years ago today the Triangle Shirtwaist fire killed 146 people - mostly Jewish & Italian immigrant women. The fire was key to winning labor & safety laws. The political power women built in its aftermath contributed directly to suffrage. <br /><br />But many horrifying examples of venality and mismanagement don’t lead to any change at all. So why did this one? Here’s a simple equation: Scale of atrocity * caliber of organizing = possibility of change. <br /><br />The Triangle fire was big - it's still one of the biggest industrial disasters in U.S. history. At the time of the fire, immigrant organizers like Rose Schneiderman, Pauline Newman, and Clara Lemlich were fresh from a significant success in the Uprising of 20,000. <br /><br />In 1910, garment workers struck all winter - and won. The leaders built skill and fortitude in that fight, and were ready to take it further. They knew women who died at Triangle; Newman had worked there for years. For the public, the horror of women jumping from the Triangle factory's windows was catalyzing. <br /><br />What will we make from this moment?
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1243005956419719175" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
25/03/2020
#HeretoStay
Labor & suffrage leader Rose Schneiderman was 8 yrs old when she came to the US. Pauline Newman was 11. Luisa Moreno came from Guatemala as a child. They changed the country: women & all workers are safer because of them. Which I guess is what this administration fears most. <br /><br />If anyone says, "Yes, but those immigrants came legally," you can explain that before 1924, no visa was required. Asian immigrants were barred totally until 1943 -really 1965- but everyone else just had to pass health inspection. Follow homeishere.us for info on #DACA.
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1194273357958721536" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Originial thread.</a>
12/11/2019
<a href="https://homeishere.us/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://homeishere.us/</a>
Rosh Hashana, Day 1: Meet Rose Schneiderman
To ring in the Jewish new year, I’m highlighting 2 women whose impact on labor rights for all working people -esp. women- endures. Both fierce union organizers, suffragists, lesbians. Read <a href="https://twitter.com/AnneliseOrleck1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@AnneliseOrleck1's</a> profiles: <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/schneiderman-rose" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rose Schneiderman first</a>. Shana tova!
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1178686028997103616" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
30/09/2019
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/schneiderman-rose