December 10 – American Women for the Win!

nPostednon December 10, 2015

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nOnnthis date in 1830, “one of the most significant of all American poets,” Emily Dickinson, was born in Massachusetts.

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nOnnthis date in 1869, women were given the right to vote in the WyomingnTerritory.

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nAndnon this date in 1931, Jane Addams became the first American woman tonwin a Nobel Peace Prize.

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EmilynDickinson n

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nEmilynDickinson was quite shy, never married, and eventually becamensomething of a recluse. You can probably guess that this meant thatnshe wasn’t much of a self-promoter. As a matter of fact, fewer than andozen of her poems were published during her lifetime, but when shendied her sister discovered a cache of 1,800 poems! n

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nEvennwhen the breadth of her work was finally known, most of the publicnand even publishers were unimpressed. Those who published her poetrynin the late 1800s and early 1900s usually altered the poems quite anbit to fit the “rules” of the time. n

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Itnwasn’t until the mid-1900s that her unaltered poetry was published,nand the skepticism about the merit of Dickinson’s work began to givenway to praise.

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nWhatnmade Dickinson’s poetry so unusual for her time? Many of her poemsndidn’t have titles; they often contain short lines; they generallynuse slant rhyme (which is kind of a “near rhyme” instead of wordsnending with exactly the same sounds).

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nHeren is an example of a Dickinson poem:

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I’mnNobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s anpair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

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nHow dreary – to be – Somebody!
Hownpublic – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong Junen-
To an admiring Bog!

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nTon learn more about Emily Dickinson, check out the Emily Dickinson Museum website.

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nWomennVoting in Wyoming!

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Sometimesnreally wonderful things happen for less-than-wonderful reasons, andnwomen winning the vote in the Wyoming territory (Wyoming was not yetna state) was probably one of those things. In the 1860s Wyoming was anlarge swath of rugged country that was little-known to the rest ofnthe United States. It was fairly unpopulated, with only 6,000 adultnmales – and only 1,000 adult females! (I presume that NativenAmericans were not included in these counts.) n

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nSonWyoming, by 1869, needed more publicity, more people, andnparticularly more women.

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nIngather some of the territorial legislators figured, what could be anbetter way to attract newspaper stories and to lure women to thenterritory than to grant women suffrage!

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nApparentlynsome of the men really did care about women having the right to vote.nWilliam Bright had been convinced by his wife that women not beingnable to vote was very unfair, and Edward M. Lee had been arguing fornwomen’s suffrage for years.

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nButnthe less lovely motivations persuaded other legislators to backnBright and Lee’s bill, and Wyoming became the first territory ornstate in the U.S. to grant women the vote!

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nTon find out what happened to women’s suffrage in Wyoming when it becamen a state, check out this brief video.

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nJanenAddams

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nTodaynis Jane Addams Day in Illinois (a holiday celebrated since 2007). n

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nJanenAdams was a writer, a philosopher, and a leader in women’s rights, social reforms,nand world peace. She did an incredible amount for the nation and thenworld, although some of her lasting contributions sound like alphabetnsoup! I’m talking about founding AAUW and IWPA, and helping to foundnACLU, NAACP, and IWLPF.

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nHerenis what all those acronyms stand for:

nAAUWn= American Association of University WomenIWPAn= Illinois Woman’s Press AssociationACLUn= American Civil Liberties UnionNAACPn= National Association for the Advancement of Colored PeopleIWLPFn= International Women’s League for Peace and Freedom

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nGivennthe fact that Addams was born in September and died in May, why isnDecember 10 Jane Addams Day? Today is the anniversary of hernreceiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

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