Thomas Wentworth Higginson - More than a Mentor

 

Post by Doris McCraw

aka Angela Raines

Photo (C) Doris McCraw

Have you heard of Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson? How about Emily Dickenson? Maybe Helen (Hunt) Jackson? 

Col. Higginson mentored and edited both. He also led one of the all-Black regiments in the Civil War. In all honesty, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Born December 22, 1823, in Cambridge, MA., and passed on May 9,1911, in Cambridge, MA. He entered Harvard at 13 and graduated at 18. He later returned to Harvard Divinity School, where he received another degree and was ordained as a Unitarian minister at 24.

He was also an abolishist, a supporter of women's suffrage, an author, and a poet. He served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives for two terms.     

Higginson during the Civil War
from Wikipedia

For those who are interested, Higginson wrote the following:

Army Life in a Black Regiment 

Common Sense About Women 

Women and Men

For more about Higginson, there is a recent biography, "A Man on Fire: The Worlds of Thomas Wentworth Higginson", by Douglas R. Egerton. You can read an overview on the Wikipedia page: Higginson - Wikipedia

Until Next Time:

Doris McCraw

Angela Raines - Amazon

Doris A. McCraw - Amazon

The 19th Amendment: Women’s Right To Vote

 

By Kristy McCaffrey

The 19^th Amendment was passed into law on August 26, 1920, when the U.S. Secretary of State certified that it had been ratified by the required 36 states.

It stated: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. 

The true meaning of this amendment, however, was less clear. Laws reserving the ballot for men became unconstitutional rather than guaranteeing any woman the vote.

When women appeared in the fall of 1920 to register to vote they faced many obstacles, racism being the biggest. Although the 15^th Amendment prohibited states from denying the vote based on race, by 1920 such practices as poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses had kept many Black men from casting their ballots. Added to that were the less obvious tactics of intimidation and threats of lynching.

Still, many Black women showed up to vote in 1920, but were turned away when they “failed to comply with the constitutional tests.” In some places such as Savannah, Georgia, officials enforced a rule that women couldn’t vote because they were not “entitled … because of state law which requires registration six months before an election.” This ruling meant that no women in the state of Georgia could vote in the 1920 election, Black or white.

But there were successes. In St. Louis, Missouri, a teacher named Fannie Williams set up a “suffrage school” where women could teach one another how to pay poll taxes and pass literacy tests. It was reported that nearly every woman in the city, Black or white, registered to vote that season. In California, Illinois, and New York, where women’s suffrage had become law before the 19^th Amendment was ratified, many Black women were able to cast their vote.

Today, however, despite the 15^th and 19^th Amendments, many American women aren’t able to vote. A woman’s access to the polls is still largely determined by where she lives, and due to past segregation policies, this still affects lower income women of color.