Hi Ginny (Moorestown lit the Christmas tree at the Community House last night)
I didn't ask for a book for Christmas, but i did ask everyone to donate money to a book project. Amelia Fry had been interviewing Alice Paul for several decades and doing research for a book on AP's life. She died several years ago before writing the book. Jill Zahniser, an early board member of the Alice Paul Institute and now a professor of gender studies, has taken all of Amelia's research, and added her own, to write and publish a book "Alice Paul: Claiming Power". The book covers AP's early life up to the time of the passing of the suffrage amendment in 1920. She is now moving all those materials to the Alice Paul Institute at AP's homestead in Mt Laurel, NJ, to archive them for future researchers to use.
We needed at least $12,000 to move the materials from St Paul, where Jill now lives, to NJ and to digitize the tapes that Amelia had made of her interviews with Alice. So i asked everyone of my family to buy me no presents, but to donate money to API to have that happen. I had 3 wonderful afternoons this week with Jill Zahniser at API, refiling materials into archival folders and boxes. It was so hard not to stop and read all those interesting bits of information. But i live close by and can always go to API and read them.
So i feel like my Christmas presents will be alive for all future researchers of local Quakers, the English suffrage movement (AP while studying at the London Schl of Economics learned about civil disobedience and demonstrations at the knee of the Pankhurst mother and dgts who led the English movement), and the American suffrage movement from 1910-1920 when it passed. When you see pictures of the suffragists standing at the White House with their banners so Pres Wilson will see them as he drove into the White House, that was AP's idea and organization. She was arrested and jailed and force fed in both England and the U.S.
After 1920 she got 3 law degrees (she's the most educated women i've ever read about: BA in biology from Swarthmore, masters in social work from Columbia, PhD from U of Pa, 3law degrees) so she could write an Equal Rights Amendment that could get passed in Congress and fought for 52 years to get Congress to pass it, which happened in 1972. Unfortunately only 35 of the 38 states needed for ratification did so. The ERA is still being introduced in every session of Congress.
She also helped Jewish refugees escaping from the Nazis during WWII, and worked with Eleanor Roosevelt on the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and fought to get "sex" added to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I hope someone will right a book on her life from 1920 to the 70s.
Jean
