feminism

The American Suffrage Movement: The Good, The Bad, and the Lessons That can be Learned Part I:

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As we mark the anniversary of our nation’s independence, it is important to remember that our founding fathers’ imagined their nation as a domain ruled by equally independent male agents. Until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in August 1920, the status of being a rights-bearing citizen excluded all women. Now it is also true that since the amendment only affirmed women’s right to vote, it ultimately failed to fully dislodge the masculine model of rights-bearing citizenship. Consequently, restrictions on women’s citizenship have persisted in our country’s laws and customs. Even so, we should not dismiss the immense historical importance of the amendment. Why? Because it constitutionally recognized women’s right to represent themselves in the polity and directly participate in the governance of the country.

Further still, there is a lot that can be learned from the tremendous social movement that brought about the passage of federal woman suffrage. For the most part, there are plenty of heroic moments within the history of the woman’s rights campaign. But, there are quite shameful instants too. We should not cast aside these negative parts, but rather recount them with the good, so that we remember there are cautionary elements even when one is on the “right side of history.” On this point, I will discuss in two installments the good, the bad, and what we can learn from the suffrage movement in America.

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Thank you, Phoebe Ensminger Burn

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Harry T. Burn

On a muggy summer morning in August 1920, House Speaker Seth Walker of the Tennessee State Legislature declared: “The hour has come!” He was attempting to call to order a special session that was set to vote on the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. The seventh name on the speaker’s roll call list was Harry Burn, a young twenty-four-year-old Republican lawmaker from McMinn County. Unbeknownst to the suffragists, and Burn’s own colleagues, he carried in his breast pocket a letter from his mother, Phoebe Ensminger Burn. His mother’s note instructed him to “be a good boy” and vote for ratification. When the clerk called Burn’s name, he surprised almost everyone by voting in favor of the amendment

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Historical Research: Philosophy and Practice

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To borrow from Joyce Appleby, I consider myself a practitioner of “practical realism.” I appreciate post-modern theorists’ suspicion of supposed essential universal truths; however, I still strive to obtain a degree of professional objectivity in my reconstructions and interpretations of the past.

Joyce Appleby
Joyce Appleby

In general, I investigate the interplay between language and ideas, particularly in the realms of religion, politics, gender, and the law. My current research examines the dueling civic ideologies embedded in the conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in order to shed light on the gendered ideas that have influenced social initiatives, political positions, and legal philosophies. In total, my work seeks to explore how the construction of ideas through language helps to create communal identities and values.

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Historical Perspectives on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

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In a recent American Historical Association (AHA) roundtable, historians Ruth Bloch, Naomi Lamoreaux, Alonzo Hamby, and John Fea offer insightful discussions on the historical implications of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores.

Ruth Bloch and Naomi Lamoreaux retrace the history of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on corporate personhood to argue that Justice Samuel A. Alito’s opinion breaks with a long line of decisions that treated for-profit companies as “persons’ under the Constitution only for the purpose of protecting property rights-not the liberties-of individual members.”

As well, Alonzo Hamby discusses the relationship between Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Hobby Lobby. He contends that Hobby Lobby reflects a growing cultural conflict that will continue to divide American society well into the foreseeable future.

John Fea reminds us that corporate personhood has a long history; to this point, he notes that in post-Civil War America the Supreme Court on several occasions affirmed that corporations (primarily railroads) were covered under the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet, he also encourages us to further reflect upon the extent to which a for-profit company can posses a soul and practice a religious conscience. As he puts it, “Religious liberty was an inherently Protestant concept. It stemmed from the belief that people could read the Bible for themselves and draw their own religious conclusions. It has always been a religious idea applied to individual human beings.”

Hobby Lobby also touches upon some of the themes that I examine in my own research. As discussed in other posts, my Ph.D. dissertation looks at the competing civic ideologies embedded in the conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from 1920-1963. Throughout the original ERA conflict, ERA supporters documented the numerous times the Supreme Court had restricted women’s standing under the Fourteenth Amendment (Bradwell v. Illinois 1872; Minor v. Happersett 1874; Mackenzie v. Hare 1915; Goesaert v. Cleary 1947, etc.). Put simply, the Court maintained that the Fourteenth Amendment did not guarantee equal treatment before the law for men and women citizens. For ERA proponents, such rulings denied women their full standing as “persons under the law.” Moreover, amendment proponents insisted that the ERA would remedy this problem by affirming complete constitutional sexual equality and ensuring the full constitutional incorporation of women into the sovereign power of the people.

~Rebecca DeWolf, Ph.D.

 

The Fight for Equality Continues: The Problems of Christina Hoff Sommers’s History of Feminism

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Recently Bill Frezza of Real Clear Radio Hour interviewed Christina Hoff Sommers about her new book, Freedom Feminism: Its Surprising History and Why it Matters Today.[1] Frezza also wrote a follow-up piece in the opinion section of Forbes magazine.[2] As Frezza describes it, Sommers’s book uncovers the hidden history of feminism and its implications for women today.

To start, Sommers identifies two major strands of feminism that have shaped the struggle for women’s rights: “egalitarian feminism” and “maternal feminism.” (For those familiar with Sommers’s earlier works, she previously labeled these competing strands as “gender feminism” and “equity feminism”).

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