|
|
Vol. 5, No. 1
|
December 2017 / January 2018
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Historic Marker to Mother Jones Unveiled on Route 66
Near Mother Jones' Final Resting Place
|
|
 |
Brian O'Brien and Brigid Duffy at the
Mother Jones Monument |
|
The historic marker to Mother Jones was dedicated in a ceremony on December 11, 2017. Brigid Duffy spoke as "Mother Jones" and
Professor Rosemary Feurer, director of the Mother Jones Museum and Heritage Project, announced that the Illinois Humanities Council had recently awarded the Project a grant to produce "Stories from the Coalfields" to accompany the marker and indoor exhibit. They were joined by
Brian O'Brien, Ireland's Consul General to Chicago and the Midwest USA and representatitves of Senator Dick Durbin, the Illinois State Historical Society, the Illinois Labor History Society and the Illinois AFL-CIO.
The marker is located on I-55 southbound at the busy Coalfield Rest Area (mile marker 65), about 15 miles south of Springfield on a stretch of the interstate that is also alongside historic Route 66. Both the marker and exhibit highlight the important role of Illinois coal miners and their heroine, Mother Jones, a Cork-born Irish immigrant. The marker will be seen by over a million people a year who take a break at the rest stop.
After the ceremony, actor Brigid Duffy, representing the Irish American Heritage Center and the Working Women's History Project, was joined by Brian O'Brien in laying a wreath at the Mother Jones Monument in the Union Miners Cemetery at Mt. Olive, Illinois.
|
|
..............................................................................................................................................
|
WWHP Tackles the Timely Topic
of the (Power of the) Vote
"March to the Polls" was the mantra of the 2018 Women's March Chicago. American women are becoming hyper aware of their voting power. Whose votes pushed Doug Jones, a long-shot, to victory in Alabama's senatorial race? Women's votes, especially African American women's votes.
And in Virginia? Women voters made it possible for the Democratic candidate to win the governorship of that state. Virginia women were also motivated to vote for several female candidates who defeated incumbent Republicans in the state General Assembly races.
So women get it - women have the power of the vote. Now WWHP and Her Story Theater have organized three events to explore this topic.
February 17, 24 and March 3, 2018
3PM-5PM Saturdays
PERFORMANCE, PANEL DISCUSSION, ART EXHIBIT
at the DANK Haus 4740 N. Western Ave, Chicago, IL 4th Flr. Gallery Space
Free to Public.
Make Reservations online:
Each Saturday matinee will feature a performance of Radical Ideas! Women and the Vote by Mary Bonnett. The play tells the stories of three suffragists who won partial suffrage for Illinois women in 1913. That made Illinois the first state east of the Mississippi to grant women the right to vote.
Following each play, a panel of women representing diverse organizations will discuss current efforts to harness the power of the vote.
|
|
..............................................................................................................................................
|
|
Three Ladies in a Bathtub
by Jess Kozik
|
|
|
| Portrait Monument to Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony |
|
In the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, currently (although at one point removed) rests a monument that not only recognizes three women of perseverance and conviction, but is also the story of the unfinished fight for equality. The monument is a sculpture of Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton created by artist and activist Adelaide Johnson.
Adelaide Johnson lived by the motto "know what you want and surely you will get it." She had a passion for arts at an early age, and that passion was nurtured by her family. She graduated from the St. Louis School of Design, and after saving up money working as a seamstress, opened an art studio at the Central Music Hall in Chicago. While working there, she was involved in a tragic elevator accident leaving her with a cracked skull and broken leg, among several other injuries. She sued the Central Music Hall and won, receiving $15,000. The money was used to help launch her artistic pursuits.
After years of honing her craft, Johnson found herself pulled into the suffrage movement. At a National Woman's Suffrage Association meeting, she met
Susan B. Anthony
. After that meeting, Johnson was inspired to sculpt a model of Anthony. Anthony encouraged her to also make statues of
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and
Lucretia Mott
. The three busts went on to be displayed at the 1893 World Fair in Chicago. These works were what led to the National Women's Party reaching out to Johnson for a commemorative piece. This piece would end up being named the Portrait Monument to Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. It is a 16,000-pound marble sculpture topped with the busts of Anthony, Mott, and Stanton. Part of the statue was left unfinished to signify the long road ahead for true gender equality. The statue was inscribed with "Women, first denied a soul, now arisen declared an entity to be reckoned." However, this inscription would later be removed.
The statue was far from universally praised. Many congressmen found the piece unorthodox and made comments embedded in misogyny. One went as far as stating it resembled "three ladies in a bathtub." After long and intense talks, the sculpture was finally agreed to be displayed in the Capitol and was unveiled in the Capitol Rotunda on February 15, 1921. However the very next day it was moved underground and the inscription was removed. Gender equality knocked, and the door was opened only to be slammed quickly in its face.
One could look at this sculpture and see it simply as a representation of three women who fought for gender equality. The statue may indeed represent these diligent women, but also the women that fought for years for the return of the statue to the Rotunda for all to see. Millions of people pass through the Rotunda each year. Having the sculpture there serves as a reminder of the work done for women's rights, as well as for the unfinished work that is yet to be done. It was the work of National Women's History Museum that successfully moved the statue from the Capitol's basement back to the Rotunda. The organization's founding "mother," Karen Staser, was one of the key people involved in the fight for its return to its initial home in the Capitol. The incorporators of the National Women's History Museum raised the money for the cost of the move of the statue and worked to get the move authorized by the House and Senate. In May 1997, the statue returned to the Rotunda, where it remains displayed today.
|
|
..............................................................................................................................................
|
|
|
|
| |
|
