The Party of Susan B. Anthony

The Republican Party isn't sexist. It's the "Party of Susan B. Anthony" according to Marsha Blackburn, who noted that the first woman to vote was a Republican. Try to vote, anyway, as Anthony was subsequently indicted by an all-male grand jury and ultimately found guilty of the infraction and forced to pay a fine for illegally voting in the 1872 Presidential election, presumably casting her vote for U.S. Grant.

Ms. Blackburn doesn't mention any names. She sufficiently blurs the edges of her references, like singling out that the first female member of Congress was a Republican (Jeanette Rankin} who actually served before universal women's suffrage, as Montana allowed women to vote and represent the state prior to 1919. I guess for Marsha, it is only firsts that matter.

The Push for the 19th amendment

After the Nineteenth amendment was passed during Wilson's administration, which she conveniently doesn't reference, the first 8 out of 10 female governors were Democrats, as the Democratic Party had essentially adopted the progressive agenda after the Republican Party had turned its back on Progressivism.

In fact, the grass roots level of this ideology can be traced to William Jennings Bryan, who delivered his famous "Cross of Gold" speech at the 1896 Democratic Convention. He strongly supported Women's Suffrage. Bryan won the Democratic nomination only to lose to McKinley in the general election.

This was a theme Teddy Roosevelt ran with in his 1904 re-election bid, much to the chagrin of the Grand Old Party, which had become a Party of Plutocrats. But, even TR couldn't deliver on universal suffrage. In fact, he didn't fully endorse women's suffrage until 1912, when he made a second bid for the White House as a Progressive candidate, much to the chagrin of the GOP, who felt he split the Republican vote and gave the election to the Democrats. Taft was their man.

Kennedy signing the Equal Pay Act, 1963

Ms. Blackburn doesn't expect her listeners to delve too deeply into any of this. She just wants her listeners to note the R by the name of prominent early women's suffrage leaders, so that it is understood that Republicans long supported equal rights. If that is the case then why is it so difficult for contemporary Republicans to embrace an Equal Pay Bill? After all, they voted overwhelmingly for the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

Comments

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

Search This Blog