Me Inside and Out

A place to exhale

Permalink coolchicksfromhistory: Harriet Tubman 1911
Permalink auntada: “Stagecoach” Mary Fields (c. 1832-1914) was born a slave in Tennessee and following the Civil War, she moved to the pioneer community of Cascade, Montana. In 1895, when she was around 60 years old, Fields became the second woman and first African American carrier for the US Postal Service. Despite her age, she never missed a day of work in the ten years she carried the mail and earned the nickname “Stagecoach” for her reliability. Fields loved the job, despite the many dangers and difficulties such as wolves and thieves (she was an excellent marksman, defending her route with a revolver and a rifle). The people of Cascade so loved and respected Fields, that each year on her birthday they closed the schools to celebrate the occasion. They even built her a new house when she lost her home in a fire in 1912.
Permalink coolchicksfromhistory: Some of the 220 black students facing charges of contempt for demonstrating against segregated movie theaters. Tallahassee, 1963
Permalink coolchicksfromhistory: Lowell - Portuguese mill girls Thirty miles from Boston, Lowell, Massachusetts was a major site in the US Industrial Revolution and a particularly important site in the history of female labor.  Beginning with the opening of the Merrimack factory in 1823, Lowell was transformed from a farming community into an industrial hub of 32 mills employing approximately 8,000 workers.  The majority of mill employees were young women between 16 and 35 who often worked only a few years in the mills before marrying. The original Lowell Mill Girls were American born women from New England farm towns.  The hours were long compared to other factories of the era and workers lived in factory owned boarding houses.  Educational and organizing opportunities began to develop within the mostly female community.  With the help of a local minister, the girls began to publish the Lowell Offering, a monthly compendium of creative writing and journalism written by the Mill Girls.  The Lowell Mill Girls went on strike twice during the 1830s in response to wage cuts.  Although both strikes were quickly broken, they showed the determination of the Mill Girls.  In the 1840s, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association was formed to petition the Massachusetts state legislature for a 10 hour work day.  Although they were again unsuccessful as the legislature did not feel they should interfere with the regulation of private industry, the Lowell Mill Girls were an active force in the labor movement of the early industrial age, forming connections with other labor groups. Expansions in the Lowell textile industry and difficulty recruiting workers for such a low wage job led to a diversification of the Lowell workforce.  From the 1840s through the 1860s, Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine were the largest group of mill workers.  As Irish immigrants moved upwards, French-Canadian, Greek, Polish, Jewish, Armenian and Portuguese immigrants took their places at the mill. Technical improvements in other mills lead to a slow shut down of Lowell mills in the 1920s and 1930s with the last mill closing in the 1950s.  Today, the Lowell Mills are part of the National Park system.  The student newspaper at UMass- Lowell is named the Lowell Offering in honor of the Lowell Mill Girls.  
Permalink wisdomfromthewestwing: To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex… which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation. Susan B. Anthony, Speech After Being Convicted of Voting, 1872
Permalink coolchicksfromhistory:  NAACP 50th anniversary, 1964.
Permalink coolchicksfromhistory: Portrait of Zitkala-Sa by Gertrude Kasebier, about 1898. Zitkala-Sa was the pen name of writer and activist Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (1876-1938).  She exposed the hardships faced by students at Native American boarding schools by writing about her own experiences as a student and as a teacher.  Zitkala-Sa also published a book of tribal folklore called Old Indian Legends and composed The Sun Dance Opera with composer William F. Hanson.  In 1930, Zitkala-Sa founded the National Council of American Indians, the first trans-tribal Native American organization to lobby the government for better treatment of Natives.  A selection of Zitkala-Sa’s writings can be read online here. An analysis of Gertrude Kasebier’s portraits of Zitkala-Sa can be read here.
Permalink ourpresidents: “Whatever is asked of us, I am sure we can accomplish it” -Eleanor Roosevelt On the evening of the Pearl Harbor attacks, Eleanor Roosevelt was to give one of her regular radio addresses.  Mrs. Roosevelt set aside her previously prepared text and became the first public figure to speak to the Nation after the attack.  This page is from the draft of her radio address, December 7, 1941. -from FDR Day by Day
Permalink staff: Neat! AddThis just published their 2011 stats on “sharing” across the web. It looks like you guys have been busy. :)
Permalink