1912 | Human Rights, Social Justice
Human Rights, Social Justice
The African National Congress has its beginnings in the South African Native National Congress founded January 8 at Bloemfontein, where Xhosa, Zulu, and other tribal chiefs have gathered with heads of religious groups to protect the rights of native peoples from encroachment by whites (see Gandhi, 1906; Mines and Works Act, 1911; Natives' Land Act, 1913).
London police arrest English suffragists Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence in early March following demonstrations (Pankhurst and two others have broken the windows of Prime Minister Asquith's residence at 10 Downing Street after leaving a note for him). Annie Kenney takes over the WSPU for 2 months while Pankhurst and the Pethick-Lawrences are in Holloway Gaol. Christabel Pankhurst has not been allowed to practice law and is joined by her mother in repudiating the Pethick-Lawrences after their release. The Pankhursts join the United Suffragists, and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence voyages to America to support U.S. suffragists.
Italians gain almost universal male suffrage under legislation adopted June 29. The measure also provides that salaries be paid members of Parliament. Italy's lower house of Parliament votes 209 to 48 against giving women the right to vote (but see 1919).
Daisy Bates applies for the position of Protector of Aborigines in Australia's Northern Territory (see 1902); she has had more experience in living with the natives than anyone else, but her application for the salaried job is rejected on the ground that a woman would need a police escort, which would hamper her work among people who regard their wives as chattels that can be sold or traded and whose population is being ravaged by sexually transmitted diseases contracted from white settlers. Given the unpaid job of Honorary Protector in the Eucla district, she is obliged in June to put her 183,000-acre cattle station up for sale in order to finance the work that will occupy her for more than 30 years (see Nonfiction, 1938).
A mass meeting of the Wage Earner's League and the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League in the Great Hall of the People at New York's Cooper Union April 22 protests the state legislature's failure to pass a resolution endorsing female suffrage. Labor leader Rose Schneiderman attacks a state senator who has said that if women were to get "into the arena of politics with its alliances and distressing contests—the delicacy is gone, the charm is gone, and you emasculize woman"; rising to her full four feet nine inches, she says, "I wonder if it will add to my height when I get the vote . . . It is just too ridiculous, this talk of becoming less womanly." She speaks of women in laundries standing 13 to 14 hours each day in terrible steam and heat with their hands in hot starch. "Certainly these women won't lose any more of their beauty and charm by putting a ballot in a ballot box once a year than they are likely to standing in the . . . laundries all year round."
A New York suffrage parade marches up Fifth Avenue from Washington Square beginning at sundown May 4. The 10,000 marchers reverently carry huge banners bearing the names of the late Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Julia Ward Howe, 1,000 sympathetic men join them, as does a contingent led by New York-born feminist Inez Milholland, 25 (Vassar '09), wearing Grecian robes and mounted on a white horse. Chivalry may entertain "people of noble leisure," she says, but "privileges and chivalry" have done nothing for women teachers seeking equal pay. The laws "must remember the masses of mankind," nor should sentimentality be used to exclude women "from the ideals of independence and power." An overflow crowd that includes women of all ages, occupations, and professions packs Carnegie Hall to hear speeches urging that women be given the vote.
Male voters in four U.S. states—Michigan, Kansas, Oregon, and the new state of Arizona—vote in the November 6 elections to adopt constitutional amendments granting female suffrage, but Wisconsin voters reject the proposal.
France's Parlement votes in November to repeal article 340 of the Napoleonic Civil Code, easing restrictions against women, but French women will not vote in general elections until 1945.