1918 - Human Rights, Social Justice

Human Rights, Social Justice

Southern whites continue to lynch blacks for such alleged "crimes" as having bad reputations, refusing to give up a farm, using offensive language, slapping a child, stealing hogs, or (in 19 percent of cases) for alleged rape. A Valdosta, Georgia, mob lynches the husband of Mary Turner in June; she learns of his death, and although in her 8th month of pregnancy vows to find those responsible, swearing out warrants for their arrest, but a mob of several hundred indignant white men and women decide to "teach her a lesson." Tying her ankles together, they hang her from a tree head down, douse her clothing with gasoline, burn them from her body, and while she is still alive someone takes a knife used for splitting hogs to open her belly, her unborn infant spills to the ground, whereupon the mob stomps the child to death and then fires hundreds of bullets into Turner's body. Lynchings remain common throughout the Southern states that continue to be home to 80 percent of the nation's blacks; with newspapers sometimes announcing when and where they will be held, parents send notes to schools asking that their children be excused to attend the events, special "excursion" trains carry spectators to the sites, and parents lift up their children to let them see.

White supremacist Sen. Benjamin R. "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman (D. S.C.) dies at Washington, D.C., July 3 at age 70 (he suffered strokes in 1908 and 1910 but was reelected in 1912).

Suffragist Alice Paul gains release from jail in January and President Wilson says woman suffrage is urgently needed as a "war measure." A resolution providing for a U.S. Woman Suffrage Amendment passes the House of Representatives in January, but the Senate rejects the resolution for a third time October 1 despite a rousing speech that day from President Wilson, who asks the Senators, "The strange revelations of this war having made many things new and plain to governments as well as to peoples, are we alone to refuse to learn the lesson, are we alone to ask and take the utmost that our women can give, service and sacrifice of every kind, and still say that we do not see that they merit the title that gives them the right to stand by our side in the guidance of the affairs of their nation and ours? We have made partners of the women in this war. Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?" (see 1919).

Suffragist-reformer-art collector Bertha Palmer dies of breast cancer at Osprey, Florida, May 5 at age 67, having doubled the value of the estate left by her late husband, Potter, in 1902. U.S. war plants have employed 1 million women, but many suffragists have followed the lead of pacifists Carrie Chapman Catt and Jane Addams in opposing anything that supported the war effort. Few labor unions accept women, whose health is neglected and who generally receive less than men for equivalent work.

German, Austrian, and Polish women gain the right to vote on the same basis as men (see Russia, 1917; Netherlands, 1919).

British women over age 30 gain the right to vote under terms of the Fourth Franchise Bill, passed last year, which also grants suffrage to all men over age 21. A new Representation of the People Act enfranchises about 6 million women; Emmeline Pankhurst has favorably influenced masculine opinion by persuading women to do war work and has helped obtain passage of the Franchise Bill and the new legislation (see 1913; 1928). A law enacted November 21 permits women to be members of Parliament, and in the Irish elections December 14 Countess Markievicz, still in Holloway Gaol, is elected to the Irish parliament (the Dail Eireann; see 1919). Women in England, Scotland, and Wales vote for the first time in a national election December 28.

Nova Scotia grants female suffrage (see 1917), and the Ottawa government grants full female suffrage in federal elections. Suffragist Clara MacDonald Denison, 51, has worked to persuade the provincial legislatures to let women vote (see New Brunswick, 1919).