Washington Lawyer - March/April 2020 - 50

SPECIAL SEC TION
The D.C. Bar is counting down to its
2020 Conference highlighting the
centennial of women's right to vote.
This is the second in a series of
articles that focus on the decadeslong movement that paved the
way for the ratification of the
19th Amendment, paying homage
to the countless women whose
persistence and sacrifice changed
the course of history.

PORTRAITS

of Suffrage's
Overlooked Heroes
By Tracy Schorn

G

enerations of activists fought to ensure voting
rights for women. Luminaries like Susan B.
Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are well
known, but the campaign had many foot soldiers -
women of color, working-class women, Western
pioneers, religious reformers, socialites, newspaper
editors, temperance leaders, and abolitionists.
Like any human rights struggle, there were coalitions,
schisms, and colorful characters. While many activists
for women's suffrage are lesser known, these unsung
heroes fought to challenge the existing social order
and imagine a world with full political participation of
women, a dream that took many lifetimes to achieve.
In honor of the centenary of the 19th Amendment,
here's a look at a few crusaders for women's rights.
50 WASHINGTON LAWYER

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MARCH/APRIL 2020

FRANCES (FANNY) WRIGHT
(1795-1852)

A

Scottish-born writer, lecturer,
and founder of a commune
and a lecture hall, among other
ventures, Wright was an influencer of
her day - and was excoriated for it.
She was called "a female monster" by
clergymen and given the nickname
"The Great Red Harlot of Infidelity"
because of her radical ideas about
birth control, liberalized divorce laws,
women's suffrage, abolition, and
interracial relationships.

Wright was the first woman in the United States in the 1820s to deliver
public lectures to co-ed audiences on political social reform issues.
From a wealthy family, she even bought her own lecture hall in New
York City, a former church, and had it converted into what she called
a "Hall of Science." From 1833 to 1836, her lectures on slavery and
women's suffrage attracted huge audiences of men and women,
leading to the establishment of "Fanny Wright societies."
A promoter of liberty, Wright was also a friend of the French aristocrat
and Revolutionary War hero the Marquis de Lafayette. In a letter to him
she wrote:
I dare say you marvel sometimes at my independent way of
walking through the world just as if nature had made me of
your sex instead of poor Eve's. Trust me, my beloved friend,
the mind has no sex but what habit and education give it, and
I who was thrown in infancy upon the world like a wreck upon
the waters have learned, as well to struggle with the elements
as any male child of Adam.
She became a U.S. citizen in 1825. Buried in Cincinnati, her epitaph
reads: "I have wedded the cause of human improvement, staked on
it my fortune, my reputation and my life."
Washington Lawyer - March/April 2020

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