Frances Willard

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the stage magician, see Frances Willard (magician).

Frances Willard
World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union; first president, National Council of Women of the United States
Signature

Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard (September 28, 1839 – February 17, 1898) was an

United States Constitution were adopted. Willard developed the slogan "Do Everything" for the WCTU and encouraged members to engage in a broad array of social reforms by lobbying, petitioning, preaching, publishing, and education. During her lifetime, Willard succeeded in raising the age of consent in many states as well as passing labor reforms including the eight-hour work day. Her vision also encompassed prison reform, scientific temperance instruction, Christian socialism
, and the global expansion of women's rights.

Early life and education

Frances Willard

Willard was born in 1839 to

Methodists.[2] Frances and her sister Mary attended Milwaukee Normal Institute
, where their mother's sister taught.

In 1858, the Willard family moved to

Garrett Biblical Institute.[1][3]

Teaching career

After graduating from North Western Female College, Willard held various teaching positions throughout the country. She worked at the Pittsburgh Female College, and, as preceptress at the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in New York (later Syracuse University).[4] She was appointed president of the newly founded Evanston College for Ladies in 1871. When the Evanston College for Ladies became the Woman's College of Northwestern University in 1873, Willard was named the first Dean of Women at the university. However, that position was to be short-lived with her resignation in 1874 after confrontations with the University President, Charles Henry Fowler, over her governance of the Woman's College.[5] Willard had previously been engaged to Fowler and had broken off the engagement.[1]

Activist (WCTU and suffrage)

"Let go — but stand by"; Frances Willard learning to ride a bicycle[6]

After her resignation, Willard focused her energies on a new career: the women's

Frances Conant, Mary Crowell Van Benschoten (Willard's first secretary)[8][9] and 43 others to found the Illinois Woman's Press Association.[10]

In 1879, she sought and successfully obtained presidency of the National WCTU. Once elected, she held the post until her death.[11] Her tireless efforts for the temperance cause included a 50-day speaking tour in 1874, an average of 30,000 miles of travel a year, and an average of 400 lectures a year for a 10-year period, mostly with the assistance of her personal secretary, Anna Adams Gordon.

Meanwhile, Willard sought to expand WCTU membership in the South, and met

John Reagan supported temperance laws. When newspapers published a photograph of Willard handing Jefferson Davis a temperance button to give to his wife, Jefferson Davis publicly came out against the referendum (as contrary to states' rights) and it lost. Although Varina Davis and Willard would continue to correspond over the next decade (as Varina moved to New York after her husband's death, and Willard spent most of her last decade abroad); another temperance referendum would not occur for two decades.[12]

As president of the

WCTU, Willard also argued for female suffrage, based on "Home Protection," which she described as "the movement … the object of which is to secure for all women above the age of twenty-one years the ballot as one means for the protection of their homes from the devastation caused by the legalized traffic in strong drink."[13] The "devastation" referred to violent acts against women committed by intoxicated men, which was common both in and outside the home. Willard argued that it was too easy for men to get away with their crimes without women's suffrage.[14] The "Home Protection" argument was used to garner the support of the "average woman," who was told to be suspicious of female suffragists by the patriarchal press, religious authorities, and society as a whole.[15] The desire for home protection gave the average woman a socially appropriate avenue to seek enfranchisement. Willard insisted that women must forgo the notions that they were the "weaker" sex and that they must embrace their natural dependence on men. She encouraged women to join the movement to improve society: "Politics is the place for woman."[16] The goal of the suffrage movement for Willard was to construct an "ideal of womanhood" that allowed women to fulfill their potential as the companions and counselors of men, as opposed to the "incumbrance and toy of man."[14]

Willard's suffrage argument also hinged on her feminist interpretation of Scripture. She claimed that natural and divine laws called for equality in the American household, with the mother and father sharing leadership. She expanded this notion of the home, arguing that men and women should lead side by side in matters of education, church, and government, just as "God sets male and female side by side throughout his realm of law."[14]

Willard's work took to an international scale in 1883 with the circulation of the

British Women's Temperance Association
, whom she visited several times in the United Kingdom.

In 1892 she took part in the St. Louis convention during the formation of the People's (or Populist) Party.[18] The convention was brought a set of principles that was drafted in Chicago, Illinois, by her and twenty-eight of the United States' leading reformers, whom had assembled at her invitation.[18] However, the new party refused to endorse women's suffrage or temperance because it wanted to focus on economic issues.[18]

After 1893, Willard was influenced by the British Fabian Society and became a committed Christian socialist.[19]

Willard Grave stone

Death

In 1898, Willard died quietly in her sleep[20] at the Empire Hotel in New York City after contracting influenza while she was preparing to set sail for England and France. She is buried at Rosehill Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois.[21]

Frances Willard and her sister Mary Thompson Hill Willard are interred at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago. She bequeathed her Evanston home to the WCTU. The Frances Willard House was opened as a museum in 1900 when it also became the headquarters for the WCTU. In 1965 it was elevated to the status of National Historic Landmark.

Legacy

Willard statue on display in the National Statuary Hall
of the Capitol Building

The famous painting, American Woman and her Political Peers,[22] commissioned by Henrietta Briggs-Wall for the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, features Frances Willard at the center, surrounded by a convict, American Indian, lunatic, and an idiot. The image succinctly portrayed one argument for female enfranchisement: without the right to vote, the educated, respectable woman was equated with the other outcasts of society to whom the franchise was denied.[23]

After her death, Willard was the first woman included among America's greatest leaders in

Her statue was designed by Helen Farnsworth Mears and was unveiled in 1905.[24]

Frances E Willard, 5c,
1940 issue

Willard is commemorated on a US postage stamp released on March 28, 1940, as part of the Famous Americans series.[25][26]

The

Indianapolis, Indiana
. The plaque commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of Willard's election as president of the WCTU on October 31, 1879: "In honor of one who made the world wider for women and more homelike for humanity Frances Elizabeth Willard Intrepid Pathfinder and beloved leader of the National and World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union."

There's a small memorial at Richardson Beach in Kingston, Ontario, Canada put there by the Kingston Woman's Christian Temperance Union on Sept. 28, 1939.

Willard appears as one of two main female protagonists in the young adult novel Bicycle Madness by Jane Kurtz.

In 2000, Willard was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[27]


Namesakes

Willard Hall in Temperance Temple, Chicago, was named in her honor.[28]

In 1911, the

Adelaide, South Australia were opened by the South Australian branch of the WCTU.[29][30]

Frances E. Willard elementary school. Evanston, Illinois.

Frances E. Willard Elementary School, Pasadena, California.

Frances E. Willard Elementary School. Became Willard Junior High School, 1960. Tidewater Drive, Norfolk, Virginia.

The Frances Willard House Museum and Archives is located in Evanston, Illinois.[31]

A dormitory at Northwestern University,

Willard Residential College, opened in 1938 as a female dormitory and became the university's first undergraduate co-ed housing in 1970.[32]

The Frances E. Willard School in Philadelphia was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.[33]

The Frances Willard Schoolhouse in Janesville, Wisconsin was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.[34]

Willard Middle School, established in Berkeley, California in 1916, was named in her honor.[35] Willard Park, also in Berkeley and adjacent to the middle school, was dedicated to Frances Willard in 1982.[36]

Frances Willard Elementary School is a public school in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Frances Willard Avenue in Chico, California is named in her honor. She was a guest of John and Annie Bidwell, the town founders and fellow leaders in the prohibitionist movement. The avenue is adjacent to the Bidwell Mansion.

The Frances E. Willard Temperance Hospital operated under that name from 1929 to 1936 in Chicago. It is now Loretto Hospital in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago.[37]

FEW Spirits, a distillery located in Evanston, Illinois, uses Willard's initials as its name.[38][39]

Relationships

The loves of women for each other grow more numerous each day, and I have pondered much why these things were. That so little should be said about them surprises me, for they are everywhere.... In these days when any capable and careful woman can honorably earn her own support, there is no village that has not its examples of 'two hearts in counsel,' both of which are feminine.
– Frances Willard, The Autobiography of an American Woman: Glimpses of Fifty Years, 1889

Contemporary accounts described Willard's friendships and her pattern of long-term domestic assistance from women.[40][41][42] She formed the strongest friendships with co-workers.[43] It is difficult to redefine Willard's 19th-century life in terms of the culture and norms of later centuries, but some scholars describe her inclinations and actions as aligned with same-sex emotional alliance (what historian Judith M. Bennett calls "lesbian-like").[44][45][46][47][48][49]

Controversy over civil rights issues

In the 1890s, Willard came into conflict with African-American journalist and anti-lynching crusader

locusts of Egypt," and "the grog shop is its center of power.... The safety of women, of childhood, of the home is menaced in a thousand localities."[51]

Willard repeatedly denied Wells' accusations and wrote that "the attitude of the society [WCTU] toward the barbarity of lynching has been more pronounced than that of any other association in the United States,"[52] and she maintained that her primary focus was upon empowering and protecting women, including the many African-American members of the WCTU. While it is true that neither Willard nor the WCTU had ever spoken out directly against lynching, the WCTU actively recruited black women and included them in its membership.

After their acrimonious exchange, Willard explicitly stated her opposition to lynching and successfully urged the WCTU to pass a resolution against lynching. She, however, continued to use the rhetoric that Wells alleged incited lynching.[53] In her pamphlets Southern Horrors and The Red Record, Wells linked rhetoric portraying white women as symbols of innocence and purity that black men could not resist, as facilitating lynchings.

Wells also believed that Willard condoned segregation by permitting the practice within WCTU's southern chapters. Under Willard's presidency, the national WCTU maintained a policy of "states rights" which allowed southern charters to be more conservative than their northern counterparts regarding questions of race and the role of women in politics.[54]

Publications

  • Woman and Temperance, or the Work and Workers of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Hartford, Conn: Park Pub. Co., 1883.
  • How to Win: A Book For Girls. NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1886. reprinted 1887 & 1888.
  • Nineteen Beautiful Years, or, Sketches of a Girl's Life. Chicago: Woman's Temperance Publication Association, 1886.
  • Glimpses of Fifty Years: the Autobiography of an American Woman. Chicago: Woman's Temperance Publishing Association, 1889.
  • A Classic Town: The Story of Evanston. Woman's Temperance Publishing Association, Chicago, 1891.
  • President's Annual Address. 1891, Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
  • A Woman of the Century (1893) (ed. Willard, Frances E. & Livermore, Mary A.) - available online at small Wikisource logo Wikisource.
  • A Wheel Within a Wheel. How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle. 1895.
  • Do Everything: a Handbook for the World's White Ribboners. Chicago: Woman's Temperance Publishing Association, [1895?].
  • Occupations for Women. Cooper Union, NY: Success Company. 1897.

See also

Sources

  1. ^
    ISBN 9780742517172
    . Retrieved June 19, 2014.
  2. ^ hedrick, Amanda (April 10, 2011). "Progressive Protestantism: the Life of Frances Willard, 1839–1896". American Religious Experience. Archived from the original on March 2, 2014. Retrieved June 19, 2014.
  3. ^
    ISBN 0-8078-1697-3
    .
  4. ^ "Learning – Frances Willard (1864-1874)". sites.northwestern.edu. Northwestern Libraries. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
  5. ^ "Frances E. Willard: Years of Challenge (1859-1874)". Illinois During the Gilded Age, 1866-1896. Northern Illinois University Libraries. 2007. Archived from the original on May 25, 2010. Retrieved March 24, 2010.
  6. ISBN 9785874228309
    .
  7. ^ "WCTU Publications". June 7, 2012. Archived from the original on June 7, 2012. Retrieved August 22, 2019.
  8. ^ Benschoten, William Henry Van (1907). Concerning the Van Bunschoten Or Van Benschoten Family in America: A Genealogy and Brief History ... (Public domain ed.). A. V. Haight Company. p. 359. Retrieved December 23, 2021. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  9. Newspapers.com. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain
    .
  10. ISBN 0-313-30661-3
    . Retrieved June 19, 2014.
  11. ^ a b "Frances Willard". Encyclopædia Britannica. July 20, 2013. Retrieved June 19, 2014.
  12. ^ Joan Cashin, First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis' Civil War (Harvard University Press 2006) pp. 241-44. 252-253
  13. ^ Willard, Frances Elizabeth. Home protection manual. New York: Published at "The Independent" office, 1879.
  14. ^ a b c Willard, Frances E. (1890). A White Life for Two. Chicago: Women's Temperance Publishing Association.
  15. ^ Frances Willard, "Speech At Queen's Hall, London," June 9, 1894, in Citizen and Home Guard, July 23, 1894, WCTU series, roll 41, frame 27. Reprinted as "The Average Woman," in Slagell, "Good Woman Speaking Well," 619-625.
  16. ISBN 978-0393000399
    . Retrieved June 19, 2014.
  17. ^ "Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard (1839–1898)". Women Christian Temperance Union. Archived from the original on June 12, 2014. Retrieved June 19, 2014.
  18. ^
    OCLC 1096495503
    .
  19. ISBN 0822319918
    .
  20. ISBN 9780807816974
    .
  21. ^ Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 50944). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
  22. ^ Briggs-Wall, Henrietta (1911). "American Woman and Her Political Peers". Library of Congress. Retrieved June 19, 2014.
  23. ^ School, Stanford Law (August 13, 2020). "Some Suffragists in the 19th Century Exploited Existing Stereotypes of the Period to Advance Their Cause, says Stanford Legal Historian". Stanford Law School. Retrieved March 29, 2023.
  24. ^ "FRANCES E. WILLARD". Architect of the Capitol. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
  25. ^ France Elizabeth Willard
  26. ^ Famous Americans Issue
  27. ^ "Willard, Frances E." National Women's Hall of Fame. Retrieved August 22, 2019.
  28. ^ Gordon, Elizabeth Putnam (1924). Women Torch-bearers: The Story of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. National woman's Christian temperance union publishing house. pp. 216–217. Retrieved July 24, 2022. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  29. ^ "Women's Christian Temperance Union". Adelaidia. October 2, 2015. Retrieved July 3, 2019.
  30. ^ "Wakefield Street, Adelaide [B 7386]: Photograph". State Library of South Australia. Retrieved July 3, 2019.
  31. ^ Frances Willard House Museum and Archives Website Retrieved 2016-02-22.
  32. ^ "Willard Residential College". Northwestern University. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
  33. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  34. ^ "Frances Willard Schoolhouse". LandmarkHunter.com. Retrieved June 19, 2014.
  35. ^ "Frances Willard - Willard Middle School". Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  36. ^ "Parks: Willard Park - City of Berkeley, CA". Archived from the original on November 10, 2019. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  37. ^ "The History of Loretto Hospital". Loretto Hospital. Archived from the original on January 24, 2013. Retrieved June 19, 2014.
  38. ^ Maroukian, Francine (February 20, 2015). "How to Build a Distillery in the Birthplace of Prohibition". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved August 22, 2019.
  39. ^ "Behind the Scenes at the F.E.W. Spirits Distillery in Evanston, IL". drinks.seriouseats.com. Retrieved August 22, 2019.
  40. ISBN 0-8090-8703-0
    .
  41. ISBN 0-231-12728-6
    .
  42. ISBN 0-618-05697-1
    .
  43. ISBN 0-231-07488-3
    .
  44. ^ Bennett, Judith M.: '"Lesbian-Like" and the Social History of Lesbianisms' Journal of the History of Sexuality Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (Jan. - Apr., 2000), pp. 1-24
  45. JSTOR 4020149
    .
  46. ISBN 1-59213-269-3
    .
  47. ISBN 0-226-90784-8
    .
  48. ISBN 0-688-13330-4
    .
  49. S2CID 143604951
    .
  50. ISBN 978-0-375-75445-6
    . Retrieved June 19, 2014.
  51. ISBN 978-0060797362
    .
  52. ^ "About Southern Lynchings," Baltimore Herald, 20 October 1895 (Temperance and Prohibition Papers microfilm (1977), section III, reel 42, scrapbook 70, frame 153).
  53. ^ Hackett, Amy (2004). ""Cloaking an Apology for Lawlessness": Ida B. Wells, Frances Willard and the Lynching Controversy, 1890-1894". University of Massachusetts Boston. Archived from the original on April 21, 2016. Retrieved October 14, 2012. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  54. ISBN 978-0-674-06185-9
    .

References

Further reading

Dillon, Mary Earhart (1979). Notable American Women: 1607–1950. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

ISBN 0674627318.[permanent dead link
]

Primary sources

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Frances Willard.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Frances Willard.
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Frances Willard
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frances_Willard&oldid=1217316929"