Rebecca Latimer Felton
Rebecca Latimer Felton | |
---|---|
United States Senator from Georgia | |
In office November 21, 1922[1] – November 22, 1922 | |
Appointed by | Thomas W. Hardwick |
Preceded by | Thomas E. Watson |
Succeeded by | Walter F. George |
Personal details | |
Born | Rebecca Ann Latimer June 10, 1835 Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
Resting place | Oak Hill Cemetery |
Political party | Democratic |
Spouse | William Harrell Felton |
Education | Madison Female College |
Rebecca Ann Felton (née Latimer; June 10, 1835 – January 24, 1930) was an American writer, politician, white supremacist, and slave owner who was the first woman to serve in the United States Senate, serving for only one day.[2][3] She was a prominent member of the Georgia upper class who advocated for prison reform, women's suffrage and education reform. Her husband, William Harrell Felton, served in both the United States House of Representatives and the Georgia House of Representatives, and she helped organize his political campaigns. Historian Numan Bartley wrote that by 1915 Felton "was championing a lengthy feminist program that ranged from prohibition to equal pay for equal work yet never accomplished any feat because she held her role because of her husband."[4]
A major figure in American first-wave feminism, Felton was also a white supremacist and the last slave owner to serve in the Senate. She spoke vigorously in favor of lynching African Americans, under the pretense of protecting the sexual purity of European-American women. Most often the African Americans whom she admonished were falsely accused of rape.[5]
The most prominent woman in the state of Georgia during the Progressive Era, she was honored near the end of her life by a symbolic one-day appointment to the Senate. Felton was sworn in on November 21, 1922, and served just 24 hours. At the age of 87, she was the oldest freshman senator to enter the Senate. Felton was the only woman to have served as a senator from Georgia until the appointment of Kelly Loeffler in 2020, nearly a hundred years later.
Early life
Felton was born in
Based on her autobiography, Felton's ancestors were Virginians and Marylanders before settling in Georgia. As per family tradition, she traced her ancestry to England from the 1600s.[8]In October 1853, she married Dr. William Harrell Felton at her home, and she moved to live with him on his plantation just north of Cartersville, Georgia. She gave birth to five children, one daughter and four sons. Only one, Howard Erwin Felton, survived childhood. In the aftermath of the Civil War, their plantation was destroyed. Because they were now unable to rely on slave labor as a means of producing income, Dr. Felton returned to farming as a way to earn money until they had enough savings to open a school. Felton and her husband opened Felton Academy in Cartersville, where she and her husband both taught.[9]
Women's suffrage
By joining the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in 1886, Rebecca Latimer Felton was able to achieve stature as a speaker for equal rights for white women.[citation needed] Upon her entrance into the public realm, independent of her husband's political career, in the late 19th century, Felton attempted to employ middle-class men to help middle-class women achieve equal status in society. She believed that it was necessary for men to be held accountable, and, during her 1887 address at the Women's Christian Temperance Union state convention, she argued that women were actively fulfilling their duties as wives and mothers, but that men undervalued their importance.[10] She argued that women should have more power inside of the home, with more influence on the decision-making process and proper education being provided both to wives and daughters; she further stated that women should have economic independence through this education, training, and later employment, and that women should have more influence over the children.[11] In 1898, Felton wrote "Textile Education for Georgia Girls" as an attempt to convince Georgia legislators that education for girls was necessary. In this article, she argued that it was a man's responsibility to take care of his wife and children. Therefore, it was his responsibility to ensure his daughters' rights and opportunities were equal to his sons'.[12]
However, this strategy was not working, and, in 1900, Felton joined the women's suffrage movement. This move led her to work for women's rights, including the right to vote, the progressive movement, free public education for women, and admittance into public universities.[13] A prominent activist for women's suffrage in Georgia, Felton found many opponents in anti-suffragist Georgians such as Mildred Lewis Rutherford and Dorothy Blount Lamar. During a 1915 debate with Rutherford and other anti-suffragists before the Georgia legislative committee, the chairman allowed each of the anti-suffragists to speak for 45 minutes but demanded Felton stop speaking after 30 minutes. Felton ignored him and spoke for an extra 15 minutes, at one point making fun of Rutherford and implicitly accusing her of hypocrisy. However, the Georgia legislative committee did not pass the suffrage bill.[14] Georgia was later the first state to reject the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution when it was proposed in 1919, and, unlike most other states in the Union, Georgia did not allow women to vote in the 1920 presidential election.[15] Women in Georgia were not given the right to vote until 1922.
Felton criticized what she saw as the hypocrisy of Southern men who boasted of superior Southern "chivalry" but opposed women's rights, and she expressed her dislike of the fact that Southern states resisted white women's suffrage longer than other regions of the United States. She wrote, in 1915, that women were denied fair political participation
except in the States which have been franchised by the good sense and common honesty of the men of those States—after due consideration, and with the chivalric instinct that differentiates the coarse brutal male from the gentlemen of our nation. Shall the men of the South be less generous, less chivalrous? They have given the Southern women more praise than the man of the West—but judged by their actions Southern men have been less sincere. Honeyed phrases are pleasant to listen to, but the sensible women of our country would prefer more substantial gifts....[16]
Racial views
After she was married at age eighteen, Felton and her husband owned slaves before the American Civil War,[17] and she was the last member of Congress to have been a slave owner.[18]
Felton was a white supremacist. She claimed, for instance, that the more money that Georgia spent on black people's education, the more crimes black people committed.[22] For the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, she "proposed a southern exhibit 'illustrating the slave period,' with a cabin and 'real colored folks making mats, shuck collars, and baskets—a woman to spin and card cotton—and another to play banjo and show the actual life of [the] slave—not the Uncle Tom sort.'" She wanted to display "the ignorant contented darky—as distinguished from Harriet Beecher Stowe's monstrosities."[22]
Felton considered "young blacks" who sought equal treatment "half-civilized gorillas", and ascribed to them a
Felton also advocated more
When there is not enough religion in the pulpit to organize a crusade against sin; nor justice in the court house to promptly punish crime; nor manhood enough in the nation to put a sheltering arm about innocence and virtue – if it needs lynching to protect woman's dearest possession from the ravening human beasts – then I say lynch, a thousand times a week if necessary.[29]
— Mrs. W.H. Felton, August 11, 1898
Newspapers reprinted
Manly was interviewed by the Baltimore Sun three days after the massacre, and he stated that he only had wished to defend "defamed colored men" libeled by Felton. He said that his editorial had been distorted by white newspapers. Felton's response appeared in the November 16 issue of the Raleigh News and Observer: "When the negro Manly attributed the crime to intimacy between negro men and white women of the South the slanderer should be made to fear a lyncher's rope rather than occupy a place in New York newspapers."[5]
In 1899, a massive crowd of white Georgians arrested, tortured, and lynched a black man,
Day as a senator
Final years
Felton was interviewed on film on April 9, 1929 at her home in Georgia, discussing her political accomplishments and her memories of witnessing part of the Trail of Tears around the year 1838. The interview was created for Fox Movietone News.[36] Felton continued to write and lecture until her final days, finishing her book, The Romantic Story of Georgia's Women, shortly before her death in Atlanta in 1930. Her remains were interred in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Cartersville.[2]
Notable writings
- "The Country Home" (1898–1920) – recurring article within the Atlanta Journal[37]
- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics (1911)
- Country Life in Georgia in the Days of my Youth (1919)
- The Romantic Story of Georgia's Women (1930) OCLC 33940186
See also
Notes
- ^ "U.S. Senate: Rebecca Felton and One Hundred Years of Women Senators".
- ^ a b "Mrs. Felton Dies. Appointed for One-Day Term From Georgia, She Said She Hoped to See Women in Senate. Active Almost to the Last, She Had Gone to Atlanta at 94 to Attend to School Business". The New York Times. January 25, 1930. Retrieved February 3, 2009.
- ^ Jennifer Steinhauer (March 21, 2013). "Once Few, Women Hold More Power in Senate". The New York Times. Retrieved March 30, 2014.
- ISBN 978-0-8203-0668-1. Retrieved September 22, 2022.
- ^ a b Zucchino 2020, p. 83-84,87–89,280–281.
- ISBN 978-0-7627-1270-0.
- OCLC 318876104.
- ^ https://www.google.com/books/edition/Country_Life_in_Georgia_in_the_Days_of_M/gHsLIvQ_BN0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=englishmen
- ^ Latimer Felton, Rebecca (1930). The Romantic Story of Georgia's Women. Atlanta, Georgia: Atlanta Georgian and Sunday American.
- ^ Latimer Felton, Rebecca (1919). Country Life in the Days of my Youth. Atlanta, Georgia: Index Printing Company. p. 294.
- ^ Whites, LeeAnn (2005). Gender Matters: Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Making of the New South. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 181.
- ^ Mrs. W.H. Felton. "Textile Education for Georgia Girls", in Hargrett Rare Books and Manuscript Library, UGA, Manuscript Collection 81
- ^ Martin. More than Petticoats. pp. 52–53.
- ^ Phillips LaCavera, Tommie (October 30, 2001). "Among Clarke County's notable women were first black female education administrator; vocal opponent of women's suffrage". Athens Banner-Herald. Archived from the original on April 20, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2009.
- ISBN 978-0-8203-2329-9.
- ISBN 978-0-8203-1743-4. Retrieved September 22, 2022.
- ^ Felton, Rebecca Latimer (1919). Country Life in Georgia in the Days of My Youth. Atlanta: Index Printing Company. p. 253.
rebecca latimer felton owned slaves.
- ISBN 978-0-7627-6439-6.
- ^ a b Holman, J. A. of The Atlanta Journal (August 26, 1898). "Mrs. Felton Speaks / She Makes a Sensational Speech Before the Agricultural Society". The Wilmington Weekly Star. p. 1 – via Wikimedia Commons. The Weekly Star reprinted Holman's Atlanta Journal article. Speech was on August 11, 1897.
- ^ a b "A Horrid Slander / The Most Infamous That Ever Appeared in Print in This State". The Wilmington Weekly Star. November 4, 1898. p. 4 – via Wikimedia Commons. The Weekly Star reprinted Manly's August 18, 1898, editorial from The Daily Record.
- ^ a b "Citizens Aroused / Emphatic Demand Made That the Editor of the Infamous Daily Record Leave the City and Remove His Plant – An Ultimatum Sent by Committee". The Wilmington Weekly Star. November 11, 1898. p. 2. Archived from the original on January 18, 2023 – via Wikimedia Commons.
- ^ a b Litwack 1999, p. 100.
- ^ Litwack 1999, p. 213.
- ^ Litwack 1999, p. 221.
- ^ Litwack 1999, p. 304,313.
- ^ Mallonee, Laura (November 21, 2022). "The Nation's First Woman Senator Was a Virulent White Supremacist". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on December 13, 2023.
- ^ "Senate Stories | Rebecca Felton and One Hundred Years of Women Senators". U.S. Senate Historical Office. November 21, 2022. Archived from the original on October 1, 2023.
- ^ Holloman, J. A. "'Lynch,' Says Mrs. Felton". The Atlanta Journal. August 12, 1897. p. 1; "Mrs. Felton's Letter". The Atlanta Constitution. August 20, 1897. p. 4.
- ^ Jerome Anthony McDuffie (1979). Politics in Wilmington and New Hanover County, North Carolina, 1865–1900: The Genesis of a Race Riot. Ph.D. thesis, Kent State University. According to McDuffie, the speech was delivered in Georgia on August 11, 1897. See https://www.1898wilmington.org/AlexanderManlyRebeccaFelton.shtml
- ^ Litwack 1999, p. 282-283.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-486-24523-2.
famous american women felton.
- ^ McHenry, Robert (January 9, 2008). "Persons of Color and Gender in National Politics". Britannica Blog.
- ISBN 978-0-7425-2909-0.
- ^ Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill (1993). New Women of the New South the Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. p. 190.
- ISBN 978-0-8283-2160-0.
- ^ "Former U.S. Senator Rebecca Felton". Moving Image Research Collections. April 9, 1929 – via YouTube.
- ^ "Felton, Rebecca Latimer". History, Art & Archives. United States House of Representatives. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
References
- Latimer Felton, Rebecca (1919). Country Life in Georgia in the Days of My Youth. Index Print.
- Scott, Thomas A., ed. (1995). Cornerstones of Georgia History: Documents That Formed the State. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-1743-4.
- Talmage, John E. Rebecca Latimer Felton: Nine Stormy Decades (1960)
- Talmage, John E. "Felton, Rebecca Ann Latimer" in Edward T. James, ed., Notable American Women: A biographical dictionary (1971) 1:606-7
Works cited
- Litwack, Leon F. (1999). Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (1st ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-375-70263-1.
- Zucchino, David (2020). Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy. Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN 978-0-8021-2838-6.
External links
- Works related to Woman of the Century/Rebecca Latimer Felton at Wikisource
- United States Congress. "Rebecca Latimer Felton (id: F000069)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
- Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930) Archived April 8, 2013, at the Wayback Machine New Georgia Encyclopedia.
- U.S. Senate. First woman senator appointed. Retrieved March 1, 2005.
- Uncorrected transcript of interview with Q&Atelevision program, June 12, 2005
- Photograph of Rebecca Latimer Felton in 1927 Vanishing Georgia Collection.
- Rebecca Latimer Felton at Find a Grave
- Felton Home historical marker
- Rebecca Latimer Felton historical marker
- Video interview with Rebecca Latimer Felton in 1929
- Transcript of Rebecca Latimer Felton's First and Only Speech to the U.S. Senate