Blog # 10

Textbook: Chapter 7

1. While the white women were fighting for reforms they set aside class in order to form better unions, but still did not accept African Americans. Many black women instead formed their own help groups and reformed for a change in their own communities. Jim Crow laws were in effect during this time period and these laws prohibited people of color from using certain public outlets, such as stores, hospitals, libraries, etc. To off set the discrimination of these laws the black communities started their own stores, hospitals, and libraries, in turn creating their own black communities where Jim Crow laws could not harm them. Black women opened and operated their own day care programs and schools for young children so that mothers could work. African Americans also began their own political groups where they could speak their mind without being discriminated.

2. The suffrage movement were primarily based on the equality of women's public and political life. This movement advocated for voting rights and equality. The feminist movement focused on a women's natural rights and privileges. It advocated for a womens rights in the home, sexual rights, and their independence. The feminist movement was based of the idea of feminism where a woman could be whomever she believed she wanted to be, regardless of a man. This idea was still very new and not all agreed with its principles. The suffrage movement was a universal goal and was received by the public.

Source Interpretation
Textbook document

3.The definitions given from the convention varied greatly. Many speakers, both men and women, spoke about feminism as being a right to do certain things. A right to have fun, to experiment, to think what she wants, and to be different. George Middletown said that feminism is a “spiritual attitude” and also called it an “educational idea”. He argued that “men and women are made up of the same soul stuff,” (461) a thought that was progressive of the eras before. Rose Young thought that feminism is a woman's need to develop her own self. Edwin Bjorkman put it nicely stating that feminism “meant that a 'woman should have the right to be a full-fledged personality and not merely a social unit.” (461)

4. What I gathered from the text is this: a women's place is now the workplace, not the home. Inez Milholland's essay says that to send a woman “back to the home” would mean to follow her to her place of work. Therefore, a women's economic independence is a base thought in feminist theory. Her economic independence makes her a feminist. In the article before many speakers stated that feminism was a women being independent. Working for her own money would cause her to be independent, therefore a feminist. Not to say that all working women are feminists, but in some sense one would believe there would be at least a hint of feminism in the female working class.

5. I believe that feminism is when a women depends on no one but herself. She thinks for herself, works for herself, believes in herself, and she does not need anyone, especially a man, to back her up on those. A women is a feminist when she fights for the rights and privileges of her own kind. My favorite definition that came from the feminism convention is Edwin Bjorkman's response, “a women should have the right to be a full-fledged personality and not merely a social unit.” (461) For the longest time women were perceived to be social homemakers, with no life outside the home or occasional book club meeting. Women were perceived to have certain capabilities and none other. If a woman had showed that she did, she was rejected by society. Women finally struck out of that mold when feminism was introduced, and it gained many rights for women then and in the future. Feminism is the action of breaking out of that mold.