Gone with the Wind published

 It was on June 30 in 1936 that Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone With the Wind was published.

Mitchell was from a prominent Atlanta family — she was a fourth-generation Atlantan on her father's side, and came from a big Irish Catholic family on her mother's side. She grew up hearing grandiose stories of the Civil War. She was 10 years old before she found out — from some black farm workers — that the South had actually lost the war.

She wanted to be a journalist, and she went off to Smith College; but her mother died after her first year of college, and she came home to run the household for her father. By this time, it was the 1920s, and Mitchell enjoyed the freedom that came with it. She cut her hair short, smoked cigarettes and drank corn liquor, and read scandalous literature like Lady Chatterley's Lover. She shocked her family's social circle when she performed a provocative Parisian street dance with a male partner at a charity ball — after the dance, she was banned from the Junior League.

She might have shocked polite society, but she attracted plenty of admirers. Just 4 feet 11 inches, she was charming and energetic. An Atlanta gossip columnist wrote in 1922: "She has in her brief life, perhaps, had more men really, truly 'dead in love' with her [...] than almost any other girl in Atlanta." For a while she was encouraging five suitors at the same time. She married a handsome young man, Red Upshaw, who made his money bootlegging liquor in the Georgia mountains. Their marriage lasted just a few months. Mitchell needed some income, so she got a job as a reporter for The Atlanta Journal. A few years later, she married John Marsh, who had been the best man at her first wedding.

In 1926, a recurring ankle injury got so bad that a doctor ordered her to stay in bed and rest. She quit her job at the newspaper and began writing fiction. She started work on a novel about a headstrong teenage flapper named Pansy Hamilton, but it didn't come together. So she renamed her heroine Pansy O'Hara and started writing a novel set during the Civil War. She wrote most of it in three years, but didn't do anything with the manuscript, and continued to fuss with it for almost 10 years, eventually writing more than 1,000 pages. She wrote on a Remington typewriter set up on her sewing table, and she wouldn't tell anyone about it — whenever people came over, she covered her work with a towel. But all her friends knew she was writing it, and jokingly called it "the Great American Novel."

In the spring of 1935, an editor for Macmillan named Harold Latham was scouting for manuscripts in the South. He got a tip that there was a reporter from Atlanta who had written a book. Latham found Mitchell; she refused to let him see it, even after he spent the afternoon touring Atlanta's flowering dogwood trees and other local scenery with her. After he left, an acquaintance said she was surprised that Mitchell had written anything good enough for an editor to consider. Furious, she returned home, and rounded up all the pieces of her manuscript, which were in various envelopes under her bed and in a closet. They didn't all fit together quite right, and she didn't even have a first chapter, so she just grabbed the envelopes and went to Latham's hotel. She described her appearance on arrival: "Hatless, hair flying, dust and dirt all over my face and arms and worse luck, my hastily rolled up stockings coming down about my ankles." She handed over her manuscript but soon doubted her decision and asked for it back. Instead, Macmillan offered her an advance, and she spent the next year reworking the novel. She changed the name of the heroine from Pansy to Scarlett, and she gave her book a title, Gone With the Wind.

It came out on this day in 1936, and sold a million copies in its first six months, going on to sell more than 30 million copies. Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize, and three years after its publication, Gone With the Wind (1939) was made into a movie that quickly became the highest-earning film of all time — adjusted for inflation, it may still hold that title. She died in 1949 when she was hit by a car while crossing the street.

Mitchell wrote to a friend in 1936: "Being a product of the Jazz Age, being one of those short-haired, short-skirted, hard-boiled women who preachers said would go to hell or be hanged before they were 30, I am naturally a little embarrassed at finding myself the incarnated spirit of the old South!"

Thanks Writer's Almanac. This is the first photo I've seen on that daily newsletter.

Anti-lynching Awareness

 RALEIGH, N.C. (WLOS) — North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein has ordered all United States and North Carolina flags at state facilities to be lowered to half-staff from sunrise to sunset on June 27.

According to a June 26 news release, this is in honor of Anti-Lynching Awareness Month. This month recognizes "the cruel acts of lynching throughout American history and memorializes the countless victims and families impacted across the state," the release said.

“Anti-Lynching Awareness Month serves as a grim reminder of one of our nation’s greatest sins. We must promote the truth of our history, both the good and the bad, and we must remember the victims of lynching and the pain their families were forced to endure," Stein said in the release. "Let their memories be a blessing and a reminder that the fight for justice and equality for all must continue with each generation.”

Historians have documented at least 173 individuals in North Carolina who were victims of lynching since the Civil War with many more victims yet unknown, the release said.

All North Carolinians are encouraged to lower flags with a moment of silence to mourn and recognize the victims and their families across the state.

Helen Keller

It's the birthday of activist Helen Keller, born in Tuscumbia, Alabama (1880). The story of her childhood is well-known: how as a toddler she became sick with an illness that left her both blind and deaf, and how she became a difficult child, until her 20-year-old teacher, Anne Sullivan, managed to communicate the letters for "water" while running water from the pump on the little girl's hand. It was a breakthrough, and on that day alone, Keller learned 30 words. She was very bright, and went on to Radcliffe College. By the time she was a teenager, her story had made Keller a celebrity. One of her admirers was Mark Twain. Twain met Keller when she was just 14, and they remained friends throughout his life. He said, "The two most interesting characters of the 19th century are Helen Keller and Napoleon Bonaparte." Keller became a popular lecturer. She began sharing her story and advocating for others with disabilities, but became a radical activist along the way. She joined the Socialist Party of Massachusetts in 1909, when she was 29, and then the Industrial Workers of the World. She supported Communist Russia and hung a red flag over her desk. The FBI opened a file on her. She advocated for women's suffrage and for access to birth control. She helped found the American Civil Liberties Union. Helen Keller died in 1968, at the age of 87. Thanks Writer's Almanac

Title IX importance!

 It was on this day in 1972 that Title IX was signed into law by President Richard Nixon. Title IX prohibited sex discrimination in any federally funded education activity or program. This applied to all schools, from elementary to universities, both public and private. Although the original language doesn't mention sports, the biggest change came for female athletes in high school and college, whose opportunities had been very limited.

In 1969, a part-time lecturer at the University of Maryland named Bernice Sandler was struggling to move up the career ladder. She had a doctorate in counseling psychology, but when she applied for one of her department's seven tenure-track positions, she wasn't even considered. One of her colleagues told her that even though she was qualified, she might as well not apply because she seemed "too strong for a woman." She was rejected twice more after that. One interviewer told her that she wasn't a real professor, but "just a housewife who went back to school."

Sandler didn't back down. Instead, she read everything she could find about workplace discrimination. She read about the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which was intended to equalize pay for men and women — but there was a broad exemption for anyone in "executive, professional, and administrative positions," including all teachers at any level. She found an executive order that President Johnson had ordered as an expansion of the Civil Rights Act, which made it illegal for companies doing business with the government to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, or nationality. It had been amended in 1967 to also prohibit discrimination based on sex. As soon as she read that, Sandler realized that she had found her loophole. She said, "Even though I was alone, I shrieked with my discovery." Since universities took funding from the government, they could technically be said to be "doing business with the government," and so they should be subject to Johnson's executive order as well.

Sandler ordered a class action charge against all universities and colleges in the country. She backed up her case with a long report of data, including statistics like the high ratio of female Ph.D.s to female faculty members. Hundreds of qualified women who had been denied academic positions wrote testimonials. Sandler worried that a federal order could be easily undone, and she believed that sex discrimination should be prohibited by a formal law. Representative Edith Green of Oregon, chair of the House Committee on Education, introduced the bill known as Title IX, requiring gender equity in education, as part of the 1972 Education Act. She actually encouraged women's groups and other supporters to stay silent on the issue, with the hope that Congress wouldn't think too hard about the significance of Title IX and just vote for it. That is exactly what happened. Someone raised a brief concern that the bill would require schools to allow women to play football. Once the bill's sponsors reassured everyone that this would not happen, the bill was passed.

Title IX revolutionized gender equity in education. Since its passage, the percentage of women obtaining degrees in higher education has steadily climbed, and women now outpace men in obtaining both bachelor's and graduate degrees. By far the greatest impact has been felt in sports. After the passage of Title IX, women's teams were required to have the same resources as men's teams — coaches, training facilities, locker rooms, equipment, etc. Spending on men's and women's sports had to be proportional to the number of athletes participating. In 1972, there were 170,000 men competing in NCAA sports and just 30,000 women — that number has now grown to 150,000. At the high school level, girls' participation in sports has increased by more than 900 percent.

Alan Turing

 Alan Mathison Turing (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science.

... Born in London, Turing was raised in southern England. He graduated from King's College, Cambridge, and in 1938, earned a doctorate degree from Princeton University. During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre that produced Ultra intelligence.

...He played a crucial role in cracking intercepted messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Axis powers in many engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic.

... Despite [many] accomplishments, he was never fully recognised during his lifetime because much of his work was covered by the Official Secrets Act.

In 1952, Turing was prosecuted for homosexual acts. He accepted hormone treatment, a procedure commonly referred to as chemical castration, as an alternative to prison. Turing died on 7 June 1954, aged 41, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death as suicide, but the evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning. Following a campaign in 2009, British prime minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology for "the appalling way [Turing] was treated". Queen Elizabeth II granted a pardon in 2013. The term "Alan Turing law" is used informally to refer to a 2017 law in the UK that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.

Alan Turing (1951)

Source: Wikipedia

June is Pride Month, where we celebrate the lives of many LGBTQ+ people.

Juneteenth celebrations

 Juneteenth

June 19, 1865, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, over 250,000 enslaved people in Texas finally received word that they were free. That day, now known as Juneteenth, marks a delayed but powerful declaration of Black liberation.

But emancipation wasn’t the finish line. It was the foundation.

In the face of uncertainty and chaos, newly freed Black people built schools, churches, businesses, and cultural traditions. They created mutual aid societies, elected officials, and established neighborhoods rooted in care and resistance. They chose community over chaos.

Juneteenth isn’t just a day of remembrance. It’s a celebration of how Black communities turned emancipation into empowerment and how that legacy continues today.

As we honor this day, may we reflect, rest, and recommit to building communities of progress where freedom is more than a word. It’s a practice.

No Kings Day yesterday

 

The crowd was so dense that officials had to close the bridge and allow only pedestrians. The weight of the crowd caused the bridge’s suspension deck to flatten, eliminating the slight upward arch that normally characterizes the roadway. All 419,000 tons groaned and swayed in the wind. While the bridge was structurally sound and did not suffer any damage, the change in shape was alarming to many pedestrians. Engineers described it as a “once-in-a-lifetime event,” but stressed that there was no real danger.

Seen in Black Mountain

660 Black Mountaineers turned out.

Violence in Salt Lake City last night:

No King Day early information

 Two hundred and fifty years ago, on June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress resolved “That six companies of expert riflemen, be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each company consist of a captain, three lieutenants, four serjeants, four corporals, a drummer or trumpeter, and sixty-eight privates…[and that] each company, as soon as completed, shall march and join the army near Boston, to be there employed as light infantry, under the command of the chief Officer in that army.”

And thus Congress established the Continental Army.

The First Continental Congress, which met in 1774, refused to establish a standing army, afraid that a bad government could use an army against its people. The Congress met in response to the British Parliament’s closing of the port of Boston and imposition of martial law there, but its members hoped they could repair their relationship with King George III and simply sent entreaties to the king to end what were known as the “Intolerable Acts.”

In 1775 the Battles of Lexington and Concord changed the equation. On April 19, British soldiers opened fire on colonists just as Patriot leaders feared they might. In the aftermath of that deadly day, about 15,000 untrained Massachusetts militiamen converged on Boston and laid siege to the town, where they bottled up about 6,500 British Regulars.

The Battles of Lexington and Concord made it clear the British government endangered American liberties. The Second Continental Congress met in what is now called Independence Hall in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, to address the crisis in Boston. The delegates overcame their suspicions of a standing army to conclude they must bring the various state militias into a continental organization to stand against King George III.

With the establishment of the Continental Army, a British officer, General Charles Lee, resigned his commission in the British Army and published a public letter explaining that the king’s overreach had turned him away from service in His Majesty’s army and toward the Patriots:

“[W]henever it shall please his Majesty to call me forth to any honourable service against the natural hereditary enemies of our country, or in defence of his just rights and dignity, no man will obey the righteous summons with more zeal and alacrity than myself,” he wrote, “but the present measures seem to me so absolutely subversive of the rights and liberties of every individual subject, so destructive to the whole empire at large, and ultimately so ruinous to his Majesty's own person, dignity and family, that I think myself obliged in conscience as a Citizen, Englishman, and Soldier of a free state, to exert my utmost to defeat them.”

After they established a Continental Army, the next thing Congress members did was to name a French and Indian War veteran, Virginia planter George Washington, commander-in-chief. To Washington fell the challenge of establishing an army to defend the nation without creating a military a tyrant could use to repress the people.

It was not an easy project. The Continental Army was made up of volunteers who were loyal primarily to the officers they had chosen, and because Congress still feared a standing army, their enlistments initially were short. Different units trained with different field manuals, making it hard to turn them into a unified fighting force. Women came to the camps with their men, often bringing their children. The women worked for the half-rations the government provided, washing, cooking, hauling water, and tending the wounded.

After an initial bout of enthusiasm at the start of the war, men stopped enlisting, and in 1777 Congress increased the times of enlistment to three years or “for the duration” of the conflict. That meant that the men in the army were more often poor than wealthy, enlisting for the bounties offered, and Congress found it easy to overlook those 12,000 people encamped about 18 miles to the northwest of Philadelphia in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, for six months in the hard winter of 1777–1778. The Congress had no way to compel the states to provide money, food, or supplies for the army, and the army almost fell apart for lack of support.

Supply chains broke as the British captured food or it spoiled in transit to the soldiers, and wartime inflation meant Congress did not appropriate enough money for food. Hunger and disease stalked the camp, but even worse was the lack of clothing. More than 1,000 soldiers died, and about eight or ten deserted every day. Washington warned the president of the Continental Congress that the men were close to mutiny, even as a group of army officers were working with congressmen to replace Washington, complaining about how he was prosecuting the war.

By February 1778 a delegation from the Continental Congress had visited Valley Forge and, understanding that the lack of supplies made the army, and thus the country, truly vulnerable, set out to reform the supply department. Then a newly arrived Prussian officer, Baron Friedrich von Steuben, drilled the soldiers into unity and better morale. And then, in May, the soldiers learned that France had signed a treaty with the American states in February, lending money, matériel, and men to the cause of American independence. The army survived.

By the end of 1778, the main theater of the war had shifted to the South, where British officers hoped to recruit Loyalists to their side. Instead, guerrilla bands helped General Nathanael Greene bait the British into a war of endurance that finally ended on October 19, 1781, at the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia, where British general Charles Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington and French commander Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau.

The Continental Army had defeated the army of the king and established a nation based on the principle that all men were created equal and had a right to have a say in the government under which they lived.

In September 1783, negotiators concluded the Treaty of Paris that formally ended the war, and Congress discharged most of the troops still in service. In his November 2 farewell address to his men, Washington noted that their victory against such a formidable power was “little short of a standing Miracle.” “[W]ho has before seen a disciplined Army formed at once from such raw materials?” Washington wrote. “Who that was not a witness could imagine, that the most violent local prejudices would cease so soon, and that Men who came from the different parts of the Continent, strongly disposed by the habits of education, to despise and quarrel with each other, would instantly become but one patriotic band of Brothers?”

With the army disbanded, General Washington himself stepped away from military leadership. On December 23, Washington addressed Congress, saying: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”

In 1817, given the choice of subjects to paint for the Rotunda in the U.S. Capitol, being rebuilt after the British had burned it during the War of 1812, fine artist John Trumbull picked the moment of Washington’s resignation from the army. As he discussed the project with President James Madison, Trumbull told the president: “I have thought that one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world, was that presented by the conduct of the commander-in-chief, in resigning his power and commission as he did, when the army, perhaps, would have been unanimously with him, and few of the people disposed to resist his retaining the power which he had used with such happy success, and such irreproachable moderation.”

Madison agreed, and the painting of a man voluntarily walking away from the leadership of a powerful army rather than becoming a dictator hangs today in the Capitol Rotunda.

It is the story of this Army, 250 years old tomorrow, that President Donald J. Trump says he is honoring with a military parade in Washington, D.C., although it also happens to be his 79th birthday.

But the celebration of ordinary people who fought against tyranny will be happening not just in the nation’s capital but all across the country, as Americans participating in at least 2,000 planned No Kings protests recall the principles American patriots championed 250 years ago.

From Heather Cox Richardson

THis was shared on my When I Was 69 blog...HERE.

The first Drive-In Theater

 It was on this day in 1933 that the first drive-in movie theater opened, in Camden, New Jersey. The theater was the brainchild of a young man named Richard Hollingshead Jr., a manager at his father's Camden auto shop, Whiz Auto Products. He dreamed of creating something that would bring a little fun to the tough daily life of the Depression era. He was also thinking about his mother, who was a little bit overweight and wasn't comfortable in movie theater seats.

Once he had the idea for a drive-in theater, he got all the materials to try it out in his own backyard. He mounted a film projector on the hood of his car, and attached a screen to a couple of trees. Then he worked out a complicated system of parking spaces with various ramps and blocks to make sure that every car would have an equal view of the screen. Hollingshead even tried to test how well his system worked in adverse weather by turning on his sprinkler in place of rain. The sound was tougher to manage—in the early days of drive-ins, all the sound came through a speaker mounted by the screen, so it was hard to hear for cars parked in the back, and tinny-sounding for everyone. Eventually technology improved, and viewers were able to get the film's sound through the FM radio in their cars.

One of the big draws of the drive-in theater was that it gave families an activity to do together. There was a kids' play area and a stand that sold snacks. Hollingshead was quick to point out all the people who could suddenly enjoy going to a film: "Inveterate smokers rarely enjoy a movie because of the smoking prohibition. In the Drive-In theater one may smoke without offending others. People may chat or even partake of refreshments brought in their cars without disturbing those who prefer silence. The Drive-In theater idea virtually transforms an ordinary motor car into a private theater box. The younger children are not permitted in movie theaters and are frequently discouraged even when accompanied by parents or guardians. Here the whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are apt to be and parents are furthermore assured of the children's safety because youngsters remain in the car. The aged and infirm will find the Drive-In a boon because they will not be subjected to inconvenience such as getting up to let others pass in narrow aisles or the uncertainty of a seat."

Hollingsburg applied for a patent in May of 1933 and opened his first theater just three weeks later, on Crescent Boulevard in Camden. The film that played on this day was a comedy called Wives Beware, starring Adolph Menjou, which had come out in 1932. The cost was 25 cents per car, and 25 cents per person after that, with a cap at one dollar.

writer's Almanac 2014

D-Day

 Landing on the beaches of Normandy...the Allied Forces of England, Canada, France, the United States, and maybe a few other country's armies...all started the effort to take back the Nazi's hold on  Europe.

Many men died on June 6, 1944.

I haven't got time to look up the details, which are available.

I just wanted to honor all those brave young men who waded ashore and some of them managed to live through the day...and then fight the Nazis.

Much gratitude!

The 9000 who never made it home”. Project dedicated to those who died in the D-Day Landings which happened on this day in 1944.

The 9000 Who Never Made It Home was a haunting, large-scale art installation created on the beaches of Normandy in 2013 to mark International Peace Day and honor those who died during the D-Day landings.

British artists Jamie Wardley and Andy Moss, along with a team of over 500 volunteers, used stencils and rakes to etch 9,000 human silhouettes into the sand of Arromanches beach, each figure representing a soldier or civilian who lost their life on June 6, 1944.

The artwork was intentionally temporary. Within hours, the sea swept away the silhouettes, symbolizing the fragility of life and the waves of time that continue to erase even the most powerful memories

Personanl computers

 On this day in 1977, the Apple II computer went on sale, and the era of personal computing began. Developed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, it was the first successful mass-produced microcomputer designed for home use. It came standard with 4 kilobytes of memory, game paddles, and a demo cassette with some programs on it. Most people used their televisions as monitors.

The Apple II sold for about $1,300; today that same money will buy you an iMac, with 4 gigabytes — one million times the original amount — of memory, a sleek backlit 21-inch monitor, and a 2.7 gigahertz processor.

Writers  Almanac 2014

I worked as a college assistantship in the Anthropology Department of the University of Florida on Apple II's for 3 years...part time. Wonderful computers, and whenever I moved, I'd get a temp job using them for many years.

Robert Kennedy's assassination

 Just after midnight on this date in 1968, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian immigrant. Kennedy had just won California's Democratic presidential primary, and he was exiting through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel. Juan Romero, a 17-year-old busboy, was shaking his hand when Sirhan began firing. Several of the men with him tackled Sirhan, including writer George Plimpton, Olympic athlete Rafer Johnson, and football star Rosey Grier. Romero knelt by Kennedy, and put a rosary in his hand.

His brother Edward "Ted" Kennedy delivered the eulogy:

"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.'"

Writer's Almanac 2014

Women's right to vote

 But it still needed to be ratified!

On this day in 1919, Congress approved the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the vote. One could say that the American women's suffrage movement began in 1776, when Abigail Adams asked her husband John to "remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors" when approving the Constitution. The movement grew hand in hand with the abolitionist movement; many women were active in both causes, and Frederick Douglass often spoke at women's rights rallies. The proposed Fifteenth Amendment, granting voting rights to black men, caused a division in the suffrage movement's leaders: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony refused to support it because it didn't grant the same rights to women; Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone argued that it would eventually lead to voting rights for all.

Some states began extending limited voting rights to women in the latter half of the 19th century, and in 1869 two organizations — the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association — began campaigning for constitutional amendments on the national and state levels, respectively. 

The United States Congress first introduced an amendment in 1878, and would continue to introduce it with every new Congress, but it took more than 40 years to gain the needed two-thirds majority to pass.

In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote her "Declaration of Sentiments," which wisely adopted the language of the Declaration of Independence in calling for voting rights for women:

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

She concludes, "Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation — in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."

Writer's Almanac 2014