A Suffragette in America

E. Sylvia Pankhurst

Description

This book is a collection of Sylvia Pankhurst's writing on her visits to North America in 1911-12. Unlike the standard suffragette tours which focused on courting progressive members of America's social elite for money, Pankhurst got her hands dirty, meeting striking laundry workers in New York, visiting female prisoners in Philadelphia and Chicago and grappling with horrific racism in Nashville, Tennessee.



Adored by socialist students and progressive politicians, Pankhurst was also shocked by the dark underbelly of American society. Bringing her own experiences of imprisonment and misogyny from her political work in Britain, she found many parallels between the two countries. These never-before-published writings mark an important stage in the development of the suffragette's thought, which she brought back to Britain to inform the burgeoning working-class suffrage campaign there.



The book also includes a contextualising introduction by Katherine Connelly.

Photographs

Acknowledgements

Sylvia Pankhurst’s North American Tours – Timelines

Note on the Text

Introduction by Katherine Connelly

SYLVIA PANKHURST’S TEXT AND EDITOR’S INTRODUCTIONS

Preface

1. A Strike of Laundry Workers in New York

2. Laundries from the Inside

3. A Festival

4. Prisoners

5. A Socialist Administration – The Milwaukee City Council

6. A Red Indian College

7. Universities and Legislatures

8. The South

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Political Process
• Political Ideologies
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• América del Norte
• Alice Lewisohn
• Politics Magazine
• Communism
• Workers' Socialist Federation
• National American Woman Suffrage Association
• Keir Hardie
• Memoir
• South
• 20th century
• Americas
• North America
• History of the Americas
• Central
• Christabel Pankhurst
• Communisme
• Emmeline Pankhurst

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781786804556
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

A Suffragette in America

First published 2019 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
This edition copyright The Estate of E. Sylvia Pankhurst; Introduction Katherine Connelly
Frontispiece credit: Box 69, National American Woman Suffrage Association Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material in this book. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions in this respect and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions.
The right of Katherine Connelly to be identified as the author of the Introduction has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3937 5 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3936 8 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0454 9 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0456 3 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0455 6 EPUB eBook



This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
Photographs
Acknowledgements
Sylvia Pankhurst s North American Tours - Timelines
Note on the Text
Introduction by Katherine Connelly
SYLVIA PANKHURST S TEXT AND EDITOR S INTRODUCTIONS
Preface
1. A Strike of Laundry Workers in New York
2. Laundries from the Inside
3. A Festival
4. Prisoners
5. A Socialist Administration - The Milwaukee City Council
6. A Red Indian College
7. Universities and Legislatures
8. The South
Notes
Index
Photographs
1. Sylvia Pankhurst in Toronto, Canada standing beside a car adapted to advertise her lecture in the Massey Hall on 11 February 1911
2. These mocking caricatures of Sylvia Pankhurst were published in the Chicago Daily Tribune on 20 January 1911 after she declined to speak to the press
3. I capitulated immediately, but the Press men and women did not entirely relent. Sylvia Pankhurst gave an extensive interview to the Chicago suffragist Belle Squire, published in the Tribune on 22 January 1911
4. Harriot Stanton Blatch and other Women s Political Union members flyposting on the streets of New York to advertise Sylvia Pankhurst s first American lecture in the Carnegie Lyceum
5. Sylvia Pankhurst looks into a prison cell at Harrison Street, Chicago on 21 January 1911
6. Around 300,000 people lined the streets of New York and a further 100,000 marched in the funeral procession on 5 April 1911 to pay tribute to the 146 workers killed in the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Sylvia Pankhurst was among those present
7. A children s dance class, sometime between 1902 and 1915, in the gymnasium of the Henry Street Settlement which is almost certainly where Sylvia Pankhurst saw the children s performance of Sleeping Beauty
8. Sylvia Pankhurst wearing the portcullis and prison arrow brooch she designed which was awarded to all suffragettes who had experienced imprisonment
Dedicated to the memory of Sylvia Pankhurst s son, Professor Richard Pankhurst (1927-2017)
Acknowledgements
First, I owe a huge debt of thanks to Helen Pankhurst for kindly granting me the rights to publish Sylvia Pankhurst s manuscript and for being so warmly supportive throughout. Helen, I hope that you and the Pankhurst family enjoy the book.
Thank you to the staff at Pluto Press, especially to Neda Tehrani for thoughtful and constructive comments on the manuscript, and to David Castle and Robert Webb for your enthusiasm for this project and for guiding it through to publication. Thank you also to Ros Connelly, Morgan Daniels, Elaine Graham-Leigh and Dana Mills for invaluable help reading and commenting on the introductory writing. Sincere thanks to Jeanne Brady for so diligently copy-editing the text.
Rachel Holmes, whose own writing on Sylvia Pankhurst I eagerly await, provided comradely support throughout, which meant a great deal to me; Jacqueline Mulhallen, always supportive and generous, provided me with the transcript for Sylvia s article in The London Magazine and William Alderson kindly sent the photographed text; Professor Joan Sangster shared her knowledge of Pankhurst connections in Canada; thanks too to Joan Ashworth for an inspiring conversation about this part of Sylvia s life.
The organisers of the Women s Suffrage and Political Activism conference at Cambridge University and the Women s Suffrage and Beyond: Local, National and International Contexts conference at Oxford University allowed me to explore my ideas with other suffrage scholars. Maggie Cohen invited me to speak on Sylvia and America at the Working Class Movement Library, enabling me to discuss this material with others who share a deep knowledge of socialist and feminist history.
For assistance with archival research, I would like to thank all the staff at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam; the British Library; the Women s Library at the LSE, and the Special Collections at Senate House Library. For assistance with archival research in America, I would like to thank all the staff at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC; the staff at the New York Public Library, especially John Calhoun at the Billy Rose Theatre Division who helped locate the Neighborhood Playhouse material; Arlene Yu, Collections Manager at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, and those in the Periodicals and Microforms Room in the Schwarzman Building; the staff at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, particularly Heidi Anoszko, the reference and instruction archivist, who gave so much of her time to help me; the staff at the Central Milwaukee Public Library, especially Casey Lapworth and Daniel Lee; to Susan Kruger at the Wisconsin Historical Society, and to all the staff at the North Dakota State University archives, especially John Halberg and Katrina Burch.
Thank you to Katie Vogel, public historian at the Henry Street Settlement in New York, for meeting with me and affording me the incredibly special experience of being shown around Lillian Wald s Settlement building. Chris Segedy, senior house manager at the Pabst Theatre Group, was kind enough to give me a tour of the beautiful theatre where Sylvia spoke in 1912, allowing another treasured glimpse into Sylvia s America. In the course of this project, I was incredibly lucky to start working with Christine Hoenigs at Lawrence University s London centre who kindly put me in contact with Erin Dix, the archivist at Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin. Thanks to Erin for delving into the college s history to find evidence of Sylvia s visit in 1912. Archival advice was also provided by Thai Jones, at the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at Columbia University; Professor Cathy Moran Hajo, editor and director of the Jane Addams Papers Project; Julianna Jenkins, at UCLA Public Services Library Special Collection; Linnea M. Anderson, archivist at the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota, and Eisha Neely, at the Research Services Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
The geographical scale of the research would have been impossible to attempt without a huge amount of generosity and imagination. It is my privilege to be sharing my life with someone who possesses both qualities in abundance. Thank you so very much to my partner Morgan Daniels for planning the route across America, thank you for transforming a research trip into a wonder-filled adventure, for sharing in every discovery, everything that was magical and inspiring, bleak and strange. Your generosity is reflected in your friendships - and it is an additional good fortune for me that so many of those happen to be in America! I am extremely grateful to a friendship group united by a passion for a band based in Dayton, Ohio, and I thank all of you for opening your homes so generously to this outsider who was made to feel entirely welcomed: to comrade Steve Panovich, Andy Cline, Emily Robinson and Mike Jueneman, Ryan and Stephanie Brush, and to Matthew Cutter, Maureen Creedon Cutter, Patrick, Abby and Maeve - thank you for letting us join your family, and special thanks to Patrick who so kindly gave us his room. Thank you also to Dan Sayer, who helped us out (not for the first time) at short notice.
Many thanks to Nancy and Barry Libecki who looked after us in Milwaukee and to Nancy for telling me about Milwaukee s past, which helped bring the research to life. Thank you to Andrew Faas for the introduction.
I owe a lifetime of thanks to my parents, Ros and Paul Connelly, and my sister, Ruth Keogh Connelly. Your constant love, support and encouragement help me every day. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to Morgan for your love, for inspiring me and for everything you did to help me to realise this book.
For many years, I was lucky enough to experience the kindness of Sylvia Pankhurst s son, Professor Richard Pankhurst. Committed to the continuation of and research into his mother s work, he afforded me advice and support when I was writing her biography. We discussed how interesting the American material was and I mentioned my hope to write an article about it, an idea that he was characteristically supportive of. That idea eventually developed into this project to bring Sylvia s own writing about America to publication and placing it in the context of her tours. I hope that Richard Pankhurst would have liked th