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Three Great American Women

    March is Women's history month. To celebrate that I am brushing up my memory and researching great women. Today I'm going to share three of them briefly with my readers: Abigail Addams, Jane Adams, and Shirley Chisholm.

    1.  Abigail Addams was the wife of the second president and mother of the fourth. Barbara Bush also had that dual role of wife and mother of the president. However, Abigail died just before John Quincey Adams took office. Documents indicate that she had followed his career closely and had encouraged him.

    She is remembered primarily for the correspondence with her husband as his political career demanded so much time from home. Their letters indicate a mutual respect, fondness, and closeness. She constantly reminded him "to remember the ladies" and sometimes threatened a rebellion by women if laws did not do more to protect them. She upheld the rights of married women and women's property rights. She encouraged women to receive the best education possible and to engage in intellectual pursuits, while always keeping the role of mother as a woman's primary role. She and her husband abhorred slavery.

    On a personal level, she was an accomplished farm manager, had a good head for business and financial management.

  2.  Jane Adams came about 100 years later, around the Civil War, from a very well-to-do family. She and her family had a great conflict when she wanted to pursue a medical career, and they wanted her to get married and have children. She hated the idea of household duties, and the conflict seemed to make her ill. After her father's death, she found a new role to play. She discovered the idea of a "settlement house" in England and put one into action in Chicago, "Hull House" which became known worldwide. She and a fried began a house for the very poor, elderly, and handicapped. Not only did they provide shelter and food, but training, counseling, literacy programs, and advocacy programs.

    She became involved in many programs from that point. She became a charter member in the newly organized NAACP. She was one of the founders of ACLU. She favored Labor Unions and worked for industrial safety. She joined or founded several peace organizations to delay or prevent WWI. She became highly criticized with her success and was labeled a socialist and a communist. This criticism caused a major cutback in donations to her programs. But thousands were going through Hull House each week, and more were helped through her other agencies, so this fueled her to keep on going. She underwrote the work with money she made making speeches and writing articles. She wrote a book about her twenty hears in Hull House, which became her autobiography. It made her world famous and wealthy.

    Finally, with Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, she saw many of her ideas and programs gaining political strength. In 1931 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the first American woman to receive it. Through all of her accomplishments, her health suffered and she was in physical pain; yet she lived about 75 years. The disappointment over a missed medical or scientific career were replaced by her contributions to the field of social reform.

3.  Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman elected to Congress. She served 14 years, from 1969-1983. She was born in Brooklyn but sent to a grandmother in Barbados to be raised in traditional English schools, since her parents did not feel she would get an adequate education in New York;s public schools. She returned by the time she was 11, but credits those early years for giving her a strong background in schooling. She married a Jamaican businessman.
    She represented New York. She was the first woman to run for Democratic presidential candidate (Margaret Chase Smith had already tried to be the Republican candidate earlier). Her areas of accomplishment included civil rights, women's rights, and child care reform. She was a co-founder of N.O. W.
      Being one of many young black college graduates, she found it difficult to get a job worthy of her skills or education. She ended up in a day care center. She worked for affordable, safe daycare. She also worked as a state legislator to begin per child funding for schools. She wrote two books encouraging women to be strong  and to take a voice in their own lives and welfare.