Frances Nacke Noel (January 5, 1873 – April 24 1963) was a German-born American feminist, socialist, and labor activist. Frances Nacke was born in Saxony, Germany. She moved to the United States at age of 20, and settled in Los Angeles in 1899 and married Primrose D. Noel in 1902. She was the vice president and president of Women’s Union Label League in California in 1910 and 1914; president of Wage Earner’s Suffrage League in 1911. She was also president of Los Angeles Chapter of the American Birth Control League in 1926 . She advocated women’s suffrage and organized womanhood. She led socialist women to found L.A branch of National Women’s Trade League, which is the leadership of cross-class women movements , and she also fought for minimum …show more content…
wage laws and eight hour working days. Biography Early Years Frances Nacke was born in a small village in Saxony, Germany in 1873. Her father was a superintendent of a furniture company. Since she is one of the eldest of six children, she took care of her siblings when she was young. She also trained to be a kindergarten teacher in her late teens . As an energetic and adventurous woman, she went to the United States and first stopped by New York City when she was twenty years old. She soon moved to Chicago, where the 1893 depression and economic hardships, the Pullman Strike of 1894, and the politics of Eugene Debs affect and grew her interest in Socialism . She then moved to Denver in 1895, and joined Socialist Party in 1898. During this period, she worked as a governess for a mining executive and former Colorado senator’s grandchild. Colorado started women suffrage in 1893, but when the first time Nacke was preparing to vote in 1895, she found out that some of the ballots are already been marked by former senator’s wife, by giving reason saying that young women did not know how to vote. Because of the unfairness she had met during the first time of voting, she realized the importance of women political independence as well as voting education. She then spent a lot of time on both women’s suffrage and socialism, inspired by the Denver suffrage movement . In 1899, she arrived in Los Angeles and worked as a waitress. She associated with Job Harriman a lot, who was a leading socialist in California and future mayoral candidate in Los Angeles. Through Harriman, she met and married Primrose D. Noel (P.D. Noel), a fellow socialist and labor movement activist employed in banking. They had two sons but second son, unfortunately, died after birth . She then worked as a socialist and participated and supported labor movement, especially women labor movements. Noel’s experience in her 20s gave her a strong background for her later work and activism in Los Angeles. Career Life Frances Nacke Noel was a supporter of cross-class movements.
She had her idea written in an article called “Twin Sister Movement of Union Labor” in 1928, showing her belief that women movement and labor movement are “twins” (wage-earning women are the typical cases), and dealing the combination of these two issues could lead to a more equalitarian society . January 1911, Noel persuaded representatives of six women union and labor groups, including WIULL Local 36, garment workers, waitresses, saleswomen, and stenographers, to form a permanent cross-class organization of women. The women’s conference of Los Angeles County was formed for the purpose of helping to “enact laws and legislative measures concerning the welfare of the home, women and children” . Unfortunately, this organization existed only for a few months, but many of the member groups joined 1911 women’s suffrage movement later …show more content…
. Women Suffrage Because of her first voting experience, Nacke Noel spent a lot of her time and effort work on the vote education and women suffrage, especially when she settled in Los Angeles.
Instead of viewing the labor movement and women’s suffrage movements separately, she tried to link these two areas together . After 1909, she put pressure on State Federation of Labor for supporting and added that in the lists of demand that were going to submit to the state legislature. She also pressured local women’s club got involve in labor issues. In November 1910, Noel organized a meeting with Woman’s International Union Label League (WIULL) Local 36 and Votes for Women Club, which is a mainstream of middle class group, to discuss the correlation between suffrage and current social issues . Because of the meeting, the collaboration among these groups in the 1911 battle for suffrage . In June 1911, Noel and other socialist women organized the Los Angeles Wage Earners’ Suffrage League (LAWESL), which united women from various unions, especially socialist women and the wives of trade union men . The suffrage was supported by trade unionists because they thought it is a way to increase Socialist power and the ballot was a way that women, such as trade unionists’ wives and daughters, who work outside the home to protect themselves. Noel also indicated in her papers that women’s place is not only at home, and male cannot keep women away from economic competition with disagreeing women’s suffrage.
She wrote the newspapers aimed to Socialist voters to make sure Socialist women remember their work is not only being housewives. In October 1911, although women’s suffrage lost in San Francisco and Oakland, under Frances Nacke Noel and other women labor leaders’ efforts, “the Los Angeles coalition claimed credit for winning women’s suffrage in the city” . Women’s minimum wage and eight-hour workday Besides Women’s suffrage, Frances Nacke Noel also put attention on the eight-hour law and minimum wage for female workers. Socialist women continued to put pressure on legislation to protect wage-earning women. Noel states that California State Federation of Labor didn’t concern women workers and lack of female representatives were in the conferences. Influenced by Noel, the Central Labor Council increased attention to female workers. On April 15 1911, the Central Labor Council had a parade to support eight-hour law in downtown Los Angeles . The eight-hour bill for women became law in 1911 but most women still worked in an unfair situation, and usually earned less than men in similar jobs because of labor of union protections. And with the help of Central Labor Council, Frances Nacke Noel and other feminists (Daisy Houck, Theodosia Harriman and etc.) founded Women’s Living Wage League in Los Angeles in 1913. The League aimed to those companies that underpaid or depreciate female workers and put social public pressure on them . The city council created a committee and chose four men and two women representatives to investigate the issue of living wage in the city. Frances Nacke Noel and Mrs. M.E. Johnson were the two female representatives. Noel and Johnson submitted a report which focus on conditions of working women to the city council, pointed out that about one-quarter of women and children were working with a low wage which was less than two dollars per day, or “starvation wage”. They found that the low wage jobs were especially founded in canneries, clothing factories, restaurants, laundries and etc.; about seventy percent of laundry female workers and sixty-four percent of department store female employees earned less than 2 dollars per day. In addition, they also states that inflow of foreign labor would also causes women’s working situation worse, especially for white female workers. By their warnings of difficult and serious situations of female labors, Katherine Phillips Edson, an officer of Bureau of Labor Statistics, tried to set a minimum wage for women in the state wage, and the minimum wage law was signed in 1913 by Governor Johnson . After 1920s After 1920s, Frances Nacke Noel continued to involve in labor and women movements, but the situation by that time was not so optimistic for her cross-class movements. The socialists and trade unionists were in tension due to the political reformation. Also due to the World War I, Socialist Party met a decline because of political repression. In late 1920 and 1930s, Frances Nacke Noel was focusing on the birth control issue. She was the president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Birth Control League. She mainly focus on middle class birth control and involved in the assistance of building first birth control clinics in the United States , and she remained on the board of the Mothers’ Clinic until 1928.
“Even in the modern day world, women struggle against discriminatory stigmas based on their sex. However, the beginnings of the feminist movement in the early 20th century set in motion the lasting and continuing expansion of women's rights” (Open Websites). One such organization that pushed for women’s rights was the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA), established in 1890. The NAWSA was the largest suffrage organization and worked toward securing the right to vote. The NAWSA however was split into two, the NAWSA and the National Women’s Party (NWP), when suffragists were disagreeing on how to achieve their goal.
The Golding Sisters lobbied for women’s rights to equal pay and employment. Annie Mackenzie (1855-1934) and Isabella Therese (1864-1940) began their careers teaching in both public and catholic schools (Kingston, 2013). Annie worked with infants and girls and later shifted to teaching at the Asylum for Destitute Children (Kingston, 2013). She was also a member on the State Children Relief Board. Belle left teaching early to pursue a career as the first female government inspector in 1900 (Lemon, 2008). With their sister Kate Dwyer (1861-1949), Labour leader and school teacher, the sister’s began the Womanhood Suffrage League in 1893 and the Woman’s Progressive Foundation in 1901 which aimed to combat the inability for women to work in certain industries and sit on juries (The Sunday Morning Herald, 1933). Belle’s research skills assisted in preparing the sister’s persuasive speeches and statements (Fawkner & Kelly, 1995). In 1921 Kate became a female Justice of Peace (Gallego, 2013). Kate also wrote extensively about politics, industries and women’s questions.
In the years after 1870 there were many reasons for the development of the women’s suffrage movement. The main reasons were changes in the law. Some affecting directly affecting women, and some not, but they all added to the momentum of Women’s campaign for the vote.
In the 20th century leadership of the suffrage movement passed to two organizations. The first was the National American Woman Suffrage Association. “The National American Women’s Suffrage Association lobbied congress, and state legislatures for const...
“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves” – Mary Wollstonecraft. In the 19th century the hot topic was women’s rights everybody had an opinion about it. Of course the expected ones like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had much to say but a few unexpected ones like William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass spoke out for women’s rights. The focus will be the responsibilities and roles that the activists played in the Women’s Rights or Feminist Movement. The relevance to the theme is the activists had a very important role toward reaching the ultimate goal of the Women’s Rights Movement. The Women’s Rights Movement was one of the most essential times in American history; it was the fight for women acquiring the same rights as men. Susan B. Anthony was considered the leader of the Women’s Rights Movement after she was denied the right to speak in a temperance convention; she had the responsibility of creating the National Women’s Suffrage Association (NWSA) and helping to secure voting rights by her historic court case, the Trials of Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an important women’s rights activist that helped plan the first organized women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York and wrote the Declaration of Sentiments. Lucretia Mott worked along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton to plan the first women’s rights convention and wrote the, “Discourse on Women”. Lucy Stone formed the American Women’s Suffrage Association (AWSA) and convince individual states to join the effort towards women rights. These women had an influence in the National American Women’s Suffrage Association’s (NAWSA) achievement of the goals in the Women’s Rights Movement. These women had a profound effect on reaching equal rights between men and women.
They formed the National Women's Party, which called for an amendment for equal rights. Even though there were technological and social advancements during this time, including the assembly line and more rights for women, anxiety and intolerance still dominated the playing field in 1920’s America.
In the beginning of the 1840s and into the 1850s, a rather modest women’s reform was in the process. This group was full of visionaries that began a movement that would soon lobby in change and this movement was the groundwork of equality for women and their right to vote within in the United States. Despite their efforts this movement required a length of seventy years to establish this necessarily equality and the right for all women to vote along the side of men. According to the CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS FOUNDATION “After male organizers excluded women from attending an anti-slavery conference, American abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott decided to call the “First Woman’s Rights Convention.” Held over several days in
By 1913, the suffragette movement had exceeded a decade. The growing desperation of the suffragettes is clear in their calls for the aid of working men, echoing Emmeline Pankhurst’s “Freedom or Death” speech in November 1913. This appears as a change of heart in the operation of the WSPU, which had decreed to exclude men from their organisation and broken with the Labour Party in the previous year.
While the understanding of women’s right to vote was still new to the prairies in Canada, the movement for women’s right to vote was not a new for other parts of the world. In the United Kingdom, 1832, the first petition of women's suffrage was presented to Parliament, while in Alberta it was not until 1914. Evidently, because European immigrants had already had similar campaigns for the prior knowledge and findings of women’s right to vote, they had more experience and knowledge within the specific topic. The immigrants who had similar ongoing events in their homeland brought their skills and debating facts of rights for women into Canada, making Canada a continuation of their campaign. Regarding this, in United Kingdom in 1907, the Women's Freedom League was formed after a break from the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) which had caused many young teens and women to be affected by this. Additionally, Icelandic women, who also had the vote in their home country, campaigned for the vote since their arrival in Manitoba in the 1870s, yet it was not seen as a highly attentioned campaigned at that time due to the lack of
It was Theodore Roosevelt, who stated that, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care”, conveying the idea that with no voice comes no change. In the morning of August 26, 1920, the 19th amendment was ratified, which centralized mainly on the enfranchisement of women. Today, they have the legal right to vote, and the ability to speak openly for themselves, but most of all they are now free and equal citizens. However this victorious triumph in American history would not have been achieved without the strong voices of determined women, risking their lives to show the world how much they truly cared. Women suffragists in the 19th century had a strong passion to change their lifestyle, their jobs around the nineteenth century were limited to just children, family, and domestic duties. It consisted of a very low rate of education, and job opportunities. They could not share their opinion publicly and were expected to support their male family members and husbands during the time. Women knew that the way to enfranchisement was going to be tenacious, and full of obstacles along the way. Therefore a new organization was formed, The National American Women Association (NAWSA), representing millions of women and Elizabeth Cady Stanton as the first party president. This organization was founded in 1890, which strategized on the women getting education in order to strengthen their knowledge to prepare for the suffrage fight. NAWSA mainly focused on the right to vote one state at a time. In 1917, a member named Alice Paul, split apart from NAWSA because of the organization’s tactics and major goals. Due to this split, many other suffragists from NAWSA bitterly divided into a new organization named, National Women’s ...
Through the history, women have always fought for their rights creating a new space for their participation as citizens. After the First World War during the 1920s and 1930s new histories of women suffragettes have been written. During that period of time some activist groups were created, for instance, the Edwardian women’s suffrage movement that created in women a ‘Suffragette Spirit’ with the same goals and purposes even with the same militant procedures such as radical feminism that involved hunger strike and forcible feeding. This argument have become controversial due to different points of view in recent years. Another samples are the formation of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), a group led by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst under an autocratic system; Women’s Freedom League (WFL), a self-proclaimed militant organization and National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). These groups were formed in Britain giving way to creation of some texts that explain the actions of the feminist groups and were the basis to achieve the right of suffragettes. Furthermore, the author of this article talks about a second narrative published in 1914 by Constance Lytton that explain about her own experiences in a militant period and personal sacrifice in an attempt to vote. Finally, her experience of militancy had become the archetype of suffrage militancy. In addition, she became in a feminist and kept touch with important members of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). According to Lytton (cited in Mayhall, 1995: 326) She said that whilst she felt sympathy towards men, children and even animals – those that she said were ‘down-trodden’ – she had completely ‘been blind to the particular sufferings ...
This movement had great leaders who were willing to deal with the ridicule and the disrespect that came along with being a woman. At that time they were fighting for what they thought to be true and realistic. Some of the great women who were willing to deal with those things were Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Jane Hunt, Mary McClintock, and Martha C. Wright. These women gave this movement, its spark by conduction the first ever women 's right’s convention. This convention was held in a church in Seneca Falls in 1848. At this convection they expressed their problems with how they were treated, as being less than a man. These women offered solutions to the problem by drafting the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. They cleverly based the document after the Declaration of Independence. The opening line of their document was “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal” (Shi & Mayer 361). In this declaration they discuss the history of how women have been treated and how men have denied them rights, which go against everything they believe in. This convention was the spark that really
It was led by Alice Paul who was earlier a member of NAWSA. She was more radical in her views and organized picketing of the White House. She left NAWSA along with her supporters and formed the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. This organization later evolved into National Woman’s Party in 1917(Sewall Belmont House and Museum n.d) What was the background that led to this milestone or struggle? Since time immemorial, women were being caged usually in unhealthy situations, often beaten, especially during the November 15 “Night of Terror” at Occoquan Workhouse, and often violently fed when they went on hunger strikes to protest being deprived of political prisoner status. [Nancy Milliken, University of California, 2013] Women of all classes risked their jobs, health, and reputations by staying on protesting. It is estimated that nearly 2,000 women spent time on the demonstrating lines between 1917 and 1919, and that led to the arrest of over hundreds of women, out of which 168 were actually jailed. [Congressional Library’s American Memory n.d] Women’s rights; including family responsibilities were socially and institutionally barred, there was a lack of educational and economic opportunities, as well as lack of a voice in political discourse. In the 1920s, the National Woman’s Party drafted more than many pieces of legislation in support of equal rights for women on the state and local levels,
This placed the focus on women's workers rights. Movements for female workers led to an overall heightened realization of the worth and power women can obtain. The women's movement was increased during the first decade of the 20th century. Middle class young females were educated. They went out as settlement workers, helping immigrant women, and increasing involvement in social issues outside the home (Doc C) such as the temperance/Prohibition movement. With advancing technology and a changing (becoming easier) way of life (Doc A) middle class women had the free time to pursue social issues, such as suffrage. Middle class women ran the movement for suffrage because they had the time to be politically active. They were not idle housewives completely dependent on men because they did not have a job (Doc H). They were community leaders (Doc C). The suffrage movement culminated in the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1916 which prohibited preventing women to vote. So, the rise of female independence began with underpaid workers and was taken up by the middle
Beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, women began to vocalize their opinions and desires for the right to vote. The Women’s Suffrage movement paved the way for the nineteenth Amendment in the United States Constitution that allowed women to have that right. The Women’s Suffrage movement started a movement for equal rights for women that has continued to propel equal opportunities for women throughout the country. The Women’s Liberation Movement has sparked better opportunities, demanded respect and pioneered the path for women entering the workforce that was started by the right to vote and given momentum in the late 1950s. The focus of The Women’s Liberation Movement was idealized off The Civil Rights Movement; it was founded on the elimination of discriminatory practices and sexist attitudes (Freeman, 1995).