SAGE presents Dr. Sarah Case for Women’s History Month

By Danny Ross

Staff Writer

As part of SU’s continuing celebration of Women’s History Month, Dr. Sarah Case gave a lecture entitled "Women Who Made a Difference" on Thursday in the Montgomery room of the Guerreri University Center. Dr. Case was introduced by a member of Salisbury Activists for Gender Equality (SAGE).

Dr. Case’s speech focused on woman who have helped pave the way for other woman by striving for equality, whether that equality occur in the work place or the political arena. One such woman was Florence Kelley.

Kelley was born in 1859 and was a supporter of Woman’s Suffrage in the United States. She was one of the founding members of the NAACP and she was crucial in improving the child labor laws and working conditions. Kelley was instrumental in getting the Illinois state legislature to pass the first factory law that prohibited children under the age of fourteen from being employed.

In furthering her battle with sweatshops, Kelley went on to direct the newly founded National Consumers League. She traveled around the country giving lectures to raise awareness of sometimes horrid working conditions in the United States. The league also began to place white labels on clothing to denote that it had been produced in factories that adhered to the new and stricter labor laws. If clothing failed to meet the standards for displaying the label, Kelley and the NCL would boycott those factories. The NCL also pushed for a minimum wage and a limitation of hours that woman and children could work.

Kelley would go on to join the Socialists Party and continued to fight for African American Civil rights, Woman’s Suffrage, and Child Labor Laws. She was also very instrumental in the continuing development of "Hull House" in Chicago. This was a mansion that was set up in Chicago to act as kind of shelter for woman and children. Kelley, along with many of influential women of the Socialist party, were able to sway wealthy people into giving huge contributions to the house, one contributor gave $750,000. The Hull House model spread to the rest of the country, with similar settlements being established in cities such as Boston and New York.

"Many people assume that women had very little political influence before the women's movement of the 1960’s. In fact, women had a significant amount of political power even before gaining the right the vote in 1920. Today women are voters and officeholders, but there is no longer a sense of 'women's politics' in they way that there was before the Nineteenth Amendment," Case said.

Another notable female that Dr. Case spoke about was Eleanor Roosevelt. Roosevelt was the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt and would marry a distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Even though she was born into wealth and affluence, Roosevelt would begin her devotion to the less fortunate as a teenager. She dedicated her life to human rights and was regarded by President Harry S. Truman as "First Lady of The World". Even as her husband contracted Polio in 1921, Roosevelt persuaded him to continue his presence in the Democratic Party despite his limited mobility. That persuasion would later prove important as he would become president in 1932.

Eleanor would use her husband’s presidency and her role as the new first lady to begin her long and dedicated career of helping the poor and pushing for woman’s rights. One of Roosevelt’s most famous quotes seemed to capture her zest for change. "It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."

During her husband’s presidency and after his death, Roosevelt remained politically active. She wrote a daily newspaper column, fought for civil rights, and went on nationwide lecture tours. She was also influential in getting her husband to appoint Francis Perkins as the Secretary of Labor in 1933. Perkins was the first female cabinet member and was involved in many important changes. Perkins, along with Roosevelt, was part of many changes that led to President Roosevelt’s "New Deal" Legislation. Never retiring from public life, Eleanor would continue her influential political involvement until her death in 1962.

Eleanor Roosevelt was appointed and served as United States delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1951. In 1946 she was elected chairman of the UN's Human Rights Commission and helped draft the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Dr. Case noted that these women were not only important for what they did in the time in which they lived, but they were extremely instrumental in helping other women, both past and present, make a difference.

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