The Wooing of Lucy Stone

Now Harry, I have been all my life alone. I have planned and executed, without counsel, and without control. I have shared thought, and feeling, and life, with myself alone. I have made a path for my feet which I know is very useful…and it seems to me, I cannot risk it by any change… I have lived alone, happily and well, and can still do it… My life has never seemed to me, a baffled one, only in hours that now and then come, when my love-life is consciously unshared. But such hours are only as the drop to the ocean.

– Lucy Stone to Henry Blackwell, 1854

The first time I used an online dating site was in high school. In one of the cruelest teenaged acts I would commit, I created a fake profile so that I could join a few of my peers in mocking a young teacher behind his back. He was 24; we were 16. We thought we were so clever, revealing the latent desperation in his swagger. We thought he was such a dweeb. We did not yet recognize the crystal ball of his profile for what it was.

It was almost a decade before I would log onto OkCupid again. I had just moved to Cleveland. I was sitting alone in the dark, absently clicking through pictures on Facebook, looking for a me that didn’t exist–perfect hair, decade-appropriate outfit, cool background. For the benefit of virtual strangers, I spun half-truths like an expert. “I’m great at being silly and tripping over air,” I typed. “I love Game of Thrones,” and, “Everything goes better with beer.” To the casual browser, I appeared charmingly vacuous. Harmless. I got a lot of messages. Most of them just said, “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Three years, two platforms, and some choice unsolicited pics later, I have finally lost my mind. It happened a few days ago, after I had a surprisingly sustained conversation with a man about his new tank top. “What color is it?” I asked. “Green,” he replied. A few minutes later, he sent me a picture, mostly of his flexed arms, with just enough of the shirt visible that vanity could be denied. “Yup,” I responded, obstinately refusing to acknowledge the elephant biceps in the room. “That’s definitely green.”

And then I threw my phone to the foot of my bed and silently screamed for ten whole minutes.

I often turn to history to help contextualize the present–“a sister’s hand may wrest a female pen”–but I had never before thought to apply such a panacea to my love life. After all, what could a Victorian lady have to say about the ennui of modern dating culture? As it turns out, I have more to learn from my historical heroes than how to weather politics. Enter: Loving Warriors: Selected Letters of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, 1853-1893.

When Lucy Stone met Henry Blackwell, she was 31 and building a solid career of speaking for abolition and women’s rights. In an Antebellum twist on an unfortunately persistent trope in every woman’s life, her critics anxiously awaited the day when “a wedding kiss” would “shut up the mouth of Lucy Stone.” She had been skeptical of husbands since she was a teenager, and marriage was the last thing on her mind when she entered a hardware shop in Cincinnati, Ohio, looking for supplies.

Henry Blackwell was 24 years old at the time, a businessman like his brothers, but desperately seeking to reconcile his desire to leave a financial legacy with his reform-minded soul. He had five sisters, most famously Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S. He was immediately smitten with Lucy Stone, and seeing her speak a few years later in New York solidified his affection. “I decidedly prefer her to any lady I have ever met,” he wrote to his brother, “always excepting the Bloomer dress which I dont like practically, tho theoretically I believe in it with my whole soul.”

Bloomers, a radical (though much maligned) sartorial choice

He immediately started writing to her, with her consent, about every aspect of his daily life. He opened most letters with a description of his surroundings, coolly segued into a discussion of civil rights, and then closed with an apology for writing so much to such a busy person. Her responses, though less prolific, followed a similar pattern. He carried her letters with him when he traveled until they practically disintegrated in his hands. Lucy, while “generally thankful for pen & ink,” admitted that she hated them in her current separation from Henry.

Their strong personalities shine in their letters. Lucy–strong-willed and frank–kept her missives short and to the point. Very rarely do her lines stray towards poetry or romance, and her love caused her to hold him, perhaps, to a higher standard than most. “With much love,” she closed one [adoringly] chastising letter, “and the hope that, as we know that we are not perfect, we must strive to become so.”

For his part, he was so full of passion, humor, and eloquence that no amount of paper could possibly contain it all. This dearth of space did not hinder his pen. He simply turned the paper from portrait to landscape and wrote over what he had already written. It is incredibly annoying, and I am unbelievably grateful to the tortured grad student that transcribed this madness:

Fig. 1: A Researcher’s Hell

But I digress. Very early on, Henry Blackwell began describing to Lucy Stone his idea of marriage, in the hopes that she someday might amend her revulsion towards the practice, if not for his sake, then for her own.

My idea of the relation involves no sacrifice of individuality but its perfection–no limitation of the career of one, or both but its extension. I would not have my wife drudge…while I found nothing to do but dig ditches. I would not even consent that my wife should stay at home to rock the baby when she ought to be off addressing a meeting… Perfect equality in this relationship…I would have–but it should be the equality of Progress, of Development, not of Decay. If both parties cannot study more, think more, feel more, talk more & work more than they could alone, I will remain an old bachelor & adopt a Newfoundland dog or a terrier as an object of affection.

– Henry Blackwell to Lucy Stone, 1853

Knowing that she felt more comfortable conversing in person, he made every effort to meet her on her speaking tours. Their first “date” occurred after he discovered she would be passing through Niagara Falls to attend a women’s rights convention in Cleveland–a manageable trip from his home in Cincinnati. Eagerly, he penned her a request to meet her in Niagara and then accompany her to the convention. Her response was painfully lukewarm, but Henry still raced to Niagara and had the time of his life, even speaking publicly on women’s rights for the first time.

I…am very willing that you should be there too… I think you know me well enough to put the right construction upon my consent to meet you at Niagara. I am glad of the friendship of the good whether they be men or women… But believe me Mr. Henry Blackwell when I say, (and Heaven is my witness that I mean what I say) that, in the circumstances I have not the remotest desire of assuming any other relations than those I now sustain. I would incur my own heavy censure, if by fault of mine, you did not understand this.

– Lucy Stone to Henry Blackwell, 1853

Though we may never know what passed between them in Cleveland, the tone of their letters shifted almost immediately from friendly to intimate. She wrote very little of “Mr. Blackwell” to her mother, but she began addressing him as “Harry” in their personal correspondence. As for Henry Blackwell, one need only look to his reminiscence of the event one year later. “I was with you at Cleveland,” he wrote. “I stood with you in the dark cool night overlooking the Lake–with Charles Burleigh & Antoinette–your hand in mind & the great roar of the waves coming up & the winds sweeping over us–& Charles quoting poetry–while I was living it.”

At this point, I was screaming into the book for Lucy to just accept him already because my heart couldn’t take it anymore! But, of course, she didn’t. As their attraction grew more obvious, Lucy grew more distant. She even went so far as to claim that she “instinctively recoil[ed]” from the thought of marrying him. The fear of losing the happy life she had built for herself seemed too great to overcome. It’s heartbreaking the abuse he took in pursuit of her affection, but nothing she wrote could deter him.

I know that the argument is not necessarily that you should marry me. That is again another question. You say you do not love me enough to do so. Then I say–wait until you do. But do not resolve beforehand against marrying me. See me & think of me & give me a fair chance of being loved by you. You cannot love by your simple will any more than you can see. But you can let yourself love or prevent yourself from loving just as you can open, or shut your eyes. Dear Lucy, love me if you can. I will endeavor to give you no cause ever to regret having ever done so…

– Henry Blackwell to Lucy Stone, 1854

It took two years of constant correspondence before Lucy Stone finally consented to marry Henry Blackwell. Excitedly, he wrote her asking if they might set the date his 30th birthday, but also expressed his wish to defer to her on every point in planning their upcoming nuptials. “I do not want you to fetter yourself one particle for my sake,” he wrote, fearing she might get cold feet. “I do not want you to forgo one sentiment of independence, nor one attribute of personality.” He knew what pain it brought her, even without reading the wedding invitation Lucy sent to Antoinette Brown to “help in so cruel an operation as putting Lucy Stone to death.”

Dear Lucy–we know each other & we know that we are one. It was not for nothing that my heart leaped towards you & yearned for you when I first saw you in our store six years ago…but dear Lucy I am not at all anxious that you shd promise to love, honor & cherish me, for I know your heart. I have no preference for any particular form, or place. My home is in you–my marriage is already solemnised.

– Henry Blackwell to Lucy Stone, 1855

As for the ceremony, it was a small affair on May 1, 1855, undertaken in protest against “such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess.” Henry Blackwell married his true love; her identity remained in tact. When they retired to their room (an event she feared almost as much as the wedding itself), Henry slipped quietly into bed without waking her.

Throughout their lives, he proved true to his lofty sentiments. The first time Lucy wished to attend a conference as a married woman, she asked for his permission. He said he could not give it, and advised her to ask Lucy Stone instead. “I cannot get him to govern me!” she wrote Susan B. Anthony, happily. Together they raised one daughter, Alice, who grew to be just as strong-willed as her mother. They lived happily for almost forty years, separated only by Lucy’s death in 1893.

Draft of their marriage protest, 1855 (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University)

So…what? When I look at my love life up to this point, I cannot help but feel discouraged. Yet, I have begun to find hope in darker moments. Superficiality breeds superficiality. If I’m done appealing to boys who only want a girl to ooh and ahh over their work at the gym, then I need to let my feminist flag fly. No more the meek woman who lets a man call her a communist for thinking health care is a universal right. No more the bland statue who spends more time taking selfies for boys than discussing sexism and white privilege. If a man doesn’t love me for my brain and my passion, then that man doesn’t love me at all. I’m sick of changing myself, diluting myself, for the fleeting gratification of simply anyone telling me I’m attractive.

Someday, I will meet my Henry Blackwell, my perfect person who will find themselves as enriched by my light as I am by theirs, someone who can be patient despite my reluctance, whom I will love (as Lucy did) with “the capacity of 20 women.” Until then, don’t look for me on Tinder. You won’t catch me preening over flirty chats. I’ll be in the library, nose buried in a book, reassembling my dignity.

flint.

It is Tuesday, November 8th, and I wake up at 5am like it’s Christmas. I won’t have a sip of coffee for another two and a half hours, but my mind is already buzzing. I put on some of my best clothes, an outfit that has been ready for this day almost as long as I have. A purple sweater–“the color of loyalty, constancy of purpose, and unswerving steadfastness to a cause”–drapes gently (perfectly) over a white blouse–“the emblem of purity, symbolizing the quality of our purpose.” The feeling of equal rights is in the air, and I am breathing deep.

I pull into the parking lot in the dark. Dawn has yet to beak over the eastern horizon, and there are still thirty minutes before the doors will open, but I get out of my car and wait outside. I am first in line at my polling place, and, though my breath hangs visible on the morning air, and the cold sinks deep into my bones, my spirit remains untouched. Democracy has never let me down. (I realize now this means I am lucky.)

My ballot number is 0002. Some old woman who lives in the building cut in front of me, and I let her, because I am not giving karma any fodder today. It takes me longer to vote than I expected. What if I forget how to read? I worry. What if my eyes get crossed and my markings are all shifted? What if I am overpowered by a brief and sudden urge to self-destruct? Working slowly, I use my finger to help me find the right bubble, and I fill it in until I think the paper might tear. Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton. I feed my paper to the scanner, and I wonder if the machine knows how much this matters to me. It beeps and boops and lights up unfazed.  I think of the men in my life, and I wonder if they know.

—

Everyone at work was nervous, and, for maybe the first time in my entire life, I am not. As I settle in and prepare for a long night of election coverage, Donald Trump is already winning. I ignore Google’s 30-second updates and instead practice the face I will make when Hillary Clinton finishes the final stretch victorious. My friends begin to doubt, but my heart beats steadily on. I turn to jokes and inspiring quotes when times get tough, because I am sure I am only moments away from true and unparalleled elation. I look up and post pictures of Hillary Clinton in college to lift my spirits. I listen to her commencement speech on endless loop. Her voice rings out clear–unpracticed, but true: “Fear is always with us. We just don’t have time for it. Not now.” My heart swells with pride, and I realize in these moments that I love her. I love her for her nerd glasses and her intelligence. I love her for her courage and unwavering dedication. I love her, also, for those moments when society let her down–when the world required her to ditch those glasses and her last name, when she had to brush her hair and talk about furniture before anyone would listen to her ideas. I realize in these moments that I would fight for her–kicking, scratching, screaming–like I would fight for myself. I realize that, for me, there is no distinction now between her dreams and my own. There can be no other outcome. She. Will. Win.

—

It is Wednesday, November 9th, and I wake up at 5am like I do sometimes when my mind is a broken record of dis-ease. It has been only three hours since sleep took me away from disbelief against my will; yet, already, my newsfeed is ablaze. Already, I see men writing that this would never have happened if Bernie Sanders had won the nomination. I am tired, and what I hear, instead, is that this never would have happened if Hillary Clinton had been a man. I still have not successfully divorced her defeat from my own, and the fact that I started my period only deepens the disconnection I feel between myself and my male friends in this moment. It has only been three hours, but some of these friends are already picking candidates for 2020, as if this mind-numbing, blood-chilling outcome were so easily put behind us. Most of the women in my life are deadly silent.

What my friends don’t know is that, while they put her loss behind them, I am still wondering if Hillary Clinton is okay. I am embarrassed to admit this, but I need to know. Did she sleep? Did she cry? Will this always be the fate of strong women who dare to dream beyond their prescribed destinies? For a brief moment, I am reassured by an image of her, taking herself out for cannoli in big, purple sunglasses and a heavy scarf to disguise her all-too-recognizable face. “It’s okay, girl,” I tell Imaginary Hillary Clinton as she wonders whether or not she deserves the sweet treat. “You’ve earned it.”

—

The week moves on, but I do not. For two days straight, I am at work and offline until almost 10pm. As my friends type out their reactions, analyses, and predictions for the future, I try to come to terms with the election while learning the symptoms of child abuse. Between worrying about event attendance and laminating things like my life depends on it, I must reconcile what I know society thinks of me (young–lazy, female–emotional) with what I know to be true (young–energetic, female–driven). Hillary Clinton concedes as I am held hostage by the responsibilities of employment. I must set aside my heartache, keep my eyes off my phone. I chide myself for being selfish. It is the only way I can survive.

—

I learn how to start a fire with flint and steel, and I feel my spirits lifting with each strike of stone on metal. Flint is a beautiful, natural stone, ranging in color from rosy pink to obsidian. It is an entity sturdy enough to withstand time, hard enough to carve steel. When broken, flint becomes sharper.

Sparks fly as stone strikes metal. It is not long before one of them hits their mark, and, a few deep breaths later, my little pile of sticks is on fire. The flint in my hand remains in tact. The steel is one tiny piece smaller.

“Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger,” wrote Audre Lorde in 1981. “Focused with precision, it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change. And when I speak of change, I do not mean a simple switch of positions or a temporary lessening of tension, nor the ability to smile and feel good. I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration in those assumptions underlining our lives.”

As I breathe deep the smell of smoke and burning tinder, I realize that we are, all of us who suffer, made of flint.

—

Watching Hillary Clinton concede the election to Donald Trump, I am torn between a sense of pride and an overwhelming sadness. Looking out over her purple-clad shoulders, both her husband and her running mate are red-faced, on the verge of tears. She stands in contrast before the microphone, her spine straightened by necessity, her trademark smile stretched wide for the haters. I wonder what they would say if she cried like the men who stand behind her. (Emotional. Weak.) She speaks of faith in the U.S. Constitution and the dreams of little girls, and I wonder, now, if those two things will ever be reconciled.

In 1798, Charles Brockden Brown (perhaps America’s first feminist ally) wrote Alcuin, a short drama in which a male schoolteacher asks a woman whether or not she is a Federalist. She answers, in a prescient nod to the 21st Century: “Even the government of our own country, which is said to be the freest in the world, passes over women as if they were not…Law-makers thought as little of comprehending us in their code of liberty as if we were pigs or sheep. If they generously admit me into the class of existences, but affirm that I exist for no purpose but the convenience of the more dignified sex, that I cannot be entrusted with the government of myself: that to foresee, to deliberate and decide belongs to others, while all my duties resolve themselves into this precept, ‘listen and obey;’ it is not for me to smile at their tyranny, or receive as my gospel, a code built upon such atrocious maxims. No, I am not a Federalist.”

Hillary Clinton is a woman with over 30 years of experience in government, who has traveled the world, who hugs crying children and tells them they are brave, who has nerves of titanium. Donald Trump is a man with no political experience, who makes fun of other countries, who treats other people–especially women–like dirt, and who banishes crying children from his presence (which is ironic because he has the temperament of a baby with a full diaper). If the differences in experience and personality are clear, so, too, are the differences in gender. Now, more than ever, I am reminded that our government was forged exclusively by men, for men, and of men. Now, more than ever, I am reminded that, as Audre Lorde wrote almost two hundred years later: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

—

I am back on social media, but I cannot find a balance. On one hand, I reject the joke that a bunch of disappointed Americans will be assimilated into Canada or move to Europe when actual refugees have been largely denied this same welcome. Has your disappointment left you blind to your privilege? On the other hand, I reject the idea that I should peacefully accept election results that threaten the safety of myself and the safety of my friends. The more people tell me to swallow my anger in the name of democracy, the more I lash out. The onus of change does not rest on the backs of the marginalized. I am not responsible for your education, your actions. I wonder…is it my anger that you fear or the realization that it has been your heel on my chest?

These are questions I must wrestle with as well. I realize now that I cannot allow myself to sink back into the complacency of my white skin and financial stability. I must strive to remain present, no matter how difficult it becomes. Hillary Clinton may have conceded the election, but she did not concede the country. “Let us have faith in each other,” she said, her voice clear–pained, but true. “Let us not grow weary and lose heart, for there are more seasons to come and there is more work to do.”

Now, more than ever, we must be vigilant and engaged. We say that “love trumps hate,” but those words are meaningless if they are not accompanied by action. When was the last time I called or wrote to an elected official? (Kindergarten.) When was the last time I shared a meal with a homeless person? (One week ago.) When was the last time I joined in a religious celebration that was different from my own? (One year ago.) When was the last time I finished a book written by someone different from me? (Last night.) When was the last time I read the U.S. Constitution in its entirety? (Seven years ago.) The point is, we can all strive do better. And we all have to.

At this crucial moment in our country’s history, I am emboldened by a story I was told in Ireland. I had been enjoying a lovely  evening stroll across Galway city with a cute boy when he suddenly stopped at a nondescript stone wall and instructed me to kick it. Now, kicking the wall at Salthill is a thing people do, but the Irish had a funny little habit of lying to me and then forgetting to tell me it was all a joke in the end. It is likely he was only testing the depth of my gullibility when he told me that the wall had once belonged to an Englishman’s estate. “It’s a symbol of British tyranny,” he said, affecting solemnity. “We Irish have been kicking it for centuries, chipping away at its foundation with every thrust.” As if to illustrate his point, the toe of my boot met a crack in the wall and a small piece of stone bounced down to the pavement.

Perhaps it is ironic that I am inspired by the image of a wall in an election season where the walls–physical, metaphorical, and potential–that divide us seem higher than ever. Sexism and racism continue to exist in the United States of America. Our president-elect may or may not bolster these walls, but we have the power to kick them down. Women in the 1800s, when confronting the evils of slavery, did not let their disenfranchisement stop their voices from being heard. Civil rights activists in the 1960s, with their lives on the line, did not allow threats of violence to silence their calls for equality. We do not “survive” a Trump presidency by sitting back and waiting for 2020. We “survive” the next four years by holding ourselves and our friends accountable for our actions (or lack of action). We “survive” by empowering ourselves and our friends to speak out. We “survive” by walking right up to those walls that seek to divide us and kicking like hell.

Poetry.

I have been quiet recently because the events of this world have made me fearful. I’m not the type of person who screams when they are afraid. Once, when I was little, and I was afraid of being sick, I told dad that he would know to get mom to help me in the bathroom when I screamed, but all I could manage was a small whimper before I threw up all over the bed. Once, while camping, I saw a spider the size of my hand on the wall by my sleeping bag–literally, in front of my nose–and I didn’t scream or run or even flinch. I closed my eyes and repeated over and over in my head, “There is no spider. There is no spider. There is no spider. There is no spider…”

When I am scared, I grow quiet. I close my eyes, cover my ears, curl up into a ball, and do my best to disappear. It’s comforting to feel invisible in the darkness, to feel removed from the danger. These days, I can wrap myself in the warm security of my upbringing (of my skin color) and I can hide for weeks.

It’s surprising how easy this is.

Growing up sheltered in the suburbs was a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it is possible that I didn’t see color as a child. I knew my best friends were Indian, but that wasn’t the point, because we were all just horses or tigers on the playground. I was open to everyone, and I loved the new cultures my friends’ families invited me to learn. Racism didn’t exist in my world. It wasn’t something I brought to the table, but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t already there. What is magical in children is less so in adults, and I learned this the hard way. I wasn’t just blind to color. I was blind to everything.

Derogatory terms were so far off my radar that I didn’t even know they existed in the 21st century. I had never heard them on T.V. and I had never heard my family use them, not once. We read Huckleberry Finn, but I had never heard the word spoken aloud, and so I thought that’s just what it was–something you read but you never, ever say, the relic of a very distant past. I remember in college, I heard someone talking about a person I knew and they called her a J.A.P. It was the only term I’d heard before, thanks to watching a lot of corny WWII movies. I remember leaning over to my friend and whispering, confused, “But…she’s not Japanese.” My friend just looked at me and frowned. “That’s not funny, Jen.”

I realized much later that the comment had had nothing to do with being Japanese. In my ignorance, I had missed an opportunity to defend someone I cared about. How many times, I wonder, had I missed that opportunity growing up? Had any of my friends tried to talk to me about what it was like being a different color, practicing a different religion? We talked about books and movies and boys and ice cream. We frolicked like champs and did science experiments together. Maybe I missed something then, too.

When I was in high school, I remember hating poetry. The first poem analysis I completed my senior year was titled “NO,” and I basically failed. My gracious English teacher gave me a second chance, even after I tried giving up poetry for Lent, and I ended up doing okay, but I didn’t like it for one minute. I couldn’t connect with the medium at any level, and I refused to try because I didn’t like it. The best description for this literary Catch-22 I have ever heard comes from a scene in The History Boys. As the teacher announces it’s time to read some poetry, one of the students groans and falls forward dramatically onto his desk. “Sir, I don’t always understand poetry,” he admits. “I don’t see how we can understand it. Most of the stuff poetry’s about hasn’t happened to us yet.”

The pain and suffering, all the life and love of poetry, wasn’t accessible to me at that moment. I was soft. My worldview was small and myopic. I didn’t possess the tools to understand and I wasn’t able to step out and realize that how I experienced the world could be so wholly different from someone else.

This entry is me eating crow.

I’m older now, and trying to be wiser. Despite the temptation to shut my eyes and plug my ears, to burrow deep into my privilege like a cicada into the earth, I have tried to remain present. I am reading what articles I can. I am listening to people grieve. My mind is opening further than I ever thought possible, and, as time goes on, the events of the world cut closer and closer to the core of my existence (the security of my white skin). The more connected I allow myself to be to the world around me, the more personal these news stories become…

A twelve-year-old boy from my city, who attended a school that sends kids to my museum, was shot and killed in less than two seconds.

Another woman is raped on a college campus and her rapist is pitied.

Men and women who look and love like some of my best friends are gunned down without apology while they were carefree and dancing.

My friends, some of the kindest people I know, are scorned and forced to answer for senseless acts of violence they had no hand in committing.

Still more friends are waking up to learn that their homelands have been bombed beyond recognition and must come to terms with the fact that most people would rather look away.

Still more friends are waking up almost daily in their own country to pictures of violence and murder perpetrated by law enforcement against people that look like them, and have to live with the realization that their lives still count for less, even in this nation of freedom.

The more I live, the more I come to appreciate the power of poetry. This world is a broken and a terrifying place, but poets are craftsmen, magicians. With an idea as pure and simple as light and a scant few lines, poets take all that pain and suffering and transform it into a thing of beauty. The meek and mourning find their souls’ grief articulated so perfectly in so few words. It’s as if the poet were holding you in their arms and rocking you gently back and forth, whispering gently, “Me, too.”

A tiny flower grows from a mountain of crap.

The events of the past few months have shaken me, and, again, I have retreated into silence, but this time it is different. I have been silent, but I have also been listening. I may not have the words to articulate how I am feeling (she says 1000+ words later), but I thought I would share three poems that have recently brought me to tears. Read them slowly, perhaps quietly in the dark, alone, and reflect. Open your mind to the fact that violence against anyone is wrong, but that it occurs disproportionately across the world to people who may be different from you. Allow those ideas to enter your heart and to course through your veins. Open your eyes and lean in.

Allowables
I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Not even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn’t
And she scared me
And I smashed her.

I don’t think
I’m allowed

To kill something

Because I am

Frightened.

– Nikki Giovanni

A Small Needful Fact
is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue 
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.

– Ross Gay

It goes without saying that our world needs peace and compassion and understanding. Our country–the cities we live in and were raised in–needs people to be brave and to hold out their hands to their neighbors. Poetry may not be the answer, but it does make me more optimistic that the answer is out there. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to continue. But I feel stronger knowing someone out there has the words to plant that flower in this giant mountain of crap.

Bobby, baby

I was riding in the car the other day, when my friend suddenly asked me: “There was this guy…he lived here in the 1970s and was elected to Congress…what is his name?” I laughed and replied that I had no idea. “Man, I don’t know. If it’s not a woman and it’s after 1920, count me out.”

I wasn’t always like this. When I started college, I could have told you anything about U.S. history. While I composed elaborate Founding Fathers fanfiction in my head, in a classic freshman move, I also attached a Suessical poem I’d written about the 1960 presidential election to the front of my research paper on Richard Nixon.  The poem was called Little Dick & Younger Jack, and I’m 10% certain it was the difference between an A and an A- on that paper.

atop the highest mountain
little Dick did strive to be
where in his mind, so dark and sad,
only he could see

but from the deepest valley
all little Dick could see
was his sweet rival climbing high
where only one could be

for all he tried to do that year
and how fast he tried to climb
the younger man had money
and a haircut that looked fine…

The point is, I’m no longer the same historian I was in 2008. The generalist passed away, and I gained a much closer, more intimate and nuanced view of social movements and women’s history in the early decades of our country. The little facts floating around in my brain that could not be tied down with relation to my studies disappeared as my focus narrowed. Teapot Dome took a back seat to the development of female patriotism. So it goes.

Sometimes you go home to visit your parents and end up digging through your old closet. You find all these outfits and tiny shoes you could never wear again. You laugh, and you throw them in a bag to donate to Goodwill. But sometimes you find a little dress from the 90s that still fits over your head and could pass as a pretty fashionable shirt in 2016. Although I rarely lament my historical transition from generalist to specialist, what strikes me most unexpectedly are the outliers that continue to be dear to me, the things I put back in the closet to save for a rainy day. What does it mean that I still relish in the drama of Marbury v. Madison? Who still feels bad that Franklin Pierce’s 11-year-old son died right in front of his eyes? Why do I still cry when I think of Bobby Kennedy?

I’m no expert, but reading about the 60s, or watching a documentary, to me, feels a lot like following Game of Thrones. The world was in chaos; the country was divided; and everyone had their own idea of how best to fix it. There were manipulators, schemers, bullies, peacemakers, secret agents, and  heroes. Leaders were taken out, it seems, in disproportionate rates. On June 6, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy died in hospital from an assassins bullet. His rise was unexpectedly meteoric, and his fall was devastating. Five years after his brother’s assassination and only months after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., another hero of his generation had died. In his wake, vulture Richard Nixon finally seized the presidency.

Perhaps I feel Bobby Kennedy’s loss so strongly because 2016 feels like the cousin of 1968. A highly contested election with conventions that will most likely have unsavory results, institutional racism, a war on women. Our leaders’ present rhetoric on the specter of terrorism is shockingly parallel to Red Scare rhetoric of yore, and the rise of social media and the 24-hour news cycle has drastically altered politics. Not a career politician, Bobby Kennedy was not above confronting the establishment to shake things up where he saw injustice. Maybe he was the hero Gotham needed then. Maybe he is the hero Gotham needs now.

Or, perhaps I feel Bobby Kennedy’s loss so strongly, not for any political reason, but because of who he was–shy, introverted, youthful, passionate, overlooked and confused. Ignored by his father, he clung to his mother, but even she saw little potential in his poor grades and sullen attitude. He tripped over air and lacked the easy, debonair style of his siblings. He was sensitive and depressive and had absolutely zero game. (Jack actually stole Bobby’s girlfriend once while they were on a date.) It’s easy to relate to someone as painfully outcast as that. Baa baa, black sheep. Baa baa, Bobby.

That isn’t to say I’m blind to his flaws. He wasn’t always right as a policy maker and his religious zeal made him a conservative adolescent. Every time I read his life, I am consistently disappointed by his machismo and his initial reluctance towards the civil rights movement. When the author notes a homophobic comment he made towards someone he didn’t like, I cringe and consider abandoning interest. But, then, he’ll do something that makes my mind spin. He’ll see a child in pain and reevaluate a situation. He’ll tour a rundown community and realize the government has failed them in unforgivable ways. He’ll revise his hawkish reaction to instead counsel peace. He’ll wonder aloud why so few of the lawyers in the justice department are black. He’ll ask a journalist what their favorite flavor of ice cream is and share that his is chocolate. He’ll acknowledge that women are absolutely necessary to the election process or join a migrant worker strike and my heart will be all aflutter again.

As an adult, Kennedy was hard and masculine, but he was intuitive and emotional at his core. His ability to empathize was off the charts. Although he resisted at times, his moral compass was in full functioning order and usually won the day. But, for most of his life, he was the trumpet and scapegoat of his family. If Jack wanted something unsavory done, he could call on Bobby to do the dirty work. If someone criticized his father, no matter how his father had discounted him as a child, he would bristle and fight. It wasn’t until 1968 that Bobby Kennedy reluctantly edged into the spotlight left vacant and flickering after the death of his brother.

A good story has a beginning, sufficient rising action towards a climax, followed by enough falling action to lead you towards the end. Kennedy’s story started slowly and unremarkably as the neglected third son of ambitious parents. It continued slowly, as he consistently put his hopes and dreams aside for his family. He charged on after 1963, though directionless, and became his own man. In just a few short months, Bobby Kennedy, the shy, skulking boy from the background, found his voice just as the nation was ready to change its tune. It was a voice no one (not even himself) had heard before, but it rang loud and true and unafraid. “We need change,” it said. “Will you help me?” it asked, and the people of this country roared an overwhelming “yes.”

RFK is a giant, but he’s a giant what if. Would he have won the Democratic nomination in 1968? Possibly. Would he have won the election? Maybe not. But his sudden death allows us to speculate, allows us to imagine that climax, that falling action, and the eventual ending. He was a man of contradictions, who was constantly growing, constantly feeling. In such a short amount of time, he seemed to lift America’s hopes and present an optimistic future. Oh, the places he could have taken us…

So why do I still cry about Bobby Kennedy? Because he was a hero. Because he was human. Because he was afraid but he always did what was right in the end. His hands still shook when he spoke in public and he still struggled under the burden of his name, but his courage and determination are inspiring, his ability to escape his privilege and empathize with the working class is striking. As his funeral train sped through all the different landscapes of our beautiful nation, all the different people that make up that nation came out to mourn him. Overlooked as a child, hundreds of thousands of people now patiently waited by the tracks to say goodbye. That’s a powerful image, and I think it’s worth a few tears.

And even in our sleep, pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

“Hitch your wagon to a star…”

The past three days, I have devoted myself to writing an essay on the 1916 Easter Rising. I’m done with school, but I entered an essay contest as part of the Columbus Feis because I was feeling disenchanted with my dancing. I haven’t been able to increase my endurance, perform my steps without error, or even motivate myself to care. Embarrassing as it is to admit, I get a little demoralized when I don’t win. Culture, history, and my own nostalgia don’t need a fancy dress, a big wig, or even a fake tan for validation, but they feel a lot more pride when they’re rewarded with a trophy.

In short, I saw that there was an essay contest, that the prompt was women’s involvement in the 1916 Easter Rising, and I thought, “That prize is mine.”  Later, when I saw that I was the only one entered, I was even happier. I was going to do some quality work, and someone was going to say “Good job!” (That doesn’t happen enough in the world. To everyone who is doing work out there–any work–great job, keep it up, you matter.) Anyway, long story short, the deadline was yesterday. All I had was the skeleton of an outline and a choice. I wasn’t that invested. It was only a $7 entry fee. I could always just quit…or I could do the research, learn something awesome about my heritage, and try to submit it anyway.

I chose the latter, and I learned a valuable lesson. Irish women were seriously awesome. What’s more, I learned I don’t really care about the commendation…at least not as much as I appreciate the opportunity to research and know these incredible people. I woke up this morning, I watched some TV, did some gardening, and then sat down to write. Four hours later, viola. Without further ado: my words.

—

Hitch Your Wagon to a Star:
Women in the 1916 Easter Rising
by Jen Graham

“Hitch your wagon to a star. Do not work for the right to share in the government of that nation that holds Ireland enslaved, but work to procure for our sex the rights of free citizenship in an independent Ireland.”
– Bean na hEireann, 1900s

On Easter Monday in 1916, the city of Dublin was engulfed in a week-long revolt for Irish independence. The Irish Citizen Army and Irish Volunteers set up garrisons at posts around the city, including the General Post Office, Stephen’s Green, and City Hall. Over the course of one week, shots were fired, arrests were made, and the lives of Irish women were changed forever. In 1917, when Margaret Skinnider published her memoir of the 1916 Easter Rising in the United States, she lamented that “when the revolt of a people that feels itself oppressed is successful, it is written down in history as a revolution…when it fails, it is called an insurrection—as in Ireland in 1916. Those who conquer usually write the history of the conquest.”[1] In the historic memory of the world, the events of Easter Week have gone down for nearly a century as a failed rebellion. It is possible, however, to push Skinnider’s idea one step further: because those who write the history of the conquest are usually men, the 1916 uprising has been recorded as a decidedly male movement.

The Fianna Eireann—the boys of Ireland—are more often associated with the rebellion than the nation’s daughters. Yet it was a woman, Constance Markievicz, who founded the organization and recruited those boys, teaching them the history and language of their country and how to shoot a gun.[2] Typical historical narrative closely associates masculinity with violence and femininity with pacifism. However, historian Gerardine Meaney argues that “women are not…essentially more peaceable, less dogmatic, uninfected by blood-thirsty political ideologies. Women have been actively involved in every possible variant of both nationalism and Unionism…Women have supported and carried out violent actions. They have gained and lost from their involvement. If patriarchal history has portrayed us as bystanders to the political process, it has lied.”[3] The 1916 Easter Rising engaged hundreds of Irish women, uniting disparate strands of feminism, bringing them out of the narrow confines of domesticity, and opening the door to fight for a greater role in Irish society. Far from impartial observers, Irish women were active participants in the struggle for independence, before, during, and after the events of 1916.

Cumann na mBan

Before 1913, women’s attitudes in Ireland were divided along ideological lines. Members of the Irish Women’s Franchise League (IWFL), founded by Hanna and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington in 1908, considered universal suffrage the top feminist priority in the nation. According to Janine Booth, Irish suffragists felt that women should not simply champion the cause of Irish independence if, in an independent Ireland, they would still be disenfranchised, second-class citizens.[4] Suffrage women believed only the vote could save them from the lives of “mere camp-followers and parasites of public life.”[5] The nationalist women of the Inghinidhe na hEireann (Daughters of Erin) believed differently.

The Daughters of Erin were founded in 1908 by Maud Gonne for women who “resented being excluded, as women, from national organizations.”[6] They believed that universal suffrage could not protect Ireland from the tyranny of the British. Securing the vote for women while Ireland was still under British rule would not liberate Irish women, but would make them participants in a government whose legitimacy they did not recognize. The Bean na hEireann, a publication of the Daughters of Erin advocating “militancy, Irish separatism, and feminism,” emphasized this idea when it urged women to take action. “Hitch your wagon to a star,” it advised. “Do not work for the right to share in the government of that nation that holds Ireland enslaved, but work to procure for our sex the rights of free citizenship in an independent Ireland.”[7]

Divided, the feminist movement in Ireland could not live up to its potential. Both suffragist and nationalist feminists needed a cause to unite them, and that cause soon revealed itself in the form of labor and socialism. Politically active women like Constance Markievicz and Margaret Skinnider witnessed the poverty of the Irish first hand. Walking through Ash Street in Dublin, Skinnider remembered the decrepit living conditions. “The fallen houses look like corpses,” she wrote, “the others like cripples leaning on crutches…They were built by rich Irishmen for their homes. Today they are tenements for the poorest Irish people…the poor among the ruins of grandeur.”[8] Markievicz, too, found her firm convictions wavering in the face of poverty. “What was the best way to tackle the problems of huge unemployment, exhausted workers, wages, and poor accommodation?” she asked in 1910. “Nationalism alone may not be the answer.”[9]

Children on the streets, 1913

In addition to experiencing poverty, activist women were becoming disillusioned with the political process in the early 1900s. Sinn Fein, a nationalist organization founded in 1908, was not actively anti-feminist, but the group was slow to react to women’s demands.[10] Socialist James Connolly, on the other hand, believed in the ability of women to successfully power social movements. Connolly identified with the feminist cause, writing that “the worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.”[11] Thus, Connolly actively recruited women to join a strike known as the 1913 Dublin Lock Out. The strike centered around a dispute between Irish workers and their employers over the right to unionize against poor working conditions and low wages. As a result of the strike, employers locked their employees out of the workplace and hired scab workers from Britain and other cities in Ireland instead. For seven months, Irish workers, the poorest in the United Kingdom, were forced to live off what charity they could find for their families.[12]

The events of 1913 effectively brought the causes of labor and feminism closer together. Women who disagreed on the priorities of nationalism and suffrage involved themselves in the fight for justice. Constance Markievicz was known for working day and night, “collecting funds and serving meals in the food kitchen. Her home [had] become a sort of refugee camp for all those who had got into trouble with the police.”[13] Actress and activist Helena Molony described Markievicz as “working as a man might have worked for the freedom of Ireland.”[14] Of her own experience, Constance Markievicz wrote: “My first realization of tyranny came from some chance words spoken in favour of women’s suffrage…That was my first bite, you may say, at the apple of freedom, and I soon got on to the other freedoms, freedom to the nation, freedom to the worker.”[15] The women who participated in the 1913 action learned that freedom was multifaceted. Neither nationalism, socialism, nor suffrage alone could solve the nation’s problems. It was only through a unification of ideologies that Irish women could free their country from tyranny.

The Dublin strike, 1913

In 1916, the time seemed ripe for a political upheaval. Britain had declared war with Germany in 1914, and the pride of the Irish had been rising for decades. Through plays, stories, and poems, the Irish people had learned of their ancient culture and history. What was called the Celtic Revival had shown Ireland what was, and what could be once more. “The refusal to do or say or think in the Anglicized way,” wrote Margaret Skinnider, “held in it a loyalty to something fine and free, the existence of which we believed in because we had read of it in the history of Ireland in our sagas. We were not a people struggling up into an untried experience, but a people regaining our kingdom.”[16] Capitalizing on the birth of a national conscience and the distraction of the British Army, James Connolly and his Irish Citizen Army (ICA) planned and executed an Irish rebellion on Easter Week in 1916.

The Proclamation of the Irish Republic, also known as the Easter Proclamation, was read aloud on the steps of the General Post Office under the new flag of the republic at the beginning of the uprising. The Proclamation was signed by activist leaders James Connolly, Padraic Pearse, and Joseph Plunkett, and made official the rising’s commitment to women’s rights. The Proclamation addressed “Irishmen and Irishwomen,” claimed “the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman,” and declared the intention to establish a national Government for the Republic of Ireland, “representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women.”[17] As Margaret Skinnider noted in her memoirs, “For the first time in history…a constitution had been written that incorporated the principle of equal suffrage.”[18] Where Sinn Fein had dawdled, James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army followed through on granting equality to women.

Proclamation of the Easter Rising

Not every organization involved in the rising agreed with the Proclamation. The Irish Volunteers, a militant counterpart to the ICA, did not accept women into its ranks. The group had “a macho ethos” it did not want disturbed, and so it created a subgroup for sisters, wives, and sweethearts of the Volunteers to join called the Cumann na mBan.[19] The women of the Cumann na mBan initially played a background (and thus more “feminine”) role than other female participants.[20] They were cooks, nurses, and fundraisers, and they were given no say in the management of the organization. Constance Markievicz saw women’s exclusion from the Irish Volunteers as a joke, “depriving women of initiative and independence,” and instead became involved in the Irish Citizen Army.[21] It wasn’t until later that the Cumann na mBan changed its tune and took on a more active militant role in the Easter Rising and its aftermath.

In contrast, Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army opened its ranks to any woman who wished to join. Although the Irish Times considered it “deplorable that amongst the rebels, working their insensate folly, women were found doing unwomanly work,” the female participants in the 1916 rising were outfitted in the green ICA uniforms, given weapons, and even promised positions in the new government should the revolt succeed.[22] Women of all classes joined the ICA to fight for Irish freedom; however, it was largely upper class women like Constance Markievicz and Dr. Kathleen Lynn who were able to devote the most to the cause. Where working class women were constrained by family responsibilities and the desperate situation of their employment, members of the upper class could choose where to invest their time and money, and these women were involved at every turn.[23] Markievicz was a member of the Army Council. Dr. Kathleen Lynn held the rank of lieutenant and was in charge of the medical section. When the Irish Citizen Army hoisted the Irish flag over Liberty Hall, it was raised by Mollie O’Reilly.[24] Margaret Skinnider made reconnaissance missions to British barracks, transported explosives from the continent, and bravely rode her bike between garrisons, carrying dispatches and ammunition.[25] When Skinnider was denied the opportunity to join a mission to bomb a building, she reminded her commandant that “we had the same right to risk our lives as the men; that in the constitution of the Irish republic, women were on an equality with men.”[26]

Constance Markievicz

Even after the fighting had ended and the cause was lost, women continued their bravery. Dr. Kathleen Lynn, when the British decided not to arrest her based on her status as a Red Cross doctor, insisted upon her own seizure, describing herself as “a red cross doctor and a belligerent.”[27] A woman named Chris Caffery, who had been a bicycle dispatcher like Margaret Skinnider, was apprehended, stripped, and searched by the British soldiers, “but she had eaten her dispatch before they dragged her off the streets.”[28] Constance Markievicz spent more time in prison than any other woman who was arrested. She had originally been sentenced to death, but after having executed all the signatories of the Proclamation and even Irish leaders who were not involved with the uprising, the British government reconsidered her sentence.

In addition to imprisonment, women carried the burden of perseverance. With nearly the entire male leadership of the rebellion executed or in prison, only the women remained free to carry the torch and pass it to the next generation. The survival of the movement depended on their commitment, and they delivered.[29] As Margaret Skinnider lay injured in hospital, women of the movement visited her and told her “stories of heroism and stories of disaster…each strengthening my belief that the courage and honor of the heroic days of Ireland were still alive in our hearts.”[30] The Cumann na mBan organized masses for the dead rebels and held after-mass political meetings. They taught their children of the heroism of 1916, and raised the next generation of Irish republicans.[31] Women of the ICA even took the message of Irish resistance abroad to the United States, where they met with government officials, gave lectures, and published political tracts.[32] Inspired by the work of her peers and the rise of women in Ireland, Margaret Skinnider wrote in her memoirs, “Perhaps it is for this we should love our enemies: when they cleave with their swords the heart of a brave man, they lay bare the truth of life.”[33]

Margaret Skinnider

The 1916 Easter Rising brought together socialist, nationalist, and, in its devotion to equal rights, feminist ideologies. However, for the women involved, there was an intense backlash in its aftermath. Involvement in the struggle for freedom had opened the possibility for women to step beyond the domestic sphere. As these women became increasingly involved in public affairs, they entered into a world that had previously been dominated by men. Rather than honored for their contribution to the nationalist cause, women were ridiculed for “acting like men.”[34] Women were increasingly shut out from the politics of the post-1916 movement. Eventually their heroism became invisible even to history. Nevertheless, just as women were intrinsic to the movement for Irish independence, so too was the nationalist fight significant in the development of female political consciences in Ireland. The 1916 Easter Uprising engaged women in new and exciting ways. For the future of feminism in Ireland, it is important to reclaim women’s place in national memory.

—