Howard zinn essays

Howard zinn essays

in whatever situation of life a woman is placed from her cradle to her grave, a spirit of howard zinn essays and submission, pliability of temper, and humility of mind, are required from her. Against this powerful education, it is remarkable that women nevertheless rebelled. She remained single, defying convention here too. You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times. However, the federal judge who presided over the case dismissed it on grounds it had been tainted by the Nixon administration's burglary of the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, howard zinn essays.

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Anti-war and civil rights movements. Howard Zinn August howard zinn essays, — January 27, was an American historianplaywrighthoward zinn essays, philosophersocialist thinker and World War II veteran. He was chair of howard zinn essays history and social sciences department at Spelman College[1] and a political howard zinn essays professor at Boston University. Zinn wrote over 20 books, including his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United States in Inhe published a version of it for younger readers, A Young People's Howard zinn essays of the United States, howard zinn essays. Zinn described himself as "something of an anarchistsomething of a socialist.

Maybe a democratic socialist. His memoir, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train Beacon Press,was also the title of a documentary about Zinn's life and work. Zinn died of a heart attack inat age Zinn was born to a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn on August 24, His father, howard zinn essays, Eddie Zinn, born in Austria-Hungaryimmigrated to the U. with his brother Howard zinn essays before the outbreak of World War I. His mother, howard zinn essays, Jenny Rabinowitz Zinn, [6] emigrated from the Eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk. His parents first became acquainted as workers at the same factory. His father and mother ran a neighborhood candy store for a brief time, barely getting by. For many years, his father was in the waiters' union and worked as a waiter for weddings and bar mitzvahs, howard zinn essays.

Both parents were factory workers with limited education when they met and married, howard zinn essays, and there were no books or magazines in the series of apartments where they raised their children. Zinn's parents introduced him to literature by sending 10 cents plus a coupon to the New York Post for each of the 20 volumes of Charles Dickens ' collected works, howard zinn essays. They invited him to a political rally being held in Times Square. Despite it being a peaceful rally, mounted police charged the marchers. Zinn was hit and knocked unconscious.

This would have a profound effect on his political and social outlook. He also studied creative writing at Thomas Jefferson High School in a special program established by principal and poet Elias Lieberman. Zinn initially opposed entry into World War IIinfluenced by howard zinn essays friends, howard zinn essays, by the results of the Nye Committeeand by his ongoing reading. However, these feelings shifted as he learned more about fascism and its rise in Europe. The book Sawdust Caesar had a particularly large impact through its depiction of Mussolini.

Thus, after graduating from high school inZinn took the Civil Service exam and became an apprentice shipfitter in the New York Navy Yard at the age of At the time, apprentices were excluded from trade unions and thus had little bargaining power, to which the Apprentice Association was their answer, howard zinn essays. Zinn was the Activities Director for the group. His time in this group would tremendously influence his political views and created for him an appreciation for unions. Eager to fight fascismZinn joined the United Howard zinn essays Army Air Forces during World War II and became an officer. He was assigned as a bombardier howard zinn essays the th Bombardment Group[12] bombing targets in BerlinCzechoslovakiaand Hungary. On a post-doctoral research mission nine years later, Zinn visited the resort near Bordeaux where he interviewed residents, reviewed municipal documents, and read wartime newspaper clippings at the local library.

InZinn returned to Royan after which he gave his fullest account of that research in his book, The Politics of History. On the ground, Zinn learned that the aerial bombing attacks in which he participated had killed more than a thousand French civilians as well as some German soldiers hiding near Royan to await the war's end, events that are described "in all accounts" he found as "une tragique erreur" that leveled a small but ancient city and "its population that was, at least officially, friend, not foe. He quotes the official history of the U.

Army Air Forces' brief reference to the Eighth Air Force attack on Royan and also, in the same chapter, to the bombing of Plzeň in what was then Czechoslovakia, howard zinn essays. The official history stated that the Skoda works in Pilsen "received well-placed tons", and that "because of a warning sent out ahead of time the workers were able to escape, except for five howard zinn essays. I recalled flying on that mission, too, as deputy lead bombardier, and that we did not aim specifically at the 'Skoda works' which I would have noted, because it was the one target in Czechoslovakia I had read about but dropped our bombs, without much precision, on the city of Pilsen.

Two Czech citizens who lived in Pilsen at the time told me, recently, that several hundred people were killed in that raid that is, Czechs —not five. Zinn said his experience as a wartime bombardier, combined with his research into the reasons for, and effects of the bombing of Royan and Pilsen, sensitized him to the ethical dilemmas faced by G. s during wartime. In his pamphlet, Hiroshima: Breaking the Silence [19] written inhe laid out the case against targeting civilians with aerial bombing, howard zinn essays. Recall that in the midst of the Gulf Warthe U. military bombed an air raid shelterkilling to men, women, and children who were huddled to escape bombs. The claim was that it was a military target, housing a communications center, but reporters going through the ruins immediately afterward said there was no sign of anything like that.

I suggest that the history of bombing—and no one has bombed more than this nation—is a history of endless atrocities, all calmly explained by deceptive and deadly language like 'accident', 'military target', and ' collateral damage '. After World War II, Zinn attended New York University on the GI Billgraduating with a B. in At Columbia Universityhe earned an M. in history with a minor in political science His master's thesis examined the Colorado coal strikes of Fiorello LaGuardia in Congress was nominated for the American Historical Association's Beveridge Prize as the best English-language book on American history. His professors at Columbia included Harry CarmanHenry Steele Commagerand David Donald. Zinn regularly included it in his lists of recommended readings, howard zinn essays, and, after Barack Obama was elected President of the United StatesZinn wrote, "If Richard Hofstadter were adding to his book The American Political Traditionin which he found both 'conservative' and 'liberal' Presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, maintaining for dear life the two critical characteristics of the American system, nationalism and capitalism, Obama would fit the pattern.

In —61, Zinn was a post-doctoral fellow in East Asian Studies at Harvard University. There was a moment in our lives or a month, or a year when certain howard zinn essays appeared before us, howard zinn essays, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness — embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television. This would seem to lead to a simple conclusion: that we all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas. Zinn was professor of history at Spelman College in Atlanta from toand visiting professor at both the University of Paris and University of Bologna.

At the end of the academic year inZinn was fired from Spelman for insubordination, howard zinn essays. Albert Manley, the first African-American president of that college, who felt Zinn was radicalizing Spelman students. Inhe accepted a position at Boston University BUafter writing two books and participating in the Civil Rights Movement in the South. His classes in civil liberties were among the most popular at the university with as many as students subscribing each semester to the non-required class. A professor of political sciencehe taught at BU for 24 years and retired in at age But he always kept his sense of humor. He was a happy warrior," said Caryl Rivers, journalism professor at BU.

Rivers and Zinn were among a group of faculty members who in defended the right of the school's clerical workers to strike and were threatened with dismissal after refusing to cross a picket line. Zinn came to believe that the point of view expressed in traditional history books was often limited. Biographer Martin Duberman noted that when he was asked directly if he was a MarxistZinn replied, "Yes, I'm something of a Marxist. In later life he moved more toward anarchism. He wrote a history text, A People's History of the United Statesto provide other perspectives on American history. The book depicts the struggles of Native Americans against European and U. conquest and expansion, slaves against slaveryunionists and other workers against capitalists, women against patriarchyand African-Americans for civil rights.

The book was a finalist for howard zinn essays National Book Award in In the years since the first edition of A People's History was published inhoward zinn essays, it has been used as an alternative to standard textbooks in many college history courses, and it is one of the most widely known examples of critical pedagogy, howard zinn essays. The New York Times Book Review stated in that the book "routinely sells more thancopies a year. InZinn published Voices of a People's History of the United States with Anthony Arnove. Voices is a sourcebook of speeches, articles, essays, poetry and song lyrics by the people themselves whose stories are told in A People's History.

Inthe Zinn Education Project [30] was launched to support educators using A People's History of the United States as a source for middle and high school history. The project was started when a former student of Zinn [ who? The People Speakreleased inis a documentary movie based on A People's History of the United States and inspired by the lives of ordinary people who fought back howard zinn essays oppressive conditions over the course of the history of the United States. The film, narrated by Zinn, includes performances by Matt DamonMorgan FreemanBob DylanBruce Springsteen howard zinn essays, Eddie VedderViggo Mortensenhoward zinn essays, Josh BrolinDanny Glover howard zinn essays, Marisa TomeiDon Cheadleand Sandra Oh.

From throughZinn chaired the Department of History and Social Sciences at Spelman College. He participated in the Civil Rights Movement and lobbied with historian August Meier [34] "to end the practice of the Southern Historical Association of holding meetings at segregated hotels. While at Spelman, Zinn served as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee SNCC and wrote about sit-ins and other actions by SNCC for The Nation and Harper's. In Zinn, howard zinn essays, with the SNCC, began developing an educational program so that the volunteer SNCC civil rights workers in the South, many of whom were college dropouts, could continue with their civil rights work and at the same time be involved in an educational system.

Up until then many of the volunteers had been dropping out of school so they could continue their work with SNCC. Other volunteers had not spent much time in college. The program had been endorsed by the SNCC in December and was envisioned by Zinn as having a curriculum that ranged from novels to books about "major howard zinn essays in 20th-century world history, such as fascism, communism, and anti-colonial movements. This occurred while Zinn was in Boston. Zinn also attended an assortment of SNCC meetings intraveling back and forth from Boston. One of those trips was to Hattiesburg, Mississippiin January to participate in a SNCC voter registration drive, howard zinn essays.

The local newspaper, the Hattiesburg Americandescribed the SNCC volunteers in town for the voter registration drive as "outside agitators" and told local blacks "to ignore whatever goes on, and interfere in no way Evers had been the state field secretary for the NAACP, howard zinn essays. Zinn was also involved in what became known as Freedom Summer in Mississippi in the summer of Freedom Summer involved bringing 1, college students to Mississippi to work for the summer in various roles as civil rights activists. Part of the program involved organizing "Freedom Schools".

Zinn's involvement included helping to develop the curriculum for howard zinn essays Freedom Schools, howard zinn essays. He was also concerned that bringing 1, college students to Mississippi to work as civil rights activists could lead to violence and killings, howard zinn essays.

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Zinn's daughter said she was not surprised by the files; "He always knew they had a file on him. Zinn married Roslyn Shechter in They remained married until her death in They had a daughter, Myla, and a son, Jeff. Myla is the wife of mindfulness instructor Jon Kabat-Zinn. Zinn was swimming in a hotel pool when he died of an apparent heart attack [83] in Santa Monica, California , on January 27, , at age He had been scheduled to speak at Crossroads School and Santa Monica Museum of Art for an event titled "A Collection of Ideas the People Speak. In one of his last interviews, [85] Zinn stated that he would like to be remembered "for introducing a different way of thinking about the world, about war, about human rights, about equality," and. for getting more people to realize that the power which rests so far in the hands of people with wealth and guns, that the power ultimately rests in people themselves and that they can use it.

At certain points in history, they have used it. Black people in the South used it. People in the women's movement used it. People in the anti-war movement used it. People in other countries who have overthrown tyrannies have used it. He said he wanted to be known as "somebody who gave people a feeling of hope and power that they didn't have before. His historical work changed the way millions of people saw the past. The happy thing about Howard was that in the last years he could gain satisfaction that his contributions were so impressive and recognized. In the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Social Justice in Pittsburgh awarded Zinn the Thomas Merton Award for his activism and work on national and international issues that transform our world.

Debs Award, [89] the Firecracker Alternative Booksellers Award in the Politics category for The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy , [90] and the Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction. In , Zinn was awarded the Prix des Amis du Monde diplomatique for the French version of his seminal work, Une histoire populaire des Etats-Unis. On October 5, , Zinn received the Haven's Center Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship in Madison, Wisconsin. In July , the Associated Press revealed that Mitch Daniels , when he was the sitting Republican Governor of Indiana , asked for assurance from his education advisors that Zinn's works were not taught in K—12 public schools in the state.

Daniels also wanted a "cleanup" of K—12 professional development courses to eliminate "propaganda and highlight if there is any the more useful offerings. This terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away Can someone assure me that it is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history? At the time the emails were released, Daniels was serving as the president of Purdue University. In response, 90 Purdue professors issued an open letter expressing their concern. But he said that would not give Zinn an "entitlement to have that work foisted on school children in public schools.

Stanford education professor Sam Wineburg has publicly criticized Zinn's research. Reviewing a critique by Wineburg, reviewer David Plotnikoff credits Wineburg for showing that " A People's History perpetrates the same errors of historical practice as the tomes it aimed to correct," for "Zinn's desire to cast a light on what he saw as historic injustice was a crusade built on secondary sources of questionable provenance, omission of exculpatory evidence, leading questions and shaky connections between evidence and conclusions," [] for which he provides many examples.

Daniel J. Flynn , an author and columnist at The American Spectator , likewise charges Zinn with presenting biased history. Zinn reduces the past to a Manichean fable. In early , Arkansas Representative Kim Hendren R submitted a "Bill introduced to ban Zinn's books from Arkansas public schools. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This is the latest accepted revision , reviewed on 7 January American historian and socialist thinker. New York City , New York, United States. Santa Monica , California , United States.

Roslyn Shechter. Utopian socialism Bishop Hill Commune Brook Farm Icarians Looking Backward New Harmony Oneida Community Progressive Era St. Abern Andrews Avrich Balagroon Barnes Bellamy Edward Bellamy Francis Berger Berkman Bookchin Brooks Browder Cabet Cannon Carmichael Carter Chomsky Clayre Cockburn Davis Day Debs De Leon Dobbs Dreiser Du Bois Einstein Fearing Ford Foster Galleani Gitlow Goldman Graeber Greene Guthrie Hall Hammett Hampton Harrington Hay Haywood Bill Haywood Harry Hawkins Hedges Heywood Angela Heywood Ezra Hill Hillquit Hoan Hoffman Keller Labadie London Lovestone Lum McReynolds Moore Most Mitchell Newton Ocasio-Cortez Ochs Owen Parenti Parsons Albert Parsons Lucy Piker Randolph Ripley Reed Rocker Rustin Ruthenberg Sacco Sandburg Sanders Sawant Seale Seidel Shachtman Sinclair Spooner Stone Sweezy Thomas Tucker Turner Vanzetti Warren West Wolff Zeidler Zerzan Zinn.

Active organizations. Black Riders Liberation Party Black Socialists in America Communist Party USA Democratic Socialists of America Freedom Road Socialist Organization Freedom Socialist Party Green Mountain Peace and Justice Party Green Party of the United States Industrial Workers of the World Party for Socialism and Liberation Peace and Freedom Party Progressive Labor Party Redneck Revolt Revolutionary Communist Party, USA Social Democrats, USA Socialist Action Socialist Alternative Socialist Equality Party Socialist Party USA Socialist Rifle Association Socialist Workers Party Solidarity Spark Spartacist League Vermont Progressive Party Workers World Party Working Class Party World Socialist Party of the United States.

Defunct organizations. American Labor Party American Workers Party Black Panther Party Colorado Springs Socialists Communist League of America Communist League of Struggle Communist Workers' Party Democratic Socialist Federation Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee Human Rights Party Independent Socialist League International Socialists International Socialist Organization Maoist Internationalist Movement New American Movement Nonpartisan League Proletarian Party of America Puerto Rican Socialist Party Revolutionary Socialist League Social Democracy of America Social Democratic Federation Social Democratic Party of America Socialist Labor Party of America Socialist Party of America Students for a Democratic Society Weather Underground White Panther Party Workers Party of the United States Youth International Party.

Appeal to Reason Current Affairs Daily Worker Dissent International Socialist Review Jacobin The Jungle Looking Backward Monopoly Capital Monthly Review The Other America A People's History of the United States Voluntary Socialism Why Socialism? Related topics. American Left Anarchism Anarchism in the United States Anarcho-communism Anarcho-primitivism Anarcho-syndicalism Bill of Rights socialism Democratic socialism Green anarchism Individualist anarchism Individualist anarchism in the United States Labor history Labor laws Labor unions Libertarian socialism Marxism Marxism—Leninism Minimum wage Mutualism Post-left anarchy Scientific socialism Social democracy Socialism Trotskyism Utopian socialism.

This section appears to contain trivial, minor, or unrelated references to popular culture. Please reorganize this content to explain the subject's impact on popular culture, providing citations to reliable, secondary sources , rather than simply listing appearances. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. April You can't be neutral on a moving train : a personal history of our times. ISBN OCLC com, January 28, Archived from the original on Retrieved Howard Zinn: a life on the left. New Press. Retrieved 3 April by Howard Zinn University of Illinois Press, pp. Declarations of Independence. New York, NY: HarperPerennial.

Army in Pilsen in in Local Periodicals" PDF. January Archived from the original on July 25, The New York Times. The Progressive. Retrieved April 15, Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left. Zinn for Beginners. For Beginners LLC. The Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame. Howard Zinn participated in the Civil Rights Movement and lobbied with historian August Meier. American Historical Association. Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement. Carol Polsgrove on Writers' Lives. Divided Minds. ISBN — via Google Books. The Boston Globe. January 31, Archived from the original on March 24, Retrieved November 20, The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 27 Spring, : — doi : JSTOR Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology.

Archived from the original on February 19, The Library of America. Identity Theory. The Guardian. May 24, full text of "Against Discouragement. Democracy Now! American Protest Against the War in Vietnam — Horizon Book Promotions. New York Post. January 30, Perspectives on History. February Archived from the original fee required on December 14, June American Political Science Review. Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers. Annenberg Center for Communication at University of Southern California. Ross September—October UU World. United States". Archived from the original on January 11, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times.

Beacon Press. Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original PDF on June 22, Retrieved 26 December DISARM Education Fund. The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved November 21, Retrieved 20 March DP: So do you feel that, by and large, the Zarqawi-world and the Bush-world are moral equivalents? HZ: I do. Yale Daily News. The Huffington Post. He was working as vice chairman for the Brooklyn branch of the American Labor Party and living at Lafayette Avenue in what is an area now considered the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. Retrieved 30 January by Robert J. Lopez, January 28, Retrieved December 4, The Progressive. July Hardly a crime of passion, despite the faint electrical charge surrounding Julia Roberts and George Clooney.

No, money was the motive, with as little moral fervor attending the crime as went into the making of the movie, which had the same motive. I was reminded of this recently when I sat in a courtroom in Camden, New Jersey, and participated in the recollection of another break-in, carried out by the Camden 28, where the motive was to protest the war in Vietnam. Learn More. A Campaign Without Class By Howard Zinn. September 29, and The Progressive, November This kind of talk is unpardonably rude, and would be enough to bar him from the televised debates. A Diplomatic Solution By Howard Zinn. May A friend wrote to ask my opinion on Kosovo. He said many people were turning to him for answers, and he didn't know what to say, so he was turning to me knowing, I guess, that I always have something to say, right or wrong.

Several things seem clear to me, and they don't fit easily together in a way that points to a clean solution. A Flash of the Possible By Howard Zinn. January What happened in Seattle recently was not as large an event as the general strike of During the Revolution, however, Spruill reports, the necessities of war brought women out into public affairs. Women formed patriotic groups, carried out anti-British actions, wrote articles for independence. They were active in the campaign against the British tea tax, which made tea prices intolerably high. They organized Daughters of Liberty groups, boycotting British goods, urging women to make their own clothes and buy only American-made things.

In there was a women's counterpart to the Boston lea Party-a "coffee party," described by Abigail Adams in a letter to her husband John:. It has been pointed out by women historians recently that the contributions of working-class women in the American Revolution have been mostly ignored, unlike the genteel wives of the leaders Dolly Madison, Martha Washington, Abigail Adams. Margaret Corbin, called "Dirty Kate," Deborah Sampson Garnet, and "Molly Pitcher" were rough, lower-class women, prettified into ladies by historians. While poor women, in the last years of the fighting, went to army encampments, helped, and fought, they were represented later as prostitutes, whereas Martha Washington was given a special place in history books for visiting her husband at Valley Forge.

When feminist impulses are recorded, they are, almost always, the writings of privileged women who had some status from which to speak freely, more opportunity to write and have their writings recorded. Abigail Adams, even before the Declaration of Independence, in March of , wrote to her husband:. Nevertheless, Jefferson underscored his phrase "all men are created equal" by his statement that American women would be "too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics. New York's constitution specifically disfranchised women by using the word "male. While perhaps 90 percent of the white male population were literate around , only 40 percent of the women were.

Working-class women had little means of communicating, and no means of recording whatever sentiments of rebelliousness they may have felt at their subordination. Not only were they bearing children in great numbers, under great hardships, but they were working in the home. Around the time of the Declaration of Independence, four thousand women and children in Philadelphia were spinning at home for local plants under the "putting out" system. Women also were shopkeepers and innkeepers and engaged in many trades. They were bakers, tinworkers, brewers, tanners, ropemakers, lumberjacks, printers, morticians, woodworkers, stay-makers, and more.

Ideas of female equality were in the air during and after the Revolution, Tom Paine spoke out for the equal rights of women. And the pioneering book of Mary Wollstonecraft in England, A Vindication of the Rights of Women , was reprinted in the United States shortly after the Revolutionary War. Wollstonecraft was responding to the English conservative and opponent of the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, who had written in his Reflections on the Revolution in France that "a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest order. I wish to show that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex.

Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, so many elements of American society were changing-the growth of population, the movement westward, the development of the factory system, expansion of political rights for white men, educational growth to match the new economic needs-that changes were bound to take place in the situation of women. In preindustrial America, the practical need for women in a frontier society had produced some measure of equality; women worked at important jobs-publishing newspapers, managing tanneries, keeping taverns, engaging in skilled work. In certain professions, like midwifery, they had a monopoly. Nancy Cott tells of a grandmother, Martha Moore Ballard, on a farm in Maine in , who "baked and brewed, pickled and preserved, spun and sewed, made soap and dipped candles" and who, in twenty-five years as a midwife, delivered more than a thousand babies.

Since education took place inside the family, women had a special role there. There was complex movement in different directions. Now, women were being pulled out of the house and into industrial life, while at the same time there was pressure for women to stay home where they were more easily controlled. The outside world, breaking into the solid cubicle of the home, created fears and tensions in the dominant male world, and brought forth ideological controls to replace the loosening family controls: the idea of "the woman's place," promulgated by men, was accepted by many women. As the economy developed, men dominated as mechanics and tradesmen, and aggressiveness became more and more defined as a male trait. Women, perhaps precisely because more of them were moving into the dangerous world outside, were told to be passive.

Clothing styles developed- for the rich and middle class of course, but, as always, there was the intimidation of style even for the poor-in which the weight of women's clothes, corsets and petticoats, emphasized female separation from the world of activity. It became important to develop a set of ideas, taught in church, in school, and in the family, to keep women in their place even as that place became more and more unsettled. Barbara Welter Dimity Convictions has shown how powerful was the "cult of true womanhood" in the years after The woman was expected to be pious.

A man writing in The Ladies' Repository : "Religion is exactly what a woman needs, for it gives her that dignity that bests suits her dependence. John Sandford, in her book Woman, in Her Social and Domestic Character , said: "Religion is just what woman needs. Without it she is ever restless or unhappy. Sexual purity was to be the special virtue of a woman. It was assumed that men, as a matter of biological nature, would sin, but woman must not surrender. As one male author said: "If you do, you will be left in silent sadness to bewail your credulity, imbecility, duplicity, and premature prostitution. The role began early, with adolescence. Obedience prepared the girl for submission to the first proper mate. Barbara Welter describes this:. When Amelia Bloomer in suggested in her feminist publication that women wear a kind of short skirt and pants, to free themselves from the encumbrances of traditional dress, this was attacked in the popular women's literature.

One story has a girl admiring the "bloomer" costume, but her professor admonishes her that they are "only one of the many manifestations of that wild spirit of socialism and agrarian radicalism which is at present so rife in our land. In The Young Lady's Book of : ",.. in whatever situation of life a woman is placed from her cradle to her grave, a spirit of obedience and submission, pliability of temper, and humility of mind, are required from her. The woman's job was to keep the home cheerful, maintain religion, be nurse, cook, cleaner, seamstress, flower arranger. A woman shouldn't read too much, and certain books should be avoided. When Harriet Martineau, a reformer of the s, wrote Society in America , one reviewer suggested it he kept away from women: "Such reading will unsettle them for their true station and pursuits, and they will throw the world back again into confusion.

Women were also urged, especially since they had the job of educating children, to be patriotic. One women's magazine offered a prize to the woman who wrote the best essay on "How May an American Woman Best Show Her Patriotism. It was in the s and s, Nancy Cott tells us The Bonds of Womanhood , that there was an outpouring of novels, poems, essays, sermons, and manuals on the family, children, and women's role. The world outside was becoming harder, more commercial, more demanding. In a sense, the home carried a longing for some Utopian past, some refuge from immediacy.

Perhaps it made acceptance of the new economy easier to be able to see it as only part of life, with the home a haven. In , one pious wife wrote: ". the air of the world is poisonous. You must carry an antidote with you, or the infection will prove fatal. The cult of domesticity for the woman was a way of pacifying her with a doctrine of "separate but equal"-giving her work equally as important as the man's, but separate and different. Inside that "equality" there was the fact that the woman did not choose her mate, and once her marriage took place, her life was determined. One girl wrote in "The die is about to be cast which will probably determine the future happiness or misery of my life I have always anticipated the event with a degree of solemnity almost equal to that which will terminate my present existence.

Marriage enchained, and children doubled the chains. One woman, writing in "The idea of soon giving birth to my third child and the consequent duties I shall be called to discharge distresses me so I feel as if I should sink. The new ideology worked; it helped to produce the stability needed by a growing economy. But its very existence showed that other currents were at work, not easily contained. And giving the woman her sphere created the possibility that she might use that space, that time, to prepare for another kind of life. The "cult of true womanhood" could not completely erase what was visible as evidence of woman's subordinate status: she could not vote, could not own property; when she did work, her wages were one-fourth to one-half what men earned in the same job.

Women were excluded from the professions of law and medicine, from colleges, from the ministry. Putting all women into the same category-giving them all the same domestic sphere to cultivate- created a classification by sex which blurred the lines of class, as Nancy Cott points out. However, forces were at work to keep raising the issue of class. Samuel Slater had introduced industrial spinning machinery in New England in , and now there was a demand for young girls-literally, "spinsters"-to work the spinning machinery in factories. In , the power loom was introduced in Waltham, Massachusetts, and now all the operations needed to turn cotton fiber into cloth were under one roof.

The new textile factories swiftly multiplied, with women 80 to 90 percent of their operatives-most of these women between fifteen and thirty. Some of the earliest industrial strikes took place in these textile mills in the s. In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in , came the first known strike of women factory workers; women joined men in protesting a wage cut and longer hours, but they met separately. Four years later, women in Dover, New Hampshire, struck alone. And in Lowell, Massachusetts, in , when a young woman was fired from her job, other girls left their looms, one of them then climbing the town pump and making, according to a newspaper report, "a flaming Mary Wollstonecraft speech on the rights of women and the iniquities of the 'moneyed aristocracy' which produced a powerful effect on her auditors and they determined to have their own way, if they died for it.

A journal kept by an unsympathetic resident of Chicopee, Massachusetts, recorded an event of May 2, There were strikes in various cities in the s, more militant than those early New England "turnouts," but mostly unsuccessful. A succession of strikes in the Allegheny mills near Pittsburgh demanded a shorter workday. Several times in those strikes, women armed with sticks and stones broke through the wooden gates of a textile mill and stopped the looms. And the life of upper-class women? Frances Trollope, an Englishwoman, in her book Domestic Manners of the Americans , wrote;.

This lady shall be the wife of a senator and a lawyer in the highest repute and practice.. She rises, and her first hour is spent in the scrupulously nice arrangement of her dress; she descends to her parlor, neat, stiff, and silent; her breakfast is brought in by her free black footman; she eats her fried ham and her salt fish, and drinks her coffee in silence, while her husband reads one newspaper, and puts another under his elbow; and then perhaps, she washes the cups and saucers. Her carriage is ordered at eleven; till that hour she is employed in the pastry room, her snow-white apron protecting her mouse-colored silk. Twenty minutes before her carriage should appear, she retires to her chamber, as she calls it; shakes and folds up her still snowwhite apron, smooths her rich dress, and.

sets on her elegant bonnet.. then walks downstairs, just at the moment that her free black coachman announces to her free black footman that the carriage waits. She steps into it, and gives the word: "Drive to the Dorcas Society. Slaves, to a system of labor which requires them to toil from five until seven o'clock, with one hour only to attend to the wants of nature-slaves to the will and requirements of the 'powers that be. We are also requested to appeal to the gallantry of the men of this city. and respectfully ask them not to be present at this meeting as those for whose benefit it is called prefer to deliberate by themselves. Around that time, the New York Herald carried a story about " females, generally of the most interesting state and appearance," meeting "in their endeavor to remedy the wrongs and oppressions under which they labor.

we very much doubt whether it will terminate in much good to female labor of any description All combinations end in nothing. The tide of Nancy Cott's book The Bonds of Womanhood reflects her double view of what was happening to women in the early nineteenth century. They were trapped in the bonds of the new ideology of "women's sphere" in the home, and, when forced out to work in factories, or even in middle-class professions, found another kind of bondage. On the other hand, these conditions created a common consciousness of their situation and forged bonds of solidarity among them.

Middle-class women, barred from higher education, began to monopolize the profession of primary-school teaching. As teachers, they read more, communicated more, and education itself became subversive of old ways of thinking. They began to write for magazines and newspapers, and started some ladies' publications. Literacy among women doubled between and Women became health reformers. They formed movements against double standards in sexual behavior and the victimization of prostitutes. They joined in religious organizations. Some of the most powerful of them joined the antislavery movement. So, by the time a clear feminist movement emerged in the s, women had become practiced organizers, agitators, speakers.

When Emma Willard addressed the New York legislature in on the subject of education for women, she was contradicting the statement made just the year before by Thomas Jefferson in a letter in which he suggested women should not read novels "as a mass of trash" with few exceptions. These, for a female, are dancing, drawing, and music. Emma Willard told the legislature that the education of women "has been too exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty. not the satellites of men. In , Willard founded the Troy Female Seminary, the first recognized institution for the education of girls. She wrote later of how she upset people by teaching her students about the human body:.

Women struggled to enter the all-male professional schools. Harriot Hunt, a woman physician who began to practice in , was twice refused admission to Harvard Medical School. But she carried on her practice, mostly among women and children. She believed strongly in diet, exercise, hygiene, and mental health. She organized a Ladies Physiological Society in where she gave monthly talks. She remained single, defying convention here too.