1920 was a big year. Joan of Arc was canonized, and Mary Pickford starred in "Pollyanna." The 18th Amendment (Prohibition) went into effect. Edith Wharton published The Age of Innocence, and Oxford admitted women to study for full degrees.
It was also the year when, after three-quarters of a century of fierce effort, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified. Women could now vote throughout the United States.
In observance of the 75th anniversary of woman suffrage, the Humanities and Social Sciences Division invited two Washington scholars who have made extensive use of the Library's collections to present lectures about Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) and Lucy Stone (1818-1893), 19th century abolitionists, suffragists and friends.
On May 31, Carolyn Karcher gave a lively talk entitled "Radical Fighter for Blacks and Women: Writing the Life of Lydia Maria Child." The following week, Andrea Kerr gave Lucy Stone her due in "Lucy Stone Speaks Out: Feminism and Racism in Post-Civil War America." These talks were part of a continuing series -- "Programs in the Humanities and Social Sciences" -- that has included presentations on the Library of Alexandria, British heraldry and women inventors.
In the first lecture, Dr. Karcher, professor of English, American studies and women's studies at Temple University, focused on the steps that led her to choose Lydia Maria Child as a subject and then to write a "cultural biography," which she called "a biography not just of Child herself but of 19th century America, as viewed through the prism of her life and work."
Dr. Karcher began her research in the Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room by studying all 16 volumes of Child's Juvenile Miscellany, the first magazine for children published in the United States. She was "curious about what kind of magazine for children an abolitionist writer would produce."
In contrast to most children's literature of the time she found the Miscellany full of antislavery articles and stories, some of which seemed "astonishingly radical."
Dr. Karcher planned at first to focus on Child's published writings, but then Child's Collected Correspondence was published in microfiche (Kraus Microform, 1980). This collection reproduced letters held in more than 60 repositories. Dr. Karcher could read the letters in the Manuscript Reading Room by day and the published literary works in the Main Reading Room by night.(She acquired her own set of the microfiche and a reader so that she could work at home as well.)
Since Child's letters "comprise some of her most vivid and eloquent writing, it would have been unthinkable, insane, not to make them a central part of her biography," said Dr. Karcher.
This new, readily available source forced her, as she explained, "to switch modes, to begin writing her biography [of Child] rather than simply analyzing her works."
The result is the 804-page The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child (Duke University Press, 1994). The 140 pages of notes list many items from the collections of the Library of Congress.
Andrea Kerr, the second guest lecturer, began her talk, "You may well ask what drove me to devote seven years of my life to the biography of a woman many people have never heard of. The simple answer is 'Indignation.' ... Lucy Stone was written out of women's history. Intentionally and with malice aforethought."
Dr. Kerr went on to point out that Stone "was the most beloved, widely known and charismatic speaker, publicist, political organizer and lobbyist for women's rights." From 1870 until her death in 1893, she published the weekly Woman's Journal, "the single most complete chronicle of women's activities in the last third of the 19th century." The entire Woman's Journal (1870-1917) is available in the Library in both microfilm and hard copy. Several collections in the Manuscript Division contain letters to and from Lucy Stone; most are in the Blackwell Family Collection.
The explanation for the eclipse of Stone's fame is found in the complex debates over the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments in the late 1860s. These amendments enfranchised freedmen but limited the vote to male citizens. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton chose to oppose the amendments and campaigned actively against them.
Lucy Stone led the majority of suffragists in supporting the amendments while insisting on a subsequent amendment to ensure that women citizens of all races received the vote. The schism in the woman suffrage movement lasted from 1869 until 1890. During these years Anthony, Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage began what was to become the many-thousand-page History of Woman Suffrage. This six-volume work is often considered the authoritative source for those researching the suffrage movement; it is more easily available and compact than Stone's Woman's Journal.
In their correspondence Anthony and Stanton reveal that they intentionally minimized Stone's role in the movement. According to Dr. Kerr, it was only at the insistence of Stanton's daughter, Harriot, that Stone was included at all.
Andrea Kerr concluded, "Eventually, the historical record may reflect events more accurately." Dr. Kerr has contributed greatly to the effort to restore Lucy Stone's proper place in history through her biography, Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality (Rutgers University Press, 1992).
Both lecturers had high praise for Library staff and collections. Dr. Karcher stated that the Library of Congress "is more my alma mater than any university I ever attended." She added that "without the librarians in all parts of the Library ... without the wonderful community of scholars that the LC brings together through its study facilities and without LC itself, none of my books could ever have been written."
Dr. Kerr agreed, saying that her study desk "was an oasis of peace and order. In that privileged space, surrounded by the resources of the Library, I was able to write undisturbed by telephones, visitors and the myriad interruptions so characteristic of modern life." Both authors agreed that a quiet, convenient space in which to use superb collections is crucial to scholarship. The Humanities and Social Sciences Division currently provides 34 study desks, but in the next few years the division expects to more than quadruple this number in its continued support of long-term scholars at the Library.
