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Frances Willard
(Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard)
born on September 28, 1839 in Churchville, New York
died on February 17, 1898 in New York City, New York
US-American temperance activist, social reformer and women's rights activist
185th birthday on September 28, 2024
Biography
Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard, the leader of the temperance movement in the United States, viewed her organization, the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), primarily as a means of mobilizing women for the women's suffrage movement. During her 20 years as president, the bold strategist built the largest women's organization of the century and was able to unite over 200,000 (mostly conservative) women in a powerful movement.
Willard had worked - very successfully - as a teacher before she discovered her true calling as an organizer and speaker, partly through her contact with the famous feminist speaker Anna Dickinson. She exchanged passionate letters with Dickinson and chose women as companions (Kate Jackson, then Anna Gordon).
In 1873, groups of praying women succeeded in closing over 3,000 saloons within six months. When Willard joined the movement, she initially met with resistance from conservative women who did not share her opinion that women's suffrage was necessary for the defense of the “female sphere” against the consequences of men's alcohol abuse. But she quickly became widely known as a brilliant speaker who attracted huge audiences. In 1879 she became president of the WCTU and remained so until her death.
Willard accepted the traditional view of separate spheres for women and men, and she thus succeeded in attracting many “typical housewives” to her cause. However, the objectives she outlined in the manual Do Everything (1895) went much further than the achievement of abstinence alone: she was committed to peace, labor reform, the abolition of prostitution, health, welfare in the cities and prison reform. This made her one of the most important American social reformers of her century. Her ideas resonated beyond the borders of the United States: she founded the international WCTU and was elected its president. In 1894, the organization had 2 million members in 21 nations.
When Frances Willard, not yet 60 years old, died of a flu infection in New York, the flag was flown at half-mast in several American cities. Like for the state funerals of former American presidents, a special train was organized to take her coffin from New York to Chicago. 30,000 mourners paid their last respects. The fact that the “most influential woman in America” in her day was later largely forgotten has to do with the fate of the movement she led; in 1919, Congress passed the Prohibition Act, a constitutional amendment that was repealed in 1933.
(Text from 1988; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2024.
Please consult the German version for additional information, pictures, sources, videos, and bibliography.)
Quotes
Let us have plain living and high thinking. (Frances Willard)
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