Fun Fact #519
Fun Fact #519
Suffer or Suffrage
On May 20th, 1885, Marion A. McBride was the Press commissioner for the World Cotton Bicentennial in New Orleans when surprised the world by going offscript. Here she brought up how the US was still divided by the civil war which had raged only 20 years before and how the scars still hurt as shown by the recession of 1885. Women writers were especially hit as they had a hard time finding work anywhere, but her message fell on deaf ears that night.
Or that’s at least what she thought. Around 2 months later, she received a letter in the mail from Frances A. Conant along with a map and the money needed (From Carrie Ashton Johnson) to reach Myra Bradwell’s law office in Chicago. When she finally arrived the 47 women gathered there would create The Illinois Women’s Press Association which in turn kickstarted the Women’s Suffrage Movement.
A key player in all of this was Carrie Ashton Johnson who used her father’s business in Rockford Illinois (Ashton’s Department Store on West State Street) to fund almost all of the travel and postage used by the early exploits of the group. She also contributed to 11 major journals as an interior decorative designer proving to be more successful than any other interior decorator at the time (Interesting note: she later admitted that often sought advice from several key members of Rockford such the wives of employees at Peerless Furniture company). Although the constant funding of the IWPA would lead to the bankruptcy and sale of Ashton’s department store, the effort was not in vain. Women's suffrage would be successfully passed, while the IWPA –the oldest organization of Women writers in the world– founded the National Federation of Press Women which protects writer’s rights worldwide.
IWPA is still around today, as is the Aston department Store building (Now being used for apartments), and Carrie A. Johnson’s Grave is in Wilwood Memorial park (less than a block away from Auburn Highschool) with the epitaph “A Woman of the Century”.
