Pride in being both barbadian and being of african descent. Let me throw out another question. In the 1970s professor Laurel Thatcher ulrich coined the phrase well behaved women seldom make history. [laughter] tell me if you agree. What rules did your women break and what rules did they follow and why . [laughter] well, for angela davis i think despite the fact that her upbringing was really one of the ways in which she was influenced and became amenable to the ideals of communism and the left, her mother being an activist, and she was also politicized in college as well, angela davis sort of coming into her own, she was born in 1944 and so she was growing up at the time of the emergence of the civil rights and black power movements. And in a lot of ways she stepped aside from some of the ideals of nationalism, the strong black identity politics, and she infused that with a sense of deep class analysis. So she was very strong in terms of the connection between to oppression and class, also on speaking to to presentation of women in particular. So in a lot of ways even though she was part of a movement of people who were trying to make this social change, she was still also a little bit on the outside of that because of her radical ideas, because of her stance as a woman that even though people embraced her in a symbolic way, there were many times when the actual angela davis and all of the complexities of her politics were actually rejected by people who may have aligned with her. So shes definitely somebody who blazed her own path and she was not a pioneer in that way though. I feel like she was walking on the path that many left organizations and leftist women had opened the doors to. So she was very influential in that way, and i think in a lot of ways she continues to do that, sort of blaze her own path and break rules. Well Elizabeth Gurley flynn was known as the rebel girl, so she was certainly famous for that image. And in a way it reminds me a little bit of angela davis because her image was so significant to the movements that she led. So this image of this young woman, you know, with flowing hair standing up on a soap box and proclaiming in the early 20th century was this really striking image about that the iww used. And flynn really embraced that idea of herself as the rebel girl. But one of the things that really interested me in the research was that while she was very far, you know, leftist of the left, very rebellious in terms of her politics, in terms of her personal life in certain ways she was a little bit more conventional. She never got married but when she got pregnant, when she was 17 actually, she did get married. She did get married briefly when she got pregnant. The guy was sort of incidental to the baby. [laughter] but she didnt feel like she could be an unwed mother. So it was interesting to me that even though she wasnt really that interested in this man she felt like she had to marry him. And i think part of that was that although her family was very radical her mother was a feminist and her father was a socialist. In certain ways they had sort of victorian values, and they expected their daughter to behave respectably. And she was also very aware she was, she really wanted to be a significant figure in the Labor Movement, and some of the people in the Labor Movement didnt share her kind of radical ideas about sexuality. And she didnt want to alienate them. So that was another reason why she felt like she had to get married when she got pregnant. How about, how about Catherine Beecher . [laughter] she was very bad. [laughter] having described her as the Martha Stewart of the 19th century, you have some explaining to do, lucy. [laughter] martha went to jail. Thats true. So Catherine Beecher was, as i mentioned, not a radical but she and she definitely had you know, she definitely advocated a very prescribed role for women. And she really was addressing middle class white women primarily, although Catherine Beecher also did have writings for working class women. She had some manuals for servants, for example, but those were largely about how servants should act in the homes of middle class women. So she she did not believe that women should go outside of their domestic roles. She really believed that and she did not believe that men and women were equal. She really earn sized, as many emphasized as many people did of her time, she emphasized a difference, the differences between men and women and the i ways in which women should capitalize on those differences or emphasize those differences in order to create a space for themselves in the polity. So beecher definitely believed women should have a role in, as they called it at the time, the public sphere, but she didnt think that that role should be a role of employment or a role of political protests. She argued against suffrage for women which put her at odds with another one of her sisters, actually, isabelle beecher, who was a suffragist. So she definitely had a kind of, again, prescribed sense of where women should be. But even with that she did believe that women should play this role, that women should emphasize domesticity and that they should have a role in the polity because they were mothers, and they were responsible for the home and for raising families essentially. And so how could they to that if they did not how could they do that if they were not aware or if they were not involved in some way in reform . And that actually, was the link between her work with domesticity and her work with education, was that she really believed that womens education should not just be, essentially finishing school, but actually women should be educated in order to be able to raise, you know, well rounded children who then could take a role in the polity. What do you think was most surprising was the most surprising thing you discovered when you were working on the biography . Im a biographer as well, and theres always something that suddenly you go, boy, i didnt expect this, or i never realized this. Barbara, do you have a thought on that . Finish. Well, quickly one of the most interesting things for me doing the research was learning about the history of barbados. And i just and the connections between barbados and the United States. And since you mentioned the domino sugar building, brooklyns wealth was based upon sugar, and most of the sugar came from barbados. So the connection between chisholms 20th century life and the history of slavery and sugar and wealth are connected. But one thing that i will say that i knew about but i didnt realize the depths of it was the misogyny against Shirley Chisholm. Misogyny, i mean, misonly you cant misogyny, you cant it was sort of so unreal and so deep and so hateful someone i interviewed for the book told me that when mrs. Chisholm was in congress and she would sit at meetings when she would get up from her chair, you know to leave the meeting a white southern male congressman would wash down her seat. I mean, this is, you know, disgusting behavior. Some of you who remember nixon and his dirty tricks, you know, they did the letter that, you know made muskie cry in public, and they did all sorts of dirty tricks, but if you buy my book or read it, you will see what the Nixon Administration to mrs. Chisholm was absolutely excra bl, and i mean that world and despicable, and it was very gendered and very racial used. Racialized. The Congressional Black Caucus, the men in the Congressional Black Caucus, the depp canths of their dislike of her and the misogyny toward her was really mind boggling, how they were jealous, they were angry that she ran for president , and the things they said about her really bothered me very deeply. But in the end we shouldnt be surprised. [laughter] right . If Catherine Beecher heres my favorite question. If Catherine Beecher angela davis, Elizabeth Gurley flynn and Shirley Chisholm sat down together for dinner not what would they eat, but what would they talk about . Are there commonalities this their experiences in their experiences despite the differences in class race, chronology and political orientation . Well sorry. I was actually thinking about Judy Chicagos dinner party and all of these historical women sitting down together for dinner and what they would talk about. And i think with our four subjects, this is going to seem really off the wall, but what i think maybe after a couple of glasses of wine they might get to is the question of who does your hair. [laughter] because each one of these women has a really distinctive hair style that communicates a lot about her. I mean, if you think about Catherine Beecher with those curls, i mean, that is very labor intensive. [laughter] and angela davis, her afro is so iconic. And i know from talking with barbara that you met the woman who used to comb out Shirley Chisholms wigs, and Elizabeth Gurley flynn she went to prison for being a communist. One of the thicks she wrote things she wrote about missing was going to the hair dresser every week and getting her hair dope. So what did these hair styles mean to these women . They were very much a part of their public image. And if you look at prechisholms election to congress andchism how manys chisholms election to congress, you really see the impact of the large, of the wigs that she wore. Any other topics you think they might cover . [laughter] i really like that because it would be something i talked about too. Well, in a more open way i think they might talk about the personal politics or what it meant to be an activist a mother or a partner a family member, how did people respond who were close to them to choices that they made, to what extent dud that leave them isolated and lonely or did it bring them community . I think those questions are often times not focused on, but i think women who are activists you know, are sort of rooted in all of those questions, right . Theyre fully you know, theyre embodied human as they go around changing the world and they do make sacrifices. And some of them are deeply political, and they to face consequences that are deeply political, and they do have joys that are deeply personal and political too. So id be curious to find out you know, those kinds of topics because its interesting two of the women were married and two one pretty briefly and two were single. Do you think that this would be a topic of conversation about what was gained, what was lost by these two positions . Definitely. I mean, i think for flynn she had that brief marriage but she was really married to her work. I mean, she was so devoted to her activism. She really didnt feel like she had time to have a family. And i think she missed, she missed that. And her mother and her sister really had to raise her son because she was just so busy with all of her work. Yeah. I would say, first of all, i wanted to say i would want to talk about what was served for dinner. [laughter] and whether its, you know, prepared in the 19th century or prepared in the 20th. But i actually think in some ways this is a commonality between beecher and flynn even though in other ways they really do not have a lot in common, i mean, Catherine Beecher was engaged to be married, and her fiance died at sea. And at that point she made a decision to not follow into a lifetime of domesticity to not create a household of her own but instead to, you know play a role as a reformer and advocate for womens education and open schools, and eventually she wrote hot of books about education lots of books about education and domesticity and went on election circuits. She was really very much a public figure, and for her in the 19th century, it it was done although it was very very difficult to both be married woman and also have a public role. And thats what i mean, i was a little bit flippant about the Martha Stewart reference but thats what i mean about beecher. In order to be an advocate for domesticity in public, in order to be a female education reformer, she had to be a woman who was not head ago household or not running a household. And that really was a decision she made and that really made her different from that really placed her in her time as a 19th century american woman. Now chisholm was married twice. Her first husband, Conrad Chisholm was more or less mr. Shirley chisholm. Very supportive of her the first seven or eight years when she was both in albany and then when she came into congress in washington. He had worked for a Detective Agency so he also was her bodyguard. And one thing i think she may have had in common with some of the women is mrs. Chisholm loved to dance. She was the first one on the dance floor and the last one off. I dont know the rest. [laughter] she also was very clothes copps and she was considered to be copps, and she was considered to be the best dressed woman in washington d. C. But i wanted to raise something else. I think if there was a dinner party, i think theyd be a bit wary of each other at a first. I dont know who drank. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] few glasses of wine. Some of them may have been tee totallers. I know angela davis would have said thank you for being the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to raise money for me and mrs. Chisholm was for the black did for the black panthers. Mrs. Chisholm was very wary of the communist party and who knows how the members of the communist party would have felt about her as an active member of Democratic Party. And i would love you to speak about having mrs. Beecher or ms. Beecher show up at a dinner party with two black women [laughter] yes. I think that she would be very confused. She would not she would be confused about why everyone was sitting at the table. [laughter] and i think that that would really definitely be an illustration of, you know, the path being a foreign country would be like she came from, you know, really an alien world into this, you know, late 20th century realm. I think that she might find some things to celebrate though. She would certainly be, excuse me amazed at a black woman going through college and being educated, her devotion to education. That would be a point of contact between the two women. Yeah. I think thats right. Were any of your women teetotalers actually . Not shirley. Im not saying she was a drunk [laughter] in that case, thered be no problem at all. [laughter] i mean, beecher didnt talk all that much well, actually, yes, she did talk a pit about temperance. I mean, those 19th century reform movements were very linked, so womens rights, abolitionism, diet reform, dress reform temperance, they were very linked. So she probably would not have imbibed. I think one of the things, if i can just interject that i learned because i wrote about angelina grim key, and so i encountered all these abolitionist reformers. The difference between, i would think, the seriousness of angelina of angela davis im getting my angelinas and her circle and the fact that these reformers from the 19th century were kooks. I mean, they were they followed water cures and strange diets, and they read bumps on the heads, and they went to the table rapping and so they were engaged in a lot of activities that were much more alike what the 60s hippies were doing and much less like what you would picture people who were seriously engaged in temperance and reform and abolition. They in their in their personal life they were a little nutty. Well, the 1830s is really akin to the 1960s. Yeah, i mean, in terms of reform. And there are links too actually. I always bring it back to food. [laughter] you mentioned them, right . The diet reformers, theyre the precursors to vegetarians and to the health food movement. Some environmentalism. And Catherine Beecher, you know, she not only talked about education and domesticity, but she also was very concerned about health, and that was because she had bad health. And a lot of those figures did a lot of those reformers had health problems. There was a rich diet can, there industrialization, they were very nervous nervous people, just peptic, a nation of and so, you know, i think that there are definitely links in terms of her reform era and the reform era of chisholm and of angela davis even though she would have been surprised at the direction that those reforms were taking. I want to open it up to the audience because i would imagine you have questions. I could sit and listen to them talk all night but is there anybody who would like to ask a question of all or any of them . Carol, over here. Oh. Theres yeah. I had a question when they started and maybe when they finished, if they felt they had made a change or they made an impact or they thought they hadnt. Good question. Success or failure. Thats a great question. I think flynn definitely felt like she had made an impact, and her career was so long. I mean, she was born in 1890s and she started speaking on new york city street corners when she was about 15, and she was active all the way up until her death in 1964. So i think she saw huge changes especially in terms of womens roles just really transforming. And she thought it was interesting, she actually was opposed to suffrage during the Suffrage Movement just because she thought voting was a waste of time. It wasnt radical enough for her. But then in retrospect when she evaluated it, she thought that that was just a huge shift in womens coppsness that women consciousness, that women had gotten the vote had become politically active. She thought that was important. And i think she also felt her work on behalf of Civil Liberties really made a difference. Her activism and the act vusm of the iww helped really establish the right to free speech and that was something around the time that she died in the 60s that was getting picked up by a new generation, and she was encouraged by the activism in the 1960s. And i think in a lot of ways angela davis was very purposeful. Her politicization and the ways in which it dovetailed with her quest for education and her travels abroad, i feel like she was someone who was seeking k