Tennessee Claflin Quotes
Let us have a fair field! This is all we ask, and we will be content with nothing less. The finger of evolution, which touches everything, is laid tenderly upon women. They have on their side all the elements of progress, and its spirit stirs within them. They are fighting, not for themselves alone, but for the future of humanity. Let them have a fair field!
Cook, Tennessee Claflin. Essays on Social Topics. The Roxburghe Press, 1898.
Mrs. Roosevelt thought that with the rate of improvement in society’s perception and treatment of women was improving so steadily that women in America were not far from equality. Because of the shortage of men on the home front in WWII women had performed well in virtually all occupations including welding, heavy construction and management and it was just a matter of time to reach equality of pay and parity. However, she and most feminists did not take into account the 2 million men returning from military service who wanted their jobs back. Sexists, who had been suppressed during the war when they objected to women in non traditional occupations, were no longer silenced by national necessity. An occupational backlash developed. Then a sexual one regarding contraception and family planning, (Condoms for example were illegal up to 1963 as birth control device). Each major step forward was accompanied by its own backlash and even in the Presidential Campaign of 2012 contained debate on women’s control over their own bodies relative to abortion and contraception.
Lady Tennessee Celeste Claflin, Viscountess of Montserrat, also known as Tennie C., was an American suffragist best known as the first woman, along with her sister Victoria Woodhull, to open a Wall Street brokerage firm, which occurred in 1870.
