Magna Carta Quotes
No widow shall be compelled to marry ... while she chooses to live without a husband.
The Magna Carta is not generally known as a document establishing women's rights, but there was one key provision. Sealed under duress and later repudiated by the King with Papal assistance
Magna Carta, Sealed by John [John Lackland], c. 1167-1216, King of England, June 15, 1215
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Johnson had a white mistress who accompanied him visibly at a time when Blacks were lynched for dating white women in many parts of the country. He was criticized heavily by whites for going with a white woman and many Blacks for the same.
The concept of taxpayers being entitled to vote to avoid taxation without representation was fundamental to the Founding Fathers. However, the only people who paid taxes were those who owned property as there was no income tax at the time. Since the male controlled the family property, not allowing women to vote did no injury to the basic principle. However, the sexist attitude of the times ran up against this basic principles in the case of widows and unmarried women who owned property. Faced with this contradiction, some of the Founding Fathers like Lee actually favored the voting franchise for women who were widows and property owners or even unmarried female property owners. There were not enough people who saw this contradiction so that all women were originally prohibited from voting, but this quotation shows that it was a political issue at the time.
Manava Dharma Shastra. 500 years before Christ, the Hindus took more official care of females’ property than we and most European cultures did until relatively modern times. In Anciend India, women could inherit and own property, but because of their relative inexperience and no education, they were taken advantage of by relative who were “managing affairs” for them. This text is a part of the Hindu Holy Texts. Hindus believe that Manu was a prophet whose text is revealed or inspired.
Miller was the first Black American admitted to a Graduate Program—Johns Hopkins—in Mathematics. Women were not then universally allowed to vote and suffrage was a major issue. Miller, like many Black males, was opposed to female suffrage. The prospect of many women holding public office was to him so absurd that the potential prospect was sufficient to oppose women voting.
Chaucer has Criseyde say this. It is the statement that would gladden the heart of any feminist. This was one of Mary McCarthy’s favorite quotations.
At the time and for many years afterward, once a woman married in America, she lost most of the legal rights she had. She could not own property—the husband controlled it all, and she had no rights to make family decisions including the upbringing of her own children.
In English law, the second a woman married, she ceased to exist and an entity independent from her husband who had total control in the family. This doctrine was carried over to American law. See {629246}.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
Unchaiuned at Last was founded in 2011 as a non-profit organization devoted to curtailing arranged and forced marriages of girls and young women in America. This is their Motto. See the Related Quotes for more insight into the American Child Marriage Problem.
Magna Carta Libertatum (Medieval Latin for "Great Charter of Freedoms"), commonly called Magna Carta or sometimes Magna Charta ("Great Charter"), is a royal charter of rights agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215. First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Stephen Langton, to make peace between the unpopular king and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift and impartial justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons. Neither side stood by their commitments, and the charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons' War.
