California Women and Politics

by Robert W Cherny

Overview

In 1911 as progressivism moved toward its zenith, the state of California granted women the right to vote. However, women’s political involvement in California’s public life did not begin with suffrage, nor did it end there.

 

Across the state, women had been deeply involved in politics long before suffrage, and—although their tactics and objectives changed—they remained deeply involved thereafter. California Women and Politics examines the wide array of women’s public activism from the 1850s to 1929—including the temperance movement, moral reform, conservation, trade unionism, settlement work, philanthropy, wartime volunteerism, and more—and reveals unexpected contours to women’s politics in California. The contributors consider not only white middle-class women’s organizing but also the politics of working-class women and women of color, emphasizing that there was not one monolithic “women’s agenda,” but rather a multiplicity of women’s voices demanding recognition for a variety of causes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803236080
Publisher:	University of Nebraska Press
Publication date:	05/01/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Robert W. Cherny is a professor of history at San Francisco State University and the author, co-author, or editor of numerous books, including American Politics in the Gilded Age, 1868–1900, and, with William Issel, of San Francisco, 1865–1932: Politics, Power, and Urban Development. Mary Ann Irwin is an instructor in the California community college system and the author or coeditor of several books and articles, including Women and Gender in the American West: Jensen-Miller Essays from the Coalition for Western Women’s History. Ann Marie Wilson is a College Fellow and Lecturer on History at Harvard University. Her first journal article received the 2010 Fishel-Calhoun Prize of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

 

Contributors: Cameron Binkley, Eunice Eichelberger, Susan Englander, Linda Heidenreich, Mildred Nichols Hamilton, Jarrod Harrison, Sandra L. Henderson, Mark Hopkins, Teresa Hurley, Mary Ann Irwin, Michelle Kleehammer, Rebecca Mead, Joshua Paddison, and Ann Marie Wilson.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Preface and Acknowledgments ix

Introduction xi

1 "I Do Not Like the White Man...

He Is a Liar and a Thief": Testimonios and the Politics of Resistance Linda Heidenreich 1

2 "Going About and Doing Good"

The Lady Managers of San Francisco, 1850-1880 Mary Ann Irwin 27

3 "Woman Is Everywhere the Purifier"

The Politics of Temperance, 1878-1900 Joshua Paddison 59

4 "Continually Doing Good"

The Philanthropy of Phoebe Apperson Hearst, 1862-1919 Mildred Nichols Hamilton 77

5 "Neutral Territory"

The Politics of Settlement Work in San Francisco, 1894-1906 Ann Marie Wilson 97

6 "Citizen Bird"

California Women and Bird Protection, 1890-1920 Michelle Kleehammer 123

7 Saving Redwoods

Clubwomen and Conservation, 1900-1925 Cameron Binkley 151

8 The Civitas of Women's Political Culture

The Twentieth Century Club of Berkeley, 1904-1929 Sandra L. Henderson 175

9 "We Want the Ballot for Very Different Reasons" Clubwomen, Union Women, and the Internal Politics of the Suffrage Movement, 1896-1911 Susan Englander 209

10 "Awed by the Women's Clubs"

Women Voters and Moral Reform, 1913-1914 Teresa Hurley Jarrod Harrison 237

11 "We Are Not Keen about the Minimum Wage"

Union Women, Clubwomen, and the Legislated Minimum Wage, 1913-1931 Rebecca J. Mead 263

12 "No Undue Familiarity"

Gender, Vice, and the Campaign to Regulate Dance Halls, 1911-1921 Mark Hopkins 289

13 "Hearts Brimming with Patriotism"

Katherine Edson, Alice Park, and the Politics of War and Peace, 1914-1921 Eunice Eichelberger 309

14 Historians, Politics, and California Women Mary Ann Irwin 339

Contributors 369

Index 373