Jean Perry #
I loved this article, especially the links to “The Presence of the Past” and “Think Talk Make Do”. Reading just “The Book Introduction” link in The Presence of the Past was fascinating although i found the lack of comment about women’s connection to the past disappointing and telling. Were there no such responses from women about having connections to women in the past, whether to their families or at museums, reading history, etc?
In one sense i can understand that, if it is true. I’m fortunate that various generations before me have extensive information about four Scotch-Irish brothers/ancestors who came to south central Pennsylvania in the early 1700′s and that my biological family has stayed in the area, so i know a lot about their environment and the history they lived through. Of course, i have no history about any of the women in their lives! It’s very frustrating.
I also recognize that most people that the surveyors talked to probably know little women’s history unless they read some biographies, or the women were connected to men whom historians have written about – and lord knows that info has often not been factual!
It still surprises me that as women’s history and women’s historical sites have been getting more attention since the 1970′s that there was only one place where the word “women” was mentioned in that explanation of how they interpreted the information from the surveys.
I found NC about six months ago and have loved it. Thank you for your initiation of this blog and for your time and expertise in sharing it with us. I have frequently shared some or all of it with friends who are feminists and some who have an interest in women’s history. I taught high school and then college history at various times in my life, but have been a reader about women in history since my sophomore year in high school – 50+ yrs ago. I have had women’s history as both a vocation and an avocation ever since. I was a founding member of the Alice Paul Institute, which continues educating school children and adults in Alice’s fight for a suffrage amendment and an Equal Rights Amendment. I actually met and talked with Alice Paul in her 92nd year.
Some of those women who were with me on the founding board of API are still dear friends and many of us meet every Jan 11 – Alice’s birthday – for dinner. They are all women who are interested in women’s history. I know there are millions of such women in the country, which is the reason for my surprise at the lack of mention in the link to The Presence of the Past.
Here is the link to the API, it is housed in the home she grew up in which was bought and renovated by an interested group of women and conducts tours, telling Alice’s and the suffrage and ERA story, and trains school girls in leadership skills and the fact that they CAN be leaders! Certainly “Doing History In Public.”
May 10, 2013
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