Browsing by Subject "Women's History"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    "Clean Clothes vs. Clean Water": Consumer Activism, Gender, and the Fight to Clean Up the Great Lakes, 1965-1974
    (2018-08) Scherber, Annette Mary; Scarpino, Philip V.; Shrum, Rebecca K.; Robertson, Nancy Marie
    During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the polluted Great Lakes became a central focus of the North American environmental movement. A majority of this pollution stemmed from phosphate-based laundry detergent use, which had become the primary product households used to wash fabrics after World War II. The large volume of phosphorus in these detergents discharged into the lakes caused excess growths of algae to form in waterways, which turned green and smelly. As the algae died off, it reduced the oxygen in the water, making it less habitable for fish and other aquatic life, a process known as eutrophication. As primary consumers of laundry detergents during the time period, women, particularly white, middle-class housewives in the United States and Canada, became involved in state/provincial, national, and international discussions involving ecology, water pollution, and sewage treatment alongside scientists, politicians, and government officials. Their work as volunteers, activists, and lobbyists influencing the debate and ensuing policies on how best to abate this type of pollution, known as eutrophication, has often been ignored. This thesis recognizes the work women completed encouraging the enactment of key water quality regulations and popularizing the basic tenets of environmentally-conscious consumption practices during the environmental movement in the early 1970s.
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    Indianapolis women working for the right to vote : the forgotten drama of 1917
    (2013) Kalvaitis, Jennifer M.; Morgan, Anita A.; Monroe, Elizabeth Brand, 1947-; Barrows, Robert G. (Robert Graham), 1946-
    In the fall of 1917, between 30,000 and 40,000 Indianapolis women registered to vote. The passage of the Maston-McKinley partial suffrage bill earlier that year gave women a significantly amplified voice in the public realm. This victory was achieved by a conservative group of Hoosier suffragists and reformers. However, the women lost their right to vote in the fall of 1917 due to two Indiana Supreme Court rulings.
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    Limitations and liabilities: Flanner House, Planned Parenthood, and African American birth control in 1950s Indianapolis
    (2017-09) Brown, Rachel Christine; Robertson, Nancy Marie; Morgan, Anita; Labode, Modupe
    This thesis analyzes the relationship between Flanner House, an African American settlement house, and Planned Parenthood of Central Indiana to determine why Flanner House director Cleo Blackburn would not allow a birth control clinic to be established at the Herman G. Morgan Health Center in 1951. Juxtaposing the scholarship of African Americans and birth control with the historiography of black settlement houses leads to the conclusion that Blackburn’s refusal to add birth control to the health center’s services had little to do with the black Indianapolis community’s opinions on birth control; instead, Flanner House was confined by conservative limitations imposed on it by white funders and organizations. The thesis examines the success of Blackburn and Freeman B. Ransom, Indianapolis’s powerful black leaders, in working within the system of limitations to establish the Morgan Health Center in 1947. Ransom and Blackburn received monetary support from the United Fund, the Indianapolis Foundation, and the U.S. Children’s Bureau, which stationed one of its physicians, Walter H. Maddux, in Indianapolis. The Center also worked as a part of the Indianapolis City Board of Health’s public health program. These organizations and individuals did not support birth control at this time and would greatly influence Blackburn’s decision about providing contraceptives. In 1951, Planned Parenthood approached Blackburn about adding birth control to the services at Morgan Health Center. Blackburn refused, citing the Catholic influence on the Flanner House board. While acknowledging the anti-birth control stance of Indianapolis Catholics, the thesis focuses on other factors that contributed to Blackburn’s decision and argues that the position of Flanner House as a black organization funded by conservative white organizations had more impact than any religious sentiment; birth control would have been a liability for the Morgan Health Center as adding contraceptives could have threatened the funding the Center needed in order to serve the African American community. Finally, the position of Planned Parenthood and Flanner House as subordinate organizations operating within the limitations of Indianapolis society are compared and found to be similar.
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    "Tho' We are Deprived of the Privilege of Suffrage": The Henry County Female Anti-Slavery Society Records, 1841-1849
    (2009) Clauser-Roemer, Kendra; McKivigan, John R.; Bingmann, Melissa; Wokeck, Marianne S.
    Without a public arena, the women’s abolitionist movement employed traditional women’s activities in conjunction with writing for publication as their rhetorical force. Female antislavery societies incorporated a range of tactics including sewing clothing for escaped slaves, organizing fund-raising bazaars, and petitioning politicians. As with societies of men, women elected recording secretaries, submitted reports and addresses for newspaper publication, and some groups even developed tracts for public distribution. Denied the right to speak publicly, female antislavery societies used organizational documentation not only as a device to record their activities but also as a persuasive tool to shape public opinion. Many of the female antislavery societies communicated through the antislavery press. Local, regional, and national papers published constitutions, resolutions, reports, and addresses of women’s organizations. The Henry County Female Anti-Slavery Society (HCFASS) maintained vigorous publication activities. During their eight-year existence, from 1841 to 1849, the Free Labor Advocate, a regional antislavery newspaper, published HCFASS resolutions and addresses almost every year. In addition to Indiana periodicals, HCFASS leaders sent publication requests to national newspapers. Although scholars have profiled several New England societies, the characteristics of individual societies in the Midwest remain slim. Since the HCFASS achieved the most prolific publication record of any female society in Indiana it provides a strong case study for female antislavery rhetoric in the Midwest.