Daring to Be Different: Missouri's Remarkable Owen Sisters

Epilogue

Epilogue In 1848, just two years before Mary Alicia Owen was born, the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 initiated a lengthy conflict that even today has not yet been totally resolved, but which began to change the way Americans viewed and treated women. No woman’s rights movement had existed in this country before that time. The Seneca Falls Convention produced a groundbreaking document known as the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments that borrowed unashamedly from the Declaration of Independence , opening with the words, “When in the course of human events . . .” and continuing, “We hold these truths to be selfevident : that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The document went on to list eighteen injustices women endured followed by a set of resolutions to address these wrongs. Four determined women led the woman’s rights movement in the United States. Two of them, Lucretia Coffin Mott and Elizabeth Stanton, were the principal organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention, and Stanton was the primary author of the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments. The other two key national figures of the woman’s rights movement were Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony. In their quest to achieve equal rights for women, these women and their supporters not only worked to change or eliminate laws that oppressed women, they also tried to change the   Epilogue male-dominated society’s perception of women as being inferior to men, and they worked with equal zeal to persuade women to believe in themselves and claim for themselves all the benefits of citizenship. By the last two decades of the nineteenth century, under the leadership of these four women and their fellow activists, new fields of employment were opening to women, such as office work and retail sales. A few middle- and upper-class women, including the Owen sisters, were already pursuing careers in a variety of professions. Prior to the Civil War, writing had been one of the few occupations open to women, although many had been denied the right to publish what they wrote. Now many more wrote—mostly in diaries and journals, but also in magazines , newspapers, and even books—among whom Mary Alicia and Luella Owen led the way in Missouri. Another Missourian, Emily Newell Blair from Joplin, worked tirelessly for change, focusing her efforts on the suffrage issue— helping to win the right for women to vote. Before that victory was achieved, women had to achieve their political goals by enlisting the help (votes) of their husbands and other like-minded men. Blair also made her voice heard through her writing for numerous magazines, such as Cosmopolitan and Century. In addition , she was the editor of The Missouri Woman, which carried articles on woman’s rights and the progress toward suffrage. In their book Into the Spotlight: Four Missouri Women, Margot Ford McMillen and Heather Roberson write that in 1916, when the National Democratic Convention was held in St. Louis, suffragists demonstrated for a suffragist plank in the party platform by forming a ten-block-long “Golden Lane.” Each woman carried a yellow parasol and wore a yellow sash inscribed with the words “Votes for Women.” They stood in a silent line on Locust Street where male delegates leaving the convention hall had to walk past them. The women’s strategy worked. The delegates grudgingly added “Votes for Women” to their platform for the presidential election. On April 5, 1919, Missouri governor Frederick D. Gardner signed a law allowing women to vote in the presidential election.  Daring to Be Different Not long after the law was signed, Blair wrote the foreword for an issue of the Missouri Historical Review that focused on the suffrage movement. A few months later, the United States Congress passed the historic Nineteenth Amendment, declaring that the right to vote “shall not be denied . . . on account of sex.” Finally, the amendment was ratified on August 26, 1920. The many changes in the status of women in the United States have not come easily or spontaneously; women have worked untiringly for more than 150 years to bring about the degree of equality they enjoy today, although the goal has not been completely accomplished on such issues...