I just came across this essay, the Hook blog article, Suffragist city: Beginnings and endings on Women’s Equality Day:

In fact, when I began my career as a reporter at the Harrisburg Patriot News in 1961, one of my first assignments was covering the 41st anniversary of this Amendment. I was one of six women on the newspaper, all of us assigned to the Women’s Section, which, ironically, was edited by a man.

For my story, I reviewed the history of the women’s movement back to the first Women’s Rights Convention convened by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott in 1848. It took until 1920– 72 years of struggle— to get the right to vote.

A Pennsylvania suffragist still alive in 1961 told me that she and her colleagues often used existing political gatherings to argue their cause, and not all women were convinced that voting was the right way to go. She recounted that one suffragist, so stunned by the polished rhetoric of an anti-suffragist, tried a little reverse psychology as a debating point: “My opponent with all her intelligence and eloquence certainly belongs in the halls of Congress,” said the suffragist, “while I should remain a housewife.”

It is interesting that there was a male editor of a women’s page. That was quite rare, based on the many women’s pages I have studied.

Here is the history of the Patriot-News. There is no mention of a women’s section – or women reporters.

Please follow and like us:

I just came across this essay, the Hook blog article, Suffragist city: Beginnings and endings on Women’s Equality Day:

In fact, when I began my career as a reporter at the Harrisburg Patriot News in 1961, one of my first assignments was covering the 41st anniversary of this Amendment. I was one of six women on the newspaper, all of us assigned to the Women’s Section, which, ironically, was edited by a man.

For my story, I reviewed the history of the women’s movement back to the first Women’s Rights Convention convened by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott in 1848. It took until 1920– 72 years of struggle— to get the right to vote.

A Pennsylvania suffragist still alive in 1961 told me that she and her colleagues often used existing political gatherings to argue their cause, and not all women were convinced that voting was the right way to go. She recounted that one suffragist, so stunned by the polished rhetoric of an anti-suffragist, tried a little reverse psychology as a debating point: “My opponent with all her intelligence and eloquence certainly belongs in the halls of Congress,” said the suffragist, “while I should remain a housewife.”

It is interesting that there was a male editor of a women’s page. That was quite rare, based on the many women’s pages I have studied.

Here is the history of the Patriot-News. There is no mention of a women’s section – or women reporters.

Please follow and like us: