When Pearl Gibbs came to our flat another early morning, her patience now worn thin, she looked over her cup and said: ‘You want to get off your behind and give us a hand.’ Over the tea and toast we planned a movement. It was a movement that should involve both Black and white, Jews and gentiles, political and non-political – but dominated by none. We joined forces.
Tag: Australian Women’s Charter
Jessie Street, Carrie Chapman Catt & Women’s Movement Internationalism
Fifty years after women meet at Seneca Falls, and almost fifty before debates about the content of the Women’s Charter, Life and Labor carries articles from women taking an internationalist view of the labour movement and women’s industrial struggle. Australians are contributors and even more closely associated with the journal. When in January 1906 she moves from Melbourne to Chicago, as first editor Henry brings with her journalistic expertise and respect gained in Australia. She brings along, too, her Women’s Movement activism and the support of confederates and mentors, Catherine Helen Spence amongst them. She carries letters of introduction from Spence to Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams and Anna Garlin Spencer amongst others. She knows from direct experience, working internationally in the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, that the movement for women’s rights necessarily crosses national boundaries.