Rising Above Average: Women Leaders

in World War I

Emily Hedges

HIST 499 Senior Seminar

Dr. Alice-Catherine Carls

5 December 2017

World War I was one of the bloodiest wars in American History. Despite the horrific effects of the war, it gave women of the time an opportunity in the United States. Many women took that opportunity and broke out of the traditional gender roles meant for them and took public leadership positions. They used their public leadership positions as opportunities to advance the objectives of women’s rights and civil rights. Sue Shelton White was a suffragist who championed for women’s rights and was instrumental in getting the Nineteenth Amendment passed. Mary Church Terrell became a civil rights activist who helped the NAACP come into fruition.1 Ida B. Wells was an African-American woman who also fought for civil rights. Ida

Clyde Clarke was given the opportunity take on the position of editor for a Nashville newspaper.

This was unheard of at the time. Women created the American Red Cross and nursing became yet another important role for women. Frances Elliott dreamed of becoming a nurse for the ARC.

She became the first black woman to be given an ARC pin.

Sue Shelton White, because of her childhood and young adult years, became a champion for women’s rights. She was born on May 25, 1887 in Henderson, Tennessee. Her parents were educators James Shelton White and Mary Calista Swain.2 Her father’s family were slaveholders before the Civil War, living in Wilson, County Tennessee. James White fought on the

Confederate side during the war. He sustained a wound in his leg that rendered him lame for the rest of his life. The White family could follow their ancestry back to the Marshall and Jefferson families in Virginia.3 When Sue was young her family moved to Montezuma, Tennessee but in

1879 moved back to the Henderson area to a rural town a few miles north of it. Her parents

1 “Terrell, Mary Church (1863-1954) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed.” n.d. Accessed October 6, 2017. http://www.blackpast.org/aah/terrell-mary-church-1863-1954. 2 “American National Biography Online: White, Sue Shelton.” n.d. Accessed October 6, 2017. http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-01386.html. 3 Betty Sparks Huehls, and Beverly Greene Bond, n.d., “Sue Shelton White (1887-1943): Lady Warrior.” In Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times, 1:140–59. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 143. taught in both places until her father died in 1893. From then on, her mother supported herself and her family by giving piano and singing lessons as well as writing articles for the town’s local newspaper. When Sue was growing up her mother did not give gender specific chores to her children. Her family lived in what White once called a “twilight zone” because it was between the white and black communities. This later influenced her views on race. Sue Shelton White’s mother passed in 1901, when she was only fourteen. She went to school for a few years and eventually in 1905 landed a job as a stenographer and clerk at the Southern Engine and Boiler

Works in Jackson, Tennessee. While working there she attempted to learn more about the business but instead was hindered by the male employees. She left in 1907 to become a court reporter. There she was congratulated on her work but faced gender bias when she expressed the dream to be a lawyer. After leaving that position, White became a secretary to a few members of the Tennessee Supreme Court. She would have been a secretary to a Tennessee senator but was denied once he learned that she was a woman. Finally, as a result of this, she became an equal rights activist in 1913.4 In December of 1912, she met with other women that were from Jackson at their local library, where they formed the Jackson Equal Suffrage League (or JESL) under instruction from two women, Mrs. Perkins Baxter and Mrs. Guilford Dudley. They were part of the Nashville League. These two organizations were attached to the National America Woman

Suffrage Association or NAWSA.5

Sue Shelton White took a job as the recording secretary for the Tennessee Equal Suffrage

Association (TESA), a branch of NAWSA. By 1917 she was the chair of the TESA’s eighth congressional district. While working for the TESA, White fought against the South’s

4 “American National Biography Online: White, Sue Shelton.” 5 Huehls, “Sue Shelton White (1887-1943): Lady Warrior,” 148. preconceived notions of “proper female behavior” and chose to deliver speeches on the street and worked in other ways to politically advocate for women in public. Apart from her activism on women’s suffrage, White assisted in composing Tennessee’s first married women’s property bill, one old age pension act and a mother’s pension act.6 White worked in 1917 to call for a

Tennessee law which proposed that women be granted the right to vote in both municipal and presidential elections. It finally passed in 1919, through the Tennessee General Assembly. In

1917, White worked as the Chairman of Registration under the Tennessee Woman’s Committee of the Council of National Defense. There she called on women to register to aid the war effort.

White managed to get over fifty thousand women signed up.7 When the United States entered

World War One in April of 1917, the NAWSA worked to connect both women’s support and wartime service to women’s suffrage. The organization and its state branches began to experience discord over ways to gain suffrage. White then made the decision to leave the

NAWSA and work for the National Women’s Party (NWP) in 1918. The NWP was more actively organizing in Tennessee and were pushing Tennessee congressmen to champion for the national suffrage amendment. White was made chair of the National Women’s Party by Alice

Paul (the head of the organization) and took on the job of editor for the organization’s national newspaper, . She travelled to Washington D.C. for a demonstration by the NWP on

February 9, 1919. They protested outside the White House.8 The NWP and White burned an effigy of then President . Because of this, White was arrested and sentenced to

6 “American National Biography Online: White, Sue Shelton.” 7 Huehls, “Sue Shelton White (1887-1943): Lady Warrior,” 152. 8 “American National Biography Online: White, Sue Shelton.” five days in the Old Work House. Once she was released, she signed up to go on a train that would travel around the country to bring attention and support to the issue of women’s suffrage.9

Congress adopted the Nineteenth Amendment for Women’s Right to Vote on June 4,

1919. To participate in fighting for state ratification, White came back to Tennessee. She made use of contacts she had here to get Tennessee to ratify the Amendment. It was successful, and

Tennessee became the thirty-fourth state to pass the Nineteenth Amendment, solidifying the needed three-fourths majority of all fifty states required to pass it.10

After the war, Sue Shelton White was hired as a clerk (later becoming a secretary,) by

U.S. Senator Kenneth D. McKellar from Tennessee. She worked for him from 1920 to 1926.

During that time, Sue White had a hand in composing the Equal Rights Amendment of 1923.

After she left work at the senator’s office, White went back to Jackson, Tennessee where she practiced law for four years.11 Between 1930 and 1932, she helped found and create a foundation for only women within the Democratic Party. This faction helped Franklin D. Roosevelt’s political alliance win in 1932. White was also known as one of the first female court reporters in

Tennessee. From 1935 to 1943 she worked at the federal Social Security Board as an assistant to their general counsel.12 She became sick in the early part of the 1940s.13 She contracted cancer and on May 6, 1943, finally passed away at home in Alexandria, Virginia.14

9 “Sue Shelton White | Entries | Tennessee Encyclopedia.” n.d. Accessed October 22, 2017. http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1501. 10 “American National Biography Online: White, Sue Shelton.” 11 “Sue Shelton White | Entries | Tennessee Encyclopedia.” 12 Huehls, “Sue Shelton White (1887-1943): Lady Warrior,” 142. 13 “American National Biography Online: White, Sue Shelton.” 14 “Sue Shelton White | Entries | Tennessee Encyclopedia.” Mary Church Terrell was another such woman who took a leadership position during

World War One. She was a civil rights activist, helping the NAACP to come to fruition.15 She became a leader because of her childhood and her experiences with racism throughout her life.

On September 23, 1863, Mary Church Terrell was born in Memphis, Tennessee. She was born to former slaves who had become business owners.16 Her parents were Louisa Ayres Church and

Robert Reed Church. Her father was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi to a sixteen-year-old slave and her white master, Captain Charles Beckwith Church, who never acknowledged him as his son. Her mother was born in the early 1840s and was a slave owned by an attorney, T.S.

Ayres. Her life was more privileged than most, because her owner taught her to read and write, going so far as to educate her in French. There are not any records of when or how Terrell’s parents met other than they decided to “marry” in December 1862.17 Louisa Ayres established herself in Memphis as an owner of a hair salon. Robert Reed became “the first black millionaire in the South” both because of his business and dealings in real estate.18 At first, her mother was the family’s source of income because it took her father several failed attempts before he became successful. Her parents divorced in 1867 and her mother had sole custody of Mary and her father had custody of Mary’s brother. Not a lot is known concerning the reasons for the divorce.19

However, in Terrell’s autobiography, she states that her father had a violent temper and would lose control, and “might have done anything desperate in a rage.”20 A directory of Memphis and the census taken in 1870 indicate that her parents still occupied the same residence. Her mother

15 “Terrell, Mary Church (1863-1954) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed.” 16 “Mary Church Terrell | National Woman’s Party.” n.d. Accessed October 22, 2017. http://nationalwomansparty.org/womenwecelebrate/mary-church-terrell/. 17 Cherisse Jones-Branch. “Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954): Revisiting the Politics of Race, Class, and Gender.” In Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times, 1:68–88. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 69. 18 “Terrell, Mary Church (1863-1954) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed.” 19 Jones-Branch, “Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954): Revisiting the Politics of Race, Class, and Gender,” 71. 20 Mary Church Terrell, A Colored Woman In A White World (New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1940), 6. continued to manage her hair salon before selling it in either 1878 or 1879, where she moved to

New York City, taking Mary with her. Because of her parents’ success Terrell lived in relative comfort and was able to receive an education. This in turn limited her exposure to racism when she was young. There were instances when she encountered racism that stuck with her and coupled with learning about her family’s history, these memories only fueled her dream of fighting discrimination.21

One of the earliest memories that she can remember of encountering racism was when she was five, travelling North with her father. At that time, Tennessee did not have Jim Crow laws in place, mandating that the races be separate, but social convention dictated everyone be separate. This meant that “self-respecting colored people” did not sit in the black train car. While on the train Terrell’s father went to the smoking car, leaving her in the white persons’ car. The conductor in charge confronted her about what she was doing in the white section. The conductor was angry and pulled her out of her seat asking everyone, “Whose little nigger is this?” One of the white men sitting in the car went to go get Robert Church and bring him back to defend his daughter. Her father returned and according to family lore, threatened the conductor with a revolver, as it was “customary for men to carry revolvers in their pockets” in that train car section. This incident sparked questions in Terrell’s mind about racism and the inequality between the races.22

Terrell left Memphis to continue her education in Ohio where she attended Oberlin

College. She graduated in 1884 with a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Languages. Four years after that she graduated with her Master’s degree. She became a teacher at Wilberforce College, later

21 “Mary Church Terrell | National Woman’s Party.” 22 Terrell, A Colored Woman In A White World, 15-16. moving to D.C. in 1887. While in Washington, she taught at what would become Dunbar High

School. There she met her future husband, Robert Herberton Terrell. Robert Terrell worked as the chairman of the language department. At the time when they married (1891), Washington

D.C had a rule against married women working as teachers; Terrell then resigned.23

In the year following her marriage, an event happened back in her hometown of

Memphis, which compelled Terrell to move into social activism. Her close friend Thomas Moss had been lynched. Both Terrell and Frederick Douglas wrote to President Benjamin Harrison asking him to publicly condemn the lynching, though this failed to produce anything. As a result of this, Mary Terrell established the Colored Women’s League in Washington, D.C. in order to raise awareness of the social problems that African-Americans had to face. Four years after this,

Terrell became the first President of the NACW or National Association of Colored Women after she helped bring it into being. The NACW advocated for “racial uplift through education and community activism.”24 The NACW also wanted to assist working black women, looked at unemployment (and its effects in African-American communities) and provide homes for older women and children. Something Terrell believed in was that in order to uplift the lives of blacks,

America had to first understand their life and the culture of African-Americans. Thus, she gave speeches about black life and told stories about the contributions of blacks. Most importantly, she urged everyone, no matter the race to find some sort of common ground.25

Terrell was not just an equal rights activist. She was also a champion of woman’s suffrage. This was an issue she spoke about quite a bit. Much like Sue Shelton White, Mary

Terrell was an active member of NAWSA, even giving two speeches at two separate NAWSA

23 “Terrell, Mary Church (1863-1954) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed.” 24 Ibid. 25 “Mary Church Terrell | National Woman’s Party.” conventions, one in 1900 and the other in 1904, respectively. At one point she protested in front of the White House alongside the National Women’s Party.26 In 1909, she helped bring the

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or NAACP to life by signing its charter that established it.27 In 1921, on February 18, she and her daughter were given pins by the

NWP because they helped picket the White House, protesting the disenfranchisement of women.28 Mary Church Terrell died at ninety years of age, on July 24, 1954 in Maryland. She passed away only two months after the Supreme Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson.29

Ida B. Wells was an African-American civil rights activist. She was born in 1862, into slavery, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Her parents died of yellow fever when she was sixteen.

This left her in charge of her siblings. Wells became a teacher, splitting her time between teaching and taking care of her siblings. An incident occurred on her commute between

Memphis and her teaching job which inspired her to protest the treatment of African-Americans in the South. She was told to move to the smoking car of the train by the conductor but refused.

People tried to forcefully remove her, and she later sued the company and won. When the railroad company appealed, the Supreme Court overturned the preceding decision, making Wells settle the fees. This made her decide to use a pseudonym and send in editorials to African-

American newspapers. Using those she challenged the Jim Crow laws. Wells also purchased a portion of one Memphis newspaper and from there, furthered “the cause of African-American civil rights.” Three of Ida Wells friends were lynched in 1892. From then on, she was one of the

26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Jones-Branch, “Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954): Revisiting the Politics of Race, Class, and Gender,” 86. 29 “Terrell, Mary Church (1863-1954)”. most vocal activists on the topic of anti-lynching. She wrote pamphlets on lynching and even studied the matter.30

Wells was married in 1895 to Ferdinand L. Barnett, who was an attorney and newspaper editor. She helped launch the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Wells was also a founding member of the NAACP. Alongside these activities, she was active in campaigning for women’s suffrage.31

While the men were fighting overseas, Americans were fighting amongst themselves.

There was widespread violence between whites and blacks on the home front which resulted in race riots. One very well-known race riot during the war was the East St. Louis Riot. This riot was born out of white resentment towards the increasing number of African-Americans to the area and began on July 1, 1917. The black community was enraged when several blacks were killed.32 Ida B. Wells-Barnett (as she was known after her marriage33), travelled to St. Louis after the riots were over. There she collected firsthand accounts on the riots34 and wrote extensively on them.35 She brought public attention to the race riots, when there likely was not a lot of news coverage about the deaths of blacks; especially with the war raging overseas.

In 1930, Wells did not like any of the people who were nominated to run for the Illinois

State Legislature. Because of this, she made the decision to run herself. This made her one of the

30 “Barnett, Ida Wells (1862-1931) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed.” n.d. Accessed October 23, 2017. http://www.blackpast.org/aah/barnett-ida-wells-1862-1931. 31 Ibid. 32 “U.S. Race Riots | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1).” n.d. Accessed October 25, 2017. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/us_race_riots. 33 “Ida B. Wells.” n.d. Biography.com. Accessed October 25, 2017. https://www.biography.com/people/ida-b-wells- 9527635. 34 “The East St. Louis Massacre: The Greatest Outrage of the Century | Illinois During the Gilded Age.” n.d. Accessed October 25, 2017. http://gildedage.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-gildedage%3A24051. 35 “Ida B. Wells, Journalist and Anti-Lynching Fighter | African American Registry.” n.d. Accessed October 25, 2017. http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/ida-b-wells-journalist-and-anti-lynching-fighter. first African-American women to run for public office in America.36 She was defeated. Ida

Wells fell ill with kidney disease and died on March 25, 1931 in Chicago.37

Ida Clyde Clark worked in a public leadership role as the editor of both the Nashville

Tennessean and Nashville Banner. She was born in Meridan, Mississippi in the year 1878 on

March 27.38 Her maiden name was Ida Clyde Gallagher. Her father had been a Civil War soldier.39 His name was Charles William and her mother’s name was Annie Campbell

Gallagher.40 At twenty-two years of age, she married the then current editor of the Nashville

Banner, Tom Clarke. And despite being both a writer and a journalist for the paper, she raised two sons.41

Clarke was as suffragist. In 1910, she wrote a piece titled ‘My Suffrage Creed’. In it, she wrote on her feelings towards woman’s suffrage, stating, “I believe that it is my inherent right to express my opinion directly and effectively through the ballot.”42 In 1911, Tom Clarke passed away and Ida Clarke was left a widow.43 After the death of her husband, she took over as editor for the newspapers.

When she wrote, Clarke targeted injustices with sarcasm and sharp wit. An example of another piece she wrote was American Women and the World War, published in 1918. Clarke personally believed that by changing the public’s opinion on the home front, it would win the

36 “Ida B. Wells-Barnett(1862-1931) and Her Passion for Justice, Black Women, African American Women, Sufferage, Women’s Movement, Civil Rights Leaders.” n.d. Accessed October 31, 2017. 37 “Ida B. Wells.” 38 “Ida Clyde Clarke.” Accessed October 23, 2017. http://prabook.com:80/person-view.html?profileId=1086548. 39 Carey Shellman. n.d. “Providing More Than “Spiritual Stimulus”: The Work of American Women in the Council of National Defense.” 40 “Ida Clyde Clarke.” 41 Shellman, “Providing More Than “Spiritual Stimulus”. 42 Clarke, Ida. 1910. “My Suffrage Creed.” Women’s Rights / Abortion, January. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/gob6/1. 43 Shellman, “Providing More Than “Spiritual Stimulus”. war overseas. Within that work, she describes her purpose for writing it as “a brief outline of what American women are trying to do” in the war effort.44

While some women broke out of traditional gender roles by taking public leadership positions, others tore down their gender roles by playing another key role in the war effort on the home front. They ran the American Red Cross and worked on fundraising for the war, raising money with Liberty Bonds. The American Red Cross made a tremendous effort in the war. One woman, Frances Elliott, became the first black nurse of the ARC. Women also played a key role in the fundraising effort with the Liberty Bonds.

The American Red Cross was created by Clara Barton in 1881 on May 21, based on her experience during the Civil War. It was founded in Washington, D.C. Clara Barton oversaw the

ARC for twenty-three years. Their first congressional charter came through in 1900, followed by another in 1905. Barton left the organization in 1904.45 In its earliest years, the Red Cross was a small, underfunded organization. Members worked to bring in money, new members and more medical personnel. They labored at this all the way up to Europe’s entrance into World War One.

The Red Cross wanted to help the Allies in Europe, but this was difficult due to the United

States’ neutral stance on the war.46 In 1914, the number of local Red Cross chapters was one hundred seven. By 1918, there were three thousand eight hundred sixty-four chapters. Their membership numbers increased to above twenty-million adults and eleven million child members. People gave the ARC four hundred million dollars in funds plus materials to support their programs as well as both American and Allied forces fighting overseas. The ARC ended up

44 Ibid. 45 “Our History | American Red Cross History.” n.d. American Red Cross. Accessed October 28, 2017. http://www.redcross.org/about-us/who-we-are/history. 46 “WWI Online :: The American Red Cross.” n.d. Accessed October 28, 2017. https://wwionline.org/articles/american-red-cross/. staffing the hospitals and ambulances. They even enlisted twenty thousand nurses to serve in the military.47

At the beginning of the war, the organization was able to send a relief ship full of supplies to England. When it arrived, it doled out supplies that included: medical gauze, anesthetics, clothing and camp supplies and was distributed to England, France, Russia and

Germany. There were one hundred seventy surgeons and nurses aboard. The Red Cross asked for their people to be impartial and treat anyone who was injured, including the enemy. Throughout the war, the ARC grew (as mentioned before) and the members of chapters all over the country sent out pamphlets to the public, telling people about ways they could participate in the war effort. Knitting commodities was the most popular avenue for people to help. The American Red

Cross afforded women the opportunity to show their patriotism and dismantle biased opinions of women. Nurses who travelled overseas experienced the war as they treated the injured. They treated injuries such as infections, burns and exposures from mustard gas attacks and many other types of wounds. At the end of the war in 1918, the American Red Cross came face to face with the flu epidemic.48

Frances Elliott had always dreamt of becoming a nurse for the American Red Cross ever since she was a young adult. She became the first African-American woman to wear the Red

Cross nurses’ pin. She was born northwest of Shelby, North Carolina on April 28, 1883. Her mother was a white woman named Emma and her father was half-Cherokee and half-black, who worked as a sharecropper. Her parents’ relationship was taboo at the time and nearly became public when her mother became pregnant. State law did not allow for the marriage, cohabitation

47 “Our History | American Red Cross History.” 48 “WWI Online :: The American Red Cross.” or relationships between Caucasians and African-Americans. Due to state law, Frances’ father,

Darryl was compelled to run away out of state or risk being lynched. Emma, her mother, also relocated, going to Tennessee. Before leaving their county, she went to the county courthouse, and willed her forty-nine acres share of her family’s estate to her daughter. When Frances was only five years of age, her mother died of tuberculosis. She had family who might have taken her in, though they did not. Her mother’s family, the Elliott’s, were white, and Frances was of mixed race. Frances spent time in five separate foster homes, all by the time she turned seventeen. She spent five years with one family, the Dorsetts. They were African-American and lived outside of

Greensboro, North Carolina. Frances, at an early age, expressed her wish to become a nurse. Her foster mother, Lucinda encouraged her by saying that she needed to get an education and then could go on to become a nurse. The Dorsetts wanted to help her further her education and set up arrangements for her to stay with a family near Raleigh, where there were better schools. This family did not support her education and took her out of school to care for their infant. Another family, the Reeds, (who Frances worked for) did not like the mistreatment Frances experienced at the hands of her foster family, the Winthrows. They removed her from her situation, packed up her bags and sent her off to Knoxville, where she would attend a boarding school at Knoxville

College. Over the next eight years, the Reeds paid for her education.49

Along the way, Frances became engaged to a man named Albert. Upon her graduation, both Albert and the Reeds wanted her to become a teacher despite her desire to be a nurse. When scarlet fever hit the Reeds family, she went back to their home to care for the Reeds’ daughters.

While caring for them, the experience only strengthened Frances’ resolve to become a nurse. She

49 “World War I Nurse Frances Reed Elliott Davis | NC DNCR.” n.d. Accessed October 30, 2017. https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2017/08/03/world-war-i-nurse-frances-reed-elliott-davis. was twenty-six years old. She ended things with Albert and landed a temporary teaching job over in Henderson. From that job, she saved all her money, so she would be able to pay for her nurses’ training. After studying for three years at the Freedmen’s School of Nursing she graduated and passed the D.C. Board of Examination. Elliott worked as a private nurse/supervisor in Baltimore. However, Frances always wanted to do more, and she turned towards the American Red Cross. At the time though African-American nurses were not being accepted by the Red Cross. When she applied, the ARC did not have an actual reason to be able to turn her down, since she was highly educated. She tried to become a volunteer nurse in 1915 but was denied due to her race.50 She continued to pursue membership51 and was finally accepted by the ARC the summer of 1916. Frances reported for advanced training at Columbia University.

Upon receiving her first American Red Cross assignment, Elliott relocated to Jackson,

Tennessee. While there, she was given her Red Cross pin, number 1-A. The A designated her as

African-American.52

When the US was at its peak with its wartime mobilizing efforts, in May of 1918, Elliott transferred to Chattanooga, Tennessee. There she was assigned to supply medical care to the servicemen’s families who lived there, while their loved ones were stationed at Chickamauga

Park and Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia. Eventually Frances went back to Jackson. However, nurses were called for soon after because in September 1918, the flu epidemic swept across the United

States. Both soldiers and civilians fell ill by the millions. Even after the war, the flu continued to take lives. During the fall and winter of 1918-1919, all Frances could do was watch as the

50 “World War I Nurse Frances Reed Elliott Davis | NC DNCR.” 51 “Partners in Service: American Red Cross and National Black Nurses Association.” n.d. American Red Cross. Accessed October 28, 2017. http://www.redcross.org/news/article/Partners-in-Service-American-Red-Cross-and- National-Black-Nurses-Association. 52 “World War I Nurse Frances Reed Elliott Davis | NC DNCR.” influenza took several lives. As the epidemic began to wane, she fell ill with the flu. She survived, albeit with permanent heart damage. She married a man named William Davis. In

1927, Frances took a job at the Detroit Public Health Department. Sometime in the 1940s, she founded a childcare facility at the Carver School, appealing to for help.

Roosevelt got involved with Elliott’s project and aided in both the planning and funding of it.

When that was finished, and the school was fully operational, at sixty-two years of age, Frances went back to work as a nurse. She worked at a hospital close by and when she was sixty-nine, she retired. She died on May 2, 1965.53

Women did not just take the initiative in public leadership positions. They were instrumental in another area: fundraising. A popular form of fundraising during World War One was through Liberty Bonds or as they are also known, Liberty Loans. The Federal Reserve

System was created in 1914, when WWI began. The United States was able to organize it completely and get it running in three years, before we entered the war effort. To fund the Great

War, the US government relied on a combination of new taxes and borrowing directly from the people. New taxes made up about a third of the funding, the other two-thirds was raised through borrowing. The borrowing effort, known as Liberty Loans, was made possible through selling

Liberty Bonds. The Treasury handled the issuing of the bonds while the Federal Reserve and the banks belonging to it oversaw the selling of the liberty bonds. William Gibbs McAdoo was

President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of the Treasury and he conceived the idea of Liberty

Bonds. His plan was composed of three parts. The first element was educating everyone about the bonds, what the causes/objectives of the war were and how much financial power the country had. The second element was appealing to the people’s sense of patriotism. By doing this, the

53 Ibid. government would ask anyone and everyone to purchase bonds, even children. The third and final element was making the effort rely entirely on volunteers, so they could avoid having to pay anyone for their work. The bonds were available at any bank that belonged to the Federal

Reserve.54

The bonds could be negotiated, and people received coupons that they could cash in every six months for interest. They matured in thirty years but could be called in fifteen. The lowest attainable bond was fifty dollars. This was a large amount for many as wages were low at the time. McAdoo then came up with another plan: “War Thrift Stamps” that were twenty-five cents. Four separate Liberty Loan Drives took place during the war with a fifth one held after the peace treaty.55

Women played a key role in the sale of Liberty Bonds. Sixty thousand women were enlisted to sell them. On Liberty Day, women were placed at the gates of factories to hand out over seven million fliers. Information sheets were sent to farm women. Famous celebrities were drawn into it. Big names such as Mary Pickford and Charlie Chapman held bond rallies as they went around the country, talking about the bonds.56

World War I forced women to get out of their traditional roles and get involved. Women have played many different roles throughout history. The Great War, beginning in 1915 was the catalyst to women breaking the traditional gender roles. On a large scale it afforded women the ability to take jobs outside the home in factories and earn wages. It gave them the opportunity to take leadership roles out in public. Sue Shelton White and Ida Clyde Clarke were both

54 “Liberty Bonds | Federal Reserve History.” n.d. Accessed October 28, 2017. https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/liberty_bonds. 55 “Liberty Bonds | Federal Reserve History.” 56 Ibid. suffragists. Sue White campaigned for the women’s right to vote. Mary Church Terrell championed for suffrage and equal rights for blacks. Ida B. Wells was an civil rights activist.

Frances Elliott was the first African-American nurse within the American Red Cross. All these women lived during the First World War and helped bring attention to women’s roles during that time. Women played a key role in fundraising for the war as well, helping to sell liberty bonds to the public. All in all, women have always been key figures to our society and continue to be, even today.

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