Anne Henrietta Martin was an American suffragist, author, and social critic.
Background
Anne Henrietta Martin was born on September 30, 1875 in Empire City, Nevada. She was the daughter of William O'Hara Martin and Louise Stadtmuller Martin. Her father was a prominent banker, businessman, and Populist politician whose politics and personality greatly influenced her. Convinced that her mother favored her three brothers, while her father considered her "the brightest of the children, " Martin later said that her most vivid childhood memories were of her "self-made" father.
Education
Martin received her elementary and secondary education in Reno, Nev. , at Bishop O. W. Whitaker's School for Girls. From 1891 to 1894 Martin attended the University of Nevada, where for two years she was the state's woman's tennis champion. After graduating with the B. A. in history, she attended Leland Stanford Junior University, from which she received a second B. A. in 1896 and the M. A. in history in 1897.
Career
In 1897 she established the department of history at the University of Nevada and headed it until 1899. She then took a two-year leave of absence to study at Columbia University, Chase's Art School in New York, and the universities of London and Leipzig. After returning to Nevada in 1901 to attend her father's funeral, she resigned as head of the history department but remained at the university until 1903, teaching art history. Martin's life from 1901 to 1908 is not clearly documented, but she appears to have tried to convince her mother not to turn the family finances over to her brothers, whom she considered incompetent, and then to have sought to expose the reckless speculation of her father's successor as head of the Washoe County Bank. Failing in both endeavors, she traveled and studied in Europe and the Orient from 1904 to 1908. In 1909 Martin joined forces with the English suffragettes led by Emmeline Pankhurst, and on November 18, 1910, on the orders of Home Secretary Winston Churchill, she was arrested with thirty others for "disturbing the peace. " While in England she also wrote short stories and political articles, sometimes under the name of Anne O'Hara, and became a member of the Fabian Society. She returned to the United States in 1911 and became president of the Nevada Equal Franchise Society the following year. For the next two years she devoted herself to woman suffrage. Her strenuous efforts to reach the state's scattered population, which included riding from one mining camp to another on horseback, earned her the title Little Governor Anne. On November 3, 1914, the Nevada legislature granted women the right to vote. Martin immediately became involved in state politics as the first woman member of the Nevada Educational Survey Commission and as president of the Nevada Woman's Civic League, which replaced the Equal Franchise Society in 1915. At the same time she worked to secure passage of a national suffrage amendment. While on the executive committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she became the first national chairwoman of the National Woman's Party (NWP), a militant suffrage group. Under the leadership of Martin and Alice Paul, the NWP adopted some of the tactics of the English suffragettes. On July 14, 1917, Martin was arrested for picketing the White House and was sentenced to the Occoquan Workhouse. Undaunted, upon her release she continued, as head of the NWP's legislative committee, to lobby for passage of a national suffrage amendment. When her efforts proved futile, she decided to become a candidate for senator from Nevada. The first American woman to announce her candidacy for the upper house of Congress, Martin refused to declare as either a Republican or a Democrat and ran unsuccessfully as an independent in 1918 and 1920. Her less than enthusiastic support of World War I, her insistence that all political prisoners and conscientious objectors be released, and her support of federal medical care for needy mothers and children also contributed to her defeats. In each campaign Martin polled approximately one-fifth of the state's popular vote. In 1919 and 1920 she helped to organize national support for the Sheppard-Towner Act, which provided for federal and state cooperation on matters concerning maternal and infant welfare.
After 1920 her activities were divided between her literary pursuits (she wrote prizewinning poetry and published articles in American and English journals on political, socioeconomic, and feminist subjects) and pacifist activities. The latter consumed most of her time: she was a delegate to the world congresses of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) at Dublin (1926) and Prague (1929), western regional director of the U. S. section of the WILPF (1926 - 1931), and a member of the league's national board (1926 - 1936). In the summer of 1936 Martin resigned in protest over what she deemed the WILPF's lack of committed feminist and pacifist leadership, which she insisted should take precedence over socialist or communist ideology. She was active until the day she died, on April 15, 1951.
Achievements
Anne Henrietta Martin was known as an early pioneer in the Women's Suffrage Movement. Anne organized the campaign that gave women the right to vote in Nevada on November 3, 1914, after passing legislation in 1911 and 1913. She was national chairperson of the National Woman's Party at the first Women's Party convention in Chicago in 1918. She was president of the Nevada Women's Civic League, as well as first female member of the Nevada Educational Survey Commission. She was also the first state women's tennis champion. She was a delegate to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and a member of the executive committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Views
During the 1920's and 1930's Martin refused to join any political party because they were all male-dominated. Martin urged other women to follow her example, insisting that they could exercise political influence only through organized bloc voting. Charging that Carrie Chapman Catt had "sounded the doom of feminism for many years to come when she urged the newly franchised American women to 'train for citizenship' [by joining] men's parties, " Martin broke with the NWP in the late 1920's. She remained, however, a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, first sponsored by the NWP in 1923. Her pacifist leanings had been evident as early as 1915, when, in the midst of her suffrage activities, she had joined the Woman's Peace Party. She criticized American entry into both world wars and spoke out against lend-lease. After the war she was an outspoken critic of early cold war policies until her death at Carmel, Calif. Martin did not want women simply to imitate men in the arts or politics. These differences arose, she thought, from the distinctly separate socialization of women and men in Western society.
Quotations:
"Pearl Harbor tragedy on the treachery of the Japs is like the fellow who had been tickling the hind leg of a mule trying to explain his bunged-up condition by blaming the mule with having violated his confidence. "
"chiefly notable for their continuous emphasis on the indispensable development and advancement of women, not only in their own interests, but because of civilization's need for their potential powers as 'special guardians of the social principle, ' for wider use of their demonstrated powers of organization and administration, and for increased opportunity to express those powers directly in government. "
"Man culturehas almost wrecked the world. The time has come for a woman culture to develop and help save the world. But this can be done not by giving what is like men, not imitating men, but by giving what is different. "
