Background
Emily Blair was born on January 9, 1877, in Joplin, Missouri, United States, the daughter of James Patton Newell, a successful mortgage broker, and Anna Cynthia Gray Newell.
( First written in 1937 and never before published, Bridg...)
First written in 1937 and never before published, Bridging Two Eras is the fascinating autobiography of Emily Newell Blair, a remarkable woman who successfully reconciled a productive public life with the traditional values of a housewife and mother. Because Blair's life essentially spanned two eras, from the end of the nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth, she thought of herself as a bridge builder. A dedicated feminist, she wanted her autobiography to help women understand what life was like during that transition time. She had moved from being a conventional, middle-class, midwestern wife and mother to becoming an acclaimed author, a nationally known feminist, and vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee only two years after women gained the right to vote. She felt that her story could encourage women to take their rightful places in public life. Bridging Two Eras is divided into two parts. Book I is a charming evocation of life in southwest Missouri in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. It offers great insight into family relationships, class structure, and social attitudes typical of much of small-town America. Book II addresses Blair's public career and follows her progress as professional writer, suffrage activist, and partisan politician. Included are acute judgments of leading political figures, fascinating vignettes of the suffrage movement, an insider's view of the workings of the national Democratic Party in the 1920s and 1930s, and a valuable outlook on Missouri politics during the first third of the twentieth century. Perceptive and introspective, Blair captivates her readers as she traces her own evolution. With candor, she explains her conflicts between family and career, acknowledging the difficulties and tensions she faced in pursuing a public life. Delightfully written, Bridging Two Eras provides valuable insight into all the possibilities, as well as the limitations, life then held for an American woman.
https://www.amazon.com/Bridging-Two-Eras-Autobiography-1877-1951/dp/0826212549?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0826212549
journalist politician social activist write
Emily Blair was born on January 9, 1877, in Joplin, Missouri, United States, the daughter of James Patton Newell, a successful mortgage broker, and Anna Cynthia Gray Newell.
Emily graduated from high school in Carthage, Missouri, in 1894 and attended Goucher College for one year, after which she was, on the death of her father, forced to return home to help support and raise her younger brother and three sisters.
For the next decade after marriage Blair led a life typical of a small-town wife and mother. She bore two children, joined local women's clubs, and managed a home that centered on her husband's professional interests. After 1909, however, Blair's life changed when she discovered both her journalistic talents and the world of politics. In that year she sold her first short story to a national women's magazine, and over the next three years her fiction and articles appeared in Cosmopolitan and the Woman's Home Companion. With her earnings Blair hired a household staff so that she could devote herself to freelance writing.
Meanwhile, the revival of the woman suffrage movement after 1910 introduced Blair to politics through the Missouri Equal Suffrage Association. After working locally, in 1914 she became the first editor of Missouri Woman, a suffragists' monthly publication. Even before suffrage was achieved, Blair moved into the national arena as a member of the executive committee of the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense, a preparedness agency which after 1917 coordinated women's contributions to the war effort. In charge of news and publicity, Blair worked with national suffrage leader Anna Howard Shaw and journalist Ida Tarbell. After the war she wrote a short history of the Woman's Committee that stressed the potential role of women in national government, an issue she concentrated on in her postwar journalism.
Blair and others noted that American women, having gained the vote in 1920, had several options in entering politics. One, chosen by the official suffrage organizations, was nonpartisan activity through the League of Women Voters. Another, represented by the National Woman's Party, was a feminist approach, concentrating on women's issues, including the Equal Rights Amendment. As a final choice, women could work through the existing political parties, the path chosen by Blair.
In 1920 the Democratic National Committee tried to attract the new voters by doubling its membership to include a committee woman from each state, and in 1921 Blair was elected to the Democratic National Committee from Missouri. She was then voted vice-chairman in charge of organization and women's activities. Between 1922 and 1924 she traveled throughout the country, organizing more than 2, 000 Democratic women's clubs and thirty "schools of democracy, " regional training programs for female party workers. At the same time she publicized the cause of partisan politics through articles in the Woman Citizen, a journal for women voters, and in the traditional women's magazines and the national press.
Blair's commitment to party politics in the 1920's derived from a conviction that women were men's equals, neither morally superior nor intellectually inferior. Thus, she argued, they should and could meet men on their own political grounds. Although she helped found the League of Women Voters in 1920, Blair then rejected their nonpartisanship; although she believed in equal rights for women, she rejected the "sex-conscious feminists" of the Woman's Party. Women should not become "women voters, " she urged, but simply voters and politicians. Nevertheless, she did hope that while "boring from within" women would change politics by bringing more substantive programs and cooperative styles to what she described as the male game of political competition. An effective party spokesman, Blair was reelected to the Democratic National Committee in 1924 and chosen first vice-chairman, the only female national officer. She served until 1928.
Throughout the 1920's, Blair continued to write on the home and on books, the latter in a monthly column for Good Housekeeping, of which she was associate editor from 1925 to 1933. After 1928 she wrote on feminism as well, both in articles and in a novel, A Woman of Courage (1931). At the same time Blair became less optimistic about women's role in American politics. In assessing the failure of women to gain significant influence by the mid-1920's she had at first asked for more time for the new voters. But she also noted "strong masculine prejudice" and regretted that the parties were, by the late 1920's, appointing only those women who would defer to male leaders. By 1931, reversing her earlier position, Blair called for a revival of feminism and for "women politicians" in both parties, elected by a female voting constituency. A loyal Democrat while her party was out of office, Blair was not forgotten during the Roosevelt Administration. In 1933 she was appointed to the Consumer's Advisory Board under the National Recovery Act, served as its chairman in 1935, and was the only woman on the Advisory Council of the reorganized NRA in 1935. She then returned to freelance writing until 1943, when she served as chief of the Women's Interest Section of the War Department's Bureau of Public Relations. The following year she was incapacitated by a stroke; she died in Alexandria, Virginia, at the age of seventy-four.
( First written in 1937 and never before published, Bridg...)
Blair was a fonding member of the Woman's National Democratic Club.
Blair's political style was a mixture of charm and determination, which matched her philosophy. Co-workers referred to her as "Southern Comfort, " a drink "that slid down the throat like velvet, and about two seconds after there was a kick. "
On December 24, 1900, Emily married Harry Wallace Blair, a law student, and settled in Carthage.