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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview G-0028, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Lucy Somerville Howorth was born in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1895. Howorth recalls her mother's political activism as a Mississippi state legislator and as a suffragist. Her mother's leadership and political beliefs strongly informed Howorth's own sensibilities: she recalls that even as a child, she was aware of gender inequality believed that women should have legal and political equality. By the 1910s, Howorth had become involved in the women's suffrage movement. She helped to organize an Equal Rights Club for women while she attended Randolph-Macon Woman's College from 1912 to 1916. During World War I, Howorth lived in New York City, attending graduate school at Columbia University in psychology and economics, working for the Bureau of Allied Aircraft, and working for the YWCA industrial department. In 1920, Howorth decided to become a lawyer and since Columbia did not admit women students to law school, she returned to Mississippi to attend the University of Mississippi law school. One of the only two women law students at Mississippi at the time, Howorth graduated at the top of her class while actively involving herself in school activities. Following her graduation, Howorth practiced law, married Joseph Howorth, another southern lawyer, and became a judge. In 1932, during the Great Depression, Howorth successfully ran for the Mississippi state legislature, where she served until 1936. In 1934, Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed her to serve on the Board of Veterans Appeals, a position she held until 1943. Following World War II, Howorth worked actively to get women appointed to federal positions. Throughout her career, Howorth was involved in numerous women's organizations, including the YWCA, the American Association of University Women, the National Association of Women Lawyers, and the Professional and Businesswomen's Club. She describes her involvement in these organizations, her perception of the women who led them, and how these organizations evolved over the years.
Born in 1895, Lucy Somerville Howorth was born and raised in Mississippi. An activist for women's rights from an early age, Howorth was actively involved in the campaign for women's suffrage before she became a lawyer, a judge, and a politician. She describes her involvement in numerous women's organizations, her perceptions of the women who led those organizations, and their evolution over the years.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Constance Myers interviewing Mrs. Lucy Somerville Howorth in Monteagle, Tennessee on June 20, 1975. Mrs. Howorth:
I wish to make a statement similar to the one that I made when Delta State University initiated a series of tape recordings. It is to this effect, that I have made many mistakes, I have committed blunders, I have done things that I wish I hadn't done and not done some that I should have, but I am not the type to go dwelling on errors. I think that life has to be lived positively and affirmatively. If I could learn from a mistake, I tried to do so. Otherwise, it was washed out. This may make my tape sound like a pompous egotist, and if so, it just has to be.
Thank you, Mrs. Howorth. Well said. Can you remember how you first became aware that equal rights for women was actually an issue?
Well naturally, I imbibed that with my early sitting at the knees of my
mother. One of my earliest recollections is sitting by her desk, she
would be writing and addressing envelopes, and I would arrange in little
stacks one leaflet of each color. They used to publish these little
leaflets in pink and yellow and white and blue and she would want to
insert in an envelope a set. My recollection is of playing with those
and of course, I learned the colors, I learned to assemble papers in an
orderly fashion and a good deal. But I was helping her to do whatever
she happened to be doing at the moment in the way of a public cause. I
just don't ever remember when I I didn't know that there was a question,
because the right to/vote was obviously The
Woman's Journal, you'll know that and will have come across it.
I used to read it everytime. I was and am an omnivorous reader, I don't
care what it is, if it is printed, I pick it up and read it. As a child,
I read all of those things that were probably beyond me, but anyhow, it
made a dent.
Were you raised in a politically conscious household generally speaking? Was your family aware of many other political issues and involved?
Oh yes. They were not political in the sense of being candidates. The first candidate in our family was my mother in 1923, but they always knew the candidates, they always knew the issues, they always discussed them. At our dining table, the conversation revolved around public issues, not around local gossip as to who had just gotten married or who_was going with whom or little petty things happening at the school. The conversation was on the level of public activities and issues and what was in the latest newspaper. Our house was full of newspapers. We had the Memphis paper, sometimes the Jackson paper, sometimes the New Orleans paper and sometimes the St. Louis paper.
What about New York and Washington?
No, I don't suppose that anybody in town took The New York
Times. Certainly, I was not aware of The New York
Times until I went to college. Oh, I knew that there was such a
paper, but I mean for any reading in the scope of it and so on. But when
I went to college, I discovered it and have read it ever since all my
life. I subscribe to the Sunday paper now.
In the community of Greenville, were there sufficiently large
I wouldn't say that there was any large number, but there were people. I have never found, and I don't know whether in her researches that Mrs. Meredith found out much about a Mrs. Mount, who moved away before I was old enough to know, but who seemed to have had a great influence on the women. I don't know what became of her or where she moved to.
I don't recall that name at all in the suffrage literature.
She is the one who introduced my mother to the homeopathic medicine and she . . . .
I see. Do you recall her first name at all?
No, I don't. You know, you don't think as you grow up to ask people those things and you get your mind on other things. But she seems to have been one that kind of stirred women up.
Mrs. Mount.
In Greenville, in the 1880's and 1890's. But I didn't suggest her name, I think, to Mrs. Meredith.
And she moved away, you believe, because you didn't hear of her subsequently?
No. I have no recollection of ever seeing her. I suppose I did, but it was before I was recalling my observations.
Were your parent's views, then, different somewhat from those that were typical of the community?
We have to make a distinction between my father and my mother. He was a
conventional Virginian who had moved to what was essentially a frontier
type of community. It always went hard with him. He joined the Methodist
Church,
And the absence of a reserve?
Yes. That was in her contacts with people. Her personal character and life were distinctly reserved.
Yes.
So, she had the adventurous mind and she was a little more willing to take a chance, which is the dominant attitude of these cotton planters who could in one year, make enough off of their crop to pay for their land and many of them were real gamblers, as well as gambling in their lives against flood and malaria and yellow fever and all sorts of things coming in. She was more of that type. So, there was a difference. But insofar as the community interest and being concerned with what developed in the community, they were both concerned.
Did your father disapprove of your mother's suffrage activity?
Well, that would not be the word, because I don't think that would have
gotten far, but he was a man who could not understand. You know, there
are men, you have found them, who with the best will in the world, can't
understand what it is about. Now, there are other men who do. My
husband, he understands and my father never lifted a word in opposition
and I am sure that if a vote had come, he would have voted for suffrage
for women. But as to
The desire for equal citizenship?
He thought, you know, "they have everything." It is partially a lack of imagination. That is, the kind of imagination that makes one person understand another person. Not the kind of imagination that can construct a story.
An empathetic imagination.
Yes. That's a good phrase.
Although your parents differed, still they doublessly projected a certain image before the community.
Oh, yes.
A unified image before the community.
I don't think that the rest, my two brothers are dead now and I never discussed this with my sister, but I don't think that they were aware. They left home early and I don't think that they sensed anything of a lack of sympathy or whatever you want to call it, but there certainly wasn't anything publicly. It was getting along happily and satisfactorily.
There were no repercussions in the community because of the suffrage activity? Or were there?
Oh, at times, yes. There were plenty of rows that went on, you know.
Can you tell about one or two incidents?
I don't know that I can. It's hard to pin those things down, you know.
There wasn't any case of open hostility. Now, you are writing in South
Carolina, and you have the same thing there, that at the end of the
Civil War period, you had the white people who were terribly poor and
what you call deprived now, but none of them ever knew that word and
didn't have that
That's the whole story, I think.
You see, her father had. . . .
He had been outstanding in the community.
Her father had been a colonel in the Civil War. He had been one of the four men in Mississippi who signed a declaration of freedom from the carpetbag rule and called on the other citizens of Mississippi to throw off the yoke. His daughter could do no wrong, really. They would mutter and wish that she wouldn't stir up the women and stir up the temperance work and try to close the saloons and this, that, and the other.
This is the same story that I found in South Carolina, of course.
Do you recall if your mother ever told you how she became interested in women's rights?
No. And I don't know that she pinned it to any one thing. Now, she had said that Frances Willard, who came to Mississippi and inspired Belle Kearney and inspired my mother and other women, that when she said that the women couldn't get anything done until they had the right to vote, then I think that is really what pinned my mother's mind to that point, that that was basic.
The vote wasn't to be an instrument for further reform?
No, and that, I think, a lot of people ought to understand. It would be used as an instrument for reform, but it was a basic right. My mother had a great sense of justice and so did these other women.
A twofold purpose, as a basic right and as an instrument.
Then, after you got it, you would use it. But she was a bit like I am, people would say something about how they are going to use the vote and I said, "Nobody asked my brothers how they could use the vote and I have the right to use mine exactly as I please."
It is nobody's business. She had a legal mind, her father offered to let her come into his law office and read law, which was an outstanding thing to do.
Why did she not do that?
She didn't do it, she said, because she felt that she should go back to Greenville, her father was living in Jackson, but her grandmother lived in Greenville and was getting old and feeble and she was the only descendant of that particular grandmother and therefore, she wanted to spend as much time as she could with her. That is the reason that she gave, and I assume that it was the reason. There might have been reasons of a more philanthropic type, she was religious and she had what you call now a sociological urge to do some good and that reading law in her father's office and then doing some pure law business, that was a little more on the side of pure business than her nature would respond to.
What about her children?
Well, of course then, she was not married.
That's right.
She had an interesting little episode. I don't think that I told Mrs. Meredith this. When she was a girl, must have been about fourteen, she was on a steamboat, going from Greenville to Vicksburg to there take the train back home to Jackson and there happened to be on the steamboat a member of the faculty of Vassar College. This, I guess, was about 1876 . . . when was Vassar founded? In the '70s, wasn't it?
I don't recall which decade.
Well anyhow, this member of that faculty tried to persuade her to go to Vassar to college. Something about her just flashed. So, she told her father about it and he said that she could. And again, she said that the reason that she didn't was because of this grandmother, that she felt that this grandmother would feel that she was deserting the South or something. In later years, she sometimes played with the idea of how different her life might have been if she had gone.
Something of this anecdote appears in the papers up at Radcliffe. There is a reference to her loyalty to the South and to Mississippi, rather than to the grandmother.
If she wrote anything herself, she would have left her grandmother out, because you see, that was what she considered a strictly personal relationship which she would never have gone into except in conversation with someone like me, you know.
Yes. I wonder when she first became aware that there were women's organizations to promote suffrage and equal rights for women? Do you have any recollection?
I don't know, but I think that she first ran into it through the home mission work of the Methodist Church, in which she was very much interested. She went to some meeting at which she met the leaders and I think that she read the newspapers and all. But Frances Willard, I think, is the one that really converted her to activity and shifted her major activity from the Methodist Church and the women in the church. But she used to boil at that even in the early days, because when she went to one of the first of these meetings, she found out that the bishops were insisting on the right to tell them how to spend the money and she didn't like that one bit.
One anecdote that I think comes from your papers was the one that [laughter]The
Southern Lady, about the minister worrying about women's prayer
groups, "I wonder what on earth they will pray for."
I ran across that, it was actually in a book. I have seen it attributed
to several things, but I picked it up in New York when I was with the
YWCA. You see, that was another issue, could the women meet without the
minister being present? I was just burned up once in Washington. They
asked me to go an Episcopal church,
Did you ask why?
I knew why, but I said, "You aren't a group of children and you should run your own affairs."
Yes, I know that you knew why, but sometimes this brings the question right out and makes them state it.
That's true, of course, all of the churches, I think, were pretty much that way and now, I don't think that the Methodists do and maybe the others don't.
I think that women have a great deal more freedom to function without male supervision in the churches these days. You were born, virtually, with the suffrage association in Mississippi.
Yes, July 1, 1895.
I think that the suffrage association was born in about March and I think that Carrie Chapman Catt came and toured the state.
She came, whether that year, I do not know, but the records
She came that year, I've forgotten the month, but it's a significant fact, I think.
I heard Mrs. Catt make her last speech at the Cause and Cure of War, when it was dissolved and then I went to New York when they had that big tribute to her.
Was this the Women's Centennial, or something of that sort? I read the newspaper account of that and saw her picture there and read that she was disappointed with the manifesto.
Yes.
Or declaration, I believe.
They had something, yes. It was all cooked up to honor her, really.
She deserved it.
She did, she was a very able and inspiring person.
Do you know if the question of women's voting had ever been raised in an official deliberated party in the state of Mississippi before 1900?
Yes, it was raised. I don't recall now, I don't have any notes with me, but it was raised in the constitutional convention of 1890.
Was it raised in 1868, by any chance?
I don't know. I would doubt it.
But it was raised in 1890.
It was raised in 1890, now. . . .
Do you recall what individual brought the question to the body?
No, but all of that has been written up somewhere. Did you run across an article written by a woman out in Texas about four years ago on Mississippi and the suffrage movement?
She's written a number of articles of that nature.
I wondered why she hadn't gotten in touch with me and I started to write and make some comments on some of her comments with which I didn't altogether agree, but then, it takes time to do those things.
This is Dr. A. Elizabeth Taylor?
I think it is. But in there, she used, as my recollection goes, the constitutional convention and the bringing up the matter of women. She puts it on the stand that it was a possible way of helping to alleviate the effect of the Negro voting. She dwells on that a good deal.
Well, this was a position taking by Belle Kearney and it was a position taken by Kate Gordon, according to the most recent historical literature.
They did, but what I object to in her article and in these others stressing that, is that when you are in the middle of a fight, you take every argument that you can think of and then after it, if you win that fight, then you begin to trim off what was essential and what wasn't and what you meant and what you just seized on, so that I think both Belle Kearney and Miss Kate Gordon are put in a rather unflattering light in stressing that argument.
It has been stressed, though, in recent historical scholarship, I think unfairly.
Yes, and also to take people out of the context of their times. Now, as I recollect, my mother never got into that, but I don't think she got into it because of any feeling of what is now called civil rights, but she didn't get into it because she didn't think that it was a good, sound argument. At least, that is what seventy years later, I think.
Did your mother and the suffrage movement have many supporters active in political life, either state or national political life, from Mississippi?
I wouldn't say so. They had more than was generally expected in Massachussetts, for example, but . . . and they had some quite influential people, mostly men, because they were the only influence that counted. But it was always an minority movement. Now, one year, an editor made a charge that nobody was interested in the suffrage activities and that there wasn't anything written about it. So, my mother subscribed to every county paper in Mississippi and I cut out every clipping for about six months and she bought yard goods and I pinned those clippings on and it went all the way around a large room and she took that on her trips to demonstrate the wide interest in Mississippi in what went on.
Was there a state senator, for example, maybe just a single one. This is what I really mean, or maybe a representative, an assemblyman?
Well yes, there were several men in the legislature and several in the state senate. Now, you know, I would hesitate to use their names because . . . well actually, this cousin, Vann Boddie, he voted some and helped Mama some and there were several. There was a man from up in Macon and over the state. The movement had some good support.
And what about in the Congress, from Mississippi?
Of course, Vardaman was possible, I remember that they put him down as possibly voting. The older senators, none of them and Pat Harrison, of course, he was building himself up and was on the popular side as far as Mississippi was concerned, but once women got the vote, Pat Harrison was very helpful and friendly and so on.
I noticed that you had a continuing friendship with him.
Not only I, but a number of women.
What were these men like that tended to support suffrage? What did they
do? Were they attorneys, were they editors, could they use their
Well, you take the editor of the paper in Greenville, Mr. L. Pink Smith. Basically, he liked Mama, he was in favor of suffrage, but when the heat was turned on him, he would go and take cover, you see, locally. When whoever was financing that paper or maybe just somebody that he recognized as having a good deal of local influence . . . but they were lawyers and there was a lawyer at home, a very distinguished man, R.B. Campbell. He was always friendly with Mama and helped her and advised her and checked her if she was making a legal statement on anything. He was friendly to her and he never stepped out and made a speech for her, but he may have introduced some speakers sometimes. There was a great deal of friendliness.
Any editorials in support of suffrage?
Oh yes, there were some.
Was suffrage activity reported fairly?
In most of the instances, every once in awhile, there would be some unfair reporting, but my recollection is that there wasn't much.
And there wasn't a blackout on suffrage news?
No, as I said, that demonstration. . . .
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
. . . didn't need glasses and until you get used to wearing them, you don't like to.
In addition then, to the men in politics who supported suffrage activities in Mississippi, you had some editorial friends, some editors. . . .
Now, these were for my mother.
Your mother's supporters.
You are still back with her.
Right. What about the merchants in the community, the early rising industrialists in the community? Did they take a position and were they vocal at all on this question?
They probably took a position in private, but insofar as my mother was concerned, they were always friendly. She would go around and she would get all of them to contribute if she was having a public speaker there, to get expenses for renting a hall and that kind of thing. Whether they were for it or against it, she could wheedle money out of them. It was a small, friendly community, you know.
How big was Greenville, then?
If you ran across, which you must have, that speech I made at Randolph [Randolph-Macon Woman's College], "From the Surrey to the Atomic Age," I gave the figures there. That speech has it, but I don't recall them, but it was a small community. It was very different from these things now. There wasn't the meaness and there wasn't the fear that is so common now.
I see that Greenville is in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, is it not?
It's in Mississippi, it's the Yazoo Mississippi Delta. People get confused because technically, the delta is the mouth of the river down in Louisiana.
I don't think that I am confused in this case, because I think of the delta that is formed by the confluence of these rivers.
It is the Yazoo river flowing southwestward into the Mississippi and this
begins south of Memphis. Memphis is on a bluff and about twenty miles
Yes. I have been reading V.O. Key, Southern Politics in
State and Nation and there is this geographical deliniation of
Mississippi political patterns, you know. I was going to ask you a
question about suffrage in connection with this geographical situation.
Did you find a particular area of Mississippi more receptive to the
notion of equal rights for women, did your mother find this?
I think not. I think there were little pockets here and there, as I mentioned, Macon over on the eastern part of the state it was a friendly community. It's in what they called the prairie section. And around Clarksdale, Mississippi, it was quite friendly. That's in the Delta. So, of course, as I said, little pockets here and there. And out somewhere that you would think would be mostly narrowminded, Vardaman and Bilbo types, you would get some friends.
But there was little crossing over boundaries in most instances, wasn't there, as with other political issues?
Do you remember suffrage meetings after the movement was reborn in 1911 or 1912? You were about the age to be aware.
Oh, I went to several of the state conventions and acted as a page and
then in the year before I went to college, the spring of 1912, Dr. Anna
Howard Shaw came and I went to the state convention where she spoke and
then she came . . . well, maybe the convention was in Greenville, but
anyhow, she spoke in Greenville. Then when I went on to college that
fall, she came to Lynchburg to a meeting and spoke and I arranged,
freshman girl that I was, I stirred them up and arranged to have her
come out to the college. Now, there's
Well, it was a touchy issue. This was in about 1912?
This was the fall of 1912 and I found out, or somebody helped me out, because I was a freshman, that the rule of the college was that the seniors could entertain anybody that they wanted in what was called the Senior Parlor. So, some of the seniors agreed that Dr. Anna Howard Shaw could speak in the parlor and we had a reception for her and we had them hanging out the windows.
You used your influence with the members of the senior class, I guess.
Well, my sister had graduated the year before, so I didn't go up there as an unknown. I am still thrilled to this day that when the car came up with Dr. Shaw and she stepped out, I came up and started to introduce myself, she said, "Why child, I know you." You see, she remembered from Greenville.
Can you characterize her? Somehow, can you give a little descriptive paragraph?
Oh, she was one of the most charming people that I have ever known. She was witty and friendly and warm and eloquent. She was the eloquent voice of the suffrage movement so far as I am concerned.
I think that others concur with this.
And then. . . .
There has been some critcism of her organizing ability.
Yes, that was the argument used to get her to step down and let Mrs. Catt come in to do the final victory.
Was this a good decisiobn in your view?
Well, I think that it was, because it was one of those things where Mrs.
Catt's friends wouldn't follow Dr. Shaw and therefore to prevent a
schism . . . you see this thing time and again in public life, that one
leader is not . . . well, Lyndon Johnson, he said that he couldn't bring
unity to the country and I think that he was correct. So, he stepped
aside. What we got in return was something else, but we will skip that.
[laughter]
It was a strategic move politically?
Yes.
You don't think that the thing could have been achieved had Anna Howard Shaw remained president?
Not if the friends of Mrs. Catt wouldn't have been whole hearted, whereas the friends of Anna Howard Shaw did go whole heartedly.
It's the first time that I have ever heard it expressed that way. Thank you.
You see, I was at that convention. You see, my mother was at that time one of the vice-presidents.
I was going to ask you if you had been to a national convention?
Yes, and I was a senior in college and we had this Equal Rights Club, you see, affiliated from Randolph-Macon and so, I went. My mother said that she wanted me to have the experience of a national meeting and I went as a delegate from the Randolph-Macon chapter of the college.
Where was this meeting held?
Washington, at the Willard Hotel. So, I was all ears and eyes and I knew from mother the undercurrents and I watched the whole proceedings.
This was about 1916, in October?
October, 1915.
1915.
I went up . . . it has been very helpful to me, and I hope to other people. I went up the elevator one day and Dr. Shaw was in the elevator. Someone spoke to her and said, "Dr. Shaw, are you ever nervous when you speak?" She said, "Always, my dear. Until I begin, I never know whether I will be able to make a sound."
Mrs. [Eulalie] Salley had the same experience when she spoke in Aiken, [S. C.] when Dr. Shaw spoke in Aiekn. Dr. Shaw said to Mrs.Salley, who was to address her on the stage, "I'm frightened, I'm scared to death. I am always this way before a speech. Aren't you, dear?" And Mrs. Salley said, "Why heavens, no. I just talk off the cuff all the time."
I have two theories about that. One is that you do not reach your audience unless you are so tense and nervous yourself, so in the projection, you need that nervous tension. So many young women especially, you know, say, "Oh, I can't get up in front of an audience," so I tell them that. I say that one of the greatest orators of all time had this experience.
You are talking about Dr. Shaw?
Yes. Oh, of course you get so that you can stand up in an ordinary meeting and make a motion without getting any nervous fits. I think that probably Dr. Shaw's nervousness was enhanced in the South, because all these people in the Middle West and New England and all were forever warning her, "Be careful down in the South, they are different and you will say something wrong." And so on. That is rather interesting that you ran across the same comment.
It is. So, you traveled with your mother some for suffrage. Did you travel around the state of Mississippi as she organized?
No, I did not travel with her on suffrage trips. I only went occasionally with her to a convention, or a set meeting. You see, there is a distinction.
Yes, there is. But she did do traveling within the state as an organizer?
Yes, she did quite a bit of it.
And she did other things too, as an organizer?
I don't know whether this appears in any of her papers, but she and Mrs.
McClurg of Greenwood, were on a tour of the state, organizing and
speaking and on the train this particular day, it was one of these local
trains you know, there was a group of Millsaps College boys. They were
on their way to Jackson, they had had a ball game or something. So, they
saw the banners that my mother and Mrs. McClurg had, "Votes for Women."
So, they began making some remarks and booing and cutting up as students
will do. There was the old train "butch" they called him, the man or boy
who went around selling candies and pop and so on. Mama signaled this
man when he came along and asked him what it would cost to buy
everything that he had. This was fifty years or more ago. He said, I
think, five dollars or something like that. So, she handed him the money
and said, "Take this to those boys back there and give them everything
that you have." So, he did and then out came cheers, "Votes for Women.
Hurrah! Hurrah!" [laughter]
What superb political sense she had. [laughter]
A question came to my mind when we were talking about your Randolph-Macon days. In 1912, Dr. Shaw wasn't permitted to speak to the student body assembled.
No.
But in 1915, a chapter of the collegiate Equal Rights Association had formed?
That's right.
A lot of transformation had taken place on that campus. When did this happen?
Well, we formed that as soon as I hit the campus!
Yes, but it had to be chartered by the administrators.
Oh no, not then. This was a simple day. [laughter]
You were behind the organizing?
Yes.
But there were others?
Yes, we had quite a nice group.
I mean, that initiated this project, that set up that chapter?
And of course, I had a legal turn of mind, I didn't know what it was, but anyhow, I wanted to get us officially established. I knew that we were subversives, you see. But the student government at Randolph-Macon, they had a very strong student government association and so it adopted a rule that organizations should be set up on a points system and that one person could only have an office in so many points. In other words, if an organization rated one point, being president of it would be one point and the rule was that you couldn't have more than ten points. That prevented one particular person from holding all the offices.
And diverting too much attention from school work, too.
Well, it was one of these kind of democratic moves and equalizing things in distributing honors and responsibilities. Of course, if one girl was president of everything, none of them got any attention from her. So, I had gotten on the student government by that time and when they drew up the list of what would have so many points, I got the Equal Suffrage group, whatever they called it, to be put on that list. So, from then on, we were a legally recognized group by the student government and the faculty could go hang as far as I was concerned, because we would fight to the death for the right of the student government to recognize organizations.
How do you account for this? In those papers up at Radcliffe, there is a little list of your accomplishments, your memberships in those early school years and any affiliation with a college Equal Suffrage club doesn't appear. There is no reference to it. The Franklin Literary group appears, and a number of other things appear, but not any reference to this. I didn't know you were a member.
I was the sponsor of it. It wasn't in the annual, ever, I don't think. That's my recollection and I wouldn't be positive, my annual has been lost, so I haven't looked at one. But we had quite a lively one. I remember that Cole Blease was an awful governor of South Carolina, and one day he announced that he was pardoning 1800 or something like that and so, I took that and made a big poster. "All of these men can vote, but the South Carolina woman can't."
About the same time, he was involved in the firing of the first woman physician hired in the state mental institution, seeing to her firing. I see that you had a similar incident take place in Mississippi. Can you tell about that?
I don't know, I remember that it happened, but I don't recall anything
about it. We had another thing at Randolph-Macon and that was Mary
I think that Ella Harrison reports similar events down in Mississsippi, when she was organizing down there.
Oh, yes.
A person would be engaged to address a group on a literary matter and then would go off into suffrage.
So, we knew a good deal about subversive activities. [laughter]
Tell about some of the Mississippi suffragists. We've mentioned Belle Kearney several times. What background did she spring from?
Well, she sprang from a background of one of the strong Mississippi families. Her father was a distinguished man and was pretty well wiped out by the Civil War. I knew Miss Kearney very slightly and when you read that speech, you will see the little that I know about her.
You saw her a few times.
Oh, yes. I saw her. I saw her and went in and congratulated her the day that she was sworn into the state senate and I saw her after I married and moved to Jackson. She was spending most of her time in Jackson, so I saw her with some frequency.
Was she a professional woman, or was she simply an inspired. . . .
No. Have you read her book, The Slave-Owners'
Daughter?
No.
I gave a copy to Radcliffe. They are out of print and hard to find.
Well, it is probably available near where I live.
It would be available from. . . .
From interlibrary loan.
Yes. But she had practically no formal education and I think that she was sixteen when she organized her little school. She herself said that she only went to school through the third grade. But of course, her home was a home of culture and had probably a good library and so she organized that little school and then she went to Jackson to hear Frances Willard. So, that was where she found her niche and became a professional member of the staff of the WCTU, eventually.
Oh, she went from WCTU into suffrage, too.
Back and forth. But she was a professional worker and she was the first American woman to take a world wide lecture tour and then during World War I, she went over to. . . .
What did she talk about on that lecture tour?
She talked about . . . I don't know, I never have read one of her speeches, but I would assume that she talked on civic subjects and women and the part women should play and probably the evils of alcohol.
I wonder what kinds of audiences she addressed?
I don't know. I would think that maybe her reports are up there in the WCTU papers in Evanston. Her papers must be there.
Probably.
She wrote voluminously. I know that my mother would occassionally get a letter from her. My mother was very telegraphic in her style and Miss Belle was very flowery.
Well, what about Mrs. Ben Saunders? Do you remember her?
Oh, I loved Mrs. Ben Saunders.
What was her first name? I think that she was president of. . . .
Yes, she was. She was the president of. . . .
All I have is Mrs. Ben F. Saunders.
She married again late in life and I saw just about a month ago, ran into a niece of hers and she said something . . . well, I believe that she was down there at the Historical Society and she asked me if I remembered Mrs. Saunders, her aunt. I said, "Oh, of course." She apparently, this niece, regretted this late marriage. Mr. Saunders died fairly early and Mrs. Saunders was a widow a long time. She was a very bright person and she had a good deal of business ability. She was not one of these national, outstanding leaders, you know, but she was deeply interested in the suffrage movement. She was a woman of considerable means.
It seemed to require that when you virtually had to foot the bills yourself.
Yes, you had to foot all the bills yourself. She came to me, consulted me as a lawyer, to draw her will at one time and of course, I didn't have to know how much property she had to draw the will at that time, but she was a woman of great charm and she was quite attractive to men in an entirely dignified way. That meant that they didn't like to oppose her wishes.
I see here a reference to Mrs. Mount, a Mrs. Thomas Mount, but her own first name doesn't appear and she is from Vicksburg.
Well, she left Greenville and went there, I guess.
I just wanted some comments about these women and the backgrounds they came from, what you can recall. I have a reference to a Mrs. Charlotte Pittman, for example. Did you know Mrs. Pittman?
No, I don't recall her at all.
Mrs. Ella Biggs?
I have a vague recollection of her, but nothing that would help you.
I think that she did the publicity at the very outset of the organization. Miss Fanny Clark?
Now, that's not the Clark that I remember, but Clark is not an uncommon name.
Mrs. Mabel Pugh from Yazoo City?
I have a vague recollection, but I couldn't throw any light on her. I tell you, you can't go running everywhere, but the archives in Mississippi have been given the papers of Mrs. Lilly Wilkinson Thompson, who was in and out as president and those papers probably have a good deal of correspondence with different ones.
The interesting thing that I am seeking, really, is your characterization and the kind of thing that you might say about these women so that I can get an idea of their background. I would imagine that they are similar to the women who were active in South Carolina.
I would think so.
There is a pattern there.
There is. They are all people of good social position, you know, and mostly of moderate means, as I remarked earlier. The custom of the period was that if you had the background of loyalty to the Confederacy in your family, then you were accepted even if you couldn't always buy your own ticket.
How did Mississippi educators stand on the question of suffrage?
A few of them were friendly, but most of them were not.
The President, for example, of Mississippi State College for Women?
Of course, Whitfield, when he went in, was more friendly and eventually very friendly. He was president for six or eight years, but I don't think that they looked upon him for much help.
I wonder if the national leaders were permitted to speak there and how often, if at all?
I don't know. I do know that a good deal of effort was made to try and get an invitation to somebody to try and speak at some of the colleges, but I don't recall.
When were women first admitted to Ole Miss? I was going to ask you about the views of the Chancellor of 01e Miss and then I thought that I had better see if women were students there at that time.
It is my recollection that the University of Mississippi was the first state university to admit women. If it was not the first, it was the second.
I have a notion that Mississippi was the first state to open a state college for women.
Mississippi State College for Women, which was originally named I&C, Industrial Institute and College, was the first state supported institution for college education for women. [Presently Missippi University for Women]
That's what I thought.
And Mississippi was the first state to charter an institution to grant degrees to women and that was in 1819 and the compilers of one of these encyclopedias of education couldn't believe their eyes when they read that. So, they wrote it up as Missouri and Missouri was not a state at that time.
That's quite a joke on them.
I ran into that when I was working up a speech in Washington, and I went
over to the AAUW headquarters, where I spent a good deal of the time
anyhow, and I knew they had this encyclopedia and I wanted to verify it
and they had it wrong. [laughter]
That's a real joke.
Isn't it. [laughter]
Mississippi has another first for women and this is married women's control over property.
Oh yes, and there too. . . .
It always surprises people when I make reference to this fact in talks.
But what they do is, they say, "New York," which I think was two years later, maybe four years later, enacted a similar law and that the New York law was broader and therefore it. . . .
This is Constance Myers continuing the interview with Mrs. Lucy Sommerville Howorth of Mississippi, the interview taking place at Monteagle, Tennessee on June 20, 1975.
. . . and she was entertained by. . . .
Your mother went to North Carolina and was entertained.
At Dr. and Mrs. Archibald Henderson's, whom you may recall, was the great
biographer of George Bernard Shaw, and a very distinguished member of
the faculty. I do not recall the purpose of the trip, except that it was
a suffragist trip and she enjoyed it very much and enjoyed the
Hendersons and
I'll bet that you have a storehouse of those anecdotes.
Yes, there are a good many, you know, incidents where she did some little stunt.
Can you recall her talking about organizing in the different states?
She would come home always with some interesting tidbit, you know, and discuss personalities. She had quite a bit of wit. She was wonderful company when you got to know her. She was one of these people that would not open up to the occasional public. There was a lady here who owned a cottage who was the daughter of Judge Mayes in Jackson, who a contemporary of my mother's father. The two families had been well acquainted, but she happened not to have known . . . my mother who was older than she, and she told me once that she was walking along out here and she saw my mother on this porch and she thought, "I hear such things about her being so fierce and stern and hard to get along with and this and that. My father liked her father and our families were good friends. I am going in and call." So, she did. Well, my mother, you see, knew who she was and knew the family and so on and she was in a good mood and they had a wonderful time swapping stories and telling jokes on people they knew. After that, Miss Mayes said . . . she was Mrs. Mary Mayes Sanders, she said, "I went regularly to see your mother because she was the best company that I ever knew." She told me that once in Jackson and she said, "Everytime I go to Monteagle, one of the first visits I make is to your mother." So, that is the contrast, you see, of people who didn't like her views and. . . .
"Fierce." That's the first time that I've heard that adjective.
Oh boy, you get into a debate with her, she could chew you up and spit you out so fast. Like that Negro woman said, she knew what people were thinking before they did.
This was native ability, innate ability?
Sure. She knew when a speaker got up what that speaker was going to say and she had a devastating reply before he sat down.
Did she have formal academic training?
Oh yes, she had a bachelor's degree.
All right. I didn't know that.
Well, she went first, she was sent when she was about twelve years old .
. . you see, a very bright child, I'm sure you have found, is as much a
problem as a very dumb one. She had a stepmother who was a very fine
person, but the stepmother had five children of her own who were younger
and here was this little girl who was, I imagine, forever into
something. So, when she was twelve years old, she was sent her to
Whitworth College in Brookhaven, Mississippi. She always said that was
where she got her real education and she was about to graduate there
when she was, it seems to me, fourteen. The president of the college
told her father that that was entirely too young to allow her to
graduate. So then, he sent to Martha Washington College in Abingdon,
Virginia and there she stayed, I don't know how many years, I think she
was in the class of '78 or '79, something like that. I gave a book to
Radcliffe on the history of Martha Washington College, which is no
longer in existence. The president of the college when she graduated was
Dr. E.E. Hoss, who became a bishop in the Southern Methodist Church and
who had a cottage here at Monteagle and that was a lifelong friendship.
He respected
But she didn't go into teaching or into one of the professions, did she?
No, you've got to remember the 1880's.
Oh, I know.
But she did . . . now, I think you can tell what a girl has deep in her, whether she begins early to want to be financially independent and she got a position as a sort of tutor in Greenville of a family . . . I can't think of their name right now. [Mr. & Mrs. Pollack] The man was the president of the Grumble bank and had two daughters. He later went to New Orleans to be president of a bank there and they moved down there. That put her back with her grandmother in Greenville and she did this tutoring.
Which is teaching.
Oh, she was a strong teacher. We always had wonderful cooks, but she would take a field hand and make a wonderful cook out of her and never go near the kitchen. I never saw her in the kitchen.
But tell them how to prepare it?
Yes, and after it was on the table, after the meal, she would call her and say, "Now, this needed a little more of this and a little more of that." But she never went near the kitchen.
Isn't that something? The more I know of your mother, the more remarkable a person she appears.
As I say, she was wonderful company and she read beautifully. She won a medal at Martha Washington for reading and she could project her voice over several thousand people in an audience.
Had she been a man, she would have gone into political life or in the educational field.
Oh, she would certainly have been in the Senate. Of course, that was unheard of.
What kind of home background did she spring from? What was her home like?
Her home was like most of those post-Civil War homes. She was born in
1863 and her mother died the first of January, 1866 and her father was
practicing law in Greenville. He had come to Greenville along about
1854, or something like that, and read law with her maternal grandfather
Abram Fulkner Smith and formed a law partnership in 1856 and he was
practicing law when he joined the Confederate Army in 1862. So, he came
back to Greenville and then her mother died and he married again in
about a year and that wife died after about a year and then he married
Miss Aimee Webb in Montgomery, Alabama. There was a good deal of
teasing. He went over to make the commencement address at a college and
was invited out to dinner at her house and [laughter]
Did she travel? Or was her travel pretty well restricted to the southern states?
She went to the 1876 exposition, which is now coming to the front, you see and she used to tell of hearing the record, you know, the first phonograph of Edison's there. The little girl, "who had a curl right in the middle of her forehead and when she was good, she was very, very good and when she was bad, she was horrid." She would do that in the squeaky voice of that machine. It was a wonderful thing, you see. It was extraordinary. Then when she married my father, they went to New York and Washington and up there on her wedding trip.
But she remained eternally loyal. . . .
She said to me and to my elder sister and I take it to other people, that until she went to a meeting a Boston, and it seems to me that it was about 1920, it wasn't '20, but anyhow it w