Fierce and forgotten feminist with ties to Fargo worked beside Susan B. Anthony
Written out of history, Matilda Joslyn Gage was a radical reformer and avid supporter of women s rights.
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Danielle A. Teigen | 12:28 pm, Nov. 3, 2020 ×
Matilda Joslyn Gage was active in the woman suffrage movement for more than 40 years of her life. Photo courtesy of Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America
FARGO When you hear the words “women’s suffrage,” you likely think of women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. And that’s perfectly normal. Their names are irrevocably tied to the history of a movement that began in 1848 and didn’t culminate until 1920 when white women earned the right to vote (
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Women vote today because of the women’s suffrage movement, a courageous and persistent political campaign which lasted over 72 years, involved tens of thousands of women and men, and resulted in enfranchising one-half of the citizens of the United States. If the history of the suffrage movement was better known, we would understand that democracy for the first 150 years in America included only half of the population. And we would realize that this situation changed only after the enormous efforts of American citizens in what remains one of the most remarkable and successful nonviolent efforts to change ingrained social attitudes and institutions in the modern era. Women
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During and after the 2020 election, countless news articles were devoted to the voting impact of women: suburban women, Black women, white women, older women, younger women, college-educated women, high school-educated women and just about every other category in which they could be sliced, diced and otherwise grouped.
And indeed, women did have an outsized effect on the election. Black women helped propel Democrat Joseph R. Biden into the presidency, with about 90% backing the former vice president on his way to reaching an historic high of 81.3 million votes. Majorities of Latina voters and suburban white women with college degrees also backed Biden.
Matilda Joslyn Gage.
Her story is one of relentless reform fueled by an incredible desire to give women more rights to guide the path of their own lives. Her story began in New York but ended up spanning west to Dakota Territory, thanks to her four children who settled in that wild frontier: three in Aberdeen, S.D., and one near Edgeley, N.D. (Two daughters actually ended up living in Fargo at the end of their lives, according to an April 16, 1915 issue of The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican.)
Here are six of the most interesting facts about a woman who changed the course of history for women in America and was effectively erased from it by the women she spent a lifetime advocating alongside, culled from Angela Carpenter Shirley’s book “