​HARPER AT 200

FRANCES WILLARD

Frances Elizabeth Willard was born on September 28th, 1839, in Churchville, New York. She attended Northwestern Female College and graduated in 1859 as valedictorian. After graduating, she taught at many women’s colleges, ultimately becoming the President of the Evanston Ladies’ College in Evanston, IL.[1] In 1873, Evanston Ladies College became Northwestern University’s Women’s College,[2] and Willard served as the first Dean of Women at Northwestern University.[3]She resigned from teaching in June 1874 and dedicated her time to the temperance effort.[4]

Willard gave her first temperance speech in 1874, which “caused when the men to weep,”[5] beginning her national lecturing career.[6]That same year, Willard was asked to run and was elected President of the Chicago Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), served as secretary of the WCTU Illinois State Convention, and was elected as the corresponding secretary of the WCTU National Convention. She also advocated for women’s suffrage, believing that women having the right to vote aligned with the mission of the WCTU.[7]

The WTCU advocated for temperance “to protect women against violence from men caused by excessive alcohol consumption.”[8]Willard thought the right to vote would protect the “home from the tyranny of drink.”[9] his led to racial tension within the WCTU in 1893, when Black members of the WTCU, led by Ida B. Wells, hoped that the WCTU would focus on ending lynching and sexual violence towards Black women rather than focusing their attention on winning the right to vote for white women.[10]

Willard also founded the National WTCU Paper, “Our Union,” and the Illinois WCTU Paper, “Signal,” which were merged into “Union Signal” in 1882. She was elected President of the National WTCU in 1879 and served for 19 years until her death in 1898.[11] As President, she organized and restructured the WTCU into the departments of “Preventative, Educational, Evangelistic, Social, and Legal.”[12] She organized to create WTCUs in all (at the time) 48 states in the United States. She also proposed a World’s WTCU and facilitated the creation of WTCUs in 35 countries.[13] Further, under her leadership, the WCTU advocated for economic justice in the form of equal pay, eight-hour work days, and workplace protections.[14]

 

References

  1. Frances Elizabeth Willard and Mary A. Livermore, A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life, ed. Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore (Buffalo, NY: Moulton, 1893), 779. ↩
  2. “Frances Willard,” Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed September 26, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frances-Willard. ↩
  3. “Frances E. Willard,” National Women’s Hall of Fame, accessed September 26, 2024, https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/frances-e-willard/. ↩
  4. Willard and Livermore, A Woman of the Century, 779. ↩
  5. Frances E. Willard, Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman (Chicago: Woman’s Temperance Publication Association, 1889), 13. ↩
  6. “Frances Willard,” Encyclopædia Britannica. ↩
  7. Willard and Livermore, A Woman of the Century, 779. ↩
  8. Anita August, “Strained Sisterhood in the WCTU: The Lynching and Suffrage Rivalry between Ida B. Wells and Frances E. Willard,” Rhetoric Review 40, no. 1 (2021): 1, https://doi.org/10.1080/07350198.2020.1841451. ↩
  9. Willard and Livermore, A Woman of the Century, 779. ↩
  10. August, “Strained Sisterhood in the WCTU,” 1-2. ↩
  11. “Frances Willard,” Encyclopædia Britannica; “Frances E. Willard,” National Women’s Hall of Fame. ↩
  12. Willard and Livermore, A Woman of the Century, 779. ↩
  13. Ibid. ↩
  14. “Frances E. Willard,” National Women’s Hall of Fame. ↩

Credits

Written by Chasia Elizna Jeffries