Elizabeth Freeman (suffragist)

For the former slave Elizabeth Freeman, see Elizabeth Freeman (Mum Bett).

Elisabeth Freeman (1876 - February 1942) was a suffragist and civil rights activist.[1]

Biography

Elizabeth Freeman was born in 1876 to Mary Hall Freeman in England. The family emigrated to the United States and lived on Long Island in New York. Mary worked for an orphanage. In 1913 she took part in the national Suffrage Hike to the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson in Washington, D.C.[1] As a publicity stunt in New York City she wore a gypsy costume and drove a wagon piled with women's suffrage literature and stenciled with Votes for Women slogans.[2]

On May 16, 1916, one day after the Jesse Washington lynching she was brought in to investigate.[3]

She died in February 1942 of pleurisy.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Elisabeth Freeman". http://www.elizabethfreeman.org/. Retrieved 2008-12-15. "Elisabeth Freeman came to this country as a small child with her brother John and sister (Clara) Jane, and their mother, Mary Hall Freeman, who came estranged from her husband. Mary worked for St. Johnland, an orphanage on Long Island for a time, and the children lived at the orphanage for some time. ..." 
  2. ^ "Marching for the Vote". Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9803/suffrage.html. Retrieved 2008-12-15. "One of the New York group, Elisabeth Freeman, dressed as a gypsy and drove a yellow, horse-drawn wagon decorated with Votes for Women symbols and filled with pro-suffrage literature, a sure way to attract publicity." 
  3. ^ Wade Goodwyn (May 13, 2006). "Waco Recalls a 90-Year-Old 'Horror'". National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5401868. Retrieved 2010-09-08. "On May 16, 1916, one day after the lynching of Jesse Washington, Royal Freeman Nash, the white social worker who was then secretary of the NAACP, wired Elisabeth Freeman in Fort Worth, where she remained following the statewide suffrage convention in Dallas."