The Mahoning Dispatch (Canfield), November 28, 1913

WANT RECOGNITION

Women Say They Are Virtually Ignored in the School’ Histories.

Washington, Nov. 26- Women of history are not given fair play, and, in fact, virtually are ignored in the histories used in the local schools, members of the College of Women’s Equal Suffrage league have just announced. Their protest was aroused by the report of a special committee appointed several weeks ago to examine school books.

The committee, in its report, announced that it had found only “incident mention” of women in the histories used in several grades of the public schools. In the fifth grade text book, the report charges, the only reference to women was in the sentence “on the fourth Monday the women went ashore to wash.”

In most every reference to the sex in the other grade books it was found that no attempt had been made to establish the identity of individuals.

The allusion to women that aroused the committee’s anger was discovered as a foot note in the text book used in the high schools. It contained the information that Garrison failed to become the leader of the abolition movement because of his extreme views, and that “among other things, he believed in woman’s suffrage.”

In 1900, the College Equal Suffrage League (CESL) was founded by Maud Wood Park, who was an American suffragist and woman’s rights activist, and Inez Haynes Irwin, who was an American feminist author and member of the National Women’s Party. The intent of this league was to draw in younger Americans and involve them in the Women’s Rights Movement. Park attended the National American Woman Suffrage convention in Washington D.C. in 1900. While there, she realized she was the youngest delegate, which led to the formation of the CESL. Upon this realization Park and Haynes formed the Massachusetts CESL and began touring colleges to campaign their fight for younger American involvement. 

Prior to the release of this newspaper article, the CESL appointed a committee to determine whether the accomplishments of women were mentioned in textbooks used in district public schools. The leagues findings are mentioned in the article above, where women were overwhelmingly ignored in public school textbooks. 

This story was first covered in The Washington Herald in Washington D.C. on November 25, 1913. In the original story, there is greater detail of how school textbooks for specific grades fail to properly portray and mention women in history. One example given was of the high school textbook which had one paragraph on women. The paragraph mentioned that William Lloyd Garrison, who was an abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer in nineteenth-century America, failed to become the leader of the abolitionist movement because he believed in woman suffrage. Three days later, Mahoning County, Ohio, editors covered this story in their newspaper, The Mahoning Dispatch. 

While there is no clear evidence of how this event in Washington D.C. and the findings of the CESL directly impacted the people of Mahoning County, it is clear that the discovery of women’s misrepresentation in school history was a large enough finding to be mentioned in The Mahoning Dispatch, which was a family newspaper that was promoted as being made for all classes and nationalities. This story would have welcomed the attention of its readers and possibly led to school textbook reform in Mahoning County.