Radical and Moderate Aides of the Women's Rights Movement

WINSTED — Sometimes the message is right, but it needs to be shouted, loudly, from the left.

That’s one of the lessons Virginia Shultz-Charette, a lifelong student of history, will discuss next week on March 21 at the Beardsley & Memorial Library, where the women’s rights movement will be the subject of a special Women’s History Month talk.

A Laurel City resident, who teaches history at Northwestern Connecticut Community College, Shultz-Charette will take her audience through the 19th and early 20th centuries, highlighting remarkable women who played critical roles in gaining voting rights for women.

"I used to play this game where I would think of any person in history I would want to sit next to. It was easy to think of the male but it was harder to find a female," Shultz-Charette said. "But now I find women all the time that I had overlooked."

Shultz-Charette noted that most people have heard of Susan B. Anthony and are familiar with her historic achievements in women’s rights, but more radical figures will be unearthed in her talk, including Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who are portrayed in the film, "Iron Jawed Angels," about the women’s suffrage movement.

Paul organized a protest during Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 presidential inauguration and ended up in jail, but not without garnering significant media attention.

"Women did learn the power of the press," Shultz-Charette said. "On President Wilson’s inaugural day everyone was at the women’s suffrage parade. They received some bruises but they got on the front page and it gained them sympathy."

Shultz-Charette noted that another, more moderate women’s rights figure, Carrie Chapman Catt, was not impressed. "She thought those were hooligan’s tactics."

Not unlike Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, the relationship between Catt and Paul evidences the role of mainstream and radical movements in the struggle for civil rights.

"Alice Paul did not kiss up like Catt did," Shultz-Charette said. "They were smacked around a bit and they weren’t allowed legal aid. They considered themselves prisoners of war. You couldn’t ignore the fact that women were being arrested and abused by their own government."

Without revealing the whole story, Shultz-Charette said there are many lessons from the women’s rights movement that ring true today. Long before women’s voting rights were enacted, many courageous women were making advances, including Victoria Woodhall, who ran for president in 1872.

"People always move toward the center but the radical side has to bring out the message," Shultz-Charette said. "If it was just moderates, you could ignore it."