On this day in history

(Bean returns from her trip to the tropical forests and alpine peaks of London, Canada tonight, and so “On this day” will return to its regular host tomorrow.)

February 18

1851: (Birth) Ida Husted Harper, official publicist for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA, see below) and collaborating author of History of Women’s Suffrage, born in Fairfield, Indiana. In 1897, she moved into the home of Susan B. Anthony in Rochester, NY after Anthony requested that Husted become her official biographer. The first two volumes of the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony appeared in 1898; a third was published in 1908. She also collaborated with Anthony on the fourth volume of the History of Woman Suffrage in 1902 (the first 3 volumes were written by Anthony). In 1916 Carrie Chapman Catt asked Harper to head the newly formed Leslie Bureau of Suffrage Education within the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1922 she published the fifth and sixth volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage, bringing the coverage up to 1920. A prolific writer and supporter of women’s rights, Husted edited columns for the New York Sunday Sun and Harper’s Bazaar and was a correspondent for major newspapers in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and New York City and served as chair of the press committee of the International Council of Women in 1899-1902 and was a delegate to council conventions in London in 1899 and Berlin in 1904.

1874: (Birth) Mary Dewson, economist and activist. Dewson helped establish the US’s first minimum wage law, in Massachusetts in 1913.

1878: (Birth) Blanche Ames, artist, women’s rights activist, botanist, author, inventor, and political cartoonist, among other achievements.

1890: The National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association combine to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as president.

1931: (Birth) Toni Morrison, nobel and pulitzer prize-winning author.

1934: (Birth) Audré Lorde, black lesbian poet and activist. Lorde, a wonderful public speaker, had a knack for telling quotes: “Silence has never brought us anything of worth.” “Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.” “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

edited by bean to add a few important events not mentioned earlier.