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"It is obvious to you that the struggle will be an unequal one, but I shall make it -I shall make it as long as I have an ounce of strength left in me..."
--Emmeline PankhurstSuccess Quote #247
Legend's biography highlights and video transcript below
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(15 July 1858 - 14 June 1928)
--Legendary Political Activist and Suffragette
Why should you consider this Legend's quote advice (in four minutes or less)?
Born Emmeline Goulden, even though her birth certificate states otherwise, Emmeline believed and later claimed her birthday was a day earlier, on 14 July -Bastille Day "Fête Nationale" the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, a fortress-prison in Paris that historically incarcerated people on the basis of lettre de cachet ("signet letters") -largely arbitrary royal indictments that could not be appealed and did not indicate the reason for imprisonment. Emmeline was one of 10 children, the eldest of five daughters. Her parents often included them in their social activism. Emmeline started reading voraciously when she was very young. Despite her avid love of books and learning, she was not given the educational advantages given to her brothers. Her parents believed that girls needed to learn most about the art of "making home attractive" and other skills desired by potential husbands...
Emmeline Pankhurst would eventually become a Legendary Political Activist and Suffragette. Emmeline's parents, although they supported women's suffrage and the general advancement of women in society, the Gouldens believed their daughters incapable of achieving goals at the same level of their male peers. Pretending to sleep one evening, when her father came into her bedroom, Emmeline heard him pause and say to himself, "what a pity she wasn’t born a lad."
Her mother read and received the Women's Suffrage Journal. At age 14, coming back from school one day, she noticed her mother on her way to a public meeting about voting rights. Emmeline begged, then insisted she accompany her mother to the meeting. At the meeting, Lydia Becker, the editor of the Women's Suffrage Journal was a key speaker. Enthralled by Becker's speech, Emmeline later wrote, "I left the meeting a conscious and confirmed suffragist."
In 1878, Goulden, met and began a relationship with Richard Pankhurst, a barrister who had advocated women's suffrage, education reform and freedom of speech. They were married a little over a year later. In 1888, Pankhurst joined Lydia Becker's new Women's Rights group: the Parliament Street Society. At the time, it was often assumed that married women did not need to vote since their husbands "voted for them," some PSS members felt that the vote for single women was a practical step along the path to full women's rights.
In 1889, she founded the Women's Franchise League with her husband Richard. The WFL was considered a radical organization because it supported equal rights for women in the areas of divorce and inheritance. By 1903, Pankhurst believed that the years of speeches and promises about women's suffrage from members of parliament yielded no progress. Each suffrage bill in 1870, 1886 and 1897 was defeated. In October 1903, she founded the Women's Social and Political Union. She later wrote: "Deeds not words, was to be our permanent motto."
The WSPU made speeches, formed rallies and gathered petition signatures. Pankhurst was arrested for the first time in 1908 when she tried to enter Parliament to deliver a protest resolution to Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. She was sentenced to six weeks in prison where she was exposed to vermin, meagre food and solitary confinement. She would be arrested several more times before women's suffrage was approved. She and her members were also attacked by male crowds. They would throw clay, rotten eggs and stones packed in snow. She and the movement would press on -regardless of the risk. In 1918, the Representation of the People Act granted the vote to women over the age of 30. However, with several restrictions.
After the years of torture, imprisonment and hunger strikes, her ill health worsened and she died on 14 June 1928. The Daily Mail described her funeral procession "like a dead general in the midst of a mourning army." Women wore WSPU sashes and ribbons and the organization's flag was carried alongside the Union Jack Flag. Press coverage around the world recognized her relentless work on behalf of the women's right to vote -even if the news organizations did not agree on the value of her contributions. In 2002, Pankhurst was ranked #27 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. In 1999, Time Magazine named her as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century. Emmeline Pankhurst is considered amongst the most influential Women's Rights Advocates and Suffragettes of all-time.
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Learn more about this Legend (below).
Suffragette: The Autobiography of Emmeline Pankhurst (Paperback) by Emmeline Pankhurst
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