REMEMBERING AMERICA'S FORGOTTEN SUFFRAGIST

Anna Howard Shaw graduated from Boston University with doctorates of divinity and medicine at a time when women didn't do that. She didn't marry or have children. Editorial writers seemed to find her unattractive and had questions about her sexual orientation. And at a time when women weren't encouraged to speak up, especially in public, she spoke tirelessly to promote the American women's suffragist movement.

"She was the renegade of the suffragist movement," says Dacia Charlesworth.

That is the only reason Shaw is not famous like other suffragist leaders like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Carrie Chapman Catt, says Charlesworth. She was such a talented speaker that members of the anti-suffragist movement would not debate her. "Shaw was the sharpest, wittiest speaker of her day," Charlesworth says.

About 50 people listened intently Tuesday night as the sharp and witty Charlesworth, an assistant professor in the Department of speech communication and theater at Southeast, delivered a passionate portrayal of this early feminist. She was the keynote speaker for the annual meeting of the League of Women Voters of Southeast Missouri at the University Center.

Speaking both about Shaw and as Shaw, Charlesworth said she first encountered the name of this unknown suffragist in a graduate course on the three waves of American feminism. In her research she found that Shaw was vilified as a man-hater, her mental ability was questioned and most damning of all she was labeled "feminist."

"What does that mean?" Shaw once asked. "It is woman aspiring to be human."

Charlesworth said she gets angry when young women in her classes raise their hands to say, "I'm not a feminist, but ..." The "but" often is followed by an espoused belief in ideas like equal work for equal pay, one of many the early feminists worked for.

Shaw for more than a decade was the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which after the passage of the 19th Amendment became the League of Women Voters.

She warned that the passage of the 19th Amendment would leave feminists with no symbol to rally around.

Shaw died in 1919, after passage of the 19th Amendment but before it was ratified. She never got to vote.

Last year, Shaw finally was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca, N.Y.