STILL IN PANDEMIC MODE, SO OUR 'THING TO DO' IN THIS POST IS A BOOK SUGGESTION!

You could say this book suggestion bridges both February: African American History Month, and March: Women's History Month.

In an essay I read recently, it was suggested that one of the things we could do to improve our understanding of RACE in America, was to READ READ READ. Well, that is always a welcome suggestion to e, and I ad taken the suggestion up with CASTE, by Isabel Wilkerson. Throughout the book, the comparisons with the situations in which women have found themselves were apparent to me. Recently, in the spate of articals about current attempts by the Republican Party to pass laws that in effect suppress voting rights, I had to think of the two hundred years that women had no voting rights in America and few if any legal rights.

Thos that we have at present were hard won. An excellent documentary by the poet of American history in documentary, Ken Burns, is NOT FOR OURSELVES ALONE, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Along with their struggle for voting rights, the documentary gives a warm portrait of their life long friendship.

The book I just ordered is DOUGLAS'S WOMEN, By Parker-Rhodes. Frederick Douglas married a free Black Woman named Anna who not only bought his ticket to freedom but supported him as he made his early career in Abolition, and raised their five children and kept his house. When others claimed that becase she ws 'illiterate' she was not his equal as his wife, he (allegedly) defended her. Nonetheless, he brought another woan into their home to be his mistress and his comrade in the struggle, a German immigrant and the daughter of German intellectuals, Ottilie Assing. She supported his efforts both financially and as his personal secretary. However, when she returned to Germany to secure her family inheritance, Frederick Douglas married a much younger woman, another personal secretary, the daughter of his neighbors who were Abolitionists and apparently, approved of their daughter's work as a clerk for Douglas but not their marriage. Her family disowned her. Ottilie, nonetheless, after securing her inheritance, set up a trust for Douglas to support him and then she committed suicide. It wasn't only her despair of hearing of Douglas's marriage, she had also been diagnosed with breast cancer. She took cyanide.

Throughout history, the sacrifices of women like Anna, Ottilie, and so many others, bot financial support and home-making, child raising, secretarial and emotional, have been neglected or underestimated. Without Anna, Douglas may never have succeeded in escaping slavery or beginning his career in Aboliton. Without the help of Ottilie and his third wife, he may never have had the time to complete his books,essays, speeches or articles.