Making Waves

by Davis, Jack E.; Frederickson, Kari

• ISBN13: 9780813027678
• ISBN10: 0813027675
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-01-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Florida

Summary

"These essays lift up the lives of outstanding Florida women who helped shape the course of 20th-century Florida."--James B. Crooks, University of North Florida From Ruth Bryan Owen, Florida's first congresswoman, and Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman College, to Betty Mae Tiger Jumper, the first chairwoman of the Seminole Tribe, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas, champion of the Everglades, Making Waves examines the lives and works of women activists who made a significant impact on Florida in the last century. This collection enriches our understanding of the history of modern Florida and the role women played in it. To a degree greater than any other southern state in the 20th century, Florida experienced dramatic economic, political, social, and environmental challenges, and Florida's women were in the forefront of the great social and political responses to those challenges. These 13 essays describe the contributions made by women in urban renewal, civil liberties, civil rights, child welfare, labor unions, education, environmental protection, rural extension work, and women's liberation. By illuminating the involvement of the state's women in many of these fundamental issues, Making Waves provides a long-overdue chapter in Florida history. It will also contribute to the advancement of the study of women's history by examining women's activism in a variety of contexts and illustrating how this activism was often circumscribed by class and racial bias. Jack E. Davis is associate professor of history and director of environmental studies at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Kari Frederickson is assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Gary M. Mormino and Raymond Arsenault, series editors	vii
Introduction by Jack E. Davis	1	(22)
Part I. Political Pioneers
1. Ruth Bryan Owen: Florida's First Congresswoman and Lifetime Activist	23	(33)
Sally Vickers
2. Seminole Activist: The Life of Betty Mae Tiger Jumper	56	(22)
Patsy West
3. In Pursuit of Power: The Political Economy of Women's Activism in Twentieth-Century Tampa	78	(27)
Nancy A. Hewitt
Part II. Rural Reformers
4. Improving Rural Life in Florida: Home Demonstration Work and Rural Reform, 1912-1940	105	(23)
Lynne A. Rieff
5. Strawberry Fields and Bean Rows: Lois Lenski's Florida Children	128	(19)
Kathleen Hardee Arsenault
Part III. Environmentalists
6. Up from the Sawgrass: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the Influence of Female Activism in Florida Conservation	147	(30)
Jack E. Davis
7. A Passion for Wild Things: Marjorie Harris Carr and the Fight to Free a River	177	(20)
Lee Irby
8. "Is This What We Came to Florida For?" Florida Women and the Fight against Air Pollution in the 1960's	197	(32)
Scott Hamilton Dewey
Part IV. Post-World War II Activists
9. One Woman's Courage: Ruth Perry and the Johns Committee	229	(21)
Judith G. Poucher
10. Elizabeth Virrick, the Maverick of Miami Slum Clearance	250	(19)
Laura Brackenridge Danahy
Part V. Freedom Fighters
11. "Without Compromise or Fear": Florida's African American Female Activists	269	(24)
Maxine D. Jones
12. "We Took the Leadership Anyway": Women's Social Activism during the Civil Rights Era in St. Petersburg	293	(19)
Ellen Babb
13. Origins and Impact of Gainesville Women's Liberation, the First Women's Liberation Organization in the South	312	(15)
Carol Giardina
Contributors and Editors	327	(2)
Index	329