Mothers Day? Bah humbug!

Chariton's Virginia Branner was a veteran campaigner for women's suffrage and, along with other women, had suffered disappointment after disappointment over the years as men consistently declined to endorse universal suffrage.

As Mother's Day 1910 arrived and was duly celebrated --- traditional womanly virtues celebrated by menfolk across America --- ten more years of hard work remained. Virginia sat down and wrote the following response to the editor of The Chariton Leader, published on May 19:

Mr. Editor ---

We have lately been reading and hearing from press and pulpits a good deal about Mother's Day, honoring our mothers, etc. How much does it mean after all? Let us leave sentiment, and get down to facts; one fact, just now, will suffice to show how little there is in it.

How can men truly honor their mothers, to say nothing of sisters, wives and daughters, when they not only placidly permit them to be classed with lunatics, criminals and idiots, but persistently refuse to removed them from that class? Cant it be that they think that is where they properly belong? If so, how can they honor them? We do not usually consider lunatics, idiots and criminals fit persons to honor.

Now if men really mean to honor mothers, the beings to whom they owe most in this world, and also to honor all women worthy of being honored, and that is the larger part of them, let them remove from our statute books that relic of the Dark Ages,that blot on civilization that deliberately classes women with the lowest and most degraded of our people. Quoting Dr. Johnson, I close by imploring our "dear (political) Lords to clear their mind of cant."

V.M. Branner

President of the Chariton Equal Suffrage Society

Nine years later, the U.S. House passed the 19th Amendment on May 21, 1919, and the U.S. Senate followed suit on June 4. Tennessee became the necessary 36th state to endorse it on Aug. 18, 1920, and the amendment was formally adopted on Aug. 26.

Virginia had little more than a year left to celebrate the successful conclusion of the work she had been engaged in for at least 30 years. She died on Sept. 16, 1921, at the age of 68 after having cast her first and last presidential vote in 1920.