WQED Weekly
Jane Grey Swisshelm
Clip | 4m 58sVideo has Closed Captions
This segment features a story about Jane Grey Swisshelm, a feminist and abolitionist from the 1800s.
This segment of WQED Weekly features a story about Jane Grey Swisshelm, a feminist and abolitionist in the 1800s. CMU Professor David Fowler talks about her work advocating for women’s right to own property in Pittsburgh, and the anti-slavery newspaper she wrote and edited called ‘The Visitor’.
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WQED Weekly is a local public television program presented by WQED
WQED Weekly
Jane Grey Swisshelm
Clip | 4m 58sVideo has Closed Captions
This segment of WQED Weekly features a story about Jane Grey Swisshelm, a feminist and abolitionist in the 1800s. CMU Professor David Fowler talks about her work advocating for women’s right to own property in Pittsburgh, and the anti-slavery newspaper she wrote and edited called ‘The Visitor’.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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There's a monument here on Sixth Avenue, and it isn't a monument to Gimbel or Saks or whoever it was who thought they could build an empire out of dry goods, pots and pans.
It's a much smaller monument.
A plaque which marks the spot where a woman named Jane Grey Swisshelm, grew up in the 1820s She was no empire builder, but her life was as important to the abolition of slavery and the rights of women as Gimbels was to the future of the corner department store.
Jane was a deeply religious girl, and most of her time was spent haunting this cemetery in the Trinity churchyard, trying to make contact with the supernatural.
Now, her journal doesn't record that she ever met a ghost, but what it does say is that Jane Grey Swisshelm spent most of her life as she spent her childhood reaching for things that were just out of reach and very often getting them.
Well, I think she was a feminist without question.
Because of her, staunch belief on what she acted, that women should be allowed to go into occupations, for which they were suited, even when these occupations had been, held exclusively by men.
David Fowler is a professor of American social history at Carnegie Mellon University.
He's been researching the life, letters and political activities of Jane Grey Swisshelm for a year and a half.
So although I think she did not call herself feminist, I think she was one.
Self-proclaimed feminist or not, she was a strong advocate of women's rights.
When her family property burned during the Pittsburgh fire of 1845, her husband claimed it as his natural right.
Jane Grey Swisshelm fought back with law books, and helped the married women of Pennsylvania gained the right to own property in 1848.
She also got her land back.
History doesn't record her husband's immediate reaction, but it does note that their marriage was stormy.
It was no less stormy, though, than her own feelings towards the institution of slavery.
When Pittsburgh's only anti-slavery paper closed, Jane Grey Swisshelm ignored the conventions of the day, which kept women out of the publics eye, if not the public's mind, and opened her own.
She edited and published The Visiter herself, and it was a tremendous success.
Her editorials were read and quoted all over the nation.
She had a good writing style in her editorials.
She was, terse, direct, forceful, witty, and above all, sarcastic when she chose to be.
The word got around that she was not a safe person to, to tangle with, in editorial controversy.
In a sense, I think she took advantage of her, position as a woman because she said she made remarks about other, males that as editors and, journalists and public figures, if she had been a man, she would have been called out, to fight a duel.
Or perhaps someone might have showed up with a horsewhip.
Activities like these won Jane Grey Swisshelm some fame and not a little notoriety.
She was convinced, as she wrote in her journal, that others saw her as a giantess with flaming black eyes, square jaw, and big fists who lived at the top of very high beanpole made nothing but the uncooked flesh of men.
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