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Black morocco (5-3/4" x 8-1/2"), boards detached, lacking spine, in need of resewing; contents fairly clean with the writing very clear and readable. Originally used (barely) as an account book and repurposed by the author containing handwritten notes and clippings, occupying approximately 144 pages, easily legible and densely inscribed, on topics of Meriwether's various social causes for presentation in public lectures. There appear to be four separate speeches written out here by Meriwether titled "Temperance," "Overproduction," "For Revenue Only," and "Constitutional Prohibition."A prolific speaker, Meriwether encouraged women to speak up for women's rights everywhere she traveled. In this manuscript, which begins with remarks for a speech delivered at the end of 1888, Meriwether's prepared text is interspersed with clippings to be read out loud in support of her points. For example, she includes a newspaper piece on a filthy dive bar on Mulberry Street in New York City. Frequented by poor women who buy stale beer mixed with soda water, these "pitiable wrecks" would drink themselves into a stupor and then sleep on the floor. She includes it to drive home her point. Meriwether felt that women of privilege were complicit in the degraded status of their sisters when they fail to take political action. Without equal education, equal work opportunities, and equal pay, how can indigent women provide for themselves? She does not mince words. "Oh woman! living in comfortable ease! is it nothing to you that thousands of your sisters, hounded into the depths by poverty, ignorance, and licensed greed, are battling and sinking in these black waves of moral and social degradation and death?" The talk that begins on page 37 of the current manuscript is titled, "Waste Not, Want Not," and is clearly written to address a Black audience. Meriwether writes in part, "I have always felt that our race owed to yours a peculiar debt of gratitude, the like of which has never been known in the history of any other nation." Raised in Virginia, she goes on to describe her warm feelings about the Black woman who tended and raised her from infancy transitioning into a description of the successes of people of color in the south. "I want to see you all prosperous, and happy, and good. I rejoice always to see schoolhouses going up for you. I love to see your nice churches, your comfortable schoolhouses, your kind, well-educated teachers, your honest, straightforward God fearing preachers. I love to go to your school examinations, and see your exhibitions, and to see how fast your children learn & how bright they are, and to hear them sing & play and to look at their pretty paintings & embroideries; and to know that they are improving their advantages and in time they will be useful & honorable men & women, a blessing and an honor to their parents, their country, & their race." Lide Parker Smith Meriwether (1829-1913) was a leader of the first generation of feminists and women's rights activists. She lobbied for prohibition, raising the legal age of consent, and woman's suffrage. In 1871, Meriwether inaugurated a pro-women's rights newspaper, the TABLET, which she used to publicly criticize Tennessee's laws that discriminated against married women and to protest against the dearth of wage-earning and professional options available to women. In 1872, Meriwether published SOUNDINGS, a book dedicated to the condition of the "fallen woman," which was an attack on the double standard and hypocrisy of genteel society, a rare public condemnation of male sexual license in the South. Meriwether was president of the Tennessee Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) from 1884 to 1897, and then as an honorary president for life. The platform of the Tennessee Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which she served as president from 1884 to 1897, included planks beyond those suggested by its name. Meriwether advocated for raising the age of sexual consent (which was ten. Seller Inventory # 022005
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