Frances M. Witherspoon

Frances May Witherspoon (July 8, 1886 – December 16, 1973) was an American writer and activist, co-founder with Tracy Dickinson Mygatt of the War Resisters League, and executive secretary of the New York Bureau of Legal Advice, a forerunner of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Early life and education

Frances May Witherspoon was born in 1886, in Meridian, Mississippi, the daughter of law professor and Congressman Samuel Andrew Witherspoon, and his wife, Susan E. May.[1] She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1909. After some years as a suffrage and labor organizer in Pennsylvania, she and Mygatt moved to New York City in 1913.[2]

Career and activism

In New York City Witherspoon and Mygatt joined the Woman's Peace Party, and together edited their publication, Four Lights.[3][4] They also organized the Socialist Suffrage Brigade, and edited an issue of The Call about suffrage.[5]

During the first World War, Witherspoon worked with various peace organizations, and lobbied in Washington against U. S. involvement in the war.[6] She was a founding officer of the Anti-Enlistment League in 1915.[7] In 1917, she co-founded the New York Bureau of Legal Advice with attorney Charles Recht, to assist conscientious objectors, draft resisters, and war protesters.[8][9] She was anonymous author of a pamphlet, Who Are the Conscientious Objectors? published in 1919.[10]

Witherspoon and Mygatt continued with peace work after the war, as members of the Women's Peace Union, and as founders of the War Resisters League in 1923.[11] They were charter members of the Episcopal Pacifist Fellowship when it was founded in 1939. In 1961 they were recognized jointly with the WRL Peace Award.

Witherspoon and Mygatt co-wrote two Biblical novels, The Glorious Company (1928) and Armor of Light (1930), and a play about Vincent Van Gogh, Stranger Upon Earth, among other literary collaborations.[12][13]

In her eighties, Frances Witherspoon organized a campaign among Bryn Mawr alumnae against the Vietnam War.[14]

Personal life and legacy

Witherspoon lived and worked with Tracy D. Mygatt for over sixty years, in New York City, and later in Brewster, New York and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[15] The pair were active in the Episcopal Church.[16] They died within a month of each other, in late 1973, in Philadelphia; Witherspoon was 87 years old.[17] The couple's papers were donated to the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.[18]

References

  1. ↑ "Death of Hon. Samuel A. Witherspoon," Proceedings in the House of Representatives (December 6, 1915): 24.
  2. ↑ "Suffragettes Begin Campaign for Votes," Delaware County Daily Times (September 28, 1912): 2. via Newspapers.com
  3. ↑ Erika Kuhlman, "'Women's Ways in War': The Feminist Pacifism of the New York City Woman's Peace Party," Frontiers 18(1)(1997): 80-100.
  4. ↑ Mark Van Wienen, "'Women's Ways in War': The Poetry and Politics of the Woman's Peace Party, 1915-1917," Modern Fiction Studies 38(3)(Fall 1992): 687-714.
  5. ↑ Frances H. Early, A World Without War: How U. S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I (Syracuse University Press 1997): 15. ISBN 0815627645
  6. ↑ Justus D. Doenecke, Nothing Less than War: A New History of America's Entry into World War I (University Press of Kentucky 2011): 296. ISBN 0813130026
  7. ↑ Scott H. Bennett, Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Non-Violence in America, 1915-1963 (Syracuse University Press 2003): 11. ISBN 081563028X
  8. ↑ Guide to the New York Bureau of Legal Advice Records, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.
  9. ↑ Scott H. Bennett, Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Non-Violence in America, 1915-1963 (Syracuse University Press 2003): 34. ISBN 081563028X
  10. ↑ Frances H. Early, A World Without War: How U. S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I (Syracuse University Press 1997): 219, note 35. ISBN 0815627645
  11. ↑ "Frances Witherspoon, 87, of War Resisters League," New York Times (December 18, 1973): 44.
  12. ↑ P. W. Wilson, "The Saints Step Out of their Stained-Glass Windows: Tracy Mygatt and Frances Witherspoon Employ Feminine Intuition to Humanize and Revitalize the Acts of the Apostles," New York Times (July 22, 1928): 51.
  13. ↑ Alfred H. Barr, Vincent Van Gogh (Routledge 1967): 42. ISBN 0714620394
  14. ↑ Bettina Aptheker, Tapestries of Life: Women's Work, Women's Consciousness, and the Meaning of Daily Experience (University of Massachusetts Press 1989): 101. ISBN 0870236598
  15. ↑ James B. Lloyd, Lives of Mississippi Authors, 1817-1967 (University Press of Mississippi 1981): 481. ISBN 0878051392
  16. ↑ Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (Anchor 2012). ISBN 140007858X
  17. ↑ "Tracy Mygatt Dies; Led War Resisters," New York Times (November 24, 1973): 34.
  18. ↑ Tracy D. Mygatt and Frances M. Witherspoon Papers, DG 089, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
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