It's a big week for the history of women's rights. August 26 -- Women's Equality Day -- commemorates the 1920 passage of women's suffrage in the U.S., with 19th Amendment Centennial Day.
This episode is the second in a three-part series celebrating the centennial of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. Katie speaks with Coline Jenkins, great-great granddaughter of famous suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who in 1848 led the Woman’s Rights Convention, the Seneca Falls, N.Y. convention that fought for the social, civil and religious rights of women.
Stanton started the convention with a speech on the convention’s goals and purpose:
“We are assembled to protest against a form of government, existing without the consent of the governed—to declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in case of separation, the children of her love.”
Coline talks about her mother, Rhoda, her intrepid grandmother, Nora, and what it's like to be descended from not just one but several generations of strong women.
On August 26th, the new Women's Rights Pioneers Monument was unveiled in New York City's Central Park.
NBC's Today Show streamed the event via the MonumentalWomen.org website.
Don't forget to visit us at ourmothersourselves.com. And while you're there, please contribute your word to the mother word cloud.
Music composed and performed by Andrea Perry.
Artwork by Paula Mangin. (@PaulaBallah)
Producer: Alice Hudson
Intern: Rosie Manock (@RosieManock)
It's a big week for the history of women's rights. August 26 -- Women's Equality Day -- commemorates the 1920 passage of women's suffrage in the U.S., with 19th Amendment Centennial Day.
This episode is the second in a three-part series celebrating the centennial of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. Katie speaks with Coline Jenkins, great-great granddaughter of famous suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who in 1848 led the Woman’s Rights Convention, the Seneca Falls, N.Y. convention that fought for the social, civil and religious rights of women.
Stanton started the convention with a speech on the convention’s goals and purpose:
“We are assembled to protest against a form of government, existing without the consent of the governed—to declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in case of separation, the children of her love.”
Coline talks about her mother, Rhoda, her intrepid grandmother, Nora, and what it's like to be descended from not just one but several generations of strong women.
On August 26th, the new Women's Rights Pioneers Monument was unveiled in New York City's Central Park.
NBC's Today Show streamed the event via the MonumentalWomen.org website.
Don't forget to visit us at ourmothersourselves.com. And while you're there, please contribute your word to the mother word cloud.
Music composed and performed by Andrea Perry.
Artwork by Paula Mangin. (@PaulaBallah)
Producer: Alice Hudson
Intern: Rosie Manock (@RosieManock)
My mother was a woman of tremendous integrity. My mother was curious, sensitive, compassionate, honest, always there for us, unflappable, loyal, complicated, she is devoted, resilient, dazzling, giving, vivacious, extraordinary.
Coline Jenkins :She made French toast that looked like houses. It even had windows! French, French toast with windows!
Katie Hafner :Wait, you're you're actually not kidding. Hello and welcome to Our Mothers Ourselves. I'm Katie Hafner, and I'm your host. This is the second in a three-part series celebrating the centennial of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. Today I'm interviewing Colleen Jenkins. She's the daughter of Rhoda Barney Jenkins, who was an architect in New York City. And Colleen is the great great granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the famous suffragist from Seneca Falls, New York. I started out thinking this would be an interview about Rhoda. But that changed quickly. And it turned into something slightly different. Colleen Jenkins, I would like to thank you so much for coming on to Our Mothers Ourselves to tell me about your mother.
Coline Jenkins :Well, thank you, Katie.
Katie Hafner :I'd like to start by telling you that I've been putting together basically an org chart of your family, all the women, just to get listeners completely, sort of straight about who everybody is. I'm going to go down the list and you can help me out a little bit here. It starts with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the 1800s. And then her daughter, and that's your great great grandmother, right?
Coline Jenkins :Elizabeth Cady Stanton is my great great grandmother. And Harriet is my great grandmother.
Katie Hafner :And then after Harriet came Nora-
Coline Jenkins :Mhm.
Katie Hafner :Your grandmother. And after Nora came Rhoda, your mother. And then you, Colleen, and then your daughter, Elizabeth. So the six generations of women and your family legacy is deep, and it's rich. And my first question for you is, when were you first made aware of who your family was?
Coline Jenkins :I would say I'm like any child in that whatever is around you is your world. So what was around me? My father was dead. At the time I was about three or four years old. So I had my mother and my grandmother. And to me, that was the world. I would go to my mother's construction sites. She was an architect. She went to the University of Pennsylvania so she had a good degree, which was very important when you lose your husband. And that was normal that my mother would also bring home two by fours that were cut into blocks. So I would make my own houses with the blocks.
Katie Hafner :While she was at her drafting table?
Coline Jenkins :I had my little drafting board, and I borrowed her t-square triangle. And I did my own houses. 30's when she was a widow, with myself, my brother, and then she inherited three stepchildren. So the point is that I'm just very, again, as a child, I didn't realize all this, but looking back, I can say that I'm very happy that my mother had an education that could allow her to be a licensed architect and get money for the family. And then to put that all in some type of context. It goes back several generations where Elizabeth Cady Stanton is basically saying, "When you're in a storm, and all of us will be in a storm at some time, that's not the time to learn the instruments of navigation. You should know those before the storm. Be prepared!" And that's I think what my mother had done. She had prepared herself with an education. And as a child, I didn't really feel the buffets of a storm. I felt secure, and she was able to do a great deal as a mother.
Katie Hafner :So tell me where your mother Rhoda was born and when, and what her childhood was like.
Coline Jenkins :My mother, Rhoda Barney, was born in 1920 in New York City. And then they immediately moved out from New York City to Greenwich, Connecticut. And my grandmother was the first female civil engineer that graduates from Cornell in 1905. Therefore, she is one of the first in the United States building the aqueduct that supplies water to New York City. She worked on steel structures in southern Manhattan. Bridges. One of the things is that you had to join your professional organization. She would join this American Society of Civil Engineers. But guess what happened? She was refused regular membership. And so what did, what does she do when she's refused? She sues them in the New York State Supreme Court. And basically, the Supreme Court ruled that yes, in fact a private organization can deny membership. Well, I don't want your listeners to be unhappy. So I want to fast forward a hundred years to just recently, when I got an email from the American Society of Civil Engineers. And they said we have unanimously voted Nora in as an exalted fellow member. And they said we made a mistake.
Katie Hafner :Oh, wow.
Coline Jenkins :Yeah. Then they have a beautiful paragraph. And I wish, I wish my grandmother could have read it.
Katie Hafner :Do you have it there? I'd love to hear this paragraph.
Coline Jenkins :Okay. Why don't you just pause it because I've got to run down three floors.
Katie Hafner :I had to ask myself why I was asking her to go get the letter. And then it dawned on me that, that yes, we'd be talking a lot about her mother. But really, we were talking about this matrilineal descent that started with Elizabeth Cady Stanton or maybe even earlier. And so I wanted to hear not just about Rhoda, but about Rhoda's mother, Nora, and explore a little bit. This idea of what gets handed down from one generation of extraordinarily strong women to the next.
Coline Jenkins :Hi, I'm back. Okay. Basically, they recognize Nora Stanton Blatch DeForrest Barney as the first female member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. "In a case that was eventually decided by the New York State Supreme Court, this society realizes that the aforementioned ruling made us complicit in systematic precedent for demonstrating bias against women participating in the engineering profession." Isn't that amazing that they admitted that? Because this is only one human being that took a stand very, very, very early.
Katie Hafner :Did all the women in your family take stands like this?
Coline Jenkins :Nora is not exceptional. But to you, she may seem exceptional. Because I know that Elizabeth Cady Stanton took very important legal stands. Elizabeth Cady Stanton when she was Elizabeth Cady, and that's a surname. It's not a first name, Cady. All around her was law. Her father was a lawyer with a practice attached, the office attached to their house. But he also served at the New York State Supreme Court as a judge. He was elected into Congress. So she learned the law by growing up there. And one time there was a woman knocking on the door to request to see Judge Cady, and the woman was distraught. Judge Cady basically took his law book out and read her the paragraph of the law, and she went out just as distraught. So Elizabeth Cady Stanton as a child planned to cut up her father's law books. To take those nasty paragraphs out of the law books, so the woman wouldn't be distraught.
Katie Hafner :Oh, my.
Colleen Jenkins :Are you surprised that Nora goes to the New York State Supreme Court?
Katie Hafner :I am not surprised. I actually fell asleep last night reading Elizabeth Cady Stanton's, is it called Eighty Years...
Coline Jenkins :And More.
Katie Hafner :Yeah, yeah.
Coline Jenkins :Oh excellent!
Katie Hafner :So I fell asleep reading it. And I woke up thinking. What was it that made a woman in 1848 first of all decide that it was wrong that women didn't have the vote, and then decide that she could and would do something about it? Where did that come from?
Coline Jenkins :It's almost that Seneca Falls is almost like spontaneous combustion. That it, you know, they demanded elec- She demanded elective franchise in a resolution. To answer your question, why is why is this Martian thinking this way? At the age of 32? Huh? 32, she's doin' this? Well you have to look back at the process of making laws. Quite frankly, if you don't have the vote, you're outside the system. She understood that because she comes out of the soup of law. She can make the connections between law and women's rights. That book that you were reading-
Katie Hafner :There was one thing in particular that I just loved. Here's what she says: "The psychological growth of a child is not influenced by days and years. But by the impressions passing events make on its mind."
Coline Jenkins :I think we do think of events, critical events. For instance, in the story in there. There was, I believe her name was Flora Campbell, came to their front door in Johnstown, New York. So as a child, you know, Elizabeth had empathy. She could read her face. They'd- now does Elizabeth Cady Stanton remember? Or do we remember every single day, every single second of our lives? No. We have a selective memory that usually picks up important things. And we remember them.
Katie Hafner :I had a feeling that this would happen with this interview with you, Colleen, is that we would keep digging back into your family legacy. Because how could we not? I mean, when I was looking at this org chart I've got of your, of your family and all the women. I kept thinking, this is like some kind of reverse novel that Margaret Atwood would have cooked up. The women are all in charge.
Colleen Jenkins :Yeah.
Katie Hafner :How could we talk about Rhoda without talking about Nora, without talking about Harriet, without talking about Elizabeth Cady Stanton? So let's just say, I just- The last thing I want to say for now, about Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is that this was the woman who in 1885 said that it makes more sense to say that men are limited because they can't be mothers. rather than the women are limited because they can. And once I read that I thought, of course, doesn't that make sense? And this is where the Margaret Atwood, she'd have a field day with this. Right?
Coline Jenkins :I haven't thought about that one yet. But this is Elizabeth Cady Stanton quote: "Do all you can, no matter what, to get people to think." So if that's a common thread through all six generations. Somebody could have seen Flora Campbell and had a totally different reaction, not been moved to act. That's a thread that you hear something you do something.
Katie Hafner :Mm hmm.
Coline Jenkins :Or you think critically. One sentence that Elizabeth Cady Stanton said that I think is brilliant. And it's said the last year for life, 1902. "Surely, there is no greater monopoly than that of all men in denying all women a voice in the laws they are compelled to obey."
Katie Hafner :She's like the RBG of her time.
Coline Jenkins :Yeah. But yeah, and to me, it's always good to make irrefutable arguments. Could you argue against that? It's a great summary of what the problem is.
Katie Hafner :Yeah. Let's go back to Rhoda, and to, and to Nora. So Rhoda had this mother Nora, who was clearly- Nora took a stand. What do you know about Rhoda and her childhood, and what it was like to have a mother like Nora?
Coline Jenkins :I, that's a good question. Because we live in a hurricane zone. We live along the Atlantic seaboard. And so I think my mother called her a hurricane. Because my grandmother was, cared very much about her children. And for instance, if my grandmother bought a piece of land for development or to put a building on, she would subdivide the land and give some of it to my mother so she could build something. At the same time, she was, shall we say, a highly productive person? So, with a touch of hurricane in it.
Katie Hafner :Was it your sense that having Nora as a mother wasn't easy for your mom?
Coline Jenkins :It's kind of interesting. I think this is true for a lot of mother-daughter-grandma relationships. Like, I got along really well with my grandmother because I'm a child. And, you know, I don't really have to work with her. And, and my, I'm sure my mother, you know, had to deal with her a lot more. But it was, you know, a solid relationship until death did them part. But for instance, my brother and I used to go visit my grandmother. And my grandmother was actually born in England, of an American mother and an English father. So she spent a lot of time in Europe. And she loved German autobahns. Because they had no speed limits. We used to always sit in the backseat of her gigantic Oldsmobile, a little afraid for our lives. So my mother was a little bit more tame compared to my grandmother.
Katie Hafner :When she said that, about her mother being more tame, it really got me to thinking. Well, what did that mean? So after the interview, I started poking around on the internet. And I found this old story that was in the New York Times in 1979, all about Rhoda. And the headline was "A Struggle For Identity In A Suffragist's Family." A couple of days after the interview, I called Coleen because I wanted to talk to her about that story. So although I'm jumping out of order here, I want you to hear that phone conversation now. Because as it turns out, it wasn't such a clean line from one generation to the next. Hi.
Coline Jenkins :Yeah. Wait, let me just. I'm on the iPad.... This is better, right?
Katie Hafner :Oh, that's much better. Did you get a chance to read the article I sent you?
Coline Jenkins :Oh yeah I did.
Katie Hafner :So one of the most interesting things I thought was when she said, "Actually, I was a very ordinary student, but I was not allowed to be ordinary. Both women pushed and pushed in. I took the brunt of it. They did not push my brother in the same way. There was all this pressure on me, Rhoda, the girl."
Coline Jenkins :She felt it.
Katie Hafner :And she felt it, yeah.
Coline Jenkins :Because it's a woman's issue.
Katie Hafner :And these two women she was living with, they were all about the women's issues, right?
Colleen Jenkins :Yeah.
Katie Hafner :And here's this one paragraph where it says her mother and grandmother, so that would be Nora and Harriet, tried to instill into their children a sense of tradition. Pausing, I love this, pausing from time to time in their own activities to offer, quote, "improving time, not fun time." Whenever they talk to me it was women, women, women, this and that until I was fed up with it all. Let's assume for a minute that yes, she resented all the feminism that was shoved into her face when she was like a child. But then we start to notice her change in a paragraph that says that when she was in college, when she associated with young men, quote, "I carried my own luggage, opened my own doors. I never said, 'Look at me, I'm opening my own door.' I just did it." So the point is that she just absorbed these lessons.
Coline Jenkins :I think you're absolutely right. You know, as much as she wants to reject something, as you say, it's incorporated into her thinking.
Katie Hafner :Right.
Coline Jenkins :Do you know what I mean?
Katie Hafner :Yes. Well, here's another thing she says is, "I ignored, I ignored feminism. It was the stuff that took all my mother's time away from us. I staged a rebellion against my mother, and what my mother was was a feminist." Wow.
Coline Jenkins :My, my mother was a feminist too.
Katie Hafner :Here's another quote from her, from your mom: "All of my childhood, I ignored my family's feminism. I took no part in those activities. But while I resented the way I was treated, at the same time I was being made self-reliant, given freedom and a good education, the very things denied many women back then."
Coline Jenkins :I'm going to tell you the truth that you're going to drop dead to know. I had never been to Seneca Falls to see her house until I was seventeen years old. I go there knowing nothing, really. And I think it's an analogy for the United States. How much did people know about women's history? I studied New York state history for one whole year, and they had two sentences about Seneca Falls.
Katie Hafner :Well, I'm gonna lay this straight at your mother's feet and ask you why she didn't inform you better before the age of seventeen?
Coline Jenkins :Where were the books about Elizabeth Cady Stanton?
Katie Hafner :You didn't need-
Coline Jenkins :But she didn't talk about it. You're right. She didn't talk about with me specifically. She could have broken it down in a conversational level with me, but she didn't.
Katie Hafner :And why not?
Coline Jenkins :If it is true that she says, "In our household was with Elizabeth Cady Stanton was still the queen mother and I hated her." Well, like, maybe you wouldn't want to pass that burden on to your child.
Katie Hafner :I wanted to play that phone call for you now, because I'm hoping that you'll see what I came to see. Which is that although Rhoda might not have told Colleen about all those hardcore feminists in her family's past, much less the fact that she, Rhoda, had rebelled against it, feminism is in these women's bones. As it has been for the last a hundred and fifty years at least. So bear that in mind as you listen to the rest of the interview, starting with a bang on the table one Thanksgiving.
Coline Jenkins :We would have Thanksgiving dinner at this very, very old mahogany table that you could extend. So my mother was at the head, my grandmother was at the foot. Those are not normal positions for women. But this is an adult I'm telling you this, it was normal for me. And this is funny. So this is Thanksgiving dinner. And my grandmother at the end of the table wasn't being heard well enough because everyone was talking. So she took her pump off, her shoe off. And she hit it on the mahogany table.
Katie Hafner :Oh, that's-
Coline Jenkins :Just like Khrushchev did in the United Nations. And then everybody stopped in shock, and then they listened to her. And my mother would just calmly take it as normal. So my mother was the capable person that weathered all the storms.
Katie Hafner :And also, she was a Girl Scout leader. Is that right?
Coline Jenkins :Yeah, she was my Girl Scout leader. And so, I think this is characteristic of my family. You know, she, she would read the requirements and the bad stuff, and it's- but she took everything much further. You know, what is the essence of this? And how can, you know, how can we add in to this experience?
Katie Hafner :It sounds like a lot to live up to. Is having the family that you had, and the women in the family who you had as role models, kind of both emancipating and empowering. But also oppressive in a way? Difficult?
Coline Jenkins :I actually, I think, you know, I actually like opposition. I get bored if, if I'm in a bubble. Everybody thinks like I do and acts like I do. I was elected to the legislative body of the town of Greenwich. And so I'm reading these rules, and one rule is the representative, he shall stand up and say his name prior to speaking. Well, I found this unacceptable. We need to draft the resolution that from this point onwards, the town of Greenwich shall in all of its written and oral communications be gender inclusive. First, it has to be debated. And one person said, "I'm not going to use that title Chair. Because Chair, like instead of Chairman. Chair is an inanimate object, and Vice Chair is a lewd act with an inanimate object." Isn't that crazy? So anyway, it came to a vote. And the vote was only four people in opposition out of 230 people.
Katie Hafner :Oh, wow. Ultimately, it was an important statement to make. And I do believe government is of the people, for the people, by the people. It's not of the men, for the men, by the men. I'm not at all intimidated. But did I think of Elizabeth, Rhoda, Harriet? I didn't really think of them. I just did what I thought was right. And it was fun. This is fun. One thing that I think is really true about all of the women for generations, is that they were very much their own bosses. If you're an architect or a civil engineer, and you're doing speculative building, or you're managing stuff, you're the boss. And I think that's the way these women have designed their lives professionally, but also with their civic engagement. Like I've spent a lot of time on this statue in Central Park. Tell me about this statue in Central Park.
Coline Jenkins :So, there's this elder, a couple who is walking through Central Park. They live near Central Park. And they said, "Well where are the real women? Well I see Alice in Wonderland, and Mother Goose, and a witch. But there are no real women." And so the woman calls me up and she says, "Do you know Elizabeth Cady Stanton?" And they say, "We want to put up a statue in Central Park of her." And I said, "Well, actually, I know about her. But I also know about statues. I was involved with moving the statue of the three suffragists from the crypt of the US Capitol to the rotunda of the US Capitol." And I thought to myself, "Well, that project took two acts of Congress." So I thought, "Well, Central Park should be easier than that." And so I said, "I'd be happy to help you about Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or statues." And that was seven years ago. And I'm happy to say August 26, 2020 we're unveiling the statue in Central Park. And the statues of Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. We call them the three women's rights pioneers. They're obviously part of a gigantic social movement that amended the Constitution. Ended up that was the result. This is the 19th Amendment. It's beautiful. One sentence: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any state, on account of sex." You see?
Katie Hafner :I do. I really want to circle back to Rhoda. So what did- did she cook dinner?
Coline Jenkins :Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean what that was my whole point. Is that she had two kids that needed to eat, and go to school, and do homework. And, you know, definitely. We had dinners. We had, she made French toast that looked like houses. I just remember-
Katie Hafner :Hahaha! She's the French toast architect?
Colleen Jenkins :Yeah, it even had windows! French, French toast with windows!
Katie Hafner :Wait, you're, you're actually not kidding.
Coline Jenkins :I'm not kidding. Oh, and this is funny. So my brother thought that every person's back porch had frying pans with burnt stuff in them. Mother would put something on, and then go maybe talk on the phone or something like that. And then the stuff would start burning. And she would rush in, take the frying pan off the stove, and stick it on the back porch. My grandmother had a hired cook in the house. So I'm not sure that my mother, she would make meat, potato, vegetable. But I'm not sure that she was any phenomenal cook.
Katie Hafner :But back to the French toast that was, um, that looked like a house. Your mom, she didn't do anything at 50% or 75% or even 100%. She did everything at 1,000%.
Coline Jenkins :As adults, we can look back at our mothers and, you know, compare them to other people. What's normal or- But when you're a child, it is the only thing. Um, I have a son and I have a daughter. And what's really important to me, I want my children to do things in their own right. Everybody has an obligation to find their own path. Maybe for tonight's bedside reading, you can read The Solitude of Self.
Katie Hafner :I was going to ask you about The Solitude of Self. What exactly does she mean by that? And we're talking, let's just back up for a sec. Solitude of Self, just to explain, is the, is your great great grandmother Elizabeth Cady Stanton's-
Coline Jenkins :Well, actually, it's more of a speech. But although somebody put it in a lovely little book format. Actually I, coincidentally, have on my desk, just the end of it. The reason you do anything in life, we do this, is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life. And that's the, that's the nutshell. It's your life. It's not anybody else's life. But you have a personal responsibility to your own individual life, and there's a solitude in that. You're born into the world, you will leave the world. And you know, it's not a lonely experience. It's the truth of experience. And I think a lot of these activities are directed from the individual point of view that this is my life. And what am I going to stake my life on? Then you take action if you find your life being squeezed, or rejected, or- If I don't take responsibility for my own life, who will?
Katie Hafner :Well, you know, and you know who it reminds me of really in a poignant and pointed way is your mother.
Colleen Jenkins :Absolutely.
Katie Hafner :Yeah. That's the way she lived her, it's the way she approached her life, the way she lived her life, the way she raised her children. And what was she like later in life?
Coline Jenkins :She would, she at eighty five, she was still designing a house for my, my nephew. So that's pretty cool that she was an architect for sixty years. Oh, this is the best thing. I think this is a great way to sum it up. She was losing her eyesight, and she wanted to put out a Christmas letter. So I said okay. I said, "What do you want to say?" She said, "Vote the rascal out." Ha! I don't know which rascal was in office at that time. So her Christmas message is saying to all of her friends, "Vote the rascal out of office." How timely is that?
Katie Hafner :And that's it this week for Our Mothers Ourselves. The theme music is composed and performed by Andrea Perry. Paula Mangin is our artist in residence, and the show's producer is Alice Hudson. I'll be back next week with the third episode in the 19th Amendment series. I'll be talking to filmmaker Donna Zaccaro, the daughter of Geraldine Ferraro, who made history in 1984 as the first female vice presidential candidate for a major political party. Our Mothers Ourselves as a production of Odradek Studios. I'm Katie Hafner, and I'm your host. If you'd like to contribute to the word montage that begins every episode, please send a recording of one word to describe your mother. Send it to ourmothersourselves@gmail.com Have a great week, everybody.