Back to the Future, Part 8: Killing Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Back to the Future, Part 8: Another School Shooting 

Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Feminist, Environmentalist, Writer

It seems cruelly ironic that the latest mass killing in America happened at a school named for Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who dedicated herself to improving lives. 

Cruel and ironic, but then, what do we expect?

Marjory Stoneman Douglas,
Photo credit: Friends of the Everglades

The shooting spree at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School occurred on day 45 of the year 2018--day 45 of the new year, Valentine's Day, in fact, but already the 18th school shooting of the year.

In other words, during 2018, we have experienced one school shooting every 60 hours. Put in still other terms, we have a school shooting every 2.5 days. 

And that's "only" counting school shootings. There have already been 30 mass shootings in 2018. 

And we are only in the 7th week of the year.

For this year's statistics, check out the Gun Violence Archive--there have been 6,621 "incidents" involving gun violence this year in the United States, resulting in 1,835 deaths. On Day 45 of 2018.*

I've written before about gun violence on this blog, many times, in fact. (I'm linking here only to the most recent post, from last November, on the occasion of, what else, a mass shooting.)

But today, instead of focusing on young, angry, white men, often with ties to white nationalism, who commit the majority of these atrocities, I thought I'd focus instead on something other than their crimes. And so, I’ve re-titled today’s post, crossing out “Back to the Future, Part 8: Another School Shooting.” Not that that changes anything…

In this case, as news reports unspooled online and on the television screen, I wondered about the woman for whom Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was named. Who was she, I asked myself.

Was that just avoidance? If so, the time I spent answering my question was not time ill-spent.

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 7 April 1890, Marjory Stoneman would later recall an incident from her early childhood that was a sign of the course her life would take. She said that when she was five years old, her father read Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha to her.  When Hiawatha commanded a birch tree to give him its bark so that he could make a canoe, she broke into "loud sobs," asking her father "why should the birch tree have to give up his bark just because Hiawatha wanted to build a canoe?" 

"I couldn't stand it," she said. (I also love her reflections on her lost childhood copy of Alice in Wonderland: "Some fiend in human form must have borrowed it and not brought it back.") Reflecting on her memory about Hiawatha, she later concluded that it was her "first really independent thought." 

Stoneman's parents divorced not long after, her father moving to Florida while Stoneman and her mother headed to Taunton, Massachusetts, where they would live with her mother's family.

Life with her mother's family was difficult--her mother's mental health was unstable, and the family criticized Stoneman's father for his unsuccessful business ventures. About this period in her childhood, Stoneman concluded that the "dislocation" of her life "made me something of a skeptic and a dissenter."

But she loved her education, begun at Barnam Street Elementary. Stoneman noted that, because employment opportunities were so limited for women in the 1890s, she had excellent (female) teachers and instruction. "There wasn't much that literate women could do except teach school," she observed, "maybe that accounted for the wonderful teaching we had."

By the age of sixteen, she had also begun her writing career, receiving a Gold Badge from St. Nicholas Magazine for her contribution in the category of "puzzle-making." Her puzzle was, as she described it, "Double the Headings and Curtailings." 

Just six months later, in June 1907, she was awarded a junior writing prize by the Boston Herald for her short story, "An Early Morning Paddle," about a young boy on a camping trip who paddles out to the middle of a late one morning in order to watch the sun rise.

By 1908, Stoneman had graduated high school and enrolled in Wellesley College, where she would major in English. She graduated four years later, in 1912, the same year as her mother's death. Although she had a college degree, Stoneman found that there were still few employment opportunities for the educated woman, and so she enrolled in a training program that would qualify her to teach salesgirls and do a bit of "personnel work."

She finished the course, which enabled her to take a job at a department store in St. Louis, where her job was "to make out sales slips and to teach the cash girls some grammar." If one of these "girls" ran into trouble, Stoneman was also supposed "to straighten her out."

After a few months, she moved on to Bamberger's department store in Newark, where she became the "educational director"--though, as she notes, "why department stores had educational directors I never really understood." 

Lonely and drifting aimlessly, Stoneman met Kenneth Douglas, a tall, thin, good-looking man who was an "ordinary dresser with good manners"--as she describes him--and thirty years older than she was. Within three months of their first meeting, on 18 April 1914, they were married. 

Marjory Stoneman, now Marjory Stoneman Douglas, does not shy away from telling about her disastrous marriage in her autobiographical Voice of the River, which I've quoted from here. Kenneth Douglas proved to be both a conman and a fraud (and possibly a bigamist)--by the fall of 1915, Marjory was persuaded to divorce him, and she moved to Miami, Florida, reunited with her father, whom she had not seen since her childhood.

(While Stoneman Douglas does discuss her marriage, a more complete account, including sordid details Marjory had not included in her autobiography, is found in Jack E. Davis's An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century.)

In Florida, Stoneman Douglas joined the staff of her father's newspaper. Frank Stoneman had gone to work for The Miami Evening Post, which had been purchased in 1910 and renamed the Miami Herald. Stoneman Douglas began her career in journalism as a society columnist, but soon her life changed once more.

In 1917, the Herald arranged for Stoneman Douglas to meet and write a story about the first Florida woman to enlist in the U. S. Naval Reserve. Although the woman never showed up for her interview (or her enlistment), Stoneman Douglas still got the story, reporting to the Herald, "I got the story on the first woman to enlist. It turned out to be me." 

Stoneman Douglas served during from 1917 to 1918, but, not finding the routine much to her liking, she volunteered to serve in the American Red Cross. In her work in Europe, she traveled to France, England, Italy, Belgium, and the Balkans, reporting on conditions for war refugees.  

When she finally returned to Miami, she again joined the Herald, where she had a column from 1920 to 1923. But then she quit the paper--she worked as a freelance reporter from 1923 until 1990, an astonishingly long career. (Stoneman Douglas did not die until 1998, at the age of 108!!)

In addition to her writing, Marjory Stoneman Douglas became an activist. Proud of her family's abolitionist ties (she was related to the anti-slavery Coffin family), she was a charter member of the first chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in the American south, and she worked to improve living conditions in racially segregated Coconut Grove.

She was a supporter of the women's suffrage movement and of the Equal Rights Amendment. She was also a supporter of the Florida Rural Legal Services group, whose aim was protecting migrant laborers.

Stoneman Douglas is best known today for her environmental work on behalf of the Florida Everglades, joining the fight to preserve the Everglades as a national park. In 1947, she published The Everglades: River of Grass, a work that "significantly impacted the environmental history of Florida by redefining the Everglades as a source of free flowing fresh water essential to both the people and wildlife of the region." 

First edition cover, 1947

In her lifetime, Marjory Stoneman Douglas published news articles and editorials, short stories, a play, and non-fiction environmental writing. Works by and about her are available at the Internet Archive. A useful bibliography is available at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas: Writer and Conservationist website; you will find it by clicking here. This website also offers an incredible digital archive of Stoneman Douglas's papers, including book manuscripts, photographs, diaries, newspaper articles, photographs, and correspondence. Update, 27 January 2026: This online resource seems to have disappeared at some point after June 2024, and I can’t find even an archived version. I’ve left the link—a better researcher than I may be able to find it. Update, January 29, 2026: Okay, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine was out for a few days (worrisome), but it’s working again, at least for now, and here’s a link to what’s preserved there. 

Marjory Stoneman Douglas is also a subject in Ken Burns's documentary series The National Parks: America's Best Idea. For a clip on the Everglades, highlighting Marjory Stoneman Douglas (with some great photos), click here.

I've learned a lot in these last few hours by reading about the life and work of Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

Unfortunately, when you Google her name, what now comes up is link after link to a horrible mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Many lives have been lost in yet another senseless tragedy--including that of Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

*The Gun Violence Archive keeps a running tally for the current year as its homepage. The data for 2018 has been archived, and is now available as a year-long summary.

Ada Kepley: A Lawyer Who Couldn't Practice Law

Ada Miser Kepley (earned a law degree, 30 June 1870)

On this day in 1870, Ada Miser Kepley (b. 1847) earned her bachelor of laws degree from Union College of Law (now Northwestern University), becoming the first woman in the United States to receive a law degree. 

Ada Miser Kepley,
1893

But, while she could work as a legal assistant for her husband, Henry B. Kepley, who had his own law practice, she could not practice law in the state of Illinois, which denied women a law license.

An appeal to the Supreme Court of Illinois was denied, meaning that if there was to be a remedy, it was not going to be judicial but legislative. Although Henry Kepley helped to change the law, and the ban against women was lifted in 1872, Kepley did not apply for a license to practice until 1881.

In the mean time, she played an active role in the temperance movement and ran for Attorney General of the state of Illinois in 1881. She was also involved in the suffrage movement, leaving the Prohibition Party when it removed its support for women's suffrage:  

I work as hard as a man . . . I earn money like a man. I bear the burdens of community like a man. I am robbed as a woman! I have no voice in anything or in saying how my money, which I have earned, shall be spent. The men of Illinois and the United States run their hands into my pockets, take out my hard earned money, and say impertinently, "What are you going to do about it, you can't help yourself."

(Doesn't this quotation sound as if it could be spoken today? On women and the pay gap, click here or here or here, and if you can stand it, here! On women and the lack of elective representation, click here and here. On still no Equal Rights Amendment, click here.)

In 1892, Kepley was ordained as a Unitarian minister, and she preached for twenty years at The Pulpit, formerly a Methodist church, which she and her husband purchased. 

After her husband's death in 1906, Ada Miser Kepley moved to the Kepley family's farm. Although she tried to support herself by farming and by writing, she lost the farm. She died in poverty, a charity case at St. Anthony's Memorial Hospital (Effingham, Illinois) in 1925.

The work that Kepley published in an effort to support herself--an autobiography, A Farm Philosopher: A Love Story, and a collection of poems and songs, The Effingham Town and Country Song Book: the First Town and Country Song Book in the World--is available in a variety of print-on-demand formats. You can read A Farm Philosopher online at the Internet Archive. Her earlier work, a seven-page pamphlet, The Ways to Teach Temperance (1883), seems to be unavailable in print or online.

Although there are a few brief references to Ada Kepley in Jill Norgren's Rebels at the Bar: The Fascinating, Forgotten Stories of America's First Women Lawyers and in Mary Jane Mossman's The First Women Lawyers: A Comparative Study of Gender, Law and the Legal Professions, the fact that she did not practice law seems to have kept her out of these histories--and Jane Friedman's America's First Woman Lawyer is about Myra Bradwell, not Ada Miser Kepley. A good biographical essay by Judy Rosella Edwards, from the Dictionary of the Unitarian and Universalist Biography  is posted at Unitarian Universalist History & Heritage.

Are Women "Equal"? Of Course Not

The Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (passed Congress, 22 March 1972)

First proposed as the "Lucretia Mott Amendment" by Alice Paul in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment was so radical that its audacity terrorized all who considered it: "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

This shocking amendment to the U.S. Constitution was introduced in every Congress between 1923 and 1972. It finally passed the Senate and then the House of Representatives in 1972--on 22 March, the proposed 27th Amendment was sent to the states for ratification. 

Obviously, since the ERA is still not part of our Constitution, it was never ratified. Why not? Well, because it's still so horrifically scary and clearly unfair. Who could possibly accept these crazy three propositions:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification

The ERA has been reintroduced in every session of the U.S. Congress since 1982. It is still not part of the U.S. Constitution.

Update, January 2017: An Equal Rights Amendment was introduced into the 115th Congress shortly after it was convened in January. In the Senate, on 20 January 2017, Robert Menendez (D-NJ) once again introduced the amendment; in the House, on 24 January 2017, the bill was once again introduced by Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). In both houses, the resolution was sent to committee. Where, once again, it died.

For the text of the bill, a history of "all actions," and list of the resolution's co-sponsor's in the House of Representatives, click here.

Update, 20 April 2018: Could it be that there is some movement on passage of the Equal Rights Amendment? The New York Times Editorial Board suggests that there might be. To read "A Rebuke to Trump, A Century in the Making," click here. (Wish I could be as hopeful . . . )

Update, 2019: An Equal Rights Amendment was introduced into the 116th Congress shortly after it was convened. On 29 January 2019, Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced the amendment in the House, and on 27 March 2019, Robert Menendez (D-NJ) introduced Senate Joint Resolution 15 in the Senate. Both resolutions proposed a "fresh start," removing the 1972 deadlines for ratification of the amendment.

Update, January 2020: On 15 January 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. As NPR reports,

Under the U.S. Constitution, amendments become law when they're ratified by at least three-fourths of U.S. state legislatures — or 38 out of 50. However, the ERA's original deadline for ratification expired in the 1980s, putting its future on uncertain legal ground. That didn't stop backers in Virginia from welcoming a long-awaited day.

In the 117th Congress, a renewed effort was made to pass the Equal Rights Amendment with the introduction of "Three-State Strategy" bills:

Current efforts are in support of Congress removing the deadline originally assigned to the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, and extended in 1979 by members of Congress. Legal scholars have stated that if Congress has the legal standing to instate a deadline for a constitutional amendment, they also have the legal standing to remove a deadline. Legislation has been proposed in both the House of Representatives and the Senate to officially remove the deadline for the ERA. If passed by both houses, legal scholars state that the ERA could potentially be ratified when the 38th state votes to ratify the amendment.

The potential legislation to remove the deadline was debated on April 30, 2019, the first hearing on the Equal Rights Amendment on Capitol Hill in 36 years.

Update, March 2021: Could we finally be on the verge of passing the ERA? Perhaps--as Rebecca Wolf writes in the Washington Post, "2021 Could Finally Be the Moment for the Equal Rights Amendment": "The turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic could push the amendment across the finish line after a century of work." Could it be that all it took was a deadly plague? 

Senate Joint Resolution 1 was introduced by Senator Benjamin Cardozo (D-Maryland) on 17 March 2021. On 23 March, by a roll-call vote of 222-204, the House of Representatives passed House Joint Resolution 17, removing the deadline for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Astonishingly, four Republicans joined Democrats to approve the resolution that was introduced by Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier and Republican Rep. Tom Reed.  Oh, yay.

And then, nothing.

Update, 22 March 2023: Still waiting . . . 

Legislation for removing the deadline for ratification of the ERA was introduced in both houses of the 118th U.S. Congress in January 2023--Senate Joint Resolution 4 was introduced on 24 January 2023 by Senator Benjamin Cardozo (D-Maryland) and House Joint Resolution 25 on 31January by Representative Ayanna Presley (D-MA). The House bill was referred immediately to the House Judiciary Committee, which is now chaired by Gym Jordan. Need I say more?

Of course it is languishing in the U.S. Congress--it's only been 100 years since the ERA was first proposed and only 51 years since the ERA was passed by both Houses of Congress in 1972 . . . 

Update, 1 May 2023: Okay, just in case you thought you might not be living in a new hellscape, one in which women are no longer regarded as full human beings, judged to be incapable of reason and having no right to bodily autonomy, here's the bad news. The ERA is once again dead. On 27 April, "Senate Republicans blocked a procedural measure on a joint resolution to remove an expired deadline for states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which has never been added to the Constitution, a century after it was first introduced to Congress." The measure failed by a vote of 51-47--it needed a super-majority of 60 votes to pass. (All the no votes were by Republicans--two Republicans, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, voted yes.)

Again, here's what is too scary for the ERA to pass: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

Update, 13 July 2023: Okay, time for something new? Equally doomed, I'm sure, but here's a New York Times piece outlining a "novel tactic" that might "revive" the ERA (click here). 

Update, 22 March 2024: Just in case you were wondering, there are no updates . . .

Update, 17 January 2025: Just three days before the end of his term, President Joe Biden said that “he believes that the Equal Rights Amendment has met the requirements of ratification and therefore is now part of the Constitution." The problem? Biden "declined to order the government to finalize the process by officially publishing it.” So, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Here's my favorite comment, from writer Elie Mystal: "Biden had FOUR YEARS to try to move the needle on this. Making this ERA statement now, with a foot literally out the door, and shifting the focus to a humble government functionary, is not courage and is not progress. It’s cowardice, from a party that has gotten all too used to it."

Update, 22 March 2025: Under the current misogynist regime (also racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and depraved), there is little hope for the ERA. As this piece in Axios  describes the current situation, “Weeks into Trump 2.0, Equal Rights Amendment advocates see a bleak political landscape.”

Update, 22 March 2026: In a new court case, Equal Means Equal v Trump, “plaintiffs demand a federal judge finally recognize [theEqual Rights Amendment] as part of the U.S. Constitution”:

In Equal Means Equal, plaintiff Jacqueline Fenore and two other women were turned away when attempting to register for the draft because they were female. EME is now suing on their behalf, arguing that under the ERA, “equality of rights shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” The plaintiffs say that the ERA became part of the Constitution when Virginia ratified the amendment in January 2020.

 I wish I could be more hopeful . . . 

Alice Paul and the Fight for Women's Suffrage

Alice Paul (born 11 January 1885)

Alice Paul, c. 1917

The American feminist and activist Alice Paul lived a long and full life--she died in 1977, aged ninety-two. Over the course of this long life, she succeeded in many of her political and civil rights goals, credited as one of the early twentieth-century strategists who finally achieved the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, in 1920, granting women in the United States the right to vote.

Paul continued her work on behalf of women even after the passage of the women's suffrage amendment, ensuring that women were included as a protected class in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

But she was unable to accomplish the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Along with Crystal Eastman, Paul first proposed the amendment in 1923 and presented it as the "Lucretia Mott Amendment" at the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention: 

Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The ERA was introduced into every session of Congress between 1923 and 1970. After decades of debate, discussion, study, revision, and clarification, the ERA was finally adopted in 1970 by the 92nd Congress. It was never ratified. It has been reintroduced in Congress every session since 1982, most recently, in the U. S. Senate on 7 May 2015, by New Jersey's Robert Menendez, and in the House on 14 May 2015, by New York's Carolyn Maloney.*

There are many online resources available for Alice Paul, and many excellent books. I like Mary Walton's A Woman's Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot.

You might also enjoy the HBO film, Iron Jawed Angels, which focuses on the last decade of the fight to gain the right to vote for women.

Alice Paul, second from left, 1920

This photo shows Alice Paul (second from left) with members of the National Women's Party, protesting the Republican Convention of 1920 with a banner quoting Susan B. Anthony.

*Update, January 2017: An Equal Rights Amendment was introduced into the 115th Congress shortly after it was convened in January. In the Senate, on 20 January 2017, Robert Menendez (D-NJ) once again introduced the amendment; in the House, on 24 January 2017, the bill was once again introduced by Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). In both houses, the resolution was sent to committee. Where, once again, it died.

Update, January 2019: The Equal Rights Amendment was again introduced into the 116th Congress. In January, "Three-State Strategy" legislation was proposed by Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) in the Senate and by lead sponsor Jackie Speier (D-CA) in the House. In March, "traditional" legislation was proposed by Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and by Carolyn Maloney (D-NY).

Update, January 2022: Nope. Introduced in the 117th Congress. Still not passed.

Update, 12 January 2024: Dead in the 118th Congress too. For more on this, click here. 

Updat, 17 January 2025: Just three days before the end of his term, President Joe Biden said that “he believes that the Equal Rights Amendment has met the requirements of ratification and therefore is now part of the Constitution." The problem? Biden "declined to order the government to finalize the process by officially publishing it.” So, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Here's my favorite comment, from writer Elie Mystal: "Biden had FOUR YEARS to try to move the needle on this. Making this ERA statement now, with a foot literally out the door, and shirting the focus to a humble government functionary, is not courage and is not progress. It’s cowardice, from a party that has gotten all too used to it." 

Update, 22 March 2025: Under the current misogynist regime (also racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and depraved), there is little hope for the ERA. As this piece in Axios describes the current situation, “Weeks into Trump 2.0, Equal Rights Amendment advocates see a bleak political landscape.”