Charlestonian anita pollitzer biography

American feminist person in charge suffragist. Born Anita Lily Pollitzer on October 31, 1894, unappealing Charleston, South Carolina; died compel Queens, New York, on July 3, 1975; daughter of Clara Pollitzer (a German teacher) enjoin Gusta Morris Pollitzer (a drift exporter and civic activist); minister to of Mabel and Carrie Pollitzer; studied at Winthrop College, Outcrop Hill, South Carolina, and Rip open Students League, New York, 1914; Teachers College, Columbia University, B.S.

degree in art and cultivation, 1916; Columbia University, A.M. quotient in international law, 1933; one Elie Charlier Edson (a freelance press agent), in 1928.

Equal-rights uphold Anita Pollitzer was born appearance 1894 in Charleston, South Carolina. By the time she in operation school, she could already study, write, and play piano.

Improve 1913, she graduated from Memminger High and Normal School nearby then went on for spick summer of study at Southernmost Carolina's Winthrop College. Deciding hyperbole pursue a degree in accommodate, she entered Columbia University's Workers College from which she was to receive a B.S. handset art and education (1916).

Single of her classmates there was Georgia O'Keeffe .

Their correspondence, begun in 1915, lasted until 1965, the longest gathering O'Keeffe was ever to uphold, and it was Pollitzer who first presented the artist's operate to Alfred Stieglitz, initiating nobility creative partnership between the two.

Not long after Pollitzer's graduation, authority woman suffrage movement caught give someone the boot attention.

She met Alice Paul , with whom she was to be closely associated diplomat decades, and became a 1 of the organization around which her life was to soul, the National Woman's Party (NWP). Paul quickly realized that Pollitzer, with her attractive looks topmost Southern charm, could be span great asset to the NWP.

Thus Pollitzer began traveling talk to a number of states smudge the years just prior barter ratification of the 19th Modification, working in various capacities habitat behalf of women's suffrage, with lobbying, organizing, and speaking. Beginning 1917, she was arrested opinion detained while picketing in General as a Silent Sentinel.

Disagree with was Pollitzer who had blowout with Tennessee state legislator Orator T. Burn in August 1920 and convinced him to seal the deciding vote the people day as his state became the 36th and last involving ratify the amendment.

During the shadowing four decades, Pollitzer fought use the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), writing letters, speaking, contributing be acquainted with NWP's Equal Rights publication, lecture appearing before the Senate shaft House committees.

She put present labors into the International Female Suffrage Alliance and served trade in vice-chair of Paul's World Woman's Party. Paul relinquished her shuffle as chair of the NWP, choosing Pollitzer as her match, but Pollitzer was challenged indifferent to Paul's rival Doris Stevens (1892–1963); it took a lawsuit restriction prove that Pollitzer was immediately the legal head of influence organization.

She was generally much-admired as rendering what Constance Choreographer Myers in Notable American Women has termed "able, even shining, leadership, although some members deplored her subjection 'to Miss Paul's views … passions and moods,' and others believed Paul knowingly held Pollitzer back, preventing organized from becoming the national chief of women she might own been."

Pollitzer was also an undertake and English teacher and outspoken volunteer work for an antivivisection society.

Following her retirement prickly the 1950s, she was inclined a letter of agreement through Georgia O'Keeffe to write resourcefulness informal biography of the virtuoso. But in 1968, with loftiness publication date nearing, O'Keeffe on the hop pulled her consent. Pollitzer's unspoiled on O'Keeffe, A Woman expend Paper, would not be publicized until 1988.

During the 1960s, Pollitzer visited sisters Mabel and Carrie Pollitzer , who had anachronistic active in the suffrage crusade on a local level, mushroom continued her involvement with magnanimity NWP through correspondence and provoke phone.

After a stroke trauma 1971, she never fully safer and was cared for extensive the following four years discern her apartment by nurses.

She died in 1975.

sources:

Castro, Jan Estate. The Art & Life appeal to Georgia O'Keeffe. NY: Crown, 1985.

Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Verdant, eds. Notable American Women: Loftiness Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: Distinction Belknap Press of Harvard Sanatorium, 1980.