Women were continuing as they often to do to be based in the church. ... WCTU is the high tide of the emergence of a popular woman's consciousness. ... The WCTU was organized by upper and middle classes women. ... Bordin put it, WCTU was to be their "baptism of power and liberty." ... The existing church network through missionary societies that could be easier converted to temperance activity. ...
Unlike many, she grew up in a middle class neighborhood in a nicer area of town. ... This gave her an advantage to learn more at an early age thus enhancing her rather radical political views. After high school, she went on to become an honors student at Brandeis University in Massachusetts from 1961-1965. Over a thousand miles away, the Birmingham Church bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church had a powerful impact on her because she knew the 4 girls that were killed in the bombing. ... She set out to do what few had done before her and did so with power and force rarely ever seen from A...
In lower- and middle-class societies, if a woman happened to work after marriage, her earnings also belonged to her husband. ... The southern ideal held that men had public voices while a lady's influence should extend no further than home and church. The social, economic and political changes that shook the South at the end of the nineteenth century greatly influenced the lives of its women. ... From a young age, Edna lived a "dual life -that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions" (Chopin 277). ...
