Frances Willard

Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard (September 28, 1839 – February 17, 1898) was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist.

Quotes

• If I were black and young, no steamer could revolve its wheels fast enough to convey me to the dark continent. I should go where my color was the correct thing, and leave these pale faces to work out their own destiny.
  • October 1890 interview "The Race Problem: Frances Willard on the Political Puzzle of the South", per 2015 book Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism, and History

• A girl of seven or ten years old is held to be the equal partner in a crime where another and a stronger is the principal; because she is in so many ways hampered and harmed by laws and customs pertaining to the past, we reach out hands of help especially to her that she may overtake the swift-marching procession of progress, for its sake that it may not slacken its speed on her account as much as for hers that she be not left behind.
  I brought to the last Council our petition to Congress for the protection of women, which was responded to by raising the age of consent from .......... to sixteen years.
  • February 1891