Revolutions in the Machinery: Oregon Women and Citizenship in Sesquicentennial Perspective

Abstract

KIMBERLY JENSEN Revolutions in the Machinery OregonWomen and Citizenship inSesquicentennial Perspective HISTORIANS ENGAGE in a dynamic process of research, writing, and analysis that often leads us from one subject of study to new questions and freshfields of inquiry.As we commemorate the sesquicentennial ofOregon statehood in 2009,1 find myself in just such a transition as a historian of women. My previous research concerned U.S. women and the FirstWorld War, inparticular how groups ofwomen ? physicians, nurses, and women at-arms ? claimed a more complete female citizenship at a time when the final years of the national woman suffragemovement intersected with questions of service to the state during wartime and broader civic roles for women beyond voting.1 In the course ofmy research, I encountered Oregon physician and activist Esther Pohl Lovejoy. Her medical work in France in 1917and 1918and thehistories shewrote ofwomen physicians in the conflict became a vital part ofmy larger analysis. As I learned more about Lovejoy's rich history as an early Oregon medical school graduate and physician, a public health activist, a suffragist,a congressional candidate, and a key figure in international medical relief, I decided towrite her biography as the next step on my historian s journey. As part of this process, ithas been crucial forme to study Oregon women shistory as a context for Lovejoy's life and activism. Because Lovejoy was involved in claiming amore complete citi zenship in her work forwoman suffrage, through her service in appointed office as Portland City Health Officer from 1907 to 1909, and in her quest for elected office in 1920, questions ofwomen's citizenship are also central tomy current project. While seeking to understand Esther Lovejoy as an OHQ vol. no, no. 3 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society Before theachievement ofwoman suffrageinOregon in 1912,a fewwomen held appointed office,includingEstherPohl, Portland CityHealth Officer (at right),and Sara A. Evans, PortlandMarket Inspector, pictured hereat CityHall in 1907 (detail of larger photograph). Oregon woman and activist, Ihave tried to uncover and analyze thebroader history ofOregon women as citizens. Citizenship maybe defined as the set of rights and obligations thatmem bers of a community or state possess by law.The rules about citizenship are setby federal, state, and for some, tribal authorities. In theUnited States, as in other nations, citizenship has been gendered in theory and practice. As his torian Linda Kerber demonstrates, "from thebeginning American women's relationship to the state has been different in substantial and important respects from that ofmen." Citizenship has been embodied as male, from voting, office holding, and jury service to bearing arms to defend home and nation. In the early American Republic, white married women's legal Jensen, Revolutions in the Machinery 337 loyaltywas to their husbands, not to the state.As Kerber notes, the idea that women are connected to the state and to citizenship indirectly through their husbands and male relatives and not directly as individuals was a powerful one that continued aswomen began to claim and win individual citizenship rights in thenineteenth century and beyond, and it"lurks behind what many people take tobe the common sense of thematter inour own time."2Not all men were accorded the rights of citizenship. Early property qualifications forvoting meant economic statusmattered. Whiteness and manhood were also necessary for citizenship and naturalization into the twentieth century. Because citizenship may also be defined as "the broader political, legal, and social meanings that attach to one's place within the polity," gender, race, ethnicity, and gender identity all have been categories that actively privi lege some and deny others civic power and authority.3 Alice Kessler-Harris emphasizes another gendered aspect of civic identitywith what she terms "economic citizenship." In the United States, the "public commitment to themale-breadwinner family" produced a different set of rights and obli gations forwomen as economic citizens in theworkplace and civic realm.4 Women have been at the nexus of struggles to secure full citizenship. Many have fought to end what Gretchen Ritter termswomen's "border status" of civic identity, to claim complete civic rights and full adult membership and human rights in their communities, the state, and the nation.5 What follows are some reflections about Oregon women...