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Frances M. Witherspoon

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Frances May Witherspoon (July 8, 1886 – December 16, 1973) was an American writer and activist, co-founder with Tracy Dickinson Mygatt of the War Resisters League, and executive secretary of the New York Bureau of Legal Advice, a forerunner of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Early life and education

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Frances May Witherspoon was born in 1886, in Meridian, Mississippi, the daughter of law professor and Congressman Samuel Andrew Witherspoon, and his wife, Susan E. May.[1] She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1909. After some years as a suffrage and labor organizer in Pennsylvania, she and Mygatt moved to New York City in 1913.[2]

Career and activism

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In New York City Witherspoon and Mygatt joined the Woman's Peace Party, and together edited their publication, Four Lights.[3][4] They also organized the Socialist Suffrage Brigade, and edited an issue of The Call about suffrage.[5]

During the first World War, Witherspoon worked with various peace organizations, and lobbied in Washington against U. S. involvement in the war.[6] She was a founding officer of the Anti-Enlistment League in 1915.[7] In 1917, she co-founded the New York Bureau of Legal Advice with attorney Charles Recht, to assist conscientious objectors, draft resisters, and war protesters.[8][9] She was anonymous author of a pamphlet, Who Are the Conscientious Objectors? published in 1919.[10]

Witherspoon and Mygatt continued with peace work after the war, as members of the Women's Peace Union, and as founders of the War Resisters League in 1923.[11] They were charter members of the Episcopal Pacifist Fellowship when it was founded in 1939. In 1961 they were recognized jointly with the WRL Peace Award.

Witherspoon and Mygatt co-wrote two Biblical novels, The Glorious Company (1928) and Armor of Light (1930), and a play about Vincent van Gogh, Stranger Upon Earth, among other literary collaborations.[12][13]

In her eighties, Frances Witherspoon organized a campaign among Bryn Mawr alumnae against the Vietnam War.[14]

Personal life and legacy

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Witherspoon lived and worked with Tracy D. Mygatt for over sixty years, in New York City, and later in Brewster, New York and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[15] The pair were active in the Episcopal Church.[16] They died within a month of each other, in late 1973, in Philadelphia; Witherspoon was 87 years old.[17] The couple's papers were donated to the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.[18]

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References

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  1. ^ "Death of Hon. Samuel A. Witherspoon," Proceedings in the House of Representatives (December 6, 1915): 24.
  2. ^ "Suffragettes Begin Campaign for Votes," Delaware County Daily Times (September 28, 1912): 2. via Newspapers.com Open access icon
  3. ^ Erika Kuhlman, "'Women's Ways in War': The Feminist Pacifism of the New York City Woman's Peace Party," Frontiers 18(1)(1997): 80-100.
  4. ^ Mark Van Wienen, "'Women's Ways in War': The Poetry and Politics of the Woman's Peace Party, 1915-1917," Modern Fiction Studies 38(3)(Fall 1992): 687-714.
  5. ^ Frances H. Early, A World Without War: How U. S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I (Syracuse University Press 1997): 15. ISBN 0815627645
  6. ^ Justus D. Doenecke, Nothing Less than War: A New History of America's Entry into World War I (University Press of Kentucky 2011): 296. ISBN 0813130026
  7. ^ Scott H. Bennett, Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Non-Violence in America, 1915-1963 (Syracuse University Press 2003): 11. ISBN 081563028X
  8. ^ Guide to the New York Bureau of Legal Advice Records, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.
  9. ^ Scott H. Bennett, Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Non-Violence in America, 1915-1963 (Syracuse University Press 2003): 34. ISBN 081563028X
  10. ^ Frances H. Early, A World Without War: How U. S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I (Syracuse University Press 1997): 219, note 35. ISBN 0815627645
  11. ^ "Frances Witherspoon, 87, of War Resisters League," New York Times (December 18, 1973): 44.
  12. ^ P. W. Wilson, "The Saints Step Out of their Stained-Glass Windows: Tracy Mygatt and Frances Witherspoon Employ Feminine Intuition to Humanize and Revitalize the Acts of the Apostles," New York Times (July 22, 1928): 51.
  13. ^ Alfred H. Barr, Vincent Van Gogh (Routledge 1967): 42. ISBN 0714620394
  14. ^ Bettina Aptheker, Tapestries of Life: Women's Work, Women's Consciousness, and the Meaning of Daily Experience (University of Massachusetts Press 1989): 101. ISBN 0870236598
  15. ^ James B. Lloyd, Lives of Mississippi Authors, 1817-1967 (University Press of Mississippi 1981): 481. ISBN 0878051392
  16. ^ Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (Anchor 2012). ISBN 140007858X
  17. ^ "Tracy Mygatt Dies; Led War Resisters," New York Times (November 24, 1973): 34.
  18. ^ Tracy D. Mygatt and Frances M. Witherspoon Papers, DG 089, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
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