Matilda Joslyn Gage
2002
Suffragist · Native American Rights Activist
Matilda Joslyn Gage was a pioneering freethinker, author, and activist during a crucial time in America’s history. She is cited in multiple works as “the woman who was ahead of the women who were ahead of their time,” as she fought tirelessly for women’s rights, abolition, and Native American rights.
Gage was born into a progressive family in the 1800s - her mother was a historian, and her family was abolitionist. She was taught to believe that all human beings are people, and all people have rights. Her childhood home was even a station in the Underground Railroad.
As a young woman, Gage was intent on becoming a doctor. She studied science and medicine with her father after school each day, preparing for college and a life of helping the injured. However, due to her gender, she was denied entrance into medical school. With her dreams crushed, she turned to marriage, settling down with her husband in a small town. They had five children. But her fiery passion for helping others did not disappear simply because society placed her in the role of wife and mother.
“The women of today are the thoughts of their mothers and grandmothers, embodied and made alive. They are active, capable, determined and bound to win. They have one-thousand generations back of them... Millions of women dead and gone are speaking through us today.”
As a wife and mother, Gage continued her activism, including helping escaped slaves. She used her time at home with her children to write for newspapers and author books. She used critical thinking and extensive research to challenge male supremacy in society, naming Catherine Littlefield Greene as the true inventor of the cotton gin and criticizing patriarchal structures within religion.
“Do not allow the Church or State to govern your thought or dictate your judgment.”
As time went on, Gage supported women's rights in very public ways. While she was the President of the National Woman Suffrage Association, she pushed for a woman’s right to divorce. She was also a fierce advocate for reproductive autonomy, telling women they had a right to decide what happened to their own bodies. And, at the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty, Gage protested, stating that it was absolute hypocrisy to say “liberty for all” when women did not have basic liberties.
As she researched, Gage became increasingly convinced that America should learn from the gender equality shown in Native American societies. She began advocating for Native American rights, vocally criticizing the federal government’s treatment of Native Americans. In 1893, Gage was honorarily adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation, receiving the name Karonienhawi, meaning “she who holds the sky.”
Matilda Joslyn Gage was a radical feminist and a pioneer for social justice. Her written works, her speeches, and her activism continue to inspire freethinkers to this day.
“When all humanity works for humanity, when the life-business of men and women becomes one united partnership in all matters which concern each, when neither sex, race, color, or previous condition is held as a bar to the exercise of human faculties, the world will hold in its hands the promise of a millennium which will work out its own fulfillment.”