Marjory Stoneman Douglas--Hooray!

Marjory Stoneman at Wellesley College, 1912

Let's honor her--not the shooting on Feb. 14, not the high school named for her.

Remember Marjory Stoneman Douglas :

• born 1890 in Minnesota
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• died 1998 - 108 years old
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• fighter for women's suffrage
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• age 30 when US women got the right to vote
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• supporter of Equal Rights Amendment
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• Quaker family ties to movement for abolition of slavery
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• graduate of Wellesley College, 1912
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• served with American Red Cross in WWI
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• journalist for The Miami Herald - Asst. Editor in the 1920s 
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• well-known in S. Florida as freelance writer and short story writer
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• author of The Everglades: River of Grass - 1947
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• at age 79, asked to help preserve the Everglades, not drain and build on it
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• awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993 by Pres. Bill Clinton
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• ACLU member
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• supporter of migrant farm workers in Florida

Read this fascinating account of her life in Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjory_Stoneman_Douglas#Early_life

Among other things, it describes her mother's mental health crises and death from breast cancer while Marjory was in college.  In 1915 she went to live with her father. Wikipedia says:  Her father, Frank Stoneman, was the first publisher of the paper that later became The Miami Herald.

A nugget from the Wikipedia bio:
She wrote a ballad in the 1920s lamenting the death of a 22-year-old vagrant who was beaten to death in a labor camp, titled "Martin Tabert of North Dakota is Walking Florida Now". It was printed in The Miami Herald, and read aloud during a session of the Florida Legislature, which passed a law banning convict leasing, in large part due to her writing.^[23] "I think that's the single most important thing I was ever able to accomplish as a result of something I've written", she wrote in her autobiography.^[30]

See her autobiography, published when she was 97 years old:

• Marjory Stoneman Douglas: Voice of the River. with John Rothchild. Pineapple Press, Inc. 1987.

Biographical sketch in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/03/magazine/the-lives-they-lived-marjory-stoneman-douglas-don-t-mess-with-her-wetlands.html