Writing

My writing credits:
Author, Designing a Campus for African-American Females: The National Training School for Women and Girls 1907 – 1964, Lambert Academic Publishing (2014). Copies may be ordered for $40 by contacting her here.

Author, “What’s in a Name? Couples, Think On It” in, On The Go: Sentence to Paragraph (1st Canadian Edition), Edit. Richard E. Bailey, McGraw-Hill Ryerson (2014).

Guest Contributor, the Telegraph Herald, Woodward Communications (1997-2010, 2014).
Contributor, the Dubuque Leader, (2011 to present).

Author, Five Walking Tours of Dubuque, Dubuque County Historical Society & the City of Dubuque (written 2007, published 2011).

Author, “Designing a Campus for African-American Females: The National Training School for Women and Girls 1907 – 1964 and the Making of a D.C. Neighborhood”, International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Science, Volume 5, Number 12 (August 2011).
Presenter, “Designing a Campus for African-American Females”, International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge (4 August 2010).

Presenter, “Brooks, Pratt, & the Romantic Picturesque at UVa”; Jefferson, Palladio, &the Fine Arts in America Symposium (21 November 2009).

Contributor, The Declaration, Charlottesville, Virginia (2007 – 2008).

Author, “Whose Last Name Should Married Couples Choose?” in, America Now: Short Readings from Recent Periodicals, (Sixth Edition); Edit. Robert Atwan; Bedford St. Martin’s (2005).

Columnist, The Minnesota Daily, (2 September 2003 – 28 April 2005); My column appeared bi-monthly in the largest student-run newspaper in the country with a circulation of 31,000. My columns were transmitted across the country by the U-wire system, two of my columns were reprinted in Dubuque’s Telegraph Herald and one was chosen for inclusion in two textbooks.

Communication and Volunteer Retention Intern, Girl Scout Council of Greater Minneapolis, 31 May – 29 July 2005; I put together volunteer e-newsletters, conducted a survey of 18-29 year old  volunteers, and put together a report on recommendations to help retain those volunteers.

My latest piece on Iowa’s Civil Rights History (which I’ve been researching and writing since 2011) is below. A selection from it was published in the Telegraph Herald in July 2014 for the anniversary of the Ralph decision. To contact me about consulting on your research or writing project click here.

Iowa’s Civil Rights History began even before Iowa became a state. Jordan J. Montgomery vs. Ralph, a man of color was decided 4 July 1839.  Ralph was born a slave in Virginia around 1795, under the name Rafe Nelson. In infancy, he was given the name of his owner, Ralph Montgomery. Both later moved to Kentucky, where Ralph was sold to Montgomery’s brother William, who in turn sold Ralph to his son, Jordan, in 1830. Two years later Jordan’s family and slaves moved to Marion County, Missouri. In 1834, Jordan made a written contract with Ralph for his freedom, at the price of $550 with an additional $50 payment for hire, and interest imposed starting 1 January 1835. Ralph traveled to Dubuque County with the hope of earning the money by mining lead, where he dug by Irishman Alexander Butterworth, who also was a partner in a grocery store, and was elected a trustee of the town council in 1838. That same year, Jordan with 3 partners took out a $4,000 loan from state bank of Missouri. When the money was due to be repaid in May 1839, Jordan sent agents (called “the Virginians” in records) to Dubuque that month since Ralph had yet to pay him. At some point Ralph married, and his sister Tilda donated $.25 to building of Dubuque Methodist Church (now St. Luke’s United Methodist Church).

Jordan’s Virginians swore an affidavit that Ralph was Jordan’s property and they were his agents, and a Justice of the Peace directed the sheriff to deliver Ralph to them. The Sheriff took the agents to Ralph’s Mineral lot, where the agents handcuffed him, put him in wagon, drove to Bellevue avoiding Dubuque, and confined him in a vessel bound for Missouri. Butterworth went to Thomas S. Wilson, District Court Judge resident in Dubuque, for a writ of habeas corpus, Latin for “you may have the body”, a legal action through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. Wilson issued the writ, and the sheriff went to Bellevue, retrieved Ralph, and returned to Dubuque. The Iowa News of Dubuque reported in June 1839 that Ralph appeared before Judge Wilson, who decided to transfer the case to the Supreme Court of Iowa Territory. They heard the case in Burlington, the territorial capitol at the time. The Justices reasoned the Articles of Compact in 1787 of the North West Ordinance, which stated “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territories” applied to Ralph.  Furthermore, Ralph came to Iowa before there was a civil government in the area at all, and so was not subject to the Blacks and Mullatoes Act of 1839. He was not a fugitive because he came to Iowa with Jordan’s permission and being in debt does not justify a return to slavery.

In Dubuque, 16 slaves belonging to 11 families were recorded in the census of 1840 and instances of slavery were reported in the state as late as 1852, but slavery was gradually phased out in Iowa except in southern Lee county, which was below the 1820 Missouri Compromise line. That is why to this day Lee County has two county courthouses while other counties only have one. Ralph’s case was not referenced directly in the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court Dred Scott decision that overturned the Missouri Compromise line, but in his dissent Justice Curtis used a line of reasoning that was used by the Iowa Supreme Court in declaring Ralph free. Ralph worked in Judge Wilson’s garden one day each spring in thanks until he died of small pox in July 1870, and was buried in Linwood Cemetery, aged about 75 years.

After statehood, in 1846, the first session of the Iowa General Assembly enacted that public schools “shall be open and free to all white persons in the district between the age of five and 21.” The Iowa Code of 1851 exempted “blacks and mulattos” from paying property taxes that went towards the support of the public schools on the assumption that the schools would be segregated.  In the 1857 Constitution, a state board of education was established, and Article 9 Section 12 stated, “The board of education shall provide for the education of all the youths of the State, through a system of common schools.”

The 7th Iowa General Assembly passed a bill in March 1858 dealing with the funding of the schools, which among other things established that the District Board of Directors “shall provide for the education of the colored youths in separate schools”. The Iowa Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional in December 1858 after a dispute between the Dubuque School Board and the City of Dubuque over how to spend school funds remaining from before the state board of education was authorized in the 1857 Constitution, District Township of the City of Dubuque v. The City of Dubuque, 7 Iowa 262. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled the March 1858 act unconstitutional because the power to provide a system of education was given by the 1857 constitution to the Board of Education. The Iowa Legislature could allocate or not allocate state funds related to education, but all other decisions were given to the Iowa Board of Education under the second constitution.

On 10 September 1867, Susan B. Clark tried to attend Grammar School No. 2 in the neighborhood of which she lived within the Muscatine school district. She was turned away on the basis that she is “of the Negro extraction and belongs to the colored race” and should attend the separate school for such children. Alexander Clark filed for a writ of mandamus on behalf of his daughter.  A writ of mandamus is an order from a superior court to any subordinate court, corporation or public authority to do or forbear from doing some specific act which that body is obliged under law to do or refrain from doing as part of their public duty.

The Muscatine School board argued that where the Iowa Legislature had left discretion to a board of directors, their actions couldn’t be controlled by mandamus, even if the discretion were unwisely exercised. The Clarks challenged the legal sufficiency of that claim, and the Muscatine District court ordered the School Board to enroll Susan at her neighborhood school. The School Board appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled that even though its previous case had dealt with funding and organization of the local School Boards, it had invalidated the entire General Assembly bill, which meant the part allowing for segregated schools had also been ruled unconstitutional. There had been no mention of discrimination in regards to color in any subsequent acts. The Board of Education in conjunction with the Iowa Legislature had passed an Act in 1860 establishing a system of education for all youths between the ages of 5 and 21 without mention of race and requiring everyone, regardless of race, to pay property taxes for the support for public schools. The Iowa Supreme Court concluded local school boards may exercise “a uniform discretion, operative upon all, as to the residence or qualification of children to entitle them to admission to each particular school, but they cannot deny a youth admission to any particular school on the basis of color, nationality, religion, or the like.”

Susan Clark’s name appeared on the list of Muscatine High School graduates in 1871. The first graduation of students of any race from a high school in Dubuque took place in 1870. During the school year of 1875-1876, the Dubuque Board denied the right of African American children to attend ward schools by claiming that the teacher at the African-American school was capable of primary instruction, but the Board did approve that any African American child completing the segregated primary school could attend Dubuque’s only public high school. The Board was taken to District Court by the parents of primary school children, but instructed its counsel not to offer any defense. All pupils withdrew from the African American primary school on February 14, 1877 and enrolled in their ward schools.

Susan’s brother, Alexander Clark, Jr., grew up to become the first African-American graduate of the University of Iowa Law School and at the age of 58, Alexander Clark Sr. became the second. President Benjamin Harrison appointed Clark Sr. U.S. Minister to Liberia, where he died in 1891. His appointment was one of the highest of an African-American by a U.S. President up to that point. Gov. Vilsack spoke of Alexander Clark Sr. in his 2003 inaugural address

The University of Iowa was founded in 1847 and has admitted women since 1855, making it the first state university to do so. It was followed by the University of Wisconsin and Kansas State University in 1863, the Universities of Utah and Minnesota in 1867, and Iowa State and Michigan State Universities in 1869.

Historically, a woman lost her legal existence upon marriage (known as coverture). A husband had legal ownership over his wife’s personal property and managerial rights over her real property. Children, considered “property” as well, remained in the husband’s possession after divorce or separation. The Iowa Territorial Legislative Assembly passed “An Act concerning the Rights of Married Women” in 1846. Thereafter, the Iowa Code of 1851 stated “The personal property of the wife does not vest at once in the husband…” and provided that if a husband abandoned his wife, the wife was entitled to custody of their children. The same year (1851), Iowa did away with racial barriers to marriage (more than 100 years before the U.S. Supreme Court would ban miscegenation statutes nationwide). In Cole v. Cole, decided in 1867, the Iowa Supreme Court directed that in the case of divorce the common law rule that a father was entitled to absolute custody of his children should not be followed and that rather the best interests of the child should be used to decide which parent a child should live with. Any remaining legal disabilities regarding married women were abolished by the Iowa code of 1873.

Iowa was also the first state in the nation to allow a woman to practice law, in 1869. Arabella Aurelia Babb, known as Belle, was born at Sperry Station, Des Moines County in August 1846. Belle moved with her parents and older brother, known as W.I., to California during the Gold Rush, returning to Mount Pleasant, Iowa, after the death of her father in a tunnel cave-in. Belle and W.I. attended Iowa Wesleyan University, both receiving their B.A.s in 1866.  W.I. then began an apprenticeship in the law office of H. & R. Ambler while Belle started teaching at Simpson College. A year later, Belle joined W.I. as an apprentice. Belle married John Mansfield, a faculty member of Iowa Wesleyan who was also a legal apprentice. Belle and John applied to the district court for admission to the bar on 15 June 1869. The two examiners appointed by Judge Francis Springer recommended both of them. The Iowa Code said that “any white male person” may be admitted to the bar, but Judge Springer ruled, “the affirmative declaration that male persons may be admitted is not a denial of the rights of females.” In 1870, the Iowa Legislature deleted the words “white male” from the code. That same year, Belle chaired the first Iowa woman-suffrage convention.

Iowa gained its first trained female physician when Dr. Maria W. Porter came to Davenport after graduating from the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia in 1859.

In 1873, the University of Iowa became the first public university to admit women to medical school. The first female graduate from the University of Iowa Law Department, was Mary B. Hickey. Jennie McGowen became the first woman to graduate from the University of Iowa medical school in 1884.

Iowa also evolved in areas other than education. In the early 1870’s, Emma Coger, who was 1/4 African-American, taught at a “colored” school in Quincy Illinois. Coger bought a ticket in Keokuk, Iowa, for a ride to Quincy on the S.S. Merril, a common carrier operated by the North West Union Packet Co. The North West Union Packet Co ran a transport lines for goods and people from Burlington, Iowa, south to Quincy, which was located across the Mississippi River from Missouri.

Once on board the Merril, Coger sent a chambermaid to purchase a dinner ticket for her. The maid brought her one with “colored girl” written on it, which would have required her to eat at a table on the guards of the boat rather than the dining room. Coger sent the ticket back and received a refund. She than asked a gentleman to buy an unrestricted dinner ticket for her, which he did. Coger seated herself at the ladies table in the dinning room. Officers of the boat asked her to leave the table and taker her meal on the guards or in the pantry. She refused and was forcibly removed.

Coger than brought an action for damages against North West in Lee County, where Keokuk is located. At a jury trial, North West was found liable for assault and battery. North West asked the judge to set aside the judgment and order new trial. The judge refused, and North West appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court in 1873, asking them to rule on whether the rights and privileges of persons transported by public carriers could be affected by race or color.

Coger argued she should be considered as Caucasian since that was ¾ of her make-up, but the Iowa Supreme Court did not find that relevant to their decision. The Iowa Supreme Court said that regardless of whether Coger was a woman of color, their ruling would be based upon “the absolute equality of all men”. They cited their previous opinion in Clark v. Muscatine School Board, which held that racial segregation of the public schools was unconstitutional – and the opening lines of the Iowa Constitution, “All men are, by nature, free and equal.” “Under the laws and constitutional amendments of the State and federal government a person of color is entitled to the same rights and privileges while traveling, as a white person is, and cannot be required by any rule or custom, based on distinctions of color or race, to accept other or different accommodations than those furnished to white persons.”

Lastly, North West tried to assert that the rights in questions are merely “social” and not “civil” rights subject to protection by the Iowa Constitution or the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Iowa Supreme Court did not consider the rights at issue in the case to be “social”. They said Coger’s “Rights of property were invaded and her right to demand services to which she was lawfully entitled were denied”. The Iowa Supreme Court upheld the trial’s court’s judgment. It would be 91 years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against racial discrimination in public accommodations.

The Iowa State Weekly Register published an interview with General Grant on Nov. 4, 1868, in which the General expressed himself as being particularly solicitous about the success of impartial suffrage in Iowa. He said he “hoped the people of Iowa, whose soldiers achieved such immortal renown in the field, would be the first State to carry impartial suffrage through unfalteringly. It had gone down in other States, but he trusted that Iowa, the bright Radical star, would proclaim by its action in November that the North is consistent with itself, and willing to voluntarily accept what its Congress had made a necessity in the South. The negro race by their devotion in the war, by their faithfulness when all others were faithless, had nobly earned the possession of their deprived rights, and surely should have it before the white rebels whom they helped to subdue.”

Much of Iowa’s support for the Union can be attributed to Samuel J. Kirkwood, its wartime governor. Of a total population of 675,000, about 116,000 men were subjected to military duty. Iowa contributed proportionately more men to Civil War military service than did any other state, north or south, sending more than 75,000 volunteers to the armed forces, over one-sixth of whom were in their graves before the South surrendered at Appomattox. Iowa also sent large supplies of food to the armies and the eastern cities.

In December 1863, a bill to support an amendment to abolish slavery throughout the entire United States was introduced by Representative James Mitchell Ashley (Republican, Ohio). This was soon followed by a similar proposal made by Representative James F. Wilson of Iowa. Sen. John B. Henderson, a Missouri Democrat, introduced a similar amendment in the Senate in January 1864, with Republican Charles Sumner of Massachusetts offering a somewhat different version the next month. What we now know as the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. Although the amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 38–6 in August 1864, the 93–65 vote it received in the House in June fell 13 votes shy of the required two-thirds majority. Ashley then switched his vote—in a maneuver mimicked by Kansas Republican senator Bob Dole after the 1995 Senate defeat of the Balanced Budget Amendment—to allow him room to reintroduce the amendment in the second session of the 38th Congress. It was adopted by the House on January 31, 1865 (events portrayed in the movie Lincoln, based upon the book Team of Rivals). It was the first of three reconstruction amendments adopted after the Civil War.

Iowa ratified the 13th Amendment on 15 January 1865 and it was adopted by 2/3 of the states as of December 6, 1865. The 14th Amendment, which provided a broad definition of citizenship that overruled Dred Scott v. Sandford; a Due Process Clause making most of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, an Equal Protection Clause requiring each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction, and a number of clauses dealing with the Confederacy and its officials, was ratified by Iowa on 16 March 1868.

In the general election of 1868, Iowa did as General Grant predicted and became the first state outside New England to grant African-American men the right to vote. Minnesota also made it legal for African-American men to vote in 1868. These victories in Iowa and Minnesota preceded the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The 15th Amendment, which prohibited each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” was ratified by Iowa on 3 February 1870.

James Falconer Wilson, October 19, 1828 – April 22, 1895, who was born in Ohio and moved to Fairfield, Iowa, in 1853, is not related to Judge in Ralph’s case. Wilson was aligned with the faction of his Party known at the time as the “Radical Republicans” for their support of civil rights. He objected to President Andrew Johnson’s attempts to veto the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Acts. He ultimately voted to impeach President Johnson and was a member of the prosecution in his impeachment trials in 1868. In 1882, the Iowa General Assembly elected Wilson to the U.S. Senate. His first initiative as a U.S. Senator was to propose an unsuccessful constitutional amendment to more explicitly authorize the federal government to adopt laws that protect civil rights from violations by private citizens, in order to nullify the Supreme Court’s ruling two months earlier in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883). The Court in those cases held that Congress lacked the constitutional authority under the enforcement provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals and organizations, rather than state and local governments.)

The 14th amendment to the US Constitution was ratified in July 1868, and was the first time the word “male” was inserted into the U.S. constitution. However, The 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in February 1870 and stated “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Suffragists began arguing that the 15th amendment not only gave voting rights to former male slaves, but to all women. Taylor County sent a petition to Congress the previous year supporting female suffrage. In October 1871, a signer of this petition, Keziah (Kizzie) Anderson of Taylor County, a 27-year-old teacher, went to the polls with her younger brother who was also voting for the first time. The election judges were William Anderson, Kizzie’s father, and Edwin Henshaw, a family friend, and they accepted and counted Kizzie’s ballot. Though the Iowa Legislature hired its first female clerk in 1870, efforts to amend the Iowa constitution to allow women’s suffrage statewide failed. In 1894, the Assembly passed an act allowing women to vote regarding city, incorporated town, and school board bond measures. This limited suffrage was later extended to allow women to vote for presidential electors.

The 1884 Iowa Civil Rights Act (ICRA) outlawed discrimination by businesses on the basis of race and passed both the Iowa House and Senate without a dissenting vote. The 1884 ICRA made discrimination a criminal misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $100 fine, which required a grand jury indictment to proceed to trial. The 1884 ICRA’s criminal sanctions were meant to convey how seriously the legislature viewed the issue, but unfortunately the grand-jury indictment was a high bar to reach and few cases made it to prosecution.

In 1878, John W. “Bud” Fowler became the first known professional black player on an integrated team when he played in a Lynn (IA) exhibition game. Bud Fowler played more seasons and more games in Organized Baseball – that is, the major leagues and affiliated minor leagues – than any African American until Jackie Robinson played his 11th season in 1956. The earliest known newspaper identification of Fowler as a player is in April 1878 when he pitched for a team in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Later that year, he pitched a game for the Lynn Live Oaks against Boston of the National League and the Worcester club, as well as the game in Iowa. Over the years he played teams in New England, Canada, Ohio, Minnesota, and Indiana. Keokuk, Iowa had not had a professional baseball team since 1875. However, in 1885 a Keokuk businessman, R. W. “Nick” Curtis, became the main individual behind starting a new team as well as the man who decided to hire Bud Fowler. Johnny Peters, the manager of the Stillwater, Minnesota team, helped Fowler get connected with the new team in Keokuk.

Fowler became the most popular player on the Keokuk team. The Western League that Keokuk played in eventually folded that season due to financial reasons and Fowler ended up playing on teams in Colorado, Kansas and Binghamton, New York until racial tensions arose and his teammates would not play with him any longer. In 1871, minor League Baseball began banning integrated teams, and in 1888-1889 the majors – the International League, the American Association and the National League – began erecting a color barrier that stood for nearly 60 years. Altogether, Bud Fowler played 10 seasons of professional baseball, from 1878 to 1888. From 1894-1904 Fowler played and/or managed teams in Michigan, New York, and Kansas that were part of the African-American professional baseball clubs.

The University of Iowa law school was one of the first to admit African Americans and the Iowa Bar Association admitted African Americans, long before the American Bar Association. Gertrude E. Rush, who studied at Des Moines, Drake, and LaSalle universities, as well as under her attorney-husband James B. Rush, was admitted to the Iowa Bar in 1918 as the state’s first African-American female lawyer. The National Bar Association, the nation’s oldest and largest group for African-American attorneys, was formed in Des Moines in 1925.

Wyoming and Utah were the first states to given women full suffrage. Partial suffrage for women in Iowa and many other states continued until the U.S. constitution was amended in 1920 to give all U.S. women the right to vote in all elections. The U.S. Congress approved the amendment in May 1919. On 2 July, Iowa became the 10th state to ratify the amendment, in a special session lasting just one hour and forty minutes, the shortest session in Iowa history. On 27 August 1920, Mrs. Jen Thuesen of Grundy County became the first woman in Iowa to vote under the 19th Amendment. The Iowa Supreme Court was one of the first courts to hold that the 19th Amendment, by allowing women to vote, also made them eligible to serve on juries in State v. Walker (1921).

The Legislature amended the Iowa Civil Rights Act in 1923 to lower sanctions in an attempt to get more cases over the indictment hurtle, but unlike the Coger decision on public accommodation, courts chose to narrowly apply the ICRA, allowing de-facto discrimination to continue. Because the public accommodations provision specifically enumerated types of facilities, the court construed that it necessarily meant to exclude from its operation those facilities not so listed. Racial discrimination at public businesses was not deemed completely illegal until 1949, when the court ruled in State of Iowa v. Katz that businesses had to serve customers regardless of race. The case began when Edna Griffin was denied service at a Des Moines drugstore. The State subsequently (successfully) brought criminal charges under the ICRA. Full racial civil rights were re-codified under the Iowa Civil Rights Act of 1965, which established the Iowa Civil Rights Commission.

In Military history, The Fort Des Moines Provisional Army Officer Training School was where African Americans were trained to be officers for the U.S. Army during World War I. The grounds of Fort Des Moines were used for U.S. Army training beginning in 1901, and the African-American 25th Infantry Regiment began training there in 1903. Although three African-American officers had previously graduated West Point, the First World War presented the initial opportunity for African-Americans soldiers as a group to become commissioned officers in the United States Army.

Of the 1,000 college graduates and faculty, and 250 non-commissioned officers, 639 graduated as captains or lieutenants from Fort Des Moines in October 1917. Fort Des Moines also contained a training camp for African-American medical personnel.

After completing basic training at sites across the nation, including Camp Dodge, Iowa, they went on to lead the 92nd Division against Imperial Germany on the bloody battlefields of France in 1918. Many of those who survived combat returned to America to become leaders in the battle for racial equality and their sacrifices launched the integrated officer corps of today serving in all of America’s Armed Forces.

Iowa had twelve graduate airmen, including Martin from Dubuque, attend the first training facility for black combat pilots at Moton Field in Tuskegee, Alabama from during World War II. 450 saw combat including 200 escort missions without losing a bomber to enemy fighter planes. Moton Field at Tuskegee was built by prominent African-American engineer Archie Alexander who was a native of Ottumwa.

During the Second World War, Fort Des Moines hosted the formation of the first Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), later renamed the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), training 72,000 troops and commissioning the first female officers for non-combat duty between 1942-1945. Fort Des Moines produced 118 African-American female officers and 3,656 enlisted women by war’s end, representing 4% of all WAC troops. The success of the WACs freed 250,000 male soldiers for combat duty in Europe and the South Pacific.

1951 – Iowa only state during McCarthyism to defeat a bill imposing a teacher loyalty oath.

1969 – Tinker v. Des Moines

John F. Tinker, 15, Christopher Eckhardt 16, and Mary Beth Tinker, 13, attended a meeting of students and adults at the Eckhardt home on December 1965, where they planed to publicize their objections to hostilities in Vietnam and support the Christmas Truce called for by Senator Robert F. Kennedy by wearing black armbands during the holiday season and fasting on 16 December and New Year’s Eve

In all, the principals of Des Moines schools suspended eight students for wearing the armbands. The ACLU agreed to help the Tinker family ask for an injunction restraining the school officials and board members from disciplining the petitioners and seeking nominal damages

The District Court dismissed the complaint and the Court of Appeals for 8th circuit considered case en banc, was equally divided, which affirmed the District’s Court decision without opinion. It was appealed to the U.S. the Supreme Court on weather the actions of the school authorities violated the students 1st Amendment. The Supreme Court said “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” T his case involves “pure speech” which is entitled to comprehensive protection under the 1st Amendment. A student has the right to express his opinion on the school grounds as long as the expression does not materially and substantially interfere with the operation of the school.  These students did not involve themselves in disruptive conduct.  The school officials punished them just because their expression caused mere discomfort and unpleasantness. Continuing with more recent history,

1970 – University of Iowa one of the first colleges in the U.S. to found a gay and lesbian student association. The University of Iowa was one of the first colleges to add sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy.

1976 – ISC held that the state’s sodomy law, as applied to the private, consensual conduct of same sex couples violated the U.S. Constitution. (State v. Pilcher) .The state’s law criminalizing same-sex sexual activity was repealed in June of that, 27 years before Lawrence v. Texas, where the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision.

1998 – Iowa BILL OF RIGHTS., Rights of persons. SECTION 1 amended to read “All men and women are, by nature, free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights–among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness.” I wrote about this Equal rights amendment in high school.

Iowa has provided benefits to same-sex partners of state employees since 2003.

2007 – Iowa outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. That same year,  Iowa’s hate crime law was extended to cover hate crimes based on sexual orientation (but not gender identity) and anti-bullying law was passed to crate a safe K-12 school climate. ICRC also began a VISTA project, the only one in the country dedicated to reducing poverty through elimination of discrimination, education, training, outreach, and capacity building of local and state agencies. Iowa also received HUD grants to create an aggressive housing testing program, create a civil rights clinic at Drake Law School, and partner with the University of Iowa law school on research and creation of a manual on testing.

2007-2010 Diversity Council – A proactive state government advisory group issued recommendation to the Culver administration regarding diversity in state government. Implementation of these recommendations ended when Culver was not re-elected.

2008 – Joint adoptions by same-sex parents ruled legal by the Iowa Supreme Court. Iowa law allows individuals and married couples, regardless of sexual orientation, to adopt. That same year, the statute of limitations for filling an Iowa Civil Rights Complaint was extended from 180 to 300 days and expanded for minors and people with disability.

April 3, 2009 – Varnum v. Brien, 876-878, describing Iowa courts’ historic commitment to progressive equality as “Background Principles” on Equal Protection

2009- Iowa second state in the nation to pass a state version of the Lily Ledbetter law, but Iowa goes further in include all stakeholder groups.

2009-2010 Dependent Adult Taskforce – legislation enacted to provide for greater protections for dependent adults and prevent future Atalissa’ from ever occurring again.

2009-2010 Strengthening the rights of working Iowa – Clarification of independent contractor law, strengthening unemployment compensation fund and implementation of project labor agreements.

Information in this memorandum comes from:

To Go Free: A Treasury of Iowa’s Legal Heritage by Richard, Lord Acton and Patricia Nassif Acton. The book’s title comes from the final line of the Ralph decision:

“It is therefore ordered and adjudged that he (Ralph) be discharged from further duress and restraint, and that he go hence.”

Jordan J. Montgomery vs. Ralph, a man of color (4 July 1839) a.k.a. In the Matter of Ralph (a colored Man) on Habeas Corpus, 1 Iowa 1 (reported in 1 Morris 1, 1839).

Clark v. Muscatine School Board of Directors (decided by the Iowa Supreme Court on 14 June 1868); reported as 24 Iowa 266 (1868).

Dubuque Community School District History in Encyclopedia Dubuque, http://www.encyclopediadubuque.org/index.php?title=DUBUQUE_COMMUNITY_SCHOOL_DISTRICT

Married Women’s Property Rights: Changing Views and Challenges; Primary Source Lessons, ©1996-2011, http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/lesson17.html

Arabella Babb Mansfield (1846-1911) by Aleta Wallach, 2 Womens Rts L. Rep 3 1974-1975, which in turned relied on Haselmayer, Belle A. Mansfield, 55 Women Lawyers Journal 46 (Spring 1969) and Thomas, Arabella Mansfield, Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary 492-93 (1971)

Lousie A. Noun, Strong-Minded Women: The Emergence of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in Iowa, p.175, 222, 231, 241, 259-61, Iowa State University Press (1969), which in turn cited “First Woman Lawyer from Mt. Pleasant,” the Iowan, summer issue 1967, and “Honor First Woman Lawyer in U.S., an Iowa,”, Des Moines Register, April 27, 1969.

African American Registry, Gertrude E. Rush, http://aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/gertrude-rush-first-black-female-lawyer

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/99999999/NEWS08/50113019/Ten-most-influential-black-Iowans

Coger v. The North West. Union Packet Co., 37 Iowa 145, decided by the Iowa Supreme Court on Friday 19 September 1873, reported as 37 Iowa 146 (1873).

The Iowa Civil Rights Commission, Iowa.org; and African-Americans in Iowa, 1838–2005, IPTV.org).

To view the interview with General Grant via the Cedar Rapids library website, go to http://crpubliclibrary.newspaperarchive.com/PdfViewer.aspx?img=75592791&src=browse.

For more information on the Fort Des Moines Museum, call 515-282-8060 or visit www.fortdesmoines.org. The Museum is located at 75 E. Army Post Road in Des Moines and is open regularly Monday-Saturday, 10 AM-4 PM.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/firsts/first8.shtml

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