Along the Blue Ridge portion of the Bikecentennial \u201876 route, visitors find themselves in the small town of Buchanan, the hometown of suffragist Mary Johnston. Born in 1870, Johnston grew up in Buchanan, and then her family moved around the east coast of the United States. She became famous in the early twentieth century for her fictional novels and short stories. Once she had established her reputation as a novelist, she began to write essays, letters, and speeches advocating for women\u2019s right to vote. As a white southern upper class woman, Mary Johnston lived a complex life that highlighted the connections between race, class, and gender in the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Johnston\u2019s life thus provides a lens for understanding the broader issues that shaped the lives of Americans in the important transitional period in US history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Welcome to episode 18 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the town of Buchanan, located just over 300 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 250 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound rides enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. I am your host, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte. This episode was researched and written by Kaitlynn Harless, a graduate student at Virginia Tech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On November 21, 1870, Mary Johnston was born in Buchanan, Virginia, to John and Elizabeth Johnston. Johnston\u2019s father was a veteran of the US Civil War, having fought on the side of the Confederacy. After the war, her father worked as a businessman, eventually rising to the position of President of the Georgia Pacific Railroad. Because of the family\u2019s inherited wealth as well as her father\u2019s success in business, Johnston grew up in an upper-class family with all the comforts and security of the white elite in late nineteenth century America. From an early age, Johnston read enthusiastically and widely about Virginia\u2019s history. She was particularly interested in the first century of this history, as the evolution of colonial Virginia parallel the foundations of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Johnston was a teenager, her family moved to Birmingham, Alabama where her father continued his management work in the railway industry. Johnston attended school at a private academy in Atlanta, Georgia, but returned to Birmingham at the death of her mother. At just seventeen years old, Mary Johnston became the primary caregiver for her younger siblings and father. A few years later, the family moved to New York City where Johnston began her career in writing novels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a literary writer, Johnston often used the setting of colonial Virginia for her fictional stories of action, adventure, and romance. Her first book, Prisoners of Hope, received praise for the storytelling and colonial era. Her second book, To Have and To Hold, became a bestseller in 1900. Hundreds of thousands of copies sold across the U.S. The publication of To Have and to Hold as a serial in Atlantic Monthly helped reach a larger audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Johnston\u2019s success was confirmed when New York Times journalist Annie Kendrick Walker interviewed her for a profile piece to describe her life and ideas. Referring to the setting for her novels, Walker wrote, \u201cShe seems to have literally absorbed that period of Virginia\u2019s history \u2026 the critics have been unable to detect any fault in her minute descriptions of the early Colonial customs and laws.\u201d Walker noted how Johnston acted and looked like an aristocratic southern woman, with her petite stature, wavy brown hair, and fashionable outfit. Her article romanticized the fashion and homes of the wealthy southern families. Despite these details, Walker noted the difficulty in interviewing Johnston, who kept much of her personal life a secret and refused to answer many questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although also set in colonial Virginia, Johnston\u2019s second novel, To Have and To Hold, introduced the theme of women\u2019s oppression. While Johnston had not yet joined the political movement for women\u2019s right to vote, her literary work increasingly explored the theme of women\u2019s inequality in society. Even thought her novels were set in colonial Virginia, her social analysis remained relevant to America in the early twentieth century. In the years to come, Johnston became increasingly active and vocal in her support for reform movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the success of her two books, Mary Johnston and her family moved back to their home state of Virginia, where she took up residence in the capital city of Richmond. After her father passed away, Johnston became the sole support for her younger siblings. Her income from popular novels was sufficient for her family to continue their elite lifestyle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1911, Johnston published another work of fiction, The Long Roll, which directly engaged current debates about the nature of white southern culture. Set during the Civil War, much of the book focused on the horrors of war. Johnston used stories told by her father about his military service to illustrate these themes. The book criticized the war, and has even been described in recent scholarship as a pacifist account of this war that remained within living memory of some older Americans. Confederate General Thomas \u201cStonewall\u201d Jackson, was a central character in this book. Johnston wrote vividly about Jackson\u2019s flaws, habits, and attitude. This fictional work tarnished the image of \u201cStonewall\u201d as a brave and heroic figure in the southern collective memory. Many readers disapproved of her portrayal of Jackson and the south. \u201cStonewall\u201d Jackson\u2019s wife, Anna Jackson, wrote an article denouncing Johnston\u2019s book for its portrayal of her deceased husband. Jackson wrote, \u201cFiction is more read by the young than history, and it would be a great injustice to Gen. Jackson that such a delineation of his character and personality should go down to future generations.\u201d Whereas Johnston\u2019s first two books had been praised for their historical accuracy, this new book provoked critics to denounce her depiction of a more recent, and controversial, era of American history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of the criticism directed at Johnston may have arisen from her vocal advocacy for women\u2019s suffrage. Two years prior to publishing The Long Roll, in November 1909, Johnston wrote an article for Richmond\u2019s newspaper, the Times Dispatch, in which she declared that she had signed a petition for Congress to consider women\u2019s suffrage. She wrote, \u201cI am a woman working for my living. I pay taxes, I own property \u2026 I have a stake in my city, in my state, in the United States.\u201d She identified herself as an active citizen, and she demanded that women should have a role in voting and politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time as she endorsed women\u2019s suffrage, Johnston called attention to other social inequalities that demand attention: the elimination of tuberculosis, the preservation of forests, the need for better health care, and other steps to improve conditions for future generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following the publication of this article in the Times Dispatch, Mary Johnston and other prominent women gathered in her parlor to discuss how to advance their shared political commitments. After a review of possible options, the women decided to establish the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia. The formation of this organization in the parlor of Johnston\u2019s home illustrated a key theme in the history of women\u2019s suffrage, as elite women used their social connections and private space to organize and create momentum for social change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a founding member of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, Johnston collaborated with Lyon Gardiner Tyler, who was the president of the College of William and Mary and the son of former President John Tyler. Lyon Gardiner Tyler wrote letters and articles in support of the Equal Suffrage League in Richmond newspapers. In 1910, Tyler visited Johnston\u2019s home, where he spoke in favor of suffrage, declaring: \u201cWomen \u2026 have the right to life and the right to protection of their interests and property, and suffrage knows no sex.\u201d Another speaker at the same meeting, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, argued against anti-suffragist rhetoric, pointing out that voting is \u201cladylike,\u201d thus challenging those who claimed that voting would disrupt women\u2019s roles in society and cause them to act like men. Shaw also asked rhetorically: \u201cWhat difference does it make if you are ruled by one man called a king, or by a thousand men called voters?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Johnston sought to mobilize other prominent southern writers to support women\u2019s suffrage, but with limited success. One of these authors was Thomas Nelson Page, whose fiction heavily influenced the Lost Cause ideology as well as the 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation, which depicted the Ku Klux Klan as a positive force in the antebellum south, and the Lost Cause. Because of Page\u2019s fame and influence through Virginia and the U.S., Johnston asked him to support the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia. Page wrote back: \u201cI wish you would let woman-suffrage alone with all the self-chaining to benches, etc. and chain yourself to that work which has given you your fame and Virginia so wonderful an example of intellectual and imaginative womanhood \u2026 What care you for what these other women are scabbling for? Let others write her ballot-extension arguments and even her laws \u2013 and you write her Romances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Page insulted the suffragists and Johnston because of their activism. Page diminished Johnston\u2019s work by emphasizing the romantic themes in her depiction of colonial Virginia, thus ignoring the themes of social inequality and women\u2019s oppression easily found in her fiction. Page threatened that if Johnston continued to openly support the suffragist movement, he would no longer respect her and her work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mary Johnston ignored Page\u2019s warning. She published many more articles in Virginian and national newspapers, spoke at suffragist rallies across the state, and worked with men\u2019s trade unions to promote suffrage to working-class men. In the Atlantic, she wrote, \u201cThe Woman Movement is not \u2018funny.\u2019 In all the darting motion of this dynamic age it is most significant, most vital, most important.\u201d Throughout her lengthy essay, she provided multiple arguments for women\u2019s right to vote. Drawing on the same themes as her fictional work, she used colonial and Civil War histories to strengthen her argument for women\u2019s contributions to society. SAlong with publishing her essays, Johnston was an editor for the Woman\u2019s Journal, a prominent suffragist journal published in Boston, Massachusetts. This position elevated her role in the suffrage movement to a national level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet Johnston\u2019s focus remained on politics in Virginia. Along with other members of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, she traveled extensively to make speeches to local communities. In Tazewell, located in southwestern Virginia, Johnston spoke to a crowd that included opponents as well as supporters of women\u2019s suffrage. Johnston spoke of the long history of women\u2019s oppression in the U.S. She declared that women had earned the right to vote through their positive contributions to local, state, and federal governments. At the Virginia State Fair, Johnston and other suffragists set up a booth to share literature and speak to those attending. In Richmon, Johnston and other suffragists worked with the Virginia Federation of Labor to build support for women\u2019s suffrage as well as the right to organize workers and craftsmen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Johnston\u2019s political trajectory eventually brought her to support the principles of socialism. She wrote about social inequalities in her literature and essays, and eventually reflected in her journal: \u201cI will sooner or later find myself identified with the socialist movement.\u201d Even as she used her elite position and social connections to advance the cause of women\u2019s suffrage, Johnston\u2019s own beliefs, writing, and speeches increasingly defied the archetype of the southern lady.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps most importantly, Johnston argued for universal suffrage for Black and white women. She criticized leading white women suffragists who argued that Black women did not deserve the right to vote. She explained that women\u2019s liberation and Black liberation were intertwined with one another. When other southern white women argued against universal suffrage, Johnston cautioned that future generations would question those who \u201chad betrayed\u201d the interests of African American women and \u201cexcluded them from freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the suffrage movement ended with the passage of the 19th amendment in 1919, Johnston continued to advocate for the rights of African Americans through her literary work. IN 1924, Johnston published The Slave Ship, a novel examining the Transatlantic slave trade from the perspective of a white captain. While calling attention to an important dimension of the history of slavery, the novel has recently been criticized for understating the full extent of the horror inflicted on captured slaves during these voyages. The short story \u201cNemesis,\u201d published in 1923, described the lynching of an African American man in a small southern town. Walter White, assistant secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) wrote to Johnston with the statement that \u201che had never \u201cread any story on this great national disgrace of ours which moved me as yours did.\u201d Johnston\u2019s activism for universal suffrage and anti-lynching set her apart from many other southern white women who supported suffrage but resisted changes to address structural racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Johnston returned to more conventional historical themes in her later novels: 1492 explored the travels of Columbua, Croatan examined the European settlement, and the Great Valley described the work of British surveyors, including George Washinton, in the Shenandoah Valley. Her novels became increasingly less popular and her income declined. Her final novel, Drury Randall, published in 1935, received almost no public attention. On May 9, 1936, Johnston passed away in her home in Warm Springs, Virginia. Today, the town has an historic marker dedicated to Johnston, sharing her literary work, suffrage activism, and anti-lynching activism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Johnston\u2019s lifetime of writing and advocacy highlights connections between political and social change in the United States. Her recognition of the links between women\u2019s liberation and Black liberation would find echoes later in the movement for women\u2019s rights and civil rights in the 1960s. More recently, these issues converged in social movements associated with #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, which also highlighted the oppressive power of systems of racial and gender oppression. The trajectory of Mary Johnston\u2019s life, from the daughter of a civil war veteran and industrial titan to advocate for gender and racial equality thus anticipated many of the key social movements of the past century of American history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You have been listening to episode 18 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the town of Buchanan, located just over 300 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 250 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. To learn more about the stories in this episode, visit our website or follow us on social media, all accessible from the homepage for this podcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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