“If a woman is pictured on the new $1 coin to be minted who would you suggest?” from the March 21, 1978 Door County Advocate
Bob Sawyer, Egg Harbor: “I hope they don’t mint another coin because I don’t have room in my till for any more coins.”
Julie Eytcheson, Forestville: “I think Eleanor Roosevelt is worthy of such an honor.”
Marvin Zwicky, 756 N. Duluth: “I think perhaps Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. I think she was one of the greatest women leaders of this country.”
Regena Urdalil, 1405 Texas: “Amelia Earhart. I’ve read her autobiography and I‘m very intrigued with her. If a living woman could be on the coin it should be Shirley Chisholm. She impresses me as a good candidate for president.”
Diane Zilisch, 126 S. Duluth: “I can think of quite a few worthy of this honor like Susan B. Anthony or Alice Paul, the woman who wrote the ERA.”
Gladys Anderson, Baileys Harbor, “I think Amelia Earhart would be a good choice or Margaret Schurz, the lady who started the first kindergarten in America.”
Dan Haen, Egg Harbor: “The black woman in the civil war who helped get the underground railroad started. Her name was Harriett Tubman.”
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
[Five of the women mentioned can be seen as having a conservative outlook, at least to a certain extent.
Eleanor Roosevelt never advocated for abortion in any of her writings or public statements. One of her newspaper columns rejected a call to legalize aborting illegitimate children: https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/iyam/iyam_1942_05.cfm
Another column she wrote shortly before she died is open to possible future legalization should the medical profession support it: https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/iyam/iyam_1962_11.cfm
This column refers to the existing problem of women whose “lives are constantly endangered by unscrupulous and unethical so-called medical practitioners”. This was how she viewed the problem with abortions in 1962.
The medical profession in the U.S. has never completely supported abortion, and the column does not ask for the courts to create a right to abortion, as the Wisconsin Supreme Court may attempt to do in the future.
Roosevelt believed men and women has differences which cannot be changed, and that this is a good thing: https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1946&_f=md000354
We cannot change the fact that women are different from men. It's true that some women can do more than men, and some can do men's jobs better than men can do them. But the fact that they are different cannot be changed, and it is fortunate for us that this is the case. The best results are always obtained when men and women work together, with the recognition that their abilities and contributions may differ but that, in every field, they supplement each other.
Roosevelt also advocated against billboards and littering:
https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydocedits.cfm?_y=1954&_f=md002876
As you drive along our roads, you wonder why it never occurs to people that the sides of the road should be kept beautiful for everybody. I have long wanted to wage a campaign against billboards but one small voice does not reach far. The Garden Clubs of America have done a great deal, but when I see a particularly hideous billboard, I wish they could do more. Even more important, however, is the clearing up of the litter and trash which one sees along highways and in parks and on beaches.
Living people, such as with Shirley Chisholm in 1978, are not placed on U.S. coins intended for circulation. The only living U.S. president featured on a coin was Calvin Coolidge in 1926, it was a commemorative half dollar.
In 1866, printing living persons on paper currency was outlawed. The occasion for this was provided by a government official named Spencer M. Clark. Although Congress had intended to recognize William Clark from the Lewis and Clark expedition on paper currency, Clark’s first name wasn’t mentioned and Spencer M. Clark substituted his portrait instead.
Susan B. Anthony was pro-life:
https://books.google.com/books?id=VG17-xnO7ksC&pg=PA47
Alice Paul was pro-life: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-1999-pt9/html/CRECB-1999-pt9-Pg12715.htm
A description of how Margarethe Schurz set up the first public kindergarten in the United States in Watertown, Wisconsin: https://books.google.com/books?id=vMqY6S9j9kEC&pg=SL1-PA1815
This is an 1869 book about Harriet Tubman which describes some of her visions, hymns she sang, and her interest in the heavenly Jerusalem: https://books.google.com/books?id=mUgDAAAAYAAJ
The location of Amelia Earhart’s airplane is still an active quest, and some people think they have located where it is: https://divernet.com/scuba-news/wrecks/5km-deep-is-this-earharts-lost-electra-aircraft/ ]
Articles by Linda Adams
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/linda-adams