WOMEN, BICYCLING AND SUFFRAGE IS THE TOPIC AT RICHWOOD ACADEMY CULTURAL CENTER
Hard to believe today, but in the 1890s many people thought that riding a bicycle was an unsuitable activity for women. Conservatives panicked at the idea of women riding alone, with other women or with unsuitable men and campaigned to stop them. In fact, bicycling offered new-found independence and mobility. The impact of the bicycle craze for women is the focus of Ellen Gruber Garvey’s lecture “Women on Wheels: How Women Found Freedom through Bicycling,” that will be presented at the Harrison Township Historical Society’s Richwood Academy Cultural Center on Sunday, March 27, at 3 pm.
“When women and girls first rode bicycles in large numbers, they celebrated their new freedom to move around in the world,” said Gruber Garvey, a recently retired Professor of English at New Jersey City University. Indeed, Susan B. Anthony claimed that bicycling was a major contributor to women’s emancipation. Other suffragists praised bicycling as a road to fuller citizenship for women, in great contrast to those who claimed that the practice would cause irreparable damage to women’s health and well-being.
Dr. Gruber Garvey is the author of two prize-winning books including Writing with Scissors: Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance and maintains a blog about scrapbooks and scrapbooking. She will be presenting virtually at the Academy and will challenge the audience to consider how bicycling and other means of mobility have affected history. This program celebrates Women’s History Month and is co-sponsored by the Mullica Hill Women’s Tri-Club and the Woman’s Club of Mullica Hill.
The Harrison Township Historical Society’s arts and history programs are made possible in part by funding from the Gloucester County Cultural and Heritage Commission at Rowan College of South Jersey in partnership with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State and the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey Historical Commission/Department of State.
The Richwood Academy Cultural Center is located at 836 Lambs Road, Richwood, NJ. Information and free tickets for this event are available at www.harrisonhistorical.com and the Society’s public Facebook page. The program will also be live-streamed and archived on Facebook.
