Caroline Lexow Babcock

Caroline Lexow Babcock (February 5, 1882 – 1980) was an American pacifist and suffragist, co-founder of the Women's Peace Union, and Executive Secretary of the National Women's Party from 1938 to 1946.

Caroline Lexow Babcock
Born
Caroline Lexow

(1882-02-05)February 5, 1882
Nyack, New York
DiedMarch 8, 1980(1980-03-08) (aged 98)[1]
NationalityAmerican
Alma materBarnard College
OccupationPacifist, Suffragist
Spouse(s)
Philip Westerly Babcock
(
m. 1915)

Early life and education

Caroline Lexow was born in 1882 in Nyack, New York, the daughter of lawyer and legislator Clarence Lexow, noted for the anti-corruption Lexow Committee probe, and the former Katherine Morton. Caroline's grandfather Rudolph Lexow was a prominent German-American writer and editor.[2] Caroline Lexow attended Barnard College, graduating in 1904.[3]

Career and activism

After college Caroline Lexow became active full-time in the suffrage movement, as executive secretary assisting Harriot Stanton Blatch in running the Women's Political Union, as president of the College Equal Suffrage League of New York,[4] and as executive secretary of the National College Equal Suffrage League.[5] "On the day of my graduation," she told audiences while touring as a suffrage organizer in 1909, "I became actively interested in suffrage work and a member of the League, and I expect to devote the most of my time to the cause until it wins."[6]

In 1921, Babcock was one of the members of the Women's Peace Society who left to start the Women's Peace Union.[7] In that same year, she chaired a women's peace march in New York City.[8] Babcock and Elinor Byrns drafted a constitutional amendment calling for the power to declare or prepare for war to be removed from the powers of the U. S. Congress.[9] She included the Boy Scouts among her targets, calling scouting a "kindergarten for war."[10][11]

Caroline Lexow Babcock was on the Executive Committee and board of directors of the Birth Control Federation of America.[12]

Personal life and legacy

Caroline Lexow married Philip Westerly Babcock in 1915.[13] They had three children together, Caroline, Philip, and Katharine. Caroline Lexow Babcock died in 1980, still wearing a button supporting the Equal Rights Amendment.[14]

Caroline L. Babcock's papers are archived with those of Olive E. Hurlburt in the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard University.[15] Another significant set of Babcock's letters are in the Harriot Stanton Blatch Collection at Vassar College.[16]

There is a Caroline Lexow Babcock Award given out by the National Organization for Women.

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References
  1. "Caroline Lexow Babcock". Find a Grave. Retrieved 9 April 2019.
  2. "Rudolph Lexow," New York Times (July 17, 1909).
  3. "Barnard College Archives, Alumnae Biographical Files inventory" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-05-31.
  4. Laura van Assendelft and Jeffrey D. Schultz, eds., Encyclopedia of Women in American Politics (Greenwood Publishing 1998): 17. ISBN
  5. Alonso, Harriet Hyman (1997). The Women's Peace Union and the Outlawry of War, 1921–1942. Syracuse University Press. p. 25. ISBN 0815604173.
  6. "Miss Lexow is a Real, Live Suffragette," Topeka Daily Capital (January 28, 1909): 5. via Newspapers.com
  7. Harriet Hyman Alonso, Peace as a Women's Issue: A History of the U. S. Movement for Peace and Women's Rights (Syracuse University Press 1993): 96. ISBN 0815602693
  8. "Women Parade in Demand that World Disarm," New-York Tribune (November 13, 1921): 10. via Newspapers.com .
  9. Harriet Hyman Alonso, The Women's Peace Union and the Outlawry of War (Syracuse University Press 1997): 95. ISBN 0815604173
  10. "Congress Urged to Outlaw Wars; Women Make Plea," Springfield Daily News (January 23, 1927): 1. via Newspapers.com
  11. "War is Ridiculed at Peace Hearing," New York Times (January 23, 1927): E8.
  12. Birth Control Organizations, Margaret Sanger Papers Project, New York University.
  13. "Caroline Lexow, Suffragist, Weds; Daughter of Late Senator Married to Philip W. Babcock at Her Home in Nyack," New York Times (January 19, 1915): 9.
  14. "Women of the Hudson Valley: Trailblazers," Hudson River Valley Heritage.
  15. "Finding aid, Papers of Caroline Lexow Babcock and Olive E. Hurlburt, 1906–1961 (Radcliffe College 1976)". Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2015-05-31.
  16. Guide to the Harriot Stanton Blatch Papers, 1807-1936, Archives and Special Collections Library, Vassar College.
  • Isabelle Keating Savell, Ladies' Lib: How Rockland Women Got the Vote (Historical Society of Rockland County 1979).
  • Records of the Women's Peace Union, New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts.
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