Fanny Garrison Villard: An Old School Liberal
Historian Joanna Neuman described Fanny Garrison Villard as an “old-school liberal.” Born to famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison in 1844, Fanny was raised in what we would call a “progressive” household long before the concept existed.
William Lloyd and his wife Helen raised their children to believe that slavery and racism were wrong, that women deserved political rights, and that war and violence were never the answer. They were not wealthy, but they made sure all of their children were educated, and they planted a seed in young Fanny that grew into a lifelong dedication to social justice.
Married with Money to Give
At 22, Fanny married a German man named Henry Villard. He was a journalist, but throughout his life was involved in many different schemes, some of which brought in quite a bit of cash. They had a good life together; they raised three children, traveled in Europe, built multiple mansions, and at one point owned both The New York Evening Post and The Nation.
Like many ladies of means, Fanny devoted herself to various philanthropic causes during her marriage, with impressive results. She worked to feed and clothe the newly-emancipated people of the South during Reconstruction, advocated for better nutrition for people living in poverty in her own community and beyond (she was president of the oddly named “Diet Kitchen Association”), and helped found Barnard and Radcliffe Colleges for women.
Suffrage at the Colony Club
But it was after Henry Villard passed away in 1900, leaving Fanny a wealthy widow with grown children, that her political career really began.
A group of society women had just decided to start the first women’s social club. The pushback they got from men was overwhelming, if not surprising. Even former president Grover Cleveland weighed in, writing in Ladies Home Journal that “[A woman’s] best and safest club is her home. A life retired is well inspired.”
Nevertheless, they persisted, and in 1907 they opened the Colony Club on Madison Avenue. It was an exclusive place — no men, children, Jews, Catholics, Blacks, or factory workers allowed. But for those on the inside, it was a place of comradery and civic engagement, and Fanny Villard used it to organize.
A women’s club dedicated to civic engagement couldn’t avoid the biggest women’s issue of the time, and in 1908 the club started holding secret debates on the issue of women’s suffrage. At the very first one, Fanny gave the argument in favor of suffrage. At age 64 she was no spring chicken, but she held her own, and gradually converted more and more members of the club to her side.
Fanny was a member of the American Woman Suffrage Association, one of the two main factions in the movement, and she also started her own organization called the William Lloyd Garrison Equal Suffrage Club.
She lectured so often about women’s suffrage that she often grew horse.
Intersectional Lady
Growing up, Fanny Villard had watched her famous father forge alliances across causes, classes, and races. She knew the value of reaching out to like-minded individuals of different circles, and she brought this strategy to the aid of the suffrage cause with two key groups.
The first was men. In 1908, inspired by similar groups abroad, she worked with her son Oswald and Rabbi Wise to found the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage. They persuaded Max Eastman, brother of suffragist Crystal Eastman to run it, and Fanny made introductions for Max to twelve prominent men she thought would be sympathetic. The group grew from there.
Its aim was simply to exist. The men should show public support, but otherwise be silent. Naturally, the men had other ideas, and attracted significant press attention, but overall proved essential and effective allies.
The second group Fanny courted was Black women. Along with Alva Belmont, she reached out to Irene Moorman Blackstone to organize Black women in Harlem for the cause. That effort was less successful, but Fanny’s commitment to racial justice did not end with suffrage.
In 1909, she and Oswald were two of the founding members of the NAACP. I don’t know much about her involvement, but it certainly tracks that the daughter of a 19th century abolitionist would join in this new organization — founded in part as a response to the increase in lynching of Black people around the country.
What do we want? Peace.
The cause to which Fanny devoted the last decade and a half of her life was world peace.
This cause was also something she inherited from her father. Four years before her death in 1928 she wrote a biography of him entitled William Lloyd Garrison on Non-Resistance. In its preface, she said:
“My inherited principles of Non-Resistance. . . seem as essential to me as the breath of life and paramount to all others.”
Peace activism was heating up as World War I raged in Europe. In 1914, at age 70, Fanny organized a massive anti-war demonstration in New York City, leading hundreds of women in a march down Fifth Avenue. She attended an international conference in Budapest about suffrage, and used it to organize for peace.
Along with Jane Addams, Crystal Eastman, and others, she founded the Women’s Peace Party. When she felt that the WPP was not anti-war enough, she started her own Women’s Peace Society, whose big success was stopping a law that would have had schoolboys in New York State doing military training exercises in gym class.
Famous Then
Fanny Garrison Villard is another of the women of early 20th century New York who were well-known during life but have since been largely lost to history. She has been mostly written out of the histories of suffrage, peace activism, and the founding of the NAACP — most of which attribute everything to her colleagues and family members like Max Eastman, Alva Belmont, and her son Oswald.
Her legacy lived on through her descendants, though. Like her father had before her, Fanny passed on her commitment to social justice to her children. Her son Oswald continued her civil rights activism, and his son, Henry Hilgrad Villard went on to become the first male president of Planned Parenthood.
Sources:
Neuman, J. (2019). Gilded suffragists: The New York socialites who fought for women’s right to vote. New York: Washington Mews Books, and imprint of New York University Press.
Fanny Garrison Villard, Women in Peace
“Villard, Fanny Garrison (1844–1928) .” Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia.com
Alonso, H. H. (2000). Villard, Fanny Garrison. American National Biography Online. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.6005897
