Cycling Sisters

Women on Wheels: The Bicycle and the Women’s Movement of the 1890s

http://www.annielondonderry.com/
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The following is an excerpt posted with permission from Zheutlin, Peter. Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride. (Citadel Press, Nov. 2007).

"I think [the bicycle] has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world," feminist pioneer Susan B. Anthony said in 1896. "It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. The moment she takes her seat she knows she can't get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood."

Mille, French Rider and an early Bike, wooden wheels and metal rims. (Cigdem's favourite picture)

Cycling brought women a whole new world: freedom. Able to wear clothes to breathe and move in, and enjoy outdoors!

See annielondonderry.com for a story about a woman who cycled around the world in 1894. You can read the article published in Bicycling Magazine at http://www.theworld.org/pages/053105_excerpt.shtml#.
This page includes photographs that Annie had taken during her travels.

Solitude of Self

Address Delivered by Mrs. Stanton Before the
Committee of the Judiciary of the United States Congress
Monday, January 18, 1892

Mrs. Stanton's Address

Elizabeth Cady Stanton*

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: We have been speaking before Committees of the Judiciary for the last twenty years, and we have gone over all the arguments in favor of a sixteenth amendment which are familiar to all you gentlemen; therefore, it will not be necessary that I should repeat them again.

Amelia Bloomer
Woman's Rights Advocate
Popularizer of the Bloomer Costume

Original from History of Woman Suffrage, Stanton et al.
Modifications © 2003 Jone Johnson Lewis. Licensed to About.com.