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Web posted May 8, 2005
My Turn: Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Celebrate Mother's Day as a day dedicated to peace
By PAULA SUTTON
Mother's Day is not a Hallmark Holiday; it is a day dedicated to women's public activism and peace. Better known for penning the famous Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) proposed Mother's Day as a day dedicated to peace.
As a wife, mother, daughter, writer, poet, lecturer, Unitarian, patriot, abolitionist, feminist, suffragist, social reformer, Howe devoted her life to peace and justice. She was inspired by the work of Anna Reeves Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker, who beginning in 1858, tried to improve sanitation in her community through what she called Mothers' Work Days. During the Civil War, Jarvis expanded her sanitation campaign to both sides of the conflict and organized women to care for the wounded. After the war, Jarvis convened meetings to persuade people to lay down their hostilities.
Julia Ward Howe witnessed the carnage of war and other devastating realities affecting loved ones, the economy, and the environment. In 1872, she wrote a Mother's Day Proclamation as a passionate plea for women to gather and call for disarmament and peace.
"Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears! Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, Disarm, Disarm! ... As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel..."
Howe proposed that a congress of women convene in the interest of peace, by mourning and commemorating the dead, promoting the alliance of different nationalities, and by understanding and resolving international questions.
Beginning June 2, 1873, under the leadership of Julia Ward Howe, women in 18 cities across the United States held a Mother's Day for Peace gathering, a tradition that continued in some cities for the next 30 years.
Taking the seeds planted by her mother and Howe, Anna M. Jarvis continued the crusade for a memorial day for women by encouraging churches nationwide to commemorate mothers. A letter-writing campaign caught the attention of President Woodrow Wilson, who in turn supported the idea. Finally, Congress passed a resolution in 1913 that declared Mother's Day to be a national holiday celebrated the second Sunday in May.
Let's celebrate Mother's Day by honoring our mothers with expressions of love and gratitude. Let's also honor our hearts and minds that guide us toward peace, and acknowledge the original sentiment of the day by taking a stand against war.
"We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
Let's support the mothers who mourn the loss of their children to war or worry about their safety and well-being. Let's honor Mother Earth too by not occupying, pillaging and pock-marking our planet's fragile and non-renewable cultural, natural and physical resources; and by not depositing uranium and other hazardous materials that damage, mutate and destroy Mother's children and other living things.
• Juneau resident Paula Sutton has a master's degree in anthropology.
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