Gertrude Weil

Gertrude Weil (December 11, 1879 - May 30, 1971) was an American Jewish activist involved in a wide range of progressive/leftist and often controversial causes, including women's suffrage, labor reform and civil rights.

According to the Jewish Women's Archive, Weil was: "Inspired by Jewish teachings that 'justice, mercy, [and] goodness were not to be held in a vacuum, but practiced in our daily lives,' Weil stood courageously at the forefront of a wide range of progressive and often controversial causes, including women's suffrage, labor reform and civil rights. She worked tirelessly to extend political, economic and social opportunities to those long denied them."^[1]

Life

Weil was born on December 11, 1879 in the rapidly developing town of Goldsboro, North Carolina to German-Jewish Americans Henry and Mina Weil (née Rosenthal).^[2][3][4] In 1883, only 17 years after the formation of North Carolina's first Jewish congregation, Gertrude's parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles helped to form Goldsboro's Congregation Oheb Sholom.^[5][6] In 1901, Weil became North Carolina's first alumna of Smith College.^[7]

In 1914, Weil helped found the Goldsboro Equal Suffrage Association and served as its first president. By 1917, she was an officer in the North Carolina Equal Suffrage League, becoming president in 1919. The same year, she declined a nomination for the presidency of the North Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs to concentrate on the fight for suffrage. Despite Weil's best efforts, however, the North Carolina legislature failed to lend its support to the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.^[8]

Weil continued working to improve the political system. In 1920, she established the North Carolina League of Women Voters, dedicated to educating women about the political system and their newly won rights. She also became a leader in the Legislative Council of North Carolina, organized to advance progressive social reforms. In 1922, she made headlines when she destroyed stacks of previously marked ballots intended to be stuffed into ballot boxes to fix an election.^[7]

Weil also spent a great deal of time fighting for labor reform in North Carolina. In 1930, Weil was a leading participant in a group of progressive citizens who issued a manifesto in support of collective bargaining and free speech; nearly one-third of the manifesto's 439 signatories were women. In 1931, the women's Legislative Council finally won shorter hours for women workers, the prohibition of night work, and other industrial reforms.^[9]

Weil first immersed herself in civil rights work in 1930, participating in the Anti-Lynching Conference of Southern White Women and subsequently joining the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching. In 1932, Governor O. Max Gardner appointed Weil to the North Carolina Commission on Interracial Cooperation.^[10]

Weil was also an ardent Zionist; Gertrude and her mother Mina were founding members of Goldsboro's Hadassah chapter and Gertrude served as president of both the local and regional groups. She also presided over the North Carolina Association of Jewish Women, sat on the board of the North Carolina Home for the Jewish Aged, worked for the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, and helped to raise money for numerous Jewish charities. In the 1930s and 1940s, she and her mother devoted much time and effort to rescuing Jewish refugees from persecution in Europe.^[11]

On May 6, 1971, the North Carolina General Assembly ratified the 19th Amendment, for which Weil had worked so hard in 1920. On May 30, Weil died in the same house in which she had been born 91 years earlier.^[7]

References

External links

• Women of Valor exhibit on Gertrude Weil at the Jewish Women's Archive
• Heather Geisberg Pennington, Biography of Gertrude Weil, Jewish Women Encyclopedia