Blight center
This building is named in Honor of Frances E Willard. A quick reading on this person turns up some controversial and frankly overtly racist statements on alcohol and the African race. I am curious when this plaque was placed and this building was dedicated. As far as I have been able to locate so far it was at least prior to 1950.
"Alien illiterates ... rule our cities today; the saloon is their palace, and the toddy stick their sceptre. It is not fair that they should vote, nor is it fair that a plantation Negro, who can neither read nor write, whose ideas are bounded by the fence of his own field and the price of his own mule, should be entrusted with the ballot ... The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt. The grog-shop is their center of power. The safety of women, of childhood, of the home is menaced in a thousand localities at this moment"
The irony of this selection is not lost on me given the number of empty alcohol bottles littering this abandoned building, named for a prohibitionist. I wonder what she would have to say about this place bearing her name. ( I have a pretty good guess! ) One of her main goals for women's suffrage appears to be the empowerment of women to protect them from all the hordes of drunken horny men out there.
Sounds like a real man-hater to me, especially of black men.
This is one of the things I love about urban exploration. It's that unexpected connection to a world that is long gone. A bit of living history and a chance to learn about the past. You never know what you will find
Blight center
This building is named in Honor of Frances E Willard. A quick reading on this person turns up some controversial and frankly overtly racist statements on alcohol and the African race. I am curious when this plaque was placed and this building was dedicated. As far as I have been able to locate so far it was at least prior to 1950.
"Alien illiterates ... rule our cities today; the saloon is their palace, and the toddy stick their sceptre. It is not fair that they should vote, nor is it fair that a plantation Negro, who can neither read nor write, whose ideas are bounded by the fence of his own field and the price of his own mule, should be entrusted with the ballot ... The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt. The grog-shop is their center of power. The safety of women, of childhood, of the home is menaced in a thousand localities at this moment"
The irony of this selection is not lost on me given the number of empty alcohol bottles littering this abandoned building, named for a prohibitionist. I wonder what she would have to say about this place bearing her name. ( I have a pretty good guess! ) One of her main goals for women's suffrage appears to be the empowerment of women to protect them from all the hordes of drunken horny men out there.
Sounds like a real man-hater to me, especially of black men.
This is one of the things I love about urban exploration. It's that unexpected connection to a world that is long gone. A bit of living history and a chance to learn about the past. You never know what you will find