The below section is taken from todays edition of The Writers Almanac. I found the quote about the rich of America so pertinent of the 10% we talk about so much these days! Its the birthday of physician and activist Samuel Gridley Howe, born in Boston (1801). He didnt think much of school and spent most of his time at Brown University thinking up practical jokes, but he made it through and went on to medical school. His hero was Lord Byron — Howe loved both his poetry and his commitment to the Greek Revolution. Byron died in Greece in April of 1824, and four months later, Howe graduated from Harvard Medical School. A special guest at the commencement ceremonies was the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution, who gave a speech praising the cause of the Greek Revolution. Howe was inspired by Lafayette and hoped to follow in the footsteps of his hero Lord Byron, plus he was getting over an unhappy love affair. So almost as soon as he graduated, he got on a ship and sailed to Greece to volunteer his medical services to the revolutionaries. A fellow American who joined the Greek cause, a Vermont farmer and soldier, wrote about meeting the slender, handsome Howe: I was astonished. He looked more like a doll than a soldier. In Greece, Howe had plenty of medical experience — he wrote, During this time I have dressed more difficult wounds than I should have an opportunity of seeing in Boston in years, and performed more operations than might have fallen to my lot during my life had I stayed at home. He clashed with the local Greek doctors, and at one point, he got so fed up with one doctor that he punched him. But he learned to work with them, and he stayed on, as a physician and relief worker, until the end of the war. Then he returned to New York with two Greek children he had agreed to educate in America, and Lord Byrons helmet and sword, and he went on the lecture circuit. Announcements of his lectures almost always mentioned the children and Byrons objects as selling points. The lectures were popular, and Howe raised about $60,000 for Greek refugees. After a few more years in Greece and Paris, Howe returned to America, convinced by a friend to throw himself into a new cause: education for the blind. His friend was starting a school and offered Howe the position of director. Howe accepted, even though the school had no students and no buildings. He started teaching a few students in his fathers house; when they could no longer fit there, they were invited to set up their school in a mansion owned by the rich industrialist Thomas Perkins, who had made his fortune trading furs and smuggling opium. And so the school became the Perkins School for the Blind. A few years later, Howe taught a young girl who was deaf and blind, the first time that had been accomplished in American history. Howe later served as an advocate for children with all sorts of disabilities. He bucked conventional wisdom by insisting that no matter how successful special schools were, children with any sort of issue — whether blindness, developmental disabilities, deafness, behavioral problem, or anything else — should be integrated into society with everyone else rather than confined in institutions. Howe was also a dedicated abolitionist — along with his wife, Julia Ward Howe, who wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic — and he became active in the womens suffrage movement. He and Julia had a rocky marriage, but they shared a passion for the same causes, and together they founded the Boston Daily Commonwealth, an antislavery newspaper. Howe publicly demonstrated against the Fugitive Slave Law in elaborate ruses to try and free slaves who were supposed to be returned to their Southern masters, and he was one of six men who secretly funded John Browns activities. Howe spent the final years of his life fighting poverty. He advocated an end to child labor, higher wages for workers, and a progressive tax system — he explained that the wealthy would see such a tax system as an invasion of their rights, but that in his opinion, poverty was an invasion of poor peoples rights. He said that ending slavery was not enough so long as the labors and drudgery of the world is thrown actively upon one class, while another class is entirely exempt from it. There is a radical injustice in it. And injustice in society is like a rotten timber in the foundation of a house.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 18:24:36 +0000