Queer Places:
Columbia University (Ivy League), 116th St and Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Gamut Club, 69 W 46th St, New York, NY 10036
30 Charles St, New York, NY 10014
Glen Abbey Memorial Park
Bonita, San Diego County, California, USA
Myran Louise Grant (January 28, 1883 – July 10, 1934) was an active
socialist and suffragist. Grant was a speaker on the New York Board of
Education, as well as a professor of history at the Finch School in New York
City. She was a member of the Heterodoxy Club.
M. Louise Grant was born in Galva, Illinois, and obtained her early education there. She was a graduate from the Galva High School. Later she attended the University of Chicago, where she received several degrees. She was a teacher in the Galva public schools for a time. In 1909 she was the history teacher and assistant English teacher at the Olive Street High School in Los Angeles. In 1910 she was appointed head of the history department at the newly founded Wilmington High School, Wilmington, California. In 1912 she obtained a leave of absence to further her studies in Chicago and New York. It's probably during this time that she attended Columbia University. She spent the summer of 1912 in England.
In 1913 Grant hosted at her apartment at the Selegma Sol apartments, Maude Mildred Davis Clisbee (1893-1921), conductor of foreign touring parties.
After Mary Shaw lost her bid for presidency of the Woman's Professional League, she set up her own club. The Gamut Club of New York, which opened in 1913, was exceptional as it was an organization to provide professional women from diverse fields with the equivalent in comfortable surroundings to those which professional men had enjoyed for decades. Grant was living at the Club in 1915. The summer of 1915 she vacationed at the Twilight Inn in the Catskills.
In August 1915, Grant was in contact with Jane Addams and Mabel L. Hyers. Grant was recommended to Addams by Charles Zueblin, who had been one of her teachers at the University of Chicago. Grant wanted to lecture for the Peacy Society sponsored by Addams. She was again recommended to Adams in September, this time by Carrie Chapman Catt, who undelined how Grant had worked for the Women Suffrage Campaign, publicly speaking all around the New York State, but she had to stop due to her inability to continue outdoor speaking.
During the second New York campaign, M. Louise Grant, under the auspices of the National and State leagues and as representant of the Chicaco and Columbia universities, made forty-five speeches to arouse the college women, which contributed to the victory for the suffrage amendment in November. She said "There is now a new profession for women. It is the profession of trained suffragist. The girls who are walking out of college today owe their ability to gain such an education to the pioneer suffragists, who worked to open colleges to women. Therefore, of all women in the world, college graduates should appreciate the great importance of the suffrage cause. The business of being a professional suffragist is the great vocation that many college girls looking around for some fine work to do have entirely overlooked."
In February 1917 she stated: "The old argument that woman does not want or will not use the ballot was forever answered at the last November election. Now the men are much more afraid that we will use it than that we will not. The greatest practical effect of the fact that we do vote is that it has raised the question of woman suffrage to a question of party politics. Enough women are voting in the West now to form the balance of power in a national election. The November election has raised the question to a much clearer atmosphere." Grant said, however, that national politics might not be the held where woman could do the most good. Municipal and state housecleaning she ascribed to women's sphere as the place where her influence would be most felt. The argument that women's votes would double the cost of election she answered by saying that Chicago, with women voting, cast two and a half times as many votes as New York, and the cost was but 5 cent more per capita. "We are living in a period of great change," she said. "Just now the change has taken a dramatic form, but the great constructive work of the world is not dramatic. The age is one of gigantic changes-materially, intellectually and spiritually. But no department of life can change without the others changing equally, and equal suffrage is one of those departments. It is not what it was even a decade ago. The woman suffrage movement is thriving and is going ahead as rapidly as anything else. The war has not put suffrage hack, but has only halted it for the time being. There are more reasons why it should go forward after the war by leaps and bounds, than why it should be retarded. If democracy has an opportunity for going forward, then the world shall see equal suffrage. The opponents of woman suffrage are also the opponents of democracy. Talk of democracy and freedom generally comes from those who understand them least-from man. Instead of democracy, without equal suffrage we have class tyranny."
In 1919 she spent 7 months abroad devoting her time to the study of social, economic and political conditions prevailing in Europe. She was chosen to do special research work in Paris in connection with the Peace Conference. In 1920 and 1921 she lectured in New York and New Jersey for the Peace Committee. On October 20, 1920, she spoke on International Law at the New York State Federation of Women's Clubs in Utica, New York.
Grant was a member of the Heterodoxy Club, a feminist debating group in Greenwich Village, New York City, in the early 20th century. The membership also included bisexual and lesbian women, in addition to heterosexuals. At this time, 1920s, Grant was living at 30 Charles Street.
She died in San Diego and was buried there.
My published books:
