Basic tenets of the Democratic Party and their relationship to the women's rights movement
McKay argues that she believed women activists were bound together by basic tenets of the Democratic Party. Focusing on the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in contrast to that of Herbert Hoover, McKay argues that, in general, advocacy of education and economic advancement for all people were core components of the fight for women's rights. As such, she emphasizes the political framework of her childhood as especially formative for her own conception of political and women's rights.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Martha C. McKay, June 13, 1989. Interview C-0076. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- KATHRYN NASSTROM:
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You mentioned education as one of the areas that most interested women in
politics. I'd like to take off from there. A question that may be too
general to answer, but I'm wondering if there's a certain common
motivation or set of beliefs or set of interests for the women who were
active at this time? Is it possible to generalize in that way?
- MARTHA MCKAY:
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I think most of them subscribed to the historic positions of the
Democratic Party. I think that most of us who continue to be active,
even if it's intermittent, it's based in the party. Those two things.
The things the party stood for. To me Franklin Roosevelt was a great
figure and I was very happy that I was able to vote for him. My first
vote was cast for him. So the things that he stood for. Raising the
level of, not just education, but the economic level of all people in
this country and serving those who were not ordinarily served by the
class structures. I think it's the party. In my view that's still there,
we need to go back to those issues, viable, valid issues.
- KATHRYN NASSTROM:
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It's interesting that you mention Roosevelt. I can't remember
now - I've done a set of these interviews, who said
what starts to blur - but someone made a comment
that ever since she could remember - and so she
must have been born, I don't know, let's say sometime in the early
1920s - that while she was growing
up and was old enough to think about these things,
Roosevelt had been President. She didn't know what any one else being
President could be like.
- MARTHA MCKAY:
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That's right, he was president for a long time. However, I remember
Hoover, even though I was a child. We all hated Hoover, justifiably so
in terms of the condition of this country, not in terms of anything
personal. I've read a little bit about him since, and he was a decent
person and a good man and had laid some groundwork for some things that
ought to happen. He just wasn't incisive. It was clear when Roosevelt
came in. But anybody that lived through the Depression remembers those
things. I've heard many Democrats say, "too poor to paint and
too proud to whitewash," so lived through hard times, bad times
in this country. Hope it never happens to them.
- KATHRYN NASSTROM:
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That's for sure.
- MARTHA MCKAY:
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And Roosevelt did something about it. My mother was a WPA artist. She's a
good artist and she got work working for the WPA. Painting, I don't
know, murals in school cafeterias or something like that. He did
something. So of course if you were affected by all that, one remembers
it.