Sylvia Pankhurst
Born in England in 1882 into an activist family Sylvia’s Mother Emmeline
- founded the WSPU - Women's social and political union
- was a forerunner of suffrage civil disobedience
- Sylvia’s Father Richard was the lawyer who drafted the first women’s suffrage bill and the married women’s property act
- Sylvia went to art school and later felt guilty for indulging in art while so many others suffered
- toured factories and painted the workers for the “Women's Workers of England” project
- stopped the painting tour at her mother’s request to help with the suffragette movement
- went on to create much of the suffrage art
- believes in Universal suffrage- suffrage for all classes
- believes in raising up the working class organized many rallies, marches and demonstrations (up to 1600 in attendance)
- was imprisoned and force fed more than any other suffragette in England
- Sylvia parted ways with her family
Sylvia relocated to London’s poorer East End and supported the Labour party Sylvia organized systems to support the poor
- Mothers milk bank
- Free restaurant and food service
- Toy factory where mostly women were hired and paid a fair wage
- In 1934 Sylvia predicted the intent of Italy to invade Ethiopia
- She used political connections to draw attention to it, and started an Ethiopian newspaper
- In 1941 Ethiopia was no longer under threat from Italy
- Ethiopia remains the only African Country never to have been colonized Sylvia befriended the Ethiopian emperor's daughter, Princess Tsehai, who was a nurse
- The Princess died in childbirth, but Sylvia carried on her dream of opening a women's birthing and teaching college in Ethiopia
- At the age of 74, Sylvia accepted the Emperor's invitation to move to Ethiopia
- She involved herself in humanitarian work, and she had the ear of the emperor