Oral history interview with Mabel Pollitzer, June 16, 1974

This is the second of two interviews with Mabel Pollitzer of Charleston, South Carolina. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, Pollitzer taught biology at an all-girls school for more than forty years during the first half of the twentieth century. As a young professional woman living in Charleston, Pollitzer became actively involved in the women's suffrage movement in the early 1910s. Here she describes in depth the role of Susan Pringle Frost as a prominent citizen of Charleston and as a leader within the women's suffrage movement as the first president of the Charleston Equal Suffrage League. Pollitzer explains the split within the women's suffrage movement that occurred when Alice Paul split off from the National American Woman Suffrage Association and formed the National Woman's Party, which both Pollitzer and Frost supported, and which advocated not only for women's suffrage but for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Pollitzer describes the split within the movement as it occurred in 1917. In addition, she describes some of the other causes she pursued as a teacher and community member, namely her effort to change school policies that led to the dismissal of female teachers when they married. Finally, she offers her thoughts on a list of South Carolina suffragists and where they aligned themselves when the movement split.