Who Was Betty Gram Swing?

Betty was born Myrtle Gram in Omaha, Nebraska on March 16, 1893, daughter of Danish immigrants Andreas Pedersen (Andrew Peter) Gram and Karen (Carrie) Jensen. She was the fifth of seven children. Her younger sister, Alice, was born exactly two years after her. They were so close that they were known as the Gram twins. Betty always remembered with fondness her early childhood on the family’s fruit tree farm in Omaha.

Her family moved to Portland, Oregon in 1904, a time when many immigrants were flocking to the city in hopes of making a new life for themselves. Betty loved the majestic mountains that could be seen on the city’s skyline and the proximity to the Pacific Ocean, where her father would build a small summer cottage in Gearhart in 1906. But there were also unexpected challenges. Her father’s dreams of greater economic success were blocked by local opposition to newcomers. Local banks refused to loan him money to start business ventures. He settled with managing a wholesale grocery store. Betty ran into prejudice as well. Her grade school teachers made a pejorative distinction between students descended from the early pioneer settlers and children of more recent immigrants. Betty learned to hide her background, and tried to fit in.

High School and College Years

Betty and Alice had the good fortune to attend the brand-new Jefferson High School, where the principal promoted a progressive approach to education. Their high school years were active and joyous, especially as their ability to design and sew dresses based on Parisian styles paved the way to their acceptance into the social life of the school. Alice, who had jumped two grades and was now in Betty’s class, became editor of the school newspaper. Betty ran for student government.

At Betty’s high school graduation in 1912, the commencement speaker encouraged all forty-seven graduates, male and female, to continue on to college. Nationwide, young women were attending college in ever greater numbers, and Betty very much wished to join their ranks. None of her four older siblings had continued past high school, however, and Betty had to work hard at convincing her father before he finally agreed to her further education. In-state tuition was free, but students still had to pay for living expenses. She enjoyed college. She wrote articles for the school newspaper, was active in student government, and sang in the Woman’s Choral Club.

Betty accepted an invitation to join the Alpha Xi sorority chapter of the Kappa Alpha Theta fraternity. Even though it mattered to her to have achieved this social success, she soon realized that she did not totally fit in. She quickly tired of the ceremonial aspects of belonging to a sisterhood. She liked even less that dances on campus had a not-so-hidden agenda as a marriage market. Twelve seniors in the fraternity next door tried to date her for their annual prom. She had gone to college for an education, not to catch a man, but she felt swept up in the constant barrage of social events. In later years, she credited her inner conflict over this as the origin of her conviction that women needed to educate themselves for more than just marriage and confinement to the home. She saw it as their social responsibility to find work that was meaningful to them.

Betty also found herself drawn to the freshman women known as “Barbs,” (short for barbarian), who did not belong to a social group or sorority.  She felt a kinship with these outsiders, perhaps because of her grade school experiences of being stigmatized as a child of immigrants. She formed an inclusive group, the “Three A’s Society,” for all freshmen women. The “A’s” stood for Action, Art and Athletics. The purpose of the group was to provide a means for all freshman women to get acquainted. She hoped this group, which continued well past her brief time in college, would give students a sense of social status that mitigated not being a member of a Greek letter society. 

 The fall of 1912 was an election year. Besides the presidential election, Oregon voters were voting on legislation that would grant women in their state the right to vote (five earlier attempts having failed). Betty’s sorority held an election-themed dance, complete with “Votes for Women” posters. It was Betty’s first foray into the suffrage movement. The legislation passed, and Betty was able to cast her first vote.

Betty’s Years of Teaching

Family finances were too tight for Betty to continue beyond her freshman year. Instead, her parents insisted she find work and help pay for her sister Alice to attend the University of Oregon (also for one year). Employment options for young women were limited. Betty passed the exam for teacher’s certification and was hired as Principal and Teacher at the Rock Creek School, a two-room rural school about twenty miles outside Portland. She enjoyed teaching, especially trying to find ways to bring more modern teaching approaches into a rural classroom.

Nevertheless, it was a lonely year for her, isolated without friends and family. She had a run-in with the School Board over her refusal to use corporal punishment and decided not to renew her contract at the end of the spring term.

Betty returned to Portland in 1914 and found employment for the following two years with the city’s recently-formed juvenile court system, teaching girls at the Fraser Detention Home and working with judges to decide where children who appeared in court should be placed. She found her job meaningful enough that she considered returning to school to become a social worker. Although she ultimately decided against doing so, this work had a profound impact on her view of the world. On a daily basis, she confronted the impact of poverty and other social ills on children. With growing anger, she saw how the second-class status of women made it difficult, if not impossible, to better their situation, both for themselves and their children.

Her heightened consciousness of the inequalities between men and women coincided with a quickening pace of the national suffrage movement. National suffrage organizations were eager to recruit enfranchised Western women so they could harness the power of their 8 million votes. They sent organizers to Western states to hold meetings to increase their membership. When Betty and her sister Alice attended some of these meetings, however, they ran into antagonistic competition between two approaches to suffrage. The well-established National American Women Suffrage Association already had many loyal members in Portland, often older women drawn to their nonconfrontational style. The breakaway Congressional Union, soon to be renamed the National Woman’s Party, had a youthful energy and vision that appealed to younger women. But Congressional Union representatives alienated many local women by demanding that they adopt their new brash style of fighting for suffrage. Betty wanted to make a difference in the world, and women’s suffrage loomed large as a worthy cause, but she felt unable to commit to either group. The fact of the matter was that her job was taking a physical and emotional toll on her. She felt worn out and inadequate to the task of rethinking her life. At the age of 23, she was at a crossroads and did not know which way to turn.

When an opportunity arose to move to New York City to study voice, she grabbed the chance to leave everything behind and make a fresh start. It would also be a relief to leave Portland, which was feeling provincial to her. She and her best friend Constance Piper, who played piano, found an apartment together. Betty thrived on being independent and self-sufficient. She worked hard at her voice lessons and began to land small roles in Broadway musicals. She adopted Betty Gram as her stage name. “Betty” soon supplanted her given name of Myrtle off stage as well. In the fall of 1917, she was offered a major role that would have established her career. Fate intervened.

Taking the Plunge into Activism

On November 9^th, Betty’s sister Alice unexpectedly arrived from Oregon with the news that Alice Paul, leader of the National Woman’s Party, was planning a particularly long picket line in front of the White House the next day. Alice Paul wanted women from every state to participate, but warned that picketers should expect to be arrested. Since setting this plan in motion, Alice Paul herself had been arrested and was incarcerated at the Washington District Jail, which only heightened the sense of urgency. Betty and Alice were not deterred by the prospect of jail time. They took the fastest train to Washington, DC; arriving at the National Woman’s Party headquarters just in time to join the picket line. Betty would never appear on Broadway again.

Forty-one women from sixteen states took up a stand outside the White House on November 10, 1917 and were arrested for “obstructing traffic.” The judge, however, released them without sentencing them. As Betty wrote in her incomplete memoirs, “We were jubilantly determined to force [the Administration] to take its choice–either to permit us to continue our peaceful agitation or to stand the reaction which was inevitable if they imprisoned us.” Over the next few days, the group picketed twice more, each time getting arrested. After the third arrest, they were sentenced to jail. They were sent to the notorious Occoquan Workhouse, where they were treated with such violence that it came to be called the Night of Terror. (link) Betty and her sister escaped bodily harm, but were very shaken by the experience. They joined the others in an eight-day hunger strike that ended finally with President Wilson’s pardon and promise of support for the 19^th Amendment.

Betty emerged from this ordeal a convinced suffragist. The jail door pin (replica pictured at left) that she received for having served time in jail became one of her most prized possessions. After being invited to give a speech at a National Woman’s Party meeting about her experiences at Occoquan, she joined the organization and worked full-time for them for the next three years.  Her first position was as advertising manager for their publication, “The Suffragist.”

She soon became a national organizer, along with other youthful organizers Julia Emory, Anita Pollitzer, Mary Dubrow and Catherine Flanagan. They lobbied Congress and traveled all over the country organizing local groups, recruiting new members, meeting with state legislators, and picketing at political conventions. Betty soon acquired the nickname the “Singing Suffragist” for ending her speeches with suffrage jail songs. She also participated in the Prison Specials, trains that brought formerly jailed suffragists to various parts of the country to raise awareness of how women were being treated for asking for the right to vote. In February, 1919, she was in Boston to organize events for a Prison Special train due to arrive in a few days. Alice Paul asked her to join a picket line in front of the Massachusetts State House. The group was arrested and sent to the Charles Street Jail, where she went on a five-day hunger strike.

Once the 19^th Amendment finally passed Congress in June 1919, suffragists had only 17 months get it ratified by 36 states if women were to vote in the 1920 presidential election. It was an uphill battle. Most state legislators were not in session, and had to be persuaded to hold a special session. Betty travelled to state after state– Maryland, Massachusetts, Delaware, West Virginia, New Jersey, Vermont and Tennessee– to try and convince state legislatures to vote for the amendment.

Many states had strong anti-suffrage sentiments; liquor businesses also lobbied heavily against it, fearing women would vote for prohibition. The anti-suffrage vote won out in Delaware despite Betty’s best efforts. She is credited for the very narrow passage of the amendment in New Jersey against heavy opposition.

She spent grueling weeks in Tennessee, the final state needed for ratification, working closely with Sue Shelton White and other National Woman’s Party organizers. Betty was in the Tennessee State House when the amendment passed by one vote. You can imagine her elation at having succeeded at long last!!

Life After Ratification of the 19^th Amendment

After the 19^th Amendment became law, Betty travelled to Berlin, Germany to resume her study of voice. She took advantage of all the city had to offer musically. She also threw herself into the vibrant post-war art scene, making friends with artists and collecting their art. She became particularly close with the Jewish artist, Martel Schwichtenberg, and they stayed in touch until Schwichtenberg’s death just after World War II. Betty studied painting with her, but had to give up oil painting when she realized she was allergic to turpentine. Betty married an American journalist, Raymond Swing, after a whirlwind 3-month romance. They took each other’s name, becoming Betty and Raymond Gram Swing, a fact that received widespread news coverage. They moved to England in 1922 for Raymond’s work and raised their three children there. They returned to the United States in 1934; their marriage ended in divorce in 1944.   

Most women who worked for suffrage returned to the private sector once they won the right to vote. Betty was aware that voting was just the beginning of achieving greater equality between men and women. Predating the consciousness-raising groups in the 1960s, she perceived it as a revolution in the concept of women towards themselves. While living abroad, Betty’s interest also expanded to an international focus. Betty joined Alice Paul’s international organization, the World Woman’s Party and continued to work closely with her. She was also Chairman of the London Branch of the National Women’s Party and served on many occasions as a member of the National Woman’s Party Committee on International Relations at the League of Nations in Geneva. Doris Stevens, Betty, and other women activists were arrested in 1928 for attempting to present the Equal Rights Treaty drafted by Paul to ambassadors meeting in France to sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact. She was the only foreign member of the Six Point Group, a British feminist organization founded by Viscountess Rhondda. Other members included Vera Brittain, Rebecca West and Winifred Holtby. They worked for passage of the “Flapper Vote,” which reduced the voting age for women from 30 to 21 as well as issues such as equal pay for equal work and the right of married women to earn.

After her return to the United States in 1934, Betty worked with Doris Stevens on the Inter-American Commission of Women. She also became chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the Woman’s Party and was put in charge of the Equal Rights Amendment campaign in Congress. Her legislative work included appearances before congressional committees and speeches all over the country.  In 1946 Betty and Lady Pethick-Lawrence represented the World Woman’s Party at the conference of the United Nations in London and helped secure the sub-commission on the status of women, now a full commission of the United Nations. She considered this her proudest achievement after her suffrage work.

During World War II, Betty shifted her focus to refuge work for children. She helped shepherd a bill “Mercy Ships for Children” through Congress to enable British children to be evacuated to the United States. She took a British boy, Gabriel Newfield, into her home. She also chaired the Speakers Bureau of the Children’s Crusade for Children sponsored by author Dorothy Canfield Fisher.

Betty gradually retired from participation in women’s rights organizations. She began writing her memoir when she realized how fast the suffrage movement had faded from public consciousness, but did not complete it. She died in 1969 in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Epilogue

Betty embraced the suffrage cause with energy and joie de vivre. Campaigning for suffrage brought out the best in her and she looked back on those years as the highlight of her life. She threw herself whole-heartedly into whatever task she was asked to do, and collaborated well with other suffragists. With her flair for the dramatic, she was a compelling speaker and a persuasive lobbyist. She was extremely good-looking, and used that to her advantage as well. This newspaper clipping, announcing her arrival in Tennessee to help win over the 36^th state needed for ratification of the 19^th Amendment, says it all:

Betty Gram Swing’s papers are located at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Learn more here.