Jessie Street

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Jessie Street (1910)
Jessie Street at a more mature age

Lady Jessie Mary Gray Street (* 1889 in Ranchi , Jharkhand , † 1970 in Sydney ) was an Australian feminist , activist for the rights of the Aborigines and author .

Origin, family and education

Jessie Mary Gray Street was born in Ranchi in northwest British India in 1889, the eldest child of Charles Alfred Gordon Lillingston, who came from a branch of the British aristocratic Gray family, and his wife Mabel Harriet Ogilvie, daughter of the Australian politician Edward Ogilvie.

After attending private schools in England, she studied at the University of Sydney .

She was married to Judge Sir Kenneth Whistler Street, who came from a prominent family of lawyers, politicians and military personnel in New South Wales . Her son, Sir Laurence Whistler Street, who was also a senior judge, later became involved in pursuing his mother's concern for the recognition of the cultural rights of the Australian Aborigines .

Political and social work

When she became secretary of the National Council of Women in 1920 , she was also an early activist for the League of Nations founded in January 1920 . After serving as president of the Feminist Club, in 1929 she became founding president of the United Association of Women, an umbrella organization for the feminist movement in New South Wales .

In the elections to the Australian House of Representatives , she ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Australian Labor Party in 1943 and 1946 . Between 1945 and 1946 she was a female of a few delegates at the United Nations Conference on International Organization , the United Nations Charter drafted. In 1947 she was a founding member of the UN Women's Rights Commission , where her particular commitment was to ensure that discrimination against people on the basis of gender, race and religion was outlawed in the UN Charter of Human Rights .

She later worked closely with Faith Bandler , who campaigned for Aboriginal rights and the Torres Strait Islanders .

She was a formative figure on the Australian and international political arena for over 50 years, from the controversy over women's suffrage in England to constitutional equality for Aborigines in 1967. As an outsider in Australia's conservative establishment, she was recognized for her work for the improvement of the Relations with the USSR and détente during the Cold War discredited as " Red Jessie " by critics in the right-wing media . But she was unwaveringly active for her cause into old age.

Appreciations

Fonts

  • Jessie Street, a Revised Autobiography. Lenore Coltheart (Ed.), Federation Press, 2004, ISBN 1-86287-502-2 .
  • Truth or Repose. Australasian Book Society, 1966.

further reading

  • Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Edinburgh 2002, p. 1066, ISBN 0-550-10051-2 .
  • Lenore Coltheart: "Jessie Street and the Soviet Union" in Political Tourists: Travelers from Australia to the Soviet Union in the 1920s – 1940s , Sheila Fitzpatrick, Carolyn Rasmussen (eds.), Melbourne University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-522-85530 -X .
  • Heather Radi: Jessie Street, Documents and Essays , Women's Redress Press, 1990, ISBN 1-875274-03-0 .
  • Peter Sekuless: Jessie Street, a rewarding but unrewarded life , Prentice Hall, 1978, ISBN 0-7022-1227-X .
  • Eric Russell: Woollahra - a History in Pictures , John Ferguson Pty Ltd, 1980, ISBN 0-909134-23-5 .

Web links

Commons : Jessie Street  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

proof

  1. ^ National Archives of Australia
  2. ^ Australian Women's Archives Project
  3. ^ Who's Who Legal
  4. ^ National Library of Australia
  5. ↑ From The History of the Street Dynasty at www.abc.net.au
personal data
SURNAME Street, Jessie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gray, Lady Jessie Mary
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian suffragette and author
DATE OF BIRTH 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Ranchi , Jharkhand
DATE OF DEATH 1970
Place of death Sydney