Annie Riley Hale

Annie Riley Hale (May 1, 1859 - December 26, 1944) was an American teacher, author, and social critic. In her lifetime she was known for her criticism of Theodore Roosevelt and her anti-suffrage and anti-vaccine activity.

Annie Riley Hale
Born(1859-05-01)May 1, 1859
DiedDecember 26, 1944(1944-12-26) (aged 85)
NationalityAmerican
OccupationTeacher, writer

Family

Annie Riley Hale was born in Rogersville, Tennessee in 1859. Hale was married to James Richards Hale, a lawyer, who died in 1897. She had three children, including the feminist Ruth Hale who as an adult opposed many of her mother's views.[1] Hale was also a cousin of John K. Shields, a justice on the Tennessee Supreme Court and U.S. Senator.[2]

Life and work

Hale worked as a high school mathematics teacher in Tennessee and Washington, D.C. and, later, as a researcher for legislators.[1] She was best known as a vocal social critic who wrote and spoke about a variety of issues throughout her life. Over the years, these positions included anti-war, anti-suffrage, anti-miscegenation, and anti-vaccine views. Hale published several articles advocating a white supremacist and anti-miscegenist approach to racial issues and corresponded with Robert Wilson Shufeldt, a scientist who held racist views.[3] One of these articles appeared in the New York Times in 1899.[4]

Her book on Theodore Roosevelt, Rooseveltian Fact and Fable, was published in 1908, during his second term as president.[5] The book was reviewed positively by Daniel De Leon in The Daily People, the weekly newspaper of the Socialist Labor Party.[6] The head of the Republican National Committee, Charles D. Hilles, ordered over 4,000 copies of her book to be distributed to party chairmen around the country.[7] Her book, a highly critical view on Roosevelt, was supplemented a few years later by the publication of her follow-up text, Bull Moose Trails. In a profile of Hale written by journalist Nixola Greeley-Smith, Hale criticized "the schoolboy English, the ignorant arrogance, the appalling bumptiousness of the man we had made President of the United States."[2]

In 1917, Hale was arrested on charges of breaching the peace after speaking at an anti-war rally in Hartford.[8][9] Hale ran in the 1932 California Senate election against the eventual winner William Gibbs McAdoo, polling in last place in the Democratic primary.[10] Hale died in 1944.[11]

Anti-suffrage

In December 1913, Hale addressed the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Woman Suffrage alongside other pro- and anti-suffrage speakers, arguing against giving women the ballot.[12] In 1916, Hale published The Eden Sphinx, in which she argued that women's lack of political power was due to their failure to properly influence men as mothers, and that women in the U.S. had otherwise already attained all the legal and economic rights they need.[1] The book was reviewed in the New York Times. The following year, Hale published a pamphlet titled "Woman suffrage: Article on the biological and sociological aspects of the woman question".[13]

Anti-vaccination and natural hygiene

After her son Shelton's death in 1920 following unsuccessful brain surgery, Hale became set against the medical establishment.[1] In 1926, Hale defended homeopathy and authored the book These Cults, a rejoinder to Morris Fishbein's Medical Follies.[14][15]

In 1935, she published The Medical Voodoo which put forward her anti-vaccination views.[16] In the book, Hale laid out arguments against vaccination based on theories of "natural healing" as well as a critique of "medical experimentation" on the lower classes and vulnerable segments of society.[17] The book was reviewed negatively in The American Mercury and positively regarded by alternative medicine advocate Herbert Shelton.[18][19]

Selected publications

References
  1. Henry, Susan (2012). Anonymous in Their Own Names: Doris E. Fleischman, Ruth Hale, and Jane Grant. Vanderbilt University Press. pp. 83–88, 223. ISBN 9780826518460. Retrieved 9 June 2019.
  2. Greeley-Smith, Nixola (October 17, 1908). "Tiny Washington Woman Tells Why She Attacked Roosevelt in a Book and Is Not Afraid of Him". The Evening World. Library of Congress. Retrieved 9 June 2019.
  3. "Why Miscegenation Flourishes in the North". Pearson's Magazine. Pearson Publishing Company. 1910. Retrieved 9 June 2019.
  4. Hale, Annie Riley (3 July 1899). "THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO; The Race Problem as It Appears to a Southern Woman". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 June 2019.
  5. Hale, Annie Riley (1908). "Rooseveltian fact and fable". Hathi Trust. Broadway Pub. Co. Retrieved 9 June 2019.
  6. De Leon, Daniel (November 23, 1910). "Rooseveltian Fact and Fable" (PDF). Daily People. Retrieved 9 June 2019.
  7. "Congressional Record - Senate - 1917" (PDF). govinfo. Government Publishing Office. June 8, 1917. Retrieved 9 June 2019.
  8. "Prosecution of Two Anti-War Agitators Fails". Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. The Bridgeport evening farmer. September 19, 1917. Retrieved 9 June 2019.
  9. "Pacifists Arrested for Protesting WW I, Celebrating the Constitution". Today in Civil Liberties History. 5 June 2015. Retrieved 9 June 2019.
  10. Davies, Pearce (September 1, 1932). "Tubbs, McAdoo To Fight It Out". San Jose News. Retrieved 9 June 2019.
  11. "MRS. ANNIE RILEY HALE; Writer, Lecturer, Economist Was Mother of Mrs, Heywood Broun". The New York Times. 28 December 1944. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
  12. "Statement of Mrs. Annie Riley Hale". Congressional Serial Set. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1914. p. 123. Retrieved 9 June 2019.
  13. Hale, Annie Riley (1917). Woman suffrage.: Article on the biological and sociological acpects of the woman question. Govt. Print. Off. OL 6602310M.
  14. Gevitz, Norman. (1988). Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America. Hopkins University Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0801837104
  15. Rogers, Naomi. (1998). An Alternative Path: The Making and Remaking of Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital of Philadelphia. Rutgers University Press. p. 106. ISBN 0-8135-2536-5
  16. Conis, Elena (2015). Vaccine nation : America's changing relationship with immunization. University of Chicago Press. p. 134. ISBN 978-0226923765. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
  17. Johnston, Robert D. (2004). The Politics of Healing: Histories of Alternative Medicine in Twentieth-Century North America. Routledge. p. 273. ISBN 9781135953911. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  18. "Check List of New Books" (PDF). The American Mercury. XXXVII (146): xi–xii. February 1936. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
  19. Shelton, Herbert M. (July 1944). "A School Ma'm Looks At Money". Dr. Shelton's Hygienic Review. 5 (11): 285. ISBN 9780787310417. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
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