Obscure(d) Women of the Right Trivia Quiz

Answer: Alma Bridwell White

Alma Bridwell White was born in Lewis County, Kentucky in 1862. The Pillar of Fire Church broke from Methodism and for a while White was associated with Pentecostalism, but then she came to add Pentecostalism to her list of "anti's". In 1918 White became the first female bishop in the USA, in New Jersey. She openly supported the Ku Klux Klan and let them hold meetings and burn crosses on church property--the only church ever to do so. She also supported woman suffrage, the National Women's Party, and the Equal Rights Amendment, but her feminism was limited to equality for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant women--as biblically ordained, she believed. White met her Maker in 1946.

Two of the other women listed were rival ministers. Eddy founded the Christian Science Church, and McPherson founded the Foursquare Church. Ellen G. White, who predated Alma White (no relation), helped found Seventh-Day Adventism.

Answer: Shirley Temple Black

Little curly-haired Shirley Temple (1928-2014), the cinematic cutie of the 1930s, grew up to marry a very rich and very conservative young man, the son of the president of Pacific Gas and Electric. Mrs. Black ran as a conservative Republican in 1967 for the House of Representatives, but lost to liberal Republican Pete McCloskey, who opposed the Vietnam War.

Her political career was far from over, however, as she received many political appointments during Republican administrations. Nixon appointed her US representative to the UN in 1969; President Ford appointed her ambassador to Ghana (1974-1976); lastly, the elder George Bush appointed her ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1989-1992).

She also served on the boards of many corporations, including Del Monte Foods and The Walt Disney Company.

Answer: Jeanne Kirkpatrick

Jeanne Kirkpatrick (1926-2006) was truly "neoconservative" in the sense that she was a disillusioned leftist who had found herself more comfortable with the policies of the Republican party. In her youth Kirkpatrick was a socialist, and even when she gave a speech at the 1984 Republican primary, she was still a registered Democrat. (She switched sides the following year). Under Reagan she also served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the Defense Policy Review Board. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003.

The Kirkpatrick Doctrine states that to thwart Communism, the USA should support any anti-Communist regime in the world, even a repressive Latin American dictator. This doctrine significantly shaped Republican foreign policy and was embraced by most neoconservatives, who retained their influence in the Republican party through the younger Bush administration.

Answer: Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand (1905-1982) grew far less obscure in American popular culture after her death, as many conservatives began to invoke her name. Her novel 'Atlas Shrugged' (1957) became one of the most influential books on the Right by the turn of the millennium. Rand's philosophy is that the only moral way to behave is to pursue one's rational self-interest.

Therefore, the only moral socioeconomic system is laissez-faire capitalism, as all other systems infringe upon individual rights. Author Gore Vidal, however, described her radical individualism as "nearly perfect in its immorality". Conservative writer and PBS icon William F. Buckley also opposed her, in part because she was atheist and pro-choice.

She is considered one of the three foremothers of libertarianism, although she rejected that appellation as she equated libertarianism with anarchy.

Answer: Rose Wilder Lane

Along with Ayn Rand, writer Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968) is considered a founding mother of the libertarian movement in the USA. Rose Wilder Lane was the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote the famous 'Little House' books, on which the 'Little House on the Prairie' TV series was based.

Lane may have edited her mother's manuscripts and she wrote many novels and biographies herself, including one of Charlie Chaplin, over which he sued Lane for defamation. Her most influential book was 'The Discovery of Freedom' (1943), which stressed individual liberty. Lane identified Social Security with a Ponzi scheme and the New Deal with "creeping socialism". During World War II the FBI kept a file on her (perhaps suspecting a fascist connection). Unlike Ayn Rand, another libertarian foremother, she embraced the "libertarian" moniker and even mentored the man who would become the Libertarian Party presidential candidate of 1976. Rand herself split with Lane, who felt that the American pioneers would not have survived without some form of cooperation, a notion which Rand decried as "collectivist heresy".

Answer: Isabel Paterson

Isabel Paterson (1886-1961) was a novelist who began writing in the 1910s. Born in Canada, she became a US citizen in 1928. Paterson refused to accept Social Security retirement benefits and kept her Social Security card in an envelope marked, "'Social Security' Swindle".

She was a major influence on the founder of the conservative 'National Review' magazine, William F. Buckley. A deist, Paterson broke in the late 1940s with the other two foremothers of libertarianism--with atheist Ayn Rand over the question of religion in capitalism, and with Rose Wilder Lane over Lane's "emotionalism".

Answer: Kathleen Norris

Isolationism was a major tenet of the American Right before the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. Kathleen Norris (1880-1966) garnered a lot of popular sympathy for isolationism because she was also prohibitionist, pacifist, and opposed to the death penalty. Norris was the first president of the National Legion of Mothers of America.

She also became a prominent member of the America First Committee--along with Charles Lindbergh and Frank Lloyd Wright--who purportedly sought to maintain the USA's neutrality. American Communists, however, condemned the AFC as a Nazi front, and even Republican leaders like Thomas Dewey found the rhetoric of the AFC too anti-Semitic.

Answer: Elizabeth Dilling

Elizabeth Dilling (1894-1966) founded the Mothers' Peace Movement, against entry into WWII, but this was not a pacifist organization. (In fact, many sources erroneously omit the word "peace" when naming Dillings's organization). Not to put too fine a point on it, Dilling and the Mothers' Movement were openly pro-Nazi, anti-Communist, and anti-Semitic. Dilling equated Communism with "Jewry", and used the Talmud to defend that belief. She denounced Eleanor Roosevelt as a Communist sympathizer, along with Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, and Mahatma Gandhi. Dilling was indicted under the Smith Act with 32 others in the Great Sedition Trial of 1944. The proceedings ended in a mistrial when the presiding judge died, and the Smith Act (which was also used against Communists) was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch is a character, loosely based on Dilling, in Sinclair Lewis's dystopic novel 'It Can't Happen Here' (1935).

Answer: United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

UNESCO is a United Nations specialized agency intended to promote peace, justice, rule of law, and human rights through (as its name suggests) international collaboration in education, science, and culture. UNESCO is headquartered in Paris, and even states and other entities not recognized by the UN may become members (of which there are nearly 200).

Los Angeles public schools were gearing up to implement UNESCO educational programs of internationalism and peace, called "Toward World Understanding". Some conservative parents, however, saw this as subversion by the Left, for they believed UNESCO was a Communist front and that internationalism meant loss of national sovereignty and identity, not to mention miscegenation (mixing of the races). The Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion revered her. She organized the parents of Los Angeles so well that UNESCO advocates were jeered and harassed in public. Joseph McCarthy himself praised her success, which helped promote right-wing political organizing in general. Her agitation led Ronald Reagan to remove the USA from UNESCO in 1984. (The USA rejoined in 2003.) Her story is told in 'Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right' by Michelle M. Nickerson.

Answer: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (1941-2007) founded the Institute for Women's Studies at Emory University in 1986. In the 1990s, she became an intellectual force in the conservative women's movement, especially in academia. She criticized both feminism and individualism, for unlike atheist Ayn Rand, Fox-Genovese was not an irreligious libertarian, but a devout convert to Roman Catholicism (which conversion was motivated by her aversion to individualism).

In 1993 a female graduate student sued her for sexual harassment and discrimination; the matter was settled out of court. (Read 'Historians in Trouble' by Jon Wiener.) Fox-Genovese received numerous awards for her historical scholarship as well as the National Humanities Medal in 2003.