We the Women

The Struggle for Equality in the Life of Ellen Browning Scripps

By Molly McClain ’84

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal.

In 1848, the first woman’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, used the U.S. Declaration of Independence as a model to demand liberty and equality for women. Ellen Browning Scripps, one of the founders of The Bishop’s School, was 12 years old at the time. Inspired, she became a feminist committed to women’s rights and education.

A vision of equality for women guided the establishment of The Bishop’s School in 1909. Its founders—the Right Reverend Joseph Horsfall Johnson, Ellen Browning Scripps and Eliza Virginia Scripps—shared the belief that education could level the playing field and allow women to compete with men for opportunities otherwise denied them. It was a radical idea at a time when people routinely faced discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age and disability. Ellen Scripps “thought women ought to be the equal of men,” wrote one of her friends, “They should have their work, interest, and place just as much as men should. This was really her idea and hope.”

Equality remains the goal of the women’s movement and a key priority of students at The Bishop’s School. The FEM Club, founded by Eliana BirnbaumNahl ’23 while in middle school, regularly meets to discuss issues related to women, including gender discrimination. “We should all just be treated equally as human beings,” states upper school club officer Maddie Ishayik ’23.

Ellen Browning Scripps came of age in a world filled with political turmoil and division. In London, where the Scripps family came from, people marched for universal manhood suffrage. In 1848, revolutionaries in France and Germany demanded an end to monarchy and the establishment of constitutional rights. In the U.S., meanwhile, abolitionists and women’s rights advocates used the upheavals in Europe to demand reform at home.

As a child, Miss Scripps lived in Rushville, a small town on the edge of the Illinois prairie. She and her family kept up with current events by reading newspapers from London and New York. In 1848, she and her brother James even started their own handwritten newspaper, “The Monthly Star.” There were few revolutionary events on the family farm, but Ellen and James recognized the value of the press in chronicling change.

Miss Scripps became a champion of women’s rights at an early age, starting with dress reform. As a teenager, she began wearing “freedom dress” or straight-legged pants. Also known as “bloomers,” pants became popular after they were taken up by women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her neighbor, Amelia Bloomer. They were worn beneath a short dress, not unlike today’s leggings, and gave women greater mobility than corsets and crinolines. They were a symbol of freedom at a time when most women were confined by their clothes.

Miss Scripps attended a high school that prepared students for college-level work at a time when few women were educated beyond the sixth grade. At Rushville Seminary and High School, she took history, chemistry, algebra, geometry and Latin. One female teacher was particularly inspirational: L. Amelia Dayton, who would go on to teach modern languages at Ohio Wesleyan University. Miss Scripps followed her example by becoming a teacher herself after her graduation in 1854. Her aim was to save enough money to attend college. Fortunately, a legacy from her grandfather allowed her to attend Knox

Bishop’s junior girls (1916)

College in Illinois. She matriculated in 1856 with advanced credit due to her work in high school and graduated two years later.

A college education allowed Miss Scripps to earn her living, first as a teacher and later as a journalist and editor on the family-owned Detroit Evening News. Because she was a woman, Miss Scripps earned less money than other employees and received only two shares of the company stock. According to her brother E.W. Scripps, she was owed much more. As the newspaper became successful, she was pushed aside by younger men. She went from the business office to the proofreaders’ room, unrewarded for her hard work and expertise.

Faced with discrimination, Miss Scripps joined other women to fight for change. She joined the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) not long after it was founded by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and she voiced her support for a constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote. She subscribed to the organization’s newspaper, The Revolution, and committed herself to the construction of “a permanent, progressive democracy” based on common humanity and the equal rights of women and men.

Suffragists’ efforts to get a constitutional amendment were stymied by white southerners who opposed giving Black women the vote. The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protected the right of formerly enslaved men to vote and hold office and prohibited states from denying the vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Nevertheless, legislatures across the South passed racially discriminatory “Jim Crow” laws that disenfranchised the majority of Black men. In that context, the U.S. Senate rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to give women the vote. Afterward, the newly-organized National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) worked on advancing women’s suffrage state-by-state.

After her move to California in the 1890s, Miss Scripps joined the fight for women’s suffrage in the West. A number of western states had opened the franchise to women, among them Wyoming (1869), Utah (1870), Colorado (1893) and Idaho (1896). California, Oregon and Washington were battleground states. Her experience as a journalist and editor proved valuable to California’s suffrage fight. In 1911, Miss Scripps directed the newspapers founded by her brother E.W. Scripps to support the campaign for equal suffrage. The result was a narrow victory for an amendment of the Constitution of California that granted women the right to vote. E.W. later wrote, “I put all of the California Scripps papers at her service in this respect and so, in an indirect way perhaps, I believe she is responsible for the success of the movement in this state.”

The 19th Amendment (1920) granted all women the right to vote but, in many states, discriminatory laws prevented Black women from going to the polls. Not until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did both Black men and women achieve racial equality in voting.

Ellen Scripps’ investments in her brothers’ newspapers made her a very wealthy woman. She used that money to invest in educational opportunities, providing major financial support to The Bishop’s School; Scripps College; the Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Scripps Research Institute; the San Diego Society of Natural History; the San Diego Zoo; the La Jolla Recreation Center; the La Jolla Athenaeum Music & Arts Library; the YMCA and the YWCA, among other organizations. The advancement of women’s equality in education, however, remained her central goal. A college graduate, Miss Scripps was keenly aware of the importance of education for women. She saw it as part of a greater movement toward freedom and democracy. After founding The Bishop’s School, she wrote, “I feel more than assured that I have embarked on an undertaking that is almost limitless in its scope and power for good.”

Equality remains a cornerstone of the educational experience at Bishop’s. Upper school FEM club officer Karina Kadia ’22 described a course “Feminism: A Biblical Perspective” that was eyeopening. Delilah Delgado ’21, also an officer, added, “At Bishop’s we have learned about the history of feminism, and we’ve been given the tools to explore that further if we want. I feel that knowledge gives us shoulders to stand on as we move forward.”

Bishop’s has a long tradition of female leadership and a committed group of alumnae who continue to champion the cause of women and the legacy of Ellen Browning Scripps.

“At Bishop’s we have learned about the history of feminism… and we’ve been given the tools to explore that further if we want. I feel that knowledge gives us shoulders to stand on as we move forward.”

Bishop’s faculty softball team (1916)