I don’t know how many times over the last few days I have heard the name Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, but it wasn’t until today that I stopped and asked myself the question, “Who is Marjory Stoneman Douglas?” The answer I found deepened even further my admiration and respect for the students, the teachers, and this moment that has been thrust upon them.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas was a journalist, environmental champion and author, whose chief cause that she is known for is the protection of the Florida Everglades against efforts to drain it and reclaim the land for development. She died at age 108 in 1998, just before the seniors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were born. www.usatoday.com/…
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on April 7, 1890, Marjory graduated from Wellesley and was given the elected recognition of “Class Orator”, an interesting legacy as today the student voices from her namesake school now reverberate across our country. She was 5 foot 2 inches tall and weighed 100 lbs.
“(Marjory) was always immaculately dressed in pearls, a floppy straw and gloves---she had an uncanny ability to get her point across...She had a tongue like a switchblade and the moral authority to embarrass bureaucrats and politicians and make things happen.” en.wikipedia.org/...
In 1915 she worked for her father at the Miami Herald, rising from a society reporter to an editorial page columnist. Her book The Everglades, River of Grass, first published in 1947 and again in 1987 defined one of the major threads of her life, defending and protecting the Florida Everglades. In her autobiography, Voice of the River (1987) she is thusly described
Mrs. Douglas was half the size of her fellow speakers and she wore huge dark glasses, which along with the huge floppy hat made her look like Scarlet O’Hara as played by Igor Stravinsky. When she spoke, everybody stopped slapping (mosquitoes) and more or less came to order. She reminded us all of our responsibility to nature. Her voice had the sobering effect of a one-room schoolmarm’s. The tone itself seemed to tame the rowdiest of the local stone crabbers, plus the developers, and the lawyers on both sides. I wonder if it didn’t also intimidate the mosquitoes...The Request for a Corps of Engineers permit was eventually turned down. This was no surprise to those of us who’d heard her speak. (John Rothchild) www.nps.gov/...
Marjory Stoneman Douglas is in the National Women’s Hall of Fame and her biography on that site notes that
She also engaged in a number of other campaigns and charity work to improve society: campaigns against slum-lords and for improved housing conditions, for free milk for babies whose parents needed aid, and for the ratification of the Women’s Suffrage Amendment. www.womenofthehall.org/...
She was a charter member of the first American Civil Liberties Union chapter organized in the South in the 1950’s... and lent her support to the Florida Rural Legal Services a group that worked to protect migrant farm workers who were centered on Belle Glade and who were primarily employed by the sugarcane industry. After quitting the Miami Herald in 1923, Marjory worked as a freelance writer from 1920-1990 publishing 109 fiction articles, 40 in the Saturday Evening Post. “Her protagonists were often independent, quirky women or youthful underdogs who encountered social or natural injustices.” en.wikipedia.org/…
Like the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High she also took her cause to the Florida State Legislature and was similarly unimpressed.
In 1917 she traveled with Mary Baird Bryan, William Jennings Bryan’s wife, and two other women to Tallahassee to speak in support of women’s right to vote. Douglas was not impressed with the reception the group got from the Florida Legislature. She wrote about her experience later “All four of us spoke to a joint committee wearing our best hats. Talking to them was like talking to graven images. They never paid attention to us at all.” en.wikipedia.org/...
Like the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, she took on the government and big business. Marjory took on the sugarcane industry referred to as “Big Sugar” taking them to task for polluting Lake Okeechobee and the Army Corps of Engineers for constructing canals to divert water away from the Everglades.
During a speech addressing the harmful practices of the Army Corps of Engineers when the colonel in attendance dropped his pen on the floor. As he was stooping to pick it up, Douglas stopped her speech and said to him, “Colonel! You can crawl under the table and hide, but you can’t get away from me!” en.wikipedia.org/...
Marjory Stoneman Douglas has received many honors. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection named its headquarters in Tallahassee after her.
During her polite acceptance speech, she railed against Ronald Regan and then Secretary of the Interior James Watt for their lackluster approach to environmental conservation. en.wikipedia.org/...
In 1993, Marjory Stoneman Douglas was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.
Like the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High she has been described as having
a clear vision of the way things ought to be, and she didn’t give a lot of credibility to excuses about why they’re not like that. en.wikipedia.org/...
This essence for justice embodied by Marjory Stoneman Douglas; this gift to speak simple strong truth to power; this fire to not be silenced, and this persistence to persevere is now being embodied by a new generation in her namesake institution---shining a light on what is right, showing us the way forward on a path we had almost lost hope of taking.