Marie Equi: courageous and unconventional
Sunday, August 10, 2008
JOHN TERRY
The [Portland] Oregonian

(First of two parts)

Were Marie Equi's only claim to fame that she horsewhipped the
superintendent of schools in The Dalles, she would be on record as
striking an obvious blow, or blows, for women's equality.

As it was, Equi progressed not only to a controversial career in
medicine but also passionate crusades for workers' rights, free speech,
women's rights and birth control. And along the way she managed to run
counter, mostly by design, to the ultra-moralistic temper of her time
and place.

Equi arrived in The Dalles in 1892 in pursuit of her relationship with
Bessie Holcomb, a teacher at Wasco Independent Academy, "an esteemed
institution for students at the primary grades through high school,"
according to Equi biographer Michael Helquist.

"Holcomb arrived . . . in the winter of 1891," Helquist says. "She took
advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862 . . . to file a land claim . . .
(on) 121 acres two miles west of The Dalles. There she made a home amid
gnarled oak, bunch grass and granite outcroppings just below a bluff
with a sweeping view of the Columbia River."

Equi followed a few months later, and the two joined in what polite
society then referred to as a "Boston marriage."

Equi, born in 1872 in New Bedford, Mass., was 20 years old, the product
of an Italian-Irish working-class family. She and Holcomb, three years
older, became fast friends in high school. But while Holcomb's family
had the wherewithal for her to attend Wellesley College, Equi supported
herself working in a textile factory.

"Both women longed for something more, something better," Helquist says;
hence, their move to Oregon.

The Dalles received them cordially, though some segments of the
community looked askance on their relationship. Their day of fame came
when the Rev. Orson D. Taylor, local minister, real estate speculator
and president of the academy board, reneged on a promise to pay Holcomb
$100 beyond her contracted salary.

Equi, outraged at the affront to her companion, equipped herself with a
rawhide whip and marched downtown to confront Taylor. Reports differ on
just what happened next.

The Dalles Weekly Chronicle reported Equi "paraded in front of
(Taylor's) office . . . for nearly an hour and half, and during that
time the gentlemen kept himself barricaded behind a locked door."

The other local newspaper, the Times-Mountaineer, reported Equi flushed
Taylor from his lair and "began applying her lash, and Mr. Taylor turned
and held her hands. She then commenced kicking him, and the crowd forced
Taylor to relinquish his hold." Equi then "rained blows thick and fast
upon his back."

The sheriff interceded, and Equi was arrested and held under $250 bond,
promptly posted by her partisans. That afternoon, a judge dismissed the
charge on condition she thereafter keep the peace. The academy board
sided with their president, but Equi's fans raffled off her whip and
rewarded her in excess of the disputed $100.

Community animosity toward the reverend is revealed in that three days
later a grand jury in Portland indicted him for embezzlement involving a
shady real estate deal in which numerous Wasco County investors were
victimized.

In the aftermath of Taylor's defeat, the Times interviewed Holcomb and
Equi, "very comfortably situated in their cosy little home." It
described them "not desirous of being made subjects of public criticism
. . . ladies in the fullest sense of the term . . . (and) will remain in
the future indissoluble friends which nothing can separate."

Equi, said the paper, was "of a jovial disposition . . . an entertaining
conversationalist, and her language shows a nice and discriminating use
of words."

After several years in The Dalles, perhaps ultimately finding its
frontier culture too stultifying, the two departed for San Francisco,
where Holcomb taught school and Equi began working toward on a medical
degree.

There the relationship proved not indissoluble: Holcomb stayed on in the
city by the bay while Equi moved to Portland and enrolled in the
University of Oregon Medical School.

Next week: Birth of a firebrand.

You can reach John Terry, a retired copy editor for The Oregonian and
member of the Oregon Geographic Names Board, at terryjo...@cs.com

Sunday, August 17, 2008
JOHN TERRY (Second of two parts)
The Oregonian

Marie Equi's matriculation at the University of Oregon Medical School
was not that of a typical submissive medical student at the turn of the
20th century.

Granted, she excelled in her studies, no doubt a saving attribute. But
reports indicate she was in no degree hesitant in expressing contempt
for her mentors' nearly universally held assessment of women as lacking
necessary brainpower and/or stamina to function as a physician.

They let her get away with it, perhaps keeping in mind a previous
offense by a member of a patronizing fraternity who moved her to
administer a public, and publicly applauded, horsewhipping on the
streets of The Dalles.

She graduated in 1903 with one of the first medical degrees awarded to a
woman by that institution. She set up practice in Portland, welcomed by
women in the community relieved that they no longer had to submit their
female complaints to often dispassionate male doctors.

When San Francisco was struck by its earthquake and fire in 1906,
Portland was quick to dispatch aid to the stricken city. Equi was one of
a group of doctors and other medical personnel -- and the only woman --
who sped to the scene to offer assistance.

Equi toiled tirelessly among patients at the San Francisco Presidio's
U.S. Army Hospital and was awarded a government citation recognizing her
efforts.

Back in Portland, she hired a young woman, Harriet Speckart, as her
assistant, and they soon began an intimate relationship.

Speckart was a niece of Olympia Brewing Co. founder Leon Schmidt, and
her family did everything they could think of to separate the two,
including threatening to cut off Speckart's inheritance. Speckart stayed
with Equi.

Equi offered birth control and performed abortions without regard to
monetary means or social status. She was outspoken in supporting women's
suffrage, which in 1912 gained Oregon women the right to vote.

In 1913, she volunteered medical help to women cherry sorters, backed by
the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), on strike against the Oregon
Packing Co. As she tended an injured worker, a policeman viciously
clubbed her. The attack prompted her allegiance to the IWW, although she
wasn't allowed to join because of her profession, and moved her to
espouse anarchy.

In 1916, Margaret Sanger, the noted birth control advocate and Planned
Parenthood founder, visited Portland. Equi responded with heartfelt
support: Correspondence indicates she fell in love with Sanger, though
it appears Sanger didn't return her ardor in kind.

Sanger and Equi were both arrested for distributing "obscene" material.
A municipal judge levied a $10 fine, suspended.

Equi joined the American Union Against Militarism. During a downtown
war-preparedness rally she unfurled a banner reading, "PREPARE TO DIE,
WORKINGMEN, J.P. MORGAN & CO. WANT PREPAREDNESS FOR PROFIT."

In December 1918, she spoke against World War I (called it "The Big
Barbecue") at the local IWW Hall. She was arrested, charged with
sedition under the Espionage Act, convicted in federal court and
sentenced to three years.

Noted lawyer and social activist C.E.S. Wood mounted an unsuccessful
appeal. The appeals court praised Wood's characteristically skillful
argument based on constitutional freedom of speech but held, in effect,
"the law's the law." The U.S. Supreme Court refused the case.

Equi went off to California's San Quentin State Prison; President Wilson
reduced her sentence to a year and a half; she served 11 months, "a
terrible inmate, always against the rules."

Speckart, meanwhile, had taken Equi's adopted (1915) daughter, Mary, and
moved to Gearhart. The two were never together again, although Mary
again lived with Equi after Speckart died of tuberculosis in May 1927.

Equi continued to live and practice in Portland, to the end, according
to a longtime friend, "a holy terror."

She died July 13, 1952.

With her death came a final contradiction, according to biographer Tom Cook:

"Her fiery denunciation of capitalism does not square with the fact that
upon her death she left an estate valued at over $100,000, much of it in
industrial stockholdings."

You can reach John Terry, a retired copy editor for The Oregonian and
member of the Oregon Geographic Names Board, at terryjo...@cs.com.

--
Dan Clore

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