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Elizabeth A.Sackler Center for Feminist Art

Frances Willard

b. 1839, Churchville, New York; d. 1898, New York

Frances Willard was a social reformer, author, public speaker, and leader of the National Prohibition Party and the American Temperance movement. She supported other reform movements in the U.S., fighting for women’s suffrage, women’s economic and religious rights, education and labor reforms. She worked as a journalist and editor (1871–74) for the Chicago Daily Post; she was dean of women and professor of English in 1873 when the Evanston College for Ladies merged with Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She helped organize the Chicago Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in 1874 and remained with them until 1898, and she was elected president of the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in 1891.