Sylvia Pankhurst, British suffragette and international socialist, dies in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at the age of 78.

Born in Manchester, England, in 1882, Sylvia Pankhurst was the daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, a champion of woman suffrage who became active in the late 1880s. Sylvia won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art and in London divided her time between her studies and involvement in her mother’s campaign to win women the right to vote. With her mother and older sister–Christabel–she helped found the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903, a political organization dedicated to achieving equality between the sexes, with an emphasis on female enfranchisement.

In 1906, she abandoned her studies and a promising career in art to pursue politics full time. A socialist, she believed that lower-class women would never be liberated until they were brought out of poverty. Because of this view, she began to drift from her more conservative mother and sister, who were focused on the goal of woman suffrage. Nevertheless, she remained a dedicated member of the WSPU and, like her sister and mother, was arrested numerous times for nonviolent protests and conducted hunger strikes. When Christabel and other members of the WSPU began to advocate violent acts of agitation–particularly arson–Sylvia, a pacifist, opposed them.

Source: history.com

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1957 September 25