Why Nellie Bly matters

You might have noticed references to Nellie Bly if you looked at Google today. An interesting person, she was. Went undercover as a reporter in the 1880s, exposing all manner of legally-sanctioned very-bad-things many women were subject to in the day, including jobs, health care (especially mental health), courtship services and much more. But it was her interview with Susan B Anthony that strike an obvious chord with me-

“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling,” Miss Anthony said, leaning forward and laying a slender hand on my arm. “I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. It makes her feel as if she were independent. The moment she takes her seat she knows she can’t get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”

I’d heard this quote before, but never the context from which it came. The Wiki makes for interesting reading on the amazing life of Nellie Bly.






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