Lizzie Crozier French

Biography

Early life

Lizzie Crozier was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1851, one of the five daughters of John H. Crozier and Mary Williams Crozier. Her father was a politician who had served in the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1837 to 1839, representing Knox County, and who had represented Tennessee's 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1845 to 1849. Young Lizzie Crozier grew up in a home full of books and was educated at the Convent of the Visitation in Georgetown and later at a private Episcopal school for young women in Columbia, Tennessee. Around 1870, Lizzie Crozier starred alongside future author Frances Hodgson Burnett in a performance of She Stoops to Conquer.

In November 1885, French initiated the founding of the Ossoli Circle, which was the first women's club in Tennessee and was to become the first club in the southern United States to join the General Federation of Women's Clubs. She was inspired to form the Ossoli Circle after having visited the Sorosis Women's Club in New York City. The Ossoli Circle is named for the early 19th-century transcendentalist and feminist Margaret Fuller Ossoli. the measure passed, and UT began admitting women in 1892.

In 1890, French founded the Woman's Educational and Industrial Union to promote various social reforms in Knoxville. Shortly after its formation, the group convinced the city to appoint a police matron to oversee female inmates, and ensure they remained separated from male inmates. Knoxville was the first city in the South to appoint such an office. French described the position of married women in the state as "nothing more or less than that of a slave," pointing out that they had no right to their own property or earnings. In a 1912 speech to the Tennessee Bar Association, she blasted the state's legal bias toward men. She urged them to "not simply alter one law concerning women here and there, but to take the whole bunch and burn it up." During this period, French began publishing a magazine, The People, the purpose of which was to expose the corrupt "ring leaders" running the city. She pointed out that the journal was not a guide for "society ladies," stating, "you will not learn from these columns how to butter your bread or hold your fork."

Women's suffrage

French's suffragist activities began as early as the 1880s, when she spoke to passers-by at Knoxville's Market Square. As the suffragist movement gained momentum in the 1900s, she was elected president of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association, and organized a writer's club to help women write letters-to-the-editor to newspapers across the state.

After Congress sent the 19th Amendment to the states for ratification in the spring of 1919, French spent much of her time in Nashville lobbying state legislators. By the time the legislature convened in August 1920 to consider the amendment, thirty-five states had ratified the amendment, leaving it one state short. French and her colleagues set up headquarters in the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, and after a marathon lobbying session, the state house certified the amendment on August 19, 1920, and the amendment thus became law. She campaigned as a progressive and an advocate for the "weak and unfortunate," and vowed to judge any proposed measure solely on its "righteousness." Her candidacy was unsuccessful.

Historic marker There is a historic marker in Old Gray Cemetery honoring Lizzie Crozier French. She was honored with the marker in August 2021.

Bust A bust of Lizzie Crozier French has been placed in the East Tennessee History Museum.