My Hometown Hero: Dr. Mary Edwards Walker
/By Eva Jones, LCSW
In the small town of Oswego, NY, outside of an unassuming rural town hall, there is a 900 lb bronze statue of a woman wearing trousers under her knee-length dress, and a quote that reads, “I have got to die before people will know who I am and what I have done. It is a shame that people who lead reforms in this world are not appreciated until after they are dead; then the world pays its tributes…”. That woman is Dr. Mary Edwards Walker.
Mary Edwards Walker was born to abolitionist parents in 1832 in the town of Oswego NY. As free-thinking radicals of the time, Walker’s parents opened the first free school in Oswego, to ensure that their daughters had access to the same education as their son. Walker went on to attend medical school at Syracuse University, graduating as the second woman ever in the US to obtain a medical degree (right behind Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, another SU graduate).
Growing up, Dr. Walker’s parents had been accepting of her preference for pants instead of skirts, but as a woman out in the world she encountered severe social and professional backlash, and physical and legal violence, for refusing to wear the clothing assigned to women of the 1800s, which was heavy, restrictive, and difficult to clean. Walker became a powerful advocate for “dress reform”, and was quoted as saying, “The greatest sorrows from which women suffer to-day… are those physical, moral, and mental ones, that are caused by their unhygienic manner of dressing!”. Dr. Walker maintained that clothing has no gender. After being arrested in 1870 in New Orleans for wearing “men’s clothes” including her signature top hat (one of several such arrests in her lifetime), Dr. Walker stated, “I don't wear men's clothes, I wear my own clothes.”.
When the civil war began in 1861, Dr. Walker decided to join the Union’s efforts. But, she was not permitted to be a medical officer because she was a woman, so instead she served as an “unpaid volunteer”. Dr. Walker traveled to the front lines, and in 1863 became the first woman to serve as a US army surgeon. Walker often crossed battle lines to tend to wounded soldiers and civilians, and in 1864, she was captured by confederate troops and held as a prisoner of war. While imprisoned, Dr. Walker still refused to wear the “women’s clothes” that were provided by her captors, maintaining that pants were more comfortable, hygienic, and made her work as a surgeon easier. Walker was released in a prisoner exchange four months later, and continued her volunteer medical work. After the war ended in 1865, Dr. Walker was awarded the Medal of Honor for Meritorious Service by President Andrew Johnson. To this day, Dr. Walker is the only woman in US history to have been awarded the Medal of Honor. Despite this achievement, Dr. Walker never received a military pension because she had never been officially hired by the military.
Throughout her life, Dr. Walker used her political voice to its fullest extent. In addition to dress reform, she spoke out on abolition, women’s political rights and suffrage, and religious tolerance. Several times during her adulthood, Dr. Walker tried unsuccessfully to register to vote, and even ran for political office in 1881 and 1890. In her later years, Dr. Walker joined the suffragist movement and continued her fight for women to gain the right to participate in politics. Looking back on her life in 1897, Dr. Walker wrote, “I am the original new woman ... Why, before Lucy Stone, Mrs. Bloomer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were ... before they were, I am. In the early forties, when they began their work in dress reform, I was already wearing pants.”
