Word: luscomb
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...Today, Luscomb is 90 years old. She lives on a quiet, tree-lined Cambridge street in a turquoise-grey house with a white front porch, an 11-member commune. Luscomb opens the door to visitors, a smiling grandmotherly figure wearing baggy black cords, a cream silk blouse and turquoise-and-silver jewelry. She peers rather hesitantly through clear pale-pink-rimmed spectacles but she moves quickly and lightly, even on a summery afternoon when the heat seems to slow every movement...
This spring Luscomb was one of the Seven Grand Bostonians Mayor Kevin H. White honored for their services to the City of Boston. At the black-tie, champagne reception this woman who has worked against the tide in most of the progressive movements of her times stood in a receiving line accepting compliments and handshakes from strangers, trying to avoid stumbling over cables and milling photographers recording the event. Two days later the corsage of flame-colored roses Luscomb had worn at the dinner was in a vase on the coffee table next to the Washington Spectator...
...Luscomb regales a visitor with a wealth of anecdotes and political prophesying about people and places far away in space and time yet, as she speaks, it is all vivid. Luscomb recalls the struggles of the early women's movement with compassion and sometimes with humor. There was, for example, a time in the summer of 1909 when Luscomb was stumping for the suffrage and spoke at a small town near Haverell, Mass. It was an evening meeting in a town hall and, after the speaker had finished, a basket filled with yellow "Votes for Women" buttons was passed around...
...Later, Luscomb recalled the drama that attended the 1919 passage of the amendment by Congress of the Federal Constitution that would have extended the right to vote to all Americans, regardless of sex. Three-quarters of the state legislatures had to ratify the amendment and time was running out. The women were anxious to ratify it by 1920--the year of a presidential election--but they had to win 36 states, and they had 35. Only five states hadn't voted, two did not hold a session that year, and two were in the far South and "very reactionary," Luscomb...
...Luscomb conjures up images with little regard for continuity (from 1920 in Tennessee, her conversation turns to the 1848 conference on the condition of women at Seneca Falls, N.Y.). And her discourses reminded one of the plot of an old movie, full of flashbacks and straying off on tangents...