Jennie Scott Griffiths

Jennie Scott Griffiths
Photograph of a woman with bobbed hair wearing a striped dress with a wide, white, scalloped collar adorned with a broach at the base of her neck.
Griffiths, Brisbane, 1920
Born
Jennie Scott Wilson

(1875-10-30)October 30, 1875
DiedJune 29, 1951(1951-06-29) (aged 75)
San Francisco, California, U.S.
Citizenship
  • United States (until 1897)
  • United Kingdom (1897–1928)
  • United States (from 1928)
Occupation(s)Journalist, activist
Years active1893–1951
Employers
Known for
  • Feminist, labor, and socialist organizing
  • pacifism
Children10, including Ciwa

Jennie Scott Griffiths (October 30, 1875 – June 29, 1951) was an American newspaper editor, journalist, and political and women's rights activist. Born in Texas, from the age of two, she performed as an orator and was a well-known elocutionist and child prodigy. Mostly homeschooled, she did attend formal institutions briefly and learned shorthand and typing. Her first job was typing the History of Texas from 1685 to 1892. Then she worked as a journalist and as a promoter for the Hagey Institute, which led to her traveling abroad. While on a world tour to promote the institute, she went to Fiji and married. Griffiths began editing for the Fiji Times, a newspaper owned by her husband. In 1913, the family moved to Australia where she became active in feminist, labor, and socialist organizations. As a pacifist, she opposed drafting personnel for war service. She wrote regularly for The Australian Worker and the socialist press. In the 1920s her family moved to San Francisco and naturalized as American citizens. She worked on the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration and continued publishing in journals like the Industrial Worker. She served as the secretary of the California branch of the National Woman's Party in the 1940s and lectured frequently in favor of the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Her papers are housed in the National Library of Australia.