THE TRUE HISTORY OF MOTHERS DAY IN AMERICA – Brought to You By Arizona Dept of Peace Advocates

Mothers Day was born from the passionate work of two women in particular: Julia Ward Howe ("Battle Hymn of the Republic") and Anna Jarvis (flowers to honor mothers). On May 8, 1914, after many years of their successful activism, President Woodrow Wilson signed a Joint Resolution designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day. The main focus here is on Julia Ward Howe.

Julia Ward Howe envisioned Mothers Day as a day of solemn council where women from all over the world could meet to discuss the means whereby to achieve world peace. They would also convene as mothers, keeping in mind the duty of protecting their children. Julia nursed the wounded during the American Civil War, 1861-1865. During the Franco-Prussian war in the 1870s, Julia began a one-woman peace crusade and made an impassioned "appeal to womanhood" to rise against war. She translated her powerful Mothers Day Proclamation (written in 1870, Boston) into several languages and distributed it widely. Julia Ward Howe also went to London in 1872 to promote an international Woman's Peace Congress. Her powerful Proclamation is below. http://www.juliawardhowe.

On May 11, 2007, for the 3rd year in a row, on the Friday before Mothers Day, inclusive and friendly Arizona Department of Peace advocates will deliver very popular apple pies to the local offices of Senators McCain and Kyl, as well as Representatives Grijalva, Giffords, Flake, Mitchell, Pastor, Shadegg, Franks and Renzi. Our message is that Mothers Day originated as a Peace Day and that "Peace Wants a Piece of the Pie", meaning allocating a portion of the federal budget to create a cabinet level Dept. of Peace. The legislation (HR808) is currently in the House of Representatives. Our Dept. of Peace colleagues across America will do the same with their elected representatives. [Duchess Note: New Yorkers for a Dept of Peace campaign will be doing likewise.]

On May 10, 2007, the Thursday before Mothers Day for the first time, we AZDOP Campaign advocates will also host "Mothers Day, Apple Pie, and Peace" at the Arizona State Legislature (10 am to 12 noon, if still in session) in gratitude for their growing bipartisan movement to send a Memorial to Congress urging them to create the cabinet level Department of Peace, which first became part of the consciousness of our Founding Fathers (& Mending Mothers) in 1792.
We invite you to join us as we honor mothers and promote peace.

Proclamation of Julia Ward Howe (1870):

"Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”