Freethought of the Day

Would you like to start your day on a freethought note? "Freethought of the Day" is a daily freethought calendar brought to you courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, highlighting birthdates, quotes, and other historic tidbits.

If you would like to be placed on the "Daily Freethought" e-mail list to automatically receive the calendar notice, log in and edit your email settings (My Membership). Or, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and include your first and last name with your request for verification purposes. This email service is limited to members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation or subscribers to Freethought Today. To become an FFRF member, click here.

Home › News › Freethought of the Day

January 21

There are 2 entries for this date: Martin Luther King Jr Federal Holiday and Helen H. Gardener

Martin Luther King Jr Federal Holiday

Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday

Helen H. Gardener

On this date in 1853, freethinker and suffragist Helen H. Gardener, née Alice Chenoweth, was born in Virginia, the youngest daughter of a minister. Changing her name in her thirties, Alice became a writer in New York City, studied biology at Columbia and met "the Great Agnostic" Robert Green Ingersoll. Helen undertook a lecture series in 1884, which was published the next year by the Truth Seeker in book form, Men, Women and Gods. A friend of feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Helen was a member of Stanton's Woman's Bible Committee. Chosen by Stanton to deliver her memorial service, Gardener quipped that while most suffragists found the Woman's Bible too radical, she found it not radical enough! Helen also used fiction to crusade for women's rights, writing novels, for example, showing the harm of the scandalously low age of consent laws of her era. Helen became vice-president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1917, working as the chief liaison with President Wilson's administration, and credited with being a "worker of miracles" by sister suffragists. At age 67, Helen became the first woman appointed to the United States Civil Service Commission, serving with distinction for five years. D. 1925.

“I do not know of any divine commands. I do know of most important human ones. I do not know the needs of a god or of another world. . . . I do know that women make shirts for seventy cents a dozen in this one. I do know that the needs of humanity and this world are infinite, unending, constant, and immediate. They will take all our time, our strength, our love, and our thoughts; and our work here will be only then begun.”

—Helen H. Gardener, Men, Women and Gods (1885). See