Helen H. Gardener

Helen Hamilton Gardener (January 23, 1853 Winchester, Virginia - July 26, 1925 Washington, D.C.), born Alice Chenoweth, was an American author, rationalist public intellectual, political activist, and government functionary. Gardener produced many lectures, articles, and books during the 1880s and 1890s and is remembered today for her role in the freethought and women's suffrage movements and for her place as a pioneering woman in the top echelon of the American civil service.

Helen Hamilton Gardener (left) exiting the White House with American feminist leader Carrie Chapman Catt (1920)

Quotes

• Women are indebted today for their emancipation from a position of hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to Jehovah, but to the justice and honor of the men who have defied his commands. That she does not crouch today where St. Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God.
  • Helen Gardner : ‘Men, Women and Gods’, p. 30, as quoted in K. M. Talreja, Holy Vedas and Holy Bible: A Comparative Study, New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan, 2000