Jennie Scott Griffiths

In 1896, Wilson left Texas with her half-brother Thomas Cowart and his family to promote the establishment of Hagey Institutes internationally. After stopping in Honolulu, Hawaii, the group made their way to Auckland, New Zealand, before arriving in Suva, Fiji.[16] Upon her arrival, she met Arthur George Griffiths, oldest son of the editor of the Fiji Times newspaper. Arthur proposed to her upon their meeting and despite her brother's protests, the two were married the following day, November 9, 1897, at the Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral, in Suva.[16][18] Under the nationality laws in place at the time, United States nationals who were women, lost their nationality upon marriage, as it was assumed that they acquired the nationality of their husband.[19][20] Because of the legislation, Wilson lost her United States' citizenship.[21] Fiji, at the time was a British colony and under the Fijian nationality law, Europeans living in Fiji were British subjects.[22][23] Under terms of the British Aliens Act 1844, foreign women marrying British husbands became British subjects.[24] The couple would have ten children together: Randolph (1898), Tom (1900), Don (1901), Max (1902), Laura (1903), Leonard (1905), Stephen (1907), Leonie (1908), Ciwa (1911), and Hazel (1913).[1][16]

Despite her duties as a mother, Griffiths became a contributor and editor at the Fiji Times, out of financial necessity. The couple engaged a nanny to help with the children and both Arthur and she worked as unpaid help to keep the paper going. When Jennie's father-in-law George Littleton Griffiths died in 1908, Arthur inherited the businesses. He had little training in writing, as he had focused on the management side of the business and keeping the equipment running.[25] As Griffiths' experience was in writing, she took over editing the paper and wrote a regular column "Passing Notes", a society page, as well as reporting on the news, including coverage of foreign events and the legislature.[1][26] Arthur was not suited to running the business and because of a lack of schooling opportunities, Griffiths urged him to sell it so that they could relocate to Australia in 1912.[27]

Arthur invested the proceeds from the sale in a large house in Sydney and the B & R Motor Company. The business went bankrupt, causing them to have to move. As the children reached the age of fourteen, each had to go to work to help with the family finances.[27] Three months after having given birth to her last child in 1913, Griffiths went to work at Australian Woman's Weekly, a women's journal which was operated by Denton & Spencer from 1911 to 1921 before folding.[28][Notes 3] The paper focused on household hints, fashion, handicrafts, and short fiction pieces. Under her editorship, Griffiths began to add articles on professional women and employment issues, as well as political and social movements.[29] Eventually, she added more radical commentary in an opinion column which covered issues such as cooperative child care centers and kitchens to help the poor, the plight of unemployed women immigrants, equal pay, child welfare programs, legal reforms of divorce laws, women's participation in politics, sexual hygiene and birth control.[1][30]

By 1915, Griffiths was publishing articles in other journals and newspapers like The Australian Worker, Sydney's The International Socialist and The Sunday Times, which allowed her to express her pacifist and socialist views.[30] By 1916, she was publishing more articles on feminism and politics in other journals than she was writing for Australian Woman's Weekly.[31] In the debates on the draft, which emerged in women's groups in 1916 and 1917 after Australia entered into World War I, she argued strongly against the policy.[32] She joined organizations like the Australian Labor Party, Social Democratic League, the Women's Anti-Conscription Committee, and the Women's Peace Army and actively took an anti-war stance. She participated in peace demonstrations, petition drives, and used her skill from her youth as an elocution performer to speak perched upon boxes in the street proclaiming the evils of war and its ties to power and wealth for those who benefited from the profits of increased manufacturing of weapons and other war-related products.[31] These activities led the publishers of the Australian Woman's Weekly to fire her in October 1916.[31]

After her termination, Griffiths was unable to find permanent employment and took assignments to write articles for numerous papers both in and out of Australia. In addition to publishing in the Sunday Times, the International Socialist and Brisbane's Daily Standard, she wrote articles on feminism and against the war for Britain's Social Democrat and Chicago's Industrial Worker.[33] She also wrote articles criticizing racism and the prosecution of people who opposed the war.[34] Federal policies in favor of the war, the uncertain employment of both herself and Arthur, and the fact that T. J. Ryan, Premier of Queensland, was the only remaining Labor Party leader in power, convinced Griffiths to move to Queensland in 1917, where the family settled in Brisbane.[1][35] She became very active there, speaking at meetings in support of the Bolshevik revolution, International Workers' Day, and the Sydney Twelve, members of the Industrial Workers of the World who had been arrested and charged with treason.[1] She attempted to revive the Queensland Socialist League and was involved in the Red Flag riots, both in sewing banners and participating in demonstrations.[1][36] When participants in the March 1919 protest were arrested, she campaigned for their release, but was disillusioned by the Australian turn toward conservatism and decided after the prisoner release to return to the United States.[37]

In June 1920, Griffiths returned to Texas, first settling in San Benito in Cameron County.[1][38] Family members followed a few at a time over several months, with some of the boys taking positions as crew on sailing vessels to pay for their passage.[37] Two of her sons, Randolph and Don, remained behind in Australia.[21] In 1922, they were back in San Antonio, and Griffiths was campaigning for the pardon of George McKinley Grace, a Black man who had been found guilty of assaulting a White woman. Griffiths and his other supporters opposed his hanging, believing that he was wrongfully convicted, but they were unsuccessful.[39][40] Unable to make a living there, by 1923 the family had moved to San Francisco, California.[1][21] She became a regular contributor of poetry to the Industrial Worker and wrote for the San Francisco Examiner and other local newspapers.[21] She was involved in speaking engagements and activities of the Children's Protection Society, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Women's Peace Union, and the National Woman's Party.[21][41][42] In 1928, she regained her United States nationality, when she and Arthur naturalized.[1][21]

During the 1930s Griffiths was recognized in the book American Women Poets of 1937 published by Henry Harrison in 1937[43] and was involved in the California division of the Federal Writers' Project for the Works Progress Administration.[1] She gave lectures and worked for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1940s and in 1943 was elected as secretary-treasurer of the California branch of the National Woman's Party.[44][45] Griffiths was one of the featured lecturers on women's gains toward equality for the National Woman's Party's commemoration of Susan B. Anthony's 125th birthday in 1945.[21][46] In 1947, she was one of the women honored by the National Woman's Party for their work to gain suffrage and advance women's rights and in 1949, she was the California delegate to the party convention.[47][48]