Our Founder Refused to Bend to Convention

Anna Lena Madesin Phillips (September 15, 1881 – May 22, 1955) was a lawyer and clubwoman from Nicholasville, Kentucky, who founded the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs (NFBPWC) in 1919 and the International Federation of Business and Professional Women (IFBPW) in 1930.

Her parents, Judge William Henry Phillips and his second wife, Alice Shook named her Lena in honor of his first wife, Selena, who often went by Lena.

From childhood, Lena chafed at the traditional roles circumscribing the life of a girl. She wanted an education and at seven convinced her parents to enroll her in the Jessamine Female Institute, where she studied every subject offered, including music, graduating at 18 with a Magna Cum Laude honor.

At just 11 years old, she changed her name to Madesin (an English transliteration of the French médecin) in honor of her oldest brother George who was studying medicine in Paris and became a doctor.

Medicine was not for her though; she attended Women’s College of Baltimore (now called Goucher College) where she continued her general studies and took courses in music hoping to become a concert pianist. She plunged herself into her studies, rehearsals, and extra-curricular speaking engagements, a choice that often left her depleted and exhausted.

Activities with such enthusiasm that she became ill from exhaustion and returned to Kentucky to recuperate.

While she was there, she fell and injured a nerve in her arm, requiring her to stop playing music and drop out of college. At that point, she began working at the Jessamine Female Institute, teaching music for $500 a year before beginning her law studies at the University of Kentucky, driving the 12 miles to Lexington each day.

During this time, she also worked with and for her father maintaining his image and helping him to win the elections that allowed him to remain a judge and became involved in politics in Jessamine County and Kentucky politics.

She was not surprised by the resistance to female law students and in 1917 when she graduated, she was the first woman to do so with full honors and had the highest GPA of her entire class. She returned to Nicholasville and opened her own practice.

One of her clients was the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), for which she also served as secretary for its National War Work Council. This association required her to travel to New York City where her interest in uniting working women led her to rallying the businesswomen of the United States in the form of the National Business Women’s Committee to form a permanent organization when the war ended.

It was at their convention in St. Louis in 1919 that she started the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs of the United States (NFBPWC).

Phillips also defied convention in her personal life. In 1919 she met Marjory Lacey-Baker, an American actress and playwright. When they began living together, Phillips described her as "the woman with whom I share my home." Their relationship lasted 36 years, until Lacey-Baker died in 1971.

According to historian Jacqueline Castledine, Phillips and Lacey-Baker "operated in a world of socially and politically committed women reformers, some also living in a same-sex relationship."

Inspired by this relationship, biographer Sergio dedicated her 1972 book about Phillips to Lacey-Baker.

Today, Phillips's collected papers, dating from 1881 to 1955, are held at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

Phillips completed her master’s in law degree at New York University in 1923 and opened a private practice in NYC while serving as president of NFBPWC from 1926 through 1929. Its main focus at that time was promoting equality for women, especially in the area of parity of pay with men. It also worked toward reducing or at least regulating child labor and support global peace.

In 1930, NFBPWC endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment and she began touring the country promoting its adoption, giving speeches in Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and California to men’s groups as well as women’s. As she had in law school, she drove herself to all her speaking engagements, a choice that often left her depleted and exhausted.

While doing all this, she also frequently published articles and pamphlets on these issues. After leaving her law practice in 1935, Phillips served as a columnist and assistant editor of the Pictorial Review from 1935 to 1939.

Phillips made goodwill tours of Europe in 1928 and 1929 in order to reach an international audience. The first trip, made with several colleagues included stops in England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy where she met with professional and business women and discussed starting clubs in their countries.

It was in Geneva, Switzerland, that on August 26, 1930, the International Federation of Business and Professional Women (IFBPW) was founded with Phillips as its founding president, a position she held until 1947.

Phillips believed that gaining economic equality would enable women to achieve equality in education and the social and political aspects of society, explaining her optimism with the words, " ...if our motive is right, if we have faith, vision and courage, accomplishment must come."

One can only wonder how she would feel today, seeing that we continue to fight for the ratification of that amendment, American women still earn X to a man’s $1, a women’s right to physical autonomy has been rescinded in the US child labor continues to be a blight on many nations, and there are still many places where women are routinely denied education, independence, and human dignity.

She continued to visit Europe and help establish and strengthen IFBPW clubs there, while maintaining her efforts to expand NFBPWC in the US.

Phillips continued to work as an activist until the end of her life. She died in Marseille, France, while on her way to the Middle East for a meeting with Arab women. Her body was returned to Jessamine County, Kentucky, and she was buried at the Maple Grove Cemetery in Nicholasville.

At the time of her death in XX, Phillips was working on an autobiography, from which biographer Lisa Sergio gathered the information for her 1972 book A Measure Filled: The life of Lena Madesin Phillips Drawn from her Autobiography.

Lisa Dicksteen

*British nurse Edith Louisa Cavell (1865 – 1915) is celebrated for treating wounded soldiers from both sides without discrimination during the First World War and for helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium.

She was arrested, court-martialed under German military law, and sentenced to death by firing squad. Despite international pressure for mercy, the German government refused to commute her sentence and she was shot. The execution received worldwide condemnation and extensive press coverage.

Information on Phillips, Sego, and Cavelle from Wikipedia, images from Sego’s book and Wikipedia.