President Woodrow Wilson proclaims the first official Mother’s Day holiday - May 9th, 1914

On this day in 1914, by order of presidential proclamation, Mother’s Day was officially established as a national holiday in the United States. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio, Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that uncovers a little bit more about history
every day. I'm Gabe Lousier, and in this episode, we're
taking a closer look at the origins of Mother's Day.

(00:22):
The second Sunday of May, when wayward sons and daughters
finally make that call to their mothers, or at least
send a text for the day. Was May nine, nineteen fourteen.
By order of presidential proclamation, Mother's Day was officially established

(00:47):
as a national holiday in the United States. Woodrow Wilson
issued the announcement, directing government officials to display the American
flag on government buildings and for private citizens to do
the same in their homes. This observance was to be
made on the second Sunday of May, as quote, a
public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers

(01:11):
of our country. By the time President Wilson made Mother's
Day official, many individual states had already celebrated such a
holiday for several years. As you can probably tell from
the language of the proclamation, the holiday was intended to
be more solemn and reverent than it's often treated today.

(01:32):
That's because, contrary to popular belief, Mother's Day wasn't the
invention of greeting card companies, florists, or restaurants as a
way to boost their business. Instead, it took shape as
part of an ongoing women's movement. The original push for
a nationally recognized Mother's Day is generally attributed to three

(01:54):
American women, and Reeves Jarvis, Julia Ward how and Jarvis's daughter,
Anna M. Jarvis. The idea began with Ann Reeves Jarvis,
an Appalachian homemaker, Sunday school teacher, and lifelong social activist.
In eighteen fifty eight, Mother Jarvis, as she came to

(02:16):
be known, began organizing Mother's Day work clubs in towns
throughout western Virginia. These community events were aimed at improving
health and sanitary conditions for young mothers and their children,
and often included lessons on childcare. Three years later, when
the Civil War broke out, Jarvis expanded the mission of

(02:38):
the work clubs to address the new challenges that the
conflict placed on families. Determined to keep the community together
despite the growing political divide, Jarvis encouraged her clubs to
offer aid to supporters of both the Confederacy and the
Union alike. As a result, the women's clubs provided food, clothing,

(02:58):
and medical treatment to soldiers from both sides of the battlefield.
In this way, they strive to be mothers to all.
Following the war, Jarvis and her clubs were called upon
to help heal the community divide in West Virginia. To
this end, Jarvis organized a Mother's Friendship Day at the

(03:19):
Taylor County Courthouse held in eighteen sixty eight. The event
brought together former Union and Confederate soldiers and their families
for a day of food, fellowship, and music. As you
may have noticed, Mother's Friendship Day and Mother's Day work
Clubs were not celebrations of mothers. They were community outreach

(03:40):
programs led by mothers. However, Anne Reeves Jarvis also had
the idea of a day on which mothers got their due.
In eighteen seventy six, she concluded one of her Sunday
school lessons by sharing this fervent wish with her students,
including one of her own daughters, and I hope and pray.

(04:01):
Jarvis said that someone sometime will found a memorial Mother's
Day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to
humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it.
We'll talk about how Anne carried on her mother's wish
in a moment, but first I want to acknowledge the

(04:22):
contribution of Julia Ward How, a contemporary of Anne Reeves Jarvis,
how was another deeply patriotic and community minded woman. She
wrote the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic
and led relief efforts for the widows and orphans of
Civil War soldiers, again on both sides. In eighteen seventy,

(04:45):
with the horrors of the Civil War still a recent
memory and the Franco Prussian War just beginning in Europe,
How urged mothers around the world to join together in
a call for peace. To get the ball rolling, she
began organizing an annual event in Boston called Mother's Peace Day.
This early version of Mother's Day was held in Boston

(05:06):
in other towns for about thirty years. However, it was
primarily celebrated by peace activists and war protesters and was
never widely adopted by the general public. The next step
in the crusade to honor Mother's didn't come until nineteen
o seven, when Anna M. Jarvis took up the cause

(05:27):
after her own mother's death two years earlier. Anna remembered
her mother's wish for a memorial Mother's Day and held
a private service in her honor on May nine, nineteen
o seven, the two year anniversary of her death. The
following year, Anna organized the first public observance of Mother's
Day at the Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia,

(05:50):
the very church where her mother had taught Sunday school.
The service was held on the morning of May tenth,
nineteen o eight, the second Sunday of the month, and
though Anna did not attend personally, she did provide five
hundred white carnations to be worn by all the sons
and daughters in attendance. The white carnation was meant to

(06:11):
represent the purity of a mother's love, but it also
carried a more personal meaning for Anna, it was her
mother's favorite flower. In the years to come, the carnation
would become a Mother's Day staple, with red carnation signifying
honor for a mother who was still living and white
representing the memory of a mother who had passed away.

(06:33):
Little by little, Anna Jarvis furthered her campaign to create
a national day honoring mother's Two years after achieving local
recognition in Grafton, Jarvis succeeded in getting her home state,
West Virginia to officially adopt the holiday. Other states quickly
followed suit, eventually prompting a joint resolution in Congress to

(06:54):
make Mother's Day a national observance. The resolution sailed through
with houses with ease, and on May nine, fourteen, President
Woodrow Wilson signed the bill into law. You might think
the story ends there with victory for Anna Jarvis, who
was able to fulfill her own mother's wish, but unfortunately,

(07:16):
the idea of a legal holiday devoted to mothers proved
less than satisfying to Jarvis. In practice, things went well initially,
and for the first several years, Mother's Day was the simple,
respectful affair that Anna had always hoped for. Church services
were held in honor of mother's and signs of affection
were publicly displayed for mothers both living and dead. However,

(07:39):
by the early nineteen twenties, Mother's Day had become a
much more commercial affair. Florists, candy makers, and greeting card
companies had seized on the holiday as a promising new
revenue stream. This eventually led Anna Jarvis to disavow the
holiday she had fought so long to secure. She'd began

(08:00):
urging the public to boycott the industries that exploited the day,
calling them quote Charlatan's bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers, and termites
that would undermine with their greed one of the finest, noblest,
and truest movements and celebrations. Jarvis believed these companies were

(08:20):
hollowing out the heartfelt holiday, removing the effort that sincere
affection required a printed card, means nothing, she wrote, except
that you are too lazy to write to the woman
who has done more for you than anyone in the world.
And candy you take a box to mother and then
eat most of it yourself, A pretty sentiment. Jarvis continued

(08:44):
her war on Mother's Day well into her old age
and her late seventies. She even started a petition to
rescind the holiday and went door to door to collect signatures.
Her campaign was finally put to an end in the
mid nineteen forties when she was committed to the Marshall
Square Sanitarium in Westchester, Pennsylvania. Unbeknownst to her. The bills

(09:07):
for her care there were largely paid for by her enemies,
a group of florists and greeting card manufacturers. It was
their way of saying thanks to the mother of Mother's Day.
I'm Gabe Lousier and hopefully you now know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. You can

(09:29):
learn even more about history by following us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at t d i HC Show, And if
you have any comments or suggestions, you can always send
them my way at this Day at I heeart media
dot com. Oh and happy Mother's Day to the best
moms in the world, mine and yours. Lastly, thanks to

(09:51):
Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day
in history class intended a wedding. The posit