Douglas, Marjory Stoneman (1890-1998), was an American writer, women’s rights activist, and environmentalist. She is best known for her book The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), a human and natural history of the southern Florida wetland . Douglas organized multiple efforts to protect the Everglades .
Marjory Stoneman was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on April 7, 1890. She graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1912 with a bachelor’s degree in English. She was briefly married to a man named Kenneth Douglas.
In 1915, Marjory Douglas moved to Miami to live with her father, a founder and managing editor of the Miami Herald newspaper. She worked on the newspaper as a columnist, editor, and reporter. Douglas often wrote about the woman’s suffrage (right to vote) movement, and she approved of the original Equal Rights Amendment . In 1917, she became one of the first women in the United States to enlist in the armed forces. Douglas performed clerical work for the Navy. A year later, she joined the American Red Cross and served in Europe in the aftermath of World War I (1914-1918). In 1920, Douglas returned to Florida and continued her work for the Herald.
In the mid-1920’s, Douglas left the newspaper to write short stories, mostly for the Saturday Evening Post. She also joined the campaign to create an Everglades national park . About a month before the park’s dedication in 1947, her book River of Grass was published. The book played an important role in convincing the public that the Everglades were not a worthless swamp but a valuable wetland. In 1969, she founded the organization Friends of the Everglades to change water-management policies that were destroying the wetland and its watershed.
Douglas continued to work for women’s rights, and in the 1970’s, she renewed her support of the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1987, she completed her autobiography, Voice of the River. In 1993, when Douglas was 103 years old, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom for the years she devoted to protecting the environment. Douglas died on May 14, 1998.
