- Ernestine Rose (1810-1892). Jewish feminist orator and activist, reformer, and freethinker. Born the daughter of a rabbi in a Polish-Russian ghetto, Rose ran away from home in her teens. She traveled and became fluent in several languages, supporting herself by marketing a kitchen deodorant she invented. In England, she married silversmith William Rose, who shared all her views; the marriage was long and harmonious. In 1836, the couple emigrated to the U.S., where they devoted their lives to humanitarian causes—free education, women's rights, and abolition. Rose made her name as "Queen of the Lecture Platform" with a moving, eloquent style and with debating skills that packed halls wherever she went. Women speakers were an oddity and their detractors many, but Rose's vitality and sincerity almost always won over the crowd. A close friend and colleague of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Rose—according to many of her contemporaries—was the greatest speaker of her time on the causes she championed.
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