February 11 1924, on board the RMS Cedric: Saw Statue of Liberty glowing in the sunlight. Bitterly cold wind, bright sunshine. At lunch, a press man came to me and said: ‘Mrs Griffiths, I am from the press.’ ‘I have nothing to say,’ I said. ‘Oh!’ said he, ‘we know your story of the Women of Wales movement, we want only your photos – will you come to the top deck when you have finished?’ So [we] trotted up to the top deck first class, where we found four burly photographers awaiting us.
March 12 1924, Los Angeles: A letter was handed to me as I left the station – an anonymous letter, telling us to get out of the United States.
One hundred years ago, Annie Hughes Griffiths travelled from her native Wales to the US, visiting everywhere from New York and Washington DC to San Francisco and Los Angeles. But while the diary of her trip describes some typical tourist must-sees – Niagara Falls, Grand Canyon, Golden Gate Bridge and Lincoln Memorial – this was no ordinary vacation, and Hughes Griffiths no ordinary tourist.
She was part of a delegation of four Welsh women tasked with delivering what the South Wales Gazette described as a “monster petition” – one which reputedly would have stretched for seven miles if its pages of signatures had been placed end to end. The petition was an appeal for global peace, from the women of Wales to the women of America.
