To many, Mother's Day means flowers and brunch, but its origins are much more radical than a Hallmark card can handle. The holiday has a deep history of activism and political protests, which feels worth revisiting now, in 2018. After all, this is a year in which an increasing number of mothers were inspired to run for office so they can make a difference, the Women's March celebrated its anniversary with protests across the country, and a female politician made history by becoming the first sitting U.S. senator to give birth. Motherhood is a powerful unifying force, something the founders of Mother's Day certainly recognized.

The holiday's creation is generally attributed to a woman named Anna Jarvis, who campaigned Congress through many letters and moving speeches to make it an officially recognized day. In 1914 Jarvis got her wish when Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation that declared the second Sunday in May a "a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country."

Mother's Day founder Anna Jarvis Bettmann

In her book Memorializing Motherhood, author Katharine Antolini describes Jarvis as a devoted daughter who wanted the day to serve as an observance of the "primary source of a home’s security and love." But as the years passed, according to Antolini, Jarvis came to deeply resent how the card and candy companies had coopted the holiday. Jarvis also disliked it when women's activist groups, like the Suffragettes, used the day to make political statements.

Ironically, though, her own mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, was an activist herself and known as a leader in her community. Beginning in 1858, Ann Reeves Jarvis organized Mothers' Day Work Clubs, which helped educate struggling mothers in their area of West Virginia. According to Antolini, Anna was reluctant to discuss her mother’s activism and spent years publicly battling the meaning of the holiday she'd helped create.

But the use of "Mother's Day" in America can be traced back even before Anna Jarvis' campaign began. In 1870 poet and activist Julia Ward Howe wrote an appeal—known as the "Mother's Day Proclamation"—for women to unite for peace. Two years later she declared a "Mother's Day for Peace" should be celebrated every June 2. Howe was calling for the end of state-supported violence, motivated by the recent devastation of the Civil War and Franco-Prussian War. For years she organized events around the day.