"[19] Despite the success of this event, an October spotlight printed in The Musical Courier revealed that Sophia would remain in New York for her formal stage training, placing herself under the direction of retired opera singer, Adelina Murio-Celli d'Elpeux.

[26] Upon her return to New Tork, Sophia met Bavarian-born Baron Hugo Julius Loebinger, a reputedly well-to-do physician who had received honors in Berlin, Paris, and several American cities.

[6] In January 1893, Sophia (now a married woman and mother) turned her musical prowess into a vehicle for giving back when she, along with sixteen fellow Jewish women, co-founded the Monté Relief Society: a charitable organization dedicated to feeding and clothing New York's sick and poor.

"[36] Their relief efforts focused primarily around distributing food and clothing to those in need, as well as providing monetary aid and, on occasion, helping those fit for employment find and secure work opportunities.

"[51] Rather, Loebinger saw the task of the American Suffragette as showcasing "an expression of woman's natural ability to be something more than a kitchen utensil,"[51] empowering women to think for themselves and dream of a world in which they could occupy space outside of the private domestic sphere.

Viewed in combination with the unapologetic noisiness of her public, pro-suffrage campaign, Loebinger's critics began equating the "unwomanliness" of her thoughts and actions with a lack of respect for both her husband and for womanhood in general.

[56] Operating as the "official organ of The National Progressive Woman Suffrage Union," the American Suffragette served as a second physical body through which Loebinger presented a carefully curated image of womanhood that combined politics and intellect with more traditionally "feminine" interests, all of which were captured in the periodical's diverse genres including essays, poetry, polemics, and domestic-oriented advertisements.

[[57] This editorial strategy served as a powerful and pointed contestation of the popular idea that the suffragettes were unladylike and aggressive,[54][55] with Loebinger's own contributions upholding the more orthodox notion that men and women did bear palpable differences.

"[42] As a means to present a more general and expansive view of women's progress outside of their Union, the periodical included interspersed sections oriented towards the national and the global, giving the American Suffragettes' newspaper a much broader political scope.

Calling their efforts "but a tea party," Loebinger thought that the parlour-confined suffragists relied too much on cajoling, pleading, and persuading men to give them the vote instead of taking direct action and demanding enfranchisement.

[43] Rather than turning to violent civil disobedience, she and her PWSU comrades cultivated what suffrage scholar Mary Chapman has called a powerful and effective politics of public "noisiness" that directly challenged the suffragists' aim of working "quietly and in a dignified manner" to further their cause.

Determined that she and her pro-suffrage sisters were "going to make themselves heard through word and action," Loebinger took the "Votes for Women" campaign to the streets in the form of open-air meetings that used public speech as another method of "unwomanly" noisiness.

[79] Delivering speeches in both English and German,[80] Loebinger became known, even by those who were not interested in the suffrage cause, for her "quickness at repartee, her unfailing good humour, her Paquin frocks and her fearlessness in expressing her opinion on any subject or any person.

"[79][81] With "fiery" enthusiasm and sharp intellect, Loebinger would spend her years as a PWSU activist delivering rousing public speeches to enormous crowds of intrigued men, women, and children.

[41] While much of Loebinger's suffrage work happened during the PWSU's open-air meetings, held weekly outside of the union's branch headquarters,[63][47] she also participated in a number of key public demonstrations that helped expedite the fight for women's enfranchisement.

During this first open-air meeting, Loebinger delivered a powerful speech in which she called attention to the "horrible mess" that unguided men had made of things, with news reports from the event say that "there wasn't much left of mere man" once she had finished.

[44] On May 5, 1909, the PWSU's Harlem branch, chaired by Loebinger, held an open-air meeting on the corner of 116th Street and Lenox Avenue that drew a crowd of several hundred people eager to see what these "self-supporting young women" had to say.

On November 14, 1909, Loebinger and her PWSU comrades strapped on yellow sashes and canvas bags full to the brim with the latest issue of The American Suffragette, taking to the streets to make their debut as newsies.

[93] In October of that same year, Loebinger, along with her frequent co-conspirator, Mary Coleman, staged a political action in response to the Brackett Bill by attempting to register to vote at the Harlem bakery in which the Board of Registry was overseeing election sign-ups.

[103] In addition to this claim, Loebinger stated that the larger goal was to prepare and publish a series of meat-free recipes, and that she and her fellow Beef Party members were ready and willing to go directly to people's homes to show them how to cook "good food without meat.

[104] Despite her actions during the 1910 Meat Boycott– and subsequent founding of the Gotham Beef Party movement– by 1912, Loebinger's political views had shifted towards more radical and far-reaching solutions to the rising cost of living, particularly its impacts on the poor.

After 1910, when her protesting and petitioning had failed to stifle rising living costs, Loebinger came to believe that "no good can be done by the occasional meat riots, the blacklisting of certain shops and markets," for "such agitations are ridiculous and harmful" to the small business owners who end up suffering the most.

"[104] Most prescient of Loebinger's agricultural vision was her desire to turn empty lots within cities and suburbs into vegetable gardens and spaces of foodstuffs production,[104] making her an antecedent champion of a kind of urban permaculture.

[34] Loebinger's idea for this Protection League arose when the construction of new tenement buildings brought poverty, vandalism, gang violence, and other crimes to her once quaint neighbourhood of Edgecombe Avenue.

[34] Fearing what would happen to her neighbourhood should rebellious youth– whose overworked parents could not provide them with the support they needed– be allowed to run rampant on the streets of Harlem, Loebinger took it upon herself to be the positive role model these children needed.

[34] Although they lacked any formal legal power, the golden badges bestowed upon them by Loebinger motivated them to clean up the public spaces they had once trashed, aid in preventing gang hold-ups instead of instigating them, and take pride in preserving their environment, rather than destroying it.

"[7] Recounting a memory of Loebinger in which he witnessed her dodge through traffic to give assistance to a hungry stranger in need, Debs writes that "that little woman has a heart of gold, the spirit of a saint, and the courage of a Spartan.

"[7] For Debs, Sophia Loebinger was a woman "richly endowed with a loving sympathy that had no bounds; whose warm heart throbbed in compassion for the downtrodden, the persecuted; and her less fortunate brothers of the race and with all the strength of her being she gave without stint her fine ability and energy to make this a nobler, a better world for the children of men in which to live in peace and comfort.

[1][106] By 1917, it appears that Loebinger's story had already begun receding to the outskirts of America's suffrage movement[78] with much of it being forgotten entirely until a grandniece, Ann Goldsmith Miller, uncovered documents revealing the true history.

From David M. Neuberger and Theodore Debs, we see that Sophia Loebinger's tireless work ethic left behind "a better world"[7] for the individuals and communities who were fortunate enough to be graced by her fiery, unladylike, spectacular spirit.