A History of Woman Suffrage

1848-1920

Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), with daughter Harriet c. 1856.

July 1848: Seneca Falls Convention

Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia MottAbolitionists fought for women’s rightsDeclaration of Sentiments written

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal…”

from the Declaration of Sentiments, 1848

• "He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.“

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)

• Quaker temperance activist and abolitionist who was silenced in both movements because of her sex.

• Joined Stanton in the late 1850s and focused work on women’s rights.

• Never married so that she could focus life work on reform activism.

The Negroes’ Hour• Many in the abolitionist and “Equal Rights”

movements put civil rights of African-American males ahead of those of women regardless of race.

– African American men’s civil rights more attainable– Public not ready for women’s equality

• Suffragists had hoped that women and blacks would gain the vote at the same time and felt betrayed by those abolitionists who chose to support the concept of the "Negroes' Hour.“

• Stanton and Anthony form the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), for the single purpose of advancing the political cause of their own sex, in 1869

NWSA Executive Committee, 1869

Lucy Stone (1815-1903), suffrage leader

• Reformer, lecturer, editor, women's rights advocate, abolitionist

• Opposed Stanton and Anthony on the 15th Amendment

• Headed the American Woman Suffrage Association

• From 1869, movement for woman's rights went forward along several paths:– the narrowing focus

on suffrage,– the byways of racism

and nativism, and– an increasing recourse

to domestic and feminine rhetoric.

1872: Susan B. Anthony votes

Arrested for illegal voting Supreme Court decides states can deny women the vote

“Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”Susan B. Anthony after her arrest for illegal voting, 1872

1874: WCTU formed

Women’s Christian Temperance Union

Fought for temperance and suffrage

Wanted vote to protect families

1890: NAWSA formed

• Led by Stanton and Anthony

• State by state strategy

• Some Western states give women the vote

From Arizona, 1912

Mrs. Henry M. Youmans of Waukesha, WI, president of Wisconsin Women's Suffrage Association

“Social Housekeeping”• Women could be counted upon to use

their votes to do the civic work that they did in their own households

• If allowed to vote, they would:– teach children– clean up urban messes– care for the sick and elderly– create a more humane and less corrupt

society

Jane Addams & Social Housekeeping

“[Life in] the modern city is ... going badly[because] the quickly-congregatedpopulation has not yet learned to arrangeits affairs satisfactorily. Unsanitaryhousing, poisonous sewage,contaminated water, infant mortality, thespread of contagion, adulterated food,impure milk, smoke-laden air, ill ventilatedfactories, dangerous occupations, juvenile crime,unwholesome crowding, prostitution anddrunkenness are the enemies which themodem cities must face and overcome,would they survive. Logically theirelectorate should be made up of thosewho can bear a valiant part in thisarduous context, those who in the pasthave at least attempted to care forchildren, to clean houses, to preparefoods, to isolate the family from moraldangers....

Jane Addams, 1860-1935

Racism and Ethnocentricity• Olympia Brown's comments to the NWSA Convention in Washington D.C. in January1889:

"The last census shows, I think, thatthere are in the United States threetimes as many American-born womenas the whole foreign population, menand women together, so that the votesof women will eventually be the onlymeans of overcoming this foreigninfluence and maintaining our freeinstitutions. There is no possible safetyfor our free school, our free church orour republican government, unlesswomen are given the suffrage and thatright speedily.... Olympia Brown, 1835-1926

Olympia Brown’s comments, continued:

“…Our American women are property holders and pay large taxes; but theforeigner who has lived only one year in the State, and ten days in the precinct,who does not own a foot of land, may vote away their property in the form oftaxes in the most reckless manner, regardless of their interests and theirrights. Women are well-educated; they are graduating from our colleges; theyare reading and thinking and writing; and yet they are the political inferiors of allthe riff-raff of Europe that is poured upon our shores. It is unbearable, there is nolanguage that can express the enormous injustice done to women. . . .

. . .We are in danger in this country of Catholic domination, not because theCatholics are more numerous than we are, but because the Catholic church isrepresented at the polls and the Protestant church is not. The foreignersare Catholic – the greater portion of them; the foreigners are men – thegreater part of them, and members of the Catholic Church, and they work for it andvote for it. The Protestant church is composed of women. Men for the mostpart do not belong to it; they do not care much for it except as something tointerest the women of their household. The consequence is the Protestantchurch is comparatively unrepresented at the ballotbox."

• Suffrage leaders reflected the racial attitudes which characterized a large segment of the white middle-class.

• Many suffragists described the female vote as a way of maintaining white supremacy

–white, educated women would outnumber black votes

• This became a very popular argument in the South– where women called for white women's vote– and talked about 4 million "semibarbaric exslaves“ who had to be overcome.

Suffrage leaders reflected the racial attitudes which characterized a large segment of the white middle-class.

• Many suffragists described the female vote as a way of maintaining white supremacy– white, educated women would outnumber black votes

• This became a very popular argument in the South– where women called for white women's vote– and talked about 4 million "semibarbaric exslaves“ who

had to be overcome.

Belle Kearney, "The South and WomanSuffrage," NWSA Convention, NewOrleans, March 1903:

“The enfranchisement of women wouldinsure immediate and durable whitesupremacy, honestly attained, for uponunquestioned authority it is stated thatin every southern State but one thereare more educated women than all theilliterate voters, white and black, nativeand foreign, combined. As you probablyknow, of all the women in the Southwho can read and write, ten out ofevery eleven are white. When it comesto the proportion of property betweenthe races, that of the white outweighsthat of the black immeasurably. TheSouth is slow to grasp the great factthat the enfranchisement of womenwould settle the race question inpolitics.

Belle Kearney, 1863-1939

“…The civilization of the North is threatenedby the influx of foreigners with their importedcustoms; by the greed of monopolisticwealth and the unrest among the workingclasses; by the strength of the liquor trafficand encroachments upon religious belief.Some day the North will be compelled tolook to the South for redemption from thoseevils on account of the purity of its Anglo-Saxon blood, the simplicity of its social andeconomic structure, the great advance inprohibitory law and the maintenance of thesanctity of its faith, which has been keptinviolate. Just as surely as the North will beforced to turn to the South for the nation'ssalvation, just so surely will the South becompelled to look to its Anglo-Saxon womenas the medium through which to retain thesupremacy of the white race over theAfrican.”

African-American Women and Suffrage

• In 1896, Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Margaret Murray Washington, Fanny Jackson Coppin, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Charlotte Forten Grimké, and former slave Harriet Tubman met in Washington, D.C., to form the National Association of Colored Women (NACW)

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Mary Church Terrell

“A white woman has only onehandicap to overcome, a greatone, true, her sex; a coloredwoman faces two-her sex and her race.” -- Mary Church Terrell

Margaret Murray Washington

Charlotte Forten Grimké

Final Stage, 1890-1920• Mass movement made up of mostly young women who

identify as “New Women”

• Explicitly feminist:– Women deserve the vote as a basic human right– Women assume equality in their methods and arguments

• Willingness to be “unladylike” in the fight

• Carrie Chapman Catt and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party (NWP)

Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947), women's suffrage leader c. 1896

Carrie Chapman Catt and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

Alice Paul and the Congressional Union

Alice Paul (1885-1977), women's suffrage leader c. 1905

Alice Paul joined in the suffragists movement in Great Britain and is imprisoned three times.

With fellow American Lucy Burns Paul went on hunger strikes and was force-fed.

Alice Paul and Lucy Burns gave a new direction to the women’s rights movement in the United States.

In 1916, Paul and Burns organized the National Woman’s Party (NWP)

adopted the radical tactics of the British suffragettes

campaigned for the first Equal Rights Amendment.

Importance of Publicity in Building a Mass Movement:• Congressional Union, under the leadership of Alice Paul,

split off from NAWSA in 1913 and had special appreciation use of publicity and means planting material in press.– Created own paper (The Suffragist), and sent press releases and

photos to newspapers.

• NAWSA had own publicity apparatus including a publishing company.

• By WWI even state suffrage organizations had publicity departments which furnished material to newspapers and magazines.

Also copied advertising, particularly publicity stunts.• In 1909 Massachusetts suffragists began

crisscrossing the commonwealth in cars, trolleys, and trains.

• One went up in balloon, circus manager agreed to put “Votes for Women” banner on elephant, suffrage float appeared in July 4th parades.

• In California, suffragists put on plays, pageants, concerts and social functions, hung huge electric signs, spoke at vaudeville shows and got Hollywood's attention in newsreels.

• Began to hold large rallies, street meetings, parades, and marches.

Headquarters of an Anti-Suffrage Group (c.1910)

• Opposition to the goal of women’s suffrage came from many arenas. Some objected because they believed that women would only duplicate the voting of their husbands, while others believed that women were unable to exert the rational thought that voting required.

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Anti-Suffrage Pamphlet (c.1910)• “Housewives!

– You do not need a ballot to clean out your sink spout. A handful of potash and some boiling water is quicker and cheaper…

– Why vote for pure food laws, when your husband does that, while you can purify your Ice-box with saleratus water?”

• “Vote NO on Woman Suffrage– BECAUSE 90% of the women either do not

want it, or do not care.– BECAUSE it means competition of women

with men instead of co-operation.– BECAUSE 80% of the women eligible to

vote are married and can only double or annul their husband’s votes…

– BECAUSE in some States more voting women than voting men will place the Government under petticoat rule.

– BECAUSE it is unwise to risk the good we already have for the evil which may occur. “

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Opposition to Women’s Suffrage:•Liquor Lobby feared it would lead to Prohibition

•Industrialists feared women would support labor reforms

•Belief that women belong in the home

Poster warns: "Danger! Woman's Suffrage Would Double the Irresponsible Vote“ c. 1912

Parading for Suffrage

"I saw the possibilities in a suffrage parade. What could be more stirring than hundreds of women, carrying banners, marching--marching--marching! The public would be aroused, the press would spread the story far and wide, and the interest of our own workers would be stirred.” Harriot Stanton Blatch

(1856-1940)

Suffrage parade, New York City, May 6, 1912

Head of suffrage parade, Washington, D.C., March 3, 1913

Inez Milholland

Some suffragists explored more radical tactics

• There were some politics ofconfrontation -- largely byCongressional Union and theNational Woman’s Party, whichpicketed White House, heckledpresident, climbed statues, burnedWilson's words and wereimprisoned.

• Many of the women engaged insuch activities were working class,hardened by labor strikes andactions;

• Some were immigrants withbackgrounds in the harsher,bloodier politics of Europe.

NWP’s “Silent Sentinals”

Virginia Arnold holding KaiserWilson banner, August 1917

Protests Lead to Arrest

• Picketers were arrested for “obstructing traffic.”

• Many including Alice Paul were convicted, incarcerated, and tortured at Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia.

• In protest of conditions Alice Paul commenced a hunger strike with others later joining her. She and other were force-fed with "The Stomach Tube."

Abby Scott Baker inprison dress, 1917

NWP Marchersabout to bearrested

Lucy Burns, Vice Chairman CongressionalUnion, in Occoquan Workhouse, November1917

Mary Winsor (PA) holding SuffragePrisoners banner, October 1917.jpg

• Passed in 1919

• Finally, on Aug. 20, 1920, the 19th Amendment became part of the United States Constitution when Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify it.

• “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

Victory – 1919-20• Wilson, appalled by thespectacle of NWP arrestsand facing a roughpolitical environment (andgrowing pressure from hisown party), agrees tonegotiate with NAWSA(but NOT the NWP)• But it was the NWP’sradical actions whichforced Wilson tonegotiate• Wilson and NAWSA’sCarrie Chapman Cattsponsor the 19thAmendment, signed intolaw in 1920.

The Woman’s Party was one of the first groups in the United States to employ the techniques of classic non-violent protest. These techniques included tactics such as: information warfare, picketing, and leafleting.

Crowd gathers in Washington, D.C., on March 3, 1913 to witness a parade for women's suffrage

Alice Miller: Why We Don't Want Men to Vote (1915)

• Alice Miller was a prominent writer who often expounded on topics relevant to women. Here she satirizes the viewpoints of many men who wanted to deny women the right to vote.

• “Why We Don't Want Men to Vote – Because man's place is in the army. – Because no really manly man wants to settle

any question otherwise than by fighting about it.

– Because if men should adopt peaceable methods women will no longer look up to them.

– Because men will lose their charm if they step out of their natural sphere and interest themselves in other matters than feats of arms, uniforms, and drums.

– Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them unfit for government.” 55

Jan. 10, 1917: The NWP began to picket the White House.

"Kaiser Wilson"• During World War I, militant

suffragists, demanding that President Wilson reverse his opposition to a federal amendment, stood vigil at the White House and carried banners such as this one comparing the President to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

• In the heated patriotic climate of wartime, such tactics met with hostility and sometimes violence and arrest.

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Passage of the 19th Amendment

• Passed in 1919

• “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

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1920: 19th Amendment passedNAWSA and NWP joined forcesProhibition already passedWomen helped in war effort, so many Congressmen supported it

Women’s Suffrage Map

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