100 Years+ of Women Suffrage We stand on their shoulders - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

`

100 Years+ of Women Suffrage

We stand on their shoulders lwvwilliamsburg.org

CIVICS 101

August 2020

Mary Ann Moxon & Bobbie Falquet

LEA EAGU GUE E OF OF WOM WOMEN EN VOTER OTERS—WI WILLIAMSB SBUR URG G AREA EA

▪ Suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt founded the League of Women Voters on February 14, 1920; 6 months before the 19th Amendment was ratified! ▪ Catt envisioned LWV as a "mighty political experiment" to help 20 million women carry out their new responsibilities as voters.

LOOKING BACK 100 years go, in 1920 . . .

What will we cover today?

The Fight for Women’s Suffrage in America

for MANY Generations

• How the fight began
• Who were in the many generations of suffragists

beyond the well-known?

• Who was left out of the history of suffrage?
• Answer your questions, submit in Chat Box
• Again. . . THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING!

But it took the U.S. Mint until 1979 to produce the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin to honor her.

Susan B. Anthony

(1820-1906) may be

the best known suffragist.

“If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.”

But long before Susan B. Anthony was Abigail Adams (1744-1818)

I desire that you would “Remember the Ladies!” to husband John, in 1776

• Quakers such as

Elizabeth Cady Stanton are closely connected with fighting for the right to vote,

• pposing slavery &

equality of the sexes

• Most Quakers were

abolitionists.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)

• A powerful advocate for

human rights

• Women of color were

integral to the women suffrage movement but often

• verlooked.
• In an 1867 speech,

Sojourner Truth had argued that giving black men the right to vote without affording black women the same right only promoted black men's dominance.

Sojourner Truth

(1797-1883)

▪ A well-to-do Quaker had invited four other Quakers to enjoy a cup of tea with her. ▪ Two of the women there that day were Lucretia Mott

(1793-1880) and Elizabeth

Cady Stanton (1815-1902). ▪ They began to air their grievances about the world’s injustices toward women.

Did the women’s suffrage movement start at a tea party in New York State on July 9, 1848?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton had A LOT to say that day over tea, including . . .

“The right to vote is ours. Have it, we must. Use it, we will.”

• About 300 women and men

gathered in Seneca Falls, New York

• n July 19-20, 1848 for “a

Convention to discuss the social, civil and religious condition and rights of women.”

• They drafted the Declaration of

Sentiments that included the vote for women as ONE of the human rights.

• Right to vote passed & was signed

by 62 women & 32 men

So just 10 days after that tea, . . .

Susan B. Anthony was NOT at this convention.

1870: Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony

Amelia Bloomer

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

friendship, betrayal & reconciliation

Lucy Stone (1818-1893)

• Abolitionist, suffragist & renowned
• rator
• First female college graduate in

Massachusetts

• Helped form AWSA (American

Woman Suffrage Association)

• Favored giving women the right to

divorce, eventually coming to the view that the reform of marriage laws was more important than women's voting rights

• Died 30 years before women could

vote; daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, carried the torch

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)

• Born free in Baltimore
• Abolitionist & suffragist
• Poet, novelist & orator; one of the

first Black women to be published in the U.S.

• Refused to give up her seat on a

trolley car in Philadelphia in 1858 (100 years before Rosa Parks)

• Helped to found the National

Association of Colored Women in 1894

• Died in 1911, nine years before

women won the right to vote

Black Suffrage Associations

“Suffering” husbands

• In 1912, the Virginia

Association Opposed to Women Suffrage believed that women were “above the dirty business of politics.”

• They believed that African-

American women would vote in large numbers, elect blacks and threaten white supremacy in Virginia.

Suffrage Opponents Organized in Virginia

NOT particularly kind either!

• Suffragettes was a term coined by a British journalist in 1906 to

mock women who used “militant” efforts like arson, hunger strikes, & destruction of public property.

• The diminutive suffix, “-ette,” was meant to minimize these

women but they embraced this intended insult and called themselves “suffra-GET-tes,” with a hard “g,” to signify that they were going to “get” the right to vote.

Suffragist or suffragette?

American women called themselves suffragists.

• In 1871, Anna Whitehead

Bodeker dropped a note into a ballot box in Richmond after election judges refused to accept her ballot; Victoria Woodhull too

Virginia women: VERY active suffragists too.

• Twenty prominent Richmond

women founded the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia (ESL) with Lila Meade Valentine as president until 1920.

• In 1912, Virginia House of

Delegates voted 85 to 12 against amending the Virginia Constitution to allow women to vote.

• 74 to 13 against it in 1914
• 52 to 40 in 1916
• NO against the 19th in 1920
• Finally ratified 19th Amendment in

1952

• Janie Porter Barrett an active

advocate

• Approved a resolution

supporting women suffrage

• Advocated creation of “political

study clubs” to stay informed

• Hampton and Norfolk

members staged a suffrage parade

• Blacks women NOT welcome as

members of the Equal Suffrage League

In 1912, numerous African- American women in Virginia attended the National Association of Colored Women’s convention in Hampton.

They marched so that WE could vote! 1912

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee (1896-1966)

• Chinese advocate for women’s

suffrage

• Famous for riding horseback in

the 1912 suffrage parade in New York

• New York allowed women to

vote in 1917 but Lee could NOT vote because of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

• 1934’s Magnuson Act granted

citizenship & the vote to Chinese

27

• Teacher, writer and

early leader in the civil rights movement

• Founded first African

American suffrage

• rganization in Chicago

(Alpha Suffrage Club)

• Investigative journalist

who exposed the horrors of lynching

• Awarded Pulitzer in

2020

Ida B. Wells

(1862-1931)

Mary Church Terrill (1863-1954)

• Worked to end discriminatory

practices of Washington D.C. restaurants using sit-ins & boycotts

• Racism and discrimination

frequently showed its ugly face inside some women suffrage campaigns

• 1896, founder & first president
• f National Association of

Colored Women (NACW)

• By the 1900s, Black suffrage

clubs had been launched all

• ver the country.

Inez Milholland (1886-1916)

March 3, 1913, Washington D.C.

• New Jersey’s Alice Paul

believed in more MILITANT tactics.

• Organized the first-ever

march on the National Mall in D.C. in 1913, calling for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote

• Thousands of women from

across the country gathered

• 1923: Introduced the ERA

to Congress

Alice Paul (1885-1977)

March 3, 1913 Parade; Washington D.C. Who was there?

Delta Sigma Theta Sorority

• Rumors that the March 3, 1913

parade in D.C. would be met by catcalls and perhaps violence

• 22 Sorority members marched

at that parade

• Segregated at back at start of

the march

• Some broke ranks and mixed

in with other marchers

• At age 92, Bertha Campbell led

10,000 Deltas in 1981 in a commemoration of that parade

Osceola Macarthy Adams & Bertha Pitts Campbell co-founded this sorority at Howard University in 1913

1913 Suffrage Parade program

Mary Louise Bottineau Baldwin (1863-1952)

• A suffragist who has really been

marginalized

• Chippewa lawyer; first Native

American graduate of Washington College of Law

• Emphasized the value of

traditional Native cultures

• Marched in the 1913 Women’s

Suffrage Parade in Washington D.C.

WE STILL MARCH!

Rose Bowl Parade, Pasadena, California 2020

How to get Wilson’s attention

The “Silent Sentinels” visit President Wilson

Virginians Pauline Adams and Maud Jamison were on the picket line and imprisoned in 1917 and 1918, leading to the “turning point” that we will soon address.

Frequently mispronounced as SUFFERage—and some of the early proponents of women voting did indeed suffer.

SUFFRAGE! . . . that rather intimidating word.

Alice Paul had past experience in England with Emmeline Pankhurst

• 27 arrests between June 22 and

26, 1917

• After picketing the White

House, 33 suffragists were arrested, incarcerated, tortured and some were force fed at the Occuquan Workhouse in Virginia.

• Lucy Burns (1879-1966) was
• ne of them. She served six

different prison sentences for picketing the White House.

• Oldest was 73-year-old Mary

Nolan who wrote down the account

“Night of Terror”

November 14, 1917

“Turning Point” Suffragist Memorial

Lorton, Virginia

The groundbreaking date of this memorial in 2019 coincided with the 102nd anniversary of the Night of Terror, when suffragists who were illegally arrested after picketing the White House were incarcerated, abused and tortured on the nearby prison grounds.

• This metal brooch became a

treasured memento of membership in an incredibly select society.

• 89 women, all dressed in

suffrage white, were honored at a theatre in Washington D.C. in 1917

• Many of the former pickets

wore them for the rest of their lives.

National Woman’s Party Prison Pin

“We WORK beside you, We FIGHT beside you, We DIE beside you – Let us VOTE beside you.”

19th Amendment Timeline in 1919

• May 21, 1919: Illinois

Republican Representative, James Mann proposed resolution; House passed 19th Amendment by 304-89 vote

• Two weeks later on June 4,

1919: U.S. Senate passed 19th by 2 votes

• Within 6 days, Illinois,

Michigan & Wisconsin ratified

• Southern states adamantly
• pposed

• 56 campaigns of referenda to male voters
• 480 campaigns to get Legislatures to

submit suffrage amendments to voters

• 47 campaigns to get State constitutional

conventions to write woman suffrage into state constitutions

• 277 campaigns to get State party conventions to include woman suffrage

planks

• 30 campaigns to get presidential party conventions to adopt woman

suffrage planks in party platforms

• 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses

“Got to be in the room where it happens”

Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947)

National Woman Suffrage Association President

1896

Some women could vote!

By 1910

By 1918

Finally ONE more state was needed

• Tennessee was the last

chance

• First term Republican

legislator, 24-year-old Harry T. Burn listened to his mother

• 19th Amendment became

law on August 26, 1920.

• Virginia did not ratify it

until February 1952—32 years later.

“Be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt” with her ‘RATS’ [ratification] (August 18, 1920)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton with daughter Harriot (1856)

• “Young suffragists who helped

forge the last links of that chain were not born when it began. Old suffragists who forged the first links were dead when it ended.” (Carrie Chapman Catt)

• Only one woman from the

Seneca Falls Convention, Charlotte Woodward Pierce, got to vote in 1920

August 18, 1920

“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.” Alice Paul sewing the last star on the ratification flag

Maggie Lena Walker (1864-1934)

• First Black female

president of a U.S. bank

• Used her influence to

push for women’s suffrage in Virginia

• Registered hundreds of

Black women to vote after the 19th Amendment passed

• Marked Nov. 2, 1920 —

Election Day — as a holiday in her diary

Credit...Courtesy of National Park Service, Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site

▪ Teacher and champion of racial and gender equality. ▪ Led voter registration drives, risking racist attacks ▪ Co-founded United Negro College Fund ▪ Close friend of Eleanor & Franklin Roosevelt

Mary McCleod Bethune

(1875-1955)

• Faculty members at

Virginia Normal & Industrial Institute near Petersburg successfully registered to vote

• More than 75,000

Virginia women voted for the first time on November 2, 1920

Victory in 1920

75,000-100,000 women register to vote in Virginia. Some registrars resign in protest.

Nevertheless they persisted

VOTE in 2020! Run for office!

2020: about 24 percent of Congress

• Share your views!
• Call your Members of Congress
• Call your City or County elected officials
• Speak out against racial injustice & all evils
• Protest peacefully (observing social distancing &

wearing a mask)

• Attend a Board of Supervisors, City Council or School

Board meeting (when it is safe to do so)

Was this your phone the last time you called any elected official?

Don’t know how to contact them? Or who they are?

• Print off the complete

brochure, FACTS FOR VOTERS, on the Williamsburg Area LWV’s website

• State level, JCC & York

Counties, City of Williamsburg, School Board links

• Voter registration info, etc.

lwvwilliamsburg,org

National Archives Exhibit

Barriers to Voting

Suppression or Fraud?

CIVICS 101

NEXT MONTH: September 15, 2020; 4 p.m.

Thank you for joining us today! Any questions?

• PBS “The Vote”
• Library of Congress “Shall Not Be Denied”
• Library of Virginia “We Demand”
• The Myth of Seneca Falls by Lisa Tetrault (2017)
• The Untold Story of Women of Color in the League of Women Voters by Carolyn

Jefferson-Jenkins (2020)

• 19th Amendment: A Woman’s Right to Vote 26-minute video from University of

Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center

Women Suffrage Webinar Sources

March 3, 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade

Washington D.C.