The Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States (Seminar Studies) [1 ed.] 0367487624, 9780367487621

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The Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States

The Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States presents important moments and participants in the history of the American suffrage movement, ranging from the mid-nineteenth century through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The book highlights the many participants in the suffrage movement, including well-known leaders, lesser-known activists, major national organizations, and local efforts across the country. An array of perspectives is examined: the garment factory worker working for protective labor laws, the wealthy wife hoping to control her inheritance, the Black activist seeking voting power for her community, and the temperance worker wanting to vote for prohibition laws. The volume examines the crucial activism of Black suffragists and other women of color, as well as the fraught nature of the cross-racial coalition in the movement. The broad and accessible approach to this important period in history will enable students to consider questions such as: How could suffragists overcome their differences and build community? Were wealthy women who funded salaries, headquarters, and parades afforded more power? What tactics and strategies did suffragists utilize to lobby legislators and win over the public? How did white suffragists and anti-suffragists wield racism as a political tactic both in support of and against the Nineteenth Amendment? How and when did women of color finally achieve the right to vote? Students will also be able to consider lessons from the suffrage movement for an inclusive feminist movement today. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in US women’s history, the history of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, and those interested in the histories of social movements. Joan Marie Johnson is Director for Faculty at Northwestern University, USA. She has written extensively about the history of women and gender, philanthropy, feminism, race, social reform, and education.

Introduction to the series

History is the narrative constructed by historians from traces left by the past. Historical enquiry is often driven by contemporary issues and, in consequence, historical narratives are constantly reconsidered, reconstructed and reshaped. The fact that different historians have different perspectives on issues means that there is often controversy and no universally agreed version of past events. Seminar Studies was designed to bridge the gap between current research and debate, and the broad, popular general surveys that often date rapidly. The volumes in the series are written by historians who are not only familiar with the latest research and current debates concerning their topic, but who have themselves contributed to our understanding of the subject. The books are intended to provide the reader with a clear introduction to a major topic in history. They provide both a narrative of events and a critical analysis of contemporary interpretations. They include the kinds of tools generally omitted from specialist monographs: a chronology of events, a glossary of terms and brief biographies of ‘who’s who’. They also include bibliographical essays in order to guide students to the literature on various aspects of the subject. Students and teachers alike will find that the selection of documents will stimulate the discussion and offer insight into the raw materials used by historians in their attempt to understand the past. Clive Emsley and Gordon Martel Series Editors

The Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States

Joan Marie Johnson

Cover image: The start of the great March 3, 1913 women’s suffrage parade before the Capitol building in Washington D.C. © Bridgeman Images. First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Joan Marie Johnson The right of Joan Marie Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Johnson, Joan Marie, author. Title: The woman suffrage movement in the United States / Joan Marie Johnson. Description: First Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2022. | Series: Seminar Studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021041285 (print) | LCCN 2021041286 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367487621 (Hardback) | ISBN 9780367487614 (Paperback) | ISBN 9781003042808 (eBook) Subjects: LCSH: Women—Suffrage—United States—History. Classification: LCC JK1896 .J64 2022 (print) | LCC JK1896 (ebook) | DDC 324.6/230973—dc23/eng/20211102 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021041285 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021041286 ISBN: 978-0-367-48762-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-48761-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-04280-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808 Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Figures Chronology Who’s Who Glossary of Organizations Abbreviations

x xi xiii xvii xix

Part I Background1  1 Introduction A Long and Diverse Suffrage Movement  4 Prioritizing the Right to Vote  5 Studying the Suffrage Movement  6

3

Part II Analysis9   2 Early Demands for Women’s Rights The American Revolution and Natural Rights  11 Growing Educational Opportunities for Education for Women  12 Industrialization and Separate Spheres in the Early Republic  13 The Second Great Awakening  15 Moral Suasion and the Early Nineteenth-Century Reform Movement  15 Conclusion 16

11

  3 Women in the Anti-Slavery Movement A Range of Viewpoints Among Abolitionists  17 Maria W. Stewart, the First Woman Abolitionist Lecturer  18 Lucretia Coffin Mott and the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society  20

17

vi Contents Angelina and Sarah Grimke Defend Women’s Anti-Slavery Activism  21 Conclusion 24   4 Women’s Rights Convention Begin Petitions for Woman Suffrage at the New York State Constitutional Convention in 1846  25 The World’s First Women’s Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, New York, 1848  26 Women’s Rights Conventions Continue  30 Sojourner Truth Preaches Against Racism and Sexism  31 Other Black Women Activists at Women’s Rights Conventions 32 Conclusion 34

25

  5 Suffrage and Citizenship After the Civil War Susan B. Anthony  37 American Equal Rights Association and Universal Suffrage  38 Stanton and Anthony Abandon Universal Suffrage  39 Human Rights and Citizenship Rights  43 Supreme Court Decisions Fail to Support Women’s Rights  44 Conclusion 46

36

  6 The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Home Protection Ballot, and Women’s Clubs The Progressive Reform Era, 1880s–1910s  47 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union  48 Frances Willard Advocates for the Home Protection Ballot  50 The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in the South  51 The Rise of Women’s Clubs  52 Mary Church Terrell and the National Association of Colored Women’s Support for Suffrage  53 Black Clubwomen and the Disenfranchisement of Black Men in the South  55 White Clubwomen and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs  57 Municipal Housekeeping  58 Conclusion 59   7 State Suffrage Campaigns in the Late Nineteenth Century Early Efforts in the Western Territories and States  60 The 1896 California Referendum  61 Carrie Chapman Catt and Early Iowa Suffrage Efforts  63 Conclusion 65

47

60

Contents  vii   8 The Suffrage Movement Expands 66 The Southern Strategy  66 NAWSA Promotes Racism to Win Suffrage  67 Raising Money From Wealthy Women for NAWSA  69 College Equal Suffrage League  72 Working-Class Women and the Women’s Trade Union League  74 The Uprising of the 20,000  75 Conclusion 77   9 Infighting at NAWSA Headquarters 78 Recruiting Wealthy Donors to the Movement  78 Alva Vanderbilt Belmont and the New NAWSA Headquarters  79 Conflict at Headquarters Continues With New Auditor Katharine McCormick  82 Conclusion 83 10 Victory in California Working-Class and Wealthy Women Combine Efforts in California’s Campaign  84 Obtaining Support From Diverse Voters  85 California’s Strategy Adopted by Other States  88 Conclusion 89

84

11 Suffragists Take to the Streets “Open Air” Speakers  90 Suffrage Parades  92 Alice Paul and the Washington, DC Suffrage Parade  94 Black Women and the Washington, DC Parade  97 Ida B. Wells, Anti-Lynching Activist and Suffragist  98 Ida B. Wells and the Washington, DC Suffrage Parade  100 Marie Bottineau Baldwin and the Washington, DC Suffrage Parade  101 Washington, DC Marchers Attacked  102 Conclusion 103

90

12 Rival National Associations Alice Paul and the New Congressional Union  104 The Rift Widens  105 Paul Leaves NAWSA With Alva Belmont  106 Conclusion 106

104

13 The Public Relations Campaign to Win Support for Suffrage The Importance of Letters  109 NAWSA’s Bureau of Suffrage Education  110

109

viii Contents Publicity Through Mainstream and Suffrage Newspapers  111 The Woman’s Journal Becomes NAWSA’s Official Newspaper 113 Conclusion 115 14 Campaign Strategy in Illinois, Iowa, and New York Presidential Suffrage in Illinois  116 Illinois Women Have the Vote  119 Unsuccessful Campaigns in Iowa  120 The Importance of New York  121 Upstate New York and New York City  122 Black Suffragists in New York  123 Success in New York in 1917  126 Conclusion 126

116

15 Lobbying Congress for the Nineteenth Amendment Appealing to Southern White Senators  128 Punishing the Party in Power  131 Carrie Chapman Catt and the Winning Plan  132 Suffrage House, Washington, DC  133 The National Woman’s Party  135 White House Pickets  136 Conclusion 139

128

16 The National Woman’s Party and NAWSA in South Carolina, New Mexico, and Texas 140 South Carolina Organizes for Suffrage  140 Opposition to Woman Suffrage in South Carolina  142 New Mexico Women Prioritize the Federal Amendment  143 Nina Otero-Warren Leads the New Mexico National Woman’s Party  144 Texas Women and Primary Election Voting  146 Organizing Black Women in Texas  147 Woman Suffrage and Citizenship Voting Amendments in Texas  148 Conclusion 149 17 Suffragists Win Support in Congress for a Federal Amendment Suffragists Support World War I  151 Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in Congress  153 Suffragists Burn Wilson in Effigy  154 Congress Votes for the Nineteenth Amendment  155 Conclusion 155

151

Contents  ix 18 Tennessee: The Thirty-Sixth State to Ratify the Nineteenth Amendment The Road to Thirty-Six States  156 Tennessee: The Long Road to Ratification  157 Suffragists Go to Tennessee  158 Ratification at Last  160 Conclusion 161

156

Part III Assessment163 19 Conclusion: The Nineteenth Amendment and Voting Rights From 1920 to the Present Black Women in the South  165 Immigration, Race, and Citizenship  166 Black Women Appeal to White Women for Assistance  168 The Voting Rights Act of 1965  170 The Women’s Rights Movement  172 Conclusion 173

165

Part IV Documents175 Documents177 Guide to Further Reading References Index

201 204 209

Figures

4.1 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, seated, and Susan B. Anthony, standing, between 1880 and 1902 4.2 Sojourner Truth 6.1 Frances Willard 6.2 Mary Church Terrell, between 1880 and 1900 8.1 Anna Howard Shaw, ca. 1920 8.2 Strike pickets from Ladies Tailors, during the New York Shirtwaist Strike of 1909 9.1 National American Woman Suffrage Association Headquarters Building, 505 Fifth Avenue, New York City, 1909 10.1 Los Angeles Women’s Political Equality League, 1911 11.1 Suffragists Katharine [Mrs. Stanley] McCormick and Mrs. Charles Parker, ca. 1910 11.2 Dr. Mabel P. Lee, ca. 1920 11.3 Head of the Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC, 3 March 1913 11.4 Ida B. Wells, 1913 12.1 Alice Paul and Alva Vanderbilt Belmont in Washington, DC, 17 November 1923 13.1 Woman’s Journal and Suffrage News, 1913 14.1 “Woman’s Party Demonstration Outside President Wilson’s Meeting in Chicago,” 1916 14.2 Irene L. Moorman-Blackstone 15.1 Mrs. Helen Gardener and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt leaving the White House, ca. 1920 15.2 Woman Suffrage Pickets at the White House 16.1 Adelina Otero-Warren, 1923 19.1 Fannie Lou Hamer, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegate, at the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 1964

27 33 49 54 71 76 80 87 91 93 97 101 107 114 118 124 134 137 145 171

Chronology

1832–1833 Maria W. Stewart delivers the first Anti-Slavery and Women’s Rights public lectures by a woman to a mixed-gender audience 1837 The first Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women is held in New York 1848 The first Women’s Rights Convention is held in Seneca Falls, New York 1850–1859 Annual national women’s rights conventions are held 1866 American Equal Rights Association is founded 1868 Fourteenth Amendment is ratified 1869 National Woman Suffrage Association is founded American Woman Suffrage Association is founded The territory of Wyoming grants women the right to vote 1870 Fifteenth Amendment is ratified First issue of the Woman’s Journal is published 1881 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union endorses woman suffrage 1890 The state of Wyoming grants women the right to vote National American Woman Suffrage Association is founded 1893 The state of Colorado grants women the right to vote 1896 General Federation of Women’s Clubs is founded National Association of Colored Women is founded The states of Utah and Idaho grant women the right to vote 1910 The state of Washington grants women the right to vote 1911 The state of California grants women the right to vote Wage Earners Suffrage League is founded 1912 The states of Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon grant women the right to vote 1913 Congressional Union is founded The state of Illinois grants women the right to vote in presidential and municipal elections Woman suffrage parade in Washington, DC 1914 Miriam Leslie bequests her estate to Carrie Chapman Catt for suffrage

xii Chronology 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1929 1935 1943 1965

The states of Montana and Nevada grant women the right to vote Carrie Chapman Catt announces the “Winning Plan” National Woman’s Party is founded Congressional Union merges into the National Woman’s Party The state of New York grants women the right to vote The states of Michigan, Oklahoma, and South Dakota grant women the right to vote House of Representatives and Senate pass the Nineteenth Amendment Nineteenth Amendment is ratified The territory of Puerto Rico grants women the right to vote with a literacy requirement The territory of Puerto Rico grants all women the right to vote Magnuson Act allows Chinese immigrants to naturalize to citizenship Voting Rights Act is passed

Who’s Who

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906): A former teacher and temperance advocate, Anthony led the suffrage movement for decades. She traveled extensively, fundraising, giving lectures, championing local suffragists, and organizing. Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, and was a dominant force in the National American Woman Suffrage Association until her death in 1906. The Nineteenth Amendment is referred to as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in her honor. Marie Bottineau Baldwin (1863–1952): Bottineau was a Native American rights activist, lawyer, and suffragist. Originally from the land that became the state of South Dakota, she moved to Washington DC where she worked for the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, and was the first Native American to graduate from Washington College of Law. Asked to organize a float to represent Native women, Bottineau chose to march in the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, DC with the delegation of lawyers. Alva Vanderbilt Belmont (1853–1933): Belmont was a wealthy New York socialite and suffragist. She was one of the most important donors to the movement, whose financial contributions kept the Congressional Union and later the National Woman’s Party afloat. Belmont pushed the National American Woman Suffrage Association to build up its public relations efforts, and supported Alice Paul’s more militant approach, providing funding for the White House pickets and other tactics. Harriot Stanton Blatch (1856–1940): The daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Blatch lived in England for 20 years, where she developed her ideas about women’s rights as well as the rights of workers. Returning to the United States in 1902, she supported women’s labor activism in New York City, and founded the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women which later became the Women’s Political Union. Blatch played a leading role in drawing working women and wealthy women into the movement, and in lobbying legislators for suffrage in New York. Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947): Catt was president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association during 1900–1904 and 1915– 1920. A graduate of Iowa State University, Catt became a suffrage organizer in Iowa in the 1890s before taking office in the national association.

xiv  Who’s Who Known for her ability to organize and centralize women’s efforts, her “Winning Plan” called for NAWSA to work toward the federal amendment at the same time they strategically built state support. Catt also founded the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964): The fourth Black American woman to receive a PhD, Cooper was an intellectual, author, and reformer. Her book, A Voice from the South, established her as an early leading voice for Black feminism. A high school teacher and principal, she was a leader in the women’s club movement and one of five Black women to speak at the World’s Congress of Representative Women in Chicago in 1893. Sarah Grimke (1792–1873) and Angelina Grimke Weld (1805–1879): The Grimke sisters, wealthy white authors and lecturers from Charleston, South Carolina, moved North where they advocated for human rights, the abolition of slavery, and equality for women in the late 1830s. In their public lectures as well as their writings, they not only described the evils of slavery but also called for racial equality, and they urged white women in the North and South to support abolition. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911): Harper was a poet and author, lecturer, and social reformer. Harper fought against racism and sexism, and drew attention to the experiences of Black women like herself. She was one of the few Black women to hold office in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, spoke at women’s rights conventions, and cofounded the National Association of Colored Women. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee (1896–1966): A Baptist minister and women’s rights advocate, Lee embraced the woman suffrage movement in New York City. Lee supported women’s rights both in the United States as well as in China. After receiving her doctorate degree from Columbia University, she led the First Chinese Baptist Church for decades. Despite her suffrage activism, as an immigrant from China, Lee was not allowed to naturalize to citizenship and therefore was not enfranchised with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Maria de Lopez (1881–1977): Lopez was an educator and suffragist in Los Angeles, California. She taught high school and then at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she later led the Faculty Women’s Club. Lopez translated suffrage literature into Spanish in order to appeal to Spanish speakers during the successful 1911 California referendum campaign. She was a member of the Los Angeles Votes for Women Club and president of the College Equal Suffrage League of Southern California. Katharine Dexter McCormick (1875–1967): McCormick was a philanthropist, suffragist, and birth control advocate. She was one of the early “open air” speakers and served as vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. A  birth control proponent, McCormick paid for the work of the scientists to develop the birth control pill. In addition, McCormick promoted access to higher education, giving

Who’s Who  xv Massachusetts Institute of Technology millions of dollars to build dormitories so that more women could attend her alma mater. Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793–1880): A  devout Quaker minister, Mott preached about the evils of slavery and co-founded the integrated Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Mott was one of the five women who organized the first women’s rights convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. She later was elected president of the American Equal Rights Association. Adelina “Nina” Otero-Warren (1881–1965): Otero-Warren was an educator, political leader, and suffragist in New Mexico. From a wealthy and politically active Hispano family, she led the National Woman’s Party in the state. Otero-Warren served as superintendent of schools and in 1922 she ran as the Republican candidate for New Mexico’s single seat in the House of Representatives. Maud Wood Park (1871–1955): A  graduate of Radcliffe College, Park started the College Equal Suffrage League to draw college graduates into the suffrage movement. Asked by her friend Carrie Chapman Catt, Park went to Washington, DC in 1917 to lead the congressional lobbying effort of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She later wrote about how women learned the ins and outs of political lobbying in Front Door Lobby. Alice Paul (1885–1977): Paul developed her militant approach to suffrage in England, where she was jailed and force-fed. Returning home to the United States, Paul infused the movement with militancy and spectacle. She organized the 1913 parade in Washington, DC and the White House pickets. Paul focused exclusively on passing a federal amendment (rather than a state-by-state approach), and broke away from the National American Woman Suffrage Association to found the Congressional Union (which later became the National Woman’s Party (NWP)) to lobby for it. The NWP later fought for the Equal Rights Amendment. Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919): Shaw, who had a medical degree and was an ordained Methodist minister, took up suffrage after activism in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. A close friend of Susan B. Anthony, Shaw earned a living on the lecture circuit, giving speeches on suffrage and women’s rights. She served as president of National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1904 through 1915, during which time the organization grew dramatically. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902): A  leader of the woman suffrage movement for the second half of the nineteenth century, Stanton was known for her expansive views on women’s rights and her intellectual influence. An organizer of the first women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, she wrote the Declaration of Sentiments. Stanton and Susan B. Anthony forged a deep friendship and coled the movement for several decades.

xvi  Who’s Who Maria W. Stewart (1803–1879): A teacher, author, and lecturer, Stewart was born to free Black parents in Connecticut, and orphaned as a child. She was the first American woman to give a public lecture on women’s rights and abolition to an audience composed of men and women. A  deeply religious woman, her lectures, delivered between 1832 and 1833, challenged her audiences to take action against racism and sexism. Lucy Stone (1818–1893): A prominent lecturer and the editor of the Woman’s Journal, Stone was an abolitionist and suffragist. Stone advocated for women’s rights on a variety of issues, from suffrage to dress reform to access to education. A graduate of Oberlin College, she helped organize numerous women’s rights conventions in the 1850s and founded the American Woman Suffrage Association. Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954): A graduate of Oberlin College and high school teacher, Terrell was an author, speaker, civil rights activist, and women’s club leader. Terrell was a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Association of Colored Women, which she led as president. Terrell spoke at several National American Woman Suffrage Association conventions and wrote extensively about civil rights and women’s rights. Sojourner Truth (1797–1883): An itinerant preacher, abolitionist, and women’s rights activist, Isabella Baumfree was born enslaved in New York. When her owner reneged on an agreement to manumit her the year prior to emancipation in the state, she left and claimed her freedom. She changed her name to Sojourner Truth, and preached the Gospel as well as lectured for abolition and women’s rights. She is best known for the speech she gave at the 1851 women’s rights convention. Ida B. Wells (1862–1931): A journalist and civil rights activist, Wells was born into slavery in Mississippi. She moved to Memphis where she coowned and wrote for the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper. Best known for her campaign against lynching, her investigation exposed the southern white justification for lynching that Black men sexually threatened white women as a lie. In Chicago, Wells founded several women’s clubs, including the Alpha Suffrage Club. Although the head of the white Illinois delegation tried to exclude her from marching with them in the 1913 Washington, DC parade, Wells characteristically refused and exhorted women to stand up for their principles and rights. Frances Willard (1839–1898): Willard served as president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union for over a decade, during which time it became the leading and largest organization for women across the country. Willard exhorted women to “Do everything” and take up social reform in a variety of causes beyond temperance. In calling for the Home Protection Ballot, she transformed the demand for suffrage into one which emphasized women’s role as mothers protecting families and bettering communities.

Glossary of Organizations

American Equal Rights Association (AERA):  In 1866, the first national women’s rights convention to take place after the Civil War voted to become the AERA and to work for universal suffrage regardless of race or sex. When members of the Republican party prioritized Black male suffrage through the Fifteenth Amendment, members of AERA split over whether to support the amendment, leading it to disband in 1869. American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA): Founded in 1869 by Lucy Stone and others, the AWSA organized to support the Fifteenth Amendment as well as (and before) woman suffrage. The organization focused on a state-by-state strategy. Rivals AWSA and NWSA merged in 1890 to form the NAWSA. College Equal Suffrage League (CESL):  Founded in 1900, the CESL was intended to organize recent women college graduates for the woman suffrage movement. College alumnae infused the movement with youth, energy, and respectability. CESL leaders also traveled to college campuses organizing chapters for women students. Congressional Committee (CC):  The Congressional Committee of the NAWSA was intended to work for a federal amendment for suffrage at a time when the organization was primarily focused on the state-bystate approach. When Alice Paul was appointed to head the CC, she tried to elevate its work, in part by holding a suffrage parade the day before the presidential inauguration in 1913. She eventually created a separate Congressional Union (later the National Woman’s Party) and left NAWSA. Congressional Union (CU): As head of the Congressional Committee of the NAWSA in 1913, Alice Paul created a separate organization called the Congressional Union to fundraise separately from the NAWSA. Eventually, she left NAWSA, and the CU became a smaller and more militant organization known as the National Woman’s Party that rivaled NAWSA for national leadership in the fight for the Nineteenth Amendment. National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA):  NAWSA was the major American woman suffrage organization, with millions of members and a central role in passing the Nineteenth Amendment. Founded in 1890, NAWSA led campaigns at the federal level as well

xviii  Glossary of Organizations through local branches and state divisions. Initially focused on the stateby-state approach, the central organization provided traveling lecturers and literature to suffrage campaigns across the country. In 1916, under president Carrie Chapman Catt’s “Winning Plan,” NAWSA worked simultaneously to lobby for the federal amendment as well in select states to drive momentum for woman suffrage. In 1920, NAWSA voted to become the League of Women Voters, dedicated to nonpartisan education for women voters. National Association of Colored Women (NACW): Founded in 1896 from a merger of the Colored Women’s League and the National Association of Afro-American Women, the NACW was the prominent organization of Black women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Members of Black women’s clubs across the country joined the NACW, inspired by leaders and local conditions to take up social reforms and community improvement, and to fight for civil rights. National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA):  Founded in 1869 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, NWSA members were opposed to the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment because it enfranchised Black men before women. The organization worked to pass a federal amendment for woman suffrage. Rivals AWSA and NWSA merged in 1890 to form the NAWSA. National Woman’s Party (NWP):  The CU formed the NWP in 1916 in order to organize enfranchised women in western states as part of their strategy to punish the political party in power if it did not pass woman suffrage. In 1917, the CU was folded into the NWP and became a new national organization with branches in states across the country. The NWP was smaller than NAWSA, more militant in its tactics, and focused exclusively on passing a federal amendment instead of a state-by-state approach. The NWP embraced novel and spectacular tactics such as the White House pickets as well as lobbying legislators for the amendment. Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS): Founded in 1833 by a group of 18 Black and white women, PFASS was unusual in the early abolitionist movement as an integrated society with women leaders and members. The PFASS held meetings, circulated petitions, and raised funds. Many leading woman suffragists began their activism in the PFASS. Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU): Founded in 1874, WCTU women initially used prayer and personal contact to convince men to pledge not to drink, before embracing political tactics to petition and lobby lawmakers to outlaw the sale of alcohol. By the 1880s, as the largest organization of women in the nation with over 200,000 members, the WCTU called for women to have the right to vote in order to pass temperance and other reforms.

Abbreviations

AASS AERA AKA AWSA CC CESA CESL CIC CU ESCC ESL GFWC IESA IWSA LWV MASS NAACP NACW NAWSA NCESL NWCEL

American Anti-Slavery Society American Equal Rights Association Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. American Woman Suffrage Association Congressional Committee California Equal Suffrage Association College Equal Suffrage League Commission on Interracial Cooperation Congressional Union Empire State Campaign Committee (New York) Equal Suffrage League (Brooklyn, New York) General Federation of Women’s Clubs Illinois Equal Suffrage Association Iowa Woman Suffrage Association League of Women Voters Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society National Association for the Advancement of Colored People National Association of Colored Women National American Woman Suffrage Association National College Equal Suffrage League Negro Woman’s Civic and Enfranchisement League (El Paso, Texas) NWP National Woman’s Party NWSA National Woman Suffrage Association NYSWSA New York State Woman Suffrage Association PEA Political Equality Association (New York) PFASS Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Association TESA Texas Equal Suffrage Association WCTU Woman’s Christian Temperance Union WESL Wage Earners’ Suffrage League (San Francisco, California) WPU Women’s Political Union (New York) WSP Woman Suffrage Party (New York) WSPU Women’s Social and Political Union (London, England) WTUL Women’s Trade Union League

Part I

Background

1 Introduction

Women in the United States fought for decades to gain access to the right to vote, granted through ratification of Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The woman suffrage movement had its roots in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Influenced by the American Revolution and the antislavery movement, women began to demand women’s rights. They called for the franchise  – the right to vote  – as the foundational right that was necessary to secure equality for women. Following the first women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, women met annually in convention. After the Civil War, they organized into a formal organization to work toward universal suffrage regardless of race or sex. Split apart by racism, suffragists came back together in the late nineteenth century in a new national association dedicated to winning the right to vote for women. They also organized at the local and state levels and through the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), women’s clubs, and other organizations. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the movement saw explosive growth, with new coalitions of wealthy women, working-class women, and college students and alumnae. Many women of color supported woman suffrage, most frequently in separate organizations. While they were sometimes able to forge coalition with white women, they often were subjected to racism from white suffragists. The movement also gained momentum from new public tactics, such as parades, new strategies for political lobbying, and new leadership in the national association and new organizations. In addition, appreciation for women’s patriotism and citizenship during World War I helped sway many men in favor of granting women the right to vote. After decades of activism, the Nineteenth Amendment to the constitution, which stated, “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,” was ratified and became law in 1920. It was a bittersweet victory, however, because many women of color were still prevented from registering to vote.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-2

4 Background

A Long and Diverse Suffrage Movement By rereading the archives and discovering new sources, historians propose a long timeline for the woman suffrage movement, one that begins before the Seneca Falls convention in 1848, extends to efforts in the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s–1960s resulting in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and continues in contemporary efforts to fight voter suppression. Building on these new histories, this book highlights important moments in the United States suffrage movement from the early nineteenth century through the final tenyear push that helped propel passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. The conclusion examines the aftermath of its ratification in 1920. This book shows how the suffrage movement succeeded due to many factors and actors, including the well-known leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as well as a myriad of lesser known women activists. It explains how an infusion of large monetary contributions from wealthy white women funded new strategies and tactics in the last decade before ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. It also reveals the crucial activism of Black suffragists and other women of color, as well as addressing the fraught nature of the cross-racial coalition in the movement: its successes and its failures. Women of color, oppressed by racism and sexism, saw the vote as a tool to fight both. This historical perspective provides insight for students discussing gender inequality and racism, as well as social justice and human rights for all people regardless of gender identity or expression, sexuality, and other identities. The two major national organizations, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and the National Woman’s Party (NWP) led the movement at the national level. NAWSA was founded in 1890, from two organizations that were formed in 1869, the American Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman Suffrage Association. NAWSA membership grew from approximately 13,150 in 1893 to 2,000,000 in 1917. NAWSA centralized the movement, sending organizers into the states to work to enfranchise women through state laws and amendments to state constitutions. By the 1910s, NAWSA also directed lobbyists to Congress to work toward passing a federal amendment that would give women across the country the right to vote. The NWP developed from the Congressional Union, founded in 1913. Though the NWP never approached the size of NAWSA, its ability to garner publicity with more militant tactics and a single-minded focus on prioritizing passage of a federal amendment rather than achieving suffrage through state legislation was crucial to ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Moderates in NAWSA seemed to offer a more palatable argument for suffrage to many male voters, while militants in the NWP elevated attention and demands. Understanding the differences between the two organizations helps illustrate the wide variety of suffragists and their approaches to the cause. Significantly, much work was done at the local level, in small towns and big cities across the country in support of winning suffrage through state law or through the federal amendment. The book weaves national effort

Introduction  5 together with local ones – examining state campaigns in California, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. By moving back and forth between local and national leaders we can better understand the wide range of suffragists, including their various forms of activism and their motivations. The work of women of color is more evident at the local level, because they were excluded from leadership in the national organizations. These state efforts also reveal how tactics and strategies also varied by region of the country. Women also fought for the right to vote through other organizations. This book explores additional crucial sites of suffrage activity and women’s rights advocacy, such as female anti-slavery societies, the WCTU, and the National Association of Colored Women. Although NAWSA and the NWP leaders were mainly white, Protestant, middle-class women, suffragists were in fact a diverse coalition that included wealthy philanthropists, factory workers, and professionals including teachers, physicians, and lawyers. Across the country, Black, Asian American, Latina, and Native women supported the movement. Eastern and southern European immigrant women, mostly Jewish and Catholic, advocated for suffrage in cities on the East and West Coast, while German and Scandinavian immigrant women took up the cause in the Midwest.

Prioritizing the Right to Vote Understanding the American woman suffrage movement therefore requires exploring why these many different women wanted the right to vote. This book presents the perspectives of an array of women, including Charlotte Rollin, a Black South Carolinian who demanded the right to vote as a human being, deserving of human rights; Mabel Lee, an immigrant from China to New York, who held a transnational viewpoint in which she hoped to advance the status of women in China and the United States; and Rose Schneiderman, an immigrant factory worker who called for the vote as a tool laborers could use to improve factory conditions. With no single reason for why women wanted the right to vote, the diverse coalition was knit together by women with different goals who all believed that the right to vote would help them to attain better lives and equality of some sort. They posited that once women gained political power, other rights would follow. This is the key to understanding them. Suffragists claimed that political power could expand women’s access to education and employment, and enable women to command respect and status in family life, as well as in public life. The garment factory worker who wanted a maximum hours law, the wealthy wife who wanted to control her inheritance, the Black activist seeking voting power for her community, and the temperance worker who believed women would vote for prohibition laws: all believed that the vote could help them advance their cause. Their viewpoints help us to learn about how rights are connected, what it means to be a citizen, what one can achieve through the political system, and how political power impacts economic and social control.

6 Background Suffragists believed that the right to vote would empower them to change their lives. If women were to have the right to vote, they would have to be considered independent political beings, no longer dependents of their fathers and husbands. Most Americans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries believed that men and women had strictly defined binary gender roles. By granting women the right to vote and allowing women to enter into the political sphere, long considered male, they feared that gender roles would blur. This is why the demand for the vote was considered to be so radical, why it encountered strong opposition, and why it took decades of activism to overcome this hurdle. Suffragists sometimes concentrated their efforts on the ballot and at other times called for a myriad of women’s rights, with suffrage as only one of many demands. In the mid-nineteenth century, women insisted on the right to vote as they also fought for access to education and professions, sought to change laws that denied married women property rights, and worked to expand their role within their churches. Right after the Civil War, the movement for women’s rights coalesced around prioritizing the vote. In the 1880s and 1890s many different women, including working women and temperance advocates, argued that the right to vote was key to winning their other objectives. A surge in suffrage activism in the first two decades of the twentieth century culminated in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Even in the early twentieth century, however, many suffragists retained their interest in obtaining rights beyond the vote. White suffragists in New York supported the birth control movement, Black suffragists fought against racial violence and oppression through civil rights organizations, and Native suffragists focused on tribal sovereignty.

Studying the Suffrage Movement This cacophony of voices provides many questions for students in the twenty-first century to consider. What did suffragists have in common with each other and could they overcome their differences? How did they build community across these differences? Were wealthy women afforded more power due to their generous financial contributions? What was the role of racism in the movement, at both the local and the national levels? How did white suffragists and anti-suffragists wield racism as a political tactic both in support of and against the Nineteenth Amendment? How and when did women of color finally achieve the right to vote? What lessons does the suffrage movement provide for an inclusive feminist movement today? In addition to examining which women wanted the right to vote and why, this book explores how these women succeeded in getting the Nineteenth Amendment passed. Women had to convince men to vote for woman suffrage. How did they do it? What tactics and strategies did they use? How did they communicate with each other and organize millions of women across the country? What kind of organizations, newspapers, and

Introduction  7 headquarters could provide spaces – figurative and literal – to create community? How did they lobby legislators, campaign for voters, and educate men about their cause? How did suffrage organizations compare to other leading women’s organizations of the day, such as women’s clubs and the WCTU? Why did it take so long to pass the Nineteenth Amendment? With the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, millions of women across the country lined up to register to vote and to place their ballots in the box during the 1920 presidential election. However, many women were excluded from the right to vote. Many women of color were not allowed to register to vote, including Black women in the southern states and firstgeneration immigrant Asian women who were barred from citizenship. The conclusion of this book explores what happened after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, how voter suppression has continued through the twenty-first century, and how women continue to fight for the right to vote today.

Part II

Analysis

2 Early Demands for Women’s Rights

The origins of the suffrage movement are complex and diffuse. The women’s rights conventions held in the late 1840s and 1850s demanding the right to vote resulted from decades of shifting ideas about women’s roles during the American Revolution (1760s–1770s) and the Early Republic (1780s–1830s). Before the American Revolution, women had limited social, political, and legal rights in the American colonies. They were excluded from political privileges, including voting, holding office, attending meetings of the colonial assemblies, serving in the military, and collecting customs duties. Questions about the role and status of women flourished during the revolution and were further debated in the Early Republic due to the effects of increasing education for women, the rise of industrialization, and an early nineteenth-century reform movement. The American Revolution Era’s focus on equality and women’s early activism during a time of reform pushed many women to consider their own status, as well as to connect with other women informally and within new organizations for women. Although there was no organized movement for women’s rights yet, questions concerning women’s roles and women’s rights kept surfacing, which ultimately included discussion of political rights for women. Despite those who sought to keep women in the domestic sphere, some emboldened women began demanding rights as American citizens. All of these factors – the revolution, education, industrialization, social reform – led to the debate over women’s roles that was a necessary precursor to the organized women’s rights movement of the late 1840s. Once women began to call for rights, they included the right to vote as central to equality.

The American Revolution and Natural Rights Although the revolution did not immediately increase rights for American women, the seeds for change were sown. The Declaration of Independence stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Thomas Jefferson based this statement on Enlightenment political DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-4

12 Analysis philosophy which posited that human beings are created with natural rights, that is, rights that are universal and God-given, rather than dependent on government to grant them. Enlightenment political philosophy and the new republican form of government engendered profound questions about who was entitled to liberty and equality. Northern states began to abolish slavery. (Zagarri, 2007) During the Revolutionary War, women on the home front carefully monitored political developments. Many supported the war effort, including the Patriots’ boycotts of British imports, such as cloth, china, and tea. Approximately 300 women in Boston, Massachusetts pledged to abstain from tea. In Edenton, North Carolina, 51 women signed a statement, printed in two newspapers, supporting the suspension of trade with England. The time seemed ripe in Revolutionary America for women to argue that the universal ideas of natural rights, liberty, and equality applied to them, as well as men. Abigail Adams famously wrote to her husband, John Adams, the nation’s second president, on 31 March 1776, that the Continental Congress should “remember the Ladies. . . . Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.” (Document 1) While her husband dismissed her proposal, writing, “As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh,” he took seriously the implication that people other than propertied white men might demand the rights of citizenship. (Document 1) Abigail Adams did not suggest that women should vote in her letter, but others did. Hannah Lee Corbin of Virginia wrote to family member Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, complaining that the cry of “no taxation without representation” did not apply to women who were widows yet paid taxes. (R. H. Lee to H. Corbin, 1778) In the early years of the new republic, some wealthy property-owning women in New Jersey actually voted from 1776 through 1807. Others began to support the developing political parties. Women expressed political opinions in private letters and published poetry and prose. They also baked “election cakes,” gave public addresses on Independence Day, and referred to themselves as “politicians” because they expressed their opinions on government, war, and politics. Women aligned with the Federalist or Republican parties, wearing party symbols, such as golden eagles, on their dresses and hats, and attending party parades and gatherings. Yet while some women continued to endorse partisanship, by the 1830s politics and partisanship came to be associated with both alcohol and corruption, and understood as male. (Zagarri, 2007)

Growing Educational Opportunities for Education for Women Fundamental to women’s claims for their rights was the argument that women were inherently as intelligent and capable as men, but had been

Early Demands for Women’s Rights  13 denied opportunities for education. This was most forcefully argued by British feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft in her 1792 book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was widely read in the United States. Women shared the same natural rights as men, she argued. However, women had been kept from getting an education and fulfilling their potential, for example, by not being allowed to practice most professions. After the American Revolution, white women used a new argument to justify their need for schooling. They asserted that education was essential to their role in the new republic as “Republican Mothers,” teaching their sons how to be good citizens. Both men and women thought that women were inherently more moral than men. Thus, women could impart the selflessness necessary for men charged with governing in a republic to make decisions based on the public good rather than their own economic selfinterest. An education would make women better mothers and teachers for their sons, as well as better companions for their husbands. One of the most well-known female educators was Emma Willard, who opened Troy Female Seminary, the first institution for higher education for women in the United States in 1821. Willard appealed to the New York state legislature for public funding for a women’s school. The legislature refused. After opening a small school in her home in 1814, Willard eventually obtained the contributions necessary to sustain a school in Troy, New York. While other women’s schools focused on French, music, and other subjects thought to be suitable for young women, Willard offered an advanced curriculum with mathematics, philosophy, geography, history, and science. Graduates founded and taught at their own rigorous schools across the country. Academies and seminaries for women proliferated around the country, especially in the Northeast. This resulted in a dramatic increase in women’s literacy. However, women still had few opportunities like men to obtain a classical education resulting in a bachelor’s degree. Many people continued to wonder if women were intellectually capable or believed education to be unnecessary for their roles as wives and mothers. In Ohio, though Oberlin was the nation’s first coeducational college, most women entered the Ladies Department, which did not require Greek and Latin and thus was considered less rigorous.

Industrialization and Separate Spheres in the Early Republic In the colonies and Early Republic, some women worked for wages, for example, as artisans, teachers, midwives, and shopkeepers. Free Black and white women, as well as enslaved women, performed unpaid labor in the household and in the fields. Dramatic changes took place in the 1810s and 1820s with the beginning of industrialization and the move from home production to “manufactory” (shortened to factory) production. Formerly, skilled craftsmen with apprentices made complete goods by hand. However, with industrialization, the work was divided between skilled and

14 Analysis unskilled workers, each making part of the finished product for pay. This new manufacturing drew more women into paid labor. Notably, textile production, traditionally considered women’s work, was one of the most significant areas of industrialization. This was made possible by advancements in technology that created power looms, as well as the increasing availability of cotton picked by enslaved people in the southern states. Large looms were housed in new mills which employed hundreds of workers. In Lowell, Massachusetts, by 1839 eight companies ran 24 mills with more than 6,000 workers, of whom 85 percent were women. Most were young white women who came from neighboring farms to live in the boarding houses developed by the mills. The women at Lowell worked 13- to 14-hour days in an unhealthy environment with little ventilation for low wages. They were among the earliest factory workers in the country to organize protests, striking twice in the 1830s and petitioning the state legislature for shorter hours twice in the 1840s. The majority of Lowell workers were single. However, if they were married, their husbands had legal rights to their wages. Some of the women who worked at Lowell later advocated for suffrage, perhaps motivated to work for the right to vote for laws that would give women earnings and property rights. The development of textile mills took place during a time of economic growth, growing urbanization, the continued movement of many white settlers across the continent, and advances in technology. Canals, steamships, and eventually railroads allowed for easier transportation of goods to market. Many Americans became concerned that these changes destroyed the personal relationships between craftsmen and their customers and pushed Americans to embrace greed and materialism. As more men and women began to work outside the home in new factories earning cash wages, the home and farm were no longer the center of production they once had been. In response to such dramatic change, ministers, editors, and other observers elevated the importance of strictly enforced binary gender roles and the “separation of spheres.” This ideal posited that men belonged in the public sphere: earning wages outside the home and representing families in politics and the legal system. A woman’s ideal place was within the home or the domestic sphere: caring for children and doing (or directing enslaved women or servants to do) the cleaning, cooking, and other housework. Women were to be pious, chaste, submissive, and modest. This ideal praised women’s inherent morality and celebrated white motherhood. Separate spheres were not a reality for many women, including those who were working in the factories, enslaved women, and other poor women who had no choice but to earn wages however they could outside their homes. The separate spheres ideal was also oppressive. It limited opportunities for women and confined their behavior. Having women remain in the home at a time when wage work increased outside of the home curtailed women’s economic power. Women continued to work within the household without

Early Demands for Women’s Rights  15 pay, unless they were wealthy enough to enslave women or hire servants to keep from having to labor themselves. Some women embraced the ideal of separate spheres. They wanted to elevate women’s position in society by emphasizing their authority within the home. The division also meant that women frequently shared space and time with other women, as historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg posited, creating a “female world of love and ritual.” (Smith-Rosenberg, 1975) They forged bonds with each other that later helped them to unite and demand women’s rights when they no longer accepted the ideal of separate spheres.

The Second Great Awakening A Christian religious revival movement took place in the early nineteenth century. The Second Great Awakening swept across New York state, through the Midwest, and across the South, calling on followers to form a closer relationship with Jesus and live more holy lives. Methodists and evangelical believers sought to create a more perfect society. Itinerant preachers held camp meetings with emotional sermons, inspiring their audience to change their behavior. Furthermore, they called on followers to look beyond themselves and help others to become perfect as well. Many women found their voice as preachers; their desire to preach challenged engrained ideas about the proper role of women. Jarena Lee, born in New Jersey in 1783, though not enslaved, was bound into servitude. After her conversion to Christianity at age 21, she joined the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in Philadelphia and heard a voice telling her to “go preach the Gospel.” (Jones, 2020: 24) Lee was determined to obtain sanction from her church as a licensed preacher. Bishop Richard Allen originally encouraged her to preach only on limited occasions. However, after he heard Lee give a powerful impromptu sermon, he formally accepted her calling. She preached thousands of sermons over the next 30 years. When local ministers tried to prevent her from taking the pulpit, her signed license from Allen provided the legitimacy she needed. In her memoir, she asserted that although some objected to women preaching, “nothing is impossible with God.” (Jones, 2020: 24)

Moral Suasion and the Early Nineteenth-Century Reform Movement The Second Great Awakening inspired a social reform movement that included women reformers. Reformers called on Americans to become more Christ-like and encouraged others to perfect themselves by giving up alcohol. Reformers commonly used the tactic of “moral suasion,” persuading sinners to give up their evil ways through speeches and pamphlets. They worked to reform prisons and asylums and expand education. The idea that women were naturally pious and moral undergirding the separate spheres ideally enabled their participation in the Second Great

16 Analysis Awakening and provided a role for women in this new wave of social reform. They spoke, wrote, and organized in favor of temperance, abolition, education improvements, prison reform, and other causes. Women founded charitable and benevolent societies to provide aid to those in need, including the poor, orphans, and widows. Reformers ultimately realized that moral suasion was insufficient to change society. They began to embrace a legal and political framework for change. In other words, they recognized that the cause of poverty and other problems was not personal sin but institutionalized and systematic structures that had to be challenged. To do so political power was required to change or enact laws. One of the most powerful political tools women without the vote had in the nineteenth century was the petition. Women created and signed petitions for temperance and the right to vote, and against slavery and the removal of Native Americans from their land in southeastern states. In 1817, the Beloved Women of the Cherokee Nation met in Tennessee to discuss their opposition to their tribe’s removal west, resulting in a petition authored by Nanye’hi, also known as Nancy Ward. They laid out their stance based on their roles as mothers and their sacred relationship to the land. A year later, another Cherokee woman presented a second petition from the women resisting removal, this time based on their Christianity and civilization. (Miles, 2009)

Conclusion During the American Revolution, women applied natural rights arguments to themselves and began to consider their role in the new republic. Expanded opportunities for education and industrialization pushed some women to reconsider the expectation that they remain in the domestic sphere. Participation in the Second Great Awakening as preachers and in early nineteenth-century reform movements helped women realize that they could mobilize to change society. Some women also began to think that their own experience of oppression could also be changed through moral suasion or political action. Women first took up their pens, signed petitions, spoke in churches, and formed organizations to better society. In the 1830s, some women joined the antislavery movement, seeking rights for oppressed and enslaved men and women. That experience would lead them to do the same for themselves as women.

3 Women in the Anti-Slavery Movement

The most important reform movement in the early nineteenth century was for the abolition of slavery. Black people, both enslaved and free, consistently fought enslavement through rebellion, escape, and the purchase of freedom as well as organizing to abolish the institution of slavery. Discourse on natural rights and freedom during the American Revolution led many white people to question slavery. They joined Quakers who called slavery sinful. Northern states ended slavery within their borders. However, there were still enslaved Black people through the 1840s in some northern states which provided for gradual, rather than immediate, emancipation. Meanwhile slave revolts in the early 1800s resulted in harsh punishments and restrictions for enslaved people across the South. The controversial Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and prohibited slavery in the territories north of the 36° 30’ parallel, made the debate over the expansion of slavery the central issue in American society for the mid-nineteenth century. As slaveholders continued to justify slavery, the anti-slavery movement grew and developed. Women played an important role as abolitionist speakers and organizers. Their anti-slavery activism was also crucial to the development of the women’s rights movement. Criticized for their activism, women had to defend their right to make public speeches against slavery. Refusing to be silenced, they began to take bold stands on broadening women’s public and political roles. Women were also inspired by antislavery rhetoric and arguments based on natural rights and equality for Black people. They considered their own oppression as women and began to call for equality and rights for all people, regardless of race or sex. Leading Black and white women abolitionists ultimately became influential in the fight for woman suffrage.

A Range of Viewpoints Among Abolitionists In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison, a white printer from Boston, founded the Liberator newspaper. He argued that slavery was evil, not just due to its violence and brutality but because the system prevented enslaved Black people from living as free moral agents accountable to God. Garrison called DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-5

18 Analysis for an immediate end to slavery and advocated for absolute equality of Black and white people. Frederick Douglass, a former slave from Virginia, who had published his memoir titled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, founded his own newspaper in Rochester in 1847 called the North Star. Douglass argued that the nation was also being held in bondage to a system that held Black men and women in chains. Garrison and Douglass were the two most prominent abolitionists in the country. They believed in full equality and citizenship for all people, regardless of race. There was, however, a full spectrum of abolitionists. Most anti-slavery supporters did not share these views on racial equality; some called for a gradual, instead of immediate, end to slavery. Others could not imagine a society where free Black and white people lived together and instead advocated sending Black people to Africa or other locations outside of the United States. Abolition was perceived by most Americans to be a radical movement, in its aims and in its makeup, because it was led by both Blacks and whites, men and women. The more radical abolitionists were subjected to violent attacks from mobs and a gag order on their petitions in Congress. As an early nineteenth-century reform movement that initially embraced moral suasion, abolitionists used their pens and their oratory skills to argue against the sinfulness of slavery. Anti-slavery lecturers included women who, as they called for abolition, also drew attention to the oppression that women experienced. Because these women considered slavery to be such a grave sin and injustice, they felt compelled to speak out in public in new and controversial ways. Forced to defend their right – their need – to speak, abolitionist women found new voices for themselves and for other women as they called for human rights and justice for all. These women were among the first to publicly demand women’s rights.

Maria W. Stewart, the First Woman Abolitionist Lecturer Maria W. Stewart was the first American woman to lecture before a “promiscuous” audience, that is, one composed of both men and women, in a public lecture hall on political issues (as opposed to in a church or meeting room on religion). Between 1832 and 1833, Stewart delivered political lectures against slavery and in favor of women’s activism on behalf of education for their communities. Criticized for her boldness, she stopped her public speaking, and moved from Boston to New York, where she began teaching. A Black woman born free in Connecticut in 1803, Maria was orphaned at the age of five and bound out in service to a minister. She married James W. Stewart, a shipping agent, who died after only three years of marriage. After his death, white businessmen fraudulently claimed her husband’s property and cheated her out of her inheritance, underscoring the precarious position of free Black people.

Women in the Anti-Slavery Movement  19 Stewart entered the abolition movement in 1831 by writing the first of several pieces she published in the Liberator. She exhorted Black people not to accept the idea that they were inferior to white people and called them to fight for freedom and equality. She preserved and published a compendium of the lectures she delivered in Boston. A woman of strong Christian faith, Stewart denounced slavery and slaveholders for their evil ways in her speeches. Facing criticism as a woman for speaking, she defended herself, noting that St. Paul would not object if he understood the oppression that Black Americans faced. She called for the end to slavery based on the Bible, as well as the American political tradition. She criticized white people for enslaving Black people, stating that white slaveholders obliged our brethren to labor; kept them in utter ignorance, nourished them in vice, and raised them in degradation; and now that we have enriched their soil, and filled their coffers, they say that we are not capable of becoming like white men, and that we can never rise to respectability in this country. They would drive us to a strange land. But before I go, the bayonet shall pierce me through. Stewart noted that Black people had the same desire for liberty as all Americans and were determined to claim natural rights fought for during the revolution. (Richardson, 1987: 64) Stewart also looked to women from the Bible and classical history to serve as models for women’s activism, education, and preaching. She asked, “Who shall go forward, and take off the reproach that is cast upon the people of color? Shall it be a woman?” Stewart argued that God, not men, chose his messengers. (Richardson, 1987: 45) Perhaps inspired by her, Black women in the 1830s and 1840s sought a more public role in Black political and reform organizations, such as anti-slavery societies and Philadelphia’s American Moral Reform Society, as well as in churches, fraternal orders, and literary societies. As a Black woman, Stewart called on other Black women to “awake! . . . arise!” to seek education and educate others, notably by banding together to open a school for Black children. Stewart believed that education would enable women to obtain employment better than domestic service, which she found unpleasant and oppressive. (Document 2) After her short speaking career, she taught and joined a Black women’s literary society in New York. After the Civil War, she became matron of the Freedman’s Hospital in Washington, DC, continued writing, and published the compendium of her collected works. Stewart was the first to publicly claim a voice for women in the abolition movement. As a Black woman, she forthrightly addressed the oppression she faced from both racism and sexism.

20 Analysis

Lucretia Coffin Mott and the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society White women in the anti-slavery movement also anchored their outspoken voices in their faith. Lucretia Coffin Mott was born in 1793 on Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts. She grew up witnessing Quaker women, who, unlike in most other Protestant denominations, were allowed to speak freely at church meetings and to become ministers. Quakers believed in the “inner light” of God in everyone, a tenet that mediated against hierarchy (on the basis of race or sex). As a minister in the 1820s, she spoke to women about their rights and responsibilities as human beings who were filled with the inner light, capable of education and rational thought, and had an individual conscience to guide moral decision-making. (Faulkner, 2013) Mott also noted that growing up on Nantucket Island, where men were often away at sea, fishing and whaling for months at a time, shaped her ideas about women’s capabilities. In absence of men, women ran the household and the family finances, sometimes setting up small businesses and making trips to Boston for goods, trade, or business. In addition, her father believed in education for his daughters. Lucretia and her husband shared beliefs in abolition and women’s rights. Mott was committed to immediate abolition. She refused to purchase slave-produced cotton, sugar, and produce. Moreover, like Garrison, she believed in racial equality, not just abolition. She attended the founding convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), held in Philadelphia in December 1833. Garrison founded the AASS to advocate for immediate abolition. Mott spoke to the convention, advocating for changes to the AASS’s Declaration of Sentiments that more forcefully grounded abolition in the principles of the Declaration of Independence and called for an unceasing commitment to abolition. Four days later, she co-founded the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS), which, like the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, had both Black and white members, at a time when most abolitionist societies were not integrated. She served in several leadership roles in the PFASS, including president, and gave lectures on abolition for which she was widely criticized and attacked. PFASS encouraged women to circulate and sign petitions, donate money, attend public lectures, and otherwise support the abolition movement. They went door to door soliciting signatures on petitions that they sent to the state legislature and to the US Congress. They also raised money for Black schools in Philadelphia and for food, clothing, and shelter for fugitive slaves. Mott was a devoted abolitionist and her views on racial equality were forged in a belief in human rights which she extended to all regardless of race or sex. (Document 6) She read Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women and similarly underscored women’s need for education and intellectual development. Furthermore, she was willing to speak

Women in the Anti-Slavery Movement  21 publicly and organize anti-slavery efforts. Mott’s beliefs led her to a prominent role in the women’s rights movement for decades.

Angelina and Sarah Grimke Defend Women’s Anti-Slavery Activism Mott’s colleagues in PFASS included Angelina Grimke. In 1837, sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimke made an anti-slavery tour throughout Massachusetts speaking to mixed-gender audiences, as Stewart had done just a few years prior. The Grimkes called for an immediate end to slavery. As with Stewart and Mott, the very act of a woman speaking to mixed audiences was related to another demand: rights for women. When they were told that women should not take on such a bold public role lecturing against slavery, Angelina and Sarah defended their right to speak. Furthermore, they explicitly called for women’s rights. They believed that women had the same capacity for education, rational thought, and conscientious public engagement as men. The daughters of a wealthy, politically prominent, white slaveholding family in Charleston, South Carolina, they eventually became staunch abolitionists. They argued that slavery’s violence dehumanized both enslavers and the enslaved. Each personally had witnessed the violence of slavery. Their mother was notoriously cruel and violent toward slaves in their home. Influenced by Quakers she met in the North, Sarah converted to Quakerism and called out the sin of slavery. Sarah’s devout faith drove her actions and compelled her to take up anti-slavery work; she believed it was her duty to obey God, not man. Initially, Sarah thought slaveholders could be persuaded to treat slaves better. However, she came to believe that immediate abolition was necessary because God created all humans as fully equal. Angelina joined Sarah in Philadelphia. Moving from Charleston to Philadelphia was critical to their development. In Philadelphia, they spent time with abolitionists who called for the end to slavery on moral grounds. Both Sarah and Angelina were brilliant, passionate, and idealistic, and refused to compromise their beliefs. In Philadelphia, Angelina attended PFASS meetings. She wrote a letter to Garrison stating her “deep, solemn, deliberate conviction that [abolitionism] is a cause worth dying for,” a letter he published in the Liberator. (A. Grimke, 1835) As with Stewart, the act of having her writing published in the Liberator served notice of her beliefs and her willingness to state them publicly. Angelina believed that freedom would have to come through political activism rather than divine intervention. Angelina and Sarah used the written word to persuade the public, penning powerful tracts. Angelina wrote “Appeal to the Christian Women of the South” in 1836 and “Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States” in 1838, explaining to white women in the South and in the North their responsibility as Christian women to work for human rights and

22 Analysis abolition. In the first tract, she explained why slavery was wrong and then suggested that white women in the South read and pray about slavery. She also urged the women to influence the men in their families, persuading them that slavery was sinful. Finally, she noted that women could act themselves, freeing slaves if they owned them and educating those who were enslaved within their households despite the laws in southern states against teaching enslaved people to read and write. In the second tract to northern white women, she laid out evidence of the evil of slavery and of the oppression that free Black people faced in the North. She called upon women, even without political rights, to act. She exhorted them to treat Black people as equals and to work with Black women on anti-slavery, temperance, and other reforms. (Document 4) Sarah is best known for a defense of women’s anti-slavery work and for Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman published in 1838. In 1837, Congregational clergy sent a “Pastoral ­Letter” in which they urged women to refrain from public reform work, including being public lecturers. In her reply, Sarah asserted that God created women as equal human beings. As such, they were accountable for their moral behavior and not dependent on men to make moral decisions for them. (Document 3) The basis of her feminism was her understanding that women were moral beings and therefore had the same human rights as men. In Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman, originally published as a series in the newspaper, she complained that women were denied the same educational and employment opportunities as men, and were paid less than men for the same jobs. (Document 5) Stewart, Mott, and the Grimke sisters all attended the first Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, held in New York City in 1837. Mott later dated the beginnings of an organized women’s rights movement to this women’s convention on abolition. The abolition convention took place 11 years before the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Mott chaired the meeting of 184 women from 10 states, including nearly 20 Black women. Angelina proposed the following resolution: The time has come for women to move in that sphere which Providence has assigned her, and no longer remain satisfied in the ­circumscribed limits with which corrupt custom and a perverted application of Scripture has encircled her; therefore that it is the duty of woman  .  .  . to plead the cause of the oppressed in our land, and to do all that she can by her voice, and her pen, and her purse, and the influence of her example, to overthrow the horrible system of American slavery. (Sterling, ed. 1987: 13) Not all attendees agreed; some preferred women to continue to use moral suasion to more quietly and privately influence men.

Women in the Anti-Slavery Movement  23 After the convention, Sarah and Angelina Grimke traveled to Massachusetts as speakers for the AASS, giving anti-slavery speeches that also called for human rights for all men and women. Angelina gave over 80 lectures, reaching 40,000 people. She also presented a petition signed by over 20,000 women to the Massachusetts legislature committee on anti-slavery. This provided an opportunity for her to address the state legislature in February 1838, the first woman to do so. A few months later, the second Anti-slavery Convention of American Women met in Philadelphia at the newly built abolitionist Philadelphia Hall. The Grimkes’ friend, Sarah Mapps Douglass, a Quaker and a teacher, attended. Born to Black activist parents in Philadelphia, she helped found the Female Literary Association with other free Black women. They drafted a constitution for the association that provided leadership for women of their own society at a time when most other women’s groups had men serve in leadership roles and handle the finances. Like Stewart and Angelina Grimke, she published in the Liberator. Sarah Douglass, Mott, and the Grimkes faced a violent mob at Philadelphia Hall at the second Anti-slavery Convention. Angelina Grimke spoke on the second night, as did Garrison, while a crowd gathered, eventually attacking convention attendees as they left. On the third day, the Mayor of Philadelphia suggested that the mob might be appeased by the absence of Black women, whom he thought were provoking such an intense reaction. He suggested that the convention continue without Black women. The women convention leaders refused and the mayor canceled the evening meeting. This did not prevent a mob numbering in the thousands from forming and torching Philadelphia Hall, as well as attacking a Black orphanage and Bethel Church, where the preacher Jarena Lee and other Blacks worshipped. Philadelphia Hall burned to the ground, only days after its opening. Abolitionists faced violence as they stuck to their principles. Women were not protected by their sex. In fact, Black women seem to have been the most threatening  – and threatened  – of all. Women struggled to find locations for future meetings, given the violence they had encountered and the controversial nature of their work. Meanwhile the controversy over women’s role in the abolitionist movement grew more heated. Some men, including the clergy who had admonished Grimke, believed it was improper for women to speak publicly about the issue or to join a mixed-gender organization. This, along with other disagreements, caused two factions to form. Garrison argued that abolition was based on one’s individual conscience. He rejected man-made laws, including the US constitution. Others believed that the constitution and laws could be used to abolish slavery. In 1839, the AASS debated whether women should serve as delegates to the society’s national convention. The following year, an exodus of men from the AASS, who disagreed on this and other issues, formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. They feared that clergy would be put

24 Analysis off by an expansive role for women and that the abolitionist cause would be endangered by controversy. Women themselves disagreed over whether they should continue to meet separately or with men. Lucretia Mott argued for the value of both. She wanted to maintain close ties between the AASS and the PFASS. In May 1838 Angelina married Theodore Weld and moved to New Jersey to raise their children, accompanied by Sarah. Angelina and Sarah ceased public speaking, but continued to write and advocate for abolition and women’s rights. Although both Stewart and the Grimkes retired from the lecture circuit shortly after their forays into public speaking, they opened the door to other women.

Conclusion As the abolitionist movement developed in the 1830s, a small group of Black and white women dedicated themselves to the immediate end of slavery. They formed their own groups, such as PFASS, and worked with male abolitionists including Garrison and Douglass. The groups used petition campaigns and speaking tours to try and convince others of the evil of slavery and the moral necessity to act against it. Women had to defend their right to speak out and participate in the abolitionist movement. They applied ideas undergirding abolition – natural rights and equality – to their own experiences as women and began speaking and writing for women’s rights as well as abolition. Stewart, Mott, the Grimkes, and other abolitionist women called for women to be free to get an education and to think for themselves as fully moral human beings. Their experiences in the anti-slavery movement were key to their development as women’s rights activists. In the late 1840s and 1850s women began to gather, not only as abolitionists but also as women’s rights advocates explicitly calling for an end to discrimination based on sex, including the right to vote for women.

4 Women’s Rights Convention Begin

On 11 July 1848, a notice appeared in the Seneca County Courier newspaper in upstate New York. Titled “WOMAN’S RIGHTS CONVENTION,” it was an invitation to attend “A  convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman,” in the Wesleyan Chapel at Seneca Falls on 19–20 July 1848. (Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, 1881: 168) Lucretia Mott sent the notice to abolitionist Frederick Douglass for publication in his newspaper, the North Star. The notice was also printed in other regional newspapers. It specified that only women were invited to speak on the first day’s meetings on 19 July, but both men and women could speak on the second day. The notice was for the first women’s rights convention in the world. This revolutionary idea drew 300 people to a small town in upstate New York a week later. The wide network of family, friends, and neighbors of the organizers who attended demonstrated that the conveners had clearly surfaced a desire for women’s rights that was already present in the area. Perhaps the interest in a women’s rights convention should not be unexpected in an area where early nineteenth-century reform was popular. Upstate New York was known as the “burned-over” district because the Second Great Awakening had spread like fire across the region. Anti-slavery sentiment was also on the rise, especially in neighboring cities like Rochester.

Petitions for Woman Suffrage at the New York State Constitutional Convention in 1846 Notably, debates at New York’s state constitutional conventions held in the early nineteenth century magnified questions about who deserves the right to vote. At the convention held in 1821, more white men gained access to the right to vote when the state dropped property requirements for them. In contrast, free Black men had their ability to vote limited when the convention imposed the property requirement on them. In 1846, another New York state constitutional convention debated and voted down an amendment removing this restriction from Black men’s voting. New York was not alone. By 1842, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Tennessee had all DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-6

26 Analysis disfranchised free Black men. Gender and race were becoming determinants in who could vote, demonstrating the underlying belief that voting was not a natural right, but a privilege. In fact, some politicians dismissed Black voters by scoffing that giving Black men the right to vote would mean that women would want the vote next. Furthermore, these arguments tended to obscure the role of Black women, who were frequently left out of efforts to enfranchise Black men or women, which centered on white women. Significantly, when the New York constitutional convention met in 1846 to rewrite the state constitution, it received at least three petitions for woman suffrage. A male delegate from Albany offered a petition signed by presumably male citizens of his city, a group of women from Covington submitted their own petition, and six women from Jefferson County presented a petition, which was later printed in the record of the Constitutional debates. The women from Jefferson county, who did not follow their petition with any sustained activism, boldly proclaimed that the State of New York widely departed from the true democratic principles upon which all just governments must be based by denying to the female portion of community the right of suffrage and any participation in forming the government and laws under which they live. This was a “self-evident truth” they asserted, and referenced James Madison’s Federalist Paper #39. The petitions are evidence that women’s right to vote was in demand before the Seneca Falls convention. It was based on a natural rights argument and was intertwined with debates over suffrage for free Black people. (Kogan and Ginzberg, 1997: 431)

The World’s First Women’s Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, New York, 1848 Against this backdrop, five white women, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martha Coffin Wright, Jane Hunt, and Mary Ann M’Clintock, met at Hunt’s house in July 1848 and discussed their frustrations with women’s lack of rights. By this time, Lucretia Mott had been lecturing and organizing against slavery for over 15  years. Lucretia and James Mott attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, with seven other American women delegates, all supporters of William Lloyd Garrison and immediate abolition. There she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was in London on her honeymoon, so that her new husband, abolitionist Henry Stanton, could attend the convention. The London organizing committee, followed by the convention itself, voted to exclude women, allowing them to sit in a curtained off area, but not to speak.

Women’s Rights Convention Begin  27

Figure 4.1   Elizabeth Cady Stanton, seated, and Susan B. Anthony, standing, between 1880 and 1902. Source: Library of Congress

Charles Remond, the only Black delegate from the United States, refused to be seated, noting that women had raised the funds to send him to London, while also stating that he prioritized abolition over women’s rights. Elizabeth Stanton did not have a history of abolitionist advocacy, and was not a delegate herself, but she was impressed with Mott. “When I first heard from the lips of Lucretia Mott that I had the same right to think for myself that Luther, Calvin, and John Knox had,” she would later recall, “I felt at once a new-born sense of dignity and freedom.” (Faulkner, 2013: 94)

28 Analysis Born in 1815, Stanton later remembered that her father told her he wished she had been born a boy. A  lawyer, legislator, and circuit court judge, he was mourning the death of two sons, and thus his dream of passing along his law profession to a son. The affluent Elizabeth attended Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary before her marriage to Henry Stanton, an anti-slavery lecturer and later, a lawyer. She was less deferential to her husband than typical for the time; she omitted “obey” from her wedding vows. (Ginzberg, 2009) Despite this, she encountered resistance from her husband and her father to her work in the women’s movement. Her husband was reluctant to have her travel for women’s rights in 1855–1856, around the time she gave birth to her sixth child. Her father temporarily disinherited her due to his disapproval of her public lectures. Discussing the pressure to stop coming from her family, she wrote, “But I will both write and speak.” (DuBois, 1978: 26) Stanton devoted the rest of her life to the women’s rights movement, writing and speaking for decades. Historian Ellen DuBois acknowledges that Stanton’s class privilege later stoked her virulent anti-immigrant and anti-Black rhetoric in which she posited that white educated (and wealthy) women were more worthy of the vote than others. (DuBois, 1978) Martha Coffin Wright was Lucretia’s younger sister, born in 1883 in Boston and raised in Philadelphia. Like Lucretia, Martha was a Quaker. However, she was excommunicated from the church because she married a non-Quaker. After his death, she moved to New York where she met and married a lawyer, David Wright. Martha was an abolitionist, present with her sister at the founding of the AASS. Both Lucretia and Martha were part of the extensive network of abolitionists and advocates for women’s rights in Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. This network included Douglass and Garrison. Martha’s son married Stanton’s niece and her daughter married Garrison’s son. Wright was quite outspoken, pointing out to her second husband how women’s lack of rights impacted their lives. For example, she disagreed with him on married women’s inability to own their property. She protested his decision that they pay their seamstress half the amount they paid the male hired hand (which he attributed to the fact that men had families to support). (Penney and Livingston, 2004) M’Clintock and Hunt were Quakers and abolitionists. M’Clintock was a founding member of the PFASS along with Mott. She and Hunt both lived in Philadelphia before moving to New York. When Mott traveled to New York to visit her sister, they went together to visit Hunt in Seneca Falls. Hunt invited her neighbor, M’Clintock, and Mott invited Stanton. They discussed their frustrations and drafted the notice for the Seneca Falls convention at Hunt’s table. As they prepared for the meeting, Stanton, working with M’Clintock and her two daughters, wrote the Declaration of Sentiments. It was modeled on the Declaration of Independence and boldly declared that men and women

Women’s Rights Convention Begin  29 are created equal. Following the format of the Declaration of Independence, which enumerated the transgressions of the King of England against the colonies, the Declaration of Sentiments laid out the ways in which men oppressed women. The first four statements posited that women had no voice to improve their condition because they had no vote. The discrimination that followed was predicated on their lack of political power. Thus women without the right to vote were denied access to higher education and many professions were closed to them. (Document 7) Further, they criticized coverture, the legal doctrine that women were “covered” by the legal identity of their husbands. This doctrine explained that By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband; under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing. (Blackstone, 1765: 442) According to the Declaration of Sentiments, coverture left married women “civilly dead.” Following these accusations, the Declaration resolved to fight for rights, including the ballot. (Document 7) Mott’s husband served as the chairman of the convention’s second day, because the women feared that having a woman chair the convention would not convey the same legitimacy. Mott and Stanton both spoke and Stanton read the declaration. The next day, the attendees unanimously voted in favor of all the resolutions in the Declaration of Sentiment, with one exception, the one calling for woman suffrage. The demand for suffrage was perceived to be too threatening to commonly accepted ideas at the time about strict binary gender roles, defended as God’s will. Opponents wondered, if women were allowed access to the vote, seen as a primary marker of masculinity, how could lines remain firmly drawn between the two genders? After speeches by Stanton and Douglass in its favor, the resolution finally passed by a slim majority. Sixty-eight women and 32 men signed the declaration. Although they did not create an organization, they pledged to speak, write, petition, and convene for women’s rights. (McMillen, 2008) The delegates who rejected coverture celebrated changes in state laws in the decades following the convention. New York passed its Married Women’s Property Act in 1848, which allowed married women to own property independent of their husbands. During the second half of the nineteenth century, many states passed similar acts and other measures that afforded married women more rights. The right to economic independence was intertwined with rights within marriage and with the legal rights necessary to defend both of these.

30 Analysis

Women’s Rights Conventions Continue Eager to continue to debate and claim women’s rights, activists met in Rochester on 2 August  1848, a mere 13 days after the Seneca Falls convention. This time a woman presided over the convention. Mott was the meeting’s most persuasive speaker, cogently overcoming objections from those who wanted women to stay in the home or the domestic sphere. One hundred participants signed the Declaration of Sentiments from the Seneca Falls convention. Although Seneca Falls was the first women’s rights convention, the first to call itself a National convention was held in Worcester, Massachusetts, two years later in 1850. Its success demonstrated that conventions were a powerful new way to draw attention to the cause and build momentum for the movement. The announcement or “Call to the Convention” was signed by 89 men and women, including Mott, Stanton (although she did not attend), and Garrison. Notably, the Worcester convention was larger than Seneca Falls, with close to 1,000 in attendance, although only 267 registered as voting delegates. The conveners called for delegates from around the country, but members came from just six states in the Northeast and Ohio. Lucy Stone, a white abolitionist, was the key to the success of the Worcester convention. Stone was born on a Massachusetts farm, to an abusive, alcoholic father and an overburdened mother who struggled to raise their children. Stone was ambitious and resented it when her father encouraged and paid for her brothers’ education, but not for hers. She taught primary school to earn her tuition for Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. By age 25, she had saved enough money to attend Oberlin College. (McMillen, 2015) Her feminism and anti-slavery ideas were already developing in the 1830s, as Stone read her father’s subscription to the Liberator at home and Sarah Grimke’s The Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women. She was outraged at the age of nineteen hearing her minister read the 1837 Pastoral letter condemning the Grimke sisters. At Oberlin, her outspoken defense of women’s right to education, professions, speaking, voting, and even running for office made her well-known among her classmates. After hearing another woman lecture on abolition, Stone was inspired to take to the podium herself. After her graduation, she planned to return to Massachusetts to become a lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (MASS). Within a year, she was traveling around the state speaking on anti-slavery, drawing large crowds, and building a reputation as a superb orator. Stone was attacked physically, with hymnals and eggs thrown at her as mobs tried to keep the abolitionists from speaking. When the MASS hired her, she claimed, “I was a woman before I was an abolitionist.” She therefore included demands for women’s rights in her anti-slavery speeches. (McMillen, 2015: 71–72) Her first opportunity to speak on women’s rights came in 1847 in Massachusetts, where she spoke at the church where her brother ministered, arguing for women’s education.

Women’s Rights Convention Begin  31 She posited that granting more rights to women would not endanger expectations for gender roles. Women could become more womanly with rights rather than desexed, a common fear at the time when most people held that there were strict differences between men and women. Stone later complained that women’s aspirations were limited to their domestic role or work in a limited number of professions, such as seamstress or teacher. She urged women not to ask for rights, but to demand them. Rebuked for bringing up the rights of women, she made an agreement with the MASS to speak on women’s rights during the week at her own expense and deliver her anti-slavery lectures on the weekends for $4 per week. As organizer and secretary of the 1850 Worcester convention, she delivered a stirring speech for women’s rights. “We want to be something more than the appendages of Society,” she claimed, “we want that Woman should be the coequal and help-meet of Man in all the interest and perils and enjoyments of human life.” (Kerr, 1992: 60) Afterward, she edited the convention proceedings, had them printed, and sold them at her lectures. Stone married Henry Blackwell, in a ceremony in which she refused to change her name or pledge to obey. Together they declared women’s equality with men. After the birth of her daughter in 1857, Stone spent less time on the road lecturing. She turned her attention to writing instead, founding the Woman’s Journal which she, and then her daughter, edited. The journal advocated for women’s rights and provided news about the suffrage movement for decades.

Sojourner Truth Preaches Against Racism and Sexism Like the 1848 convention, white women also dominated the 1850 convention. Therefore, it was notable that Sojourner Truth, a Black woman, delivered the first of many addresses to women’s rights conventions beginning in 1850. Born Isabella, she was enslaved by Dutch families who populated the farms in Ulster County, New York. She was sold away from her parents at the age of nine and owned by two families before being purchased by John Dumont. Around 1815, she married and had five children. (Painter, 1996) State law guaranteed her emancipation by 1827, but Isabella extracted a promise from Dumont for release a year earlier. He reneged on his agreement. Believing that God had told her to leave the Dumonts, she did so, taking her youngest child with her. Her other children remained indentured into the 1840s. She found refuge with a local Dutch Reformed family who did not believe in slavery. Isabella helped found the Kingston Methodist church, a Pentecostal church that emphasized the Spirit and the seeking of perfectionism. She believed that her profound faith in Jesus enabled her survival. By the 1830s, she had moved to New York City where she began preaching. Isabella became an itinerant preacher and renamed herself Sojourner Truth in 1843.

32 Analysis Truth was a spellbinding and forceful speaker. She dictated her autobiography, the Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Truth gave her first antislavery speech in 1844 in Northampton and spoke to the AASS in New York in 1845. At the 1850 Worcester women’s rights convention, Truth emphasized the finite nature of evil, the infinite nature of good, and her faith in God. Truth is best known for her speech at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron the following year. A contemporaneous report noted that she claimed equality for women based on her physical strength and intellectual equality. Truth testified that she had “as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man.” (Painter, 1996: 125) Furthermore, she shot down fears that granting women rights would decrease rights for men. Finally, Truth concluded with a reference to the New Testament biblical story signifying respect for women in which Jesus responded to Mary and Martha’s request to raise Lazarus from the dead. Twelve years later, a white abolitionist reported on the speech, for the first time quoting Sojourner in a southern slave dialect, asking “Ar’n’t I a woman?” (Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, 1881: 249) Historian Nell Painter shows how this phrasing was unlikely to have been spoken by Truth, who had been enslaved in the North and whose first language was Dutch. Painter suggests that the phrase nonetheless served to remind white feminists not to neglect Black women. The phrase was particularly significant because at the 1850 convention, a white women’s rights supporter had argued vociferously that the delegates should not adapt a resolution against slavery and in support of enslaved women. She posited that slavery and race issues should be debated at anti-slavery conventions and that gender issues should be debated at women’s rights conventions. Such a division effectively erased Black women and their intersectional experiences of both racism and sexism. Truth, and the phrase attributed to her, became symbolic of intersectional feminism. (Painter, 1996) Perhaps the most significant resolution at the 1850 convention pledged that “every party which claims to represent the humanity, civilization, and progress of the age, is bound to inscribe on its banners, Equality before the law, without distinction of sex or color.” (Proceedings, 1851: 15) This became the argument for universal suffrage that dominated the suffrage movement in the 1850s and 1860s.

Other Black Women Activists at Women’s Rights Conventions In addition to Truth, a limited number of Black women also spoke or served as officers at the women’s rights conventions held annually during the 1850s and after the Civil War in the 1860s. Mary Ann Shadd Cary was present at many of the conventions. She was born in Delaware and educated in Pennsylvania. She then lived in Toronto, Canada, where she

Women’s Rights Convention Begin  33

Figure 4.2  Sojourner Truth. I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance, 1864. Source: Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana

published an anti-slavery newspaper, The Provincial Freeman. Due to fear that she would face resistance as a woman editor, Cary initially named men as the editors of the newspaper she owned. After two years, she finally listed her own full name on the masthead among the editors. She later returned to the United States during the Civil War to help recruit Black soldiers for the Union army, attended Howard University Law School, and served as an agent selling Douglass’ New National Era newspaper. She formed the Colored Woman’s Franchise Association in Washington, DC. (TerborgPenn, 1998)

34 Analysis In her newspaper, she printed many editorials focusing on women’s rights. She and her sister wrote that “Woman’s work was anything she put her mind or her hand to.” (Terborg-Penn, 1998: 20) They advocated for the rights to participate in political and reform activity through writing and speaking, and holding office, as well as to obtain an education and enter professions and the arts. The newspaper featured women who had done just that, such as Truth. Cary reprinted an article featuring Truth criticizing white abolitionists who were against slavery but did not believe in racial equality. Cary also promoted the poet, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, in her newspaper. Born to free parents in Maryland, Harper was orphaned as a child. Raised by her uncle, she obtained an education and became a teacher, writer, and notable public speaker. Known for her graceful manner of speaking, she challenged her colleagues to address racism and sexism. She began lecturing on abolition in 1853. Harper traveled widely, speaking alongside noted men and women abolitionists, and writing about the dangers she encountered as a Black woman abolitionist and speaker. Harper was a key speaker at women’s rights conventions in the 1860s. Sarah Remond, along with her brother Charles, both spoke at the 1858 women’s rights convention. As evident by his protest at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention, Charles had long supported both Black voting rights and women’s voting rights. Raised in Salem, Massachusetts and Newport, Rhode Island, Sarah left the public-school system when it became segregated in each of these cities and educated herself. Remond was determined to claim her full citizenship rights; her middleclass status gave her the ability to use the court system for remedy. When she was refused a seat in a theater and sent to the balcony in Boston, she sued for discrimination and won. She later sued a theater usher for pushing her and again when she was refused to move her seat on a train. As a lecturer, she decried southern slaveholders’ political power and the sexual violence to which enslaved women were subjected. Ultimately, however, she found that she could not escape oppression in the United States. She spent two years in England on the anti-slavery lecture circuit, then moved to Italy in 1860 where she studied medicine and set up her own practice. Members of her family joined her there and also escaped the racism they experienced in the United States.

Conclusion Women’s rights conventions, beginning with Seneca Falls in 1848, started an organized women’s rights movement. Many of the attendees were abolitionists but at these conventions they turned their focus to women’s rights. Conventions continued annually (with the exception of 1857) until the Civil War. Women called for women’s rights including property rights for married women, the right to an education and access to professional jobs, and the right to vote. While states began to pass married women’s property

Women’s Rights Convention Begin  35 laws, and colleges opened doors to women, activists faced stronger opposition to woman suffrage. Supporters only numbered in the thousands, and were considered radical, due to their association with abolition and the threat they seemed to pose to strict traditional gender roles. Leaders thus were trying to convince legislators to vote for woman suffrage well before it became a mass movement with millions of followers. The close ties between women’s rights and abolition would peak during and immediately after the Civil War, when abolitionists and suffragists focused on passing an amendment to the constitution that would eliminate barriers to voting based on race or sex.

5 Suffrage and Citizenship After the Civil War

After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the United States outlawed slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment. Some Republicans in congress then shifted their focus from abolition to ensuring full citizenship for Black men through enfranchisement. Before the war, southern states had disproportionate political power because congressional representation was based on the number of white adults plus three-fifths of the enslaved population in each state. Thus the region benefitted from a disproportionately large number of legislators relative to the number of voters. Furthermore, the Democratic party dominated the region. Passage of the Thirteenth Amendment ended the threefifths clause. Assuming that freed Black men would vote for the Republican party, the party of Lincoln, Democrats would lose the benefit they had gained from the three-fifths clause unless they could prevent Black men from voting. Republicans believed that the vote was necessary for former slaves to have full citizenship rights. Furthermore, they quickly realized it was to their political benefit to ensure that Black men could vote. They worked to pass two additional amendments to the Constitution: the Fourteenth, which guaranteed citizens that the states could not deny the rights of citizenship without due process, and the Fifteenth, which forbid states from disenfranchising men on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” These amendments are referred to as the Reconstruction amendments, a reference to the period from 1865 to 1877 in which the southern states which had seceded were brought back into the Union and the federal government tried to protect the rights of Black people. In 1867, the Republican congress broke the South into military districts and ensured that the states could not rejoin the Union until they had written new state constitutions and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. Black men voted and held office, and Reconstruction governments established public education and other reforms. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, white southerners used violence and other means to deny the rights that Black people had gained. Attention to the right to vote as fundamental to national citizenship in debates over the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments gave new language and impetus to suffragists in the late 1860s and early 1870s. They believed DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-7

Suffrage and Citizenship  37 that the effort to enfranchise Black men might provide an opportunity for women also to win suffrage as the right of citizenship. Black and white suffragists promoted universal suffrage as right of citizenship, not to be denied due to race or sex. The Republican party, however, ultimately refused to prioritize woman suffrage. The Fifteenth Amendment was drafted to outlaw disfranchisement only on the basis of race, not sex. Resenting their exclusion, white suffragists split. Some refused to support the Fifteenth Amendment even though it gave more than a million Black men the right to vote. Their decision to work against the enfranchisement of Black men shows how, despite the close ties of many white suffragists to anti-slavery activism, racism permeated the suffrage movement. Examining the late 1860s and early 1870s brings to light how support for universal suffrage collapsed under the weight of racism, partisan politics, and the need for funding.

Susan B. Anthony After the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, in which President Abraham Lincoln freed enslaved people in the states that had seceded, abolitionists worked to complete and codify the end of slavery. They formed Union Leagues and Loyal Leagues to support the Republican party. They advocated in favor of the Thirteenth Amendment which was passed by Congress in January 1865 and ratified in December. In New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the Women’s Loyal National League in 1863 to support the Thirteenth Amendment. The league collected approximately 400,000 signatures on petitions, then disbanded following the amendment’s ratification. Stanton and Anthony met in 1851, forging their notable friendship and collaboration. Anthony did not attend the 1848 women’s rights convention, although she and Stanton later mythologized Seneca Falls as the “origin” of the suffrage movement. (Tetrault, 2014) Anthony was born in Massachusetts but raised in Rochester, New York, with her five siblings. Her parents were Quakers and abolitionists. Her father was a factory owner, farmer, and insurance agent. Her mother and sister attended the 1848 women’s rights convention in Rochester. (Barry, 2020) During an economic downturn in 1837 she and her sisters began teaching to earn money, an experience that left her attuned to the needs of working women and the importance of financial independence for women. She began to work for temperance. Prohibited from speaking at a temperance convention due to her sex, she organized a new women’s temperance society with Stanton as president. While Stanton’s ideas in favor of woman suffrage and divorce were too radical for the temperance organization, Anthony and Stanton continued their partnership, working for suffrage and within women’s organizations they could lead themselves. Anthony also worked as a paid lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) in the late 1850s.

38 Analysis Anthony fostered deep and emotional relationships with other women, including romances and friendships. She did not marry or have children. She chafed when Stanton and women she surrounded herself with did, because of the ways in which domestic obligations diminished the time they could commit to women’s rights. Anthony herself traveled and wrote tirelessly, and carefully identified and nurtured hundreds of suffrage leaders around the country. She ran petition drives, organized local and national associations, and promoted the cause for over five decades.

American Equal Rights Association and Universal Suffrage After the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, Republicans turned their attention to securing the right to vote for Black men. In addition to guaranteeing that the states could not deny citizens their rights without due process, the Fourteenth Amendment, passed by Congress in 1866 and ratified in 1868, specified that states would lose congressional representation if they denied the right to vote to all adult males. But because it did not directly enfranchise formerly enslaved Black men, Republicans began advocating for another amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment, to guarantee all males the right to vote regardless of race. Republicans’ interest in expanding the electorate through Black male voting did not extend to woman suffrage. All women were not expected to vote Republican to the same extent that Black men were. In May  1865 abolitionist Wendell Phillips made a speech at the AASS meeting declaring it was “the Negro’s Hour.” (DuBois, 1978: 59) Phillips was a prominent white abolitionist and Republican, who had supported woman suffrage and spoken at women’s rights conventions during the 1850s. Now he argued that Republicans should unite behind Black male suffrage; woman suffrage would have to wait. Woman suffrage was considered by many to be a radical idea. He and others feared that connecting two controversial proposals by entwining woman suffrage with Black male suffrage endangered passage of the latter. Stanton and Anthony were angry that Phillips seemed to be abandoning woman suffrage. They led the call for an amendment that would guarantee the right to vote regardless of both race and sex, advocating for universal suffrage at the eleventh national women’s rights convention in May 1866. The delegates then transformed themselves into a new organization, the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), with Lucretia Mott serving as president. The AERA called for “equal rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color, or sex.” (Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, 1887: 173) Notable Black abolitionists and women’s rights advocates Frances Harper, Sojourner Truth, and Sarah Remond joined AERA. They were not happy that Phillips and the AAAS prioritized male suffrage. They tried to show how Black women experienced both racism and sexism and keep the focus on universal suffrage. However, convention debates often became

Suffrage and Citizenship  39 discussions about whether Black men or women should be enfranchised first if universal suffrage could not be achieved. In these discussions, references to women focused exclusively on sexism and the experiences of white women. Black women struggled against their invisibility in these debates. Harper addressed this conundrum at the 1866 convention. First, she complained about coverture, the legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a woman’s legal identity was subsumed into that of her husband. Because married women could not control their property, when Harper’s husband died, debt collectors took her family possessions, even those bought with her earnings. Addressing racism head on, she then detailed the indignities and violent treatment Black women faced on public transportation. Harper illustrated her oppression as a Black woman: as a woman without property rights, and as a Black person who faced discrimination in housing and transportation in Philadelphia and Boston. Emphasizing Black women’s lived experiences of racism and sexism, Harper said, “I do not believe that giving the woman the ballot is immediately going to cure all the ills of life . . . You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs.” But Harper tried to remind those gathered that their purpose was to work together for rights for everyone regardless of sex or race, stating, “we are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity.” (Document 8) When pressed, Harper added that if there could only be one group under consideration at a time, Black women would never prevent Black men from getting the vote.

Stanton and Anthony Abandon Universal Suffrage At the next AERA convention in May 1867, delegates continued to debate universal suffrage, Black male suffrage, and woman suffrage. Stanton’s comments show how she and Anthony began to abandon the inclusive strategy undergirding universal suffrage. Stanton said she wanted universal suffrage, for Black men and all women to achieve the right to vote at the same time. However, she added, she was unwilling to have Black men go first, as advocated by Phillips and others. Stanton argued that Black men should not be trusted to give women their rights. Furthermore, she claimed that women with “virtue, wealth, and education” should vote to overcome the “ignorance, poverty, and vice” she feared would result from universal male suffrage, equating these traits with Black and immigrant men. (DuBois, 1978: 178) When Stanton said “women,” she meant white women. Stanton’s racism was not new. In speeches and essays, Stanton often argued first that all people should have the vote. However, if that was not possible, then it should be [white] women who received the right to vote before those who, in her view, did not deserve it due to race, ethnicity, education, or socioeconomic status. As early as 1854 she said, “We are moral, virtuous, and intelligent, and in all respects quite equal to the proud white man, yet by your laws we are classed with idiots, lunatics, and negroes.” (Stanton, 1854: 4) She noted that despite the $250 property requirement

40 Analysis in New York, Black men with property could vote, but women could not. “Here again, you placed the negro, so unjustly degraded by you, in a superior position to your own wives and mothers,” she admonished white politicians. (Stanton, 1854: 4) By 1869, Stanton was even using rhetoric associating Black men with the threat of rape, a dangerous myth. She argued that if Black men got the vote but not white women, “fearful outrages on womanhood, especially in the southern states” would occur. (Stanton, 4 February 1869: 64) Stanton used this approach for many years. She first pleaded for the high ground of universal human rights, and then she would speak about what she called “the low ground of expediency and precedent” in which she complained that [white] women had it worse than Black men. (Dudden, 2011: 44) In her rhetoric, white women were educated and refined, whereas others – Black people, immigrants, etc. – were not. Further, Black women were marginalized, excluded from the category of women by Stanton. Once again, attendees at the 1867 AERA convention questioned Black women as to whether they would support an amendment that enfranchised only Black men. Truth claimed that Black men would have the right to vote through the Reconstruction Act, a law that required former Confederate states to include Black male suffrage in their constitutions before reentering the union, and that she wanted the right to vote as a Black woman. She also called for equal pay for women. The debate about whom should obtain the right to vote was complicated by party politics. Politically, former abolitionists and supporters of the right to vote for Black men were wedded to the Republican party. However, the Republican party did not support woman suffrage. The Republican party’s position was evident in 1867 in two states, New York and Kansas. In New York a state constitutional convention debated two changes: allowing woman suffrage and removing the $250 property requirement for Black men to register to vote. AERA worked for both amendments to the state constitution, lobbying and gathering petitions. But the Republican chair of the convention’s suffrage committee recommended only the removal of the property requirement and not woman suffrage. His committee called woman suffrage “an innovation so revolutionary and sweeping, so openly at war with the distribution of duties and functions between the sexes as venerable and pervading as government itself, and involving transformation so radical in social and domestic life.” (DuBois, 1978: 285) Stanton was furious. The debate continued in Kansas where the state legislature had voted to change the state constitutional clause that defined eligible voters as white and male. The state then held simultaneous voting referenda on both proposed changes in the fall of 1867. Phillips and other former abolitionists cautioned that they should not work for both simultaneously. Working for women’ rights could have a negative effect on the campaign for the Black vote, which should be prioritized. They accused Stanton and Anthony of jeopardizing Black male suffrage.

Suffrage and Citizenship  41 The state Republican party did not actively support either bill, so Stanton and Anthony decided to try to appeal to Kansas Democrats, then the party of former slaveholders, for support. But aligning with Democrats over Republicans was unthinkable to other suffragists. It required abandoning the former abolitionists who remained loyal to the Republican party. In addition, Stanton and Anthony desperately needed money. They hoped for funding from Phillips. He controlled two bequests that were intended to fund abolition and women’s rights. Reiterating that it was the “Negro’s hour,” Phillips rejected their requests and prioritized spending the money on winning the amendments in New York and Kansas for Black male suffrage, arguing that it constituted a continuation of the abolitionist cause. (Dudden, 2011) Needing money and political allies, Stanton and Anthony made a choice. They aligned themselves with George Train, a Democrat and notorious racist. Train was a wealthy entrepreneur with an interest in politics. Although Train had defended the Union during the Civil War and campaigned for Lincoln, he was proslavery. Train was flamboyant and made virulently racist comments. Echoing Stanton, he asked voters if they would choose to have the “Muscle, and Color and Ignorance” of Black male voters over the “Beauty, Virtue and Intelligence” of white women. (DuBois, 1978: 95) Both Kansas state constitutional referenda failed. Stanton and Anthony continued working with Train after the Kansas vote. He agreed to finance a lecture tour, as well as their new newspaper, the Revolution. Stanton justified their collaboration with him because they needed the money, stating that she would have made “a deal with the Devil” if necessary to get the funding. Although the funding did not last long, their association with Train permanently damaged their reputation, exposing their racism. (Dudden, 2011: 133) Stanton and Anthony were dedicated to women’s rights first and foremost over abolition and anti-racism. Trying to appeal to Phillips for funding, they saw themselves in competition with Black men for the right to vote rather than in collaboration. They abandoned their call for universal suffrage. Moreover, historian Ellen DuBois argued that their racism “drew on and strengthened a much deeper strain in their feminism, a tendency to envision women’s emancipation in exclusively white terms.” (DuBois, 1978: 96) This was evident in the ways that Black women were marginalized and left out of discussions on voting framed as a choice between supporting Black men or white women. The brief moment when it seemed that Black and white women and men could all work for universal suffrage collapsed. Stanton and Anthony’s racism surprised and offended their allies. Former abolitionists working for the Fifteenth Amendment were horrified when Stanton dropped universal suffrage and prioritized educated, white women. AERA fell apart at its 1869 convention. Abolitionist Stephen Foster called for the resignation of Stanton and Anthony because of their racism. They had, he said, “repudiated the principles of the society  .  .  .  [for] universal suffrage.” (Stanton,

42 Analysis Anthony, and Gage, 1887: 381) Furthermore, he called them out for working with George Train, “with his ridicule of the negro,” on their newspaper. (Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, 1887: 382) Frederick Douglass and Harper also repudiated Stanton and Anthony. Douglass decried their refusal to advocate for the Fifteenth Amendment and was disgusted that Stanton had called Blacks “sambo” and “bootblacks.” He ultimately argued that Black men’s suffrage must come first because they suffered violence due to their race, which he argued, women did not due to their sex. When asked, “is that not all true about black women?” he answered, “Yes, yes, yes, but not because she is a woman but because she is black.” (Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, 1887: 382) Anthony answered that if they had to give it one group before the other, then “give it first to women, to the most intelligent & capable of the women at least,” continuing, When Mr. Douglass tells us today that the cause of black man is so perilous, I tell him that wronged & outraged as they are by this hateful & mean prejudice against color, he would not today exchange his sex. (Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, 1887: 383) Pushed as to whether she would support the Fifteenth Amendment, Harper replied that race came first. (Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, 1887: 391) White suffragist Lucy Stone also supported the Fifteenth Amendment, stating, Woman has an ocean of wrongs too deep for any plummet, and the negro too has an ocean of wrongs that cannot be fathomed. . . . But I  thank God for the Fifteenth Amendment, and hope that it will be adopted in every State. I will be thankful in my soul if any body can get out of the terrible pit. (Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, 1887: 384) Stanton replied that she “did not believe in allowing ignorant negroes and foreigners to make laws for her to obey.” (Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, 1887: 391) Stone furiously rejected their racism, and she and Anthony became bitter rivals. Two days later, Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) which passed a resolution against the Fifteenth Amendment. Stanton and Anthony ran editorials in the Revolution, the official organ of the NWSA, echoing this position. Within weeks, Stone and her allies, including Harper, decided to form their own suffrage organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) which supported the Fifteenth Amendment. One thousand people attended the organizing meeting they held in November 1869 in Cleveland, Ohio. Stone also quickly started the Woman’s Journal, to compete with the Revolution, publishing the first issue in January 1870.

Suffrage and Citizenship  43 Beyond their differences regarding support for the Fifteenth Amendment, NWSA and AWSA also had different strategies for winning the right to vote. The more conservative AWSA focused only on suffrage, refusing to be drawn into more controversial subjects such as divorce, which Stanton and others often addressed in the Revolution and at NWSA conventions. AWSA worked to win suffrage state by state, while NWSA favored winning suffrage through a federal amendment. Having two rival organizations split Black suffragists. For example, Truth and Harper both attended AWSA meetings in the early 1870s, while Mary Anne Shadd Cary belonged to NWSA. Whichever organization they were affiliated with, none was willing to advocate against the Fifteenth Amendment.

Human Rights and Citizenship Rights Notable Black AWSA members included the Rollin sisters, Frances, Charlotte (Lottie), Mary Louise, Katherine, and Florence from South Carolina. Growing up in a wealthy, free Black family in Charleston before the Civil War, the sisters were well-educated. Frances was married to a legislator from Beaufort, who was a delegate to the South Carolina state constitutional convention in 1868 at which he argued for woman suffrage. The sisters used their social prominence during Reconstruction to open their home to Black and white politicians for political and social events. Lottie spoke on the floor of the state House of Representatives in 1869 arguing for universal suffrage by positing that the Constitution did not specify sex in relation to voters. The sisters organized a women’s rights convention that met in Columbia, South Carolina, on 20 December 1870, where Lottie said, We ask suffrage not as a favor, not as a privilege, but as a right based on the ground that we are human beings, and as such entitled to all human rights. While we concede that woman’s ennobling influence should be confined chiefly to the home and society, we claim that public opinion has had a tendency to limit woman’s sphere to too small a circle, and until woman has the right of representation, this will last. (Gatewood, 2010: 61) Lottie was elected secretary and Katherine the treasurer of the South Carolina Woman’s Rights Association, an interracial association with male and female members. Lottie then represented the state at an AWSA meeting the following year. Lottie Rollin’s statement represented the central argument for woman suffrage in the mid-nineteenth century: as a human right, due to women as being equal human beings to men. With the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, women expanded this idea to focus on the rights of citizenship, due to women as being equal citizens to men. They posited

44 Analysis that as citizens, women were already enfranchised, a strategy known as the New Departure. The Fourteenth Amendment used persons or citizens (not males) when it defined citizenship, stating: “All persons born or naturalized in the US and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the US and the state wherein they reside.” They argued that this clause was more relevant than the second part of the amendment, which introduced the word “male” into the constitution. Even though it defined the basis of congressional representation as “all persons,” it added a provision that if the states “denied to male citizens over the age of 21” the right to vote, their congressional representation would be reduced. Suffragists argued that people created the government to protect their rights, natural rights which preceded the creation of the government, rather than were being granted by the government. They posited that the federal government’s role was to protect their rights – rights that already existed. They thought that the right to vote is one of the most basic rights of citizenship – it is inherent, not bestowed; it is a right, not a privilege. Putting this understanding of citizenship and rights into practice, in 1871–1872 women across the country decided to try and vote. In Rochester, Anthony and a group of 50 other women succeeded. Anthony was arrested two weeks later. She was not allowed to serve as a witness nor to give testimony due to her sex. The judge instructed the jury that they should find her unable to vote because she was a woman. She was fined $100 and court costs which she refused to pay. The judge would not arrest her again to prevent her from appealing the case. Elsewhere, Truth tried unsuccessfully to vote in Battle Creek, Michigan, and Cary and 63 other women presented themselves to register in Washington, DC. They were all refused.

Supreme Court Decisions Fail to Support Women’s Rights Two court decisions effectively ended this new strategy by denying that citizenship guaranteed voting and other rights. White suffragists Myra Bradwell and her husband James B. Bradwell moved to Chicago in the early 1850s. James was an attorney, circuit court judge and state legislator; Myra studied law in his office. Myra served in the state woman suffrage association as well as the AWSA. In 1869, when the board of trustees at Northwestern University debated whether to admit women students, trustee James Bradwell spoke out in favor on the basis of women’s rights. Despite objections from other trustees, the board voted to admit women. Myra Bradwell had to get a “femme sole license,” a special charter exempting her from state law that prevented married women from entering into a contract, in order to run the Chicago Legal News. In the weekly law journal she called for the rights to vote and serve on juries for women, as well as for married women’s property rights. She helped draft the Illinois Married Women’s Property Act of 1861 and the Earnings Act of 1869, which allowed married women to control their property and their earnings.

Suffrage and Citizenship  45 In 1870, Bradwell was denied admission to the Illinois Bar by the state supreme court despite being found competent to practice law. The court ruled that the prohibition against married women entering into contracts prevented women from being able to practice law. Furthermore, the court was unwilling to challenge laws which had been made with the belief that God designed men and women for different spheres. Men should make, apply, and execute laws, lest women want to become governors or judges. Thus, rather than sticking to a narrow decision that married women could not enter contracts, the decision took an expansive view that women should not be allowed to practice law due to their gender. In 1873, the US Supreme Court also ruled against Bradwell, even though she invoked the Fourteenth Amendment in her defense. Bradwell v. Illinois illustrated how unwilling the US Supreme Court was to expand rights for women. The court found that the right to practice law was not a right of federal citizenship. Furthermore, it stated that the amendment was intended to protect formerly enslaved people, not to grant more general powers in citizenship. As had happened in the state court decision, a concurring opinion further concluded that women belonged in the domestic sphere: Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. . . . The harmony, not to say identity, of interest and views which belong, or should belong, to the family institution is repugnant to the idea of a woman adopting a distinct and independent career from that of her husband. (Document 10) Two years later, the Supreme Court delivered a similar negative verdict to Virginia Minor. The president of the Woman Suffrage Association of Missouri, Minor also tried to vote and was refused by the registrar. With assistance from her husband, a lawyer, she sued the registrar, claiming that her citizenship entitled her vote. After losing her case in Missouri, she appealed to the United States Supreme Court. The court first found that Minor was a citizen, having been born in the United States. However, it declared that voting is not a right of citizenship despite the Fourteenth Amendment, and therefore the state of Missouri was free to deny the right to vote based on sex. The decision in Minor v. Happersett effectively dampened suffragists’ efforts to use the post–Civil War amendments to demand more rights including the right to vote for women. Collectively, these court cases also weakened voting rights in general. If the vote was not a guaranteed right of citizenship, it could be, and soon was, taken away from Black men as well. Neither the Fifteenth Amendment nor the Nineteenth Amendment for woman suffrage affirmatively declares that people have the right to vote; instead they prohibit states from denying the right to vote on the grounds of race or sex. This interpretation left

46 Analysis plenty of room for states to use other means to suppress the vote, from literacy tests in the early twentieth century to voter identification bills in the twenty-first century.

Conclusion In the late 1860s and early 1870s, suffragists embraced the idea of universal suffrage, which would have prohibited states from denying the right to vote on the basis of both race and sex. Universal suffrage was based on the natural rights that all people share. Some former abolitionists and supporters of the Fifteenth Amendment argued that universal suffrage endangered the chances of passing Black male suffrage, and prioritized passing the latter first. Stanton and Anthony abandoned universal suffrage, aligned with racist politicians, and worked against the Fifteenth Amendment. Their allies were horrified by their racism. Prioritizing white women’s rights over human rights and anti-racism continued to mar the suffrage movement through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and feminism more broadly. Although they failed to claim the right to vote based on citizenship guaranteed in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, suffragists nevertheless continued to organize and agitate. Despite their differences, in 1887, Anthony and Stone appointed a committee to meet and bring the NWSA and AWSA together. The process took over two years. The newly combined organization, National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), was founded in early 1890. NAWSA was the leading national suffrage organization for the next three decades, although its remarkable growth was due in part to new arguments and to the growth of women’s activism in other organizations, including the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and women’s clubs. These other organizations pushed suffragists to broaden their approach, utilizing arguments that stressed women’s differences from men as much as their equality.

6 The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Home Protection Ballot, and Women’s Clubs

From the late 1840s through the early 1870s, suffragists forced male political leaders to consider their demand for woman suffrage. However, they were a relatively small group of women and their demands were rejected. Most Americans considered suffragists to be radical due to their ideas about gender equality and association with abolition. Once suffragists were able to mobilize more women and form a mass movement across the country, it became easier to win over legislators. The number of suffragists grew dramatically in the late nineteenth century as women’s organizations increased in kind and number. Women joined local and national church associations, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and women’s clubs. Many women began to support suffrage within these organizations. Many later joined suffrage associations like NAWSA as well. Women in the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century clubs and organizations promoted different ideas for justifying suffrage than earlier activists like Sojourner Truth and Lucy Stone. They spoke less about women’s rights and more about women’s moral authority and their duty to protect families and homes. This helped make the suffrage movement less radical and more popular. Their important influence was crucial to increasing the number of suffragists and the power of the woman suffrage movement.

The Progressive Reform Era, 1880s–1910s Women’s organizations flourished during the Progressive Era, a time of social and political reform. Reformers were responding to major changes in society, including the rise of industrialization, immigration, and urbanization. During the 1880s–1910s, a second wave of industrialization took place and the industrial workforce grew dramatically. Industrialists pioneered new business management tactics and strategies, which along with the first transcontinental railroad, allowed for monopolies and markets to stretch across the country. Business owners made millions of dollars in industries such as steel, oil, mining, railroads, and banking. They paid low wages to their workers, many of whom were immigrants. DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-8

48 Analysis Millions of people from Southern and Eastern Europe immigrated to the United States, fleeing religious and political persecution and seeking economic opportunity. On the West Coast, tens of thousands of immigrants came from China and Japan. Anti-immigrant sentiment flourished against these European and Asian immigrants. White Protestants distrusted nonChristian and Catholic immigrants. They worried about the spread of poverty and disease in cities crowded with immigrants. In response to these developments, progressive reformers sought to improve conditions through new services and laws. They tried to improve health and safety for industrial workers with factory inspections; fought disease by tackling its root causes, such as the lack of sanitation; and tried to eliminate corruption in politics. Women, through their clubs and many other organizations, were at the forefront of progressive reform. They drew attention to problems and worked to solve them through building community organizations, coordinating the work of various groups, and lobbying for new laws and government funding for social services and institutions such as libraries, schools, and hospitals.

Woman’s Christian Temperance Union After the Civil War, women gained valuable leadership skills and influence through a proliferation of Protestant women’s church auxiliaries and missionary societies. Black women made significant strides in expanding their power within Black churches during the 1870s and 1880s. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, for example, granted women the right to vote and hold office within the church in 1876. This was extremely important because Black churches were key sites of community leadership. Historian Martha Jones argues that “Black churches rivaled political organizations as the most important sites of African American public culture.” (Jones, 2020: 154) Black and white women in various Protestant denominations created women’s auxiliaries, female missionary societies, and other organizations that focused on benevolent work within the community. (Higginbotham, 1994) The most significant of the new women’s organizations in the 1880s and early 1890s was the WCTU, founded in 1874. It was key to the growth of the suffrage movement. The WCTU developed from the Women’s Temperance Crusades which began in New York and Ohio in the winter of 1874. Women prayed on their knees, inside and outside saloons, to persuade owners to stop selling alcohol. Across the Midwest and New York women joined the temperance crusades, blaming alcohol for driving men into poverty and abusive behavior. They then formed the WCTU to coordinate their work. As it spread across the country, the WCTU was organized into state divisions and local chapters, called unions, that operated somewhat independently of the national organization. The WCTU initially followed the “moral suasion” tactics of midnineteenth-century reformers, using prayer and personal contact to convince men to pledge to abstain from drinking. Frances Willard was elected

WCTU, Home Protection Ballot, Women’s Clubs  49 president in 1879. Under her leadership the WCTU shifted gears and embraced political tactics. They petitioned and lobbied lawmakers to outlaw the sale of alcohol. Willard allied the WCTU with the new national political party, the Prohibition Party. (Bordin, 1990) Frances Willard was born in 1839 in New York state and raised on a farm in Wisconsin. She moved to Evanston, Illinois at the age of 18 to attend North Western Female College, a Methodist secondary school. She became president of Evanston College for Ladies. When the college was

Figure 6.1  Frances Willard. Source: Library of Congress

50 Analysis subsumed into Northwestern University, she briefly served as the university’s first dean of women. Willard attended the WCTU founding convention, where she was elected corresponding secretary, a position that required travel to visit local unions. After she was elected president, she exerted powerful influence over women across the nation. Willard exhorted women to “Do Everything,” embracing social reform beyond temperance. She encouraged local unions to meet the needs of their community – from prison reform to public kindergartens to shelters for destitute men and women. Many women came to embrace progressive social reform through the WCTU. (Bordin, 1990) Under Willard’s leadership, the WCTU became the largest women’s organization in the nation. In 1892, at the peak of its popularity, it had nearly 150,000 dues-paying members. Around the same time, NAWSA had only 13,000. The WCTU’s weekly magazine, The Union Signal, had a circulation of 100,000. At the time of her death in 1898 Willard was among the most beloved women in the nation, with thousands of people lining up to honor her as she lay in state at WCTU headquarters in Chicago. After she died, the WCTU narrowed its focus to temperance resulting in a decline in its membership and influence.

Frances Willard Advocates for the Home Protection Ballot In the 1880s and early 1890s under Willard, the WCTU played a critical role in expanding the suffrage movement. Willard called for what she termed the “Home Protection Ballot.” (Document 11) Arguing that women needed the right to vote in order to pass laws protecting themselves and their children, she converted thousands of women to the suffrage cause. Willard emphasized women’s moral duty to vote for legislation that would protect families, rather than justifying suffrage on women’s desire for equality and rights. Willard’s innovative rhetoric allowed women to embrace suffrage as a selfless goal, a tool they could use to protect their home and family, rather than just benefit themselves. The national convention adopted a resolution in favor of the Home Protection Ballot in 1881. Union members across the country worked to achieve suffrage. Despite the Home Protection Ballot rhetoric, Willard understood that WCTU members were in fact gaining rights as women when they led reform efforts and sought temperance. “The crusaders wrought [worked] only for their tempted husbands and fathers, brothers and sons; but behold seventeen years later all this work has tended more toward the liberation of women than it has toward the extinction of the saloon,” she said. In 1894, the WCTU convention voted in favor of suffrage for “women are wronged and who are governed without their consent.” (Bordin, 1990: 114) The Home Protection Ballot had enormous impact on the suffrage movement because it helped modify the radical reputation of suffragists. At the time, the suffrage movement was struggling with a scandal due to Victoria

WCTU, Home Protection Ballot, Women’s Clubs  51 Woodhull, a white suffragist. A spiritualist, investor, and journalist, Woodhull argued that Congress should pass a law that specified that women’s voting rights were guaranteed in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. But Woodhull also publicly asserted that she favored “free love” (sex outside of marriage), which was considered scandalous at the time. Further, she publicly accused the male minister who was president of the AWSA of having an affair with his best friend’s wife. He was tried in court and acquitted of adultery; Woodhull was jailed for obscenity for writing about it in her newspaper. Suffragists were tainted by their association with Woodhull and accused of holding radical views on sexuality. Some suffragists, most notably Stanton, did hold relatively radical views for the time about women’s sexuality, marriage, and divorce. She approved of divorce and complained that women could not control their bodies, even in marriage, at a time when there was no legal recognition of marital rape. Other suffragists disagreed with Woodhull and Stanton and tried to distance themselves from these views.

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in the South Willard enabled women, especially white women in the South, who shied away from these relatively radical beliefs to embrace suffrage. Southern suffragists did not have an abolitionist reform tradition from which to build a movement. White southerners emphasized that Willard’s Do Everything strategy and the WCTU’s states’ rights policy allowed local unions to decide which reforms they wanted to work for in addition to temperance. Suffragists and anti-suffragists could therefore coexist within the WCTU. The states’ rights policy also allowed for racial segregation. Willard made several tours around the South to recruit Black and white southerners into the WCTU. Black members could attend the national convention. However, white women led the southern state divisions and ensured that local unions were segregated. The paternalistic and racist attitudes of white southern women led some Black women in the South to insist that their unions, which they called “#2s,” report directly to the national rather than to the white-led state divisions. To encourage greater Black participation, the WCTU created the Department for Work among Colored People in 1881, splitting it into north and south divisions the following year. However, a white southerner initially led the southern department. As Superintendent of Work among the Colored People of the North, suffragist Frances Harper was the first Black executive board member of the WCTU. Harper supported temperance for decades. She believed that Black members who wanted to join local white unions should be allowed to. She also recognized that other Black women might prefer the autonomy of a separate union. She worked within the WCTU in part because she hoped that it could create true interracial cooperation based on Christian fellowship and common humanity. Harper adapted the idea of the Home Protection Ballot

52 Analysis to the needs of Black women. She posited that Black women with the vote could also protect their families by pushing for a federal anti-lynching law. Demoted from her position as superintendent after several years and frustrated with the lack of respect and interest in interracial cooperation in the WCTU, Harper decided to put her efforts into an all-Black organization instead. She was one of the founders of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), a federation of Black women’s clubs, in 1896. (Jones, 2020) Harper affiliated herself first with the early abolitionist and women’s rights organizations, then the WCTU, and finally the NACW. Harper’s changing affiliations underscore the fact that Black women’s support for suffrage often took place within Black women’s clubs as well as in interracial suffrage organizations. In the 1890s, women’s clubs, which were largely segregated, became more widespread and eclipsed the WCTU as the dominant women’s groups in the nation.

The Rise of Women’s Clubs Women’s clubs were different from church auxiliaries and the WCTU in that they were not religious or related to a particular church. Women’s clubs provided opportunities for women to socialize and engage in community activism, most often with a focus on promoting education and the needs of women and children, especially girls. Black women created and led Black women’s clubs in the 1890s and early 1900s. For example, the Washington, DC, Colored Woman’s League organized care for children in day nurseries and kindergartens, promoted education for adults through sewing classes and night school, and tried to help lift Black people out of poverty by creating a savings bank. Many clubs fostered racial pride by reading Black authors and promoting Black history to children. The Colored Woman’s League reached out to other Black women around the country to form the National League of Colored Women in 1894. (Terborg-Penn) Anna Julia Cooper, a writer and educator, was one of the founders of the Colored Woman’s League in Washington, DC. Cooper, who had been formerly enslaved in North Carolina, attended Oberlin College and later received a PhD in Paris from the Sorbonne. (May, 2007) She moved to Washington, DC, where she taught Latin at M Street High School. Cooper published A Voice from the South in 1892. (Document 12) In her writing, Cooper testified to the dangerous and dirty conditions Black women experienced traveling in segregated railroad cars. She explained that Black women endured not just physical inconveniences, but also denial of their womanhood when they were not treated with respect. “It is not the intelligent woman vs. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman vs. the black, the brown, and the red, – it is not even the cause of woman vs. man,” she wrote, calling for women to work for justice for all. (Cahill, 2020: 19) She

WCTU, Home Protection Ballot, Women’s Clubs  53 envisioned women’s clubs as leaders in improving their communities and fighting both sexism and racism. The founder of the Woman’s Era Club of Boston, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, wanted to unite Black women’s clubs across the country to promote their community activism. Born in Boston, Josephine’s husband was the first Black graduate of Harvard Law School and became a judge. Ruffin wrote for a weekly newspaper and joined the mostly white New England Women’s Press Association. A  suffragist, she helped found the AWSA in 1869 and was the first Black member of the New England Women’s Club. Ruffin believed that woman suffrage would enable Black women to promote civil rights for all Black people. She wrote, “We are justified in believing that the success of this movement for equality of the sexes means more progress towards equality of the races.” (Ruffin, 1915: 88) Outspoken against lynching for years, she was also a founder of the Boston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1920. The NAACP was the leading civil rights organization in the country in the twentieth century. Ruffin held a convention in 1895 for the specific purpose of refuting statements made by an editor who accused Black women of lacking morality and being liars, thieves, and prostitutes. Defending Black women from charges of being oversexualized was essential to protecting Black women from sexual violence and was a crucial part of Black women’s club work. Ruffin and the attendees of the 1895 convention formed a new organization, the National Federation of Afro-American Women. The following year, it merged with the National League of Colored Women to create the NACW. The NACW pushed member clubs to foster education and to improve their communities and the nation. (Giddings, 1984; White, 1999)

Mary Church Terrell and the National Association of Colored Women’s Support for Suffrage The NACW was enormously influential, with approximately 100,000 women members by the 1920s. Their motto, Lifting as We Climb, reflected the wealth and education of many of its members, including Mary Church Terrell. Her parents, both the children of white slaveholders and enslaved mothers, were entrepreneurs who earned enough money to raise Terrell in an affluent household. She traveled extensively and was one of the first Black women to graduate from Oberlin College. Like Cooper, her classmate at Oberlin, Terrell moved to Washington, DC to teach Latin at M Street High school where she was later appointed to the Board of Education. Her wealth, fluency in foreign languages, and political connections cemented her reputation as a respectable and prominent leader. Married to a lawyer who was appointed to a federal judgeship, she fought for civil rights for decades. She helped found the NAACP in 1909 and protested segregation in DC in the 1950s shortly before her death. (Parker, 2020)

54 Analysis

Figure 6.2  Mary Church Terrell, between 1880 and 1900. Source: Library of Congress

Terrell first called for woman suffrage as a young woman, outraged by men’s sense of superiority over women. She consistently called on Black men to support woman suffrage. She complained that Black men had suffered disenfranchisement on account of their race and therefore should not disenfranchise others on account of their sex. Terrell also nurtured relationships with white suffragists, such as Susan B. Anthony, and pushed for a greater role for Black women in the national suffrage associations. Terrell was strategic. She called out white women for their racism, while simultaneously

WCTU, Home Protection Ballot, Women’s Clubs  55 maintaining cordial relationships with white women suffrage leaders. This approach enabled her to speak at NAWSA conventions in 1898, 1900, and 1904 and be elected a life member in 1902. (Jones, 2020) Terrell centered Black women’s lived experiences and rights in the fight against both sex and race oppression. She wrote about how she experienced racism as a Black person and sexism as a woman and tried to push white women to understand that intersectionality. In particular, Terrell thought it imperative to defend Black women from stereotypes of immorality and sexual permissiveness, instead emphasizing their vulnerability to sexual violence. In her 1898 speech to a NAWSA convention, she defended Black women’s morality, educational attainment, charitable and temperance work, and professional successes. “Seeking no favors because of our color,” she said, “nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking for an equal chance.” (Document 13) Although Terrell had a role in NAWSA, she spent most of her time and energy in Black organizations, pushing the NACW to include support for suffrage among its priorities. In 1908, Terrell convinced the organization to establish a woman suffrage department.

Black Clubwomen and the Disenfranchisement of Black Men in the South Southern Black clubwomen believed that they had a special obligation to become community leaders because southern Black men were losing their political power in the 1890s. Despite the Fifteenth Amendment, white southerners began to restrict Black male voters through intimidation and violence. Southern states also passed laws designed to disenfranchise Black men. The laws did not explicitly use race in their wording, but were selectively enforced and overwhelmingly targeted at Black men. In 1890, Mississippi passed a new state constitution aimed at disenfranchising Black men through poll taxes and literacy tests. Other southern states followed the “Mississippi Plan”: South Carolina in 1895, Louisa in 1898, North Carolina in 1900, Alabama in 1901, Virginia in 1901, Texas in 1902, Georgia in 1908, Arkansas in two constitutions, 1893 and 1908, and Oklahoma in 1910. The result was immediate and dramatic. For example, between 1901 and 1903, the number of Black registered voters in Alabama dropped from 181,315 to 2,980. These laws were coupled with violence. A lynching is the killing of someone, often by a group, for an alleged offense. From the 1880s through the early 1900s, lynching became a racialized crime, with thousands of Black victims killed by whites, mostly in the South. There were 3,155 documented lynchings of Black people in 13 southern states between 1882 and 1930. (Work, 1931: 293) The 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina riot was a violent political coup in which white residents drove a coalition of Black and white leaders who had just been elected out of office through a violent massacre of up to 300 Black residents. It showed Black and white voters

56 Analysis that whites were willing to use violence in order to take back and maintain political power. With Black men increasingly disfranchised, segregation, violence, and lynching on the rise, and anti-suffragists arguing that suffrage threatened white supremacy, it was difficult for southern Black women to mobilize overtly for the vote in the South. Black male disfranchisement meant that by the late 1890s and early 1900s, southern Black women were unable to campaign for support from Black men to vote in favor of woman suffrage. They could not effectively lobby white politicians because their community had no voting power. Black clubwomen organized separately from white clubwomen in local and state organizations. To avoid violent reprisal from whites, they carefully worded their public statements regarding suffrage. Furthermore, white southern resistance to woman suffrage was driven in large part by a desire to prevent Black women from voting. That is why, in contrast to northern cities like Chicago and New York, Black women rarely joined local suffrage parades or formed independent suffrage clubs in southern cities. South Carolinian Marion Birnie Wilkinson was the president of the Black branch of the local Charleston WCTU, with 100 members in 1899. The daughter of a wealthy cotton shipping agent, she graduated from Avery Institute, an elite secondary school for Black students that prepared its graduates for teaching and service to their race. She married a professor who became president of South Carolina State College. (Johnson, 2007) Wilkinson was the most prominent Black clubwoman in South Carolina. She founded the Sunlight Club in Orangeburg and the South Carolina Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs in 1909. The Sunlight Club and the state federation worked to improve the lives of Black people by focusing their efforts on expanding education, improving literacy and health, and protecting young women in the juvenile delinquent system. Wilkinson also served as vice president of the NACW from 1920–1922. Significantly, Wilkinson was immersed in a network of southern Black clubwomen who led the efforts for education and women’s clubs. Like her, they were associated with schools or colleges as either school founders or the wives of college presidents. These women, who were friends and colleagues, led local women’s clubs, state federations, and held office in NACW. They sustained each other with their friendship and support through challenges in the segregated South. In addition, they donated to each other’s schools, shared advice, and strategized together through letters, visits, and conferences. Leaders in this network of southern Black clubwomen included Lugenia Burns Hope, who, although born in Chicago, moved to Atlanta with her husband when he became president of Atlanta University. She founded the Neighborhood Union, a women’s club that provided community services in education, health, and childcare. Charlotte Hawkins Brown founded a school, Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina, published two books, and led the state federation of Black women’s clubs. Margaret

WCTU, Home Protection Ballot, Women’s Clubs  57 Murray Washington was married to Tuskegee president Booker T. Washington. She served as director of Girls’ Industries and dean of Women at Tuskegee University. She also founded the Tuskegee Woman’s Club, which had a suffrage department within the club. (Rouse, 1989; Gilmore, 1996; Harris, 2020) Wilkinson, Hope, Brown, and Washington were all suffragists who supported women’s right to vote through their work in the NACW. They viewed the right to vote as only one tool among many for winning rights that belonged to their entire community. However, with the exception of the Tuskegee Woman’s Club, their clubs did not publicly support suffrage at home in the South. Instead, they advocated for the right to vote through national Black women’s organizations like the NACW. Their support for woman suffrage is clearly evident in how they mobilized to vote when the Nineteenth Amendment finally passed.

White Clubwomen and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs Black and white women’s clubs followed similar trajectories, focusing on similar issues, such as education, but often for very different reasons. Their work was therefore separate, but parallel. Few women’s clubs were integrated. Even those that were, like the New England Woman’s Club, usually had very few Black members. Like Black women’s clubs, most white women’s clubs across the nation initially focused on education and gradually expanded to include a variety of social reforms. As women sought greater access to higher education, early women’s clubs provided an opportunity for women to gather weekly or monthly and discuss literature, art, history, and other topics. Like modern book clubs, they brought women in small towns and big cities together for socializing and debate on current events. (Blair, 1980; Johnson, 2007) By the late 1890s and early 1900s, many clubs had expanded their purpose to improving schools and opening libraries, playgrounds, and kindergartens. They also worked for sanitation, health, and penal system reforms. Their work frequently led them to engage in the political system lobbying for public funding or new laws. For example, a club might start a small library, with dozens of books donated by club members. As the collection grew, eventually they lobbied legislators for funding for public libraries. The same process took place with kindergartens, which were not yet part of public-school systems in the early 1900s. Clubs created private kindergartens and then worked to have them included in public schools. White women’s clubs were more successful at gaining public funding for segregated facilities than Black women. Black clubwomen had to rely on the generosity of donations from members and the community for the institutions they built. The Sorosis Club, founded in 1868 in New York, provided a model for white women’s clubs. Two decades later, women’s clubs had become

58 Analysis popular enough that the founder of Sorosis organized a conference in New York. The following year, in 1890, women founded the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC). The organization grew quickly, with women’s clubs also forming federations at the city and state levels. Unlike the WCTU, the GFWC did not allow Black women to attend its national conventions. Louisa Poppenheim was one of several white southern women who were tasked with ensuring that the GFWC excluded Black members. Poppenheim was one of four sisters from Charleston, South Carolina. They all attended Vassar College in the 1880s and 1890s, where they were exposed to the women’s rights movement. After graduation, Louisa and her sister Mary returned home and founded and led many prominent white women’s clubs in South Carolina. Mary became national president-general of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, while Louisa headed the South Carolina Federation of Women’s Clubs, founded in 1899. She also held several positions within the GFWC, including honorary vice president. Women’s clubs in the state tied themselves closely to southern identity, reading southern literature, and defending the Lost Cause, in which they celebrated and honored a mythic history of the Confederacy. (Johnson, 2007) In 1900 and 1902, Louisa attended the GFWC conventions with the intention to pull South Carolina out of the national body, if it allowed Josephine Ruffin to join as a representative of the New England Women’s Club. In 1902, the GFWC voted to enforce segregation not through a direct edict banning Black women, but instead by requiring unanimous approval for admission of each member by a membership committee. Poppenheim served on this committee. Her role was to ensure that Black women were excluded from the GFWC. She later supported limited suffrage based on an educational requirement designed to prevent Black women from registering to vote.

Municipal Housekeeping The concept of the Home Protection Ballot and Willard’s focus on the home and women as mothers lasted well beyond her death and the waning of the WCTU. By the turn of the century, women increasingly justified suffrage by arguing that women needed the right to vote in order to more effectively protect their children, homes, and the community. Women’s clubs in particular embraced this rhetoric. As one member stated at NAWSA’s 1911 convention, although her club had pledged not to discuss controversial topics, including woman suffrage or politics, they found that they could not effectively provide social services and civic improvements without a political voice. Therefore they endorsed suffrage. (Harper, 1922a, vol. 5: 828) Another clubwoman explained, “The mother . . . is only fulfilling her responsibility as a mother when she takes a part in making the world a fit place for her children to live in.” (Mead, 2004: 119) Suffragists referred to their civic activism as municipal housekeeping because they cared for the community beyond their own individual household.

WCTU, Home Protection Ballot, Women’s Clubs  59 In 1911, progressive reformer and the founder of the nation’s first settlement house, Hull House in Chicago, Jane Addams argued that women needed the right to vote. Settlement houses were community centers offering services to those in need in poor, immigrant neighborhoods in which the reformers lived at the settlement house, so that they could get to know and understand the members of the community. Addams explained that women should have a voice in regulating “public charities which have to do with the care of dependent children and the Juvenile Courts, pensions to mothers in distress, care of the aged poor, care of the homeless, conditions of jails and penitentiaries . . . and other things.” Addams also pointed to laws regulating marriage and divorce. These laws, she pointed out, regulate women’s “functions as mother to her children.” (Harper, 1922a, vol. 5: 850–851) Therefore, she argued, women could not leave politics to men. Due to the growing popularity of these arguments for municipal housekeeping and maternal duties, the GFWC formally endorsed woman suffrage in 1914. Suffragists in the WCTU and women’s clubs put these arguments to work as they advocated for suffrage in their states.

Conclusion In the 1880s and 1890s, new women’s organizations, most notably the WCTU and women’s clubs, pushed many women to advocate for suffrage based on women’s maternalism, their role as wives, mothers, and municipal housekeepers, rather than on natural rights or equality with men. The Home Protection Ballot and municipal housekeeping arguments were an alternate way to seek the right to vote. Advocating for suffrage based on women’s maternalism was expedient because it provided a means for women to achieve success in their social reform work. For example, it would give women the power to vote for temperance, sanitation laws, and public funding for libraries. In this way, woman suffrage would benefit society. This approach also seemed to have the potential to be a more successful strategy because it was a less threatening argument that did not explicitly call for a radical change in gender roles or equality of the sexes. For the next two decades, arguments based on equality of the sexes existed alongside arguments based on municipal housekeeping and maternalism, enabling women with diverse viewpoints to endorse suffrage. Some suffragists even wielded both arguments at various times, depending on their audience.

7 State Suffrage Campaigns in the Late Nineteenth Century

The influence of the WCTU and women’s clubs is evident in state suffrage campaigns in the late nineteenth century. Locally, it was often members of these organizations who dominated early organizing in the 1880s and 1890s. Although the national suffrage associations supported state campaigns, local conditions impacted campaigns in different regions of the country. After some early victories in western territories and states including Colorado, campaigns in California and Iowa failed. At the state level, suffragists lobbied their legislators to pass an amendment to the state constitution which would then be put to the voters in a referendum for ratification. This process was difficult because it involved both lobbying legislators and also running a campaign for male voters across the state to ratify the amendment. In some states, it was even harder to achieve because state law required the legislators to pass the bill twice consecutively before it could be sent to the voters. Occasionally, when a state held a convention to rewrite the state constitution, suffragists used the opportunity to push for the state to include woman suffrage in the new constitution. Some suffragists looked to avoid the challenge of enfranchisement through the state constitution and instead worked to have their legislature pass a more limited bill that only granted women the right to vote in a school board election or in presidential (but not other statewide) elections. This was easier because it did not require a voter referendum.

Early Efforts in the Western Territories and States In 1900, there were only four states where women had the franchise, each due to unique factors. Women won the right to vote in Wyoming territory in 1869, the state of Utah in 1870, and Washington territory in 1883. Two states followed: Colorado passed a suffrage referendum in 1893, followed by Idaho in 1896. After these early successes, it took until 1910 before the next state, Washington, gave women the right to vote. Other western states followed soon after: California in 1911; Arizona, Alaska, and Oregon in 1912; and Montana and Nevada in 1914. The early territories and states had some unique circumstances, including territorial politics, alliances with labor and with the Populist Party, a third DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-9

State Suffrage Campaigns  61 political party rooted in agrarian protest. (Mead, 2004) In Wyoming territory, woman suffrage was passed without a campaign by women. Colorado was the first state to enfranchise women after they ran an enthusiastic and organized campaign. In 1877, Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony both traveled throughout Colorado along with speakers from the Colorado Woman Suffrage Association. The referendum that year was soundly defeated; Anthony blamed the defeat on Spanish-speaking miners, while others faulted anti-temperance German immigrants. Members of women’s clubs formed the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association for the next referendum held in 1893. The Colorado suffrage movement benefited from a coalition of working-class labor activists, middle- and upper class clubwomen, and Black and white suffragists. (Mead, 2004) The Knights of Labor, a national labor union, sent an organizer to Colorado to encourage working-class people to support suffrage. Black women were organized under Elizabeth Piper Ensley, a teacher, journalist, and clubwoman. Ensley was the treasurer of the Colorado Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association and advocated for suffrage to the Colorado Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. At the same time, Carrie Chapman Catt, then an organizer for NAWSA, went to Colorado and developed what would become known as the “society plan.” She worked with women’s clubs to recruit wealthy white women. Ione Theresa Hanna, a member of the Denver Fortnightly Club, who represented Colorado in the Association for the Advancement of Women, was one of these women. A graduate of Oberlin College, she was the first woman elected to a school board in the state. Hanna complained that wealthy women were unable to use their education and have careers. They were instead limited to discussing fashion and planning their social lives, while remaining financially dependent on male relatives. She saw suffrage as providing independence and purpose for society women. In Colorado, Hanna organized wealthy women through private, “parlor” meetings that took place within their homes. Catt and Anthony also sought to implement the society plan nationwide. They suggested that suffragists join prominent women’s clubs and other associations to which wealthy women belonged and recruit them to join the suffrage movement. In addition, Anthony sought assistance from wealthy women for particular campaigns. For example, when New York held a state constitutional convention the next year in 1894, Anthony asked wealthy women in New York City to lead a door-to-door petition campaign.

The 1896 California Referendum In California, the movement was initially dominated by middle-class, white Protestant women, who emphasized municipal housekeeping. They focused on their duty to educate themselves and organize to improve the lives of those in need in their communities. Many California suffragists emerged from the WCTU and the women’s club movement. In addition, suffragists

62 Analysis recruited prominent wealthy women for their influence and financial contributions. The first suffrage lectures and meetings began in the late 1860s, culminating in a meeting in San Francisco where women formed the first state suffrage society. The fledgling suffrage movement forged early ties with East Coast suffragists and emphasized women’s natural rights, including the right to vote regardless of race or sex. The new state society made a financial pledge to NWSA and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anthony traveled to California in 1871. Its relatively radical views and association with Stanton and Anthony led to charges of socialism, spiritualism, and free love. The result was the splintering of suffragists in the San Francisco area and the demise of the California state suffrage society by the 1880s. (Gullett, 2000) At the same time, the WCTU in California grew. Members began calling for temperance education in public schools, initially through essay contests. Ultimately temperance women decided to run for school board in order to make the changes they desired. By 1886, the California WCTU convention resolved to support suffrage and establish a franchise department. In Southern California, Caroline Severance persuaded white women’s clubs to embrace suffrage activism. Severance had founded the New England Woman’s Club in 1868 in Boston, before moving to Los Angeles where she started the Los Angeles Woman’s Club. In San Francisco, college graduates in the Pacific Association of Collegiate Alumnae, and members of the Century Club, a prominent women’s club, and the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, which advocated for working women, dominated women’s social reform work. Across the state, women organized through these clubs and associations to tackle school improvement, the needs of working women, and other pressing social issues. Some Californian WCTU leaders championed labor and opposed the growing income inequality between workers and the immensely wealthy new railroad owners and other industrialists. Women from these diverse organizations all supported suffrage. In 1895, the state legislature passed a state constitutional amendment for woman suffrage, which had to be voted on by referendum the following year. Anthony returned to California to help with the cause, initiating a push to win over wealthy white society women in the San Francisco area. She courted donors because California suffragists were short of money and therefore struggled to hire paid organizers. Anthony corresponded with Jane Stanford, who, together with her husband, founded Leland Stanford, Jr. University in honor of their deceased son. When her husband died in 1893, she inherited his entire estate, worth millions of dollars. She insisted on remaining sole executor, refusing to give power of attorney to one of his partners. Stanford managed the investments, farm, vineyard, and brand-new college. However, she could not obtain railroad passes for suffrage lecturers from the company her husband had led. Stanford resorted to having her brother obtain them, complaining to Anthony that she did not have the same power as her husband had “because of being a woman. Could I vote and wear trousers I would enjoy

State Suffrage Campaigns  63 more rights.” (Johnson, 2017: 125) Stanford ultimately was able to provide the railroad passes, and she brought suffragists to speak on campus. Anthony also spent time with Phoebe Hearst, widow of George Hearst, the wealthy miner and industrialist. Hearst was a passionate philanthropist, donating generously to many educational institutions and organizations, especially for girls and women. Hearst was initially noncommittal about woman suffrage. She donated $1,000 to the 1896 campaign, but told Anthony that she was not “an advocate of woman suffrage.” (Nickliss, 2018: 376) Hearst became the first woman regent of the University of California in 1897. The university’s president was against suffrage and his wife was a founder of the Northern California chapter of the Woman’s Association Opposed to Woman suffrage. Hearst carefully guarded her views on suffrage until late in the 1911 campaign. Despite Stanford’s support and Hearst’s generosity, Anthony’s efforts failed to convert many women to the cause or to convince wealthy men to vote for suffrage. While the 1896 campaign was dominated by white women, Naomi Talbert Anderson traveled the state to appeal to Black men to vote for woman suffrage. She argued that if women could vote, it would provide the community with more political power to use against discriminatory laws. She had first caught the attention of suffragists in 1869, when she was the only Black suffragist to address the NWSA convention in Chicago. Over the next several decades, she kept lecturing for suffrage and temperance, opened a home for Black orphan children, and began a career in hairdressing after the death of her first husband. Anderson campaigned in Kansas in 1892, before moving to California. She gave suffrage lectures in Oakland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles during the 1896 campaign. Suffragists faced many challenges in 1896. California was mired in an economic depression, there was resistance from the liquor lobby, and women’s organizations were still young and small. Populists, who supported woman suffrage, fused with Democrats to more effectively campaign against the Republican party. However, because Democrats did not support suffrage, this ended the Populists’ support. Anti-suffragists claimed that allowing women to vote would cause social upheaval, endanger the home by having women neglect their duties there, and threaten masculinity by invading a traditionally male space. Despite women’s organizing across the state and the assistance of Anthony and other NAWSA representatives, the 1896 referendum failed. After this loss, women’s clubs succeeded the WCTU as one of the leading forces in women’s activism in California. They helped lead a revitalized state suffrage movement in the early 1900s.

Carrie Chapman Catt and Early Iowa Suffrage Efforts The influence of the WCTU and women’s clubs is evident in the Midwest where, like the South, traditional gender roles were entrenched. By emphasizing civic responsibility, women in Iowa asserted their influence through

64 Analysis organizations like church auxiliaries, the WCTU, and women’s clubs. Having proven their contributions to the community through their service and activism, Iowa suffragists tried to show that they deserved the right to vote. (Egge, 2018) WCTU members worked hard to bring temperance and suffrage to a region that was home to many European immigrants, including German, Norwegian, and Swedish, who rejected prohibition laws to ban the manufacture and sale of alcohol. NAWSA leaders wanted to separate the WCTU and the temperance movement from woman suffrage. They believed that immigrants, fearing women would vote for prohibition, opposed woman suffrage. In 1894, Stanton argued that a literacy test was necessary to “limit the foreign vote,” with so many immigrants arriving. (Stanton, 1894: 1) Concern about immigrant voting was heightened because, in many states, immigrants could vote once they began the process of naturalizing; that is, they could vote before they became citizens. Yet, many suffragists in the Midwest resisted the anti-immigrant rhetoric espoused at the national level. Iowa had more suffrage enthusiasm than most neighboring states in the Midwest. The Iowa Woman Suffrage Association (IWSA) was active in the 1870s. They sent numerous petitions to the state legislature and promoted many suffrage bills introduced in the state capital. The state legislature approved a resolution for a state constitutional amendment twice, but not consecutively, which was necessary in order to force a vote on any amendment. The work continued in the 1880s. Women across small towns held rallies and raised money for the cause. In 1884, the IWSA raised enough money to bring in two paid workers from out of state to canvas the state. They gave speeches and handed out suffrage literature. NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt began her suffrage activism in Iowa by attending her first suffrage meeting in 1885. Catt began writing and then lecturing for suffrage during her first marriage to a newspaper editor, writing a column, “Woman’s World,” in his newspaper. In the column, she dismissed arguments against suffrage and called for women to educate themselves about the cause. As a young woman, Catt was incensed when she learned that her mother could not vote because of her sex. When her father discouraged her from going to college, she taught school until she earned enough money to go to Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University), graduating first in her class. A high school principal and superintendent of schools, she was married and widowed twice before moving in with Mary “Mollie” Garrett Hay. Catt and Hay lived together for the rest of their lives, working with each other in NAWSA and New York suffrage associations for many years. After her death, Catt was buried next to Hay, rather than either of her former husbands. (Van Voris, 1987) The IWSA agreed to try a new tactic in 1886 because the process to amend the state constitution was so difficult. Women decided that rather than working for full suffrage, they would instead advocate for laws that

State Suffrage Campaigns  65 only provided suffrage in municipal and presidential elections. These presidential suffrage laws were easier to achieve because they only had to be passed by the state legislature whereas a state constitutional amendment had to be passed twice consecutively by the legislature and then approved by voters. Men had rejected suffrage on the basis that women themselves were against it. Catt went door to door to gain signatures from women in favor of presidential suffrage to prove that women did want the right to vote. The 1886 effort failed, but Catt persevered. She encouraged women to form Political Equality Clubs on an organizing tour in 1889–1890. In 1890, after her second marriage, Catt moved from Iowa to New York. Initially, she returned for extended visits to continue to help organize in Iowa. She encouraged women, some of whom wanted to continue to work quietly through their churches and the WCTU, to hold a convention in each county so that they could make their support for suffrage more public. The IWSA again sent field workers, including a suffragist from Kansas, on the road in Iowa to drum up support for a state suffrage amendment. Iowa’s well-organized efforts drew the attention of NAWSA. In 1896, Catt explained plans for Iowa’s next major effort to the national organizers. The next year, suffragists at the state woman suffrage convention stressed women’s civic duty and moral influence when they called for an amendment. Every county was to hold a two-day convention, with neighboring counties holding them at the same time, so they could exchange speakers. NAWSA held its convention in Des Moines to encourage the effort. Despite local and national support, including a petition with 100,000 signatures submitted in 1900, woman suffrage was defeated in 1898, and again in 1900, seriously diminishing suffrage work in Iowa during the next decade.

Conclusion Despite the flurry of activity in the western states, and some early successes there including in Colorado, the movement as a whole made little headway in the 1890s. Efforts in California, Iowa, and other states failed. NAWSA tried to support the campaigns, and Anthony and other leaders traveled to California and sent money and speakers to Iowa, without success. With little hope for imminent change across the nation, the late 1890s and early 1900s were commonly referred to as “the doldrums” of the suffrage movement. Overall, there were few successes in terms of states approving suffrage before 1910. According to historian Aileen Kraditor, there were 480 campaigns in 33 states in which suffragists tried to convince legislatures to bring woman suffrage in front of voters. They only succeeded 55 times, with only two victories for suffrage itself. (Kraditor, 1965: 3) The movement would soon begin to broaden in ways that would increase its power.

8 The Suffrage Movement Expands

The suffrage movement expanded in the first decade of the twentieth century due to a large influx of college-educated women, wealthy women, and working-class women. The growing numbers and importance of these women underscore the ways in which a single-issue focus on suffrage created a coalition among different women with various needs. Suffragists had many reasons for wanting the right to vote, including expanding access to higher education, opening doors to professions, and improving working conditions. These changes would create greater financial independence and economic power for women. Women also believed that obtaining the right to vote would bring them more respect at home and in public, protection from violence, and a greater role in shaping society. At the same time, women of color continued to be mostly excluded from national and state organizations, with limited opportunities for promoting suffrage, mostly at the local level. Although NAWSA increased recruitment across the country, especially in the South, for the most part leaders only welcomed southern white women. This continued the suffrage moment’s discrimination against Black women.

The Southern Strategy Interest in expanding the suffrage movement nationally, in particular strengthening it in the South, surfaced racist ideas and practices embraced by white women across the country. NAWSA began recruiting southern white women in the late 1890s. At the time, new disenfranchisement, segregation laws, and racial violence were on the rise across the South. NAWSA tried to appeal to southern whites by arguing that giving women the right to vote would ensure white supremacy because white women outnumbered Black women. They revived a letter that Lucy Stone’s husband, Henry Blackwell, had written in 1867, “What the South Can Do: How the Southern States Can Make Themselves Masters of Their Situations.” He proposed that giving women the vote would help whites outnumber Blacks because it would add more white women voters than Black women voters. In a pamphlet, he wrote, “Your four millions of Southern white women will counterbalance your four millions of negro men and women, and thus the DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-10

The Suffrage Movement Expands  67 political supremacy of your white race will remain unchanged.” (Document 9) His proposal became known as the “southern strategy.” As southern states held constitutional conventions in the late 1890s, some white suffragists in NAWSA used Blackwell’s argument to promote their cause. In South Carolina, for example, Virginia Durant Young, corresponding secretary of the state WCTU, advocated for suffrage with an educational requirement. She formed the South Carolina Equal Rights Association, affiliated with NAWSA, and unsuccessfully petitioned for her own enfranchisement as an educated taxpayer. (Taylor, 1976) Young’s association made its most significant efforts to persuade white political leaders to pass woman suffrage leading up to the 1895 state constitutional convention. The convention met to adopt a new constitution to replace the one created immediately after the Civil War during Reconstruction. The earlier constitution had protected Black men’s voting; the new one would follow Mississippi’s example of suppressing Black voting by using poll taxes and literacy requirements. Susan B. Anthony and Laura Clay, a NAWSA board member and prominent Kentucky suffragist, visited South Carolina before the state convention. They argued that enfranchising women with education and property requirements would grant the right to vote to more white women than Black women and distributed Blackwell’s pamphlet. Young claimed that as citizens and taxpayers, women deserved the right to vote; Clay directly argued for woman suffrage as a tool to maintain white supremacy. Although a few male allies supported their cause, most convention delegates rejected the suffrage proposition. They feared that women would lose their femininity, and asserted that women did not want the right to vote anyway. The proposal was defeated 121 to 26. Legislators in South Carolina and other southern states rejected the suffragists’ southern strategy. They chose to uphold white supremacy by disenfranchising Black men through literacy requirements and poll taxes rather than by enfranchising women. Yet, NAWSA continued to try to appeal to white southerners by denying that woman suffrage would enfranchise enough Black women to threaten white political control.

NAWSA Promotes Racism to Win Suffrage NAWSA held its convention in Atlanta in 1895, the same year as the South Carolina convention. Anthony asked the elderly abolitionist Frederick Douglass not to attend. She later admitted it was a strategic choice, designed to appease southern white women and welcome them into NAWSA. In 1899, the NAWSA convention took place in Michigan, a state where suffrage clubs were not segregated. When a local Black delegate, Lottie Wilson Jackson, proposed a resolution that Black women should not have to ride in segregated railroad cars, Clay was incensed. She declared the resolution insulting and unfair to the white southern delegates. She even suggested that Jackson was lying about the poor conditions she described

68 Analysis in the cars. Anthony ended the conversation by redirecting delegates’ attention to what she claimed to be their purpose, getting the right to vote. However, Anthony’s call to focus on sexism, not racism, failed to recognize the lived experiences of Black women who were subject to both. (TerborgPenn, 1998; Harper, 1922, vol. 4) In 1903, the NAWSA convention, which was held in New Orleans, Louisiana, was officially segregated. The year before, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs had passed rules to ensure segregation in their national body. Now NAWSA used similar tactics, announcing that state affiliates had states’ rights, that is, they could locally determine qualifications for membership in their clubs. This rule allowed any state branch of NAWSA to practice segregation if they chose. NAWSA officers wrote a letter to the editor in New Orleans during the convention to say that the association took no position on race questions, but recognized states’ rights for local clubs to make decisions “in harmony with the customs of its own section.” Pressed, NAWSA leaders endorsed states’ rights and white supremacy. President of NAWSA Carrie Chapman Catt said, Woman suffrage in the South would so vastly increase the white vote that it would guarantee white supremacy if it otherwise stood in danger of overthrow.  .  .  . If the South really wants white Supremacy, it will urge the enfranchisement of women. (Catt, 1903: 11) In response, the son of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called out the suffragists for their complicity in racism. “To purchase woman suffrage at the expense of the negro’s rights is to pay a shameful price,” he wrote. (Kraditor, 1965: 203) The actions taken by NAWSA leaders in the early 1900s demonstrate that racism was widespread in the organization. Nevertheless, some northern white suffragists blamed southern whites. They claimed that they were not racist themselves, but were acquiescing to the decisions to segregate NAWSA and to use the southern strategy to win over white southern women or white southern senators’ votes. They even defended themselves by referring to their involvement in the abolition movement. Black women thus had to maneuver through a national organization that was not welcoming to them. For Black suffragists in the South, the situation was even trickier. Already limited in how much they could publicly support suffrage locally, they were also excluded from NAWSA. Sylvanie Williams was a Black suffragist and clubwoman in New Orleans. She wrote to the Woman’s Journal to complain about her exclusion from the 1903 NAWSA convention in her home city as a woman of color. Williams was a public-school administrator, an author who wrote about Black women, and the president of the Phillis Wheatley Club, which founded a hospital and nurses training school for Black residents. Instead of allowing Williams

The Suffrage Movement Expands  69 to attend the convention, Anthony went to speak to the Phillis Wheatley Club to encourage their community work and suffrage activism. (TerborgPenn, 1998) Margaret Washington and her colleague at Tuskegee Institute, Adella Logan, led Black suffragists in Alabama. Washington, the wife of Booker T. Washington, was president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) from 1912 to 1916 as suffrage activism was increasing. The Washingtons were dependent on white donors to Tuskegee Institute, so Washington was careful about her support for suffrage. She noted that Black women were studying the issues and would be ready when the law allowed them to vote. (Harris, 2020: 123) Logan was a teacher at Tuskegee who passed as white to attend the 1903 NAWSA convention. She headed the suffrage department of the Tuskegee Woman’s Club. In the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine symposium on woman suffrage, Logan argued that Black women understood that they needed the vote in order to vote for legislation that would protect children. Empowered with the vote, Black women could take action on issues that particularly affected Black children. For example, they could demand that Black children no longer be imprisoned alongside adults. (Alexander, 2019) Logan claimed that Black women who were enfranchised in the western states had shown themselves to be good citizens. She ended her essay in The Crisis with a call for justice: This much, however, is true now: the Colored American believes in equal justice to all regardless of race, color, creed or sex, and longs for the day the United States shall indeed have a government of the people, for the people, and by the people – even including the colored people. (Document 15) For Williams, Logan, Washington, and other southern Black suffragists, NAWSA was often not any more inclusive than their white-led local and state organizations. They had to focus their suffrage activity on national Black organizations, such as the NACW and the NAACP. By 1906, NAWSA briefly retreated from some of its most overt racist practices. The organization finally abandoned the southern strategy that explicitly claimed that woman suffrage be passed in order to uphold white supremacy. They also denied claims by anti-suffragists that woman suffrage threatened white supremacy. In 1906, the NAWSA president refused to endorse a proposal to have a white-women only suffrage amendment added to the Mississippi constitution.

Raising Money From Wealthy Women for NAWSA In November 1905, Anthony visited Mary Garrett and M. Carey Thomas to discuss the convention scheduled to take place in Baltimore three months

70 Analysis later. Anthony hoped they would support the convention and make a financial contribution to NAWSA. Mary Garrett was the daughter of John Garrett, who made his fortune as owner of the B&O Railroad. When he died in 1884, Mary, then 30 years old, inherited almost six million dollars, the equivalent of nearly 150 million dollars in 2021. Although she inherited one-third of his fortune, an equal share to that of her two brothers, she deeply resented the fact that while her brothers were allowed to go to college, work in the family business, and control their investments, she was not. An intelligent and voracious learner, Garrett was determined to broaden access to education and employment for women. She began supporting suffrage in the 1890s. (Sander, 2008) Her friend, and later romantic partner, M. Carey Thomas, also championed women’s rights. Thomas graduated from Cornell before obtaining her PhD in Europe. She was appointed dean and then president of Bryn Mawr College. She later took over the National College Equal Suffrage League, focusing on recruiting educated women into the movement. The fathers of Garrett (before his death) and Thomas served on the board of the recently founded Johns Hopkins University, which needed money to build a medical school. Mary Garrett offered $100,000  – but only on the condition that, unlike the college, the medical school would accept women on the same terms as men. The president of the college, according to Thomas, was “working against us tooth and nail.” (Johnson, 2017: 143) Undeterred, Garrett created the Women’s Medical School Fund, obtaining donations through committees of women in cities across the country. She donated approximately half herself and raised the other half of the $100,000. When the college president declared the school needed $500,000, instead of $100,000, Garrett upped her own personal pledge to just over $350,000, along with the money she had raised, in order to provide the full half million dollars. Thus, Johns Hopkins Medical School opened for women on the same terms as men. The roster of donors to the Medical School Fund includes hundreds of donors: the vast majority were women. Garrett demonstrated enormous fundraising and organizing ability as she recruited women to the cause. Many of the women were suffragists or later joined the movement, including Phoebe Hearst. They were typical of many suffragists who believed that women needed financial independence, access to higher education and professions, and the right to vote. When Anthony visited Garrett and Thomas, she discussed the need to raise the money for a salary for new NAWSA president, Anna Howard Shaw. Shaw was well-educated and worked to support herself economically through wage work, as an ordained Methodist minister and a renowned lecturer. Born in England in the midst of a family bankruptcy, her father moved the family to America for better economic opportunities. He first worked in a paper mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts, before migrating to rural Northern Michigan to farm. (Franzen, 2014)

The Suffrage Movement Expands  71

Figure 8.1  Anna Howard Shaw, ca. 1920. Source: Library of Congress

Shaw sought education and economic independence. After attending Albion College and Boston University School of Theology, she was ordained in the Methodist Protestant Church in 1880. Soon after, she began lecturing on suffrage and became friends with leading suffragists, including Frances Willard. In 1886, she graduated from medical school, but instead of practicing medicine, decided to take a full-time position lecturing for the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association for $100 a month. That experience

72 Analysis led her to freelance lecturing about women’s rights and temperance, which enabled her to earn a comfortable living. Anthony recruited her to NAWSA. Championed by Anthony, Shaw became president of NAWSA in 1904. Shaw hired Susan’s niece, Lucy, as her business manager, after which they became lifelong professional and romantic partners. Shaw, Catt, Garrett, and other queer suffrage leaders challenged gender and sexual norms. As women in relationships with other women, they well understood that women needed financial independence and political power of their own, not through male relatives or spouses. Lacking a wealthy family to support her, Shaw’s ability to run the organization without an income was tenuous. Officers in suffrage organizations were not paid for their work, although traveling speakers and organizers were. Thus only those women who were independently wealthy could hold office. Shaw supported herself and her partner with income from her speaking engagements. Anthony therefore looked to Garrett to provide the funding necessary for NAWSA to pay Shaw for her service. Garrett had demonstrated her personal generosity and her fundraising prowess through the Women’s Medical School Fund. Toward the end of the convention, Anthony asked Garrett and Thomas to establish a fund for NAWSA officer salaries. They agreed to solicit 24 pledges, with total contributions from the pledges coming to $12,000 per year for five years, or $60,000 in total. They formed a committee composed of two members each in six cities across the country. Garrett herself pledged $500 per year and obtained pledges from 22 donors ranging from $500 to $2,500. (Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, vol. 3) Garrett, Thomas, and the other wealthy donors who contributed to this fund were the first of an influx of wealthy women into the suffrage movement during the final push for the amendment. Many did more than contribute money; they held office, shaped strategy, and pushed for various tactics.

College Equal Suffrage League The “College Evening” at the 1906 NAWSA convention demonstrates the new importance of college graduates to the suffrage movement. Two college presidents, three professors, the president of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, and the founder of the College Equal Suffrage League (CESL) addressed delegates. They spoke of suffragists’ contributions to increasing access to education for women. A professor from Vassar College expressed college women’s debt to women’s rights pioneers for advocating for equal pay and professional opportunities that provided meaningful work for women. Beyond a few exceptions, women did not gain access to colleges and universities until after the Civil War. Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, and other rigorous women’s colleges were founded in the 1860s and 1870s, building on the success of the early nineteenth-century female academies. At the same

The Suffrage Movement Expands  73 time, universities in the Midwest and West opened to women, broadening women’s access to coeducational institutions. Thus by 1900, there was a growing number of college-educated women. When they graduated, they returned home to their communities with new ideas about women’s capabilities and their role in society. College graduates disproportionately founded women’s clubs and led women’s organizations at the turn of the century. The popularity and success of the College Evening at the 1906 NAWSA convention reflected the growing interest in suffrage among college women, who had earlier founded the CESL. In 1900, Maud Wood Park, a graduate of Radcliffe College and a teacher, formed the first CESL in Boston with 25 college-educated women members. College graduates then formed new leagues in cities across the country that were loosely affiliated with each other. CESL members wanted to educate college students about suffrage, so they would be prepared to join their local association upon graduation. In so doing, the CESL aimed to revise the image of suffragists from older and old-fashioned women to young, feminine, modern women. College women were middle and upper class and some were professionals. These factors also helped make the suffrage movement appear to be more respectable and less radical. (Marino, 2016) College alumnae also used their education to conduct research and advance arguments in favor of suffrage. Boston CESL members provided statistical information on women’s literacy (higher than men) and criminal rates (lower than men); they argued that women’s high education level and behavior was evidence that women deserved the right to vote. The New York league investigated how woman suffrage had affected society in Colorado after women got the right to vote in Colorado in 1893. They surveyed 1,200 people, and published their findings, emphasizing the positive effects of woman suffrage in the state. The CESL also began to recruit current students on campuses beginning around 1905 in Boston. Suffrage was still controversial at many colleges. Vassar’s president did not allow students to form a suffrage club. In 1908, a suffrage speech had to take place in the cemetery near campus, due to the president’s refusal to allow the speech on campus. The growth of CESL campus chapters helped make suffrage activism more acceptable on many campuses. CESL campus chapters encouraged students to study the rationale for women’s rights so they could effectively advocate for suffrage. CESL sponsored essay contests and encouraged students to participate in oratory or speech contests. The Illinois Equal Suffrage Association organized an intercollegiate oratorical contest, with colleges holding preliminary contests locally to decide their representative. Writing essays and giving speeches helped college suffragists develop the ability to effectively persuade others, a skill they could later utilize on the lecture circuit in local campaigns.

74 Analysis At the college evening at the NAWSA 1908 convention, CESL members organized the National College Equal Suffrage League (NCESL). NCESL was an umbrella organization for local CESL alumnae leagues and college chapters. It was formally affiliated with NAWSA, with Thomas as president. She wanted educated college women to lead the suffrage movement through a more centralized organization than the previous loose alliance of local leagues and chapters. For example, NCESL developed a network of lecturers available to send to colleges and a bibliography of appropriate reading materials for college students about suffrage. NCESL’s main contribution was to draw college women into the national suffrage movement. Many students got their first exposure to NAWSA by serving as ushers and greeters at conventions. By 1918, the NCESL announced that it had succeeded in converting college women to suffrage. It disbanded due to financial troubles, infighting among the leadership, and not enough staff to continue to coordinate the alumnae leagues and college chapters across the country.

Working-Class Women and the Women’s Trade Union League The Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), an organization dedicated to improving conditions for working women, was founded in 1903. Working women had called for the right to vote to protect themselves for years and suffragists had long sought better conditions for working women. The WTUL marked a new organized effort to bring working-class women into the suffrage movement. The WTUL was designed to bring together wealthy women, known as “allies,” and working-class women to fight for the rights of working women. Founded at the American Federation of Labor union convention in 1903, its leaders initially focused on recruiting women into labor unions. They encountered resistance from men, including the union president, who was reluctant to support women in unions because he thought working women depressed men’s wages. (Payne, 1988) The WTUL quickly expanded its efforts beyond striking for better working conditions, pay, and hours to include working for suffrage. The president of the New York chapter of the WTUL explained that the lack of support from men in the labor movement pushed her to realize suffrage was the best means to empower working women. Working-class women would be able to vote for protective labor legislation, rather than depend on gaining better conditions through strikes and labor bargaining. The New York chapter of the WTUL included Harriot Stanton Blatch, the daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. A graduate of Vassar College, she married and lived in England for 20 years, returning to the United States in 1902. Her time in England and exposure to British labor unions and the militant suffrage movement there helped her to develop her own ideology. It was rooted in the need for economic independence for married women

The Suffrage Movement Expands  75 and expanded to include economic and political rights for all women. (DuBois, 1997) Blatch disagreed with her mother, who called for literary restrictions to combat voting from immigrants. Blatch instead argued that working women, including immigrant women, needed the vote, due to the difficult conditions they faced. Blatch worked to help women of leisure to understand the needs of lower socioeconomic women. As a member of the WTUL, Blatch investigated the working conditions of hatmakers in New York City. After the deaths of her mother in 1902 and Anthony in 1906, Blatch formed her own suffrage organization, the Equality League of SelfSupporting Women (known as the Equality League). Two hundred women attended the first meeting, which was open to all wage-earning women. Blatch thought it would be beneficial to bring together immigrant workingclass women, mostly garment factory workers, to meet professional working women, such as teachers and lawyers. The Equality League was designed to unite these two classes of working women. The Equality League’s purpose was to move away from the rhetoric around working women from a deficit-based argument that focused on the need to protect women from oppressive working conditions. Instead, Blatch used an asset-based argument that all women work, whether in the home or for wages, and that women’s productive labor benefits society.

The Uprising of the 20,000 Working-class members of the Equality League like Leonora O’Reilly and Rose Schneiderman emphasized the need for the vote as a tool to gain respect and protection, so that bosses and even male unionists would be forced to recognize and reward their work. O’Reilly was the daughter of Irish immigrants. She began factory work while still a young girl. Born in Poland, Schneiderman’s family moved to New York City in 1890. Her father died, leaving her mother with four children. Mired in poverty, Schneiderman began work at the age of 13, initially in a department store before seeking higher wages in industrial work. She worked at a cap-making factory, and in 1903 she co-founded the first female local chapter of the Hat and Cap Maker’s Union. Two years later, she led a successful strike when the factory owners tried to break the union. Schneiderman was dubious that a coalition of wealthy and working-class women could succeed. Nonetheless, she decided to join the WTUL because she could not get any support from male unionists. Both Schneiderman and O’Reilly received salaries from wealthy WTUL leaders, enabling them to quit their factory jobs and work full time recruiting women workers into unions. In 1907, Schneiderman joined the Equality League and began giving speeches in favor of woman suffrage. Two years later, the Shirtwaist Strike, also known as the Uprising of the 20,000, drew more suffragists to support women factory workers. Mostly Eastern European Jewish immigrant women who worked in small garment

76 Analysis

Figure 8.2  Strike pickets from Ladies Tailors, during the New York Shirtwaist Strike of 1909. Source: Everett Collection Inc., Alamy

factories in New York City all voted to strike. Workers wanted better pay, shorter hours, safer working conditions, and recognition of their union. (Payne, 1988; Dye, 1980) The WTUL quickly threw its support behind the strikers. Wealthy women donated significant sums of money, sustaining strikers without paychecks and paying for their bail. Donors included Alva Belmont, a New York socialite who believed wealthy and working women alike suffered from sexism. She rented an arena for a rally with speakers in support of the strike and woman suffrage. Some wealthy women urged strikers to settle on a deal without union recognition, and then when the strikers refused, blamed it on socialist influences. That heightened mistrust between the strikers and wealthy women. The strike ended in February 1910, when strikers went back to work with some gains in pay and hours. Most factories, however, did not recognize the union, nor did they substantially improve working conditions and safety. While working women appreciated the assistance from wealthy women during the strike, they also resented the power that wealthy women exerted. Wealthy WTUL leaders seemed to be able to control the organization

The Suffrage Movement Expands  77 because they paid for its expenses. Furthermore, working women complained that they had been supporting suffrage to gain rights in the workplace for many years and did not need a wealthy woman like Belmont to win them over to the cause. In 1911, O’Reilly and Schneiderman formed a suffrage organization just for working-class women, the Wage Earners Suffrage League. This new organization only allowed working women to become full voting members. It was affiliated with NAWSA. They called on working women to demand the right to vote in order to vote for laws that would protect them from unsafe working conditions in factories and guarantee them equal pay. The Wage Earners Suffrage League most notably held a rally in 1912 that attracted thousands of working women to hear speeches by Schneiderman and her colleagues. They repudiated the arguments against suffrage made by New York legislators. (Document 17) The group disbanded shortly afterward, although working-class women continued to support suffrage through the “industrial section” established for working-class women within the New York state suffrage organization.

Conclusion In the late 1890s and early 1900s, the suffrage movement expanded its reach. Recruiting southern white women resulted in NAWSA officially allowing segregation within its member clubs. This resulted in southern Black women having limited options to work for suffrage within NAWSA. NAWSA also experienced the beginning of an influx of wealthy women, college women, and working-class women. These groups became increasingly important in the final ten-year push for the Nineteenth Amendment. The increase in power of wealthy women would cause challenges in the movement.

9 Infighting at NAWSA Headquarters

In 1909–1910, wealthy women’s influence on the suffrage movement exploded. While the growing interest  – and donations  – from wealthy women dramatically impacted tactics and strategies, their demands were a factor in growing tension within NAWSA leadership. Wealthy women’s financial clout caused resentment; other suffragists complained that the wealthy were dictating with their dollars. The consternation over what it meant to have affluent women wield power reflected unease in society with women and money and power. It also engendered questions about the meaning of the movement. Could a movement for equality condone class inequality within its own ranks? Wielding power with their money, wealthy women challenged the movement in many ways. Infighting among NAWSA leaders led to resignations and regional factions. Examining the internal politics at NAWSA headquarters reveals a power struggle over personality and influence, tactics and strategies, and over the meaning of feminism itself. It was difficult for NAWSA leaders to lead a growing organization. Regional differences, personality clashes, resentment of wealthy donors, and conflicts over strategy caused problems. Leaders fought with each other as they fought to push NAWSA in the direction they thought best, and sometimes, to guard their own power and position within the organization.

Recruiting Wealthy Donors to the Movement As the first officer to earn a salary from NAWSA, Anna Howard Shaw’s perceived loyalty to her donors caused friction. Once Mary Garrett and M. Carey Thomas succeeded in raising the $60,000 fund (referred to as the Garrett/Thomas fund) in the spring of 1907, NAWSA had $4,500 for salaries and $7,500 for other expenses available for each of the next five years. Shaw was paid $3,500 and treasurer Harriet Taylor Upton received $1,000. Shaw grew closer to Thomas, her benefactor. Because Thomas controlled the Garrett/Thomas fund, she controlled Shaw’s salary. Eventually, other officers questioned whether Thomas had undue influence on the decisions Shaw made as president. (Franzen, 2014)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-11

Infighting at NAWSA Headquarters  79 Garrett and Thomas’ fundraising campaign was soon eclipsed by even larger donations from dozens of extraordinarily wealthy women. These contributions had enormous impact, enabling the strategies and tactics that would ultimately enable the Nineteenth Amendment to be ratified in 1920. Many of these donors gave tens of thousands of dollars or more, contributing a large proportion of the associations’ budgets. Notably, it was women who gave, not men. (Johnson, 2017) In New York, Harriot Stanton Blatch helped recruit some of the wealthiest women to endorse suffrage. Having formed the Equality League for Self-Supporting Women to persuade working women to become suffragists, she also set out to win over society women who inherited millions of dollars from their fathers or husbands. Blatch had ambitions for new tactics. She wanted to substantially increase women’s political presence and lobbying in New York’s capital city, Albany, as well as hold spectacular parades to increase awareness of the suffrage movement. These would take substantial funding. She was determined to convince wealthy women to donate. (DuBois, 1997)

Alva Vanderbilt Belmont and the New NAWSA Headquarters Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, the outspoken New York society leader, was the most influential new wealthy donor. She married William K. Vanderbilt, the grandson of the railroad tycoon. Belmont’s suffragism stemmed from her deep resentment that women received no respect and had no power without the vote, amplified by her anger that her husband had cheated on her. Despite her wealth and privilege, she thought she had little control over her life as a wife. She was drawn to the vote as a tool that would enable wealthy women like herself, as well as working-class women, to claim independence and respect from cheating and abusive husbands and bosses. (Document 16) (Hoffert, 2012) After a long conversation with Shaw, Belmont made a dramatic entrance into the suffrage movement in 1909, quickly offering to pay for NAWSA to move its headquarters back to New York City. At the time, NAWSA headquarters was located in Warren, Ohio, at a desk in the home of treasurer Upton. Belmont looked askance at the small-town location. She offered $7,200 to NAWSA to rent and equip a new headquarters, at 505 Fifth Avenue, where leaders and staff could hire paid publicists and garner attention from the New York media. The media was especially eager to follow the flamboyant Belmont’s every move. Belmont’s instincts were correct. Moving NAWSA headquarters to New York provided the publicity and presence that helped suffragists be taken more seriously. Belmont’s vision for a more prominent headquarters also provided space for a staff, as well as for suffragists to gather to build community and

80 Analysis

Figure 9.1  National American Woman Suffrage Association Headquarters Building, 505 Fifth Avenue, New York City, 1909. Votes for Women Postcard. Source: Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection

Infighting at NAWSA Headquarters  81 solidarity. Moreover, the new headquarters drew the public in. NAWSA’s new headquarters was one of many sites for women’s suffrage in New York City: the midtown shopping district housed NAWSA along with five other New York suffrage societies. (Santangelo, 2019) Newspapers always pointed out how beautifully furnished these offices were. Many had streetlevel lobbies, with pamphlets, brochures, buttons, sashes, and other items on display. Despite the success of the new headquarters, it quickly became evident that simmering tensions over money and power among officers in the building were boiling over. In 1909, newspapers were reporting a crisis at NAWSA and blamed resentment of Belmont’s power. With her $7,200 donation, it seemed as though Belmont could exert her will over NAWSA. Her financial contribution was conditional on moving headquarters. She insisted on having a say on who was in charge of the press bureau, threatening to decrease her donation by the same amount as that salary, $173.33 a month. Other officers also feared that Belmont herself would take office – buying her way into power. Upton complained bitterly. Even though they got more press in New York, the expenses were five times as high. She remarked that the press only printed articles that favored Belmont. Upton wrote to Thomas that “New York women seem to think they own the National.” (Johnson, 2017: 59) Thomas thought that having given $10,000, Belmont was “entitled to express her opinion.” (Johnson, 2017: 59) The cause of all this acrimony included many factors. Money played a role, as did personality. Regional differences resulted in complicated alliances. Disagreements over strategies and tactics were also critical factors. Shaw held onto the presidency with the financial backing of both Thomas and Belmont. The southern wing (which included Laura Clay and Upton) resented Shaw’s salary and the power of northeastern officers and donors. By 1912 Upton complained that “the money [Shaw] made and which was handed to her, caused her to prostitute these principles . . . she has grown more and more self important and degraded all the time.” (Franzen, 2014: 142) In addition to the Garrett/Thomas fund and Belmont’s donations, Shaw also benefited from a donation she received anonymously. This contribution of $30,000 nearly equaled the entire NAWSA annual budget and came without strings. That meant Shaw controlled the money and could use it to finance whatever plans she wanted. The donation increased Shaw’s power and the ire against her. Given NAWSA’s emphasis on state campaigns (rather than a federal amendment), Shaw had to decide which state campaigns NAWSA should support by providing funds and traveling speakers. Shaw’s ability to control the direction of the movement depended on her special fund. In 1911, Belmont announced that as her two-year pledge to pay rent was nearing the end, she had decided to stop her donations. The officers debated whether to make up the difference to keep the New York building. Belmont

82 Analysis inflamed tensions further by proposing a condition for her financial contributions, requiring that the embattled Shaw remain president. Officers also bitterly debated a proposal for the board to meet once a month at headquarters, which would have advantaged the northeastern women who could more easily travel to New York. The southerners, Clay and her allies, were infuriated when Thomas suggested creating a travel fund to cover their costs, because Clay did not want “to accept money with a string attached to it.” (Johnson, 2017: 61) That would have made Clay beholden to Thomas or whoever donated the travel fund. The board finally decided on bimonthly meetings and the removal of the condition that Shaw remain president. Belmont continued her contributions for rent for another six months. At the national convention in 1911, the “eastern” suffragists, most likely orchestrated by Thomas, ousted the southern “insurgents,” Clay and others, by voting for new officers. In addition, Upton resigned.

Conflict at Headquarters Continues With New Auditor Katharine McCormick Controversy at NAWSA continued with the election of another wealthy white woman into office: Katharine Dexter McCormick as auditor. McCormick was a graduate of MIT and the wife of Stanley McCormick, the millionaire son of the McCormick Reaper family. Shortly after their marriage in 1904, Stanley suffered a mental breakdown. He remained confined in a family home in California until his death in 1947 and she lived in Boston with her mother. When he died, she inherited over 35 million dollars. Originally drawn into the suffrage movement through the CESL, McCormick was an open air speaker in Massachusetts before becoming auditor, treasurer, and then vice president of NAWSA, moving to New York to carry out her duties. It took the other officers two rounds to confirm her nomination as auditor. Mary Ware Dennett, corresponding secretary of NAWSA and a supporter of the birth control movement, complained that it was not fair to have McCormick present at the board meeting where the election took place. Dennett complained that it was due to Thomas’ wealth and consequent power. Although Thomas had not invited McCormick to attend, she did push for McCormick to be selected in hopes that McCormick might give money to NAWSA. (Johnson, 2017) McCormick was a generous donor, giving $6,000 to pay off NAWSA debt and making $1,000 or $2,000 annual contributions matched by her mother. She also shared her office with NAWSA, paying the $600 rent herself in order to decrease NAWSA’s expenditures. Although McCormick was originally generous to Shaw, their friendship did not last. Ultimately McCormick turned against her, working to convince Thomas to have Shaw resign.

Infighting at NAWSA Headquarters  83 Dennett also turned against Shaw. Shaw wrote to Thomas, reporting that Dennett claimed, That I sold the organization out to you two years ago at Philadelphia, and that this year had sold out the association and the cause to Mrs. Stanley McCormick and that I was simply the tool in your hands. She accused me of having a personal gain in it. (Shaw to Thomas, 1914) Resentment of wealthy women’s power extended to officers like Shaw who seemed to accede to their wishes and who were beholden to them for their salaries.

Conclusion The influx of wealthy women caused conflict within NAWSA, especially when they imposed conditions on their contributions. The regional alliances that NAWSA leaders formed fomented further distrust. The disarray among NAWSA leadership reflected broader challenges that suffragists faced as the movement grew larger and more diverse. Holding together an increasingly disparate national coalition of working-class, middle-class, and wealthy followers would prove essential to their eventual success. A coalition along these lines would bring the right to vote to California in 1911.

10 Victory in California

The 1911 campaign in California, which resulted in the passing of a referendum on woman suffrage, provided an important victory to suffragists. Two successive wins, in the state of Washington in 1910, and California a year later, created new momentum in the movement. The success in California was due to a wider coalition of suffragists, beyond the middle-class white women who had dominated earlier efforts. Working-class women, immigrant women, Latinas, and Black women played larger roles than they had in the 1890s and were crucial to the win. Furthermore, the 1911 campaign showed that a much more public campaign, one with rallies, billboards, and ubiquitous yellow banners, drew attention to the movement and galvanized enthusiasm among suffragists.

Working-Class and Wealthy Women Combine Efforts in California’s Campaign Labor activists enrolled a large percentage of working women in unions in San Francisco. However, working women argued that union membership was insufficient without the right to vote. Leading unionist and suffragist Maud Younger explained that working women had fought for better wages, hours, and working conditions through the union. She stated, “But the Union cannot do everything. They need good laws to protect them,” both in the workplace and at home. The way to secure these laws was by having the right to vote. (Younger, 1908) Younger worked for wages by choice rather than necessity. Although raised in a financially well-off family, she was radicalized by volunteer work with working-class people in New York. She began work as a waitress and became a union organizer and suffragist. (Gullett, 2000) Younger and many other labor women in the state were socialists who believed workers should have more control over their labor and protection from unsafe workplace conditions guaranteed by the government. Through the Woman’s Socialist Union of California, local women’s Socialist clubs advocated for working-class women to have the vote, so they could help pass protective labor legislation, such as a minimum wage.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-12

Victory in California  85 As in New York during the Uprising of the 20,000, working-class women in California did not always trust middle-class suffragists. Younger and her colleagues formed their own suffrage association, the San Francisco Wage Earners’ Suffrage League (WESL) in 1908. At the same time, the California Equal Suffrage Association (CESA) had recently decided that they needed to cultivate closer ties with wage-earning women and the labor movement. CESA reached out to the WESL. Initially, WESL resisted forming an alliance with the CESA because they believed that CESA members did not understand their position as wage earners. The WESL president explained that middle-class women in the CESA did not share working women’s concerns about the workplace. Ultimately, however, after several years CESA and working women came together to lobby the legislature for a suffrage amendment to the state constitution. In January 1911, seven women spoke to the state legislature: five middle-class members of women’s clubs representing CESA and two trade unionists from WESL. While each demanded suffrage for her own reasons, they coordinated their efforts. Despite a 50-minute speech against woman suffrage by an anti-suffragist, the amendment passed in both the state Senate and state Assembly. A  special election referendum was called for 10 October 1911 to ratify it. Suffragists now had to move from lobbying legislators to convincing voters. CESA began organizing immediately, forming a council to oversee the statewide effort. WESL continued to work together with the CESA to encourage working-class voters to pass the amendment. CESA also secured assistance from long-standing supporters, including the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the California Federation of Women’s Clubs, and the College Equal Suffrage League.

Obtaining Support From Diverse Voters As California suffragists worked to convince men across the state to vote for the referendum, women of color played an essential role. Many had been working to expand the suffrage movement after the 1896 referendum was defeated. Black women worked through a variety of organizations. Lydia Flood Jackson led the Fannie Jackson Coppin Club, the first Black women’s club in the state, founded in Oakland in 1899. It was named after a Black teacher and principal in Philadelphia. Jackson was the daughter of wealthy civil rights activists, who fought to desegregate schools. She was the first Black child to integrate the local public school in 1872. Jackson supported woman suffrage through both the Fanny Jackson Coppin Club and her role as legislative and citizenship chairman of the California Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. Jackson fought racism and sexism and tied suffrage to democracy and women’s power. In a speech to the federation in 1918 after California women were enfranchised, she

86 Analysis explained why she supported the cause for so long, “Suffrage stands out as one of the component factors of democracy; suffrage stands as one of the most powerful levers by which we hope to elevate our women to the highest planes of life.” (Beasley, 1919: 274) In San Jose, Black clubwoman and suffragist Sarah Overton led the Victoria Earle Matthews Club and the San Jose Suffrage Amendment League. Overton was also a member of the San Jose Political Equality Club. A noted speaker, she traveled to various cities in California to rally voters during the 1911 campaign. Journalist and suffragist Charlotta Spears Bass promoted the efforts of Jackson and other Black suffragists in her editorials in the California Eagle, the largest Black newspaper in the state. Statewide, the Colored Women’s Suffrage League aimed to convince the approximately 30,000 Black male voters in the state to pass the amendment. Once enfranchised, Black members of the Alameda County League of Women Voters formed a separate Alameda County League of Colored Women Voters to promote Black women’s continued civic involvement. Maria de Lopez was key to appealing to Spanish-speaking Californians. Lopez was a well-known educator in Los Angeles. She graduated from the Los Angeles Normal School, a teaching college incorporated in the Southern Branch of the University of California (later University of California, Los Angeles), where she later taught Spanish. She belonged to the Votes for Women Club in Los Angeles. In the spring of 1911, as president of the Southern California College Equal Suffrage League, she hosted a suffrage tea at her home. This was one in a series of meetings, teas, and public rallies held that spring. In the fall, Lopez spoke at a rally just before the referendum took place. The Los Angeles Times reported that on 8 October suffragists had “bombarded” Mexicans gathered at Los Angeles Plaza with “ammunition done into native tongue” during a speech in Spanish by Lopez. She also translated suffrage pamphlets into Spanish for the Votes for Women Club. (Los Angeles Times, 9 October 1911: 18) In Northern California, two-thirds of San Francisco’s population was composed of first- and second-generation immigrants, led by Irish, German, and Italian immigrants. Immigrant women often had their own women’s clubs, which were also sites of suffrage activity. In San Francisco, Italian women in the elite Vittoria Colonna Club supported suffrage. In addition to Spanish pamphlets, CESA printed suffrage advertisements in Italian, German, French, Swiss, Portuguese, and Chinese newspapers. A small number of Chinese American women supported suffrage in San Francisco. Historian Judy Yung found that these Chinese American women were more influenced by calls for modernization and women’s rights emanating from China than by NAWSA and American suffragists. The 1898 Reform Movement in China promoted women’s advancement as crucial to modernization. Women’s organizations in China began advocating for an end to foot-binding (the practice of binding upper class Chinese women’s feet as a marker of beauty and class, even though it disfigured their feet and

Victory in California  87

Figure 10.1  Los Angeles Women’s Political Equality League, 1911. Translated into Spanish by Maria de Lopez. Source: Women’s Suffrage and Equal Rights Collection, Ella Strong Denison Library, Scripps College, Claremont, CA

made it difficult to walk), polygamy, and arranged marriage. They also supported woman suffrage. (Yung, 2008) In San Francisco, during 1900–1911, the Chinese language newspaper Chung Sai Yat Po advocated for these changes, both in China and in Chinatown. The newspaper, however, rarely discussed the American suffrage movement, even in 1911 when the California referendum took place. Instead it featured news on women’s rights leaders in China. (Yung, 2008) According to US law, first-generation Chinese immigrants were considered “aliens ineligible to citizenship” due to their race; they could not become citizens through the naturalization process. Their children, secondgeneration Chinese Americans, born in the United States, were citizens.

88 Analysis Thus they could, and some did, support suffrage and registered to vote once the referendum passed. In November  1911 Clara Elizabeth Chan Lee and Emma Tom Leung were the first Chinese American women to register to vote in the country. Lee prioritized expanding opportunities for women. Two years later, she founded the Chinese Women’s Jeleab Association, a self-reliance and mutual aid association that provided social and service opportunities for women. The association also fought for education for women, so they could become more independent and prove their equality with men.

California’s Strategy Adopted by Other States Suffragists in California embraced more flashy, public spectacle similar to new tactics beginning to be used on the East Coast: ranging from buttons and badges to parades and automobile caravans. Suffragists blanketed the state with posters, featuring yellow, the color most associated with suffrage, and with art created by women artists. Suffragists’ seven-passenger Blue Liner automobile always attracted a crowd who gathered to see the car and hear college women speaking from it. Both cars and women driving were still novel at the time. Massive rallies the week before the election attracted thousands of people. New converts included wealthy donor Phoebe Hearst, who despite her financial contribution to the 1896 campaign, in early 1911 had not publicly stated her view on suffrage. Finally, five days before the election, Hearst came out in favor of the ballot, arguing that women needed the vote to effectively improve conditions for women and children. She sent a message to be announced at a rally and argued that women in California had already been participating in public affairs and economic enterprises, thus proving their mettle as citizens. These dramatic tactics and enthusiastic crowds resulted in victory in California. The referendum passed by a slim margin, only 3,587 votes out of nearly 250,000 votes cast. Voters in Los Angeles and many rural counties approved the amendment, while it lost in San Francisco. Across the state, working-class districts had higher support for it. The new law in California required English literacy. This provision was intended to exclude Chinese American immigrants, Spanish speakers, and even Native Americans. The victory in California had a tremendous impact on the movement across the nation. After years without winning any new states, the wins in Washington and especially California created new momentum and excitement. Because of its large size and population, California played a significant role in later efforts to use enfranchised women to pressure political parties to endorse suffrage through the power of their votes for California’s Congressmen. The Northern California College Equal Suffrage League compiled their committee reports to create a history of their campaign called “Winning Equal Suffrage in California.” Published in 1913, this booklet covered

Victory in California  89 topics from window displays to rural campaigns and served as a guide for other states. It discussed efforts to persuade groups ranging from teachers to German organizations. The editors noted that although the committee reports centered on work in San Francisco, similar efforts were carried out in many other Californian cities and towns. The reports suggested that the first step for a successful campaign was to create public enthusiasm for suffrage through a series of public lectures. Suffragists then needed to organize locally to persuade voters. “Winning Equal Suffrage in California” also stressed the importance of novel campaign tactics to garner free press coverage and publicity, such as having a celebrity sing and perform for suffrage in Union Square, San Francisco and the Blue Liner automobile campaign. It provided advice on other best practices, such as what ushers should wear at public meetings, depending on the time of day. The pamphlet also advised that in immigrant neighborhoods, it was better to send speakers fluent in the language to local meetings than have immigrants attend mass meetings conducted in English. (“Winning Equal Suffrage in California,” 1913) Key California suffragists shared their expertise by helping to organize suffragists in Nevada and Oregon, among other states. Younger spent time campaigning for the vote in Nevada. She called on western women to use their votes to gain the right to vote for women across the nation by voting for pro-suffrage amendment legislators. She also spoke in front of US Senate committees, lobbying the legislators.

Conclusion Victory in California was significant due to the makeup of suffragists there, as well as its galvanizing effect of the win on suffragists across the country. Working-class women and women of color, including Black women, Latina women, and immigrant women, were crucial supporters of the movement in California and eager to vote once enfranchised. With a significant victory in California, suffragists were optimistic that they could finally be successful in states in the East. Growing enthusiasm was evident in the thousands of women taking up the cause and marching in larger and larger parades. Women on the East Coast were ready to demonstrate in more dramatic ways that women wanted the vote.

11 Suffragists Take to the Streets

To convince men to vote for women to have the right to vote, women had to demonstrate their desire for the vote by taking a public stance. This included showing their expanding numbers by marching in parades, as well using banners, automobiles, and other tactics that garnered attention and publicity. Examining these new tactics, along with new political maneuvering and strategies, explains how women were able to convince men to vote for woman suffrage. These new public campaign tactics began in late 1907. The 1911 California campaign proved their success. Afterward, the size of parades on the East Coast grew dramatically, and suffragists in towns and cities around the country created excitement locally with parades and spectacles.

“Open Air” Speakers Among the earliest of the new public campaigns were the “open air” meetings, held in New York by the “American Suffragettes,” a group started in December 1907. They were inspired after hearing a British suffragist who had been imprisoned for her activism speak in New York weeks earlier. The movement in Britain, led by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), quickly gained a reputation for militancy, staging demonstrations and disrupting political meetings, resulting in arrests and imprisonment. Many American suffragists were inspired by the courage of British suffragists and their spectacular tactics. Militant British suffragists were referred to as “suffragettes,” which in the United States, other than when it was adopted by the short-lived American Suffragettes group, was considered a derogatory term used to mock suffragists. The American Suffragettes published their own magazine, American Suffragette. In it they embraced criticism from more conservative suffragists and the public, writing, “We glory in the reproach that we are theatrical.” They contrasted their tactics with those of less militant suffragists. According to the American Suffragettes, “The suffragists believe in milder and more conciliatory methods sitting in comfortable parlors and halls. We on the other hand believe in standing on street corners and fighting our way to recognition.” (Cooney, 2005: 107) DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-13

Suffragists Take to the Streets  91 Having open air speakers stand on street corners was a novel technique for suffragists. The spectacle of seeing women speaking so publicly, whether standing on a street or speaking from a car or train, drew attention from passersby. In May  1908, the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women had a trolley car campaign between Syracuse and Albany. Harriot Stanton Blatch went from Seneca Falls to several other towns in upstate New York. Afterward, the Equality League began open air speaking all over New York City throughout the summer. Open air speakers generally traveled around a city or state, using street corners or plazas to reach more people. Massachusetts had its first open air meetings in June 1909, featuring Katharine McCormick, Mary Ware Dennett, and three other suffragists. They held 97 meetings over the summer of 1909, reaching 25,000 people. They gathered in parks, or outside factory

Figure 11.1   Suffragists Katharine [Mrs. Stanley] McCormick and Mrs. Charles Parker, ca. 1910. Source: Library of Congress

92 Analysis gates. In Nantucket, suffragists were forbidden from speaking on the beach, so they waded into the water to speak instead. The following year, they expanded their open air speeches into working-class neighborhoods, using translators in Italian, Yiddish, Arabic, and other languages. NAWSA took notice of this new tactic. The 1910 convention featured a symposium on open air speaking, with McCormick and other speakers explaining techniques to use to engage an audience. After the symposium, delegates went outside to practice on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Suffrage Parades Suffragists also took to the streets for parades, allowing women to demonstrate their mass support for the movement. Parades were beautiful, exciting spectacles that were highly orchestrated. Organizers carefully arranged the participants, and effectively used banners, costumes, and floats to dramatize their message. The first New York parade took place in February  1908, held by the American Suffragettes. Because participants were denied a police permit, it was unofficial and ended up having only 23 suffragists marching. Nonetheless, the parade marked the beginning of this important new tactic. Hundreds of spectators followed the parade up Broadway and many joined the meeting held at its conclusion. Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Equality League organized the first large parade in New York in 1910. Blatch planned for a spectacular event, with beautiful banners, and 400 women marching, some riding in automobiles. Despite the rain, around 10,000 spectators listened to speeches by Blatch and other members of the Equality League. New York’s May 1912 parade dwarfed the 1910 parade with close to 20,000 marchers. Blatch and the rest of the marchers were ­organized by their work for wages: professional women, including teachers, lawyers, doctors, librarians, social workers; industrial workers, including dressmakers and shirtwaist makers; and businesswomen, including bookkeepers, stenographers, telephone operators, and others. They carried banners representing their profession and notable women in it. (Santangelo, 2019) Carriages followed with elderly suffragists referred to as pioneers. Representatives from the western states and other countries that had the right to vote already, came next. They were followed by additional New York suffrage organizations, such as the Wage Earner’s Suffrage League, the Women’s Trade Union League, and the Political Equality Association. Next came male supporters and lastly a small socialist contingent. Newspapers noted that Black women marched in the parade, perhaps from the Brooklyn Equal Suffrage League, a leading Black women’s suffrage group. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee and her mother both participated in the 1912 parade. Her father was a Christian minister to a small, but growing Chinese

Suffragists Take to the Streets  93

Figure 11.2  Dr. Mabel P. Lee, ca. 1920. Source: Library of Congress

immigrant population in New York’s Chinatown. He worked at the Morningstar Mission, where Chinese women had a history of working together to benefit their community. They organized the Chinese Women’s Club for Mutual Encouragement, as well as worked with white women in the YWCA. (Cahill, 2020) Many Chinese American women on the East Coast participated in the suffrage movement. Their support for women’s rights, like that of women in San Francisco, was inspired by changes taking place in China, as well as in the United States. In 1911–1912, the Chinese Revolution overthrew the Quing empire and established a republic. Women played a significant role in the uprising, with one female military organization, the Women’s Northern Attack Brigade. Chinese women were hopeful that the new president of China would grant women the right to vote. Although the nation did

94 Analysis not grant woman suffrage until the late 1940s, Chinese provinces initially had the opportunity to enfranchise women, leading to great transnational enthusiasm about women’s rights in China. In April 1912 Lee, her parents, and other women from Chinatown met with Anna Howard Shaw, Alva Belmont, and two other white women to discuss woman suffrage and women’s rights in the United States and China. American suffragists seized on the excitement over the possibility that women in China might get the vote, although they showed no interest in challenging US naturalization laws that prevented Chinese immigrants from becoming citizens and voting in the United States. After this meeting Lee and her mother participated in the parade. Her mother, who had bound feet and could not march, rode in an automobile near Shaw. Shaw held a sign about American women keeping up with China. The press remarked on Lee’s presence in the parade, noting that she rode a horse in the cavalcade at the front. In 1913, Lee began studying at Barnard College and then attended Columbia University, where she received a PhD. While a student, Lee continued to work for rights for Chinese women both in America and in China. She called for suffrage as the “application of democracy to women.” According to Lee, “feminists want nothing more than the equality of opportunity for women to prove their merits and what they are best suited to do.” (Document 18) She was asked to speak on Chinese Day at suffrage headquarters in New York. Her mother translated suffrage literature into Chinese for distribution in Chinatown. Not allowed to become a citizen in the United States due to naturalization laws, Lee was unable to vote after the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. She intended to return to China and help ensure equality for women there. However, her father’s death led her to change her plans and remain in New York, taking over the leadership of the First Chinese Baptist Church and the Chinese Christian Center.

Alice Paul and the Washington, DC Suffrage Parade The 1913 parade in Washington, DC was perhaps the most dramatic public spectacle for American women’s fight for the vote. Its organizer, Alice Paul, radicalized by the British militant suffragette movement, understood well the power of public parades to symbolically embody women’s demand for full citizenship. Paul brought energy and enthusiasm for dramatic, militant tactics to the movement. Paul was raised in a Quaker family in New Jersey. Her maternal grandfather was one of the founders of Swarthmore College, a local Quaker institution, from which her mother graduated. Alice’s mother and grandfather encouraged education for her and she also attended Swarthmore. Like many of the mid-nineteenth-century abolitionists and women’s rights advocates, Paul drew examples of women’s potential for leadership from the Quaker faith. (Zahniser and Fry, 2014) After graduation from Swarthmore, Paul

Suffragists Take to the Streets  95 moved to New York to work, earned a master’s degree in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, and then traveled to Europe, where she studied and worked. In London, Paul had her first encounter with the British suffrage movement when she went to hear radical suffragist Christabel Pankhurst speak in late 1907. Although Paul’s mother supported suffrage at home in New Jersey, the English suffragists were unlike anything Paul had previously encountered, with their militant commitment to the cause and their use of public spectacle. In the summer of 1908 she decided to march in two suffrage parades in London for the first time. Seeing tens of thousands of marchers, along with thousands of banners, ribbons, and sashes, made a deep impression on Paul. Paul began attending WSPU meetings, the organization led by Christabel Pankhurst and her mother Emmeline. After some months, Paul began selling a suffrage newspaper in the street and speaking on street corners. Her increased involvement finally forced her to write to her mother to admit that she had joined the WSPU. This was a shock, given its militant reputation and the Quaker emphasis on peace and peaceful protest. Her new colleagues in the WSPU soon noticed her speaking skills. As her involvement ramped up, she was asked to join Emmeline Pankhurst in a group protesting to the Prime Minister in favor of suffrage, thus risking arrest. Paul spent the next six months protesting, getting arrested and imprisoned, and eventually, hunger striking and being force-fed. She embraced militant protests, in which women pushed back when police shoved them. They also smashed windows. Charged with breaching the peace and vandalism, they claimed they were breaking laws they believed were unjust because the laws were made without women’s vote. The hunger strikes in prison were designed to force recognition that the women were political prisoners. Force-feeding involved being tied down, physically restrained by doctors and nurses, and having a tube forced down one’s nose into the stomach. This was an excruciating process that was often repeated several times before the tube could be effectively inserted. In one 30-day prison term in November, Paul was force-fed 55 times. Physically debilitated, she returned home in January 1910. She was 25 years old. Back home in America, Paul gained notoriety by giving speeches about her experiences. When asked about the violence of militant suffragettes, she replied, “No one has ever been injured in the suffrage cause, except the suffragettes.” (Zahniser and Fry, 2014: 109) She returned to the University of Pennsylvania, earning her doctorate in sociology in 1919, with a dissertation on “The Legal Position of Women in Pennsylvania.” Later she earned a law degree from American University. In Philadelphia, Paul organized an outdoor suffrage rally at Independence Square. She also began forging connections with other suffragists. She became reacquainted with Lucy Burns, an American with whom she had

96 Analysis been imprisoned in England, who had also returned to the States. In addition, she met prominent suffragists, including Harriot Blatch. Through Blatch, Paul met reformer and settlement house founder Jane Addams. At the November 1912 NAWSA convention, Addams suggested that Paul be appointed to the Congressional Committee (CC) charged with working for a federal suffrage amendment. At the time it was almost inactive because NAWSA’s prime strategy was to work for changes in each state. The chair of the CC, Elizabeth Kent, the wife of William Kent, California Congressman, had not even spent the ten-dollar budget allotted to the CC for pursuing a federal amendment. After much discussion, the board decided to appoint Paul and Burns and to allow them to organize a parade to be held in conjunction with the presidential inauguration of Woodrow Wilson in March  1913. They were to raise their own funding for the work. A parade was actually the idea of Florence Etheridge, the president of the Stanton Suffrage Club, a suffrage club in Washington, DC named after Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and of the Washington, DC branch of NAWSA. She proposed holding a suffrage procession at the Philadelphia NASWA convention in late 1912. Paul was intrigued, suggesting that they instead process in Washington before the inauguration. Etheridge was unsure that they could pull off such a big event so quickly. However, Paul was determined to do so, inspired by her experiences in England. (Cahill, 2020) The suffrage parade was important in part because there was no real precedent for a large-scale political protest parade in the nation’s capital. The only previous protest in Washington, DC, had been when a group of unemployed men, known as Coxey’s army, marched to Congress in the 1890s to demonstrate the problems of poverty during an economic depression. Thus, the suffrage parade was notable not just because it was made up of women marchers, but because it helped establish a new tradition for political protest marches in Washington, DC. Paul envisioned a procession in Washington, DC, the center of politics, that would illustrate women’s lack of political equality. A  march down Pennsylvania Avenue would demonstrate women’s limited citizenship: they had been unable to vote for the new president. Paul wanted to show that women wanted the right to vote and were willing to show up in large numbers to make their wishes known. Paul started fundraising immediately. Although the CC had not been active under Kent’s leadership, Kent turned out to be a key connection for Paul. She donated funds to rent an office and joined the planning process. Philadelphia suffragists and Quaker friends provided additional funding. After Paul raised over $1000, she obtained permission from NAWSA leaders to hold the “autonomous” parade, that is, to hold a procession for suffrage the day before the inauguration, rather than organizing a contingent in Wilson’s official parade the next day. Paul was supposed to funnel the money through the treasurer at NAWSA, thus ostensibly allowing NAWSA to retain some control over her. NAWSA president Shaw was concerned about spending, as was the new treasurer, Katharine McCormick.

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Figure 11.3  Head of the Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC, 3 March 1913. Source: Library of Congress

McCormick inquired in late January how Paul was handling the money, which was supposed to go through the treasury.

Black Women and the Washington, DC Parade In January, Paul wrote to the Woman’s Journal editor, Alice Blackwell, to stop her from writing a story on Black women participating in the parade. Paul and her colleague, Helen Gardener, feared that the publicity would cause some white suffragists to refuse to participate alongside Black suffragists. Gardener was a speaker, author, and feminist, who was later appointed to the US Civil Service Commission. Gardener, a southerner whose family manumitted the enslaved people whom they owned, argued that allowing Black women to march in the parade would be a distraction. She told Blackwell that she and Paul had struggled to obtain the permits for the parade and did not want the effort derailed by attention to race. “It will prevent the parade, ruin us, and do nobody the least little bit of good – and least of all the negroes,” she wrote. (Hamlin, 2020: 201) Acutely aware that Washington, DC, was a southern city, Paul wrote, The prejudice against [Black people] is so strong in this section of the country that I believe a large part if not a majority of our white march-

98 Analysis ers will refuse to participate if negroes of any number formed a part of the parade . . . as far as I can see we must have a white procession, a negro procession, or no procession at all. She preferred to “say nothing whatever about the question, to keep it out of the newspapers, to try to make this a pure Suffrage demonstration entirely uncomplicated by any other problems such as racial ones.” (Zahniser and Fry, 2014: 138) Both Gardener and Paul tried to defend their position by blaming other suffragists and assuring Blackwell that they themselves were not racist. Paul referred to herself as a Northerner and a Quaker, and Gardener referred to her father, who fought for the Union and emancipated the people he had enslaved. Paul and Gardener, however, continued to ignore and exclude Black suffragists, not only during preparation for the parade but for years afterward. Many Black women marched in the parade despite the resistance they encountered from the Paul and Gardener. Rumors that Black women would not be allowed to participate were widespread. Black suffragists were told they had to register at the office, but the registrar might not be there when they arrived. (Lindsay, 2017) In response to the uncertainty and controversy, NAWSA’s Dennett wrote to Paul on behalf of the organization, reminding her, “The Suffrage movement stands for enfranchising every single women [sic] in the United States and there was no occasion when we would be justified in not living up to our principles.” She also telegrammed Paul in early March to say “Please instruct all marshals to see that all colored women who wish to march shall be accorded every service given to other marchers.” (Hamlin, 2020: 203) Nellie Quander, president of the new Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA), Inc. at Howard University, wrote to Paul about participating in the parade. Paul simply ignored the letter. Quander wrote back, insisting that the AKA sisters wanted to be allowed to walk with the college women. Paul finally invited her to come to the office to discuss their participation. Both the AKAs and the Delta Sigma Theta sorority from Howard, with Mary Church Terrell, marched in the college section. Many other Black women marched. Some were in the homemaker’s section and some represented their professions, including sculptors, pharmacists, and drug store owners. Several state delegations had Black marchers (including Delaware, West Virginia, and New York) and a Black suffragist from a Detroit NACW chapter carried the flag for Michigan. Black women thus demonstrated their resolve and respectability by insisting on marching.

Ida B. Wells, Anti-Lynching Activist and Suffragist Ida B. Wells, the anti-lynching activist, journalist, and clubwoman was the most well-known Black suffragist to march in the parade. She was born enslaved in Mississippi in 1862. After yellow fever killed her parents and a

Suffragists Take to the Streets  99 sibling, she became a teacher to support her remaining siblings. She moved to Memphis, where she became a journalist and ultimately part-owner of the Memphis Free Speech newspaper. Wells had a long history of activism. In the 1880s, she successfully sued a railroad company when she was removed from the “ladies” car to the “colored” car, although the decision was later overturned. (Giddings, 2009) In 1892, Wells’ friend Thomas Moss, a grocery store owner, and two other Black men were lynched. In response, Wells wrote that southern whites defended lynching as a response to the supposed sexual danger Black men posed to white women; in reality the lynchings were meant to punish Black economic success. After investigating hundreds of lynchings, Wells exposed the lie: only one-third of lynchings even involved an accusation of rape. Further, Wells pointed to both the lynching of Black women and the fact that the rape of a Black woman by a white man was never met with punishment. Finally, she argued that there were consensual sexual relationships between Black men and white women, for which she was attacked for impugning white women. Whites in Memphis threatened her safety and she was unable to return to Memphis. Black women helped Wells with her campaign against lynching. Leading Black clubwoman and suffragist Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and other women gathered in New York in 1892 to raise money to print Wells’ pamphlet, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. In it, and a second pamphlet, The Red Record, Wells elaborated on her editorials and presented her research. The pamphlets established her as the leading crusader against lynching. (Document 14) WCTU leader Frances Willard did not extend the same support. Wells pressed Willard to support her anti-lynching campaign. The WCTU ultimately passed several resolutions condemning lynching as wrong because it was outside of the legal justice system. However, Willard refused to endorse Wells’ findings that the justification for lynching that Black men were raping white women was a lie. Willard made racist statements regarding the dangers that Black men posed to white women. Wells angrily denounced Willard for her lack of moral leadership, and her refusal to use her influence within the WCTU and the nation as a whole to fight lynching and racism. In Chicago, Wells married Ferdinand Barnett and was often referred to as Ida Wells-Barnett. He was a prominent activist and lawyer, the first Black assistant state’s attorney in Illinois. She continued her civil rights advocacy, including investigating riots that took place in Illinois and other states, in which Black people were subject to mob violence. She also founded the Negro Fellowship League, a community center that provided recreation, housing, and employment services to Black men before the YMCA formed a Black branch in Chicago. Wells founded and belonged to several women’s clubs, including one later named for her, the Ida B. Wells Club. In early 1913, when it became clear that Illinois would soon pass the right to vote in presidential and municipal elections for women, Wells

100 Analysis founded the Alpha Suffrage Club and an accompanying newsletter. As a nonpartisan club, its goal was to educate and register Black women to vote. The club hosted meetings with and endorsed political candidates, amplifying the power of Black voters in the second ward. Wells also argued that augmenting Black men’s voting power with woman suffrage was a tool to fight lynching, enabling Black people to support legislators who would vote for a federal anti-lynching bill and other civil rights legislation. Wells had a long history of working with white women in various organizations in Chicago and beyond. White suffragist Belle Squire had worked with Wells to found the Alpha Suffrage Club, stating, “We want every colored woman in Chicago to become a suffragist. We need them and they need us.” (Afro-American, 11 January 1913: 1) Wells and 19 other members of the Alpha marched in the 1913 Chicago suffrage parade. (AfroAmerican, 5 July  1913: 1) Many more joined the 1914 Chicago parade, with Wells serving as a commandant. Black marchers carried banners for the Alpha Suffrage Club and other organizations. Afterward, several Alpha members joined the banquet at the Hotel La Salle where Wells was one of the speakers. (Chicago Defender, 9 May 1914: 8)

Ida B. Wells and the Washington, DC Suffrage Parade Despite these instances of cooperation in the suffrage movement in Chicago, Wells struggled to be included as an equal with white women in 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, DC. Shortly after she founded it, the Alpha Suffrage Club raised the funds for Wells to join dozens of white women in the Illinois delegation to Washington, DC. Wells was incensed when Grace Wilbur Trout, the head of the Illinois delegation, announced that Paul had decided that Black women had to march at the back of the parade. Wells refused, stating “Either I go with you or not at all.” (Chicago Tribune, 5 March 1913: 5) The 62-member Illinois delegation was divided. One white member, Virginia Brooks, issued an impassioned plea to walk with Wells: “I think that we should allow Mrs. Barnett to walk in our delegation. If the women of other states lack moral courage, we should show them that we are not afraid of public opinion. We stand by our principles.” (Chicago Tribune, 5 March 1913: 5) Ultimately, however, Trout decided that they should obey Paul’s mandate. Incensed, Wells disappeared and the parade began without her. Standing in the crowd, she stepped out and joined the Illinois delegates, rather than march at the back of the parade. After the parade, when Wells returned to Chicago, Catherine McCulloch, a white suffragist from Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, expressed her solidarity with Wells. McCulloch invited Wells to speak in Evanston. She also invited Ida and her husband to dinner at McCulloch’s home. Wells accepted the invitation and thanked McCulloch for her support, adding that Black women and their supporters had to stand up for their principles just as firmly as white southern women were determined to enforce their

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Figure 11.4  Ida B. Wells, 1913. Source: Chicago Tribune, 5 March 1913, p. 5

prejudice. Black and white women, she was arguing, who supported suffrage and other rights for Black women had to be actively anti-racist to prevent discrimination from occurring.

Marie Bottineau Baldwin and the Washington, DC Suffrage Parade The 1913 parade also featured other women of color, mostly notably, prominent Native American suffragist Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, who was Ojibwa (Chippewa) and French. Born in what would become the state of North Dakota, her father was an attorney for the Turtle Mountain Chippewa nation, defending their treaty rights. (Cahill, 2020) Native American citizenship was precarious. Her father, for example, was eligible to vote in Minnesota where they settled, because people with both Native American and white ancestry were considered civilized if they adopted white customs. They could therefore vote. According to the Fourteenth Amendment, “Indians not taxed” did not have the privilege of birthright citizenship. In 1884, the Elk v. Wilkins Supreme Court case found that Native Americans could not become citizens, except through federal law. This left many Native people, who struggled to maintain ties to their communities and traditions, unsure of how they would be classed in white society.

102 Analysis Bottineau moved to Washington, DC, with her father, and began work at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Eager to show white Americans both that Native culture was valuable and that many Native Americans were modern, educated, and living in urban areas, she and others formed the Society of American Indians (SAI). In 1911, she addressed the SAI about women’s roles, arguing that women in Native cultures were equal with men and had political power. Bottineau was the first Native American graduate of Washington College of Law in Washington, DC. She worked at the Bureau with a classmate from law school, suffragist Florence Etheridge, who had inspired Paul to organize the parade. Parade organizers asked Bottineau if she would organize a float of Native women for the parade. Instead, she chose to march with her law school, asserting that Native women had “virtual suffrage . . . since time immemorial.” (The Times Dispatch, 30 January 1913: 10) Because the SAI worked hard to present Native people as modern, Bottineau may have hesitated to plan a float that would showcase them as foreign and different.

Washington, DC Marchers Attacked The 1913 parade, like the New York parades, was a dramatic visual spectacle. The marchers were organized in several sections, including an international section representing countries where women voted, early suffragists from the nineteenth century, and a section amplifying women’s help in building a strong country, which included state delegations, college women, and professionals. The marchers carried beautiful banners and signs, including one that said, “We demand an amendment to the United States constitution enfranchising the women of the country.” Paul succeeded in showing that women wanted and deserved the right to vote and that they were determined to fight for it. The parade was intended to be precise, beautiful, and purposeful, rather than raucous. After the parade began, onlookers attacked the marchers. Men in the crowd pushed, shoved, hit, and jeered women marchers, mostly unchecked by police. The violent backlash provided Paul and her followers an opportunity to again demonstrate women’s seriousness and determination. They argued that chivalry was not enough, that women were treated poorly, had their right to assemble trampled on, and needed the ballot to protect themselves. The Senate held hearings on the violence and lack of adequate police protection. Their report concluded that women had the right to march and that there was not adequate protection. However, they did not place blame on police leadership. NAWSA leaders were pleased with the resulting publicity. After the parade, Paul continued to plan and hold even more dramatic public spectacles in Washington, DC, including an automobile procession less than five months later to bring 200,000 signatures on petitions to the Senate. She held outdoor meetings, and even put on a suffrage play.

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Conclusion Taking to the streets as open air speakers and in parades, woman suffragists created new excitement and spectacle. They communicated their demands for the right to vote through speeches, banners, and the sight of thousands of women mobilized behind the cause. The New York 1912 and Washington, DC 1913 parades reveal the inclusion and exclusion of women of color in the suffrage movement. Black women marched, but only because they insisted on it. Marie Bottineau, a Native American, marched on her own terms. Women of color understood how important it was to demonstrate their support for suffrage, as well as to march alongside fellow college graduates and professionals and women from their own states. The parades also illustrate both the willingness of some white suffragists to stand alongside suffragists of color and of other white women to exclude them. Massive parades in New York and Washington showed the growing diversity in the suffrage movement, as well as resistance to this diversity from some within the movement.

12 Rival National Associations

With the success of the 3 March 1913 Washington, DC parade, Alice Paul emerged as a dynamic new suffrage leader. While many suffragists were excited by her militancy and flair for spectacle, others were offended by her tactics, preferring a less radical approach. NAWSA officers felt threatened by her prolific fundraising, which verged on surpassing their own. Rivals fought for control over increasingly large donations and budgets. Paul’s singular focus on a federal amendment and her political strategies were controversial. And, as was clear from the parade, Paul’s leadership also meant that her organization continued to exclude Black women. Paul ultimately left NAWSA and created a small but powerful rival organization. The drama around her exit from NAWSA sheds light on challenges within the movement in the 1910s.

Alice Paul and the New Congressional Union When Paul assumed leadership of the NAWSA Congressional Committee (CC), she quickly opened a headquarters in Washington, DC to plan the March 1913 parade. Due to a lack of funding from NAWSA, Paul and Lucy Burns formed the Congressional Union (CU), a separate organization from which they could fundraise. They intended the CU to be run in conjunction with the CC, but to have its own funding that did not have to be run through the NAWSA treasury. NAWSA president Anna Shaw approved the plan for the CU in late March 1913. After the parade, Paul continued to campaign for the federal amendment through the CC and CU. (Zahniser and Fry, 2014) When Paul admitted at the 1913 NAWSA convention that the CC and CU were financially and otherwise entangled with each other, the arrangement blew up. NAWSA leaders claimed that having Paul serve simultaneously as chair of the CC and as president of the CU was confusing. Furthermore, she had used NAWSA letterhead for fundraising for the CU. NAWSA claimed that this practice misled donors who thought they were donating to NAWSA, but in fact had donated to the CU. Plus, Paul did not run the donations she received through the NAWSA treasury. Treasurer Katherine McCormick became incensed with Paul’s tactics. DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-14

Rival National Associations  105 The concern over funding was elevated because of the enormous amount of money Paul had raised. Paul’s ambitions for a spectacular parade and a more successful movement had inspired her to propose a $14,000 budget for the 1913 parade at a time when the entire annual budget for NAWSA was approximately $38,000. She then raised $25,000 through donations and sales of suffrage literature for the parade. At the 1913 convention, Paul provided details about the $25,000 she had raised and spent without NAWSA’s approval, and asked for additional monetary support. Former NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt questioned why the CC had so much independence when it was a NAWSA committee and why it seemed to be competing with NAWSA. McCormick claimed she was “seriously embarrassed” when Paul did not run the money through the treasury and report it to her. (Johnson, 2017: 65) Paul took offense, complaining that McCormick was implying that she was guilty of financial impropriety. She claimed to have provided documentation to McCormick that McCormick ignored. Later Paul speculated that the fight was fueled by disagreement over how the money should be spent, recalling that McCormick disapproved of spending so much money on the parade, instead of on state campaigns. NAWSA board members held a series of meetings with Paul, Burns, and their supporters. They debated leadership of the CC and CU, finances, and whether the CU encroached on state suffrage societies. NAWSA demanded that the CU allow the NAWSA treasurer to have information about and consent to their fundraising. NAWSA also stipulated that the CU could not use NAWSA stationary. Nor would the CU be allowed to enter states to organize or fundraise without the knowledge and consent of the NAWSA-affiliated state suffrage associations. The monthslong negotiations were so bitter that at one point McCormick turned her chair around so that she would not have to face Paul. Paul was frustrated that NAWSA leaders did not seem to appreciate the CC and CU’s achievements.

The Rift Widens Negotiations faltered. Shaw did not want the NAWSA to split, but she eventually regarded Paul as militant, divisive, and even dangerous to its lobbying efforts. Having been force-fed in England branded Paul a militant. NAWSA rejected militancy and promoted itself as the voice of ordinary American women. McCormick wrote a letter to the New York Times rejecting the claim that NAWSA supported British militant suffragists, headlined, “On Militant Women: Treasurer of National Suffrage Body Says It Is Dumb.” (New York Times, 23 April 1913: 10) Furthermore, Paul was young, dynamic, and daring. Shaw was dismayed over the contrast between the CU and the older and steadier NAWSA leadership. Paul, for her part, refused to accede to NAWSA’s demands to change her approach.

106 Analysis When Burns was fined for chalking a meeting announcement on the sidewalk near the White House, Shaw agreed with the fine. She wrote, You may think we are all a set of old fogies, and perhaps we are, but I, for one, thank heaven that I am as much of an old fogy as I am, for I  think there are certain laws of order which should be followed by everyone. (Zahniser and Fry, 2014: 175) Shaw finally decided to end NAWSA ties with the CU. She announced through a press release that the CU was no longer a member of the NAWSA because Paul had withdrawn the CU as an “affiliate” to apply for “auxiliary” status. Shaw encouraged the board to reject the application. Affiliates had to give ten percent of their revenue to NAWSA, while auxiliaries paid an annual due of only $100. Given Paul’s fundraising prowess, it was financially advantageous for her to have the CU switch to auxiliary status. At a February 1914 meeting, the NAWSA board voted against auxiliary status. In an attempt to smooth over the dispute, NAWSA agreed to state that they did not accuse Paul of financial misappropriation.

Paul Leaves NAWSA With Alva Belmont Paul had initially been reluctant to pull the CU out of NAWSA because there was considerable risk that her supporters would not follow her out of the more established association. But eventually she realized that she and her organization were powerful enough to thrive on their own, in part due to her fundraising skills and a small group of wealthy supporters whom she could count on to follow her out of NAWSA. One of those supporters was Alva Belmont, at the time NAWSA’s biggest donor. When Paul left NAWSA, Belmont followed her. Belmont forthrightly stated that she was leaving NAWSA for somewhere she could have more influence and made a $5,000 donation to the CU. Belmont was insulted that at the 1913 NAWSA convention, leaders did not seriously consider her proposal to move headquarters to Washington, DC in order to more effectively lobby for a federal amendment. Belmont’s donations were key to the survival of the new organization, especially when its treasury was down to seven dollars in June 1914. Given prior controversies over Belmont’s tendency to try and dictate policy with her dollars, Shaw was happy to see her leave NAWSA. The board members at the CU knew Belmont and debated how much she would interfere and whether her donations were worth dealing with her.

Conclusion With Paul’s success at fundraising and organizing the 1913 parade, NAWSA leaders came to resent her growing influence. They distrusted

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Figure 12.1   Alice Paul and Alva Vanderbilt Belmont in Washington, DC, 17 November 1923. Source: Everett Collection Historical, Alamy

Paul’s militancy, tactics, and strategies, and complained that she was diverting financial contributions away from NAWSA. Paul, for her part, chafed under their control. She was eager to follow her vision for suffrage victory without interference. Paul was ready for the CU to take a leading role in the movement when it separated from NAWSA.

108 Analysis The division between the CU and NAWSA remained acrimonious. NAWSA thought having two organizations caused unnecessary duplication, confusion, and competition. When Catt reassumed the presidency of NAWSA in 1915, another attempt was made to repair the relationship. After the NAWSA convention that year, five members of each organization met to negotiate with each other. However, they again decided against affiliating with each other. The CU would not pledge to abandon their more militant political strategies or state organizing, which NAWSA objected to. Both organizations played essential roles from 1915 to 1920, the final five years leading to the Nineteenth Amendment.

13 The Public Relations Campaign to Win Support for Suffrage

As the suffrage movement expanded its reach, suffragists had to increase their communication, both with each other and the wider public. Building relationships across vast geographical distances, as well as cultural and race divides, and bringing millions of women together to work for one cause was difficult. Organizing a campaign and communicating details for events required local and national associations to communicate with each other. Women used all the tools available to them including the then modern telephone and telegraph and an old-fashioned method: they put pen to paper, writing letters. Suffragists also had to communicate with the public, educating them about suffrage and winning their support for the vote. They mounted professional public relations campaigns, which included a variety of media. Their most important tool was the newspaper, a tool they could use to control their own message.

The Importance of Letters Most suffrage leaders spent hours daily writing thousands of letters every year. Between the postal service and telegrams, they could communicate quickly – usually overnight. Suffragists wrote to each other in friendship. Letters were a primary source for deepening relationships between visits that often took place at annual conventions and other infrequent meetings. Letters strengthened the deep friendships that sustained suffragists. They connected women across great distances who shared the same fervent belief in the cause. Friends could empathize with each other’s experiences and struggles with day-to-day organizing, speaking, lobbying, and other work. For example, Marion Birnie Wilkinson and Charlotte Hawkins Brown were the leading clubwomen and suffragists in South Carolina and North Carolina. They both belonged to the NACW and many other Black women’s organizations. Correspondence between the two women documents their decades-long partnership in women’s activism, as well as their friendship. They shared details about their club work and their families. Wilkinson wrote to Brown that their friendship “made me feel as close to you as I would to a sister.” (Johnson, 2007: 93) DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-15

110 Analysis Letters could also be gossipy and malicious, detailing some of the machinations and infighting that took place within various suffrage organizations. For example, dozens of letters between suffrage leaders chronicled the rift between Alice Paul and NAWSA.

NAWSA’s Bureau of Suffrage Education When Alva Belmont offered to pay to move NAWSA’s headquarters to New York, she paid not only the rent but also for the creation of a professional press bureau in September 1910. As Corresponding Secretary Mary Ware Dennett explained in 1912, the headquarters supplied “ammunition for the suffrage fight. The ammunition is of many sorts, from money, leaflets and buttons to historical data, slide lectures, and advice on organization.” (Harper, 1922a, vol. 5: 355) Between the 1910 and 1911 conventions, NAWSA’s press bureau sent out 5,584 letters responding to inquiries for information. The following year, it printed three million pieces of literature. The press bureau sought to improve press coverage by holding a reception for reporters from every New York newspaper. The bureau also documented suffrage activity by cutting newspaper clippings, 3,000 from the 16 New York City papers in five months, in addition to nearly 11,000 from papers outside New York City. NAWSA’s headquarters had a large lobby where they displayed publications and supplies, including buttons, posters, pennants, and periodicals from around the country and the world. The press bureau chair noted that the passage of suffrage in California had brought the subject of suffrage to the attention of the entire nation. The bureau was no longer trying to write and distribute persuasive articles. Instead, they could supply facts and information for newspaper reporters to write articles themselves. The work of the press bureau was expensive and depended on donations from wealthy white women. After Belmont’s donation, Mrs. Frank Leslie left a much larger bequest in 1914 that underwrote an even more ambitious effort. Miriam Folline Leslie was born in 1836 in New Orleans and was known for a series of scandalous marriages, divorces, and affairs. She was married to the publisher Frank Leslie. When he died she changed her name to Frank Leslie. Leslie was determined to save the debt-ridden publishing business that she inherited from her husband. An astute businesswoman, she consolidated publications and scooped other magazines with political news. After making small donations to the suffrage movement for decades, when she died, she left her entire estate to Catt to do with as she wished to support the suffrage movement. The estate was valued at over $1.7 million; once lawyers’ fees and taxes were paid, Catt netted $977,875. Catt wisely established the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission to oversee the money rather than depositing it in the NAWSA general budget. This allowed her to retain control over the money and direct it to the projects she prioritized. (Young, 1929)

The Public Relations Campaign  111 Catt used the new funds to mount a publicity blitz, with parades, editorials, statistics, cartoons, and even silent movies. She established the Bureau of Suffrage Education, which had a staff of 25. The newly hired professional publicity experts and journalists took over the fifteenth floor of headquarters. The bureau director created six departments, including the Publicity and News department, which offered five services. The news service sent daily press releases and the photo news service sent biweekly photographs to newspapers across the country. A bulletin service created a weekly compendium of suffrage news that was sent to suffragists around the country for use in writing their columns. The “stunts” service helped with rallies and parades which used automobiles or other objects to garner attention; the motion picture service created films. (Young, 1929) The Feature department offered cartoons, stories about suffrages, testimonials, and “plates” or ready-to-print news to newspapers. It also provided “intelligence” or statistical information and legislative updates created by the Research department. A  Field Press department managed outreach directly to local presses around the country and through local suffrage organizers who reached out to their local press. The Magazine department published a magazine and the Editorial Correspondence department corresponded with editors and rebutted anti-suffrage editorials. The corresponding secretary and the press bureau fulfilled thousands of requests for information from students doing research on state laws to local organizations around the country creating poster campaigns to magazines and newspapers. Many requests asked for speakers for mass meetings, press clubs, labor meetings, churches, and universities.

Publicity Through Mainstream and Suffrage Newspapers The massive publicity effort was essential because women needed a platform through which they could control their message and reach people across the nation. For years it had been difficult to obtain coverage of suffrage events in newspapers. Suffragists in California recruited Phoebe Hearst, not only for her thousand-dollar donations but also because her son controlled the Hearst newspapers. She pushed her son to help suffragists by providing positive coverage. Suffragists realized that it was smart to contact her when there was something they wanted to be covered. (Nickliss, 2018) By taking to the streets as open air speakers and in parades, suffragists garnered more press coverage in local newspapers in the 1910s. In addition, the entry of society women into the suffrage movement also attracted attention from reporters, eager to cover celebrities like Belmont. However, the press, including the anti-suffragist New York Times, could not be counted on for positive coverage. Editorials and articles in some newspapers mocked and criticized suffragists.

112 Analysis Given their difficulties with the mainstream press, suffragists created many of their own newspapers and magazines. Some suffrage associations published newspapers or magazines, referred to the “official organ,” which reported on association activities. Individual suffragists also published newspapers and magazines featuring editorials and essays on women’s rights. From 1868 to 1872, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton published the Revolution. It printed articles on a wide array of women’s rights topics beyond suffrage, including such scandalous subjects as sex education and divorce, as well as support for unionization and working women. According to Anthony, it was essential for women suffragists to have their own newspaper to “sauce back our opponents.” (Johnson, 2017: 74) It was so important to her that one of the reasons she was willing to work with the notoriously racist George Train was because he promised to finance the newspaper. When he stopped funding the paper, she went into debt, refusing to compromise on the quality of the paper or the women journalists’ pay. It ceased publication after she personally assumed a $10,000 debt for it. In Boston, clubwoman Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin published the Woman’s Era, the first national newspaper for and by Black women. The Woman’s Era, owned and edited by Ruffin and her daughter, published a variety of articles focused on women, including woman suffrage, women’s health and beauty, and profiles of prominent women. The Woman’s Era stressed respectability, morality, and race uplift as it advocated for both gender equality and civil rights. Ruffin financed the paper herself. The National Association of Colored Women (NACW) published National Notes, with news from Black women’s clubs around the country and articles about woman suffrage and civil rights. When Ida B. Wells, who was a journalist and editor, founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago in 1913, the first thing she did was start a newspaper, the Alpha Suffrage Record. The Woman’s Era, National Notes, and the Alpha Suffrage Record all provided the means for organized Black women to communicate with each other and the public. Through these newspapers, they advocated for equality, provided information on conventions, and inspired others with their achievements in local women’s clubs and suffrage clubs. In addition to these newspapers run for and by Black women, Black suffragists reached a wider audience of Black and white people through the NAACP’s monthly magazine, The Crisis. It published two symposia on woman suffrage, in September 1912 and August 1915, just prior to a suffrage referendum in New York State. They featured well-known Black men and leading Black clubwomen and suffragists, including Ruffin and Mary Church Terrell. Contributors provided a range of reasons why women should have the vote, from women’s role as mothers and moral guardians of the race to their shared human rights. Terrell argued that the United States government,

The Public Relations Campaign  113 “founded upon the eternal principles that all men are created free and equal,” should not deny rights to half of its population. (Terrell, 1912: 244) The Woman’s Journal was the longest running women’s rights newspaper in the country. Begun as a weekly newspaper in 1870 by a white suffragist, Lucy Stone, and her husband, Henry Blackwell, it provided news of the suffrage movement for decades. Like the AWSA that Stone led, the Woman’s Journal was more conservative than the Revolution had been. It appealed to women who found Stanton too radical in her views on women’s rights. Stone was devoted to the Woman’s Journal, sometimes refraining from travel to stay home and edit the newspaper. Her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell took over as editor in 1883. Stone and Blackwell personally contributed funds to supplement subscriptions and advertising revenue to keep the newspaper in print. It featured editorials, news of the local and national organizations, as well as poetry and fiction. The Woman’s Journal connected women across the country.

The Woman’s Journal Becomes NAWSA’s Official Newspaper At the 1910 convention, NAWSA accepted Alice Blackwell’s offer to make the Woman’s Journal the official voice for the organization. Although NAWSA did not pay her a salary as editor, it did contribute to expenses. It also provided funds to employ a business manager. The circulation was low, under 20,000 in 1912. NAWSA ran up $9,000 in debt over the Woman’s Journal. In 1912, new treasurer Katharine McCormick advocated ending NAWSA’s relationship with the newspaper that they contributed to but did not own. Because the Woman’s Journal was such a long-standing and important newspaper to suffragists, there was considerable controversy over McCormick’s advice. However, the board voted to end the collaboration. Blackwell created a Literature Company (selling stock at $10 a share) to run the newspaper, which still advocated in favor of suffrage. Having a newspaper was so important to Catt that in 1917 she decided that NAWSA should purchase the Woman’s Journal. Catt had the Leslie bequest funds available to her. She used money from the fund to buy the Woman’s Journal and several smaller newspapers. She incorporated all these papers into a new newspaper, called the Woman Citizen. NAWSA spent $75,000 in the paper’s first year on salaries, printing, office rent, and postage. (Young, 1929) The Leslie Commission subsidized almost all the paper’s expenses in its first year because advertising and sales covered only a small portion of its expenses. The Woman Citizen remained in existence until 1929. During this time, the Leslie commission spent $400,000 on the paper, a huge expense relative to the NAWSA budget and over 40 percent of the total bequest. Alice Paul also realized the importance of controlling publicity through a newspaper she could oversee. When Paul broke away from NAWSA to

114 Analysis

Figure 13.1  Woman’s Journal and Suffrage News, 1913. Source: Library of Congress

The Public Relations Campaign  115 create the CU, she tried to get Blackwell to move the Woman’s Journal to Washington, DC. Paul thought the move would provide more positive press for the campaign for the federal amendment. However, Blackwell refused. Paul decided that the CU needed its own weekly newspaper, in part because she did not trust the Woman’s Journal to cover the CU fairly. She found an editor and her new newspaper, The Suffragist, debuted in November 1913. It featured articles by Paul and her coworkers extolling the federal amendment and defending militant British suffragists. Although it garnered 1,200 paid subscribers within months, by 1920 the newspaper had landed Paul $56,000 in debt. In addition to these national periodicals, there were other important women’s periodicals that supported suffrage. Women’s regional and local newspapers and magazines promoted the cause across the country, as did several written and published by other women’s groups. Louisa and Mary Poppenheim, women’s club leaders from South Carolina, created a monthly magazine, The Keystone. It supported white southern state federations of women’s clubs and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Initially, the editors were reluctant to support suffrage. However, by the 1910s The Keystone began to feature discussions on the subject. The WTUL published Life and Labor, which promoted the needs of working women, including the right to vote. Margaret Sanger, who led the birth control movement, published The Birth Control Review, which featured a variety of articles on women’s rights, in addition to its focus on birth control.

Conclusion Organizing a national movement for suffrage required women to communicate quickly and effectively with each other and with the public. Much of the organizational work was accomplished through letter writing, which also helped suffragists develop deep friendships with each other. Suffragists also realized that they needed to create a publicity campaign to reach the public. They paid professional publicists to educate the public about suffrage. Newspapers were one of the most important tools suffragists had to communicate both with each other and with the public, including nonsuffragists. At a time when many newspapers were anti-suffrage, suffragists had to reach people through their own newspapers that they themselves could control. The papers also succeeded in bringing disparate women from across the nation together in support of suffrage. They provided important suffrage information, from practical tips on tactics and strategies to inspirational articles on how to defend the cause. Newspapers allowed women to control their own media coverage and their message. Newspapers had much to report on in the 1910s, as suffrage activism increased in many states as well as in the national association.

14 Campaign Strategy in Illinois, Iowa, and New York

As women took to the streets and took up their pens to advocate for suffrage, state campaigns grew more organized and politically strategic in the 1910s. In Illinois, Iowa, and New York, women debated how best to make change in their states – via a limited legislative bill for presidential suffrage or a state constitutional amendment. They organized campaigns to lobby state legislators to pass laws and amendments and to canvass male voters to convince them to vote to ratify woman suffrage amendments to the state constitution. Like California suffragists in the successful 1911 campaign, suffragists in Illinois, Iowa, and New York embraced public spectacle. They also prioritized organization and centralization whereby the state association provided direction to local clubs. They learned how to become more effective political lobbyists at their statehouses. These state campaigns also provide insight into how Black women in some regions were sometimes more integrated into state associations than NAWSA or the CU. The national associations prioritized recruiting southern white women over Black women. However, in these midwestern and northern states Black men had the right to vote. Black women were seen as valuable collaborators who could convince Black men to vote in favor of woman suffrage.

Presidential Suffrage in Illinois The center of the Illinois suffrage movement was the city of Chicago and its surrounding towns. Early suffragists in the 1860s and 1870s, including Myra Bradwell, fought hard to expand women’s rights, from married women’s property rights to the right to vote. Chicago women were highly organized in a myriad of women’s clubs and other organizations, led by nationally prominent women like Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House, and Ida B. Wells, the activist and suffragist. Many suffragists in the state wanted the right to vote in order to advance social reforms and community improvement. (Buechler, 1986) Despite being able to vote for elective school offices since the early 1890s, Illinois women did not mobilize in large numbers for many years. Illinois DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-16

Campaign Strategy in IL, IA, and NY  117 suffrage organizations remained small until the 1910s when enthusiasm for suffrage began to increase around the country. Founded in 1894, the Chicago Political Equality League membership increased dramatically after Grace Wilbur Trout, a clubwoman from just outside Chicago, was elected president in 1910. Trout led a membership drive that increased membership from 150 to nearly 400 women within the first few months and to over 1,000 by 1912. As in other states, suffragists forged a loose coalition among various groups of women in the early 1910s. The WCTU and women’s clubs had influenced many women around the state to support suffrage. Wealthy members of the Chicago Woman’s Club embraced the cause. Many saw the vote as a tool for women to vote for temperance, education reform, and other social reforms. Jane Addams and other settlement house reformers, who hoped to pass protective labor legislation, reached out to working-class women, especially through the WTUL. Black women, under the leadership of Wells, worked alongside white women, as well as in the Alpha Suffrage Club, to demonstrate Black voting power and advance civil rights and women’s rights. Chicago area suffragists brought spectacle to the Midwest. They organized a suffrage float for a Chicago parade and the first suffrage automobile tour in the state in 1910. The automobile tour was innovative enough to merit news coverage from the Chicago Tribune, which featured a fullcolored page with photos of women in the autos and sent two reporters along for the tour. Other Chicago papers sent reporters to see the women speak from the autos at their stops. The Winton Motor Company donated a seven-passenger car and a chauffeur for the first leg of the trip. Local committees in various towns organized the stops on a town square or prominent street corner. Large parades took place in Chicago annually starting in 1912. (Trout, 1920) Trout took over the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association (IESA) in 1912 and quickly turned to legislative work. Trout decided to separate publicity and legislative work, arguing that too much publicity heightened the opposition to suffrage. She thought it better to quietly educate legislators to win them over. The IESA carried out her plans in 1913. In Springfield, the state capital, they established a card index. The cards contained information on every legislator. They also learned to recognize each legislator so they could call him by name. Trout carefully worked to convince individual lawmakers to support suffrage. They also had to learn the ins and outs of political lobbying. For example, the IESA determined that it was better to have the suffrage bill placed with the Elections Committee, where they had friendly votes, rather than the Judiciary Committee, where they did not, and foiled a legislative plan to switch committees. When a state senator hesitated to support the bill, wondering if there was enough suffrage sentiment in the state, the Chicago Political Equality League and the IESA swung into action to convince him. They both immediately called on members to send telegrams and letters,

118 Analysis

Figure 14.1  “Woman’s Party Demonstration Outside President Wilson’s Meeting in Chicago,” 1916. Burke and Atwell, Chicago. Source: Records of the National Woman’s Party, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

and to participate in a “telephone brigade” in which they called him every 15 minutes at both his home and his office. (Document 20) Suffragists in Illinois disagreed over strategy. Some wanted to convince legislators to submit a bill for a state constitutional amendment, that if ratified by the voters, would grant women full suffrage. Others preferred a more limited legislative bill that would be easier to pass. It would only allow voting in presidential and municipal (local town or city) elections, and not for congress. The presidential suffrage bill only had to be passed by the legislature and signed by the governor; it did not require ratification by voters. The success of the school suffrage law led some in the state to think that limited presidential suffrage was potentially the most strategic route to the right to vote. Trout and Catherine McCulloch disagreed over these approaches. McCulloch was a clubwoman, suffragist, and lawyer, who was elected Justice of the Peace in Evanston, the first woman to hold that office in the state. Trout heavily criticized McCulloch for the wording of a suffrage bill that McCulloch drafted. Furthermore, McCulloch submitted a resolution for a state constitutional amendment at a time when the IESA had agreed to hold off and instead submit a legislative limited presidential suffrage bill.

Campaign Strategy in IL, IA, and NY  119 The governor supported the latter because only one amendment could be introduced in each legislative session and he was prioritizing a different amendment (one to allow initiatives and referendums). According to Trout, McCulloch nevertheless introduced a resolution for a suffrage amendment, which died in committee. Trout and her colleagues continued their lobbying campaign, which included appealing to newspapers for positive editorials on suffrage. They placed the editorials on the desks of legislators in Springfield. The presidential and municipal suffrage bill passed the state Senate in May 1913. A month later, on the day of the statehouse vote, Trout sent two colleagues into the gallery. She remained outside the door, to keep legislators from leaving before the vote was tallied, as well as to prevent opposing lobbyists from illegally entering the chamber once the session was underway. The bill passed, with support from both prohibition and anti-prohibition legislators, making Illinois the first state east of the Mississippi River to grant presidential suffrage to women. The six-month lobbying campaign had involved a letter-writing campaign, telegrams, telephone calls, and numerous train rides from Chicago to the state capital in Springfield.

Illinois Women Have the Vote With municipal elections taking place in 1914 in Illinois, well before the 1916 presidential election, women could have an effect locally almost immediately. Wells created the Alpha Suffrage Club for Black women in 1913 to powerfully demonstrate their impact. She and many other members, who were originally from the South, were eager to take advantage of their ability to vote in the North, especially to vote for Republicans. Members of the Alpha Suffrage Club, as well as the Aloha Political Club, the Colored Women’s Party of Cook County, the Second Ward Republican Club, the Third Ward Political Club, and the Negro Women’s Civic League of the 6th Ward, worked hard to mobilize Black women voters. (Giddings, 2009) The block-by-block canvassing by these Black clubwomen revealed that some Black men did not want their wives to register to vote. However, these men became amenable when they realized the voting power that large numbers of Black voters in the precinct could have. In the second ward, for example, which was predominantly Black, over 7,000 women registered to vote alongside the approximately 16,000 men. The Alpha Suffrage Club’s support for Oscar DePriest enabled him to become the first Black man elected alderman in Chicago. Operating in the North, in a city where Black people had the right to vote and were not disenfranchised by state laws, as they were in the South, the Alpha Suffrage Club proved that woman suffrage could amplify Black political power. Wells and her colleagues then joined the Colored Women’s Republican Headquarters in 1916 to support presidential candidate Charles Evans

120 Analysis Hughes. Although he lost the campaign to incumbent Woodrow Wilson, Hughes carried Illinois. After winning presidential suffrage, the IESA continued to work for full suffrage. Trout and McCulloch again disagreed on strategy. Trout supported a resolution for the state to hold a constitutional convention to adopt a new constitution that would include woman suffrage. McCulloch formed a splinter group, the Suffrage Amendment Alliance, that lobbied for an amendment to the current constitution, which failed. The referendum for a constitutional convention finally passed in 1918 and the convention was held in January 1920. A new constitution was ratified, granting women the right to full suffrage, eight months before the federal Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. Illinois was the first state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment on 10 June 1919. The campaign in Illinois demonstrated how suffragists varied their tactics according to their purpose, selectively using public parades to rally supporters, while learning to effectively lobby legislators in Springfield. Prioritizing a limited law led to early presidential franchise, even as they continued to debate whether a new state constitution or a constitutional amendment was the best route to full suffrage.

Unsuccessful Campaigns in Iowa In neighboring Iowa, a mostly quiet movement also grew more active in the mid-1910s. Women in Iowa continued to emphasize their civic contributions through their church, WCTU, and women’s clubs as justification for the right to vote. White women in Iowa also emphasized their citizenship and patriotism. While some NAWSA leaders had long railed against immigrants they referred to as ignorant having the vote before white women, this argument took on new meaning as nativism, anti-immigrant ideology, grew during World War I. Suspicion of German American enclaves in Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota rose dramatically. In the Midwest the continued prominence of the WCTU and reputation of German Americans as antiprohibition exacerbated the tendency of suffragists to blame foreigners when suffrage referendums failed. In Iowa, two consecutive state legislatures were required to vote in favor of holding a referendum in order to amend the state constitution. The legislature passed resolutions in 1913 and 1915, and scheduled the suffrage referendum vote to take place at the same time as the election primaries in June 1916. The Iowa Equal Suffrage Association had to quickly begin canvassing the state to promote the measure. (Egge, 2018) Iowans received crucial assistance from outside the state. Nebraska suffragists provided key advice to expend effort in rural farming communities, blaming their own lack of success on their failure to do so. NAWSA president Catt saw to it that NAWSA gave Iowa, her home state, special attention. She recognized that given the timing, Iowa could provide a strategic

Campaign Strategy in IL, IA, and NY  121 victory. A victory in June 1916 could provide momentum for party leaders to endorse suffrage before the November presidential election. Catt provided financial assistance and even personally chose a traveling organizer to work in the state. Suffragists followed Catt’s organizing plan which divided the state into counties, townships, and wards, with chairs at each level. They scheduled meetings with engaging speakers, including leaders from Illinois and New York, canvassed door to door, and distributed thousands of pieces of literature. Heeding Nebraska’s advice, they crossed rural counties with an automobile tour, which allowed them to stop and speak in small towns and at farms. Although the Black population in Iowa was small, Black women from the Iowa Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs also traveled, speaking in Des Moines, Davenport, and other cities. Jennie Johnson Shaw Mays was among an active group of Black suffragists in Des Moines, and a prolific author in the Bystander, the state’s largest Black newspaper. She exhorted Black men to support woman suffrage, complained about southern whites who wanted to enfranchise white women only, and urged Black women to fight for the right to vote. Despite the organization and effort, the referendum failed. Many suffragists quickly blamed German Americans for voting against it; some WCTU members even accused them of election fraud. Iowa did not hold another referendum before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. However, women continued to press for the right to vote based on their civic responsibility, which they argued was evident in their patriotism and support for World War I. Iowa was the tenth state to ratify the amendment, voting overwhelmingly in favor of it on 2 July 1919.

The Importance of New York Because New York City was the country’s largest city, many suffragists considered the state crucial to the national movement. According to suffragist Harriot Stanton Blatch, “If we win the empire state, all the States will come tumbling down like a pack of cards.” (DuBois, 1997: 148) New York state had 43 representatives in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. Having such a large congressional delegation meant the votes from New York could be decisive as suffragists lobbied for the federal amendment. Furthermore, New York City was the epicenter of NAWSA’s public relations efforts and the site of numerous parades, supported in large measure by the donations and celebrity of wealthy women, as well as the activism of working-class immigrant women. As in California, the New York movement grew more diverse by the 1910s as suffragists in New York City worked to appeal to immigrant neighborhoods. Well-organized Black women frequently worked with white dominated groups, with varying degrees of inclusion.

122 Analysis New York suffragists waged an intensive political campaign at the state level. They lobbied the legislature to pass a bill to authorize a referendum on an amendment to the state constitution. Then they campaigned to convince voters to pass the referendum.

Upstate New York and New York City There was a significant tradition of activism in the rural town and smaller cities in upstate New York, where some of the women’s rights conventions of the nineteenth century had taken place, beginning with Seneca Falls in 1848. Initially, suffrage activism in both upstate New York and New York City (which included Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island) were connected. Lillie Devereux Blake, a suffragist from New York City, led both the New York State Woman Suffrage Association (NYSWSA) from 1879 to 1890 and the New York City Woman Suffrage League from 1886 to 1900. (Goodier and Pastorello, 2017; Santangelo, 2019) However, New York City lost its prominent role in the state and the national associations after Blake’s relationship with Susan B. Anthony deteriorated due to differences in strategy. Anthony had Blake removed from her committee role within NAWSA in 1899, then promoted Catt to the NAWSA presidency over Blake. In 1903, NAWSA moved national headquarters out of New York City to Warren, Ohio. With Blake and New York City sidelined, the NYSWSA turned its focus to upstate New York, where they campaigned for presidential suffrage in cities with populations smaller than 50,000. The WCTU was popular upstate and inspired interest in suffrage. In the 1890s many women formed political equality or suffrage clubs in rural small towns, as well as cities like Rochester, Buffalo, and Syracuse in upstate New York. Several wealthy women from the area were key donors to the New York and national campaigns in this time period. When Blake retired due to ill health in 1906, New York City was in the midst of a proliferation of new leaders and their organizations. Blatch’s Equality League of Self-Supporting Women, which became the Women’s Political Union (WPU), Alva Belmont’s Political Equality Association (PEA), and Catt’s Interurban Woman Suffrage Council, which became the Woman Suffrage Party (WSP) all established headquarters in a 13-block midtown shopping district. Working-class women joined the Wage Earners’ Suffrage League and encountered suffrage activism through the Henry Street Settlement House on the Lower East Side, where many Russian, Polish, and Italian immigrants lived. In addition, NAWSA headquarters moved back to New York City in 1909 due to Belmont’s largesse. Blatch and Catt led the state suffrage campaigns in the 1910s, returning New York City to leadership of the state movement. Blatch led the lobbying effort at the state legislature, setting up headquarters in Albany, hiring a professional lobbyist, and aligning with progressive

Campaign Strategy in IL, IA, and NY  123 politicians in the Democratic, Republican, and Progressive parties. The state legislature passed a bill authorizing a referendum to amend the state constitution to be voted on in November 1915. The 1915 campaign required suffragists to shift their efforts from lobbying the legislature to convincing voters across the state by using a massive public relations campaign. The campaign used tactics similar to those which had brought victory in California, such as silent films. The WPU collaborated on silent films including The Suffragette and the Man and What 8,000,000 Women Want. They also capitalized on women’s power as consumers. Suffrage hats, buttons, pins, postcards, and literature were widely available, especially at the WPU store. Suffragists continued to use parades and other spectacular events to garner attention. They had horseback and automobile tours, as well as a Suffrage Torch, representing democracy, that traveled with them. Parades in New York City grew larger each year, ultimately reaching 50,000 marchers in 1915 just before the referendum. Given all the suffrage associations in New York City and the NYSWSA, significant organization was necessary to run a coordinated campaign. Catt had initiated a new approach by organizing all the members of the WSP according to voting districts (rather than having local clubs that often crossed district lines affiliating with the WSP). The idea was for women from each district to appeal to their local representatives. The NYSWSA asked Catt to organize the referendum campaign, so Catt combined almost all the suffrage societies into the Empire State Campaign Committee (ESCC) in order to centralize and organize. Blatch and the WPU refused to join the ESCC. This meant that both the ESCC and the WPU conducted expansive campaigns across the state. The WPU included wealthy Manhattan suffragists who paid for salaries for speakers across the state. Working-class women in upstate New York also generally supported the WPU, while working-class women in Manhattan, aligned with the ESCC or the Socialist Party. The WPU had difficulty in some upstate towns and cities, where well-established suffrage societies preferred to associate with the ESCC. The WPU either set up competing offices or pulled out of these towns. These divisive contests were exactly what Catt had hoped to avoid by establishing the ESCC.

Black Suffragists in New York Black suffragists played an active role in the campaign, having been organized in New York City for many years. The Brooklyn Equal Suffrage League (ESL) was a prominent suffrage club. Its leaders had led women’s clubs in New York and in the NACW for decades. The ESL and its leaders sometimes participated in city and state suffrage associations. They had some success collaborating with white suffragists at the local level in New York, for example, speaking at each other’s meetings. (TerborgPenn, 1998)

124 Analysis In 1909, Belmont met with ESL leaders, and they formed a Black branch of her organization, the PEA. Belmont paid rent for a headquarters for the branch in Manhattan. Before agreeing to form the new branch, ESL leader Irene Moorman, a leading clubwoman and entrepreneur, expressed some skepticism. She asked Belmont for assurance that if women got the right to vote, Black women would not be disenfranchised as Black men had been disenfranchised in the southern states. Belmont reassured Moorman that woman suffrage was for all women, regardless of race and Black women would not be denied the right to vote. (Terborg-Penn, 1998) However, despite Belmont’s assurance, Black women struggled for equality in the PEA. Belmont did not stand up for Black women when white PEA members tried to exclude Black members from PEA events. Eventually, Belmont closed all the PEA branch headquarters in favor of a new and larger central headquarters. The Black women’s branch dissolved. Later, Belmont secretly donated $10,000 to the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference, a virulently racist organization that worked against the federal amendment, fearing it would enfranchise Black women. In 1914,

Figure 14.2  Irene L. Moorman-Blackstone. Source: The Colored American Magazine, 1907

Campaign Strategy in IL, IA, and NY  125 she told newspaper reporters, “We are after securing for women political rights equal to those of men. Negro women could share the rights of negro men. If they are disfranchised, let women share the same treatment.” It was clear that Belmont had backed away from her earlier promise to Moorman. Now she focused on equal rights for women, who she explicitly defined as white. (Chattanooga Daily Times, 11 November 1914) Despite the demise of the PEA branch, cooperation between Black and white suffragists continued in other state organizations. In March 1910 the ESL was invited to send delegates to the state legislative proceedings in Albany. It also accepted an invitation from Catt’s Interurban Association to join their federation of suffrage clubs in New York. Moorman was invited to address the NYSWSA. She told white delegates that Black people had been used “as a plank or an issue” in white politics and had been made many empty promises. “You also say that ‘equal suffrage’ means the square deal for every people and the square deal is the suffrage movement. If you mean all you say,” she continued, then Black women and men would support it. Black men, she pointed out “dyed the American flag in their blood” during the Civil War “that the women of his race, along with himself” might get the “the square deal.” She concluded with a plea for suffrage based on equality and justice: “Remember, don’t do anything for us because we are colored men and women, but make it humanitarian because it’s right, and remember, we are working for the good of all humanity regardless of color.” (Atlanta Constitution, 7 February 1910) Black women like Moorman supported suffrage because they understood that it was necessary for civil rights and thus a communal right, rather than just an individual right. Black women’s support for suffrage was evident in women’s clubs and fraternal organizations, as well as suffrage clubs. In 1913, thousands of delegates to the Empire State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs convention voted in favor of a woman suffrage resolution. In 1915, the Household of Ruth, a Black women’s fraternal organization, passed a suffrage resolution. Two leaders sent a copy to the ESCC, stating, “Whereas, the women of our race are largely wage earners in industry and their labor needs the protection of the ballot . . . ,” they endorsed suffrage. (Broad Ax, 25 August 1915: 4) Black suffragists also called for the vote on the basis of equality. Helen Holman, a member of the Colored Women’s Suffrage Club of New York City, argued, “By what logic can you argue that her equality is not of man’s? . . . I urge that women in politics is a necessity.” (New York Age, 22 April 1915: 4) Black women supported the 1915 referendum and urged Black men to vote for it. Despite the extensive campaign, on 2 November 1915, the referendum was defeated by nearly 200,000 votes, losing in both New York City and upstate New York counties. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts also lost campaigns the same year. New York suffragists immediately began working on the next referendum, which was held in November 1917.

126 Analysis

Success in New York in 1917 The EESC, which became the New York State Woman Suffrage Party (WSP), ran the 1917 campaign, after the WPU dissolved in 1916. Although Catt was by then president of NAWSA, WSP leadership remained with women from New York City. The WSP had 2080 precinct captains and over 10,000 meetings in 1917. The WSP was more inclusive than the national organizations. Members of Wage Earners Suffrage League joined the WSP as its Industrial Section. Working-class immigrant men voted in favor of the referendum. So did Black districts in New York City, where Black women hosted speakers, including Ida B. Wells, advocating for Black men to support the referendum. Black women organized the Colored Women’s Suffrage Club of New York City in 1917. They attended the state suffrage convention in Saratoga, after which there was a controversy over whether they had been treated well. Annie Lewis was made vice leader of the 19th Assembly District, and claimed “there is no such thing as the color line in the Woman Suffrage Party.” (New York Age, 27 September  1917: 1) Other Black women felt excluded, especially by the WSP requirements that they pay dues and organize by district, rather than join together as a club. According to historian Elinor Lerner, voting results show that Black men largely supported woman suffrage. The area around the former Black branch of the PEA headquarters voted for both the 1915 and the 1917 suffrage referenda, with approximately 60  percent of the vote in the district. This was among the top 50 election districts in 1915 and the top 100 in 1917 that supported suffrage. (Lerner, 1981) Afterward, some Black women worked to foster women’s voting by forming a Woman’s Civic League in Brooklyn. Once they had the right to vote, others used their new voting power to push for women in political office by voting in 1918 for a white woman candidate for the US Congress. Wealthy women continued to support the effort, raising an enormous amount in just two years: $682,500. The 1917 campaign focused more on door-to-door canvassing to secure voters than on public spectacle, in part due to the polio epidemic and the outbreak of World War I. Decades of activism finally paid off. This time the amendment passed, with extensive support from New York City, adding momentum to the national campaign for suffrage.

Conclusion The campaigns in Illinois, Iowa, and New York took place across small towns and big cities. Women used parades and other new public relations tactics to visibly demonstrate their desire for the vote and to drum up excitement and attention. They proved their ability to organize themselves, running coordinated campaigns from the ward and district to the county and state levels. Black women and working-class immigrant women found

Campaign Strategy in IL, IA, and NY  127 more opportunity for inclusion in city and state associations in these midwestern and northern states than in the South or the national associations. Suffragists in these states debated strategies, whether to work for a legislative bill for presidential suffrage, a state constitutional amendment, or a new constitution. They also demonstrated their growing prowess as political lobbyists. These were skills they would bring to Washington, DC to lobby their state congressional delegations for a federal amendment.

15 Lobbying Congress for the Nineteenth Amendment

From 1915 to 1920, at the same time that many women’s organizations were working to pass state suffrage laws, the effort to pass a federal amendment for woman suffrage began to dominate the movement. Suffragists had called for a federal amendment to guarantee women the right to vote as far back as the 1860s. By the 1890s, NAWSA, however, had shifted to working to change laws in the states where they thought the vote could more easily be achieved. The shift back to passage of the federal amendment in the late 1910s came from both failures and successes at the state level. The many failures to achieve suffrage in the states convinced some suffragists that the only way to effectively gain suffrage would have to be through a federal amendment. Other suffragists were inspired by a few key victories in the states, such as the wins in Washington in 1910 and California in 1911. They believed that the state wins provided momentum that might yield success at gaining a federal amendment. NAWSA appointed a Constitutional Committee (CC) to lobby for a federal amendment. When Alice Paul first assumed her role leading the CC at the end of 1912 the CC had a budget of $10 and a very limited agenda. Paul sought to invigorate it. She argued that many states would never pass suffrage and the only way to win the right to vote was through an amendment to the constitution. When she left NAWSA to lead the Congressional Union (CU), she dedicated her efforts solely to passing a federal amendment. NAWSA appointed a new chair of the CC and eventually began to increase their efforts toward a federal amendment as well.

Appealing to Southern White Senators Both the CU and NAWSA’s CC had to learn the ins and outs of political strategy to effectively maneuver among the nation’s lawmakers. In the House of Representatives, the woman suffrage amendment was in the hands of the Judiciary committee, which was against it. In August 1913, the CU petitioned Democrats in the House to establish a committee on woman suffrage. Legislators would have to go on the record for or against

DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-17

Lobbying Congress for the Nineteenth Amendment  129 it. Women voters in western states where women were enfranchised could then choose to vote only for those who supported suffrage. Some in NAWSA opposed Paul’s effort to force a vote because they believed that Democrats would oppose the amendment due to southern states’ defense of states’ rights. The principle of states’ rights is that the federal government should stay out of matters that they thought should be left to the states, such as voting laws. States’ rights was the same argument that southern states used during the Civil War to argue that the federal government should not try to regulate or prohibit slavery in states or federal territories. (Harper, 1922a, vol. 5; DuBois, 2020; Adams and Keene, 2008) NAWSA political strategists were correct. In January 1914, Democrats caucused and voted overwhelmingly against establishing a standing committee on suffrage, by a vote of 123 to 55. Their position was that suffrage is a state question, not a national question, and should be settled by state law and not a federal amendment. The Senate had a standing committee on suffrage that approved the woman suffrage amendment. This enabled it to be placed on the calendar for Senate discussion and vote. However, suffragists encountered similar resistance to the amendment in the Senate. Ruth Hanna McCormick, a suffragist who served one term in the United States House of Representatives in 1928, took over NAWSA’s CC. She declared she had met with senators who explained that they were for states’ rights. Even senators who were not from southern states informed her that they would vote against a suffrage amendment. They claimed that they refused to force woman suffrage in the South because most white southerners did not want to enfranchise Black women. Many white southerners did not want the federal government to pass another federal amendment concerning voting. It might bring unwanted scrutiny to how, despite the Fifteenth Amendment, southern states had disenfranchised Black men. They thought that enfranchising women through a federal amendment would also likely make it more difficult to stop Black women from registering to vote along with white women. In March  1914, Mississippi senators proposed repealing the Fifteenth Amendment and changing the woman suffrage amendment to declare that white citizens could not have their vote denied on account of sex. This would only grant white women the right to vote. Although neither of these resolutions succeeded, they indicate the ways in which race was central to white southern politicians’ resistance to woman suffrage. The Senate also voted in favor of the woman suffrage amendment, 35 to 34. But because an amendment needed two-thirds of senators to be present and vote in favor, the resolution lost. The woman suffrage amendment prohibited states from denying the right to vote on the basis of sex. Ruth McCormick and her colleagues in the CC became convinced that they needed a different type of federal amendment that could manage the opposition to a federal woman suffrage amendment

130 Analysis due to the southern states’ rights position. In March  1914 Senator John Shafroth of Colorado introduced a new federal amendment, which was designed to encourage states to pass suffrage through their own state constitutions. The Shafroth Amendment specified that eight percent of a state’s voters could file a petition at any time to force a vote on suffrage in its next general election. The idea was to encourage states to debate and vote on suffrage annually or at least more frequently until it won. In some states, suffragists had encountered setbacks previously because the laws in these states required that if a referendum was lost, another referendum could not be voted on again for two or five years. Thus, the Shafroth Amendment could help advance suffrage in all states by forcing debate to take place more easily. However, it did not require states to eliminate restrictions based on sex the way the woman suffrage amendment would. In this way, suffragists hoped it would not be perceived as jeopardizing states’ rights. According to McCormick, the Shafroth Amendment appealed to northern congressmen who did not want to interfere with southern white legislators because they felt they owed them “the justice of refraining from interference in matters vital to the South.” (Wagner, 2019: 430) The NAWSA board voted in favor of supporting this new approach after acrimonious debate in the Woman’s Journal and among the NAWSA board members. NAWSA officer Mary Ware Dennett asserted that NAWSA aimed to pass the Shafroth Amendment immediately, while they continued to work for the woman suffrage amendment. The Board’s resolution stated they supported the Shafroth Amendment for the ultimate purpose of passing the woman suffrage amendment. The Shafroth Amendment, however, was not popular, and by late 1915 NAWSA had abandoned the effort to support it. Although NAWSA’s support for the Shafroth Amendment was shortlived, it reveals the ways in which suffragists continued to accede to racism and to prioritize placating white southerners over universal suffrage and racial justice. In this case, McCormick, a northerner from Chicago, and other Board members justified their approach on the need to win over white southern male legislators. The same rationale had been used when NAWSA conventions were segregated, only in that case NAWSA leaders prioritized placating white southern suffragists. NAWSA was willing to sacrifice the right of Black women to vote in order to advance suffrage for white women. The CU also assured southern states that a federal amendment would not change their ability to retain white supremacy. A broadside published by the CU noted that white women outnumbered Black women by over six million in the southern states. (Black women did outnumber white women in two states: South Carolina and Mississippi.) It noted that the literacy and property requirements already in place to register to vote could be applied to women when suffrage was passed.

Lobbying Congress for the Nineteenth Amendment  131 Paul defended herself by insisting that her goal was woman suffrage, not Black suffrage, that is, she was focused on sex discrimination, not race discrimination. Paul believed that this was the only way to win a federal amendment because it required the votes of southern white congressmen. She refused to acknowledge the intersectional oppression that Black women experienced. (“Will the Federal Suffrage Amendment Complicate the Race Problem?”)

Punishing the Party in Power Following the Senate vote on the woman suffrage amendment in March 1914, suffragists had the senators on the record. They could now focus their efforts on the 34 who voted against it. In August 1914, Paul held a conference for the CU’s new advisory council in Newport, Rhode Island, where New York’s wealthiest families had large summer homes. Alva Belmont had invited them, eager to entertain the suffragists at her mansion, Marble House. There they dined on her new china painted with “Votes for Women.” Wary of Belmont’s money and power, one council member refused to attend because she thought it would appear that the CU was beholden to Belmont and unwelcoming to workingclass women. Paul was increasingly dependent on Belmont’s funding. The CU was small (especially in comparison to NAWSA), but building on a $10,000 donation from Belmont in 1914, Paul raised $37,000 for the year. This nearly equaled NAWSA’s entire budget for 1913. (Zahniser and Fry, 2014) In Newport, Paul proposed a new strategy for the CU: punishing the party in power. Paul was inspired by British suffragists who had used a similar strategy. The idea was to encourage those women in western states who were already enfranchised to vote against the political party in power if it did not support suffrage. The problem, however, was that while the party in power, the Democratic party, as a whole did not endorse suffrage, there were individual Democratic legislators who did. The strategy required suffragists to campaign against them as well. Paul initially argued that Democratic president Woodrow Wilson should persuade his party to support suffrage. However, if he did not, then she endorsed opposition campaigning. This meant that the CU would campaign against every Democratic candidate, including those who supported suffrage despite their party’s platform. With four million women living in the nine states where women could vote in congressional elections in the fall of 1914, Paul sent 16 organizers to eight of the states: Colorado, Kansas, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, California, Wyoming, and Idaho (all but Utah; Illinois was not included because women in the state could vote for presidential and municipal elections, but they could not vote for Congress). She later claimed credit for a handful of Democratic Senate losses.

132 Analysis To some, the strategy was anti-Democratic party, and thus partisan. Woman suffragists had traditionally carefully presented themselves as nonpartisan, above the political fray. NAWSA loudly criticized Paul’s approach, in part as too partisan for women. In 1916, Katharine McCormick explained that NAWSA believed that the CU’s “policy and method of work” were both “harmful to the Cause” and that suffragists had to choose whether to belong to NAWSA or the CU – but not both. (McCormick to Magoun, 2 February 1916) Punishing the party in power was Paul’s most audacious strategy and, to NAWSA leaders, impolitic and wrongheaded. NAWSA leaders also disapproved of Paul’s methods because NAWSA was beginning to take a more active part in congressional lobbying for a federal amendment themselves. NAWSA believed that Paul damaged the relationships they were carefully developing with political leaders.

Carrie Chapman Catt and the Winning Plan When Anna Howard Shaw decided not to run again for the presidency of NAWSA, Carrie Chapman Catt returned to the presidency in 1915 with an ambitious plan and the money to back her agenda. Having received the million dollar Leslie bequest, Catt could fund her priorities and exert more organization and discipline across the states through the national organization. Immediately, Catt began to tighten NAWSA’s control over the states. The NAWSA constitution changed to require all local suffrage societies to become affiliates of their state divisions and pay a percentage of revenue to NAWSA. According to the 1915 convention report, states should first consult with the national association to see if they were ready for a campaign. If NAWSA decided they were not ready, they would not receive funding. Catt announced her “Winning Plan” at the 1916 convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The plan called for suffragists across the country to work through NAWSA for the federal amendment, and simultaneously, to advance the cause as best suited to local conditions. Katharine McCormick explained how state constitutions impacted states, categorizing them as “The Impossibles, the Indubitables, the Inexecutables, the Improbables, the Inexcusables, the Irreproachables, and the Insuperables.” These were all states whose constitutions could not be amended easily. Women in these states would benefit from a federal amendment. (Harper, 1922a, vol. 5: 1275) Catt divided states into four districts, each with a different agenda, based on women’s status in the state and its constitution. The western states where women already had the right to vote, plus Illinois, were to work to get their state legislators to pass resolutions requiring Congress to pass woman suffrage. Catt determined that another set of states, including New York, had a solid opportunity to gain suffrage by state amendment. They would put their effort toward winning a state amendment.

Lobbying Congress for the Nineteenth Amendment  133 Another group of states was to follow the example of Illinois and focus on winning presidential enfranchisement within their state. This was an easier route to the right to vote because presidential enfranchisement was possible through a legislative decision and did not require a new state constitution or referendum. She instructed southern states, which were unlikely to pass full suffrage and were strongly one-party Democratic, to get their state legislatures to grant women the right to vote in party primaries. At the same time, all suffragists were to endorse the federal amendment. According to Catt, “We must do both and we must do them together.” (Park, 1960: 17) Catt explained that the Winning Plan meant that NAWSA did not have to assist the states who did not have a chance at passing suffrage at the state level. Excluded southern states were unhappy because they were cut off from funding. States deemed likely to pass suffrage received generous allotments from NAWSA. Catt’s home state of New York got $25,000. Michigan, Oklahoma, and North Dakota split $20,000. The four states won suffrage in 1917 or 1918, with New York, Michigan, and Oklahoma passing state amendments and North Dakota granting presidential suffrage. The Leslie Commission also gave $10,000 donations to states who were trying to elect a pro-suffrage senator.

Suffrage House, Washington, DC In December 1916, NAWSA opened Suffrage House at 1626 Rhode Island Avenue, in Washington, DC. This was the new headquarters for NAWSA’s CC lobbying team, now led by Maud Wood Park, the founder of the College Equal Suffrage League. Along with offices, there was room for entertaining and for CC members to live. The total expenses for the year from November  1917 through October 1918, which included Suffrage House rent, were just under $24,000. NAWSA could afford Suffrage House and the lobbying activities due to the largesse of the Leslie bequest. (Harper, 1922a, vol. 5) The lobbying team had files for each legislator and senator. The files held various biographical details including religious affiliation, personal interests, and political views. The information was gleaned from publications, as well as reports were written by the lobbyists from their interviews with legislators. Immediately after calling on a representative or a senator, suffragists were instructed to retreat to the ladies’ room for privacy and make extensive notes on their meeting. Most women had little or no experience with lobbying legislators and had to learn quickly. The Capitol was dominated by male legislators, with the first woman to be elected to Congress, Jeannette Rankin, in 1917. Park provided extremely detailed advice to lobbyists. She instructed them to know where the public telephones were, so that they could call headquarters if necessary, and to go in pairs to avoid accusations of improper behavior in meetings. Furthermore, the women were to be careful not to remain

134 Analysis in the congressional office buildings after hours. Park famously summed up her informal guidelines as “Don’t nag. Don’t boast. Don’t threaten. Don’t lose your temper. Don’t stay too long.” (Document 21) Living together at Suffrage House allowed the group to connect in the morning before leaving for their work at the capitol and then to debrief together at the end of the day. In addition to the 15 CC members who were more or less ensconced in Washington, women from state congressional committees came to lobby for one to four weeks. They learned more about the process, so they could more effectively keep up the pressure when they returned home to their state. In January 1917, for example, there were 15 committee members plus 29 women from various states living at Suffrage House. Women were generally responsible for lobbying legislators from their political party and their home region. Southern lobbyists, in particular, were known for their charm. The most important southern lobbyist was Helen Gardener. Gardener initially had worked with Paul to plan the 1913 parade, but rather than following Paul to the CU, Gardener remained in NAWSA. Paul’s strategy to punish the party in power did not appeal to Gardener. With the CU and NAWSA, as well as lobbyists from CESL and other groups all approaching Congressmen, Gardener frequently had to

Figure 15.1  Mrs. Helen Gardener and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt leaving the White House, ca. 1920. Source: Library of Congress

Lobbying Congress for the Nineteenth Amendment  135 remind legislators that she represented NAWSA and to position herself and her allies as the leaders of the movement. (Hamlin, 2020) Gardener’s southern identity was crucial to her effectiveness. She tried to convince white southerners that the federal amendment was inevitable. She argued that southern states should pass state enfranchisement first. This would make it easier for the states to pass measures that would prevent Black women from voting. A federal amendment would be accompanied by much more scrutiny, making it more difficult to prevent Black women from voting. Paul criticized this approach for what Paul perceived to be the lack of firm enough support for the federal amendment. As NAWSA’s most highly positioned southern white woman, Gardener represented the region for years as she tried to win over a southern president, Woodrow Wilson, and southern white congressmen. In addition to lobbying male politicians, she also developed personal relationships with the wives of President Woodrow Wilson, senators, and congressmen. Gardener ultimately fought for the federal amendment and did not call for an amendment that would explicitly only enfranchise white women. However, she played on stereotypes, especially that Black men threatened the safety of white women. In one instance, she explained to Wilson that the state-by-state effort required women to go door to door to win over male voters. She knocked on one door and was met “by a colored man in his underclothes . . . And with that man in a dark hall-way, half-undressed, I had to discuss my right to vote.” (Hamlin, 2020: 228) In the summer of 1916, Gardener wrote to Woodrow Wilson’s secretary, Joseph Tumulty, to introduce herself. She also met with Wilson’s new wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson. Over the next four years, Gardener used her relationships with Tumulty and the First Lady to gain access to Wilson as NAWSA’s ambassador to the White House. Gardener wrote hundreds of documents in which she explained NAWSA arguments and asked for Wilson’s assistance in increasingly important and influential ways. Wilson’s support ranged from public statements to correspondence with Congressmen to try to win their votes for the establishment of a committee on Woman Suffrage in the House, and then for the amendment itself. Most notably, once Tumulty and Wilson understood the difference between Gardener and Paul, they increasingly granted Gardener the audience and favors that they refused to Paul, including, for example, a meeting at the White House. While Tumulty dealt with Paul as well, he was friendlier to Gardener.

The National Woman’s Party In early 1915, the CU was restructured to become a more national organization. Organizers spent the rest of the year traveling to establish financially independent branches in each state. They held their first national convention

136 Analysis at the end of the year, which included groups of western women voters and a petition signed by half a million women in the West. The CU also moved to a large headquarters in Washington, renting a historical home, Cameron House, close to the White House. Belmont agreed to pay rent for three years. Paul and Lucy Burns moved in. Work and social events took place on the first floor. In order to harness women’s voting power, Paul formed the National Woman’s Party (NWP) in 1916. It was composed of women voters in the western states. The NWP met in Chicago with donors Alva Belmont and Phoebe Hearst. The NWP replaced the CU in states where women had the vote, and the two organizations initially existed together, before the CU merged into the NWP in March 1917. (Zahniser and Fry, 2014; Adams and Keene, 2008; Lunardini, 2012) The final years leading to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment thus took place with two major national organizations, the larger and more traditional NAWSA, now more centralized and following Catt’s Winning Plan, and the smaller but militant NWP, with its sole focus on passing a federal amendment. Not surprisingly, the two organizations continued to clash after their failed attempt to discuss reconciliation in December 1915, with Catt and other NAWSA leaders criticizing NWP tactics. Furthermore, in many cities and states, women had to choose between the two organizations. Some NAWSA chapters switched their allegiance to the NWP. Other chapters split, with some members remaining in NAWSA and others leaving for the NWP.

White House Pickets When Wilson refused to endorse suffrage in 1916, the NWP worked against Democrats. In addition, pro-Republican women actively campaigned for Republicans. Despite their efforts, Wilson won reelection; he even carried the western states where Paul had encouraged women to vote against him. Nonetheless, Paul felt that the Democratic party had learned the power of women voters and would have to change their political platform and take suffrage more seriously. (Zahniser and Fry, 2014; Adams and Keene, 2008; Lunardini, 2012) Meanwhile, things took a dramatic new turn in Washington, DC. In January 1917, the NWP announced a new tactic: a silent picket at the White House, which would prove how serious women were about the vote. The picket began on 10 January 1917 when 12 women marched from Cameron House to the White House gates, carrying banners that read, “Mr. President, What Will You Do for Woman Suffrage?” and “How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty?” The women stood silently outside the gates, and were referred to as the Silent Sentinels. Belmont had pledged half of the $10,000 Paul thought she needed for the pickets. Over the course of

Lobbying Congress for the Nineteenth Amendment  137

Figure 15.2  Woman Suffrage Pickets at the White House. Source: Alpha Stock, Alamy

the year, a substantial sum of money had to be spent on the banners, which were ripped from the women’s arms and had to be constantly replaced. In total, thousands of women picketed the White House during 1917 and 1918. The picketers included NWP members from across the country. Although the picketers were almost all white women, NACW leader Mary Church Terrell and her daughter picketed more than once in the cold, as she recalled in her autobiography. (Terrell, 1940: 316–317) By June  1917, when Wilson met with the Russian envoy, the banners called out Wilson for denying women the right to vote, questioning whether the United States was a democracy. It was deeply embarrassing for Wilson. It was also divisive for suffragists, some of whom thought the protesters went too far in criticizing the government and in targeting Wilson in particular. At the same time as they criticized Wilson, suffragists were soliciting him for his support. Whether the protests were legal or illegal was not clear. The 1914 Clayton Act allowed nonviolent labor protests. However, there were no laws regarding political protests outside the White House. When picketers were accused of blocking traffic, the Secret Service began an investigation. After 150 days of pickets, the DC police were instructed to arrest picketers. They

138 Analysis were arrested, charged with obstructing traffic, and released. The judge gave them a $25 fine or three days in jail. Six women chose jail. Despite these first arrests, the picketing – and the arrests – continued. In July, a group of 16 was arrested and given a fine or 60 days at the Occoquan Workhouse, a jail facility where the inmates worked in the fields or at factory labor. Again, the women chose imprisonment, despite terrible conditions at the Workhouse. Reports about the conditions put pressure on the president. On 19 July, Wilson pardoned the women before they had to report to the Workhouse. In August, the pickets were back, this time with a banner that said, “Kaiser Wilson, Have you forgotten your sympathy with the poor Germans because they were not self-governed? 10,000,000 American women are not self-governed. Take the beam out of your own eye.” Wilson was sympathetic to the German people and their lack of democracy under the German Emperor and King of Prussia, Kaiser Wilhelm II. This sharp criticism drew condemnation. Cameron House was attacked by men throwing objects and ripping banners off the balcony. The women hung new banners, but the attacks continued and more banners were destroyed. Paul’s silent protest had grown loud by the women’s insistent presence and sharp banner slogans. Six women were arrested on 17 August. This time they were not pardoned and were sent to Occoquan. The pickets, the arrests, and the long sentences continued, although it made it harder to mobilize willing picketers. In October, Paul herself was arrested. She refused to enter a plea in court, saying that women had not made the laws. An exasperated judge sentenced her and several other women to seven months in jail. Paul and the other women called themselves political prisoners, arguing that they were not being punished for obstructing traffic, but for their political protest. Sent to the district jail, they objected to their conditions in various ways. For example, they tried to open windows and even threw shoes and tin cups at the window to try to break it open for fresh air. They were put in solitary confinement. In late October, Paul decided she had no choice but to resort to a hunger strike. Wilson had Tumulty contact the district commissioner who sent a psychiatrist to evaluate Paul. Their plan was to find her insane and move her to the government asylum. Isolated in the psychiatric ward in the jail, they began force-feeding her again. They tortured her by shining light on her face all night, until her lawyer had her moved back to the hospital ward. The pickets, arrests, and jail sentences continued. (Document 19) Finally, the media picked up on the conditions of Paul and the other jailed women. On 23 November, a judge declared it illegal to transfer the prisoners from the jail to the Workhouse. Now dozens of the women were in the jail. A reporter for the New York Post arrived to interview Paul. Finally, the judge instructed the warden to take steps to improve the women’s health, and then released them. On 27 November 1917, most of the women were

Lobbying Congress for the Nineteenth Amendment  139 released, and the remaining eight were released the next day. No explanation was given. The convictions were ultimately reversed and dismissed because there was insufficient evidence that the women had obstructed traffic. (Adams and Keene, 2008) The pickets were enormously controversial. Catt asked Paul to stop picketing, arguing that it was only engendering anger and damaging the slow and steady lobbying effort. Of the approximately 2,000 women who served a shift at the White House pickets in 1917, 500 were arrested and 170 jailed. The pickets continued through early 1919, though no more arrests were made.

Conclusion By the mid-1910s, both the CU and NAWSA had well-organized lobbying efforts for the federal amendment. Each organization was operating out of its new headquarters in Washington, DC. Between 1915 and 1917, NAWSA and the NWP both introduced strategies for escalating the fight for suffrage. Catt’s Winning Plan called on NAWSA members to work simultaneously for the federal amendment, as well as for state amendments in select states. Paul instituted a new political strategy, punishing the party in power, as well as a new tactic to raise public attention, the White House pickets. While the White House pickets drew attention to lobbyists in Washington, DC, suffragists in the states continued their campaigns.

16 The National Woman’s Party and NAWSA in South Carolina, New Mexico, and Texas

Across the South and Southwest, women organized NWP chapters and worked for the federal amendment. State divisions of NAWSA and local clubs affiliated with NAWSA followed Catt’s Winning Plan. Surprisingly, while South Carolina was a deeply conservative state, it had one of the earliest NWP chapters. Anti-Black racism was a prominent factor in the debate over suffrage in South Carolina. New Mexico’s state laws made it extremely difficult to change the state constitution, leading suffragists to champion the federal amendment through the NWP. Suffragists in many states in the South and Southwest, including heavily Democratic Texas, fought for the right to vote in state primaries.

South Carolina Organizes for Suffrage Despite early activism, with organizing by Black suffragists in the 1860s and white suffragists in the mid-1890s, there was little suffrage activity in South Carolina in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Many white southern clubwomen were reluctant reformers and even more reluctant suffragists. Under Louisa Poppenheim’s leadership, the state federation of women’s clubs initially distanced themselves from suffrage. They worked hard to defend their clubs against charges that organizing women’s clubs threatened traditional gender roles. It was not until after 1910 when municipal housekeeping arguments for women to promote social reform that would benefit women and children and improve communities became popular that local clubs were comfortable beginning to study and debate suffrage. This new interest was reflected in the increase in discussion of suffrage in the pages of the Keystone, the monthly magazine edited by Poppenheim and her sister. (Johnson, 2007) Finally, in 1912, a new women’s club, the New Era Club, in Spartanburg, South Carolina, called for advancing the industrial, legal, and educational rights of women and children. They sponsored a special edition of their local newspaper the following year. It featured pro-suffrage articles by Anna Howard Shaw and Alva Belmont. In 1914, the club decided to affiliate with NAWSA. (Farmer, 2010)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-18

The NWP and NAWSA in SC, NM, and TX  141 Once Columbia and Charleston also formed local organizations affiliated with NAWSA, leaders formed a statewide South Carolina Equal Suffrage League. Members used methods similar to suffragists across the country: they encouraged letter writing campaigns, distributed literature, and lobbied legislators for a state referendum. For the most part, suffragists in the state argued that women needed the vote to help pass laws to protect women and children, clean up cities with sanitation and other measures, and fight corruption in government. In 1915, a few women in the state began to embrace the more militant tactics of the NWP, which sent an organizer to Charleston. The organizer worked with Susan Pringle Frost to recruit suffragists to the NWP. Frost was a court reporter and real estate agent, who later started a historic preservation society. She had just returned from traveling to the Panama Pacific Exposition in California, where she met with other visitors at the NWP’s suffrage exhibit. In South Carolina, she presented a petition for suffrage signed by many clubwomen to a local congressman. The publicity around Frost’s work delighted Alice Paul. When South Carolina established a branch of the NWP, Paul went to Charleston to speak and inaugurate the chapter. (Bland, 1981) With a new state division in place, suffragists created chapters of the NWP in three cities: Charleston, Greenville, and Orangeburg. The NWP’s outdoor meetings and exciting tactics drew much attention in the state, even though their membership was small. The NWP sent a suffrage car to the state in the summer of 1917, featuring executive committee member Maud Younger. She spoke about the White House picketers’ experiences. While many South Carolinians did not approve of militancy, some were nonetheless offended by the stories of jailing and force-feedings described by Younger. They thought that women should not be treated so poorly. Anita Pollitzer, South Carolina’s most prominent suffragist, was a leader in the state and national NWP. Anita and her sisters, Mabel and Carrie, were the daughters of German Jewish immigrants. The sisters all belonged to the NWP. Carrie led a successful effort to admit women to the College of Charleston. Anita attended Teachers College, Columbia University in New York. She was teaching art at the University of Virginia, when she met Paul who was lecturing there. Inspired, she moved to Washington, DC to work for the NWP. Anita nurtured her southern identity, and, like Helen Gardener, was known for her charm when lobbying legislators. However, her advocacy for suffrage was limited to white women. (McCandless, 2010) Paul asked Anita to become a national organizer and lead work for ratification. Anita ultimately became chairperson of the NWP in the 1940s and later worked for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The ERA called for the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex. It was passed by Congress in 1972, but was not ratified by the required number of states. The NWP appealed to Anita because she understood that states like South Carolina were too conservative to pass suffrage on their own, and

142 Analysis women in the state were not likely to be enfranchised without a federal amendment. In January 1915, the South Carolina statehouse judiciary committee debated a proposal for woman suffrage. The following year, state legislators debated it on the floor of the house. Some legislators argued that women did not need the right to vote because it was the duty of men to protect women, not for women to protect themselves. (Hudson, 2009)

Opposition to Woman Suffrage in South Carolina Two years later, suffrage resolutions were introduced in both the house and senate, and the state senate debated whether to hold a referendum in order to give voters the opportunity to decide. Those in favor argued that a state referendum was a more palatable approach than a federal amendment. Opponents argued that women did not want the vote and that it threatened gender roles and families. They claimed it would lead to divorce, as South Carolina was the only state in the nation that still prohibited divorce. The resolution failed in the senate and the house postponed consideration. White anti-suffragists argued that giving women the vote would “unsex” women who should remain in the home and leave politics to men. Furthermore, when it came to the federal amendment, opposition in South Carolina was typical of southern states that feared the amendment endangered white supremacy by enfranchising Black women. In one revealing account, James F. Byrnes, a US congressman, argued that the federal amendment threatened South Carolina’s ability to retain white supremacy and limit Black voting. He admitted that Black male voters were numerically larger than their registration numbers reflected, due to a lack of “fair registration” practices. He worried that if the Nineteenth Amendment passed, there would never be a review and repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment. (Hudson, 2009: 212) Byrnes wanted a review because he claimed that it might find the Fifteenth Amendment was illegitimate. According to Byrnes the state governments who voted on it were illegitimate because these were governments that included Black men during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War. In addition, Byrnes thought Black women would be more inclined to vote than white women. He noted that he had seen the NAACP’s Crisis magazine, which promoted educating and organizing to turn out women voters. Byrnes argued he knew that Black people in South Carolina read the Crisis; therefore, he feared it would have a galvanizing effect on them. Black women’s efforts to register in 1920 show he was right about their desire to vote. Some supporters therefore emphasized the state’s ability to enforce the same types of restrictions on Black women that had disenfranchised Black men. Paul defended the Nineteenth Amendment, writing, “Negro men cannot vote in South Carolina and therefore negro women could not if women were to vote in the nation. We are organizing white women in the South.” (Weiss, 2018: 272)

The NWP and NAWSA in SC, NM, and TX  143 The South Carolina legislature overwhelmingly voted against ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, 93–21 in the statehouse and 26–4 in the senate. White supremacy dominated the discourse. Although the federal amendment took effect in every state once it was ratified, South Carolina did not ratify it until 1969. At that time the legislature also voted to remove the word male from the state constitutional clause on voting, a measure that was approved by voters in 1970.

New Mexico Women Prioritize the Federal Amendment The NWP’s singular focus on the federal amendment had particular significance in states where enfranchisement by state law was unlikely. This included southern states, as well as states like New Mexico, where amending the state constitution was nearly impossible. In 1845, the United States annexed the Republic of Texas, resulting in a dispute with Mexico over the border between Texas (part of the United States) and Mexico and the Mexican–American War from 1846 to 1848. Afterward, under the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, Mexico ceded the land that became California, Nevada, Utah; most of New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado; and parts of Texas, Kansas, and Wyoming. Mexicans living on this land were given the right to become US citizens. They are referred to as Hispano/as to differentiate from Mexican Americans who later crossed a border to immigrate into the United States. In 1910, Congress allowed New Mexico territory to begin writing a state constitution in order to become a state, actually two states, New Mexico and Arizona. Suffragists in New Mexico held their first major campaign for women’s right to vote to be included in the new state constitution. There had been minimal organized suffrage activity in the territory prior to 1910, although some WCTU and women’s club members supported it. Along with the WCTU, clubwomen submitted a petition to the constitutional convention. Rather than full suffrage, the clubwomen successfully called for a limited right to vote for women for school boards and to hold office as school board members. They did not, however, get full suffrage rights. (Jensen, 1981) The state constitution declared that the right to vote in presidential and state elections could not be prohibited on the basis of religion, race, language, or color, without mentioning sex. Including language protected Hispanos, Spanish-speaking men who were among the Republican delegates to the convention. The state also ensured that there would not be separate schools for “children of Spanish descent.” Native Americans, however, if they lived on reservations or in Pueblos, did not pay taxes and therefore were not considered citizens, nor were they eligible to vote. By 1914, every western state, except New Mexico, granted women the right to vote in presidential elections. New Mexico’s constitution required three-quarters of the voters in each county to approve any changes to the

144 Analysis constitution regarding the franchise. Because this applied to an amendment to grant women the right to vote, it was nearly impossible to change the state constitution. Suffragists in New Mexico instead decided to focus their efforts on supporting a federal amendment.

Nina Otero-Warren Leads the New Mexico National Woman’s Party Due to the extreme difficulty in amending the state constitution, NAWSA organizers did not prioritize New Mexico in the Winning Plan. However, the NWP did. The first NWP representative reached out to the WCTU, and then to the more socially prominent women’s clubs, which were predominantly white. A second NWP organizer broadened her reach to include Hispana women from prominent families, like Maria Adelina Otero-Warren, known as Nina, and her cousin. Born in 1881, Otero-Warren came from a wealthy Hispano landowning family. The family-owned land that became part of New Mexico after the Mexican–American War. When she was two years old, her father was murdered by a European American over land rights. He had inherited extensive land with many sheep ranches through an original land grant from the Spanish government. Her father died in a confrontation with white settlers, who, after buying a portion of the land, tried to extend their boundaries with bogus court claims and violence. Despite US citizenship through the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, and their powerful numbers in New Mexico, Hispano landowners had to fight to retain their land and assert their political power. (Cahill, 2020) With her mother remarried and her extended family in powerful economic and political positions across the state, Otero-Warren was well-educated and independent-minded. After a short marriage ended, Otero-Warren lived with Mamie Meador, her partner, on their ranch named Las Dos, running a real estate and insurance company together. Her mother had been elected to the Santa Fe School Board, the only elected office women could hold in New Mexico. After her mother’s death, Otero-Warren served as school superintendent for many years, promoting bilingual education. In New Mexico, there were politically powerful Hispano men, including Otero-Warren’s uncle, and a large population of Hispano male voters. Therefore, it was important to recruit Spanish-speaking suffragists who could appeal to them. The NWP printed literature in Spanish and included Spanish speakers like Otero-Warren on programs to draw Hispano men to their meetings and rallies. Otero-Warren emphasized the duty that women had to protect their homes and their children. In 1916, a NWP organizer helped to create the New Mexico branch of the NWP. Otero-Warren was elected vice-chair. When the chairmanship opened the following year, Paul asked her to take over, and later credited her with winning ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in New

The NWP and NAWSA in SC, NM, and TX  145

Figure 16.1  Adelina Otero-Warren, 1923. Source: Library of Congress

Mexico. Otero-Warren traveled to Washington, DC at least twice, to meet with New Mexican politicians and NWP leaders. The NWP held a tea in her honor, with Paul and others present. On her return to Santa Fe, Otero-Warren reported on suffrage work at the governor’s mansion and chaired the political parties and platform subcommittee of the state ratification team. In 1919, she stepped down from leading the state NWP and chaired the New Mexico Republican State Women’s Committee, while still serving as country superintendent of schools and later even serving briefly as chair of the state board of health.

146 Analysis New Mexico’s congressional delegation voted for the Nineteenth Amendment. When the state held its special session in February 1920, last-minute resistance threw ratification in doubt. Otero-Warren and the other Republican suffragists worked to keep the legislators to their pledges. New Mexico became the 32nd state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.

Texas Women and Primary Election Voting Suffragists in Texas carefully negotiated politics in a state where the Democratic party dominated and concerns over race, immigration, and citizenship existed. As in many other states across the country, soon after the end of the Civil War, there was a short effort in Texas to enfranchise women. Women lobbied unsuccessfully for suffrage at state constitutional conventions held in 1868–1869 and again in 1875. In the 1880s, women’s activism grew through the WCTU. Eliza E. Peterson led the colored division of the state WCTU and advocated for woman suffrage. Peterson saw the vote as a tool to achieve temperance. White women formed a Texas Equal Rights Association affiliated with NAWSA in 1893, but it did not last long. White suffragists remained unorganized until the Equal Suffrage League of Houston was founded in 1903, followed by the Texas Woman Suffrage Association (which became the Texas Equal Suffrage Association, TESA). In 1907, suffragists unsuccessfully tried to interest the state in a constitutional amendment. Mexican American women organized in the early 1910s. Jovita Idar hoped that the victory in 1911 in California would motivate Texas women. Originally, a teacher and advocate for education for Mexican American children, she began writing for her father’s newspaper, La Cronica. Idar and other women participated in the First Mexican Congress held in 1911 in Laredo, a gathering that inspired them to organize around their feminist ideas. Idar wrote in favor of woman suffrage for La Cronica and other newspapers. She organized La Liga Femenil Mexicanista to support education for poor school children. In 1913, TESA reorganized under new leadership and narrowly missed winning a majority vote in the statehouse for a state constitutional amendment for woman suffrage in 1915. New leader Minnie Fisher Cunningham, the daughter of a state representative, grew up steeped in politics. She received a degree in pharmacy and was active in the Woman’s Protective Health Association, working for pure milk and other Progressive Era reforms. During the four years she led TESA, she used her comfort with and knowledge of politics to lobby legislators both in Texas and Washington, DC as NAWSA’s Congressional Committee secretary. Cunningham also traveled to western and southern states to promote ratification. She remained active in Democratic politics for decades and even ran for the senate and for governor of Texas. (McArthur, 2003) When Governor James Ferguson refused to support suffrage in the Texas Democratic party’s platform, a furious Cunningham led Texas suffragists to

The NWP and NAWSA in SC, NM, and TX  147 support an impeachment campaign against him for financial impropriety in 1917. Suffragists held an automobile tour around South Texas and organized a letter writing campaign. In addition, Cunningham secretly worked with Democratic party leaders, convincing them that women would support the anti-Ferguson campaign in exchange for the Democratic party supporting women’s right to vote in political party primary elections. Ferguson was impeached, but resigned before he was removed from office. (McArthur, 2003; Gunter, 2017) Obtaining the right to vote in primaries was easier to pass than full suffrage because it did not require a state constitutional amendment. Primary voting was important because the Democratic party dominated politics in the Texas. Therefore, voting in the primary was effectively a vote for the eventual winner of local and statewide offices. Suffragists convinced Ferguson’s successor, William Hobby, to call a special session in 1918 in which women received the right to vote in Texas primaries. Ferguson ran against Hobby in the July 1918 Democratic primary. Nearly 400,000 women registered to vote and rewarded Hobby with their votes. He won by more than 300,000 votes.

Organizing Black Women in Texas While Black women were excluded from TESA, there were Black suffragists at the local level in the state. The Galveston Negro Women’s Voter’s League and the Colored Welfare League of Austin both worked to register women in the primaries in 1918. They sued election officials after a literacy test and a poll tax for women voters took effect after these primaries, excluding most Black women from voting in future primaries. Maud Sampson Williams organized the El Paso Negro Woman’s Civic and Enfranchisement League (NWCEL) in 1918. Raised in Austin, Williams graduated from Prairie View State Normal College and began teaching in El Paso. A women’s club founder, she was also a charter member and vice president of the El Paso chapter of the NAACP. Early in 1918, club members voted to create a separate organization dedicated to woman suffrage. Sampson hosted club members and white women from the El Paso Equal Franchise League; they developed plans for the NWCEL. (BrannonWranosky, n.d.) Sampson first encountered difficulty when the county’s Democratic chairman refused to allow Black women to serve as election clerks in 1918. She also tried to enroll the NWCEL as an auxiliary to NAWSA. Her correspondence with NAWSA left her frustrated because NAWSA changed its rules to avoid having Black clubs directly join the national organization. Instead, they were required to join through TESA, effectively allowing state organizations to deny membership to Black women. Carrie Chapman Catt told white state leaders that it was better to not allow Sampson’s club to join. She noted that a suffrage victory would be easier if TESA did not have to deal with negative publicity around having a

148 Analysis Black club. She also advised that Cunningham should ask Black women not to embarrass TESA by applying for membership and thereby endangering the suffrage movement in the South. Cunningham tried to delay, suggesting that the club could not join until the next state convention (nearly a year later). She told Sampson that she hoped the federal amendment would already be passed by then, enfranchising all women. Despite these machinations, NWCEL focused on registering Black women and hosting speakers from local campaigns. Their work paid off, with Black women first in line to register in several El Paso precincts in 1920.

Woman Suffrage and Citizenship Voting Amendments in Texas Mexican Americans, who were legally considered white in Texas, were not denied the right to vote, as long as they were citizens. The new primary law required citizenship voting and eliminated “first paper voting.” Before this, male immigrants who had begun the naturalization process (filing their first papers), but had not become citizens, were eligible to vote. Citizenship voting was more complicated for women. At the time, women derived their citizenship status through marriage. Therefore, women who had married an immigrant could not vote unless their husbands naturalized and became citizens. Additionally, US-born women citizens lost their citizenship when they married noncitizens. Thus, the citizenship requirement prevented noncitizen immigrant men, as well as women with noncitizen husbands from voting. (Gunter, 2017) Democrats endorsed citizenship voting. Some thought that political operatives in southern Texas controlled Mexican and Mexican American votes, providing favors and benefits to workers in exchange for their votes. Democrats argued that citizenship voting would limit this problem by eliminating votes from the noncitizens among the workers. In January  1919, Governor Hobby endorsed a state constitutional amendment for full woman suffrage, as well as a prohibition amendment (just as the federal prohibition amendment was being debated and voted on in Congress). He and other Democrats believed that having a referendum on woman suffrage at the same time as one on prohibition would help to pass the latter. They were eager to enfranchise women in part to enlarge the number of voters whom they believed would vote in favor of prohibition. Like the primary voting law, the state constitutional amendment referendum also bundled woman suffrage and citizenship voting. This time progressive reformers in the Democratic party, led by Hobby, wanted to limit noncitizen immigrants from voting because they believed that immigrants typically voted against woman suffrage, prohibition, and other measures that progressives favored.

The NWP and NAWSA in SC, NM, and TX  149 Surprisingly, Cunningham did not actually want Hobby to put the proposed woman suffrage amendment in front of the state legislature for a vote. Cunningham carefully calculated whether it could succeed. She was in Washington, DC, lobbying the congressional delegation for the federal amendment, which seemed to be close to passing. She feared that a state campaign would be costly and ill-advised and that there was not enough time for a successful campaign to take place. Cunningham and Catt corresponded frequently as to how Texas fit into Catt’s Winning Plan. Texas was a winnable state in Catt’s judgment, and a large, important state. Suffragists needed to carefully strategize about how best either to win a state victory or to position the state to ratify the federal amendment. Hobby proceeded with the suffrage referendum, despite objections from Cunningham. At that point, NAWSA sent several organizers to help rally the state with speeches, including former NAWSA president Anna Howard Shaw. Because they were bundled together, Cunningham sometimes focused on promoting the citizenship requirement, arguing that it was not fair that American women did not have the vote, while noncitizen immigrants did. Women would not be able to vote on the amendment (having been granted only the right to vote in primaries), while immigrants who were not yet citizens could. Anti-suffragists, meanwhile, hoped that if a state amendment was defeated, it would justify the state refusing to ratify the federal amendment for woman suffrage should the amendment be passed by Congress. Though suffragists campaigned hard, Cunningham was right to be apprehensive. The woman suffrage and citizenship voting amendments lost by just over 25,000 votes (although the prohibition amendment passed). (Gunter, 2017) Despite this defeat, a month later the statehouse and senate voted to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, making Texas the ninth state to do so. Cunningham had been lobbying for it, while also working for the state amendment. When anti-suffragists questioned why the state should ratify the federal amendment when voters did not pass the state amendment, Cunningham blamed defeat on German and Mexican immigrant men. She claimed that the noncitizen immigrant men voted against woman suffrage because it was coupled with the citizenship voting amendment and they wanted to protect their vote.

Conclusion Suffragists in South Carolina, New Mexico, and Texas had to maneuver through state politics. In South Carolina, suffragists were unable to overcome deeply held traditional gender roles and white resistance to enfranchising Black women. Therefore, South Carolina did not pass a state suffrage law and voted against ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. While New Mexico women could not change their state constitution, led

150 Analysis by Nina Otero-Warren, they succeeded in winning ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In Texas, Minnie Cunningham successfully pushed for women to be able to vote in state primary elections through effective deal-making. Although the suffragists did not convince voters in the state to vote for a state suffrage amendment, Texas did ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. These state campaigns reflected the growing momentum in Washington, DC, to pass the Nineteenth Amendment.

17 Suffragists Win Support in Congress for a Federal Amendment

In April 1917, the United States entered World War I. Most Americans rallied to support the war effort, including suffragists. While women’s work in the battlefields was mostly limited to nursing injured soldiers, they supported the war from home. Suffragists led the effort to coordinate women’s war work, earning them respect for their patriotism. While there were fewer parades and rallies for suffrage, the lobbying work continued.

Suffragists Support World War I When fighting broke out in Europe, Americans originally preferred that the United States remain neutral. President Woodrow Wilson won his campaign for reelection in 1916, in part, by campaigning for keeping the United States out of the war. The Woman’s Peace Party was formed in 1915 to call for peace and the end to the war through diplomacy. They opposed the United States joining the war. Some of its members suggested that women were naturally more pacifist than men. NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt’s pushed the Executive Council to consider how they could continue suffrage work if the United States entered the war. On 5 February 1917, she wrote, If the worst comes, very serious problems confront us. Our suffrage work would unquestionably come to a temporary standstill. How shall we dispose of our headquarters, our workers, our plans? How shall we hold our organization and resources meanwhile, so that our movement will not lose its prestige and place among the political issues of our country? (Harper, 1922b, vol. 6: 721) With it likely that the United States would send troops to Europe, many women dropped their opposition and began to support the war in a display of patriotism. Suffragists had to decide whether to support the war or call for peace. At the NAWSA executive council meeting on 24 February,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-19

152 Analysis members voted 63 to 13 to send a letter to the President and Congress expressing the organization’s support should the nation enter the war. With no intention of laying aside our constructive forward work to secure the vote for the womanhood of this country as “the right protective of other rights,” we offer our services in the event that they should be needed, and, in so far as we are authorized, we pledge the loyal support of our more than two million members. (Harper, 1922b, vol. 6: 723) During the war, women typically focused on helping soldiers by knitting socks and providing other supplies for them. They sold Liberty Bonds, government war bonds that raised money to fund the war. Facing a decrease in commercial food production due to the war, women also promoted home victory gardens and taught other women how to can and preserve homegrown food. NAWSA declared that it would cooperate with the Red Cross which led nursing and other care for soldiers, and conduct Americanization classes to teach immigrants about American culture and civics and how to speak English, in order to unite the nation in patriotism. NAWSA established a War Service Department, chaired by NAWSA vice president Katharine McCormick, to coordinate NAWSA’s work for the war effort. She also served on the Woman’s Committee of the Council of National Defense, along with NAWSA’s former president Anna Howard Shaw and Catt. The Council oversaw and coordinated women’s support for the war around the nation. With men serving in the military, more women entered commercial agricultural and industrial work. The NAWSA War Service Department created an employment bureau for women and addressed challenges these women faced. The department’s food production chair noted that it “arranged with the largest overalls company in the United States to design and put out a suitable farm uniform for women, which was extensively sold and used.” The department advocated for reasonable work hours and “equal pay for equal work.” It contacted the Departments of War, Navy, State, and Commerce to complain about lower pay scales for women, as well as their exclusion from clerical jobs traditionally held by men. (Harper, 1922b, vol. 6: 728–729) NAWSA also raised $178,000 for American hospitals in France and sent 74 women to serve as nurses and doctors. In the midst of all that NAWSA was doing to support the war effort, suffragists did not want the suffrage campaign to disappear. In Indiana they knitted yellow into every article of clothing to represent suffrage. McCormick noted that while the suffragists were devoting themselves to war-service they did not lay down arms for their cause, which had reached a stage where further delay was impossible. There was a general tacit understanding

Suffragists Win Support in Congress  153 that, while the war needs of their country were and should be uppermost, their hands must never relinquish the suffrage throttle, and the double tasks of war work and suffrage work were undertaken in a fine spirit of devotion to both. (Harper, 1922b, vol. 6: 735) Although suffragists were accused of disloyalty by some, their support for the war effort proved their patriotism to others. Many men began to argue that women had demonstrated that they deserved the right to vote. McCormick concluded that the war work was “a principal factor” in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. (Harper, 1922b, vol. 6: 737) As Illinois suffragist Grace Wilbur Trout noted, it was essential that women realized “it is as vitally important to vote for one’s country as to fight for one’s country.” (Trout, 1920: 179)

Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in Congress Suffrage lobbying continued. On 24 September 1917, the US House of Representatives voted to establish a Committee on Woman Suffrage. The night before the House vote, Wilson hosted Democratic members at the White House to encourage a Yes vote. After the vote in the House, Helen Gardener helped other lobbyists appeal to the Senate. She wrote to Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi, reviving the argument she had made to Wilson. She stated that passing state amendments by voter referendum would require women to lobby all voters (including Black men), instead of just the legislators in the state (all white) who would vote to ratify a federal amendment. Williams refused to budge from his anti-suffrage position because he feared it would be harder to prevent Black women from voting than it had been to disenfranchise Black men in the state. He believed that the violence used to intimidate Black men would not be a good tactic against Black women because it would look bad. (Hamlin, 2020) Gardener visited the White House in person and telephoned several times a week. On 30 September 1918, Wilson went to the Capitol and addressed the entire Senate. He argued that women had been partners in World War I and thus deserved the right to vote. Meanwhile, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed approximately 675,000 people in the United States, was creating campaigning difficulties for suffragists. The need to social distance and avoid crowds resulted in the canceling of some fundraising events and large rallies. Even Catt was sick with the flu in October 1918. She wrote to suffragists to encourage them, noting that the flu was another obstacle for them to overcome. Despite Wilson’s support, the Senate defeated the amendment in a vote that took place just before many legislators were also struck with the flu and congressional business slowed to a halt. Additional rallies and speeches had to be canceled just before the November midterm election. “Everything

154 Analysis conspires against woman suffrage. Now it is the influenza which is conspiring to stop the spread of the suffrage doctrine . . . ,” said a suffragist. (New Orleans Times-Picayune, 10 October 1918: 15) The Illinois Equal Suffrage Association had to seat delegates four feet apart at its October convention, and decided to exclude the general public from attending. Suffragists had to rely on their longstanding tactics of letter writing and newspaper advertising campaigns, rather than on the big parades so popular just a few years earlier. NAWSA provided pamphlets for door-to-door canvassing. Women’s support for the war, along with their role as nurses during the pandemic, elevated their contributions to their country. (New York Times, 20 April 2020) Women gained new hope when the 1918 election ousted two of the Senators who had voted no for suffrage.

Suffragists Burn Wilson in Effigy Alice Paul turned up the heat on the White House pickets on 1 January 1919, lighting “Watchfires of Freedom” in the park across from the White House. Members of the NWP burned speeches that Wilson was making in Paris as he negotiated the peace treaty at the end of World War I. His rhetoric about democracy in Europe, they declared, did not apply to American women. They were arrested for lighting fires in a public park, briefly jailed, released, and returned to watch the fires burn. (Zahniser and Fry, 2014) With the Senate set to vote on the amendment in February 1919, Paul requested that NWP leader Sue Shelton White burn Wilson in effigy. This type of political protest was common during the American Revolution, when colonists burned likenesses of British governors and officials. As usual, Paul designed a spectacle. Seventy-five women processed from headquarters toward the White House, through Lafayette Park. Louisine Havemeyer, a wealthy New York widow, led the procession, carrying the American flag. The other marchers held colorful banners similar to the White House picket banners. At the end of the procession women carried an urn, logs, and kindling. They stopped in front of the White House gates, with thousands of spectators looking on. Havemeyer spoke, the urn was lit, and White dropped the paper doll resembling Wilson into the flames. White, Havemeyer, and three dozen other women were arrested. They chose five days in jail over a five-dollar fine, except for Havemeyer, who paid the fine and left jail more quickly. Despite the spectacle, in February 1919, the resolution lost again. In March, the Northeastern Federation of Women’s Clubs, composed of Black women’s clubs, applied for cooperative membership in NAWSA. A  NAWSA official explained to them that the amendment was close to passage as more and more southern legislators became willing to vote for it in appreciation for women’s war work. Therefore, if NAWSA admitted the federation and white southern suffragists protested, NAWSA might lose the southern legislators’ votes for the amendment. She asked them to apply again after the amendment passed.

Suffragists Win Support in Congress  155

Congress Votes for the Nineteenth Amendment Finally, suffragists won over enough legislators. The Nineteenth Amendment, stating “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be abridged or denied on account of sex,” passed the House on 24 May 1919 by a vote of 304–89, and passed the Senate on 4 June 1919 by a vote of 56–25. In both September and October, President Wilson had two cerebral embolisms, the first while traveling and the second in the White House. Paralyzed on his left side, he was an invalid. His wife, Edith, took over, along with his secretary, Tumulty. They kept him out of sight claiming nervous exhaustion. The public was unaware of what had happened and the extent of his disability. Edith Wilson read all his correspondence and reports, informed him of what she thought was important, and then conveyed his response through form letters to government officials. She was not a suffragist, and she was enraged by the way the picketers treated her husband. However, the president had already come out in favor of the amendment, in particular assisting Catt, Gardener, and NAWSA. As women lobbied the states for ratification of the amendment, Tumulty ensured that Catt’s requests for assistance continued to be fulfilled.

Conclusion After decades of advocating for the right to vote, and an intense lobbying effort for the last half dozen years, suffragists had finally convinced enough representatives and senators to vote for woman suffrage. They combined personal lobbying of congressmen and the President, with spectacular rallies like the NWP’s watchfires of freedom, despite the limitations that World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic imposed on their work. Many suffragists credited their patriotic support of World War I as the deciding factor that pushed male politicians to vote for woman suffrage. Now, they had to convince three-quarters of the states to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment in order for it to take effect and grant women the right to vote in every state.

18 Tennessee The Thirty-Sixth State to Ratify the Nineteenth Amendment

Once the Nineteenth Amendment was passed by both branches of Congress, it went to the states, where legislators in three-quarters of the states, that is, 36 states, were required to ratify it in order for it to take effect. Catt’s Winning Plan counted on states where women already had the right to vote through state law and where local momentum was in their favor to ratify first. NAWSA and the NWP understood that getting enough states to ratify would be extremely difficult, especially given strong resistance to suffrage in the South.

The Road to Thirty-Six States Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin immediately ratified the Nineteenth Amendment on 10 June  1919. Wisconsin delivered its ratification certification to Washington, DC, by fast train in order to be first. Seventeen states eagerly ratified in the first three months after Congress passed the amendment. However, winning ratification in the other states was clearly going to be difficult. The governor of Louisiana was so strongly against ratification that he tried to organize southern states against it. Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Delaware all refused to ratify. Only three southern states ratified it before August 1920: Arkansas, Texas, and Kentucky. In the South, anti-suffragists’ constant references to Black women voting and race to stoke anti-suffragism was far more effective than the strategies of white suffragists, who, unable or unwilling to directly reject their message, tried instead to downplay or ignore race and Black women. The western states were also difficult to convince initially, despite having the right to vote at the state level. Only five of the 15 states where women had full suffrage had ratified the amendment in late 1919. By the summer of 1920, 35 states had ratified the amendment. Only one more had to ratify to reach the three-quarters majority of states needed. Connecticut, Vermont, Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee had yet to take any action. In Connecticut, despite an active suffrage movement, the Republican governor refused to call the legislature to vote on ratification. DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-20

Tennessee  157 Vermont and Florida also refused to call a special session of the legislature needed for the vote. Catt complained that it was as if the Republican and Democratic parties had made a pact to stop at 35 states and to refuse to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. North Carolina was predicted to reject the Nineteenth Amendment when it began its special session on 10 August 1920. Anti-suffragists argued that the Nineteenth Amendment threatened white supremacy and states’ rights. On 17 August, the state senate voted to postpone action until 1921, defeating a resolution to ratify.

Tennessee: The Long Road to Ratification All hope was now pinned on Tennessee, the only state that was still planning to vote on ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Tennessee had limited organized support for suffrage before the 1906. The leader of the WCTU in the 1880s had helped start ten local suffrage leagues and the Tennessee Equal Rights Association in 1897. But after she resigned due to poor health, suffrage activity declined for the next several years. The Tennessee suffrage movement began to reemerge in 1906, with the formation of a new state Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association. Cities each formed their own leagues. By 1917, there were over 70 city leagues, a high number compared to many other southern states. Tennessee hosted the NAWSA convention in 1914. Competition between Nashville and Chattanooga led to the temporary establishment of two competing state associations, reunited in 1918. (Weiss, 2018) A limited suffrage bill for municipal and presidential elections failed in 1917, then succeeded two years later. In accordance with Catt’s Winning Plan, suffragists realized that persuading the legislature to grant presidential suffrage would be easier and faster than trying to pass a state constitutional amendment for full suffrage. Women’s support for World War I helped sway voters, as did an aboutface by state legislator Seth Walker. Formerly against woman suffrage, he declared he had decided to support presidential suffrage so that white women would have the vote that Black men already had. Once the law for presidential suffrage was modified to include a poll tax for women to match the one already in place for men, it was affirmed by the Tennessee Supreme Court. (Weiss, 2018) Now that they could vote in presidential and local elections, an unusual coalition of Black and white women in Nashville coordinated to turn out women’s votes in the 1919 municipal election. White women wanted to show that women would vote in large numbers and could elect progressive reform candidates. They hoped to pass reforms ranging from hiring women police officers to social welfare laws to equal pay for women teachers. They were willing to form an alliance with Black women to do so. (Goodstein, 1998) Organized Black women, who also wanted temperance and other social welfare services to benefit Black citizens, were willing to work with white

158 Analysis women on progressive reform measures. This was because Nashville had a substantial Black middle class and a history of biracial support for two Black community institutions, Bethlehem House and the Black branch of the YWCA. Dr. Mattie Coleman, a medical doctor and leader in the Christian Methodist Episcopal church, had experience working with white Methodist women, especially supporting the Black YWCA. Coleman’s closest colleague was Juno Frankie Pierce, a founder of the Nashville Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. By the 1910s they were actively advocating for child welfare benefits, including funding for a state vocational school for Black delinquent girls who were jailed with adults. Coleman and Pierce worked with a white suffragist, Catherine Kenney, who was pleased when 2,500 Black women registered to vote in 1919. Many Black women voted for Progressive Democratic candidates. They were rewarded when the girls’ vocational school was founded and funded, with Pierce serving as superintendent for the first 18  years, followed by Coleman. Pierce was invited to speak at the first convention of the Tennessee branch of the League of Women Voters (LWV) in the spring of 1920. Pierce explained that Black women were also interested in “moral uplift” and wanted justice, which she referred to as a “square deal.” (Weiss, 2018: 363) Kenney asked Coleman and Pierce to organize Black women to advocate for ratification, with official roles in the LWV’s ratification committee. Pierce, however, stopped participating in lobbying for the amendment a few months later, perhaps because the debate over whether to ratify was fraught with concerns about Black women voting.

Suffragists Go to Tennessee Anticipating that the governor would call a special session to vote on ratification, suffragists traveled across the state. They lobbied legislators in their homes, turned up the pressure on the governor, and met with anyone else influential in the state – businessmen, newspaper editors, and politicians. They also worked to obtain statements of support from current President Wilson and the Democratic and Republican candidates to be the next president, Warren G. Harding and James Cox, to help pressure legislators to vote for it. The governor announced he would convene the ratification session on 9 August 1920. As suffragists organized, so did anti-suffragists. Josephine Pearson was president of the Tennessee State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage and of the Southern Women’s League for the Rejection of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. She argued that women’s place was in the home and woman suffrage threatened white supremacy. A former high school principal and professor of English, she was steeped in Lost Cause ideology and white supremacy. “The fate of white civilization in the South may hang on a few votes either way,” she wrote, “and YOUR action may be the deciding

Tennessee  159 influence with YOUR representatives, so please let your neighbors and your representatives know where you stand in this great battle for State Rights, Honor, and the safety of Southern civilization.” (Weiss: 255) Suffragists faced steep opposition from businessmen in the railroad, textile, and liquor industries, who all feared that women voters would vote for regulation to end corruption and protect workers. With the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting alcohol, anti-suffragists also did not want women voters to take a closer look at how this law was not strictly enforced in Tennessee. Both NAWSA and NWP descended on Nashville. The NWP relied on a small number of key organizers, including Sue Shelton White, a native of Tennessee and the chairwoman of the Tennessee NWP. In 1917, while still a member of the NAWSA state branch, White originally opposed the White House pickets. But when NWP organizer Maud Younger was called un-American and not allowed to speak in Memphis, White was appalled. (Weiss, 2018) She persuaded the mayor in Jackson to let Younger speak and then traveled with her to other cities for five days to ensure her free speech. The Jackson police chief threatened to arrest Younger if she criticized President Wilson. White herself was accused of being un-American as she traveled with the NWP organizer. White decided to join the White House pickets to protest a lack of free speech. NAWSA state leaders also accused White of disloyalty to NAWSA. The accusation reached Catt and the two corresponded. After defending her work to protect NWP’s free speech, White complained that NAWSA’s Winning Plan did not include the South. The NWP, on the other hand, was at least sending organizers south. White quit NAWSA and joined the NWP. Jailed for burning Wilson in effigy at the White House protests, she resorted to a hunger strike. Later, she joined a group of suffragists who had been jailed and were touring the country giving suffrage speeches on the Prison Special tour. White was quickly elevated to leading her state NWP division and editing The Suffragist magazine. White led the NWP contingent during the Tennessee ratification fight. She was in constant contact with Paul by mail and telegram, while Paul remained in Washington, DC, fundraising. Catt went to Nashville to lead NAWSA’s support for ratification. She met with legislators and businessmen when she first arrived in Nashville. However, poor health as well as personal attacks on her  – as a radical outsider – ultimately confined her mostly to the Hotel Hermitage, awaiting updates. Tennessee suffragists affiliated with NAWSA led the lobbying effort. They struggled to unify, as Democratic and Republican women, as well as contingents from Memphis, Knoxville and Nashville all jockeyed for leadership. To project confidence in victory, Catt prematurely stated that she had the votes to ratify. Suffragists from both NAWSA and the NWP became increasingly nervous as lawmakers peeled away from the list of legislators

160 Analysis who promised to vote in favor of the amendment. Tennessee Republicans were almost evenly divided on suffrage. Democrats in the state were also fractured and the governor struggled to keep them in line. Neither presidential candidate Cox nor Harding provided a strong enough pro-suffrage message to Tennessee legislators to pressure them to vote to ratify. Cox, the Democratic candidate, in part worried that Black women in his home state of Ohio would turn out to vote for Republicans if enfranchised, enabling the Republican party to advance in the state. Anti-suffragists in Nashville opened a museum in their headquarters in the Hotel Hermitage. Its exhibits featured copies of the force bills, laws that were debated in congress and would have required enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; a first edition copy of the controversial Woman’s Bible that listed Catt as an author; and photographs and other evidence linking Susan B. Anthony and the suffrage movement to Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist movement, and passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. The museum represented the emphasis of anti-suffragists on adherence to traditional gender roles and the defense of white supremacy to fight the Nineteenth Amendment.

Ratification at Last On 9 August, the Tennessee house and senate began meeting, separately. After days of debate, and a failed motion to delay in the house, the voting finally began. On 13 August, the senate overwhelmingly passed the ratification resolution, 25 to four. Despite the 62 pledges that suffragists had received from legislators, the ratification vote was close in the House. Speaker of the House Seth Walker, who, despite an earlier pledge to vote in favor, changed his mind and now lobbied against ratification. With the news that North Carolina had postponed their vote, Walker argued that Tennessee should not have the power to enfranchise the whole country when there was opposition to it by many, especially in the South. He even brought up a letter from Black women in California that stated they voted more frequently than white women as a reason to resist woman suffrage. Walker tried to table the resolution, but his motion failed to be approved. The vote to ratify therefore followed. The suffragists counted votes, with anti-suffragist legislators wearing red boutonnieres and pro-suffragists wearing yellow boutonnieres. Harry Burn, a 24-year-old who was up for reelection, changed his mind at the last moment. Despite wearing a red rose, he voted Yes. He had received a letter from his mother, who told him to “Hurrah and vote for suffrage and don’t keep them in doubt. . . . Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt” and vote for ratification. (Weiss, 2018: 584) On 24 August, the governor signed the ratification certificate and sent it to Washington, DC, where two days later, the secretary of state signed it immediately. Although the Nineteenth Amendment took effect on 26 August 1920 in every state, the states which had not ratified eventually did pass a symbolic

Tennessee  161 vote to ratify the amendment. Over the next three years, Connecticut, Vermont, and Delaware also ratified. Maryland followed in 1941, Virginia in 1952, Alabama in 1953, Florida and South Carolina in 1969, Georgia and Louisiana in 1970, North Carolina in 1971, and Mississippi in 1984.

Conclusion Suffragists from both NAWSA and NWP, and anti-suffragists all descended on Tennessee in the summer of 1920. The vote was close and included the last-minute change of mind by Harry Burn, but in the end it was successful. With ratification from Tennessee, suffragists had finally persuaded men to vote for women to be enfranchised. Despite opposition, much of which was based on white supremacy; it was a southern state that delivered the final vote. The Nineteenth Amendment prohibited states from denying the right of citizens to vote on the basis of sex. After decades of activism by millions of women across the country, suffragists celebrated their victory. The victory was bittersweet, however. Despite the Nineteenth Amendment, many women of color were not allowed to register to vote due to various factors.

Part III

Assessment

19 Conclusion The Nineteenth Amendment and Voting Rights From 1920 to the Present

The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in August 1920, with a presidential election just months away. Women around the country were eager to register and vote for the first time. However, many women of color were not allowed to vote, either due to their lack of citizenship status or because they were prevented from registering in southern states by the same tactics that had disfranchised Black men.

Black Women in the South Resistance to Black women voting was acute in the South. Stories from various cities across the region demonstrate that only in some areas did large numbers of Black women succeed in registering and voting. In general, however, most Black women in the region were denied the right to register. (Gidlow, 2018) In Columbia, South Carolina on the first day of registration in September 1920, over 100 Black women lined up to register. The registrars waited on white women first. They delayed registering Black women for six to eight hours to try to limit the number processed on the first day. When Black women returned the next day, the registrars employed a lawyer to help them prevent Black women from voting by testing them for the literacy requirement. The women, who were college-educated, were erroneously asked to read and explain passages from the law code rather than the state constitution. Furthermore, the registrar tried to humiliate the women by selecting passages that included references to sexual crimes. Regardless of their answers, the women were told they failed the test and denied the right to vote. (Hudson, 2009) Thirty-two women bravely worked with a lawyer and president of the Columbia NAACP to mount an appeal against the Board of Registration of Richland County, which included the city of Columbia. The national NAACP was particularly interested in encouraging Black women to register in South Carolina because they did not have the additional hurdle of paying a poll tax. Women were exempt from the poll tax that men were required to pay. When the national NAACP supported the effort, some of the women asked the organization to refrain from publicizing their efforts because the DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-22

166 Assessment women feared violent reprisal against themselves and their families. Ultimately only 136 Black women in the county successfully registered. In Beaufort, South Carolina, where the population was largely Black, the registration board refused to meet in September. The deadline for registration was 30 days before the 2 November  1920 election, giving women only the first few days of October to register. This effectively rendered the vast majority of women in the county unable to register and vote. Eight white women petitioned to register. Behind the scenes, white politicians convinced the eight women to drop their petitions. They feared that if only white petitioners were allowed to vote, violence might erupt on Election Day when Black residents realized the white women were voting. In neighboring North Carolina, clubwoman and suffragist Charlotte Hawkins Brown was determined to register women to vote. Brown used literature from the NACW and organized women through their local clubs and branches of the NAACP. In Salisbury, when registration opened in October, their strategy was to wait out the first two weeks. Registrars were therefore surprised when Black women showed up in groups on the next to last Saturday of registration. (Gilmore, 1996) Registrars administered literacy tests, which some Black women passed. The following Saturday, the registrars were better prepared. They separated Black and white women, failed Black women when they could, and slowed the process down enough to turn away many at the end of the day. According to newspaper reports, 119 Black women succeeded in registering in Salisbury, although the voting registration records listed only nine. Black women made similar efforts to organize for registering to vote across North Carolina. However, they met with very limited success. In Greensboro, 94 Black women and 190 Black men registered; in Asheville, 600 Black women attempted to register, but less than 75 were allowed to. Across the South, Black women had similar experiences. They attempted to register to vote, and while some succeeded, many were denied by registrars who stalled, selectively enforced literacy tests, or prevented Black women from voting in other ways. In the North, Black women did not encounter the same resistance as in the South. Black women had already proved their political voting power in northern states like New York and Illinois in elections before 1920; they continued to vote in large numbers.

Immigration, Race, and Citizenship For other women of color, a key question that determined whether they would be allowed to vote was citizenship. Asian immigrants were prohibited by the Naturalization Act of 1790 from naturalizing (becoming a citizen). Because they could not naturalize, they could not vote. The children of Asian immigrants who were born in the United States were citizens according to American law, which grants citizenship to those who are born on United States soil.

Conclusion  167 Chinese immigrants, who initially overwhelmingly settled in California beginning in the late 1840s, faced obstacles marrying and having children in the United States. Immigrants from China were initially predominantly male, a common trend for many immigrant groups in which men came to earn money. They then used this money to make a better life for their families upon their return home or to bring their families to the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 severely restricted immigration. It prevented Chinese men from returning to China to marry and then reentering the United States with their Chinese brides. In addition, Chinese men living in California could not marry white women due to state laws banning such marriages. Japanese immigration to the United States began in the late nineteenth century, several decades after Chinese immigration. The United States reached an informal agreement with Japan to limit Japanese immigration to the United States in 1907. Japanese immigrant men remained in the United States and married women, referred to as picture brides, who were still living in Japan. Once married, the women were able to circumvent the limits on immigration and obtain permission to enter. Thus both Chinese and Japanese immigrants faced restrictions on emigrating to the United States and on attaining citizenship and the right to vote. They even faced difficulty marrying and having children, who, if they were born in the United States would be citizens and therefore would not be prevented from voting. During World War II, in a show of allyship with China, Congress passed the Magnuson Act, which repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act and allowed for Chinese immigrants to naturalize. The McCarran–Walter Act of 1952 finally repealed the clause in the Naturalization Act of 1790 that had limited naturalization to “free white persons.” Now, all immigrants could naturalize regardless of race. Asian and other women of color who immigrated to the United States could finally become citizens and vote. In 1920, approximately one-third of Native Americans did not have the right to vote because they were considered “wards of the nation,” not citizens. They were “wards of the nation” because the United States stated that Native Americans were under federal guardianship. Whether Native Americans were considered wards was related to tribal affiliation, because the federal government considered some tribes less “civilized” than others and thus not deserving of citizenship. Some Native American women hesitated to try and become recognized as citizens and vote because they feared it would endanger their sovereign status as Native Americans, and therefore imperil their tribal land claims. Native American tribes are recognized as having the power of self-government and hold lands in trusts as a tribe. Other Native women focused on increasing voting rights for women within tribal elections. (Cahill, 2020) The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 granted all Native Americans born in the United States (or territories) citizenship – and the right to vote – without stripping them of their tribal land. However, registrars sometimes denied

168 Assessment them the right to vote anyway, claiming that Native Americans remained under federal guardianship. In Arizona, it was not until 1948 that the state supreme court ruled against this tactic. Mexican Americans who lived on the land ceded to the United States at the conclusion of the Mexican–American War in 1845 were given the opportunity to become citizens. Therefore, despite facing discrimination, their right to vote allowed for some measure of political power. In New Mexico, Nina Otero-Warren encouraged women to move from the Republican Women’s Committee and into the more powerful state Republican committee, including positions on its executive committee. Otero-Warren was one of 18 Hispana women, out of 57 women, who were placed on various subcommittees of the Republican committee. She was elected state vice-chair of the state Republican party and spoke out regarding the need to appeal to Spanish-speaking women voters. Otero-Warren believed these women would be particularly concerned about issues dealing with both working hours and conditions, especially for women and children, including child labor laws and salaries for teachers. In 1921, the state amended its constitution to allow women to hold office (this process was easier than one which made changes to the franchise). Otero-Warren ran for the US Congress in 1922. She won her primary but lost the election. Although she lost, she continued to work with the Republican party. (Cahill, 2020) Meanwhile, the right to vote for other Latina women depended on citizenship and where they lived. For example, women in Puerto Rico gained the right to vote in 1929, although the law had a literacy clause that was not removed until 1935. Additionally, women in American territories waited longer for the right to vote. For example, women in the US Virgin Islands were not enfranchised until 1935; women and men did not obtain voting rights in Guam until 1950.

Black Women Appeal to White Women for Assistance Frustrated with the barriers to voting they encountered, Black women appealed to white women for assistance in the 1920s. Both of the former major suffrage organizations failed to help. In 1920, NAWSA voted to disband and become the League of Women Voters (LWV), a nonpartisan educational organization. Addie Hunton, a Black suffragist and YWCA leader, approached the LWV president, Maud Wood Park, asking if Black women could address the organization about Black women’s voting rights. Park agreed to provide time for a representative of the NAACP to address the executive committee. In response, southern white members of the LWV organized and insisted that the issue should not be raised at the convention. They were determined to wield power by coming together as a bloc and threatening to veto any resolutions they opposed that were introduced at the next LWV convention.

Conclusion  169 As a compromise, rather than having Black women address the convention, Hunton and Park persuaded the executive committee to appoint a commission to study how Black women’s rights under the Nineteenth Amendment were being violated. Black women faced even greater resistance when they asked white women in the NWP to help them overcome obstacles to their right to vote. Alice Paul refused to allow Black suffragist and clubwoman Mary Talbert to speak to the next NWP convention as a representative of the NACW. Paul argued that anti-lynching was not a feminist issue and that the NACW was a race organization, not a women’s organization. Paul also did not want to upset white southern members. Talbert, Hunton, and Mary Terrell kept trying to persuade the NWP to appoint a committee to investigate the difficulties Black women were experiencing when they tried to register to vote. Hunton solicited Black women to go to Washington, DC to meet with Paul. Ultimately 60 Black women from 14 states came to Washington, DC, ready to attend the NWP convention. They went to NWP headquarters and waited until Paul agreed to meet them, presenting a letter in which they argued, “No women are free until all are free.” (Cahill, 2020: 216) Paul refused to meet with them until they threatened to picket the convention, as she had once picketed the White House. She allowed Terrell to present the statement to the Resolutions committee. Terrell knew Paul and members of the NWP from participating in the White House pickets. Terrell pleaded for the women present to work to enfranchise Black women, especially those in the South, who not only were disenfranchised but also faced lynching and segregation. Terrell’s resolution asked for the NWP to form a committee to pressure Congress to address these issues. Some white allies supported Terrell, but white women from Louisiana and South Carolina spoke against the resolution. It failed. Paul’s attitude, that this was a race issue, and not a sex issue, prevailed. This episode showed that the Paul and the majority of NWP members did not understand the intersectional experiences of Black women. In the South, Black women also appealed directly to white women. They invited two white women to attend the NACW convention held in Alabama in the spring of 1920. After the NACW convention, these white women met with a small group of leading Black clubwomen leaders, including Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Lugenia Burns Hope, and Marion Birnie Wilkinson, among others, at the home of Margaret Murray Washington. Afterward, the Black women wrote a statement on interracial cooperation and the needs of Black women. (Gilmore, 1996) They held a larger interracial meeting in Memphis in October 1920, just before women were able to vote for the first time. A white woman edited the statement when she read it at the meeting. She weakened a condemnation of lynching. In addition, she removed a strong preamble demanding for Black women all the same privileges and rights that white women had, as well as a resolution in favor of Black people voting. Black women had

170 Assessment stated, “We believe that if there is ever to be any justice before the law, the Negro must have the right to exercise the vote.” Hope, Wilkinson and Brown were incensed. Black women later printed the booklet themselves, revising the statement to read, “We regard the ballot as the democratic and orderly method of correcting abuses and protecting the rights of citizens.” The booklet asked white women to “indicate their sanction for the ballot for all citizens.” (Johnson, 2007: 82) At the Memphis meeting, the women organized themselves into a Committee on Women’s Work of the new Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC) with branches around the Southeast. The CIC was an interracial regional organization formed in 1919 to improve conditions for and lessen white violence against Black people in the South, though not to challenge segregation itself. Wilkinson sent the full statement to members of the South Carolina state division of the CIC to be sure they understood the full scope of Black women’s demands, including the right to vote. (Johnson, 2007)

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 Given the hurdles to voting that Black women and men faced and the recognition that political power was intertwined with social and economic power, voting was a key priority in the modern Civil Rights movement from the late 1940s through the early 1970s. Women’s ability to vote was limited in southern states, due in part to poll tax requirements. States with poll taxes had lower overall turnout than states without them. The tax hit both Black and white women harder than men, both because male veterans were exempt and because families who struggled to afford more than one poll tax often prioritized paying for men in the household. Southern white legislators resisted the movement to abolish the poll tax for the same reason they had resisted woman suffrage – they did not want to increase Black voting power. Women, including Terrell, organized the biracial National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax in 1941, but the group was eventually accused of communism during the 1950s. Such accusations were common in the 1950s; they were used to discredit and damage liberal organizations. Poll taxes were finally outlawed in 1964. Women played key roles in voting rights activism during the Civil Rights movement. For decades since 1920, Black women were rejected by registrars when they tried to register to vote. If they succeeded in registering, they were threatened with violence and loss of employment. Black women understood how difficult, and how important, it was to vote. They led many voter registration drives during the Civil Rights movement. Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper who was viciously beaten after she registered to vote, co-founded and led the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. When the Democratic party prevented Black Mississippians from voting in the primary, they voted instead for the Freedom

Conclusion  171

Figure 19.1  Fannie Lou Hamer, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegate, at the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 1964. Source: Leffler, W. K. Library of Congress

Party, which then fought to be seated at the national Democratic party convention. Hamer delivered a powerful speech challenging the all-white Mississippi Democratic party delegation by asking why Black Americans had to face violence when they tried to vote. (Document 23) Victoria Gray, a founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Party, declared her intent to run for office against the white senator from Mississippi, who advocated against Black voting rights. Many other Black women led local efforts in Alabama and other states to register Black voters and protest political oppression. (Blain, 2021; Lee, 1999)

172 Assessment Women were among the marchers from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, who were viciously beaten as they peacefully protested for voting rights. President Lyndon B. Johnson had to send 1,900 members of the Alabama National Guard under federal control, FBI agents, and federal marshals to protect the marchers as they resumed the march. Afterward, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which outlawed the discriminatory voting practices that the southern states had adopted to prevent Black people from voting.

The Women’s Rights Movement In the 1920s, women in the NWP called for an equal rights amendment stating, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” Labor activists fought the amendment because they had succeeded in passing protective labor legislation for women and feared it would prohibit these laws. Despite opposition to the amendment, women labor activists continued to fight for women’s rights, including equal pay, for decades. In the early 1960s, a new women’s rights movement emerged which included many labor leaders and women from the Civil Rights movement. For some, just as anti-slavery activism had provided the impetus and language to call for women’s rights, the Civil Rights movement provided new motivation and opportunity for women to demand the end of both racism and sexism. A diverse coalition of women founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. NOW focused on employment discrimination and many other legal issues. Women also examined their status in society, as well as expectations about their role in marriage and family life. Using the phrase “the personal is political,” they publicly fought against domestic violence, rape, and other issues that had previously been thought of as private. Further, they called for new opportunities for women in the workplace and fought against the idea that women’s ambitions should be limited to housework and childcare. As with previous women’s activism, women of color were both within and excluded from the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Just as Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, and other Black women had tried to draw attention to their experiences of racism and sexism, Black feminists in the 1960s and 1970s again called for a recognition of the ways in which they experienced both. Women in the Combahee River Collective, a Black lesbian feminist organization in Boston in the late 1970s, issued a statement explaining that they found the women’s rights movement and the Civil Rights movement both inadequate to addressing the challenges they faced as Black women. Members explained that they fought a range of oppression simultaneously as Black lesbians. (Taylor, 2012) Fighting for equality in the twenty-first century must be an inclusive movement that champions social justice and human rights. Many women’s

Conclusion  173 rights activists remain influenced by Ida B. Wells’ statement after the 1913 parade in Washington, DC, when she called for women to stand up for their principles, to ensure equality for women, to be actively anti-racist, and to fight for human rights for people everywhere.

Conclusion The passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 was an important milestone in the history of American democracy. It took decades of activism on the part of suffragists to achieve this victory. However, it was not a complete victory because not all women were enfranchised. Once the Nineteenth Amendment passed, women did not vote as a bloc for one issue or for one party in the United States. Yet, over time women became more likely to vote for the Democratic party than men. The South, which previously was a one-party region for the Democratic party, became solidly Republican after Democratic president Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Black women in the twenty-first century overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic party. In close elections, their turnout has been influential in determining the results. Following the 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder, there has been another wave of voter suppression in many states. In the Shelby County decision, the Court voided Section  5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required certain states and localities to have preclearance, or approval from the courts, before they changed voting laws to ensure that the changes would not disenfranchise Black voters. Once the preclearance requirement was lifted, southern states rushed to pass laws that suppressed the right to vote, ranging from voter ID laws to limits on voting days, poll hours, and voting by mail. States across the country, not just in the South, have enacted a variety of laws that suppress voting. These laws disproportionately limit voting in areas where people of color live. For example, laws that limit the number of polling places per county disproportionately impact voters of color in large metro areas. As a result, they face longer lines at fewer polling sites in comparison to rural areas with less population and frequently more white people than Black people. Native people in North Dakota living on reservations that do not assign street addresses have been disenfranchised by rules that require an individual to have a street address to be able to register. Although the right to vote is crucial to citizenship and political power, it remains unavailable to many people in the United States as of the 2020s. For decades, woman suffragists understood the power of the vote, and believed it could transform their lives and grant them access to greater opportunities and respect. They fought at the local and national levels for the right to vote as citizens of the United States. Americans continue their fight in the twenty-first century.

Part IV

Documents

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  1.   2.   3.   4.   5.   6.   7.   8.   9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Correspondence of Abigail Adams and John Adams, 1776 Maria W. Stewart, America’s First Woman Political Lecturer, 1831 Sarah Grimke Justifies Women’s Anti-Slavery Activism, 1837 Angelina Grimke Appeals to Northern White Women, 1838 Sarah Grimke, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, 1838 Lucretia Mott, Discourse on Women, 1850 Declaration of Sentiments, 1848 Frances Harper, Women’s Rights Convention Speech, 1866 Henry Blackwell, Appealing to Racism in Arguing for Female Suffrage, 1867 Bradwell v. Illinois, 1873 Frances Willard, The Home Protection Ballot, 1879 Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice From the South, 1892 Mary Church Terrell, Speech to NAWSA, 1898 Ida B. Wells-Barnett, The Red Record, 1895 Adella Logan, Colored Women as Voters, 1912 Alva Belmont, A Girl? What a Pity It Was Not a Boy! 1912 Rose Schneiderman, Senators vs. Working Women, 1912 Mabel Lee, The Meaning of Woman Suffrage, 1914 Alice Paul, Note From Jail, 1917 Grace Wilbur Trout, Illinois Suffrage History, 1920 Maud Wood Park, Front Door Lobby, 1920 Katharine Dexter McCormick, Speech to NAWSA Convention, 1920 Fannie Lou Hamer, Testimony, 1964

1. Correspondence of Abigail Adams and John Adams, 1776 Abigail Adams famously wrote her husband John Adams, the second president of the United States, to “Remember the Ladies” as he and other leaders of the American Revolution considered how to create a government for an independent nation. Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March, 1776: DOI: 10.4324/9781003042808-24

178 Documents I long to hear that you have declared an independency – and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of the Husbands. Remember that all Men would be tyrants if they could. 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. That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in imitation of the Supreem [sic] Being make use of that power only for our happiness. John Adams to Abigail Adams, 14 April, 1776: As to Declarations of Independency, be patient. Read our Privateering Laws, and our Commercial Laws. What signifies a Word. As to your Extraordinary Code of Laws, I  cannot but laugh. We have been told that our Struggle has loosened the bonds of Government every where. That Children and Apprentices were disobedient – that schools and Colledges [sic] were grown turbulent – that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes grew insolent to their Masters. But your Letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerful than all the rest were grown discontented – This is rather too coarse a Compliment but you are so saucy, I wont [sic] blot it out. Dependent upon it, We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems. Altho they are in full Force, you know they are little more than Theory. We dare not exert our Power in its full Latitude. We are obliged to go fair, and softly, and in Practice you know We are the Subjects. We have only the Name of Masters, and rather than give up this, which would completely subject Us to the Despotism of the Petticoat, I hope General Washington, and all our brave Heroes would fight. I am sure every good politician would plot, as long as he would against Despotism, Empire, Monarchy, Aristocracy, Oligarchy, or Ochlocracy – A fine Story indeed. Sources: Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March–5 April 1776, and John Adams to Abigail Adams, 14 April 1776 [electronic edition] in Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society. www.masshist.org/digitaladams/

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2. Maria W. Stewart, America’s First Woman Political Lecturer, 1831 Maria Stewart, the first American woman to give a public lecture to a mixed-gender audience in 1832, here exhorts Black women to arise at a speech to the African-American Female Intelligence Society of America. Many think, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that you are an inferior race of beings; but God does not consider you as such. He hath formed and fashioned you in his own glorious image, and hath bestowed upon you reason and strong powers of intellect. . . . He hath crowned you with glory and honor; hath made you but a little lower than the angels [Psalms 8: 5]; and according to the Constitution of these United States, he hath made all men free and equal. Then why should one worm say to another, “Keep you down there, while I sit up yonder; for I am better than thou?” It is not the color of the skin that makes the man, but it is the principles formed within the soul. Many will suffer for pleading the cause of oppressed Africa, and I shall glory in being one of her martyrs; for I am firmly persuaded, that the God in whom I trust is able to protect me from the rage and malice of mine enemies. . . . O, ye daughters of Africa, awake! Awake! Arise! No longer sleep nor slumber, but distinguish yourselves. Show forth to the world that ye are endowed with noble and exalted faculties. O, ye daughters of Africa! What have ye done to immortalize your names beyond the grave? What examples have ye set before the rising generation? What foundation have ye laid for generations yet unborn? . . . It is of no use for us to sit with our hands folded, hanging our heads like bulrushes, lamenting our wretched condition; but let us make a mighty effort, and arise; and if no one will promote or respect us, let us promote and respect ourselves. . . . Let every female heart become united, and let us raise a fund ourselves; and at the end of one year and a half, we might be able to lay the corner stone for the building of a High School, that the higher branches of knowledge might be enjoyed by us; and God would raise us up, and enough to aid us in our laudable designs. Source: Maria Stewart, Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build Productions From The Pen Of MRS. MARIA W. STEWARD [sic], (Boston: The Liberator, 8 October 1831); reprinted in Marilyn Richardson, ed., Maria W. Stewart: America’s First Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 29–31, 35, 37

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3. Sarah Grimke Justifies Women’s Anti-Slavery Activism, 1837 Sarah Grimke responds to the Pastoral Letter sent to Congregation churches denouncing women abolitionists who they considered improperly outspoken. I find the Lord Jesus defining the duties of his followers in his sermon on the Mount, laying down grand principles by which they should be governed, without any preference to sect or condition:– “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” I follow him through all his precepts, and find him giving the same directions to women as to men, never even referring to the distinction now so strenuously insisted upon between masculine and feminine virtues: this is one of the anti-Christian “traditions of men” which are taught instead of the “commandments of God.” Men and women were CREATED EQUAL; they are both moral and accountable beings, and whatever is right for man to do is right for woman to do. But the influence of woman, says the [General] Association [of Massachusetts Congregational Churches] is to be private and unobtrusive; her light is not to shine before man like that of her brethren; but she is passively to let the lords of the creation, as they call themselves, put the bushel over it, lest peradventure it might appear that the world has benefited from the rays of her candle. Then her quenched light is of more use than if it were set on the candlestick:– “Her influence is the source of mighty power.” This has ever been the language of man since he laid aside the whip as a means to keep woman in subjection. He spares her body, but the war he has waged against her mind, her heart, and her soul, has been no less destructive to her as a moral being. How monstrous is the doctrine that woman is to be dependent on man! . . . She has surrendered her dearest RIGHTS, and has been satisfied with the privileges which man has assumed to grant her, whilst he has amused her with the show of power, and absorbed all the reality into himself. He has adorned the creature, whom God gave him as a companion, with baubles and gewgaws, turned her attention to personal attractions, offered incense to her vanity, and made her the instrument of his selfish gratification, a plaything to please his eye, and amuse his hours of leisure. “Rule by obedience, and by submission sway,” or in other words, study to be a hypocrite, pretend to submit, but gain your point, has been the code of household morality which woman has been taught. Source: Sarah Grimke, “Province of Women: The Pastoral Letter,” The Liberator, 6 October 1837, reprinted in Sarah Grimke, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (Boston: I. Knapp, 1838), pp. 14–20

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4. Angelina Grimke Appeals to Northern White Women, 1838 Angelina Grimke wrote appeals to southern white women in 1836 and northern white women in 1838, explaining their duties to work toward abolition and racial equality. Slavery exerts a most deadly influence over the morals of our country, not only over that portion of it where it actually exists as a “domestic institution,” but like the miasma of some pestilential pool, it spreads its desolating influence far beyond its own boundaries. Who does not know that licentiousness is a crying sin at the North as well as at the South? And who does not admit that the manners of the South in this respect have had a wide and destructive influence on Northern character? Can crime be fashionable and common in one part of the Union and unrebuked by the other, without corrupting the very heart’s blood of the nation, and lowering the standard of morality everywhere? . . . But this is not all; our people have erected a false standard by which to judge men’s character. Because in the slaveholding States colored men are plundered and kept in abject ignorance, are treated with disdain and scorn, so here, too, in profound deference to the South, we refuse to eat, or drive, or walk, or associate, or open our institutions of learning, or even our zoological institutions to people of color, unless they visit them in the capacity of servant, of menials in humble attendance upon the Anglo-American. Who ever heard of a more wicked absurdity in a Republican country? . . . [Another] reason we would urge for the interference of northern women with the system of slavery is, in consequence of the odium which the degradation of slavery has attached to color even in the free states, our colored sisters are dreadfully oppressed here. Our seminaries of learning are closed to them, they are almost entirely banished from our lecture rooms, and even in the house of God they are separated from their white brethren and sisters as though we were afraid to come in contact with a colored skin. . . . Much may be done, too, by sympathizing with our oppressed colored sisters, who are suffering in our very midst. Extend to them the right hand of fellowship on the broad principles of humanity and Christianity, treat them as equals, visit them as equals, invite them to cooperate with you in the Anti-Slavery and Temperance and Moral Reform Societies – in Maternal Associations and Prayer Meetings and Reading Companies. . . . When this demon has been cast out of your hearts, when you can recognize the colored woman as a WOMAN – then will you be prepared to send out an appeal to our Southern sisters, entreating them to “go and do likewise.” Source: Angelina Grimke, An Appeal to the Woman of the Nominally Free States, issued by an Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838), pp. 14–15, 49–52, 60–61

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5. Sarah Grimke, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, 1838 In this letter, Sarah Grimke explains the need for equality for wealthy women, working women, and enslaved women. During the early part of my life, my lot was cast among the butterflies of the fashionable world, and of this class of women, I am constrained to say, both from experience and from observation, that their education is miserably deficient; that they are taught to regard marriage as the one thing needful, the only avenue to distinction; hence to attract the notice and wins the attentions of men, by their external charms, is the chief business of fashionable girls  .  .  . to be married is too often held up to the view of girls as the sina qua non of human happiness and human existence. . . . There is another way in which the general opinion, that women are inferior to men, is manifested, that bears with tremendous effect on the laboring class. . . . I allude to the disproportionate value set on the time and labor of men and of women. A  man who is engaged in teaching, can always, I believe, command a higher price for tuition than a woman – even when he teaches the same branches, and is not in any respect superior to the woman. . . . A woman who goes out to wash, works as hard in proportion as a wood sawyer, or a coal heaver, but she is not generally able to make more than half as much by a day’s work. . . . There is another class of women in this country, to whom I cannot refer, without feelings of the deepest shame and sorrow. I allude to our female slaves. Our Southern cities are whelmed beneath a tide of pollution; the virtue of female slaves is wholly at the mercy of irresponsible tyrants, and women are bought and sold in our slave markets, to gratify the brutal lust of those who bear the name of Christians. . . . the power which is necessarily vested in the master over his property, leaves the defenceless slave entirely at his mercy, and the sufferings of some females on this account, both physical and mental, are intense.  .  .  . But even if any laws existed in the United States, as in Athens formerly, for the protection of female slaves, they would be null and void, because the evidence of a colored person is not admitted against a white, in any of our Courts of Justice in the slave states. Nor does the colored woman suffer alone: the moral purity of the white woman is deeply contaminated. In the daily habit of seeing the virtue of her enslaved sister sacrificed without hesitancy or remorse, she looks upon the crimes of seduction and illicit intercourse without horror, and although not personally involved in the guilt, she loses innocence in her own, as well as the other sex, which is one of the strongest safeguards to virtue. She lives in habitual intercourse with men, whom she knows to be polluted by licentiousness, and often is she compelled to witness in her own domestic circle, those disgusting and heart-sickening jealousies and strafes which disgraced and distracted the family of Abraham. . . .

Documents  183 Can any American woman look at these scenes of shocking licentiousness and cruelty, and fold her hands in apathy, and say, ‘I have nothing to do with slavery’? She cannot be guiltless. Source: Sarah Grimke, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (Boston: I. Knapp, 1838), pp. 46–54

6. Lucretia Mott, Discourse on Women, 1850 Lucretia Mott and other early suffragists emphasized a woman’s right to be a full moral human being, responsible for her own decisions. The question is often asked, what does woman want, more than she already enjoys? What is she seeking to obtain? Of what rights is she deprived? What privileges are withheld from her? I answer, she asks nothing as a favor, but as a right, she wants to be acknowledged a moral, responsible being. She is seeking not to be governed by laws, in the making of which she has no voice. She is deprived of almost every right in civil society, and is a cypher in the nation, except in the right of presenting a petition. . . . Far be it for me to encourage woman to vote, or to take an active part in politics, in the present state of our government. Her right to the elective franchise, however, is the same, and should be yielded to her, whether she exercise that right or not. Would that man too, would have no participation in a government based upon the life-taking principle – upon retaliation and the sword. It is unworthy a Christian nation. But when, in the diffusion of light and intelligence, a convention shall be called to make regulations for self-government on Christian, non-resistant principles, I can see no good reason, why woman should not participate in such an assemblage, taking part equally with man. Source: Lucretia Mott, Discourse on Woman (Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson, 1850), pp. 12–15. National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/09002748/

7. Declaration of Sentiments, 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted the Declaration of Sentiments, based on the Declaration of Independence, for the world’s first women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . . But when a long train of abuses and usurpations . . ., evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism,

184 Documents it is their duty to throw off such government. . . . Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station, to which they are entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice. He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men – both natives and foreigners. Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns. He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master – the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement. He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women – the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands. After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it. He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of Theology, Medicine, or Law, she is not known. He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education – all colleges being closed against her. He allows her in church as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church. He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different code of morals for man and woman, by which moral delinquencies which

Documents  185 exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man. He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God. 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. Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation – in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States. In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country. Source: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds. History of Woman Suffrage (Rochester, NY: S. B. Anthony, 1889), pp. 174–80

8. Frances Harper, Women’s Rights Convention Speech, 1866 In this speech, Francis Harper explained her lived experience of racism and sexism as a Black woman, and called for white women to do more to stop the oppression of Black women. I feel I am something of a novice upon this platform. Born of a race whose inheritance has been outrage and wrong, most of my life had been spent in battling against those wrongs. But I did not feel as keenly as others, that I had these rights, in common with other women, which are now demanded. About two years ago, I stood within the shadows of my home. . . . My husband had died suddenly, leaving me a widow, with four children, one my own, and the others stepchildren. I tried to keep my children together. But my husband died in debt, and before he had been in his grave three months, the administrator had swept the very milk crocks and wash tubs from my hands. . . . Had I  died instead of my husband, how different would have been the result! By this time he would have another wife, it is likely; and no administrator would have gone into his house, broken up his home, and sold his bed, and taken away his means of support. I took my children in

186 Documents my arms, and went out to seek my living. While I was gone; a neighbor to whom I had once lent five dollars, went before a magistrate and swore that I was a non resident, and laid an attachment on my very bed. And I  went back to Ohio with my orphan children in my arms, without a single feather bed in this wide world, that was not in the custody of the law. I say, then, that justice is not fulfilled so long as woman is unequal before the law. We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul. You tried that in the case of the negro. You pressed him down for two centuries, and in so doing you crippled the moral strength and paralyzed the spiritual energies of the white men of the country. . . . I do not believe that giving the woman the ballot is immediately going to cure all the ills of life. I do not believe that white women are dew-drops just exhaled from the skies. I think that like men they may be divided into three classes, the good, the bad, and the indifferent. The good would vote according to their principles and convictions, the bad, as dictated by prejudice or malice, and the indifferent will vote on the strongest side of the question, with the winning party. You white women speak here of rights. I  speak of wrongs. I, as a colored woman, have had in this country an education which has made me to feel as if I were in the situation of Ishmael, my hand against every man, and every man’s hand against me. Let me go to-morrow morning and take my seat in one of your street cars – I do not know that they will do it in New York, but they will in Philadelphia – and the conductor will put up his hand and stop the car rather than let me ride. [A Lady in the audience] – They will not do that here. Mrs. Harper  – They do it in Philadelphia. Going from Washington to Baltimore this Spring, they put me in the smoking car. [Loud voices] – Shame Aye, in the capital of the nation, where the black man consecrated himself to the nation’s defence, faithful when the white man was faithless, they put me in the smoking car! They did it once, but the next time they tired it, they failed, for I would not go in. I felt the fight in me, but I don’t want to have to fight all the time. To-day I am puzzled where to make my home. I would like to make it in Philadelphia, near my own friends and relations. But if I want to ride in the streets of Philadelphia, they send me to ride on the platform with the driver. . . . Talk of giving women the ballot-box? Go on. It is a normal school, and the white women of this country need it. While there exists this brutal element in society which tramples upon the feeble and treads down the weak, I tell you that if there is any class of people who need to be lifted out of their airy nothings and selfishness, it is the white women of America. [Applause] Source: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, “We Are All Bound Up Together,” in Proceedings of the Eleventh Woman’s Rights Convention (New York: Robert J Johnson, 1866), pp. 45–48

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9. Henry Blackwell, Appealing to Racism in Arguing for Female Suffrage, 1867 Henry Blackwell, the husband of suffragist Lucy Stone, argued that woman suffrage would enforce white supremacy in the South, because white women voters would outnumber Black women voters, an argument that continued to be debated by suffragists and anti-suffragists for decades. To the Legislatures of the Southern States: – I  write to you as the intellectual leaders of the Southern people – men who should be able and willing to transcend the prejudices of section – to suggest the only ground of settlement between North and South which, in my judgment, can be successfully adopted. Let me state the political situation. The radical principles of the North are immovably fixed upon negro suffrage as a condition of Southern State reconstruction. The proposed Constitutional Amendment is not regarded as a finality. It satisfies nobody, not even its authors. In the minds of the Northern people the negroes are now associated with the idea of loyalty to the Union. They are considered citizens. They are respected as “our allies.” It is believed in the North that a majority of the white people of the South are at heart the enemies of the Union. The advocates of negro suffrage daily grow stronger and more numerous. On the other hand, a majority of the Southern white population are inflexibly opposed to negro suffrage in any form, universal or qualified, and are prepared to resist its introduction by every means in their power. In alliance with the President and the Northern Democracy, they protest against any and all terms of reconstruction, demand unconditional readmission, and await in gloomy silence the Republican initiative. . . . The population of the late slave States is about 12,000,000; 8,000,000 white, 4,000,000 black. The radicals demand suffrage fore the black men on the ground named above. Very good. Say to them. . . . “Apply your principle! Give suffrage to all men and women of mature age and sound mind, and we will accept it as the basis of State and National reconstruction.” Consider the result from the Southern standpoint. Your 4,000,000 of Southern white women will counterbalance your 4,000,000 of negro men and women, and thus the political supremacy of your white race will remain unchanged. Source: From Henry B. Blackwell, “What the South Can Do: How the Southern States Can Make Themselves Masters of the Situation,” 1867, in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, et al. History of Women’s Suffrage, vol. II. Rochester, NY: Charles Mann, 1887, 929–930

10. Bradwell v. Illinois, 1873 The Supreme Court found that women had no right to access the law profession as citizens because they belonged in the domestic sphere. Justice Samuel Miller (majority opinion). In regard to that amendment, counsel for plaintiff in this court truly says that there are certain privileges

188 Documents and immunities which belong to a citizen of the United States as such, otherwise it would be nonsense for the XIV Amendment to prohibit a State from abridging them, and he proceeds to argue that admission to the bar of a State of a person who possesses the requisite learning and character is one of those which a State may not deny. In this latter proposition we are not able to concur with counsel. We agree with him that there are privileges and immunities belonging to citizens of the United States, in that relation and character, and that it is these, and these alone, which a State is forbidden to abridge. But the right to admission to practice in the courts of State is not one of them. . . . Justice Joseph Bradley, Concurring: The claim that, under the XIV Amendment of the Constitution, which declares that no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, the statute law of Illinois, or the common laws prevailing in that State, can no longer be set up as a barrier against the right of female to pursue any lawful employment for a livelihood (the practice of law included) assumes that it is one of the privileges and immunities of women as citizens to engage in any and every profession, occupation, or employment in civil life. It certainly can not be affirmed, as a historical fact, that this has ever been established as one of the fundamental privileges and immunities of the sex. On the contrary, that civil law, as well as nature itself, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance, as well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to the domain and functions of womanhood. The harmony, not to say identity, of interests and views which belong, or should belong, to the family institution is repugnant to the idea of a woman adopting a distinct and independent career from that of her husband. Source: Bradwell v. Illinois, Supreme Court of the United States, 1873, 83 U.S. (16 Wallace), 130, 141

11. Frances Willard, the Home Protection Ballot, 1879 By calling for a “home protection” ballot for women to vote for temperance and other measures to protect women and children, Frances Willard provided a different and compelling argument for the vote to many members of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. “Home Protection” is the general name given to a movement already endorsed by W. C. T. Unions of eight states, the object of which is to secure for all women above the age of twenty-one years the ballot as one means for the protection of their homes from the devastation caused by the legalized

Documents  189 traffic in strong drink. In Illinois and Massachusetts the ballot on the single question of license is all that has been asked; but Indiana, Iowa, and Minnesota ask for the ballot in general; While Ohio desires it “on all temperance questions.” . . . It will be seen that, while the reason for seeking this added weapon in women’s hands is in each case that it may be used against the rum power, in defense of home, there is much latitude in the methods by which it is sought, as also in the extent to which the idea is carried out and in the progress which different states have made. . . . Take the instinct of self-protection (and there is none more deeply seated): What will be its action in woman when the question comes up of licensing the sale of a stimulant which nerves with dangerous strength the arm already so much stronger than her own, and which at the same time so crazes the brain God meant to guide that manly arm that it strikes down the wife a man loves and the little children for whom when sober he would die? Dependent for the support of herself and little ones and for the maintenance of her home, upon the strength which alcohol masters and the skill it renders futile, will the wife and mother cast her vote to open or to close the rum-shop door over against that home? Source: Frances Willard, Home Protection Manual: Containing an Argument for the Temperance Ballot for Woman, and How to Obtain It, as a Means of Home Protection; Also Constitution and Plan of Work for State and Local W. C. T. Unions (N.Y.: The “Independent” Office, 1879), pp. 5, 9

12. Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice From the South, 1892 Anna Julia Cooper inspired Black women, positing that despite facing racism and sexism, she had vast opportunity, “to be a woman then is sublime.” In the era about to dawn, her [woman’s] sentiments must strike the keynote and give the dominant tone. And this because of the nature of her contribution to the world. The colored woman of to-day occupies, one may say, a unique position in this country. In a period of itself transitional and unsettled, her status seems one of the least ascertainable and definitive of all the forces which make for our civilization. She is confronted by both a woman question and a race problem, and is yet an unknown or an unacknowledged factor in both. While the women of the white race can with calm assurance enter upon the work they feel by nature appointed to do, while their men given loyal support and appreciative countenance to their efforts  .  .  . the colored woman too often finds herself hampered and shamed by a less liberal sentiment and a more conservative attitude on the part of those for whose opinion she cares most. This is not universally true I am glad to admit. . . . Fifty years ago woman’s activity according to orthodox definitions was on a pretty clearly cut “sphere,” including primarily the kitchen and the

190 Documents nursery, and rescued from the barrenness of prison bars by the womanly mania for adorning every discoverable bit of china or canvass with forlorn looking cranes balanced idiotically on one foot. The woman of to-day finds herself in the presence of responsibilities which ramify through the profoundest and varied interests of her country and race. . . . No woman can possibly put herself or her sex outside any of the interests than affect humanity. All departments in the new era are to be hers, in the sense that her interests are in all and through all; and it is incumbent on her to keep intelligently and sympathetically en rapport with all the great movements of her time, that she may know on which side to throw the weight of her influence. She stands now at the gateway of this era of American civilization. In her hands must be moulded the strength, the wit, the statesmanship, the morality, all the psychic force, the social and economic intercourse of that era. To be alive at such an epoch is a privilege, to be a woman then is sublime. In this last decade of our century, changes of such movement are in progress, such new and alluring vistas are opening out before us, such original and radical suggestions for the adjustment of labor and capital, of government and the governed, of the family, the church and the state, that to be a possible factor though an infinitesimal in such a movement is pregnant with hope and weighty with responsibility. To be a woman in such an age carries with it a privilege and an opportunity never implied before. But to be a woman of the Negro race in American, and to be able to grasp the deep significance of the possibilities of the crisis, is to have a heritage, it seems to me, unique in the ages. In the first place, the race is young and full of the elasticity and hopefulness of youth. All its achievements are before it. It does not look on the masterly triumphs of the nineteenth century civilization with that blase world-weary look which characterizes the old washed out and word out races which have already, so to speak, seen their best ways. . . . What a responsibility then to have a sole management of the primal lights and shadows! Such is the colored woman’s office. She must stamp weal or woe on the coming history of this people. May she see her opportunity and vindicate her high prerogative. Source: Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice From the South, By a Black Woman of the South (Xenia, Ohio: The Aldine Printing House, 1892), 131–136, 142–145

13. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, The Red Record, 1895 Ida B. Wells-Barnett provided evidence that exposed the lies condoning lynching in the name of protecting southern white women in this pamphlet, The Red Record, and another, Southern Horrors. If the Southern people in defense of their lawlessness, would tell the truth and admit that colored men and women are lynched for almost any offense, from murder to a misdemeanor, there would not now be the necessity for

Documents  191 this defense. But when they intentionally, maliciously and constantly belie the record and bolster up these falsehoods by the words of legislators, preachers, governors and bishops, then the Negro must give to the world his side of the awful story. A word as to the charge itself. In considering the third reason assigned by the Southern white people for the butchery of blacks, the question must be asked, what the white man means when he charges the black man with rape. Does he mean the crime which the statutes of the civilized states describe as such? Not by any means. With the Southern white man, any mesalliance existing between a white woman and a colored man is a sufficient foundation for the charge of rape. The Southern white man says that it is impossible for a voluntary alliance to exist between a white woman and a colored man, and therefore, the fact of an alliance is a proof of force. In numerous instances where colored men have been lynched on the charge of rape, it was positively known at the time of lynching, and indisputably proven after the victim’s death, that the relationship sustained between the man and woman was voluntary and clandestine, and that in no court of law could even the charge of assault have been successfully maintained. It was for the assertion of this fact, in the defense of her own race, that the writer hereof became an exile; her property destroyed and her return to her home forbidden under penalty of death, for writing the following editorial which was printed in her paper, the Free Speech, in Memphis, Tenn., May 21,1892: Eight Negroes lynched since last issue of the Free Speech one at Little Rock, Ark., last Saturday morning where the citizens broke(?) into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one near New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, Ga., the last three for killing a white man, and five on the same old racket – the new alarm about raping white women. The same programme of hanging, then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter. Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. But threats cannot suppress the truth, and while the Negro suffers the soul deformity, resultant from two and a half centuries of slavery, he is no more guilty of this vilest of all vile charges than the white man who would blacken his name. . . . True chivalry respects all womanhood, and no one who reads the record, as it is written in the faces of the million mulattoes in the South, will for a minute conceive that the southern white man had a very chivalrous regard for the honor due the women of his own race or respect for the womanhood which circumstances placed in his power. That chivalry which is “most sensitive concerning the honor of women” can hope for but little respect from the civilized world, when it confines itself entirely to the women who happen to be white. Virtue knows no color line, and the chivalry which

192 Documents depends upon complexion of skin and texture of hair can command no honest respect. Source: Ida B. Wells-Barnett, The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States (Chicago: Donahue and Henneberry, 1895) pp. 11–15

14. Mary Church Terrell, Speech to NAWSA, 1898 Mary Church Terell used her speech to NAWSA to share the achievements of Black people and to introduce suffragists to the accomplishments of the National Association of Colored Women. [T]o me this semi-centennial of the National American Woman Suffrage Association is a double jubilee, rejoicing as I do, not only in the prospective enfranchisement of my sex but in the emancipation of my race. When Ernestine Rose, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony began that agitation by which colleges were open to women and the numerous reforms inaugurated for the amelioration of their condition along all lines, their sisters who groaned in bondage had little reason to hope that these blessings would ever brighten their crushed and blighted lives, for during those days of oppression and despair, colored women were not only refused admittance to institutions of learning, but the law of the States in which the majority lived made it a crime to teach them to read. Not only could they possess no property, but even their bodies were not their own. . . . To use a thought by the illustrious Frederick Douglass, if judged by the depths from which they have come, rather than by the heights to which those blessed with centuries of opportunities have attained, colored women need not hang their heads in shame. . . . the progress they have made and the work they have accomplished, will bear a favorable comparison at least with that of their more fortunate sisters, from whom the opportunity of acquiring knowledge and the means of self-culture have never been entirely withheld. . . . Though the slaves were liberated more than forty years ago, penniless, and ignorant, with neither shelter nor food, so great was their thirst for knowledge and so herculean were their efforts to secure it, that there are today hundreds of negroes, many of them women, who are graduates, some of whom have taken degrees from the best institutions in the land. . . . With this increase in wisdom there has sprung up in the hearts of colored women an ardent desire to do good in the world. No sooner had the favored few availed themselves of such advantages as they could secure than they hastened to dispense these blessings to the less fortunate of their race. . . . Believing that it is only through the home that a people can become really good and truly great, the National Association of Colored Women

Documents  193 has entered that sacred domain. Homes, more homes, better homes, purer homes is the text upon which our sermons have been and will be preached. And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long. With courage, born of success achieved in the past, with a keen sense of the responsibility which we shall continue to assume, we look forward to a future large with promise and hope. Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking for an equal chance. Source: Mary Church Terrell, The Progress of Colored Women: An Address Delivered Before the National American Woman Suffrage Association (Washington, DC: Smith Brothers, 1898), pp. 7–9, 15

15. Adella Logan, Colored Women as Voters, 1912 Adella Hunt Logan argued that Black women voters would use their vote to improve the community, and that their enfranchisement would allow the nation to truly fulfil its democratic destiny, in this article featured in a symposium on woman suffrage in The Crisis magazine. More and more colored women are studying public questions and civics. As they gain information and have experiences in their daily vocations and in their efforts for human betterment, they are convinced, as many other women have long ago been convinced, that their efforts would be more telling if women had the vote. The fashion of saying “I do not care to meddle with politics” is disappearing among the colored woman faster than most people think, for this same woman has learned that politics meddle constantly with her and hers. Good women try always to do good housekeeping. Building inspectors, sanitary inspectors and food inspectors owe their positions to politics. Who then is so well informed as to how these inspectors perform their duties as the women who live in inspected districts and in inspected houses, and who buy food from inspected markets? . . . Not only is the colored woman awake to reforms that may be hastened by good legislation and wise administration, but where she has the ballot she is reported as using it for the uplift of society and for the advancement of the State. . . . A number of colored women are active members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. They are well informed and are diligent in the spread of propaganda. Women who see that they need the vote see also that the vote needs them. Colored women feel keenly that they may help in civic betterment, and that their broadened interests in matters of good government may arouse the colored brother, who for various reasons has become too indifferent to his duties of citizenship. . . .

194 Documents This much is, however, is true now: the colored American believes in equal justice to all, regardless of race, color, creed or sex, and longs for the day when the United States shall indeed have a government of the people, for the people and by the people – even including the colored people. Source: Adella Hunt Logan, “Colored Women as Voters,” The Crisis, September 1912, 242–243

16. Alva Belmont, “A Girl? What a Pity It Was Not a Boy!” 1912 Wealthy suffragist Alva Belmont called for women of leisure like herself to work together with working-class women for the right to vote in order to fight their shared experience of oppression as women. In families of national, political, and financial importance there is a popular, deep seated, deep rooted conviction that sons are needed to carry on the importance and dignity of the family. . . . And the daughter? By the same process of reasoning, sanctioned by the same course of years, the daughter has been held to be a superior kind of family chattel – a transferable article. She is destined for some other family, for some other household. There she will be claimed for the production of an individual, who, in his turn, is to perpetuate the greatness, riches, and importance of his station. . . . Is it not self-evident from this that from the hour of her birth the woman is relegated to the rear rank? And so it should not be! The world should rejoice from the hour of her birth that a woman is born. . . . . . . What are we suffragists going to do? . . . You would not bid us turn back. What we are going to do is what many women are already doing for themselves. We are preaching the lesson of self-dependence, of industry, of education, women’s unions, of professions, of the real marriage and high motherhood. We are bidding the child of fortune to put aside at the right movement the playthings of the hour, to leave out of her life the old false ideals made for her in days long gone by, to assert her individualism, to train herself to meet the demands of true citizenship, to know the obligation and pleasure of toil and thus the joy of recreation. I claim for the woman child of what is termed the leisure class a new education. . . . Tell her that polo playing, tennis, hunting, coaching, sports of all kinds, pet dogs, and husbands are things apart, well in their way of recreation perhaps, but that she as a creature must exist not for herself, not for sport, not for the husband, but for the commonwealth, and that in the fulfillment of that she will be both true wife and real mother. To the woman who is self-supporting and self-reliant only words of encouragement are needed. She has found her way. Like all pioneers, she is bearing the burden and lighting the torch that her sister who are to follow in endless procession may call her blessed. . . . The time has passed forever when a man or a woman shall not be permitted to take that place in the world to which they are both adapted.

Documents  195 There shall be no inequality by reason of sex and free opportunity and equal privilege to both work out the destiny that is stored within them. Source: Mrs. Oliver H. P. [Alva] Belmont, “A Girl? What a Pity It Was Not a Boy!” Chicago Daily Tribune, 9 June 1912, p. B1

17. Rose Schneiderman, Senators vs. Working Women, 1912 Labor activist Rose Schneiderman replied to a New York senator who claimed that women should not have the vote because they would lose their delicacy and charm. We have 800,000 women in New York State who go out into the industrial word, not through any choice of their own, but because necessity forces them out to earn their daily bread. I am inclined to think if we were sent home now we would not go home. We want to work, that is the thing. We are not afraid of work, and we are not ashamed to work, but we do decline to be driven; we want to work like human beings; we want to work for the welfare of the community and not for the welfare of a few. Can it be that our Senators do not realize that our Senators do not realize that we have women working in every trade but nine? We have women working in the foundries, stripped to the waist, if you please, because of the heat. Yet the Senator says nothing about these women losing their charm. They have got to retain their charm and delicacy and work in foundries. Of course you know the reason they are employed in foundries is that they are cheaper and work longer hours than men. Women in the laundries, in insurance, stand for 13 or 14 hours in the terrible steam and heat with their hands in host starch. Surely these women won’t lose any more of their beauty and charm by putting a ballot in a ballot box once a year than they are likely to lose standing in foundries in laundries all year round. Source: Rose Schneiderman, “Miss Rose Schneiderman Cap Maker Replies to New York Senator on Delicacy and Charm of Women,” in Senators vs. Working Women (N. Y.: Wage Earners’ Suffrage League, 1912), pp. 4–5

18. Mabel Lee, the Meaning of Woman Suffrage, 1914 Mabel Lee, inspired in part by the Chinese Revolution, called for woman suffrage as a fulfilment of democracy. [T]he idea of woman suffrage at first stood for something abnormal, strange and extraordinary, and so has finally become the word for anything ridiculous. The idea that women should ever wish to have or be anything more than their primitive mothers appears at first thought to be indeed tragic enough to be come, but if we sit down and really think it over, throwing

196 Documents aside all sentimentalism, we find that it is nothing more than a wider application of our ideas of justice and equality. We all believe in the idea of democracy; woman suffrage or the feminist movement (of which woman suffrage is a fourth part) is the application of democracy to women. . . . The fundamental principle of democracy is equality of opportunity, as distinguished from equality of compensation. It means an equal chance for every man to show what his merits are. . . . And in the feminist movement, these opportunities are again applying the same misrepresentation by saying that the feminists wish to make women like men; whereas the feminists want nothing more than the equality of opportunity for women to prove their merits and what they are best suited to do. This is a purely scientific attitude, for we can never determine anything until it has been tried. For instance, it was not so long ago that even Western people thought that woman was not capable of being taught even the three R’s. The very thought of a woman knowing how to read or write made them hold up their hands in “holy horror,” for it would entirely “unsex the women.” But when woman proved she could go through elementary school, then these same persons said that she could not go through a secondary school – “it was too much for women and they could never be taught such difficult subjects.” Again woman proved herself capable, and these people then said that she could not go through college. It is only a short time since she gained the victory of admission to college, and there are still many schools too conservative to open their doors for her instruction. At present there is still the cry although woman has gone so far, that she can go no further, that she cannot succeed in the professions. But this again is being refuted by the success of pioneers of today. Source: Mabel Lee, “The Meaning of Suffrage,” The Chinese Students’ Monthly, 12 May 1914, pp. 526, 528

19. Alice Paul, Note From Jail, 1917 Alice Paul smuggled a note out of jail, printed in the New York Times, that described her experience while force-fed in prison. Miss Winslow and I are at opposite ends of this building, each locked in her own room, with an iron barred door. . . . Today they nailed two of my windows shut so that they cannot be opened. The third window has been nailed shut at the bottom, so that the only air I have now is from the top of one window. This was done by the order of Dr. Gannon. He seems determined to deprive me of air because air was one of the things we demanded in our letter asking for recognition as political offenders. We have, of course, been deprived of everything else that was included our original demand – letters, books, visitors, decent food, except as they force it upon us through tubes. . . . I was in the psychopathic ward just a week, and was only released, I think because of Mr. Malone’s [Paul’s lawyer] efforts. It was apparently

Documents  197 an attempt at intimidation. Dr. Gannon said if I  persisted in hungerstriking, he would “write a prescription” to have me taken to the psychopathic ward and have me fed forcibly. I was thereupon placed upon a stretcher and taken there. Dr. Gannon, another doctor and several nurses then proceeded to feed me forcibly. Source: “Miss Paul Removed to Prison Hospital,” New York Times, 19 November 1917, p. 11

20. Grace Wilbur Trout, Illinois Suffrage History, 1920 Illinois suffrage leader Grace Wilbur Trout explained how women in the state achieved presidential suffrage through intense lobbying efforts. On March 10th I went to Springfield to consult with Governor Edward F. Dunne, and secure if possible, his support of the Presidential and Municipal Suffrage Bill. He agreed to support this statutory suffrage bill if we would promise not to introduce a suffrage measure which provided for a constitutional amendment, as but one constitutional amendment (according to Illinois law) could be introduced during a legislative session, and this if introduced, would interfere with the Initiative and Referendum Constitutional Amendment upon which the Administration was concentrating its efforts. We assured the Governor that we would not introduce a resolution for a constitutional amendment because we knew we had no chance to pass such a resolution and we also wished not to interfere with the Administration’s legislative plans. . . . The hope of the opposition now was to influence Speaker McKinley and prevent the bill from coming up, and let it die, as so many bills do die, on Third Reading. Sometimes bills come up that many Legislators do not favor but to preserve their good records they feel obligated to vote for, then afterwards these Legislators appeal to the Speaker of the House and ask him to save them by preventing it from ever coming to a final vote. If he is adroit, this can be done without the people as a whole knowing what has happened to some of their favorite measures. . . . In the meantime I  also phoned Mrs. Harriette Taylor Treadwell, President of the Chicago Political Equality League, to have Speaker McKinley called up by phone and interviewed when he returned to Chicago that week.  .  .  . She organized the novel, and now famous, telephone brigade, by means of which Speaker McKinley was called up every 15 minutes by leading men as well as women, both at his home and at his office from early Saturday morning until Monday evening, the days he spent in Chicago. His mother . . . said that it was one continuous ring at their house and that someone had to sit right by the phone to answer the calls. . . . He announced that the suffrage bill would be brought up for the final vote on June 11th. Source: Grace Wilbur Trout, “Side Lights on Illinois Suffrage History,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 13 July 1920, pp. 154, 161–162

198 Documents

21. Maud Wood Park, Front Door Lobby, 1920 Maud Wood Park, who led NAWSA’s legislative lobbying effort in Washington, DC, described the keys to their success. File cases were what I saw when I opened the door [to the office]. The outer office was crowded with them, file cases holding, as I  learned later, 531 portfolios, 96 for the Senate and 435 for the House, every portfolio marked with the name of the member of the Congress whose record was inside. The system, developed by Miss Ruth White, provided for the keeping of all known data about a senator or representative. There were printed sketches of his life; there were facts supplied by our members in the state about his personal, political, business and religious affiliations; there were reports of interviews with him by our friends in Washington or elsewhere; there was everything that was discovered about his stand on woman suffrage and more or less about his views on other public questions. . . . When I was sufficiently familiar with the work to have a little sense of humor about it, I condensed those rules into a series of dont’s. Don’t nag. Don’t boast. Don’t threaten. Don’t lose your temper. Don’t stay too long. Don’t talk about your work where you can be overheard. Don’t give the member interviewed an opportunity to declare himself against the amendment. Don’t do anything to close the door to the next advocate of suffrage. . . . Another Southern interview [with a congressman] went into the record in these words: Invited us in  – polite manner. Believes that woman dwells apart from man – in her nature. “She is different – Nature made it so – All history, science and biology prove it! Look at the barnyard, the ‘cockerel’ protects the hen, etc. Woman is meant for the home, the hearth, and to be sheltered by man.” He acknowledged that there were some women outside the home, but men could protect them. The dirty mire of politics for women could not be thought of. He deplored the lack of woman’s trust in men, and did not think women wanted to be called “suffragands” (the correlation of the word “brigand”). He is beyond the pale. We parted in a friendly way. Source: Maud Wood Park, Front Door Lobby (edited by Edna Lamprey Stantial) (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960), pp. 19, 39–40

22. Katharine Dexter McCormick, Speech to the NAWSA Convention, 1920 In 1920, with victory near, NAWSA vice president Katharine McCormick anticipated celebration in this speech at the convention.

Documents  199 When we met at St. Louis a year ago in the 50th annual convention of our association, we knew that the end of our long struggle was near. We comprehended in a new sense the truth of Victor Hugo’s sage epigram: “There is one thing more powerful than Kings and Armies – the idea whose time has come to move.” We knew that the time for our idea was here, and as State after State has joined the list of the ratified we have seen our idea, our cause, move forward dramatically, majestically into its appropriate place as part of the constitution of our nation. We have not yet the official proclamation announcing that our amendment has been ratified by the necessary thirty-six States, but thirty-one have done so and another will ratify before we adjourn; three Governors have promised special sessions very soon and two more Legislatures will ratify when called together. There is no power on this earth that can do more than delay by a trifle the final enfranchisement of women. The enemies of progress and library never surrender and never die. Ever since the days of cave-men they have stood ready with their sledge hammers to strike any liberal idea on the head whenever it appeared. They are still active, hysterically active, over our amendment; still imagining . . . that a fly sitting on a wheel may command it to revolve no more and it will obey. They are running about from State to State, a few women and a few paid men.  .  .  . It does not matter. Suffragists were never dismayed when they were a tiny group and all the world was against them. What care they now when all the world is with them? March on, suffragists, the victory is yours! The trail has been long and winding; the struggle has been tedious and wearying; you have made sacrifices and received many hard knocks; be joyful to-day. Our final victory is due, is inevitable, is almost here. Let us celebrate to-day, and when the proclamation comes I beg you to celebrate the occasion with some form of joyous demonstration in your own home State. Two armistice days made a joyous ending of the war. Let two ratification days, one a National and one a State day, make a happy ending of the denial of political freedom to women! Source: Katharine McCormick, Speech to NAWSA Convention, 1920, in Ida Husted Harper, ed. History of Woman Suffrage, v.5, (N.Y.: J. J. Little and Ives, 1922), p. 597

23. Fannie Lou Hamer, Testimony, 1964 Civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer gave this emotional testimony to the Credentials Committee at the 1964 Democratic Convention about the dangers she faced when she tried to register to vote in Mississippi. Hamer was violently beaten after trying to register. She asked the committee to seat the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which was supported by Black voters who were excluded from voting for the Democratic party in Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, and to the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi,

200 Documents Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and Senator Stennis. It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens. We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time. After we had taken this test and started back to Ruleville, we was held up by the City Police and the State Highway Patrolmen and carried back to Indianola where the bus driver was charged that day with driving a bus the wrong color. After we paid the fine among us, we continued on to Ruleville, and Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area where I had worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for eighteen years. I was met there by my children, who told me that the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down to try to register. After they told me, my husband came, and said the plantation owner was raising Cain because I had tried to register. Before he quit talking the plantation owner came and said, “Fannie Lou, do you know – did Pap tell you what I said?” And I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “Well I mean that.” He said, “If you don’t go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave.” Said, “Then if you go down and withdraw,” said, “you still might have to go because we are not ready for that in Mississippi.” And I addressed him and told him and said, “I didn’t try to register for you. I tried to register for myself.” I had to leave that same night. Source: Fannie Lou Hamer, Testimony Before the Credentials Committee, Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey – August 22, 1964. www.learningforjustice.org/professional-development/fannie-louhamers-testimony-at-the-1964-democratic-convention-transcript (also in: The speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: to tell it like it is (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi; 2011)

Guide to Further Reading

For general works on the woman suffrage movement, the two classic histories are E. Flexner (1959) Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press; and A. Kraditor (1965) The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920. New York: Columbia University Press. The classic history of Black women and suffrage is R. Terborg-Penn (1998) African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850–1920. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. For more recent works, see the following: C. Cahill (2020) Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; E. DuBois (2020) Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote. New York: Simon & Schuster; J. Johnson (2017) Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women’s Movement, 1870–1967. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; M. Jones (2020) Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. New York: Basic Books; E. Weiss (2018) The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote. New York: Viking. For a transnational view, see A. Sneider (2008) Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870–1929. New York: Oxford University Press; and K. Marino (2019) Feminism for the Americas: The Makings of an International Human Rights Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. For Biographies of individual suffragists, see A. L. Alexander (2019) Princess of the Hither Isles: A  Black Suffragist’s Story From the Jim Crow South. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; E. DuBois (1997) Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; C. Faulkner (2013) Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; T. Franzen (2014) Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage. Urbana: University of Illinois Press; P. Giddings (2009) Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching. New York: Amistad; L. Ginzberg (2009) Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life. New York: Hill and Wang; K. Hamlin (2020) Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener. New York: W. W. Norton; S. Hoffert (2012) Alva Vanderbilt Belmont: Unlikely Champion of Women’s Rights. Bloomington: Indiana University Press; H. Horowitz (1994) The Power and the Passion of M. Carey Thomas. New York: Knopf; C. Lunardini (1986) From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, 1910–1928. New York: New York University Press; V. May (2007) Anna Julia Cooper, Visionary

202  Guide to Further Reading Black Feminist: A  Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge; S. McMillen (2015) Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life. New York: Oxford University Press; N. Painter (1996) Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol. New York: W. W. Norton; A. Parker (2020) Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; J. Zahniser and A. Fry (2014) Alice Paul: Claiming Power. New York: Oxford University Press. For regional and state histories, see B. Berenson (2018) Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: Revolutionary Reformers. Charleston: The History Press; S. Buechler (1986) The Transformation of the Woman Suffrage Movement: The Case of Illinois, 1850–1920. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press; S. Egge (2018) Woman Suffrage and Citizenship in the Midwest, 1870–1920. Iowa City: University of Iowa; S. Goodier and K. Pastorello (2017) Women Will Vote: Winning Woman Suffrage in New York State. Ithaca: Cornell University Press; G. Gullett (2000) Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women’s Movement, 1880–1911. Urbana: University of Illinois Press; L. Materson (2009) For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois, 1877–1932. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; R. Mead, (2004) How the West Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the West States 1868–1914. New York: New York University Press; L. Santangelo (2019) New York Women Battle for the Ballot. New York: Oxford University Press; M. Wheeler (1993) New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States. New York: Oxford University Press. For the early years of the movement, see F. Dudden (2011) Fighting Chance: The Struggle Over Woman Suffrage and Black Suffrage in Reconstruction America. New York: Oxford University Press; E. DuBois (1978) Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1847–1969. Ithaca: Cornell University Press; L. Ginzberg (2005) Untidy Origins: A  Story of Women’s Rights in Antebellum New York. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; M. Jones (2007) All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830–1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; S. McMillen (2008) Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement. New York: Oxford University Press; L. Tetrault (2014) The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; E. Varon (1998) We Mean to Be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. For the ties between the suffrage movement and labor, religious organizations, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, women’s clubs, and the broader women’s movement, see R. Bordin (1990) Women and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press; N. Dye (1980) As Equals and As Sisters: Feminism, the Labor Movement, and the Women’s Trade Union League of New York. Columbia: University of Missouri Press; G. Gilmore (1996) Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; E. Higginbotham (1994) Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; J. Johnson (2007) Southern Ladies, New Women: Region, Race, and Clubwomen in South Carolina. Gainesville: University Press of Florida; D.G. White (1999) Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994. New York: W.W. Norton.

Guide to Further Reading  203 For women’s political activism after 1920, see K. Blain (2021) Until I  Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America. New York: Beacon Press; D. Cobble (2004) The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America. Princeton: Princeton University Press; N. Cott (1987) The Grounding of Modern Feminism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; L. Gidlow (July 2018) “The Sequel: The Fifteenth Amendment, the Nineteenth Amendment, and Southern Black Women’s Struggle to Vote,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17, 433–449; C. Lee (1999) For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press; T. Lindsay (2017) Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, DC. Urbana: University of Illinois Press; E. McRae (2018) Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy. New York: Oxford University Press; B. Ransby (2003) Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; L. Schuyler (2006) The Weight of Their Votes: Southern Women and Political Leverage in the 1920s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; M. Spruill (2017) Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Womens’ Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics. New York: Bloomsbury USA; K.-Y. Taylor (2012) How We Get Free: Black Women and the Combahee River Collective. New York: Haymarket Books.

References

Adams, A. to Adams, J. (31 March 1776) [electronic edition] Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society. www.masshist.org/ digitaladams/. Adams, J. to Adams, A. (14 April 1776) [electronic edition] Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society. www.masshist.org/ digitaladams/. Adams, K. and Keene, M. (2008) Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Afro-American (11 January 1913): 1. Afro-American (5 July 1913): 1. Alexander, A.L. (2019) Princess of the Hither Isles: A Black Suffragist’s Story from the Jim Crow South. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Atlanta Constitution (7 February 1910). Barry, K. (2020) Susan B. Anthony: A Biography. New York: New York University. Beasley, D. (1919) The Negro Trail Blazers of California: A Compilation of Records from the California Archives in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, in Berkeley; and from the Diaries, Old Papers, and Conversations of Old Pioneers in the Dtate of California. Los Angeles, CA: Times Mirror Printing and Binding House. Blackstone, W. (1765) Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1. Blain, K. (2021) Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America. New York: Beacon Press. Blair, K. (1980) Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–1914. New York: Holmes & Meier. Bland, S. (1981) “Fighting the Odds: Militant Suffragists in South Carolina,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 82: 32–43. Bordin, R. (1990) Women and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Brannon-Wranosky, J. (n.d.) “Maude Evangeline Craig Sampson Williams,” Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Association. www.tshaonline.org/ handbook/entries/williams-maude-evangeline-craig-sampson. Broad Ax (25 August 1915): 4. Buechler, S. (1986) The Transformation of the Woman Suffrage Movement: The Case of Illinois, 1850–1920. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Carrie Chapman Catt (19 March 1903) “Letters from the People: Woman Suffrage and the South,” The Times-Democrat: 11. Chattanooga Daily Times (11 November 1914).

References  205 Chicago Defender (9 May 1914): 8. Chicago Tribune (5 March 1913): 5. Cooney, R. (2005) Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement. Santa Rosa, CA: National Women’s History Project. DuBois, E. (1978) Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1847–1969. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. DuBois, E. (1997) Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. DuBois, E. (2020) Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote. New York: Simon & Schuster. Dudden, F. (2011) Fighting Chance: The Struggle Over Woman Suffrage and Black Suffrage in Reconstruction America. New York: Oxford University Press. Dye, N.S. (1980) As Equals and as Sisters: Feminism, the Labor Movement and the Women’s Trade Union League of New York. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Egge, S. (2018) Woman Suffrage and Citizenship in the Midwest, 1870–1920. Iowa City: University of Iowa. Farmer, J.O. (2010) “Eulalie Salley and Emma Dunovant,” in Spruill, M., Littlefield, V., and Johnson, J., eds., South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times, vol. 2. Athens: University of Georgia Press: 144–165. Faulkner, C. (2013) Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Franzen, T. (2014) Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Gatewood, W.B., Jr. (2010) “The Rollin Sisters: Black Women in Reconstruction South Carolina,” in Spruill, M., Littlefield, V., and Johnson, J., eds., South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times, vol. 2. Athens: University of Georgia Press: 50–67. Giddings, P. (1984) When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. New York: W. Morrow. Giddings, P. (2009) Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching. New York: Amistad. Gidlow, L. (July  2018) “The Sequel: The Fifteenth Amendment, the Nineteenth Amendment, and Southern Black Women’s Struggle to Vote,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17: 433–449. Ginzberg, L. (2009) Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life. New York: Hill and Wang. Goodier, S. and Pastorello, K.S. (2017) Women Will Vote: Winning Woman Suffrage in New York State. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Goodstein, A. (1998) “A  Rare Alliance: African American and White Women in the Tennessee Elections of 1919 and 1920,” Journal of Southern History 64: 219–246. Grimke, A. to Garrison, W. (1835) “Slavery and the Boston Riot,” Boston. Library of Congress. www.loc.gov/item/rbpe.05601500/. Gullett, G. (2000) Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women’s Movement, 1880–1911. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Gunter, R. (2017) “More Than Black and White: Woman Suffrage and Voting Rights in Texas, 1918–1923,” PhD diss., Texas A&M University. Hamlin, K. (2020) Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener. New York: W. W. Norton.

206 References Harper, I. (1908) The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, vol. 3. Indianapolis, IN: Hollenbeck Press. Harper, I. (1922a) History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 5. New York: J. J. Little & Ives. Harper, I. (1922b) History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6. New York: J. J. Little & Ives. Harris, S. (2020) Margaret Murray Washington: The Life and Times of a Career Clubwoman. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Higginbotham, E. (1994) Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hoffert, S. (2012) Alva Vanderbilt Belmont: Unlikely Champion of Women’s Rights. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hudson, J. (2009) Entangled by White Supremacy: Reform in World War I-Era. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. “Influenza Mars Suffrage Plans,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 10 October 1918, p. 15. Jensen, J. (1981) “ ‘Disenfranchisement is a Disgrace’: Women and Politics in New Mexico, 1900–1940,” New Mexico Historical Review 56 (1): 5–35. Johnson, J. (2007) Southern Ladies, New Women: Region, Race, and Clubwomen in South Carolina. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Johnson, J. (2017) Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women’s Movement, 1870–1967. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Jones, M. Vanguard (2020) How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. New York: Basic Books. Kerr, A. (1992) Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kogan, J. and Ginzberg, L. (1997) “1846 Petition for Woman’s Suffrage, New York State Constitutional Convention,” Signs 22: 427–439. Kraditor, A. (1965) The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920. New York: Columbia University Press. Lee, C.K. (1999) For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Lee, R.H. to Corbin, H. (17 March 1778) in The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, vol. 1. Edited by J. Ballagh. New York: Macmillan Co., 1911–1914: 392–393. Lerner, E. (1981) “Immigrant and Working Class Involvement in the New York City Woman Suffrage Movement, 1905–1917: A Study in Progressive Era Politics,” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley. Lindsay, T. (2017) Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, DC. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Logan, A. (September 1912) “Colored Women as Voters,” The Crisis: 242–243. Los Angeles Times (9 October 1911): 18. Lunardini, C. (2012) Alice Paul: Equality for Women. New York: Routledge. Mabel, L. (May  1914) “The Meaning of Woman Suffrage,” Chinese Student Monthly: 526–529. Marino, K. (2016) “Votes for College Women: Women’s Suffrage and Higher Education in Modern America,” PhD diss., State University of New York, Binghamton. Materson, L. (2009) For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois, 1877–1932. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. May, V. (2007) Anna Julia Cooper, Visionary Black Feminist: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge.

References  207 McArthur, J. (2003) Minnie Fisher Cunningham: A Suffragist’s Life in Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. McCandless, A.T. (2010) “Anita Pollitzer: A  South Carolina Advocate for Equal Rights,” in Spruill, M., Littlefield, V., and Johnson, J., eds., South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times, vol. 2. Athens: University of Georgia Press: 166–189. McCormick, K. to Magoun, Mrs. F. (2 February 1916) National American Woman Suffrage Associations Records, Library of Congress, microfilm, reel 33. McMillen, S. (2015) Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life. New York: Oxford University Press. Mead, R. (2004) How the West Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the West States 1868–1914. New York: New York University Press. Miles, T. (2009) “Circular Reasoning: Recentering Cherokee Women in the Antiremoval Campaigns,” American Quarterly 61: 221–243. New York Age (22 April 1915): 4. New York Age (27 September 1917): 1. New York Times (23 April 1913): 10. New York Times (20 April  2020): www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/us/spanish-fluwomens-suffrage-coronavirus.html?auth=login-email&login=email. Nickliss, A. (2018) Phoebe Apperson Hearst: A Life in Power and Politics. Lincoln, Neb.: Bison Books. Painter, N. (1996) Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol. New York: W. W. Norton. Park, M. (1960) Front Door Lobby. Boston: Beacon Press. Parker, A. (2020) Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Payne, E. (1988) Reform, Labor, and Feminism: Margaret Dreier Robins and the Women’s Trade Union League. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Penney, S. and Livingston, J. (2004) A Very Dangerous Woman: Martha Wright and Women’s Rights. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Proceedings of the Women’s Rights Convention Held at Worcester, October 23d and 24th, 1850. (1851) Boston, MA: Prentiss & Sawyer. Richardson, M. (1987) Maria W. Stewart: America’s First Black Political Writer, Essays and Speeches. Bloomington: Indian University Press. Richmond (VA) Times Dispatch (30 January 1913): 10. Rouse, J. (1989) Lugenia Burns Hope: Black Southern Reformer. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Ruffin, J. (August 1915) “Trust the Women!” The Crisis 10: 88. Sander, K. (2008) Mary Elizabeth Garrett: Society and Philanthropy in the Gilded Age. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Santangelo, L. (2019) Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot. New York: Oxford University Press. Shaw, A. to Thomas, M.C. (3 November 1914) in M. Carey Thomas Papers, microfilm, reel 160. Smith-Rosenberg, C. (1975) “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” Signs 1: 1–30. Stanton, E. (1854) Address to the Legislature of New-York: Adopted by the State Woman’s Rights Convention, held at Albany, Tuesday and Wednesday, February 14 and 15. Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons, and Company. Stanton, E. (4 February 1869) “Women and Black Men,” The Revolution 4: 64. Stanton, E. (1 September 1894) “Foreign Vote,” Woman’s Journal: 1.

208 References Stanton, E., Anthony, S., and Gage, M. (1881) History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1. Rochester, NY: Charles Mann. Stanton, E., Anthony, S., and Gage, M. (1887) History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2. Rochester, NY: Charles Mann. Sterling, D. ed. (1987) Turning the World Upside Down: The Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women Held in New York City, May 9–12, 1837. New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York. Taylor, A.E. (1976) “South Carolina and the Enfranchisement of Women: The Early Years,” South Carolina Historical Magazine I 77: 115–126. Taylor, K.-Y. (2012) How We Get Free: Black Women and the Combahee River Collective. New York: Haymarket Books. Terrell, M. (1898) The Progress of Colored Women: An Address Delivered before the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Washington, DC: Smith Brothers. Terrell, M. (September  1912) “The Justice of Woman Suffrage,” The Crisis: 243–245. Terrell, M. (1940) A Colored Woman in a White World. Salem, NH: Ayer. Tetrault, L. (2014) The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Trout, G.W. (July 1920) “Side Lights on Illinois Suffrage History,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 13: 145–179. Van Voris, J. (1987) Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life. New York: The Feminist Press, CUNY. Wagner, S.R. ed. (2019) The Women’s Suffrage Movement. New York: Penguin Books. Weiss, E. (2018) The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote. New York: Viking. White, D.G. (1999) Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994. New York: W.W. Norton. “Will the Federal Suffrage Amendment Complicate the Race Problem?” National Literature Headquarters, Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, Philadelphia, n.d. https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/woman-suffrage/ will-woman-suffrage-complicate-the-race-problem-flyer-hsp/ “Winning Equal Suffrage in California,” (1913) San Francisco, CA: National College Equal Suffrage League. Work, M. ed. (1931) The Negro Year Book: An Annual Encyclopedia of the Negro, 1931–1932. Tuskegee, AL: Negro Year Book Publishing Co. Young, E.R. (1929) The Record of the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission, Inc. 1917–1929. New York: Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission. Younger, M. (21 August 1908) “Why Wage-Earning Women Should Vote,” Labor Clarion. Yung, J. (2008) “The Social Awakening of Chinese American Women as Reported in Chung Sai Yat Po, 1900–1911,” in Ruiz, V. and DuBois, E., eds., Unequal Sisters: An Inclusive Reader in U.S. Women’s History, 4th ed. New York: Routledge: 259–270. Zagarri, R. (2007) Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Zahniser, J. and Fry, A. (2014) Alice Paul: Claiming Power. New York: Oxford University Press.

Index

AASS see American Anti-Slavery Society Abolition see anti-slavery movement Adams, Abigail 12, 177 – 178 Adams, John 12, 177 – 178 Addams, Jane 59, 96, 116 – 117 AERA see American Equal Rights Association AKA see Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc. Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc. 98 Alpha Suffrage Club 100, 112, 117, 119 Alpha Suffrage Club Record 112 American Anti-Slavery Society 20, 23 – 24, 28, 32, 37 – 38 American Equal Rights Association 38 – 39, 41 – 42 American Federation of Labor 74 American Revolution 11 – 13, 16 American Suffragettes (New York) 90, 92 American Woman Suffrage Association 42 – 43, 46, 51, 53 Anderson, Naomi Talbert 63 Anthony, Lucy 72 Anthony, Susan B. 27, 37 – 38, 54, 68, 112, 159; arrested for voting 44; in California 62, 65; in Colorado 61; death of 75; and Elizabeth Cady Stanton 37; lecturer for AAAS 37; and Mary Garrett 69 – 70, 72; in New Orleans 69; in South Carolina 67; and universal suffrage 38 – 42, 46 Anti-lynching see lynching Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women 22 – 23 Anti-Slavery movement 17 – 25, 38 – 42 Anti-suffragism 65; based on racism 142, 156, 158 – 161; early nineteenth century resistance to women’s rights

19, 22 – 24, 26; and states’ rights argument 129; and threat to gender roles 29, 40, 59, 63, 67, 160; of white Southern legislators 67, 129, 142 – 143, 157 Asian American women 85 – 87, 92 – 94, 166 – 167 AWSA see American Woman Suffrage Association Baldwin, Marie Bottineau 101 – 103 Barnett, Ida B. Wells see Wells, Ida B. Bass, Charlotta Spears 85 Belmont, Alva Vanderbilt 77, 79 – 82, 94, 106, 107, 110, 122, 124 – 125, 131, 136, 140, 194 – 195 Birth Control Review 115 Black male voting 25 – 26, 36 – 42, 46, 55 – 56, 58, 66 – 67, 116, 126 see also Fifteenth Amendment Black women suffragists 31 – 34, 38 – 40, 43 – 44, 67, 112 – 113, 137; after 1920 165 – 6, 168 – 172; in California, 63, 85 – 86; in Colorado, 61; in Iowa 121; and intersectionality of racism and sexism 32, 38 – 39, 41 – 2, 52 – 55, 68, 189 – 190, 192 – 194; in New York 92, 123 – 126; in Texas 146 – 148; in Illinois, 99 – 100, 119; in the south 55 – 57, 68 – 69, 109; in Tennessee 157 – 158; and Washington, DC parade 97 – 98, 100 – 101, 123; and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union 51 – 52; and women’s clubs 52 – 57 see also racism Blackwell, Elizabeth Stone, 113, 115 Blackwell, Henry 31, 66 – 67, 113, 187 Blake, Lillie Devereux 122 Blatch, Harriot Stanton 74 – 75, 79, 91 – 92, 121 – 122

210 Index Bradwell James 44 Bradwell v. Illinois 45, 187 – 188 Bradwell, Myra 44 – 45, 116 Brooks, Virginia 100 Brown, Charlotte Hawkins 56 – 7, 109, 166, 169 – 170 Bryn Mawr College 70 Bureau of Suffrage Education see Press bureau Burn, Harry 160 – 161 Burns, Lucy 95 – 96, 105 – 106, 136

Congressional Committee (NAWSA) 96, 104 – 105, 128 – 129 Congressional Union 104 – 108, 128, 130, 132, 134 – 136 Cooper, Anna Julia 52, 189 – 190 Corbin, Hannah Lee 12 Coverture 29, 39 The Crisis, 69, 112 – 113, 193 – 194 CU see Congressional Union Cunningham, Minnie Fisher 146 – 149

California 60 – 63, 65, 84 – 89, 110 California Equal Suffrage Association 85 California Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs 85 Cameron House (Washington, DC) 136 – 137 Cary, Mary Ann Shadd 32 – 34, 43 – 44 Catt, Carrie Chapman 64 – 65, 72, 122 – 123, 125, 132 – 133, 134, 159; and Alice Paul 105, 108; bequest from Leslie 110; in Colorado 61; in Iowa 120 – 121; and segregation in NAWSA 68, 147 – 148 CC see Congressional Committee CESA see California Equal Suffrage Association CESL see College Equal Suffrage League Chicago 44, 99 – 100, 116 – 117, 118 Chicago Legal News 44 Chicago Political Equality League 117 Chinese American suffragists 85 – 87, 92 – 94, 166 – 167 Citizenship voting 64, 148 – 9 Clay Laura 67, 81 – 82 Coleman, Mattie 158 College Equal Suffrage League 72 – 74, 85 Colorado 60 – 61, 73 Colorado Equal Suffrage Association 61 Colorado Woman Suffrage Association 61 Colored Woman’s League (Washington, DC) 52 Colored Woman’s Suffrage Club of New York City 125 – 126 Colored Women’s Suffrage League (California) 85 Combahee River Collective 172 Commission on Interracial Cooperation 170

Declaration of Independence 11 – 12, 28 – 29 Declaration of Sentiments 28 – 30, 183 – 185 Delta Sigma Theta 98 Democratic Party 36, 41, 63, 173 Dennett, Mary Ware 82 – 83, 91, 98 110, 130 DePriest, Oscar 119 Douglass, Frederick 18 – 19, 67; and Women’s Rights Convention, 1848 (Seneca Falls, New York) 24 – 25, 28 – 29; and Women’s Rights Convention, 1850 (Worcester, Massachusetts) 30, 42 Douglass, Sarah Mapps 23 DuBois, Ellen 28, 41 Emancipation Proclamation 37 Empire State Campaign Committee (New York) 123, 125 – 126 Ensley, Elizabeth Piper 61 Equal Rights Amendment 172 Equal Suffrage League (Brooklyn, New York) 92, 123 – 124 Equality League of Self-Supporting Women (New York) 75 – 76, 79, 91 – 92, 122 ESCC see Empire State Campaign Committee (New York) ESL see Equal Suffrage League (Brooklyn, New York) Etheridge, Florence 96 Fannie Jackson Coppin Club (Oakland, California) 85 Ferguson, James 146 – 147 Fifteenth Amendment 36 – 38, 41 – 46, 55 Flu pandemic 155 Force-Feeding 95, 138 Fourteenth Amendment 36, 38, 43 – 46

Index  211 Frost, Susan Pringle 141 Funding 41, 72, 78 – 79, 81, 96, 104 – 107, 110 – 113, 131 – 133; in California 62 – 63 see also wealthy women Gardener, Helen 97 – 8, 134 – 135, 134, 141, 153 – 155 Garrett, Mary 69 – 70, 72, 78 Garrison, William Lloyd 17 – 18, 20 – 21, 23, 28, 68 Gender roles 6, 14, 28 – 29, 31, 35, 63, 72, 140, 142, 149, 160 General Federation of Women’s Clubs 58 – 59 GFWC see General Federation of Women’s Clubs Gray, Victoria 171 Grimke, Angelina 21 – 24, 181 Grimke, Sarah 21 – 24, 180, 182 – 183 Guam 168 Hamer, Fannie Lou 171, 171, 199 – 200 Hanna, Ione Theresa 61 Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins, 34, 38 – 39, 42 – 3, 51 – 52, 185 – 186 Havemeyer, Louisine 154 Hay, Mary Garrett (Mollie) 64 Headquarters 79 – 83, 80, 104, 106, 110 – 111, 123 – 124, 126, 134, 136 Hearst, Phoebe 63, 70, 88, 111, 136 Hispanos/as 143 – 144, 168 Hobby, William 147, 148 – 149 Holman, Helen 125 Home Protection Ballot 50 – 52, 188 – 189 Hope, Lugenia Burns 56 – 57, 169 – 170 Hunt, Jane 26, 28 Hunton, Addie 168 – 169 Idar, Jovita 146 IESA see Illinois Equal Suffrage Association Illinois 73, 99 – 100, 116 – 120, 197 Illinois Equal Suffrage Association 73, 117 – 120, 154 Immigrant women 5, 75, 86 – 89, 92, 121 – 122, 146 Immigration 47 – 48, 61, 94, 120 – 122, 126, 148, 166 – 167; suffragists’ opposition to immigrants voting 28, 39 – 40, 64, 120, 149 Industrialization 13 – 14, 47 – 48 Interurban Woman Suffrage Council (New York) 122, 125

Iowa 60, 64 – 65, 120 – 121 Iowa Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs 121 Iowa Woman Suffrage Association 64, 120 – 121 IWSA see Iowa Woman Suffrage Association Jackson, Lottie Wilson 67 Jackson, Lydia Flood 85 Jefferson, Thomas, 11 Johns Hopkins University 70 Johnson, Lyndon 172 Kansas 40 – 41 Kenney, Catherine 158 Kent, Elizabeth 96 The Keystone 115, 140 Labor Unions 61 Latina women 86, 143 – 144, 146, 168 League of Women Voters 158, 168 – 169 Lee, Clara Elizabeth Chan 87 Lee, Jarena 15, 23 Lee, Mabel Ping-Hua 92 – 94, 93, 195 – 196 Lee, Richard Henry 12 Leslie Bequest 110, 113, 133 Leslie, Miriam Folline (Mrs. Frank) 110 Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman 22, 30, 182 – 183 Leung, Emma Tom 87 Lewis, Annie 126 The Liberator 17, 19, 21 Life and Labor 115 Logan, Adella Hunt 69, 193 – 194 Lopez, Maria de 85 Los Angeles Woman’s Club 62 Lost Cause 58, 158 – 159 Lowell, Massachusetts 14 LWV see League of Women Voters Lynching 52 – 53, 55 – 56, 98 – 100, 169, 190 – 192 M’Clintock, Mary Ann 26, 28 Married Women’s Property Act 29; Illinois 44; New York 28 MASS see Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society 30 – 31 Mays, Jennie Johnson Shaw 121

212 Index McCormick, Katharine Dexter 82 – 83, 91, 91 – 92, 96 – 97, 113, 132, 198 – 199; and Alice Paul 104 – 105, 132; and World War I 152 – 153 McCormick, Ruth Hanna 129 – 130 McCormick, Stanley 82 McCulloch, Catherine 100, 118 – 120 Memphis Free Speech 99 Militant suffragists 74, 90 – 91, 94 – 95, 105, 107 – 108, 115, 136, 141 Minor v. Happersett 45 Minor, Virginia 45 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party 171 Missouri Compromise 17 Moorman, Irene 124, 124 – 125 Moral suasion 15 – 16, 48 Mott, Lucretia Coffin 20 – 24, 38, 183; and Women’s Rights Convention, 1848 (Seneca Falls, New York) 25 – 29; and Women’s Rights Convention, 1850 (Worcester, Massachusetts) 30 Municipal housekeeping 58 – 59, 61 NAACP see National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NACW see National Association of Colored Women Nanye’hi 16 Narrative of Sojourner Truth 32 Nashville, Tennessee 157 – 158 National American Woman Suffrage Association 77, 113; and Alice Paul 96 – 98, 104 – 108, 129, 132, 136, 139; fighting among leadership 78 – 83, 104 – 108; founding of 46; fundraising for 70 – 72, 78 – 83, 96 – 97, 104 – 106, 110; Headquarters 79 – 83, 110 – 111, 133; in Iowa 65, 120 – 121; press bureau 110 – 111; resistance to militancy 105, 132, 139; segregation of 68 – 69, 147, 154; in the south 66 – 67, 77; support for Nineteenth Amendment 128, 133 – 135, 153 – 155, 159; enacts winning plan 132 – 133, 159; and World War I 151 – 153; see also Shaw, Anna Howard; Catt, Carrie Chapman National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 53, 69, 112, 165

National Association of Colored Women 52, 53 – 55, 56 – 57, 69, 112 169 National College Equal Suffrage League 70, 74 National Federation of Afro-American Women 53 National League of Colored Women 52 – 53 National Notes 112 National Organization for Women 172 National Woman Suffrage Association 42 – 43, 46 – 47, 55, 63 National Woman’s Party 4, 136 – 140, 154, 159, 169, 172; headquarters 104, 136, 169; in New Mexico 142 – 146; in South Carolina 141; in Tennessee 159; and Watchfires of Freedom 154; and White House pickets 136 – 139 Native American women 16, 101 – 103, 167 – 168, 173 Natural rights 11 – 13, 16 – 17, 26 NAWSA see National American Woman Suffrage Association NCESL see National College Equal Suffrage League Negro Woman’s Civic and Enfranchisement League (El Paso, Texas) 147 – 148 New Departure strategy 43 – 44 New England Women’s Club 53, 57, 58, 62 New England Women’s Press Association 53 New Mexico 143 – 146 New York 40, 121 – 126; state constitutional convention 25 – 26 New York State Woman Suffrage Association 122 – 123, 125 Newspapers 109, 111 – 115 Nineteenth Amendment 45, 153, 155; ratification of 120 – 121, 146, 156 – 161 North Carolina 166 North Star 18, 25 Northeastern Federation of Women’s Clubs 155 Northwestern University 44, 50 NWCEL see Negro Woman’s Civic and Enfranchisement League (El Paso, Texas) NWP see National Woman’s Party

Index  213 NWSA see National Woman Suffrage Association NYSWSA see New York State Woman Suffrage Association O’Reilly, Leonora 76 Oberlin College 13, 30, 52 – 53, 61 Open air speakers 90 – 91 Otero-Warren, Adelina 144 – 146, 145, 168 Overton, Sarah 85 Painter, Nell 32 Pankhurst, Christabel 95 Pankhurst, Emmeline 95 Parades 92 – 103, 97, 117, 123 Park, Maud Wood 73 – 74, 133, 168 – 169, 198 Pastoral Letter 22, 30 Paul, Alice 94 – 98, 102, 107, 128, 131 – 132, 135 – 136, 141, 159; and NAWSA 104 – 107, 110, 113, 115; and Black women 97 – 98, 100, 131, 142, 169; imprisoned 95, 138, 196 – 197; leadership of the Congressional Union 104 – 107, 113 – 114, 128 – 129; and New Mexico 144 – 145; supports punishing the party in power 131 – 2, 134, 136; and South Carolina 141; and White House Pickets 136 – 139; and Watchfires of Freedom 154 PEA see Political Equality Association (New York) Pearson, Josephine 158 – 159 Peterson, Eliza E. 146 Petitions 16, 26 PFASS see Philadelphia Female AntiSlavery Association Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Association 20 – 21, 28 Philadelphia 21, 23 Phillips, Wendell 38, 40, 41 Phyllis Wheatley Club (New Orleans, Louisiana) 68 – 69 Pierce, Juno Frankie 158 Political Equality Association (New York) 92, 122, 124 – 126 Political Lobbying 128 – 136, 153, 198; in Illinois 117 – 120, 197; in New York 122 – 123 Poll tax 147, 157, 165, 170 Pollitzer, Anita 141 – 142 Pollitzer, Carrie 141 Poppenheim, Louisa 58, 115, 140

Poppenheim, Mary 115 Presidential limited suffrage 60, 65, 122, 133; in Illinois 99, 118 – 120, 131; in Tennessee 157 – 158 Press bureau 110 – 111 Primary voting 147 Progressive Reform Era 47 – 48 The Provincial Freeman 33 – 34 Publicity tactics 88 – 89, 90 – 103, 109 – 115 Puerto Rico 168 Quakers 17, 20 – 21, 28, 94, 98 Quander, Nellie 98 Racism 34, 36, 52, 58, 99; after 1920 165 – 173; and abandonment of universal suffrage 37, 39 – 42, 46; and lobbying white southern legislators 129 – 131, 135, 142 – 143, 157, 160; at the Washington, DC parade 97 – 98, 100 – 101; of white suffragists 28, 32, 64, 66 – 69, 124 – 125, 135, 142, 147 – 8; and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union 51 – 52, 99 See also Black suffragists Ratification 149 Reconstruction 36 The Red Record 99, 190 – 192 Remond, Charles 27, 34 Remond, Sarah 34, 38 Republican Mothers 13 Republican Party 36, 37, 38, 40 – 41, 173; in California 63; in Kansas 40 – 41; in New Mexico 168; in New York 40 Revolution 41 – 43, 112 Rollin Frances 43 Rollin, Charlotte (Lottie) 43 Ruffin, Josephine St. Pierre 53, 99, 112 Schneiderman, Rose 76 – 77, 195 Second Great Awakening 15 – 17, 25 Seneca Falls, New York 25, 122 See also women’s rights conventions Separate Spheres 14 – 16 Severance, Caroline 62 Shafroth Amendment 130 Shaw, Anna Howard 70 – 72, 71, 78 – 9, 81 – 83, 94, 96, 132, 140, 149; and Alice Paul 104 – 106 Shelby County v. Holder 173 Shirtwaist Strike 76, 76 – 78 Social Reform 11, 15 – 17, 25; see also Progressive Era Reform

214 Index Socialist Party 123 Society of American Indians 102 Sorosis Club 57 – 58 South Carolina 43, 58, 67, 140 – 143, 165 – 166 South Carolina Equal Suffrage League 141 South Carolina Woman’s Rights Association 43 Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases 99 Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference 124 Southern Strategy 66 – 67, 187 Spanish Flu Pandemic 153 – 154 Squire, Belle 100 Stanford, Jane 62 – 63 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady 26 – 30, 27, 43, 51, 74, 96, 112; and Susan B. Anthony 37; in California 62; antiimmigration 64; and the Society Plan 61; and universal suffrage 38 – 42, 46; and Women’s Rights Convention 1848 (Seneca Falls) 26 – 29, 183 – 185 Stanton, Henry 26 – 27 State suffrage campaigns 60, 67, 81, 122 – 123; western states and territories 60 – 61, 84; see also California, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas Stewart, James W. 18 Stewart, Maria W. 18 – 19, 21 – 22, 24, 179 Stone, Lucy 30 – 31, 42, 47, 61, 66, 113 Suffrage House (Washington, DC) 133 – 134 The Suffragist 115 Talbert, Mary 169 Temperance, 16, 22, 37, 47 – 52, 61 – 62, 64, 117, 146, 157 Tennessee 157 – 161 Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association 157 Terrell, Mary Church 53 – 55, 54, 112, 137, 169 – 170, 192 – 193 TESA see Texas Equal Suffrage Association Texas 146 – 150 Texas Equal Suffrage Association 146 – 147 Thirteenth Amendment 36, 37 38 Thomas, M. Carey 69 – 70, 72, 74, 78, 81 – 83

Three-fifths clause 36 Train, George 41 – 42, 112 Trout, Grace Wilbur 100, 117 – 120, 153, 197 Troy Female Seminary 13, 28 Truth, Sojourner 31 – 32, 33, 34, 38, 40, 43 – 44, 47 Tumulty, Joseph 135, 138, 155 Tuskegee Woman’s Club 69 United Daughters of the Confederacy 58, 115 Universal suffrage 37 – 38, 41 – 42, 46 Uprising of the 20,000 see Shirtwaist Strike Upton, Harriet Taylor, 78, 79, 81 – 82 US Virgin Islands 168 Vassar College 72 – 74 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 13, 20 Vittoria Colonna Club (San Francisco, California) 85 A Voice from the South 52, 189 – 190 Voting Rights Act of 1965 172 Wage Earners Suffrage League (New York) 77, 92, 122, 126 Wage Earners’ Suffrage League (San Francisco, California) 85 Walker, Seth 157, 160 Ward, Nancy see Nanye’hi Washington, Booker T. 57, 69 Washington, Margaret Murray 56 – 57, 69, 169 WCTU see Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Wealthy women 28, 61 – 63, 66, 69 – 72, 76 – 79, 81 – 83, 88, 106, 110, 117, 122 – 123, 126 See also funding Wells, Ida B. 98 – 100, 101, 112, 116, 119, 126, 190 – 192 Wells-Barnett, Ida B. see Wells, Ida B. WESL see Wage Earners’ Suffrage League (San Francisco, California) White House pickets 136 – 139, 137 White, Sue Shelton, 154, 159 Wilkinson, Marion Birnie 56 – 57, 109, 169 – 170 Willard, Emma 13, 28 Willard, Frances 48 – 51, 49, 58 71, 99, 188 – 189 Williams, Maud Sampson 147 – 148 Williams, Sylvanie, 68 Wilmington, North Carolina 55 – 56

Index  215 Wilson, Edith Bolling Galt 135, 155 Wilson, Woodrow 96, 120, 131, 135, 151, 153 – 155, 158 – 159; and White House pickets 136 – 138 Winning Plan 132 – 133, 136, 146, 149, 157, 159 Wollstonecraft, Mary 13 Woman Citizen 113 Woman Suffrage movement: after 1920 165 – 170; in California 61 – 63, 84 – 88; and college women 72 – 74; funding for 61 – 63, 69 – 72, 78 – 82; in Illinois 116 – 120; imprisonment of suffragists 95, 138, 196 – 197; in Iowa 63 – 64, 120 – 121; leadership conflicts 78 – 83, 104 – 106; link to anti-slavery movement 17 – 24, 36 – 42; municipal housekeeping argument in 58 – 59; in New Mexico, 143 – 146; in New York 121 – 126; and the Nineteenth Amendment 128 – 135, 153 – 161; origins of 11 – 16; parades 90 – 103; publicity 110 – 115; in South Carolina 140 – 143; and the southern strategy 66 – 69; supported by Woman’s Christian Temperance Union 48 – 52; in Texas 146 – 149; in the West 60; and White House pickets 136 – 139; and women’s clubs, 52 – 58; and women’s rights conventions, 25 – 35; and working-class women 74 – 77 Woman Suffrage Party (New York) 122 – 123, 126 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union 47 – 52, 58 – 60, 99, 188 – 189; in California 61, 63, 85; in Iowa 65, 120 – 121; in New Mexico 143 – 144; in New York 122; in South Carolina 56, 67; in Tennessee 157; in Texas 146; in the Midwest 63 – 64; in the South 51 – 52 Woman’s Era 112 Woman’s Journal 31, 42, 97, 113, 114, 115, 130

Woman’s Socialist Union of California 84 Women’s clubs 47, 52 – 59, 73, 112, 115, 154; in California 62, 85 – 86; in Chicago 99, 116 – 117; in Colorado 61; in Iowa 120; in the Midwest 63; in New Mexico 143 – 144; in New York 93, 123, 125; in South Carolina 140; in Tennessee 158 Women’s Educational and Industrial Union 62 Women’s Loyal National League 37 Women’s Medical School Fund 70, 72 Women’s Peace Party 151 Women’s Political Union (New York) 122 – 123 Women’s Rights Conventions, 25 – 35; 1850 (Worcester, Massachusetts) 30 – 32; 1851 (Akron, Ohio) 32; 1848 (Rochester, New York) 30; 1848 (Seneca Falls, New York) 25 – 29, 34 Women’s Social and Political Union (London, England) 90, 95 Women’s Trade Union League 74 – 77, 115, 117 Woodhull, Victoria 50 – 51 Working-class women 14, 66, 74 – 79, 92; 117, 195; in California 84 – 85, 88; in New York 121 – 123, 126 – 127 World Anti-Slavery Convention, 1840 26 – 27 World War I 120 – 121, 126, 151 – 156 WPU see Women’s Political Union (New York) Wright, Martha Coffin 26, 28 WSP see Woman Suffrage Party (New York) WSPU see Women’s Social and Political Union (London, England) WTUL see Women’s Trade Union League Young, Virginia Durant 67 Younger, Maud 84, 89, 141, 159