Do you know the story of Women’s
Suffrage in the US?
It was not until 1920 that women were
granted the right to vote.
Take note of this living history, and get out
and vote, cherishing the right. It was a hard
fought battle for women in this country.
Lucy Burns
was beaten and her hands chained to cell bars above
her head. She was left hanging for the night,
bleeding and gasping for air. For weeks, the
women's only water came from an open pail. Their
food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with
worms.
Innocent and defenseless women were jailed for
picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for
the vote.
Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917,
when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in
Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the
suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to
picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right
to vote.
By the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty
prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's
blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women
wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'
Alice Paul
was one of the leaders who embarked on a hunger
strike with another leader, Lucy Burns. They were
force fed by a tube down their throat or nose and
tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled
out to the press. Woodrow Wilson and his associates
tried to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul
insane so that she could be permanently
institutionalized. The doctor refused. Alice Paul was
strong, he said, and brave and that didn't make her
crazy. The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in
women is often mistaken for insanity.'
These brave women built on prior actions of earlier
activists. In 1756 Lydia Taft became the first legal
woman voter in colonial America when town fathers
allowed her to vote as her recently deceased
husband’s proxy. This occurred under British rule in
the Massachusetts Colony at Uxbridge in town
meetings at which she voted on at least three
occasions. Unmarried women who owned property
could vote in New Jersey from 1776 to 1807. In
1840, Elizabeth Cady Stanton became an avid
suffragist after meeting Lucretia Mott at the World
Anti-Slavery Convention in London. The convention
refused to seat Mott and other women delegates
from America because of their sex. Stanton joined
Mott and a handful of other women to organize the
first women's rights convention held in Seneca Falls
in 1848. Over 300 people attended. Stanton drafted
and read a Declaration of Sentiments modeled on
the United States Declaration of Independence
proclaiming that men and women are created equal.
She proposed, among other things, a controversial
resolution demanding voting rights for women. In
1851, Stanton met temperance worker Susan B.
Anthony, and the two joined in the long struggle to
secure the vote for women.
Lucy Stone,
a prominent American abolitionist and suffragist,
and a vocal advocate and organizer promoting rights
for women, in 1847 became the first woman from
Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She spoke
out for women's rights and against slavery at a time
when women were discouraged and prevented from
public speaking. Stone was the first recorded
American woman to retain her own last name after
marriage. Susan B. Anthony credited a speech by
Stone as inspiring her to be a suffragist.
Together, Anthony, Stanton, and Stone have been
called the 19th century "triumvirate" of women's
suffrage and feminism.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(sitting) with Susan B. Anthony, founded the
National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA),
dedicated to gaining women's suffrage in 1869.
Women’s Suffrage organizations continued to
evolve. In February 1890, Susan B. Anthony
successfully orchestrated the merger of the NWSA
with Lucy Stone's more moderate American Woman
Suffrage Association (AWSA), creating the National
American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
Carrie Chapman Catt was
mentored by Lucy Stone who had been impressed at
her ambition and sense of presence. Catt became a
close colleague of Susan B. Anthony, who selected
Catt in 1900 to succeed her as head of the NAWSA.
She served a first term from 1900-1904. She served
another term from 1915-1920. In 1920 she formed
the League of Women Voters aimed to help newly
enfranchised women exercise their responsibilities
as voters.
In the US presidential election of 1916, the NWP
campaigned against the continuing refusal of
President Woodrow Wilson and other incumbent
Democrats to support the Suffrage Amendment
actively. In January 1917, the NWP staged the first
political protest to picket the White House. The
picketers, known as "Silent Sentinels," held banners
demanding the right to vote. This was an example of
a non-violent civil disobedience campaign. In July
1917, picketers were arrested on charges of
"obstructing traffic." Many, including Paul, were
convicted and incarcerated at the Occoquan
Workhouse in Virginia.
Alice Paul
joined the National American Woman Suffrage
Association (NAWSA) following her PhD graduation
from the University of Pennsylvania. Her initial work
was to organize a parade in Washington the day
before President Wilson's inauguration. The focus of
the parade was lobbying for a constitutional
amendment to secure the right to vote for women.
Such an amendment (authored by Susan B. Anthony)
had originally been sought by suffragists Susan B.
Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton who being
stymied by Congress on the Amendment front, tried
securing women’s suffrage on a state-by-state basis.
Alice Paul and Lucy Burns proposed more publicity
seeking confrontational methods which created
tension between her and the leader of NAWSA ,
Carrie Chapman Catt who was serving a second term
as president and who felt that a constitutional
amendment was not practical for the times.
After months of fundraising and raising awareness
for the cause, membership numbers in NAWSA went
up in 1913 and when her lobbying efforts proved
fruitless, Alice Paul and her colleagues formed the
National Woman's Party (NWP) in 1916 and began
introducing some of the methods used by the
suffrage movement in Britain.
The 2004 movie Iron Jawed Angels, portrays the
story of Alice Paul during her struggle for passage of
the 19th Amendment.
Left to right: Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott
Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel,
Mabel Vernon (standing, right) conferring over
ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution at National Woman's Party
headquarters, Jackson Place , Washington , D.C.
First introduced into Congress in 1878 as the
Anthony Amendment and finally passed by Congress
June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the
19th amendment granted women the right to vote.
XIX Amendment to US Constitution
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.
Congress shall have power to enforce
this article by appropriate legislation.
Although the Nineteenth Amendment had
prohibited the denial of the right to vote because of
a person's sex, Alice Paul, a suffragist leader, argued
that this right alone would not end remaining
vestiges of legal discrimination based upon sex. Paul
drafted the Equal Rights Amendment and, in 1923,
presented it as the "Lucretia Mott Amendment" at
the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the 1848
Seneca Falls Convention and the Declaration of
Sentiments. It was introduced to Congress in 1923.
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
Equality of rights under the law shall
not be denied or abridged by the
United States or by any State on
account of sex.
The Congress shall have the power to
enforce, by appropriate legislation,
the provisions of this article.
It was not until 1970 when the ERA found its way out
of committee and was submitted to the state
legislatures for ratification in 1972 following
approval by the US House and Senate. Approval by
38 states was required to ensure adoption of the
amendment. Not enough states — only 35 — voted
in favor in time for the 7 year deadline. However,
efforts to pass the ERA passed by Congress in the
1970s are still afoot, and almost half of the U.S.
states have adopted the ERA into their state
constitutions.
Rep. Shirley Chisholm, as a newly
elected first black woman in the
US Congress delivered a famous
speech in 1970 For the Equal
Rights Amendment. Chisholm
said that during her New York
legislative career, she had faced
much more discrimination
because she was a woman than
because she was black.