Women's Suffrage Movement

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another edition of History in a Nutshell!

The year 2020 marks 100 year anniversary of one of the crowning achievements in United States law, the passing of the Constitution's 19th Amendment, which granted women across the country the right to vote.

The 19th Amendment took more than 70 years to achieve, and even longer for full voting rights to be extended to everyone, regardless of race!

When you hear the phrase Women's Suffrage, some key figures which come to mind may be Susan B. Anthony, Ida B.

Wells, Inez Milholland, Carrie Chapman Catt, or Alice Paul!

While women were naturally at the forefront of this suffrage movement, there were also many notable men who supported them behind the scenes, including famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and inventor Thomas Edison!

Both the 19th Amendment, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 needed to come about, and were indeed a step in the right direction for equal rights for all citizens of the United States!

The Women's Suffrage Movement was not an easy one, however, for it was plagued with political and social opposition, and schisms from within.

The question of Women's Suffrage in the U.S., not unlike the question of slavery, had been debated long before the Women's Suffrage Movement's humble beginnings in 1848.

In the development of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers pondered about women's right to vote, but ultimately passed it off for the states to decide for themselves.

Due to the social norms of the 18th and 19th centuries, women were viewed as second class citizens, and certainly did not enjoy the same rights as men.

A woman's place was, say, in the home, and should not concern herself with politics or the plights of society.

Social conditions for enslaved people were even worse, and these would serve as the causes of both movements for abolition and women's rights.

In the early years of the Women's Suffrage Movement, both the Abolition and Suffrage Movements were intertwined.

The first generation of suffragists rose to prominence from the abolition movement.

Notable figures like Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Lucy Stone, worked together with Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass in the fight for equal rights!

The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 was the first women's rights convention in the U.S., where Elizabeth Cady Stanton famously decried women's lack of rights.

Abolition and women's rights would remain intertwined, until the American Civil War caused the first major rift in these equal rights campaigns.

The fight for Women's Suffrage had to be placed on the back-burner, so to speak, in order to focus on the rights of the enslaved.

The suffragists naturally believed that women would gain equal rights alongside freed slaves, but this was not the case.

In 1869, Suffragists were asked by Republicans to support the 15th Amendment, which granted voting rights only to African American men.

The sentiment was that "the nation cannot handle "two great reforms at once."

This need to compromise drove a wedge between the Abolition and Women's Rights movements.

The argument now became one of race versus gender.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton argued that educated White women should get the vote over slaves and sons of slaves first, while Frederick Douglass argued that African American men should be first.

Abolitionist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper remarked, "When it was a question of race, "I let the lesser question of sex go.

"But the White women all go for sex, "letting race occupy a lesser position."

The Women's Suffrage Movement suffered yet another split, this time from within.

Disagreements on strategies arose, which caused suffragists to form two rival groups.

The American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Lucy Stone and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, believed petitioning to state governments was the best approach for achieving women's right to vote.

The other group, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, was the National Woman Suffrage Association.

The National Woman Suffrage Association fought mainly for a federal remedy, which they believed would be the 16th Amendment to the Constitution.

So bitter was the rivalry between these two groups, that they would not reconcile their differences until 1890.

Racial tensions would cause an even further divide in the fight for Women's Suffrage.

African American suffragists who were essential in the movement before were cast aside.

Even Frederick Douglass was denied entry into a convention in Atlanta, for fear of alienating potential Suffrage supporters.

Jim Crow laws and segregation enabled Women's Suffrage chapters in the South to deny African American women entry into these groups.

While African American women were basically left on their own to fight for Suffrage, they by no means gave up!

Throughout the late 1800s, the Women's Suffrage Movement's results were pretty mixed.

While the Eastern states would prove to be the toughest to crack, sentiments in the Western states were not quite so hostile.

The Women's Suffrage Movement gained much needed momentum in the West.

See, in Western states and territories, women were viewed as essential citizens, and needed to be able to vote, for the populations out West were much smaller.

The Wyoming territory enfranchised women in 1869, followed by Utah in 1870, Colorado in 1893, and Idaho in 1896.

The Women's Suffrage Movement gained even further support when the Woman's Christian Temperance Union joined the fray in the late 1870s.

As support for Women's Suffrage grew, so too did resistance.

One of the Temperance Union's goals was to ban alcohol, and when the group started advocating for Suffrage, this in turn, caused the liquor industries to actively resist women getting the right to vote.

Other groups opposed Women's Suffrage as well, such as textile mill owners and railroad owners, out of fears that women would drastically change labor laws and caused their businesses to lose money.

There were even some women who opposed the Suffrage Movement!

Anti-suffragists were afraid that the Women's Suffrage Movement would destroy the family unit, and increase the number of socialist voters in America.

From 1896 - 1909, over 160 legislative measures were proposed for consideration.

Out of those, only six were put to a vote; all of them failing.

This period, as Susan B. Anthony put it, was known as "The Doldrums."

♪ [melodic music] ♪ The early 1900s gave rise to the next generation of suffragists, alongside the "New Woman" movement, which actively encouraged women's presence in public spaces.

Activities such as getting a college education, riding bicycles, and speaking in public were considered taboo for women to do.

Women were now more actively involved in the public arena, and the torch had been passed to the new generation of suffragists: leaders like Harriot Stanton Blatch, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Alice Paul would continue to lead women in the fight for the vote.

However, like the first generation of suffragists, this new generation did not come without disagreements on strategies.

The two rival organizations mentioned earlier: the American Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman Suffrage Association merged in 1890 to create the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

After the merger, the Association shifted to fighting for suffrage at state levels.

When Alice Paul joined the Association in January 1913, she was solely responsible for reviving the drive for a Constitutional Amendment.

Paul and her followers grew impatient with the Association's slow progress, and decided to take a more confrontational approach, arguing that Democrats would not work to enfranchise women, even though they controlled Congress and the Presidency.

When Paul and her followers became more militant in their tactics, the National American Woman Suffrage Association withdrew its support, causing yet another split.

Paul, together with Lucy Burns, formed the National Woman's Party in 1916.

While the National American Woman Suffrage Association was more mainstream, and had more lobbying power, the National Woman's Party was smaller, and was viewed as more vocal and confrontational.

The National Woman's Party's most notable demonstration was the Silent Sentinels Vigil outside of the White House, between 1917 and 1919.

The President of the United States at this time was Woodrow Wilson, who became President in 1913.

At first, Wilson's attitude towards Women's Suffrage was indifferent, but as the years went by, his views shifted due to increasing political pressure.

Ironically, it would be another war to really give the Women's Suffrage Movement the momentum it needed to pass the 19th Amendment.

World War I.

President Wilson was forced to break his isolationist stance, and the United States entered the conflict in April 1917.

Suffragists once again had to put the right to vote on hold, however, many suffragists, including Carrie Chapman Catt believed that women could use World War I as an opportunity to show the country that women indeed deserved the right to vote.

Catt and the National American Woman Suffrage Association encouraged women to fulfill their patriotic duties by stepping into roles normally performed by men, and they did!

While men were off fighting The Great War, women on the home front contributed to the war effort by making arms and ammunition, sewing uniforms, working in steel mills and oil refineries, and serving as nurses to help treat America's wounded soldiers.

Unfortunately, not all women felt quite so patriotic... Alice Paul's National Women's Party continued to picket outside of the White House.

Paul argued: Why should women step up to support a country which will not allow women the right to vote?

Paul even went so far as to compare President Wilson to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany!

These actions were largely frowned upon and deemed unpatriotic; so much so that National Woman's Party members, including Paul herself, were imprisoned, and subjected to abuse at the hands of prison guards.

President Wilson was appalled when he received news of the suffering Paul and her followers endured, and immediately demanded their release.

Women's efforts during World War I, and the abuse of Alice Paul and her followers were the two key motivating factors to shift Wilson's stance into fully backing the Women's Suffrage Movement.

With Wilson's support, you would think that women's suffrage was a given, right?

Well, not quite.

In January 1918, a bill passed the House of Representatives, but was blocked by the Senate.

Another vote was scheduled for March of that year, but opponents kept delaying, and there would not be another chance for the Suffrage Amendment until September.

No matter how hard Wilson pleaded with the Senate to pass the Suffrage bill, his pleas fell on deaf ears.

As it turns out, most of the opposition in the Senate came from Southern Democrats.

Women's enfranchisement was stalled in the Senate for the time being, but not all hope was lost: in 1918, three more states enfranchised women, raising the total number to 21.

The midterm election of 1918 broke the stalemate, for Congress shifted to a Republican majority, and on June 4, 1919, the measure for the 19th Amendment finally passed...

But the fight was not over yet.

In order to ratify a new federal amendment, three quarters of the states have to approve it.

In 1919, there were 48 states, which meant that the country needed 36 to fully recognize the 19th Amendment, and boy, was there still some resistance in the state level!

Southern states continued to push against the 19th Amendment, but by mid-June 1920, suffragists had managed to raise the number of states to 35.

Only one more state to go.

Seven "Solid South" states rejected the 19th Amendment, which left only two possible states to reach that majority: North Carolina, and Tennessee.

President Wilson urged Tennessee's Governor Albert Roberts to make the state the last one needed for ratification, and on August 18, 1920, the vote barely passed the Tennessee House of Representatives, which signaled to the U.S. that the 19th Amendment was officially the law of the land.

Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the 19th Amendment eight days later, on August 26, 1920.

The 1920 Presidential Election was the first presidential election in which women in every state could vote.

The effort to enfranchise women took over 70 years of hard work, and several generations of suffragists to make it happen.

This, however, did not mean that all women could vote.

The 19th Amendment meant that mainly White women could vote; the battle for full suffrage, to include African Americans and minorities still raged.

Despite the progress made for women's rights and suffrage before the passing of the 19th Amendment, African American suffragists were still widely excluded.

Many suffragists, including Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt believed that advocating for anything other than suffrage would dilute or diminish the issue.

After the passing of the 19th Amendment, some African American women in the North and in the West got to vote, however other state legislatures, particularly in southern states, went out of their way to continue disenfranchising African Americans by introducing more unnecessary hurdles.

Grandfather clauses, literacy tests, and poll taxes kept African Americans from casting votes.

Some individuals, like Ku Klux Klan members, even resorted to using lynching and other forms of abuse to discourage African Americans from approaching ballot boxes.

It's noteworthy that in the face of all this inhumane treatment, suffragists like Ida B.

Wells, and Mary McCleod Bethune stood their ground and kept fighting for African American Suffrage.

It would not be until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s where African Americans could finally secure the right to vote once and for all.

After a string of racial incidents President Lyndon B. Johnson called upon legislators in 1965 to enact expansive voting rights protections, which came in the form of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

This Voting Rights Act expressly prohibits racial discrimination in voting, and enforces the voting rights guaranteed in the 14th and 15th Amendments.

These victories in Women's Suffrage also served to influence the Women's Movement in the 1970s, where figures such as Shirley Chisholm and Gloria Steinem fought for other crucial rights women rightfully deserved.

Thanks to the contributions and efforts of countless women and men fighting for civil rights and suffrage, now all citizens, regardless of gender or race, can have a voice in U.S. elections!