The Long History of the Battle for Women's Suffrage

The Long History of the Battle for Women’s Suffrage The Age-Old Absence of Rights for Women The compelling need by women throughout the world to secure rights – over their lives, their children, their bodies, their property - has burned for centuries. In America it was not only regarding voting that women were disadvantaged. The absence of women’s rights – long before women’s suffrage – was cruelly obvious. A woman’s property became her husband’s upon marriage, and women were only gradually allowed to act as independent agents in legal contexts on a state-by-state basis after 1839. American women, until well into the 20th century, could not sue for divorce or gain legal custody of their children if their husbands divorced them or died. Age, sex and wage discrimination in the workplace was legal, and widely practiced. Few laws gave women any right to their earnings or inheritance and even fewer laws addressed physical abuses that women suffered at the hands of their husbands. The U.S. followed English Common Law: “The husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband.” Where is the “Right” in “Right to Vote”? Isn’t the “right to vote” one of our most fundamental constitutional rights? In fact, it is not. Neither the original Constitution nor the Bill of Rights expressly guarantees the right to vote. Until the 15th Amendment passed in 1870, granting the vote to all African American men, each state decided who could vote. Only in the 1960s, when the Supreme Court concluded that the 14th Amendment implicitly protected the right to vote, did voting come to be regarded as a fundamental federal constitutional right. And women? They were expressly prohibited from voting in all the original state constitutions except New Jersey’s after the Revolutionary War, and New Jersey’s tolerance for women’s suffrage ended in 1807. 523 Ridgewood Road Maplewood, NJ 07040 (973) 763-7712 www. durand-hedden.org The Long History of the Battle for Women’s Suffrage The Anti-Slavery Movement: The Cradle of Women’s Suffrage The desire for female self-determination was already evident in the late 1700s as American women became increasingly involved in the anti-slavery movement. The cause of abolition led many of them into the public sphere for the first time. But as they defended the rights of African American people to be free, they began to look at their own constrained situation as women. In New Jersey in the early 1790s, Quakers formed the New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, a chapter of the most prominent abolitionist group in the young nation. Women were active members of this and other anti-slavery organizations. Sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké, staunch and outspoken abolitionists, discussed women’s place in the public discourse as early as the 1830s. (They later ran an Underground Railroad stop in Perth Amboy in the early 1860s.) In many places, women were prohibited from being members of and speaking at Anti-Slavery Society meetings, and early on formed separate organizations of their own. The Philadelphia Female Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society Anti-Slavery Society was one of the first, founded in 1833, and the Grimké sisters were members. When criticized for speaking in public to “mixed” audiences of men and women in 1837, the Grimkés fiercely defended the right of women to participate in political discourse. Seal of Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society 523 Ridgewood Road Maplewood, NJ 07040 (973) 763-7712 www. durand-hedden.org The Long History of the Battle for Women’s Suffrage Sparks Lit by Women Factory Workers The Victorian aphorism that “a woman’s place is in the home” tried to make women feel good about their lot. In reality, their lives were an endless round of pregnancies, child-rearing and domestic duties. They worked hard and died young – often in childbirth. For working class women, having their “place in the home” was an unattainable ideal. In the 1830s, numerous women worked in more than one hundred low-paying industrial occupations. They often worked for pennies an hour in unsafe factories, subjected to unregulated abuse from their bosses. They desired rights for women, too, but their goals focused on better pay and working conditions. And they were not afraid to take action. Female textile workers in Lowell, Mass., led strikes in 1834 and 1836 for fair treatment and decent wages. In 1835, a strike in 20 Paterson, NJ textile mills involved more than 2,000 women and children seeking shorter working hours. Ernestine Rose Ernestine Rose, a Polish Jewish immigrant to America in 1836, became an eloquent orator on the abolition of slavery, religious tolerance, public education, and equality for women. In 1838, she circulated petitions supporting a proposed New York state law to improve the civil rights of married women and to allow them to hold property in their own name. At an 1851 national women’s rights convention she spoke about the legal death of women in marriage. She described the cases of two offenders brought before a Justice of New York: “One was charged with stealing a pair of boots, for which he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment; the other crime was assault and battery upon his wife: he was let off with a reprimand from the judge! …The judge showed us the comparative value which he set on these two kinds of property.” 523 Ridgewood Road Maplewood, NJ 07040 (973) 763-7712 www. durand-hedden.org The Long History of the Battle for Women’s Suffrage The First Convention on Women’s Rights in 1848 Launches a Formal Movement Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, attending an anti- slavery convention in London in 1840, were required, as women, to sit in the balcony. They refused to remain at the conference, and the seeds were planted for a formal movement to improve women’s rights. In 1848, Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Mott planned the first major convention on women’s rights, in Seneca Falls, New York. It ignited a movement that expanded in the following decade, to push for the Lucretia Mott Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony reform of divorce and property laws, and the rights of citizenship. Without a vote and virtually invisible in the eyes of the law, women could not stand up for themselves, the new suffragists said, for they were nothing more than the property of men. Finding a Voice African American women, doubly oppressed by racism and sexism, found their own ways to join the battle for women’s rights as part of – and apart from – White women’s suffragist organizations. Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Mary Ann Shadd Cary and others spoke at national and state women’s rights conventions and meetings in the 1850s. Starting with church groups and the formation of Black women’s clubs, they provided support for their communities and raised money to fight slavery. Harriet Tubman Library of Congress 523 Ridgewood Road Maplewood, NJ 07040 (973) 763-7712 www. durand-hedden.org The Long History of the Battle for Women’s Suffrage The Aftermath of the Civil War and the Fifteenth Amendment During the Civil War, abolitionists and women’s suffrage activists, both White and African American, focused their attention on ending slavery. With the end of the war, arguments for woman suffrage became entwined with debates over the rights of formerly enslaved people and the meaning of citizenship. Before, voting status had been determined by the states. Now Congress proposed two federal amendments: • The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including former slaves—and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the laws”. • The 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that 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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Sex was not mentioned. By defining the right to vote in a separate amendment, Congress implied that it was not synonymous with citizenship. The proposed Fifteenth Amendment created a challenge among suffragists – should they support it? Should they fight for African American women to be included? And if so, what about White women? NWSA vs AWSA – Two Approaches Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had established the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) in 1866, “to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex.” Some of the more prominent reform activists of that time were members, including women and men, Blacks and Whites. Elizabeth Cady Stanton promoting the National Women’s Suffrage Association But disagreement over support of the 15th Amendment led to a split. In 1869, Stanton, Anthony and Rose created the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), and Lucy Stone and her husband, Henry Blackwell, formed the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). AWSA adopted a state-by-state approach to winning the vote for women. NWSA Lucy Stone was more radical and controversial, and wanted a Constitutional amendment to secure the vote for women. 1868 Petition to New Jersey Legislature requesting rights for women 523 Ridgewood Road Maplewood, NJ 07040 (973) 763-7712 www. durand-hedden.org The Long History of the Battle for Women’s Suffrage Losing momentum, then gaining celebrity endorsements Between 1870 and 1890, neither group achieved much success. A few states allowed women to vote in municipal or school board elections, but the entire movement was “in a rut.” Events were not well attended, and annual conventions did not attract new people.

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