Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot by Lauren C. Santangelo

Abstract

Reviewed by: Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot by Lauren C. Santangelo Antonia Petrash (bio) Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot By Lauren C. Santangelo. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 272 pages, 11 halftones, 6-1/8" x 9-1/4". $78.00 cloth, $79.99 ebook. Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot By Lauren C. Santangelo. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 272 pages, 11 halftones, 6-1/8" x 9-1/4". $78.00 cloth, $79.99 ebook. In 2020 the centennial of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment enfranchising millions of women across the nation brought forth a wide range of books on the subject. Most offer a general history, focus on a particular time span, or offer biographies of prime players in the long-running campaign. But in her new book, Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot, author Lauren C. Santangelo offers historians a unique perspective on the movement, positing that the City of New York, and primarily the borough of Manhattan, was itself an active, viable entity in the battle for the ballot, a central player in the drama, offering a rich and unique environment within which the movement could flourish and eventually succeed. We are introduced to activists Lillie Devereux Blake and Maud Malone, early leaders of the New York City Woman Suffrage League, who as early as 1870 suspected that [End Page 223] New York held unique possibilities for success of the movement. After all, it was the center of banking and industry, publicity and publishing. By 1889 advanced educational venues for women were opening, and a burgeoning retail environment offered respectable employment opportunities. But these positives were offset by myriad negatives, from dread of sexual assault to concern for an equally devastating assault on a woman's respectability. Many early suffrage leaders considered cities rampant with a dangerous anonymity that encouraged crime and corruption. The author shows us how the suffragists gradually overcame these restrictive concerns and learned to use the resources of the nation's largest metropolis to their advantage. Early suffrage meetings were held in private homes, offering a nonthreatening environment where women could freely discuss ideas. But the movement quickly outgrew these venues and needed to find appropriate public spaces, most of which were dominated by men. If finances allowed they rented Masonic Halls, churches, and commercial spaces. But they often used public spaces that cost nothing but effort and organization. They gave speeches on street corners and protested at public ceremonies. Their efforts gradually caught the attention of the city's wealthier women, whose subsequent addition of financial aid, celebrity, and glamour served to diffuse some of the older suffragists' concerns. The dominance of early leaders Susan B. Anthony and Lillie Devereux Blake gave way to that of Harriot Stanton Blatch (Elizabeth Cady Stanton's daughter) and the wealthy socialites Katherine Mackay and Alva Vanderbilt Belmont. While competitive, their focus differed—Blatch's Equality League of Self-Supporting Women served the working-class professional; Mackay's Equal Franchise Society courted the wealthy; while Belmont's Political Equality Association appealed across class lines, opening separate organizations for African American women and courting young immigrant laborers. Blatch favored outdoor activities that could include women with "thin checkbooks," and all began to see the benefit of marches and parades that gave a face to the proponents—teachers, professional women, industrial and domestic workers, a "unified army" working for the vote. By 1914 suffragists had sponsored five parades on Fifth Avenue, each more dazzling than the last. In 1909 Belmont moved the National American Woman Suffrage Association from Warren, Ohio, to the corner of Forty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue, the veritable center of Manhattan. She also rented space there to the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, thus making Manhattan the "capital of the city, state and national movements" (66). This strategic placement gave the movement an unmistakable aura of respectability that an address of downtown Henry Street could not, and encouraged other suffrage organizations to relocate nearby. But the suffragists did not confine themselves to this posh area. They...