National American Woman Suffrage Association Research Articles

Borrowing from Our Foremothers: Reexamining the Women's Movement through Material Culture, 1848–2017

Borrowing from Our Foremothers: Reexamining the Women's Movement through Material Culture, 1848–2017

Florence Kelley: Pragmatist, Feminist, Socialist

Florence Kelley: Pragmatist, Feminist, Socialist

Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States

The 2020 centennial of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment inspired an impressive array of books, articles, museum exhibits, and public humanities projects encouraging us to revisit, revise, and, in some cases, revolutionize our understanding of women's long (and ongoing) fight for the vote. At the forefront of the new digital projects stands the Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States (Obd), edited by Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar. The Obd is connected with the Women and Social Movements Database (Wasmd), launched by Sklar in 1997 and published by Alexander Street Press. What makes the Obd so useful, however, is that Dublin and Sklar negotiated with the publisher to offer the resource both as part of the subscription-only Wasmd and as a stand-alone Web site available for free to anyone with an Internet connection. The result is a monumental biographical database comprising what will soon be more than 3,700 women suffragists. Most of these women were engaged in suffrage and other reform efforts at the local and state levels, so their names will be new to historians and laypeople. For user convenience, more well-known national leaders are also included in the database via links to their biographical entries in Notable American Women (1971), in partnership with the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard University. The entries are organized into three parts, mirroring the suffrage movement's divisions: Militant Women Suffragists—The National Woman's Party (Nwp); Black Women Suffragists; and Mainstream Suffragists—The National American Woman Suffrage Association (Nawsa).

Woman Suffrage and Citizenship in the Midwest, 1870–1920 by Sara Egge

Reviewed by: Woman Suffrage and Citizenship in the Midwest, 1870–1920 by Sara Egge Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz Sara Egge, Woman Suffrage and Citizenship in the Midwest, 1870–1920. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018. 242 pp. $85 (cloth). In this fascinating and important work, Sara Egge recaptures the story of the upper midwestern fight over suffrage in the five decades prior to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Drawing on newspapers, archival sources, voluntary association records, and other materials, Egge takes readers on a deep dive into three counties that, over the period between 1870 and 1920, weighed the question of whether women should vote. She uses the histories of the suffrage debate in Clay County, Iowa; Lyon County, Minnesota; and Yankton County, South Dakota, to analyze midwestern political discourse surrounding not just suffrage but citizenship. In five succinct and well-argued chapters, Egge traces the five-decade trajectory of conversation surrounding suffrage. Her first chapter lays out the early histories of White settlement (at the expense of the Indigenous populations, she notes) and the meanings of community to settlers in the upper Midwest. Egge then describes, essentially, how women started behaving as citizens and participating in these communities in the decades prior to 1920. On the surface, Clay, Lyon, and Yankton women adhered to gender conventions while quietly defying them as they planned bazaars, worked in Ladies Aid Societies, and joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Egge argues that through such work as planning a bazaar, women were "recognized as loyal citizens intent on making their communities better" (52). That the women understood their work as actively subversive is not always clear, though Egge makes it very apparent that they knew better than to use such terms as "feminism." Even with this cautious approach, the story she tells is not one of linear progression towards the vote, but rather one of stops and starts, as voters defeated suffrage multiple times in the 1890s. In South Dakota, woman suffrage was defeated three times alone, leading the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to [End Page 79] denigrate the Midwest and leading Carrie Chapman Catt (herself Iowaborn) to blacklist the South Dakota Equal Suffrage Association. In part, Egge's book intends to rescue the region's reputation and restore the Midwest, especially its rural parts, to its proper place in the history of suffrage activism. Her third chapter in particular offers great comparisons of the counties, where enfranchisement efforts failed for varied reasons, as well as discussion of the lessons suffragists in each place learned from the losses. Two important takeaways were realizations that local leadership needed to disentangle discussion and debate over temperance and suffrage and that they needed to shed their more radical language of individual liberty in favor of a language of civic responsibility. Suffrage advocates worked on both, combining Progressive Era ideals of civic participation with their own desire to vote. World War I was a watershed, as women's wartime efforts and the rampant "anti-German hysteria" convinced Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota voters to reverse course and confirm suffrage for White, native-born women (151). Egge argues that success came, in perhaps large part, because of a narrowing of the definition of citizen to one focused on loyalty to community rather than on individual rights. This, coupled with nativist sentiment and the historical context of WWI (which "shattered the tolerance of ethnic diversity in the Midwest"), allowed White native-born women to secure the franchise (155). The idea that racism and nativism shaped both suffrage activism and passage is of course not new, but Egge adds nuance to discussion of nativist and anti-German sentiment as well as to the divisions between NAWSA and upper midwestern groups. In particular, she reminds readers that in the early days of German, Norwegian, and Swedish immigration to the upper Midwest, Yankee settlers were "grateful" as well as "wary"—and dependent upon the immigrants in their community. Importantly, Egge interrogates citizenship as much as suffrage, looking closely at "the complex political identities women built," their evolution over five decades, and the broader interaction between geographical and regional identity (2). Throughout her work, she reminds us that...

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

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...

Stunts and Sensationalism: The Pennsylvania Progressive Era Campaign for Women’s Suffrage

ABSTRACT Drawing on biographies of Pennsylvania women active in the National American Woman Suffrage Association, this article explores strategies used by suffragists during the Progressive Era. During Pennsylvania’s 1915 campaign for a state suffrage amendment, supporters participated in several stunts, including suffrage gardens and tour of a replica Liberty Bell. Despite the failure of the amendment to win the vote for women, the experiences of campaigning in 1915 and up to 1919 functioned as a training ground for the first generation of women to fully participate in the political life of Pennsylvania.

“Rung it Never can be Until All Women are Free”: Katharine Wentworth Ruschenberger and the Justice Bell

ABSTRACT This article traces the origin, creation, and use of the Justice Bell, a replica of the Liberty Bell that was cast for a statewide tour in support of the 1915 Pennsylvania referendum on woman’s suffrage. Suffragists used the image of the Liberty Bell well before 1915, connecting its symbolism of freedom to the suffrage cause. After the unsuccessful 1915 campaign, the bell was used for national suffrage events, patriotic fundraising, and get-out-the-vote campaigns. Katharine Wentworth Ruschenberger commissioned and paid for the bell and retained ownership of it until her death. The post-1915 use of the bell reflects the shift in her suffrage affiliation from the more traditional National American Woman Suffrage Association to the radical National Woman’s Party.

The Woman’s Hour: Our Fight for the Right to Vote (Adapted for Young Readers) by Elaine Weiss

Reviewed by: The Woman’s Hour: Our Fight for the Right to Vote (Adapted for Young Readers) by Elaine Weiss Elizabeth Bush Weiss, Elaine The Woman’s Hour: Our Fight for the Right to Vote (Adapted for Young Readers). Random House, 2020 [224p] illus. with photographs Library ed. ISBN 9780593125199 $20.99 Trade ed. ISBN 9780593125182 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780593125205 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys R* Gr. 6-10 “They were drenched by rainstorms, chased by watchdogs, and stranded by flat tires. But they found their men.” “They” were the pro- and anti-suffrage activists who blew through Tennessee in the summer of 1920, and “their men” were the Tennessee legislators who would be called into special session for a ratification vote that would seal the fate of the Nineteenth Amendment that would give women the [End Page 452] right to vote. Whereas many books for youth in this centennial year offer overviews of first wave feminism, this rousing adaptation of Weiss’ adult work zooms in on the nailbiting eleventh-hour blitz to push Tennessee off the fence—either expanding on the partial suffrage legislation it had just passed a year prior, or retracting from further enfranchisement under the banner of states’ rights, traditionalist values, and racism. “Suffs” Carrie Chapman Catt of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (who grabbed the baton from Susan B. Anthony) and Sue White of the National Woman’s Party (under the leadership of firebrand Alice Paul) go head to head with “Anti” Josephine Pearson of the Tennessee State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (a politically active organization dedicated to keeping women out of politics). It’s a drama rife with dirty tricks, double-dealing, business lobbying, election year horse-trading, surprising alliances, and last-minute defections, all unfolding with the flow of a gripping novel. Weiss eschews the tone of Noble Purpose Triumphant for a clear-eyed assessment of driven women with ethically questionable gambits and serious philosophical blind spots whose final nasty battle nonetheless pushed our nation forward. Illustrated plates and a selected bibliography are included; the bound book will include an index. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

To Lead and to Vote: Black Women Suffragists in the Naacp in the South

6 | BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL. 82, NO 2 82 No.2 TO LEAD AND TO VOTE: BLACK WOMEN SUFFRAGISTS IN THE NAACP IN THE SOUTH By: Jessica Brannon-Wranosky and Cecilia Gutierrez Venable There is increasing interest in woman suffrage history as the August 2020 centennial approaches for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. This federal amendment removed sex as a qualifier for voting when it passed in August 1920. However, it did not immediately give all women in the US voting access. This article offers an overview of some of the history relevant to current debates on the subject, which of late have focused on the global majority’s role in the woman suffrage movement. Further, it also offers examples of Black women’s suffrage activism in the NAACP. These histories offer sketches of how some white suffrage leaders segregated affiliation within the national woman suffrage organizations and the ways in which Black women suffragists worked to circumvent those barriers. Here are some of their stories. History of Early Woman Suffrage Discussions of early woman suffrage in the United States arose between the interplay of abolitionists. Early supporters included Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan Brownell Anthony. Before the Civil War, early suffrage work was often abstract and aimed at groups of reformers gathering to discuss various aspects of the subject and/or spreading information to new audiences. Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, deliberations among early women’s rights advocates and former abolitionists led to the formation of the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) in 1866, with its express purpose “to secure equal rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex.”2 By 1869, however, a rift developed within this organization concerning women’s right to vote, and it split in two, forming the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) and the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). The AWSA, led by Lucy Stone, supported the Fifteenth Amendment, which Congress had recently passed and sent to the states for ratification. The amendment defined the right to vote as an individual male’s right and not limited by race. The NWSA, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, was furious that the Fifteenth Amendment provided black men the right to vote, but did not guarantee suffrage for women. Among the patterns that developed between the split in 1869 and what suffrage historians call “reunification” in 1890, when the AWSA and NWSA recombined, is that Anthony and Stanton aligned themselves with supporters, money, and campaigning that increasingly incorporated nativist and racist language and fear-baiting at different points. Through these tactics, Anthony and Stanton’s support of voting regulations developed a nativist ideology. Therefore, it was not surprising that a larger number of Black women and men aligned their support with AWSA. In 1890, NWSA and AWSA joined to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). After Lucy Stone died in 1893 and Stanton reduced her role in this new group, Anthony assumed its leadership. Now the dominant national woman suffrage organization, NAWSA attracted other dynamicwomen,includingCarrieChapmanCatt,AnnaHoward Shaw, Laura Clay, and many others. These national suffragists focused their efforts on recruiting and organizing white social elite women into NAWSA affiliates, which left Black women on the sidelines. By the turn of the century, African American advocates for women’s suffrage were increasingly pushed out of NAWSA’s corridors, or prevented from addressing Black women’s voting concerns directly as part of the association’s work or proceedings. African Americans found themselves on the periphery of participating in NAWSA by 1910, so they identified new spaces to spotlight the importance of Black women’s suffrage. The NAACP was founded in 1909 by leaders from several earlier organizations, including the National Afro American League (AAL), the National Afro-American Council (AAC), the Constitution League, the Committee of Twelve, the National Negro Suffrage League, the Niagara Movement, and the National Negro American Political League (NNAPL). These various groups built their successes on the strategies, networks, and failures...

Gertrude Weil: Jewish Progressive in the New South by Leonard Rogoff

Reviewed by: Gertrude Weil: Jewish Progressive in the New South by Leonard Rogoff Anne Gessler Gertrude Weil: Jewish Progressive in the New South. By Leonard Rogoff. ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. xiv, 354. $35.00, ISBN 978–1-4696–3079-3.) In the first biography of Goldsboro, North Carolina, suffragist and social justice activist Gertrude Weil, historian Leonard Rogoff's argument is twofold. First, he counters Eli Evans's portrayal of North Carolina Jews as provincial by arguing that although Weil was entangled in the state's complex racial and gendered hierarchies, she was "cosmopolitan with roots" (p. x). Second, Rogoff offers Weil's career as usable history for readers seeking to "live a meaningful life" (p. xi). Weil was steeped in classical Reform Judaism and the civic-minded German ethos of Bildung—"moral education and self-improvement"—and she believed that Jews were meant to model moral conduct for other nations (p. 2). While Gertrude Weil: Jewish Progressive in the New South builds on literature on North Carolina, women's studies, and Jewish history, Rogoff closely follows Anne Firor Scott's classic survey The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1930 (Chicago, 1970), which documents how the southern women's club movement helped affluent white southern women build networks crucial to organizing politically. Rogoff also complements Pamela Tyler's and Landon R. Y. Storrs's research on the southern woman suffrage movement and consumer activists' emerging maternalist political apparatus. Weil mirrors Storrs's twentieth-century Jewish consumers and advocates whose northern education and international affiliation made radical, interracial organizing possible. Weil's career, however, provides a long view of grassroots movements, and Rogoff extends organizational histories by charting how Weil mobilized social networks to mitigate segregation, poverty, and public health crises for seventy years. The first four chapters examine Weil's spiritual and educational development. Rogoff outlines the Weil family's German Jewish familial network that linked urban nodes like New York City and Baltimore to outposts such as Goldsboro and facilitated assimilation while maintaining traditions, language, and ties to Europe. Additionally, Weil's classical education in North Carolina and at Smith College sharpened the independent, civically engaged idealism that propelled her to join New Woman social work agencies that advocated "municipal housekeeping" to reform political systems (p. 73). Next, Rogoff explores the interplay of Weil's interwar activism, science, and Jewish identity. As a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the North Carolina Association of Jewish Women, Weil attended social work conferences and rooted "democracy and social justice in the canon of Israel" (p. 105). Yet racist and classist paternalism complicated Weil's egalitarianism. For instance, in 1919 she declared that black women's enfranchisement "is a problem" to be solved by strict voting requirements and not by "injustice and discriminations against the white women" (p. 119). In 1927 Weil called for economic equity while suggesting that allowing the poor and the "feeble-minded" to procreate exacerbated "social problems" (p. 200). Rogoff concedes that Weil's abstract idealism translated into "utopian thinking that overlooked social and racial consequences" (p. 202). Rogoff shines in chapter 9, where he traces the southern, northern, and European channels that Weil used to rescue a dozen relatives from Nazi-occupied Europe. She doggedly interceded with American and foreign governments and [End Page 193] spent thousands of dollars to secure family members' visas and make travel arrangements. Rogoff narrates Weil's heartbreaking failures with building tension, as wartime bureaucratic delays prevented one of her relatives from fleeing to Cuba before its borders closed. Rogoff thus illustrates the deeply personal stakes that colored Weil's postwar commitment to Zionism, building domestic religious institutions, and racial integration as an antifascist measure. Marshaling an impressive array of letters, ephemera, speeches, essays, newspaper articles, and government reports from the Gertrude Weil Papers and other archives, Rogoff painstakingly documents Weil's wide-ranging philanthropic, political, and religious efforts. However, without consistent historical signposting and confusing chronology, undergraduates and readers unfamiliar with the subject may become mired in Rogoff's thicket of details and dense prose. Nonetheless, Gertrude Weil invites further research into the history of southern Jewish women's organizations, specifically...

More than a "Trophy for Womankind": Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and the Struggle for Suffrage in New York State

More than a "Trophy for Womankind":Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and the Struggle for Suffrage in New York State1 Randi Storch (bio) Meeting in Buffalo, New York, in 1908, the National American Woman Suffrage Association marked the sixtieth anniversary of the suffrage movement. Rousing speeches punctuated three days of executive sessions, formal meetings, and informal mingling as the Progressive Era's most prominent reformers gathered to honor suffrage "pioneers" and other "distinguished persons," planning at the same time for the movement's future. Among the august group of women was a handful of men, including Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of New York City's Free Synagogue, the only male attendant whose remarks the newspapers reported.2 Wise impressed the audience with his oratory and passion. He declared that anti-suffrage arguments were simply un-American, and he upheld the ballot as a symbol of citizenship. Without women's suffrage, he claimed, "ours is no democracy," America is a "homocracy," or better yet, he decided, "let us call it by its right name, 'manocracy.'" What Wise called the "triumph of the male or man caste," represented, to him, unfinished work of America's republic.3 By 1908, Wise was thirty-four years old, a nationally known speaker, and a prominent Jewish leader. He had served as Beth Israel's rabbi in Portland, Oregon, from 1900 until 1906, and as the Free Synagogue's leader in New York City since 1907. Beginning in Oregon, Wise led and joined numerous causes to broaden American democracy. He supported the [End Page 397] state's women's suffrage effort, which he viewed as a direct application of Judaism's moral principles. Once in New York, women reformers continued to encounter Wise while working to resolve tensions between industrial capitalism and democracy. Out of these labor and municipal reform networks, Wise built a national reputation as a supporter of women's rights. His public arguments upheld women as morally superior to men and deserving of full equality. As a result, women suffragists increasingly came to depend on Wise to stump, preach, network, and write in support of "equal suffrage" as a fundamental step in the realization of democracy's promise. His suffrage activism represented the culmination of his Jewish ideals and his political work within progressive social networks. The story of women's suffrage in New York State conjures images of Seneca Falls, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and later, the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Women leaders and national suffrage organizations were fundamental in the battle for suffrage in New York State and in the nation generally, and excellent histories document the story of female suffrage leaders, suffrage organizations, and suffrage tactics.4 More recent scholarship adds complexity to our understanding of the regional, class, racial, and ethnic backgrounds of those who supported and opposed widening the vote, and several studies examine women's international networks and activism.5 Only a few scholarly works, however, examine the motivations and activism of male [End Page 398] suffragists.6 Historians generally agree that men and women had different reform agendas, political cultures, and approaches to change.7 Wise offers a compelling case of a male reformer whose political work overlapped with women reformers. He linked such social issues as vice and labor protection with suffrage, tying his public reputation to his relationships with women reformers and the changes they attempted together. The suffrage victory in New York State in 1917 was both a statewide and national story, and Wise was part of both. Between 1905 and 1917, he worked most closely with the National American Woman Suffrage Association and then the Men's League for Woman Suffrage of New York State. At all stages in the development of the suffrage movement, women drove the overall strategy of the campaign. Men served as foot soldiers for the women spreading the message. Most men's clubs were not involved in the campaign's daily work, but individual club members, such as Wise, proved to be consistent public voices and strategic allies in the fight for women's suffrage.8 His suffrage activities reached the hearts and minds of leading men and people throughout the state. Even when...

"Intruding in Sacred Territory": Forging Women's Suffrage on the Buffalo-Niagara Frontier

"Intruding in Sacred Territory":Forging Women's Suffrage on the Buffalo-Niagara Frontier1 Shannon M. Risk (bio) Rochester, New York, and New York City saw a great deal of suffrage agitation in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but pro- and anti-suffrage women and men were also active in Western New York. As Buffalo and Niagara Falls became host to larger enterprises, some elite women with wealth, time, and a desire for action emerged as strong proponents of the women's vote. Niagara Falls and Buffalo suffragists did not coalesce until the early 1900s, after attracting a National American Woman Suffrage Association convention in 1908. The region's suffragists chose the "maternalism" path in their campaign, using domesticity as one of their main themes. This softened the conservative response to their efforts, making suffrage plausible. Theirs was an uphill battle against staunchly conservative, patriarchal ethnic enclaves, and certain economic titans. Wealthy women might engage in charity, in keeping with the "woman's sphere," but press, clergy, and civic leaders discouraged their forays into the political realm. To wage a successful suffrage campaign, wealthy women had to build a fragile coalition of different groups. For Buffalo's African American community, formed from canal workers, descendants of ex-slaves, restaurant and domestic workers, teachers, ministers, and industrial laborers, maintaining the middle class was more precarious. Female leaders in the black community not only headed charity endeavors, but also sought to "uplift" their race and protect their right to be citizens, and they did this without the wealth of elite white women. However, local leaders like Mary Talbert were instrumental in forming the National Association for Colored Women in the late 1890s. Their network became a base for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in effect, a suffrage organization. For this community, [End Page 367] the women's vote was about self-respect and survival, but it also fed into a larger movement for black civil rights. While there was some collaboration between black and white suffragists in the area, their efforts remained mostly separate, reflecting state and national trends. Despite the delay in more formal suffrage agitation in the region for black and white suffragists, their efforts were crucial for the state campaign. To run a successful campaign, well-known organizers in other parts of New York State needed the labor and fundraising of these Western New Yorkers. Buffalo and Niagara Falls women gave needed money and respectability to the suffrage movement in a conservative region. Their donations were important during the last decade of the fight for the vote, but they also needed to coalesce different factions in the region. They helped to empower New York State as the linchpin for greater suffrage success on the east coast, and to put pressure on Congress to pass a national women's suffrage amendment. In the last two decades of the women's suffrage movement, women from Niagara and Erie counties organized, countered conservative voices in their society, and worked with state leaders to realize their main goal–the vote–bettering their communities generally.2 This work allowed these regional suffragists to overcome a devastating loss in the 1915 New York State suffrage referendum, and turn their districts towards a positive vote in the next referendum in 1917.3 Early Reform Work Shaped Woman Suffragists Towns along the western portion of the Erie Canal saw major economic gains by the late 1800s and early 1900s due to heavy industry along the canal and on the Great Lakes. This prosperity gave upper class and educated white women in the region time to devote to the betterment [End Page 368] of their communities. They could employ other women to care for their children and their households, thus freeing them for voluntary work. As these women fanned out beyond their own neighborhoods to provide socio-economic uplift, they experienced a transformation in their own lives. The women soon realized that they needed a voice in politics to create meaningful change. The male, "public" political sphere was not welcoming to women's participation, so women in Western New York readily adopted the maternal approach to...

Announcements

Research Article| January 01 2017 Announcements Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies (2017) 84 (1): 132–140. https://doi.org/10.5325/pennhistory.84.1.0132 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Announcements. Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 1 January 2017; 84 (1): 132–140. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/pennhistory.84.1.0132 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressPennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies Search Advanced Search Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600–2000, is compiling a state-by-state database of women involved in the National American Woman Suffrage Association for its Online Encyclopedia of Women's Suffrage in the U.S. So far, the encyclopedia includes National Woman's Party activists and Black women activists. WASM hopes to add NAWSA members by mid-2018.In Pennsylvania, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania is organizing this effort. We seek graduate students, independent scholars, and academics to research and write 500-word biographical sketches of seventy-five Pennsylvania activists. We are particularly interested in college and university instructors who wish to assign biographical sketches to classes of advanced undergraduate students. HSP's collections include information on almost all of the women involved, and we are happy to direct authors to these resources. However, additional research will be required in many cases.For questions or to volunteer, please contact Pennsylvania co-coordinators Christina Larocco, editor and... You do not currently have access to this content.

Brand New District, Same Old Fight: The Bankhead–Hobson Campaign of 1916

Brand New District, Same Old Fight: The Bankhead–Hobson Campaign of 1916 Kari Frederickson (bio) Spanish–american war hero and prohibition crusader Richmond Pearson Hobson defeated ten-term Congressman John Hollis Bankhead in 1906 in a spirited and nasty campaign of ideological and temperamental opposites.1 His victory over Bankhead was equal parts political triumph and personal vendetta. For Hobson, Bankhead had become a personal nemesis determined to block the rise of a younger, more dynamic foe. Despite his victory over John Bankhead, Hobson remained especially sensitive to the Bankhead influence in the state and to what he regarded as politically imperious behavior by the family. When Hobson was defeated in a race for the U.S. Senate in 1914, most political observers believed his political career over. They were wrong. Hobson’s suspicion of all political moves by the Bankheads within the state of Alabama, in addition to his desire to usher a prohibition amendment through Congress, prompted him to make a fateful political decision. In 1916, Hobson challenged John Bankhead’s forty-two-year-old son William for the newly created Tenth Congressional District. But the son was not the father; Will Bankhead was better able to counter Hobson’s claims to the prerogative of political leadership by drawing on some of the same masculine conventions that had powered Hobson to victory over the senior Bankhead in 1906. The charismatic younger Bankhead and Hobson’s political missteps proved impossible for the war hero [End Page 267] to overcome. The results of the 1916 election set the combatants on opposing tracks: Hobson would never again hold political office while Bankhead’s victory would be the first of many that would bring him to the pinnacle of power in the nation’s capital. Richmond Hobson took his seat in Congress as the representative of Alabama’s Sixth Congressional District when that body convened in December 1907. For the next seven years, Hobson proved himself to be a staunch advocate of a strong navy. He spoke frequently of his concern about Japan’s growing power and urged his fellow Congressmen to support generous naval appropriations and general military preparedness. Hobson also became a reliable advocate of progressive reforms. He opposed protective tariffs, which he believed hurt rural folks and promoted “an abnormal growth of city life,” and supported additional federal aid for education, constitutional amendments instituting the graduated income tax and for the direct election of U.S senators, as well as the Clayton Anti-Trust and Federal Trade Commission Acts. Though popular with his constituents, Hobson was not well liked by his fellow congressmen, particularly those from his own state. While in Congress, he developed a reputation as something of a maverick and was not considered a reliable southern Democrat. For example, Hobson supported New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 1912, breaking with Alabama’s Congressional delegation, which supported favorite-son candidate Representative Oscar Underwood.2 Hobson stood apart from his southern colleagues on a number of critical issues. Viewing women as natural allies in the progressive reform battle, Hobson was one of the few southern representatives to actively support women’s suffrage. Of the value of women’s political participation, Hobson argued, “We find ample provisions of law for dealing with cholera in hogs or foot-and-mouth disease in cattle, but [End Page 268] there is nothing to reach infant mortality and little to reach child labor, debauchery, and moral obliquity.” Giving women the vote would make it more likely that political solutions would be found for these problems. When the National American Woman Suffrage Association staged the first suffrage parade in Washington D.C., in 1913, it named Congressman Hobson as a parade leader. Some political observers spoke of his potential as a vice presidential and perhaps even a presidential candidate.3 More conspicuous than his support of women’s suffrage was his response to what became known as the Brownsville Affair. In late 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered a dishonorable discharge of 167 African-American soldiers of the 25th Infantry Regiment stationed at Fort Brown in Texas. The presence of the black troops had exacerbated racial tensions...

REFLECTIONS ON AILEEN KRADITOR'S LEGACY: FIFTY YEARS OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE HISTORIOGRAPHY, 1965–2014

AbstractThis article assesses the impact that Aileen Kraditor's classic monograph,The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement(1965) has had on fifty years of suffrage historiography. Kraditor is best known among scholars for offering the terms “justice” and “expediency” to distinguish between two strains of suffragist argumentation, the former of which she associated with the nineteenth century and the latter with the Progressive Era. Although specialists no longer believe in a firm divide between the two periods, many continue to differentiate between principled (egalitarian) arguments that called for suffrage as a universal right of citizenship and instrumental (expedient) claims that often contained racist assumptions about white women's superiority. The majority of scholars now accept Kraditor's fundamental insight that a political movement devoted to the extension of democracy contained within it antidemocratic and racist elements, but they have challenged other key aspects of Kraditor's work, including her characterization of white southern women's advocacy of suffrage and her Turnerian assumptions about why statewide suffrage referenda succeeded first (and primarily) in the West. In addition, scholars have expanded the terrain of women's political activism to include analyses of black women's suffrage activities and understandings of citizenship; in so doing they have connected the regional histories of the South and the Midwest, displacing Kraditor's national narrative. Collectively the field has moved far beyond Kraditor's focus on the National American Woman Suffrage Association to emphasize the enormous range of suffrage activities that took place before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, demonstrating how woman suffrage encompassed new understandings of citizenship that were inseparable from the histories of Reconstruction, U.S. expansion, and western imperialism.

A Woman Both “New” and “True”: Jane Campbell as Catholic Suffragist

Historical accounts of the Progressive Era in the United States generally lack any discussion of the nation’s Catholic laywomen. Yet Catholic laywomen played key roles in Progressive Era history. Some, for example, were active in suffrage reform, and one necessary step in that struggle was the bridging of the problematic divide between supporters of suffrage and the Catholic Church – more specifically, between suffrage advocates and the votes of the Catholic faithful, which were greatly influenced by the church establishment, and which became critical in the years leading up to the ratification of the nineteenth amendment. One Catholic laywoman in particular, Jane Campbell (1845–1928), maintained leadership roles in both the Catholic community and the suffrage community (specifically the National American Woman Suffrage Association). This article provides some necessary historical context regarding the Catholic Church’s history in the Progressive Era United States and discusses Campbell’s influence in both the suffrage and Catholic communities during the two-year span of 1913–1915, which was a critical period of growth and change for both the church’s identity and the suffrage cause.

“The perfect library”Carrie Chapman Catt and the authoritative historiography

The very act of remembering was at the core of power dynamics in the suffrage movement, during the years of struggle and after the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920. In the late 1930s, Carrie Chapman Catt, the former president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, decided to create her own “perfect library” on the woman suffrage movement, that she bequeathed to the Library of Congress in Washington. This paper explores the authoritative dimension of Catt’s endeavor and her effort to control the memory of the movement. Catt made it a personal affair: she obliterated historical accurateness to favor her vision, her agenda and her legacy. She saw herself as the sole custodian of suffragist remembrance.

Anna Howard Shaw: the work of woman suffrage

With this first scholarly biography of Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919), Trisha Franzen sheds new light on an important woman suffrage leader who has too often been overlooked and misunderstood. An immigrant from a poor family, Shaw grew up in an economic reality that encouraged the adoption of non-traditional gender roles. Challenging traditional gender boundaries throughout her life, she put herself through college, worked as an ordained minister and a doctor, and built a tightly-knit family with her secretary and longtime companion Lucy E. Anthony. Drawing on unprecedented research, Franzen shows how these circumstances and choices both impacted Shaw's role in the woman suffrage movement and set her apart from her native-born, middle- and upper-class colleagues. Franzen also rehabilitates Shaw's years as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, arguing that Shaw's much-belittled tenure actually marked a renaissance of both NAWSA and the suffrage movement as a whole. Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage presents a clear and compelling portrait of a woman whose significance has too long been misinterpreted and misunderstood.

Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman SuffrageAssociation Collection, 1848-1921 * By Popular Demand: "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920

Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman SuffrageAssociation Collection, 1848-1921 * By Popular Demand: "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920

Call Her a Citizen: Progressive-Era Activist and Educator Anna Pennybacker (review)

Reviewed by: Call Her a Citizen: Progressive-Era Activist and Educator Anna Pennybacker Rebecca Montgomery Call Her a Citizen: Progressive-Era Activist and Educator Anna Pennybacker. By Kelley M. King. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010. Pp. 284. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9781603441858, $39.95 cloth.) This work provides a complex portrait of a remarkably accomplished woman who, if she had been born male, no doubt would have attained positions of even greater public authority and power. Anna Hardwicke Pennybacker (1861–1938) [End Page 97] was born in Virginia but spent most of her life in Texas. Trained as a teacher, she enjoyed a successful career in public schools and authored a popular textbook on Texas history in the 1880s. After her husband Percy’s death in 1899, she channeled her considerable writing, oratorical, and organizational skills into work with numerous women’s and political organizations. Pennybacker held prominent positions in, among other groups, the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Chautauqua Women’s Club, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and the Democratic National Committee. All of these organizations highly prized her skillful use of persuasive speech and print media for educational, publicity, and fundraising purposes. Pennybacker’s value as a leader was enhanced by her sharp political acumen. She had an expert grasp of timing and strategy that made her particularly effective at handling controversial issues. For example, as president of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs she bridged the divide between conservative southern white women and women’s rights activists by muting her advocacy of woman suffrage enough to keep conservatives in the fold, while showing just enough support for the issue to appease suffragists. Although this alienated some members of the suffrage movement, she reconciled with both the Texas and national factions by assisting in their campaigns after stepping down from the presidency. She similarly negotiated the race question by accepting the legitimacy of white supremacy without resorting to the racist rhetoric employed by southern suffragists such as Kate Gordon of Louisiana. Once ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment appeared inevitable, she worked with the Democratic National Committee to educate women voters and secure their support for the party of the South. It was only after World War I that her diplomatic skills failed her. She participated in international relief work and publicly endorsed the League of Nations and World Court, but was unable to find an effective middle ground in women’s organizations between ultra-patriotic groups like the Daughters of the American Revolution and advocates of disarmament and peace. This is by far the most complete and critical account of Pennybacker’s public life published to date, although there are a few areas in which it is lacking. The introduction does not contain the sort of overarching thesis on the significance of her life needed to ground the reader in the narrative. Admittedly, the author discusses in her conclusion the difficulties of formulating such a thesis, but simply providing some initial generalizations as to Pennybacker’s place within Southern progressivism would have been helpful. The book also fails to explain the place of Mexican Americans in the racial politics of Texas progressivism. The author notes that Pennybacker’s history textbook referred to “lazy and insolent Mexicans” who challenged Anglo property rights (52), but there is no effort to explain how Hispanics figured into either public education or the suffrage issue. Despite these omissions, Call Her a Citizen makes important contributions to the history of education, Texas, and progressivism through its exhaustive examination of Pennybacker’s activism. Its account of the roles she and her husband played in pedagogical reform and the professionalization of teaching breaks new ground in Texas educational history. Moreover, by tracing Pennybacker’s journey from school teacher to political operative the author broadens the concept of education and reminds us of its connections to personal and political power. Although [End Page 98] Pennybacker’s life may defy easy generalization, this study should inspire other historians to give it the attention it deserves. Rebecca Montgomery Texas State University-San Marcos Copyright © 2011 The Texas State Historical Association