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The Women's Suffrage Movement
Votes for Women
Women and Televised Hearings
The first woman governor – Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming - was elected
in 1924, upon the death of the previous governor, her husband.
The Women's Suffrage Movement
1913: Women Organize Parade to Disrupt Inauguration, Onlookers Harass
and Attack Marchers
When Woodrow Wilson arrived in Washington, D.C., on March 3, 1913, he expected
to be met by crowds of people welcoming him for his inauguration as United States President the next day.
But very few people came to meet his train. Instead, hundreds of thousands of
people were lining Pennsylvania Avenue, watching a Woman Suffrage Parade.
Organizers of the parade, led by suffragists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, planned
the parade for the day prior to Wilson's first inauguration in hopes that it would turn attention to their cause: winning
a federal suffrage amendment, gaining the vote for women.
Five to eight thousand suffragists marched from the U.S. Capitol past the White
House. Most of the women, organized into marching units walking three across and accompanied by suffrage floats, were in costume,
most in white. At the front of the march, lawyer Inez Mulholland Boissevain led the way on her white horse.
In another tableau, Florence F. Noyes wore a costume depicting "Liberty". She
posed for photographs with other participants in front of the Treasury building.
Of the estimated half million onlookers watching the parade instead of greeting
the President-elect, not all were supporters of woman suffrage. Many were angry opponents of suffrage, or were upset at the
march's timing. Some hurled insults; others hurled lighted cigar butts. Some spit at the women marchers; others slapped them,
mobbed them, or beat them.
The parade organizers had obtained the necessary police permit for the march, but the police did nothing to protect them
from their attackers. Army troops from Fort Myer were called in to stop the violence. Two hundred marchers were injured.
The next day, the inauguration proceeded. But public outcry against the police
and their failure resulted in an investigation by the District of Columbia Commissioners and the ousting of the police chief.
More than that, the sympathy generated even more support for the cause of woman
suffrage and women's rights. In New York, the annual woman suffrage parade in 1913, held on May 10, drew 10,000 marchers,
one in twenty of whom were men. Between 150,000 and 500,000 watched the parade down Fifth Avenue.
The March 3 suffrage parade was designed to gain maximum exposure and to draw
attention which would normally be given to the Presidential inauguration in Washington.
After the March suffrage parade put the issue of woman suffrage more prominently
into the public eye, and after the public outcry over the lack of police protection helped increase public sympathy for the
movement, the women moved ahead with their goal.
In April, 1913, Alice Paul began promoting the "Susan B. Anthony" amendment.
It was introduced into Congress on March 10, 1914, where it failed to get the necessary two-thirds vote, but drew a vote of
35 to 34. A petition to extend voting rights to women had been first introduced into Congress in 1871, following the ratification
of the 15th Amendment extending voting rights regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”.
The last time that a federal bill had been submitted to Congress, in 1878, it had been defeated by an overwhelming margin.
In July, the Congressional Union women organized an automobile procession
(automobiles still being newsworthy, especially when driven by women) to present a petition for the Anthony amendment with
200,000 signatures from around the United States.
In October, militant British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst began an American
speaking tour. In November elections, Illinois voters approved a state suffrage amendment, but Ohio voters defeated one.
By December, the NAWSA leadership, including Carrie Chapman Catt decided
that the more militant tactics of Alice Paul and the Congressional Committee were unacceptable and that their goal of a federal
amendment was premature. The December NAWSA convention expelled the militants, who renamed their organization the Congressional
Union.
The Congressional Union, which merged in 1917 with the Women's Political
Union to form the National Woman's Party (NWP), continued to work through marches, parades and other public demonstrations.
After the 1916 Presidential election, Paul and the NWP believed that Woodrow
Wilson had made a commitment to support a suffrage amendment. When, after his second inauguration in 1917, he did not fulfill
this promise, Paul organized 24-hour picketing of the White House.
Many of the picketers were arrested for picketing, for demonstrating, for
writing in chalk on the sidewalk outside the White House, and other related offenses. They often went to prison for their
efforts. In prison, some followed the British suffragists' example and went on hunger strikes. As in Britain, the prison officials
responded by force-feeding the prisoners. Paul herself, while imprisoned at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia, was force-fed.
Lucy Burns, with whom Alice Paul had organized the Congressional Committee in early 1913, spent perhaps the most time in prison
of all the suffragists.
Their efforts succeeded in keeping the issue in the public eye. The more
conservative NAWSA also remained active in working for suffrage. The effect of all the efforts bore fruit when the U.S. Congress
passed the Susan B. Anthony amendment: the House in January 1918 and the Senate in June, 1919.
Opposed by a well-organized and well-funded anti-suffrage movement which
argued that most women really didn't want the vote, and they were probably not qualified to exercise it anyway, women also
used humor as a tactic. In 1915, writer Alice Duer Miller wrote,
Why We Don't Want Men to Vote
· Because man's place is in the army.
· Because no really manly man wants to settle any question otherwise than
by fighting about it.
· Because if men should adopt peaceable methods women will no longer look
up to them.
· Because men will lose their charm if they step out of their natural sphere
and interest themselves in other matters than feats of arms, uniforms, and drums.
· Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games
and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them unfit for government.
During World War I, when women took up jobs in factories to support the
war, as well as taking more active roles in the war than in previous wars. After the war, even the more restrained National
American Woman Suffrage Association, headed by Carrie Chapman Catt, took many opportunities to remind the President, and the
Congress, that women's war work should be rewarded with recognition of their political equality. Wilson responded by beginning
to support woman suffrage. In a speech on September 18, 1918, he said,
We have made partners of the women in this war. Shall we admit them only
to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of right?
Less than a year later, the House of Representatives passed, in a 304 to
90 vote, a proposed Amendment To The Constitution:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied
or abridged by the United States or by any States on Account of sex. The Congress shall have the power by appropriate legislation
to enforce the provisions of this article.
On June 4, 1919, the United States Senate also endorsed the Amendment,
voting 56 to 25, and sending the amendment to the states.
Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan were the first states to pass the law;
Georgia and Alabama rushed to pass rejections. The anti-suffrage forces, which included both men and women were well-organized,
and passage of the amendment was not easy.
When thirty-five of the necessary thirty-six states had ratified the amendment,
the battle came to Nashville, Tennessee. Anti-suffrage and pro-suffrage forces from around the nation descended on the town.
And on August 18, 1920, the final vote was scheduled.
One young legislator, 24 year old Harry Burn, had voted with the anti-suffrage
forces to that time. But his mother had urged that he vote for the amendment and for suffrage. When he saw that the vote was
very close, and with his anti-suffrage vote would be tied 48 to 48, he decided to vote as his mother had urged him: for the
right of women to vote. And so on August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th and deciding state to ratify.
Except that the anti-suffrage forces used parliamentary maneuvers to delay,
trying to convert some of the pro-suffrage votes to their side. But eventually their tactics failed, and the governor sent
the required notification of the ratification to Washington, D.C.
And so on August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution became law, and women could vote in the fall elections, including in the Presidential election.
Votes for Women
U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi made history when her
fellow Democratic representatives chose her to be the first-ever female Speaker of the House. Come January, when the new Congress
convenes, Speaker Pelosi will be second in line to the presidency (after the vice president) and leader of Congress's lower,
larger house.
Women have come a long way in U.S. politics, in a relatively short time.
We look back at how American women first won the right to vote.
It all started in the mid-1800s, when a handful of American
women decided enough was enough. Women deserved the right to vote, despite what most men (and women) of the time believed.
Here's how those suffragists persuaded a nation to change its laws.
In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott lit a
fire under 300 freethinkers at a meeting in Seneca Falls, New York, with passionate speeches in favor of women's rights. Before
long, similar conventions were being held around the country. Female abolitionists, women educators, and bottle-smashing veterans
of the Christian temperance movement eagerly joined the movement.
Two major factions of the suffragist cause emerged. Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony's group wanted to free women from all restrictions, including social ones such as restrictions on divorce.
This was too much for Lucy Stone, who worried her group would lose valuable support if it challenged notions of genteel behavior.
For years, the two egged each other on. In 1890, they merged into one formidable group: the National American Women Suffrage
Association.
The women had to choose between two paths. They could focus
on persuading the states to allow women to vote, or they could set their sights on amending the U.S. Constitution so women
across the nation would have the same rights.
By 1860, the suffragists had a strategy. Kentucky and a
few other states had granted women partial voting rights in school elections, so women tried to gain the vote little by little,
through state law. But after a constitutional amendment gave black men the vote in 1870, women asked, why not a federal law,
and why not now?
The country wasn't ready. In 1878, a California senator
introduced the amendment that would be ratified in 1920. It was soundly defeated, with only 40 of 76 senators even bothering
to vote. Passing a federal amendment required a daunting two-thirds majority. Both houses of Congress had to be filled with
men who supported the cause.
The campaign for suffrage began with the humble petition.
Between 1868 and 1920, volunteers solicited millions of signatures seeking pro-suffrage amendments. But petitioning had drawbacks:
it was only mildly effective, and it was glacially slow. To attract widespread sympathy for their cause, suffragists needed
media attention.
In 1908, the movement switched tactics. American suffragists
took cues from their more militant British sisters and brought their speeches into the streets. Conservative newspapermen
reeled at the spectacle of women on soapboxes, but the aggressive open-air meetings gave the movement new vitality and recognition.
"Votes for Women" was the rallying cry on every corner.
Marches also got the message across. In 1915, more than
30,000 pro-suffrage women and men paraded up Fifth Avenue while a quarter-million New Yorkers turned out to watch. Elaborate
theatrical pageants were the icing on the cake. In 1913, the steps of the U.S. Treasury served as backdrop for a flamboyant
procession of women dressed as "Justice," "Charity," and "Liberty." News about the pro-suffrage cause slowly moved from the
back pages of the paper to the front.
As the country expanded westward, so did the suffrage movement.
The frontier proved fertile ground for women in search of votes. Susan B. Anthony and others traveled across the Plains, Rockies,
and Pacific Coast, drumming up support in the most desolate of tumbleweed towns.
Out west, other motives prevailed for granting women the
vote. Woman-starved Wyoming, where men outnumbered women 6 to 1, became the first state to grant women full voting rights
in 1890. In Utah, Mormon men supported enfranchising their multiple wives in hopes their votes would help defend the faith.
Colorado and Idaho, full of lonesome silver miners, followed suit.
By 1918, the movement had won the right to vote in 15 states.
World War I had brought women new independence, as they poured into factories and hospitals. Now that women were armed with
electoral power as well as economic clout, national party leaders began to pay attention. President Woodrow Wilson encouraged
fellow Democrats to vote for a federal amendment, as "an act of right and justice," that would allow all American women to
vote.
Though the House of Representatives passed the suffrage
amendment in January 1918, the bill stalled in the Senate. Furious suffragists burned Wilson's speeches outside the White
House. That fall, Wilson made an unprecedented appearance before Congress, saying the success of the amendment was vital to
winning the war.
Wilson's words and the suffragists' hard work helped turn
the corner. The amendment passed Congress in June 1919. It took more than a year for the required 36 states to ratify it,
but the 19th Amendment became part of the Constitution in August 1920. After a 70-year struggle, American women had won the
right to vote.
Claire Vail
November 17, 2006
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Women and Televised Hearings
By Denis Mueller
Programming habits in the early days of television followed
familiar established radio patterns during the 1950s. Everyone was defined by his or her particular relationship with the
nuclear family and daytime programming was directed at the housewife followed by the four o'clock children's shows, which
began as mom made dinner for the family.
The regular weekday programming, however, was interrupted by Senate
Hearings, first of the Kefauver Committee which was soon followed by the McCarthy hearings. To the amazement of the gurus
of network programming, women started to watch the hearings of the Kefauver Committee, which studied organized crime, in droves.
The New York Times went so far as to run a headline which stated "Home Chores Wait."
In the spring of 1954, coaxial cable had made coast to coast watching
feasible and housewives everywhere turned to their television sets while daily household chores were shunned aside. The press
itself displayed a certain animosity, which suggests more than a mere eruption. The hearings became a threat to the masculine
order of things.
Politics was not an area where women were supposed to involve themselves.
In the natural hierarchy of order, women need not concern themselves which such things. But the invention of television allowed
women to move into the public sphere, which created a problem of sorts.
Women now became a national jury while men received their accounts
from the press. This caused women to question the biased reporting, on the behalf of McCarthy, of the press. In a letter to
the New York Herald tribune one woman wrote: "I am really glad for the opportunity to view these hearings over the television,
for I can see for myself what the true story is in this controversy. Just want you to know how fortunate I think it is that
the hearings are televised so that the public can get a true picture and make up their own minds. It is protection against
slanted, biased editorials such as those that appear in your paper."
McCarthy came across as a bully who intimidated witnesses by his sheer
rudeness. His tactics had turned the country against him. The question is how much of an influence were women in that changed
public perception of the Senator from Wisconsin. Women told their husbands when they came home and a changed perception of
McCarthy arose. Another factor was in the early days of televised hearings the politicians didn't know how to control an event
so the truth was not as easily controlled. Later in the Watergate hearings, especially in the Iran/Contra hearings, the press
had figured out how to do it.
Furthermore, the daytime programming of political events did not play
well with advertising on television; for if housewives became engaged with the politics they might not be so apt to buy certain
products which then would lead to an overall assessment of women's abilities. So the programs went back to the regular daytime
soaps. The ratings success of the hearings had little to do with prescribed network order and indeed became a threat to the
ordered middle class way of life.
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