“WE INTEND TO GET THE VOTE….”
This week marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote. On August 18, 1920, the state of Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, passing it by ONE vote. I’ll have more on that process next week, when we celebrate the certification of the 19th Amendment on August 26, 1920, by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby. It had been a long, hard journey to that point, and still Black women were denied the vote in the South until 1965, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
As I wrote last week, the Seneca Falls Convention in New York in 1848 is seen as the beginning of organized efforts to gain the right to vote for women in the USA. Some colonies had allowed women to vote (Massachusetts and New Jersey), but by 1807, all states denied the right of women to vote. The work to obtain the right to vote was long and arduous. A bill to allow women to vote was introduced in the Senate in 1866 but was defeated. In 1869 Wyoming voted to give women the right to vote, as did several other Western states. In 1872 Susan B. Anthony was allowed to register to vote in the Presidential election, and she was later arrested and convicted for voting in that election. In 1875 the US Supreme Court ruled in Minor v. Happersett that the US Constitution did not guarantee women (or anyone) the right to vote, despite the 15th Amendment stating otherwise. In 1878 the “Susan B. Anthony” Amendment was introduced into the Congress for the first time but was defeated there.
As we are seeing now with the emergence of new leaders in the fight for racial justice, it would take a new generation of leaders to push through the passage of the 19th Amendment. There were many, but Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and Harriet Stanton Blatch stand out. And, as we are seeing now in the renewed Black Lives matter movement, it took millions of people galvanizing and organizing to get the needed changes. They believed that more political pressure on state and federal leaders was needed in order to get the vote for women. Paul and Burns went to Britain to learn under the Pankhurst family and others who were working there to get the right for women to vote. Black women like Ida Wells and Mary Church Terrell were also working on the right to vote for women. All joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association, though there was great tension over whether the 19th Amendment would include Black women – the white women were afraid of alienating Southern white women, and the Black women had heard that story so many times!
Burns, Paul, and Stanton Blatch began to raise the pressure in the early 1900’s. Stanton Blatch believed that a state-by-state approach was the best, feeling that the Congress would never pass the Amendment. Paul and Burns believed that they could not conduct such a state-by-state approach well. In order to work on a federal, constitutional amendment, Paul formed the National Women’s Party (NWP), specifically designed to develop an amendment to the Constitution. In 1913 they joined forces with Carrie Chapman Catt to form the first political mass protest in Washington, DC. They gathered their supporters to march on March 3, the day before Woodrow Wilson was to be inaugurated as President. There were tensions and struggles over whether to allow Black women to march in their state groups, or whether the Black women should be segregated to the back of the march. Mary Church Terrell agreed to go to the back – Ida Wells did not. They had many thousands of participants, and at one point, the march was broken up by white males. The US Calvary was called in to restore order, and they finished the march.
In January, 1917, Alice Paul and the NWP did another first – they began picketing the White House, demanding the right to vote for women. Many of their allies felt that they were going too far, that it would alienate more people than persuade them. What seems routine now was started by women seeking the vote. Alice Paul and others pushed the envelope further – they managed to get arrested after the USA entered World War I in April, 1917. Borrowing from tactics learned from the Pankhursts in Britain, they began a hunger strike to force a vote on the amendment. The authorities decided to force feed them instead of making martyrs for the movement. Instead, it shocked the public, and the sympathy meter began to move. All the while, Harriet Stanton Blatch and many others were working on the state levels.
On June 4, 1919 the Congress and the US Senate approved the 19th Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. The Amendment passed the US Senate by ONE vote, after a filibuster by Southern Democrats. The vote in the Senate was 56-25, with 37 Republicans voting for it and 19 Democrats. This would be an amendment that would squeak by – one vote in the Senate, one vote in Tennessee. The passage of this 19th Amendment, which has made such a difference in our democracy, is testimony to the combined power of political organizing, direct action, strong witness, and endurance. It wasn’t perfect, but it is part of those steps needed to seek fulfillment of the great American ideal: we hold these truths to be self-evident- that all people are created equal. Next week on to Tennessee.
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