19th Amendment Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

West Virginia Ratifies 19th Amendment

One hundred years ago, women won the right to vote.

In West Virginia, ratification came down to one vote. In February, 1920, when Governor Cornwall called a special session of the legislature to ratify suffrage, two state senators were missing. One had resigned the previous year and one was playing golf in California. The House of Delegates passed the amendment, but it failed in the Senate.

Undeterred, the leadership kept the Senate in session until the pro-suffrage senator from Wheeling, Jesse Bloch, was persuaded to abandon the golf course and travel cross-country. The Charleston Gazette dramatized the senator’s journey from California to Charleston in headlines. “Senator Bloch Is Said to Be on His Way.” “Where Is Senator Bloch?” “Senator Bloch Last Seen in New Mexico.” “Senator Bloch Coming by Airplane.”

Despite that exciting headline, he came by train. The national Republican Party shelled out $5,000 for a special train to get him to Charleston in time for the vote. Senator Bloch arrived in Charleston at 2 a.m. on March 10. After a short night’s sleep, he walked to the old state capitol in today’s Lee Street Triangle and cast his vote in favor of ratification.

This message is produced by the Kanawha Valley Chapter of the National Organization for Women with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council.

Alice Paul Organizes National Women's Party

One hundred years ago, women won the right to vote.

In her twenties, Alice Paul learned about the struggle for women’s voting rights while studying in England. Back home in 1910, she joined the American movement. Unlike her peers, Paul took a more radical approach. She organized 5,000 women to parade Pennsylvania Avenue on March 3, 1913, the day before President Wilson’s inauguration. Onlookers attacked them with obscenities and physical violence. The police simply watched but national headlines made suffrage a hot topic.

In 1916, Paul organized the National Women’s Party. They picketed the white house. Their banners mocked Wilson. Jailed for obstructing traffic, they staged hunger strikes. Jailers responded with more brutality, including forced feeding, and declared her insane.

Public support for the prisoners convinced caused Wilson to get behind the suffrage amendment. After it became law in 1920, Alice Paul proposed a further amendment: “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex…” known as the ERA, it was introduced in every congress from 1923 until passage in 1972. Paul worked for ratification until her death in 1977. Today, the ERA has yet to be added to the constitution.

This message is produced by the Kanawha Valley National Organization for Women with funding from the WV Humanities Council.

Yost, Jones, and Brown Led Fight for Suffrage in West Virginia

One hundred years ago, women won the right to vote.

The activists who led West Virginia’s suffrage movement faced more than sexism. Despite political setbacks, personal tragedies, and bad roads, they persisted.

Here are just three of those mighty women: a lifelong champion for women’s rights and education, Marion County resident Lenna Lowe Yost attended and later received an honorary doctorate from West Virginia Wesleyan College. She was the mother of a toddler in 1905 when she joined the West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association. After a bitterly disappointing referendum on the women’s vote in 1916, she rallied the group to success four years later.

Harriet B. Jones, born five years before the Civil War, was West Virginia’s first licensed female doctor, practicing in Wheeling. Active in the state’s suffrage movement from its beginning in 1895, she also ran a hospital, fought for women’s place in higher education, worked for children’s welfare, and served in the West Virginia House of Delegates.

Izetta Jewel Brown was an actress, Preston County dairy farmer, political candidate, and WPA administrator during the New Deal. She headed West Virginia’s chapter of the National Women’s Party. She lived to be ninety-five and, in her eighties, lobbied for the Equal Rights Amendment.

This message is produced by the Kanawha Valley chapter of the National Organization for Women with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council.

West Virginia Fails To Pass 1916 Women's Suffrage Referendum

One hundred years ago, women won the right to vote.

As early as 1867, Samuel Young, a minister and state senator from Pocahontas county, introduced a resolution to give West Virginia Women the vote. It failed. In the early 1900s, West Virginia women organized suffrage clubs and, in 1916, tried to pass a state-wide referendum on the vote. When it failed miserably by a three to one margin, Julia Ruhl, president of the state suffrage association, acknowledged, “Our organization is in a demoralized condition.”

In 1917, West Virginians shifted their attention to support the US effort in World War I. After the war, the National American Women’s Suffrage Association proposed an amendment to the US Constitution giving women the right to vote. On June 3, 1919, Congress passed the 19th Amendment stating that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.”

By August 1920, thirty-six states had ratified it, including West Virginia. In November of that year, women were finally able to vote for the first time in a national election.

This message is produced by the Kanawha Valley chapter of the National Organization for Women with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council.

Carrie Chapman Catt Becomes President of National American Women's Suffrage Association

One hundred years ago, women won the right to vote.

Carrie Chapman Catt followed Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association and was its leader when the women’s right to vote became the law of the land. A determined woman and brilliant organizer, she got her start organizing women in Iowa for a state referendum on the vote, and went on to rally women in other states.

When Chapman Catt secured women’s voting rights in Colorado, Susan B. Anthony asked her to become the head organizer for the National American Women’s Suffrage Association. When Anthony retired in 1900, Chapman Catt took her place as president.

Failing to get the right to vote state by state, she decided to switch tactics and lobbied Congress for a national amendment. After more than 70 years of denying women the right to vote, Congress passed the amendment in 1919 and sent it to the states for ratification. When the battle was won in 1920, Chapman Catt organized the League of Women Voters to continue the work of engaging women in politics and using their precious new right to make the world a better place.

This message is produced by the Kanawha Valley chapter of the National Organization for Women with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council.

Susan B. Anthony Charged with Voting Illegally

One hundred years ago, women won the right to vote.

A major event in American democracy was the trial of Susan B. Anthony in 1872. Frustrated by passage of the 15^th Amendment in 1870, allowing former male slaves the right to vote but explicitly leaving women out, she registered and voted in Rochester, New York. She was arrested and tried for knowingly, wrongfully, and unlawfully voting. The openly biased judge would not allow her to speak. He declared, “She is not competent as a witness in her own behalf,” and instructed the jury to find her guilty. The Albany Law Journal opined, “If Susan B. Anthony doesn’t like our laws, she should emigrate.”

She was fined a hundred dollars, and told the court, “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.” She vowed to continue to urge women to vote, reminding the judge, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” Years later, a trial assistant wrote, “There never before was a trial in the country of one-half the importance as this. If Miss Anthony had won on the merits, it would have revolutionized the suffrage of the country and enfranchised every woman in the United States.” Instead, women would have to wait another forty-seven years.

This message is produced by the Kanawha Valley chapter of the National Organization for Women with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council.