Tag: 19th Amendment

Susan B. Anthony Organizes National American Women's Suffrage Association

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

Part of the remarkable history of the suffrage movement is the lifelong friendship and partnership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. While Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the philosopher of the women’s movement, Susan B. Anthony became its most visible and prominent leader. Of the partnership between the two, it is said that Cady Stanton fashioned the thunderbolts and Anthony threw them. While Cady Stanton was bound to house and home with pregnancy and childbirth, Anthony traveled the country to spread the message.

Travel in the 19 Century was not comfortable. Campaigning in Kansas, Susan wrote home about rugged conditions and bed bugs, “We have not slept a wink for several nights, but even in broad daylight our tormentors are so active that it is impossible. We find them in our bonnets, and this morning i think we picked a thousand out of the ruffles of our dresses.”

In 1890, Anthony organized the National American Women’s Suffrage Association and became its first president. The organization had 2,000 members that year and grew to two million members by 1920, becoming the largest voluntary association in the United States. 

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

100 Years Ago – Elizabeth Cady Stanton Writes the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one of the most consequential women in the battle for women’s rights. She fought for equality on all fronts. In her later years, she even took on the Bible as the root cause of women’s subordinate status in society. She came from a highly educated and wealthy New York family. Marriage and motherhood, with seven children, did not deter her from making equality for women her life’s work. On her honeymoon in 1840, in London, she and her husband attended the World Anti-Slavery convention. When she was relegated to the balcony because she was a woman, she joined with Lucretia Mott, another anti-slavery crusader, to fight for women’s equality.

Together they planned the first women’s rights convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. Attended by about 300 women and men, the convention delivered the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments and marked the beginning of the women’s movement for equal rights. Cady Stanton wrote most of that document and based it on the Declaration of Independence. Channeling Thomas Jefferson, she wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.”

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

100 Years Ago – Abigail Adams Advocates for Women's Suffrage

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

Abigail Adams, wife of one president and mother of another, was one of the first voices for women’s rights. She had a long and loving correspondence with her husband, John, who would become the second president of the new American republic. On March 31, 1776, she wrote to him, “I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

John Adams and the other founders did not take her seriously. In fact, it would be another 144 years before Congress would remember the ladies and pass the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote.

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

100 Years Ago – The Constitution Originally Denies Suffrage to Women

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

Though its first sentence begins “we the people,” the U.S. Constitution’s principles didn’t include all people. When it came to apportioning representatives, enslaved people counted as three-fifths of a person; Native Americans were excluded altogether; and it would be 143 years before the word “sex” appeared in the Constitution.  

In the early 1770’s, British colonists in North America met to consider rejecting royal edicts as a form of government. In July 1776, the delegates to the Continental Congress signed a declaration of independence asserting “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Ironically, they also degreed that governments should derive their powers from the consent of the governed.

Following the war for independence, the thirteen states met to discuss rules on which they could jointly agree to form a single nation. Delegates gathered in Philadelphia in 1787, successfully producing a constitution. A new form of government, representative democracy, was born. Despite the lofty aspirations of the new laws, women and many others were not included in in their protections and privileges, nor were they represented in the new government. It would be nearly a century and a half before they were. Government—to be credible—must derive their powers from the consent of the governed.  

This series, 100 Years Ago,  is produced by the Kanawha Valley National Organization for Women with funding from the West Virginia Humanities Council.

March 10, 1920: West Virginia Becomes 34th State to Allow Women the Right to Vote

On March 10, 1920, West Virginia became the 34th state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Months later, the amendment became law, guaranteeing all women in the country the right to vote.

The fight for women’s suffrage was a longtime coming in West Virginia. In 1867, a Pocahontas County state senator introduced a resolution endorsing suffrage. But the legislature voted it down. Support for the issue lagged until the 1890s, when suffrage clubs became popular in northern West Virginia, especially in Wheeling and Fairmont.

By 1913, a women’s suffrage amendment to the state constitution had gained enough support to pass the House of Delegates, but it was rejected by the Senate. Two years later, the amendment passed the full legislature. However, the state’s all-male voters shot it down by a more than two-to-one margin.

In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed the House of Delegates but was deadlocked 14-14 in the Senate. With a touch of drama, Senator Jesse Bloch of Wheeling dashed home early from his California vacation to cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of women’s suffrage.

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