1919: Chapter Two

Many of the women thought the subject too controversial to be dealt with, but African American leader Frederick Douglass, the only African American present at the convention, argued heatedly and eloquently for its inclusion, and a suffrage (meaning the right to vote) resolution was written.

Together, the two women founded several African American and women’s rights organizations, culminating in 1869 with the creation of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), with Anthony as its main driving force.

By traveling almost endlessly on behalf of women’s suffrage, delivering as many as one hundred speeches a year, and working in many state campaigns, Susan B. Anthony became the best known of all the early suffragists.

As journalist Tracy Thomas has written, “In pop culture, the American West belongs to rugged cowboys and macho gunslingers. Left out of those depictions are the women...who also made homes on the range. Far from just the wives, mothers, daughters...of frontiersmen as portrayed in books and films, women arrived in the West, single or with their families, for the same reasons men did—for adventure, for livelihood or to escape the oppressive social mores that dominated the eastern United States.”

Many African American women joined these widespread clubs and participated in what amounted to a grassroots campaign to gain the vote.

Many of these women were already involved in the temperance movement—the campaign to rid the nation of intoxicating liquor—which would also culminate in 1919.

Paul’s idea for a Washington march came at the most propitious of times.

As one of the many workers she recruited observed, it was very difficult to refuse Alice Paul, and by the beginning of March, enough money had been raised for a major parade with floats, tableaus, banners, speakers, and a twenty-page official program.

“Because,” the publication stated, “this is the most conspicuous and important demonstration that has ever been attempted by suffragists in this country. Because this parade will be taken to indicate the importance of the suffrage movement by the press of the country and the thousands of spectators from all over the United States gathered in Washington for the Inauguration.”

Mrs. Wiley canvassed all her friends in Washington and came up with a tremendous list of people who were willing to entertain the visiting marchers for a day or two.

In an extremely bold statement, it also warned that the women of the United States “will watch your administration with an intense interest such as has never before been focused on any of your predecessors.”

Determined to take every precaution possible, one of the committee members, whose brother-in-law was Henry A. Stinson, the secretary of war, went to see him and elicit a promise that if the suffragists encountered any trouble during the march, he would send over the cavalry from nearby Fort Myer.

Finally, Secretary Stinson was contacted and made good on his word by quickly dispatching troops to clear the parade route.

Specific tactics included motorcades, parades, banners, billboards, transcontinental automobile trips, and speaking tours—all designed to educate the public about why women deserved the vote.

One of the NWP’s main strategies was that of lobbying—exerting pressure on national and state office holders to change laws that were discriminatory toward women and to vote for laws that would lead women to the ballot box.

Suffragist leaders hired Hazel MacKaye, the best-known pageant designer and producer in the country, to create four pageants for them, believing along with Mrs. MacKaye that nothing was better than pageants “for the purpose of propaganda,” specifically for converting followers, raising money, and lifting the morale of suffragist workers.

One was the manner in which Paul and the other leaders shifted attention away from state-level voting rights toward a constitutional amendment granting women the national right to vote. The other was the militancy the suffragists injected into their campaign.

Paul was aware of the building sympathy for the suffragists’ cause garnered by the Washington parade and other NWP tactics and that as a result, the goal of achieving the vote was closer than ever before.

No one had ever dared to picket the White House.

No protest group had ever challenged an American president so defiantly.

Paul’s plan involved having a continual lineup of women stand directly in front of the White House, holding placards containing messages demanding the vote—for President Wilson to see.

Paul stated, “We said we would have a perpetual delegation right in front of the White House, so he wouldn’t forget.”

The picketers, whom the suffragists proudly regarded as “silent sentinels,” remained at their posts through snow, rain, sleet, and all other types of adverse weather.

The picketers, whom the suffragists proudly regarded as “silent sentinels,” remained at their posts through snow, rain, sleet, and all other types of adverse weather.

One suffragist spoke for many when she later explained how tedious the long hours on the picket line often were.

“Anything but standing at the President’s gate would be more diverting,” she wrote while also commenting on how she and many of the other “silent sentinels” spent much of their time while picketing wondering “when will that woman come to relieve me?”

Suffragist Inez Haynes Irwin wrote about this special and frightening ordeal, describing the “slow growth of the crowds; the circle of little boys who gathered about...first, spitting at them, calling them names, making personal comments; then the gathering of gangs of young hoodlums who encourage the boys to further insults.... Sometimes the crowd would edge nearer and nearer, until there was but a foot of smothering, terror-fraught space between them and the pickets."

Despite the abuse, the White House picketing went on relentlessly.

But conditions in the two prisons into which the women were placed were deplorable. Cells were filthy, bedding was unwashed, the food often contained worms and insects.

But as the picketing continued at the White House and was initiated in front of the congressional office building and at the US Capitol, more arrests were made.

Everywhere the train stopped—Charleston, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, and many other places, ending in New York—enormous rallies were held, featuring speeches by veteran suffragist activists, each one dressed in prison garb.

The final vote occasioned great celebration among those who had worked so hard to bring it to fruition.

As evidenced from the very beginning of the suffragist movement, women, despite their sacrifices, their ambition, their abilities, and the extraordinary contributions to American life they continue to make, will always face a special challenge, once articulated by Elizabeth Genovese.

“Americans,” she wrote, “seem to be groping for a vision in which women have as much opportunity as men to develop their talents and reap the rewards of their labor and still remain women.”

Given how heated and how controversial women’s battle for the right to vote was, it was not surprising that it was accompanied by impassioned opposition from men who felt threatened by the prospect of sharing the vote with women.

African American leader Booker T. Washington shared this view, opposing suffrage on the grounds that giving women the vote would undermine their moral and domestic influence.

Yet, as historian Edwin Rozwenc wrote, “It does stagger the imagination to realize that there were those who claimed that [if] women got the vote and thus became involved in politics, they would stop marrying and having children and the human race would become extinct.”

African American women faced an even tougher road to equality. They were doubly disenfranchised by their race and their sex.

Focused so intently on gaining long-denied rights and opportunities for their gender, most white suffragists were unwilling to confront their own acceptance of white supremacy.

The Equal Pay Act is passed by Congress, promising equitable wages for the same work, regardless of the race, color, religion, national origin, or sex of the worker.