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Interchange: Women's Suffrage, the Nineteenth Amendment, and the Right to Vote

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Interchange: Women's Suffrage, the Nineteenth Amendment, and the Right to Vote, Journal of American History , Volume 106, Issue 3, December 2019, Pages 662–694, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaz506

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Soon after the U.S. Congress approved the Nineteenth Amendment in early June 1919, state legislatures began to deliberate the question of women's suffrage. Ratification proceedings, which persisted for more than a year, unfolded against a backdrop of extraordinary rage, fear, and uncertainty in the United States. After World War I the decline of manufacturing and the demobilization of soldiers contributed to a painful recession. Across the long red summer, mobs of angry whites terrorized African American communities, lynching dozens of persons and burning homes and churches. Emboldened by union activism and the specter of Bolshevist revolution, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer launched a series of brutal raids, arresting and attempting to deport thousands of immigrant workers. In Congress, the dry majority overrode President Woodrow Wilson's veto of the Volstead Act, heralding a new era of prohibition. Amid this social and political tumult, the Nineteenth Amendment wound its way toward ratification.

What did the amendment, a milestone of American democracy, mean to a nation so deeply committed to white supremacy and immigration restriction? What were its implications for an aspiring empire then exerting military power overseas? How, if at all, did it affect politics and law in the United States?

To promote critical reflection about the Nineteenth Amendment and its many complex legacies, the Journal of American History announces a new series, Sex, Suffrage, Solidarities: Centennial Reappraisals. This series, which will run throughout the coming year, will consist of research articles, special features, and reviews published across the JAH , the JAH Podcast , and Process: a blog for American history . Our theme for the project—sex, suffrage, solidarities—is intended to provoke new questions about the Nineteenth Amendment and the political, economic, and cultural transformations of which it has been a part. Our ambition is to foster creative thinking about suffrage, its discursive and material frameworks, and its often-unanticipated consequences. We intend to examine the intricate linkages among suffrage, citizenship, identities, and differences. We aim to facilitate global, transnational, and/or comparative perspectives, particularly those that compel us to reperiodize or otherwise reassess conventional ways of thinking about campaigns for women's rights and adult citizenship.

To inaugurate this series, we invited a panel of distinguished historians—Ellen Carol DuBois, Liette Gidlow, Martha S. Jones, Katherine M. Marino, Leila J. Rupp, Lisa Tetrault, and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu—to join in conversation about the Nineteenth Amendment, suffrage, and women's political activism more broadly. The Interchange that follows reads by turns as essential historiography, compelling critique, and honest personal reflection. It offers invaluable context for, and analysis of, the study of women's rights in the United States. We are grateful to the participants and to our associate editor Judith Allen for her creative direction of this project.

Ellen Carol Dubois is Distinguished Professor (Emerita) in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author or editor of numerous books, including Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869 (1978), Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony: Correspondence, Writings, Speeches (1981; 3rd ed., forthcoming, 2020), Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (1997), and Woman Suffrage and Women's Rights: Essays (1998). Her next work, Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote , will be published in 2020. Readers may contact Dubois at [email protected] .

Liette Gidlow is the 2019–2020 Mellon-Schlesinger Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and an associate professor of history at Wayne State University. She is the author of The Big Vote: Gender, Consumer Culture, and the Politics of Exclusion, 1890s–1920s (2004) and editor of Obama, Clinton, Palin: Making History in Election 2008 (2012). She is now preparing a book manuscript entitled The Nineteenth Amendment and the Politics of Race, 1920–1970 . Readers may contact Gidlow at [email protected] .

Martha S. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830–1900 (2007) and Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018), and coeditor of Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (2015). Her next book, Vanguard: A History of African American Women's Politics , will appear in 2020. Readers may contact Jones at [email protected] .

Katherine M. Marino is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her Stanford University dissertation won the Lerner-Scott Prize for the best dissertation in U.S. women's history from the Organization of American Historians; she has since revised and published it as Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement (2019). Readers may contact Marino at [email protected] .

L Eila J. Rupp is Distinguished Professor of feminist studies and associate dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has published nine books and more than two dozen articles, among them Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (1987), co-authored with Verta Taylor, and Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement (1997). She is now researching queer college students in the contemporary United States. Readers may contact Rupp at [email protected] .

Lisa Tetrault is an associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of the Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898 (2014), which won the inaugural Mary Jurich Nickliss women's and gender history book prize awarded by the Organization of American Historians. She is working on a book about where and how women's suffrage fit into the political landscape after the American Civil War and another project tracing the genealogy of the Nineteenth Amendment. Readers may contact Tetrault at [email protected] .

J Udy Tzu-Chun Wu is a professor in the Department of Asian American Studies and director of the Humanities Center at the University of California, Irvine. Her books include Dr. Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: The Life of a Wartime Celebrity (2005) and Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era (2013). She is now researching the career of Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. Readers may contact her at [email protected] .

JAH: U.S. historians have closely studied women's suffrage. In the 1960s and 1970s, practitioners of the new women's history wrote extensively about women's enfranchisement and citizenship, as well as the nineteenth-century reform movements that inspired support for—but also opposition to—them. These aspects of political history remained a core priority for women's historians in the 1980s and even the 1990s. The publication of numerous authoritative biographies, organizational studies, and documentary collections enriched our knowledge of these subjects.

As you think back over this field, what are your impressions? What are its distinguishing characteristics? What works, methodologies, or interventions do you find most crucial?

Leila J. Rupp : When I began my graduate work in 1972, it was pretty much possible to read all the existing scholarship on women's history. My introduction to women's suffrage began with Eleanor Flexner's Century of Struggle: The Women's Rights Movement in the United States (1959), Aileen S. Kraditor's The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920 (1965), Gerda Lerner's The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels against Slavery (1967), and the less well-remembered The Puritan Ethic and Woman Suffrage by Alan P. Grimes (1967). As an undergraduate in Herbert Aptheker's class on African American history, I wrote a paper on the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, relying heavily on Lerner's work to guide me to the sources. Then in 1978 came Barbara J. Berg's The Remembered Gate: The Origins of American Feminism and the now-classic Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869 , by Ellen Carol DuBois. 1

When I think about this early literature and the subsequent development of the scholarship on suffrage, citizenship, and the women's movement over time, three themes come to mind. The first is the increasing attention to the importance of race, ethnicity, and class. Both Flexner and Lerner, embedded in the progressive Left, attended to issues of race and class, but the racial complexities of the suffrage movement that grew out of the abolitionist struggle did not take center stage, as they would in later literature. DuBois, also coming out of a left feminist context, detailed the failure of a joint struggle for black suffrage and woman suffrage during Reconstruction, the inability of suffragists to forge an alliance with organized labor, and the racism and class bias that underlay and were exacerbated by these failures. Yet, the point of her book is that these developments led to the emergence of an independent women's movement, a positive development in the long run. Since 1978 we have, of course, learned much more about the role that black women, with a foot in both race and gender politics, played in achieving suffrage, from works such as Rosalyn Terborg-Penn's African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850–1920 (1998). 2

A second theme that characterizes the direction of scholarship over the decades is the continuity of the struggle for women's rights in the aftermath of suffrage victory in 1920. For a time, the Nineteenth Amendment seemed to mark the end of organized efforts to win women full citizenship until the emergence of the women's movement in the 1960s. Then a flood of studies addressed the intervening decades. What happened to the women's movement? Did it die out after suffrage was won? Scholarship on the 1920s and beyond—Susan D. Becker's The Origins of the Equal Rights Amendment: American Feminism between the Wars (1981), Nancy F. Cott's The Grounding of Modern Feminism (1987), Dorothy Sue Cobble's The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (2004), on labor activism, Cynthia Harrison's On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues, 1945–1968 (1988), and my work with Verta Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (1987), to name just a few—argued persuasively that it did not die out, and that it took a variety of forms. We came to think of “waves” of the women's movement—the first suffrage wave giving way to the second wave in the 1960s, with third and fourth waves to follow—only to back off from that metaphor to emphasize greater continuity than the rise and fall of waves seems to suggest. 3

This brings me to a third theme in the scholarship: placing the U.S. suffrage movement and subsequent activism in the context of transnational developments. In my Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement (1997), I argued that a history of what I called an international women's movement, which picked up steam in the 1920s and 1930s, showed that rather than “waves” of activism we should think of “choppy seas.” Increasingly, as in other fields of U.S. history, women's historians are paying attention to the global context. Bonnie S. Anderson's Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement, 1830–1860 (2000) makes it impossible to think about the Seneca Falls Convention as a purely American event. To give just a couple of other examples, Allison L. Sneider, in Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870–1929 (2008), connects women's suffrage to U.S. imperialism, and Katherine M. Marino's Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement (2019) details the ways that Latin American feminists in the 1920s and 1930s took the lead in fighting for economic, social, and legal equality on the global stage. 4

Ellen Carol Dubois : I begin by challenging the premise of the question itself. In the revival of women's history inspired by the women's liberation insurgence of the late 1960s into the 1970s, the American woman suffrage movement was not a topic of great interest. I believe that when I published Feminism and Suffrage in 1978, I was alone in reexamining the subject within a full-fledged scholarly monograph. 5

Other suffrage scholars—notably Eleanor Flexner and Aileen Kraditor—though highly influential, were not infused with the energies and the concerns of those women's liberation years. Others of my sister scholars in that pioneering women's generation addressed related subjects—I think particularly of Nancy Cott, Mari Jo Buhle, and Linda Gordon—and I was much influenced by them. But for the most part that entire generation of radical and social historians were not much interested in electoral politics. In our experience, established parties were indistinguishable and ineffective; many of us didn't even vote. Women's liberationists tended to dismiss the suffrage movement for leaving untouched the issues of women's oppression with which we were concerned. My challenge to that dismissal was reflected in the title of my first article on the subject, “The Radicalism of the Woman Suffrage Movement” (1975), published in an early issue of Feminist Studies . In it, I elaborated what I saw as the underlying premise of the suffrage movement, that women were full-fledged and rational individuals, not subservient to family. 6

Following the concerns of my late 1960s political generation, in Feminism and Suffrage I examined the emergence of the suffrage demand in the context of race and class politics. I considered at great length the terrible 1867–1869 schism between black suffrage and woman suffrage advocates. While lamenting the conflict, my conclusion, reflected in the book's title, was that the break freed suffrage leaders—Stanton and Anthony the boldest and most radically feminist of those—to pursue their own political path, no longer deferential to the concerns of racial equality dictated by the Republican party. Again, this argument reflected the experience of my own women's liberation generation as it separated itself from the influence of the male-dominated black power movement.

In my later JAH article, “Outgrowing the Compact of the Fathers: Equal Rights, Woman Suffrage, and the United States Constitution, 1820–1878” (1987), I came to a different conclusion, emphasizing what was lost in 1869, the solidarity of these two movements. By then I was influenced by the first works of black suffrage scholars. Paula Giddings's brilliant When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (1984) was particularly important for me; I thought of it as the Century of Struggle for black women's history in its scope and bold interpretive stance. Of course, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn's “Afro-Americans in the Struggle for Woman Suffrage” (1977) was very important, but it should be remembered that it was available only as a difficult-to-access dissertation until it was published as a book in 1998. I still believe it necessary, in reconsidering suffrage history, to return to this tragic foundational conflict, especially as what we learn about the traditions of African American suffragism continues to grow. 7

While the racial dimension of the history of woman suffrage has received ever more attention, its class aspects have not, and this is unfortunate. Two of the six chapters of Feminism and Suffrage focused on Anthony's efforts to reach out to wage-earning women and forge a bond with the labor movement of the era. Mari Jo Buhle and Christine Stansell laid the basis for further exploration of these concerns and Diane Balser, Carole Turbin, and Susan Levine pursued the subject, but it has dropped off of suffrage scholars' radar in the current century. As we look over suffragism's seventy-five-year history and its impact on women's political activism after 1920, we should surely be struck by the prominence of women, many of whom began as suffragists, in the twentieth-century labor movement. As suffrage scholars, we should make it our business to dig into the deep, complex, and crucial interactions of race and class in American feminist politics. 8

Martha S. Jones : I came to women's history in the mid-1990s and am a beneficiary of so much work that predated my own. I also came to the field as a historian of African American women. Thus, my starting place was not with, for example, Flexner's Century of Struggle , though I would eventually get to that. Ellen DuBois's Feminism and Suffrage would soon join my list of essential reads. But the work of Terborg-Penn first shaped my thinking. Her 1977 Howard University Ph.D. dissertation, “Afro-Americans in the Struggle for Woman Suffrage,” defined the field long before being published as African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote . 9

Terborg-Penn's study conveyed three enduring insights for historians of black women—indeed, for historians of all women—and the vote. The first was that the work demanded painstaking recovery across an archival terrain not built to preserve black women as political thinkers or activists. Her sheer doggedness in the combing of sources was both an instruction about method and a cautionary tale. The second lesson was that we should not defer to, or trust, the often-cited sources that had long informed histories of women's suffrage. I remember locking horns with fellow graduate students in the 1990s about how to use the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage (a project initiated by Stanton and Anthony in the 1870s, with the last volume published in 1922). A nod here to Lisa Tetrault's important contribution to this point with The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898 (2014). It was from Terborg-Penn that I learned the politics that animated those volumes and then how to set them aside and avoid being misled. Finally, Terborg-Penn taught me to be unflinching about how racism had infected the minds of some of the best-remembered white women's suffrage activists. I learned that racism had been woven into the fabric of the movement's strategies and tactics. Today, thirty years later, some historians still struggle with how to write about this dimension of the movement. Terborg-Penn put that dilemma squarely in front of us. 10

I also read Paula Giddings's When and Where I Enter in the mid-1990s. It opens with the often-quoted words of the African American scholar and activist Anna Julia Cooper from 1892: “Only the BLACK WOMAN can say ‘when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood … then and there the whole … race enters with me.’” This quotation told us much that we need to know about African American women's politics at the end of the nineteenth century. Cooper and others like her were charting their own way forward as women by the 1890s. Giddings anticipated, if not called into being, the field of African American women's history, which blossomed by the early 1990s. 11

Giddings begins her study with Ida B. Wells's antilynching campaign. This choice is a lesson in the history of women's suffrage. Black activist women such as Wells did not focus on a single issue in their view of women's rights, including the vote. Women's rights were in the service of human rights—rights that extended to women and to men. Giddings recognizes that black women's striving for the vote was interwoven with concerns about antilynching, temperance, the club movement, and Jim Crow. Challenging the periodization of the women's suffrage movement, Giddings's section on Fannie Lou Hamer sent a clear signal: for black women, the movement for suffrage extended to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment (not unlike ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment) was only one stop along a hard-won route to political power. 12

Neither Deborah Gray White's Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (1985) nor Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham's Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (1993) was expressly about women suffrage. Still, I read them as essential studies of how, where, and when black women built political power. Rather than in parlors or conventions, the roots of black women's politics lay in labor, loss, and survival on plantations. There, cruel myths about black women were crafted; the battle against such ideas animated black women's suffrage politics. Higginbotham's study of black Baptist women runs parallel to the histories of the American Woman Suffrage Association ( Awsa ), the National Woman Suffrage Association ( Nwsa ), and the National American Woman Suffrage Association ( Nawsa ), as well as the so-called women's suffrage movement. But we see the Nineteenth Amendment's ratification from a new perspective when we take the point of view of hundreds of thousands of black Baptist women. They did their political work within religious communities. Locating black women's politics on the plantation and in the church changed forever the way we would tell the history of black women and the vote. 13

These threads and more run through my 2007 book, All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830–1900 . What I had learned from the earliest works in African American women's history was how the politics of suffrage, for black women, was always “bound up” with broad concerns, diverse institutions, and differences among and between women, black and white. 14

Lisa Tetrault : When I began reading in this field in the late 1990s, there was little published about post–Civil War women's suffrage. As a result, after I finished Ellen DuBois's necessary Feminism and Suffrage , and several of her seminal articles, I turned to History of Woman Suffrage simply to learn basic historical outlines. I was struck not only by the majesty of Stanton, Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage's recovery and preservation work, but also by their enormous silences and unmistakable emphases. 15

Also in the 1990s, Nell Painter published Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol (1996), which bore heavily on themes of narrativity and power. In her articles as well as her book, she emphasized how Truth had been mythologized rather than remembered as a fully rendered human being and complex historical actor. The origin of the oft-cited “ain't I a woman speech” in primary-document readers (and increasingly online) was often the History of Woman Suffrage , which reprinted that problematic formulation from Frances Dana Gage. Painter's work on narrative and its present-day legacies were deeply influential for me. 16

Rosalyn Terborg-Penn published her highly respected dissertation in that decade as well, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote . That book strove to unmask and rebuild a basic narrative around women and voting. It too underscored how Stanton and Anthony helped create many of the outlines around something bounded (if still vast) called women's suffrage that nevertheless left out many women and political projects. 17

Over the 1990s and into the early 2000s, scores of new works broke down the idea that women existed in a separate sphere removed from politics. Women need not be domestic and women need not be enfranchised to exercise political power, and women engaged in politics in plenty of places we hadn't thought to look. 18

At the same time, my reading of the rapidly transforming field of Reconstruction-era scholarship signaled the end to a debate that bled from the 1980s into the 1990s: Was women's suffrage radical or conservative? Consequential or inconsequential? The nuanced, fine-grained analyses of power, race, citizenship, gender, freedom, and voting in Reconstruction scholarship, combined with women's political history, underscored that there was no one fixed issue to assess. Whether women's suffrage was radical or conservative, consequential or inconsequential, now seemed beside the point.

Finally, historians such as Elsa Barkley Brown, Eric Foner, Heather Cox Richardson, and the political scientist Victoria Hattam all questioned whether the franchise was even a stable category. Did it too need to be contextualized, interrogated, and historically understood? They clearly answered, “yes.” 19

Liette Gidlow : I have always seen histories of women's suffrage as part of broad histories of political institutions, political culture, women, and gender. Perhaps this is because I came to the study of women's/gendered politics through a different door. When I arrived at my Ph.D. program in history I came with an undergraduate background in political science; work experience in the D.C. Public Defender's office, the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, and the Ohio legislature; and a feminist consciousness sharpened on issues of campus sexual assault and workplace harassment. My first exposure to women's studies came as an undergrad through feminist literary criticism, and my early interest in race and public policy was cultivated by working with Gary Orfield on issues of racial equity in education and by serving as a staffer to Rep. Julian Dixon in the 1980s. Representative Dixon at the time was the only African American subcommittee chair on the House Appropriations Committee, meaning that all manner of policy issues related to African American constituencies found their way to his desk, and thus mine.

All of these pieces, and a few others, came together in graduate school in the 1990s in a historically grounded way when I started investigating the League of Women Voters' Get Out the Vote ( Gotv ) campaigns of the 1920s. “Politics” clearly extended beyond electoral politics to the full range of ways power was being deployed, and yet “officialness” still mattered. I was especially interested in the nexus of the politics of representation and discourse, on the one hand, and the politics of formal governmental institutions, on the other. How has civic legitimacy historically been constructed, institutionalized, and contested, and what do race, gender, class, sexual preference, religion, and other sources of identity have to do with it? In an era of ostensibly universal suffrage, why did the members of the League of Women Voters feel they needed Gotv campaigns? Why were they trying to get out the votes of middle-class whites, who had the highest turnout, and not those of the working class and/or people of color, who were much less likely to vote? And what did it mean for anyone to be a good citizen in an era in which a majority of eligible voters did not cast ballots, as was the case in 1920 and 1924? Clearly gender, class, and race had a great deal to do with the answers to these questions.

Scholarship on suffrage and Progressive Era women reformers laid crucial foundations for my explorations, and I was especially indebted to work by Paula Baker, Jean Baker, Sarah Hunter Graham, and Robyn Muncy. More theoretical works, in particular Joan W. Scott's “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” (1986) and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham's “African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race” (1992), helped me think about meaning-making, because I was interested in not only what the vote accomplished but also what enfranchisement signified and how that changed over time. Scholarship outside the conventional categories of “women's history” and “suffrage history” helped me explore the interplay between formal political institutions and processes and the politics of meaning-making. Nancy Fraser's essay on counterpublics, “Rethinking the Public Sphere” (1992), was essential in helping me think about discourse and resistance. Joseph R. Gusfield's The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order (1981) made me think about the framing of public issues. James C. Scott's Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (1990), and John Gaventa's Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley (1980) made me think about resistance in new ways. Works by Warren Sussman, Louis Althusser, Clifford Geertz, and Antonio Gramsci made me think about power dynamics embedded in everyday processes of meaning-making. 20

It was really after graduate school that I immersed myself more deeply in historical treatments of women's politics, broadly defined—in part because I was beginning to teach women's history surveys, and in part out of a growing appreciation for the power of narrative and the richness of stories focused on people rather than political institutions. Barbara Ransby's Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (2003), Katherine Mellen Charron's Freedom's Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark (2009), Higginbotham's Righteous Discontent , and Lisa G. Materson's study of black women's electoral activism in the context of the Great Migration ( For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois, 1877–1932 [2009]) stand out among many books that helped open the way to my current book project, “The Nineteenth Amendment and the Politics of Race, 1920–1970.” 21

JAH: Professor Gidlow mentioned biographies of Ella Baker and Septima Clark. Are there other biographies that have particularly influenced your thinking about women's suffrage, the Nineteenth Amendment, or women's political activism more broadly?

Jones : I'd like to focus on the role of biography in writing and rewriting the history of women's suffrage. Let me digress just long enough to say that I think nomenclature is important here, so I will use the phrase “women and the vote” rather than “women's suffrage.” With this, I am signaling that my discussions are generally about the broader question of women and the vote, and not about the Nineteenth Amendment in particular. A discussion too narrowly framed by the Nineteenth Amendment relegates many American women to the margins.

African American women's history has produced a robust body of book-length, scholarly biographical works. This genre makes plain that African American women have approached voting rights through campaigns directly organized around suffrage, but they also did so through many other collectives, from clubs and churches to political parties and antislavery societies. Black women's biographies inform my understanding of how to write black women's political history, including their concern with voting rights.

For example, I've come back to Jane Rhodes's biography of Mary Ann Shadd Cary ( Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century , 1998). Rhodes was most interested in Cary's fascinating work as a journalist, but she takes us through a life that includes affiliation with the Nwsa and a role in suffrage campaigns in Washington, D.C. Melba Joyce Boyd's Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825–1911 (1994) is at its heart a literary biography. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was the only African American woman to speak on the record during the fraught American Equal Rights Association meetings of the 1860s. Her interventions are essential to any telling of mid-nineteenth-century suffrage politics. When Harper told those gathered that they were “all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity,” she asserted a human rights vision that remained at the core of black women's thinking about the vote and perhaps remains there today. 22

Nell Painter's magnificent Sojourner Truth refuses to let Truth's memory merely serve the interests of others. We must grapple with Truth's complex, multifaceted life if we are to write about her at all. Painter's insight into racism—both as animus and as paternalism—is an essential lesson. Those who patronized Truth should not be understood as having wholly respected or made space for the entirety of Truth's humanity, even if they incorporated her into women's conventions, the History of Woman Suffrage , and more. 23

Add to these Jean Fagan Yellin's Harriet Jacobs: A Life (2004), which introduces sexual violence as a women's rights issue; two biographies of Harriet Tubman (Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom [2004] and Kate Clifford Larson, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero [2004]), which remind us that in the last years of her life Tubman stumped for women's suffrage; and Marilyn Richardson's pathbreaking Maria Stewart, America's First Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches (1987), which wholly resets our periodization of women's rights in the United States with 1832 Boston as a point of origin. Together these biographies are a rich portrait of how black women thought about and worked toward their political rights, while also laboring for human rights. 24

Biographical works often take the point of view of insurgent activists. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the important work on Ida B. Wells-Barnett, which spans the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and is foundational to my thinking about suffrage versus the vote versus politics versus power. Wells-Barnett was frustrated by Congress and political parties in her antilynching campaign, leading her to adapt an old internationalist vision for her own times. Here, Mia Bay's To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells (2009) and Paula J. Giddings's Ida: A Sword among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching (2008) are must-reads. 25

But when I invoke insurgent politics, I am suggesting that the history of black women's politics and power cannot be understood without appreciating those who rejected the politics of the vote for other visions. Again, biographies let us see this clearly. Consider works from Barbara Ransby— Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement and Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson (2013)—and Ula Yvette Taylor— The Veiled Garvey: The Life and Times of Amy Jacques Garvey (2002) and The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam (2017). I'd also place Sherie M. Randolph's Florynce “Flo” Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical (2015) on a shelf of histories that call into question whether frameworks such as “suffrage” and the “vote” are even central to understanding African American women's history. These insurgent histories are counternarratives that ask hard questions about whether and to what degree women who worked for inclusion and equity in parties and at the polls might have been misled, misguided, or just plain mistaken in their objectives. 26

A few works hit a sweet spot where both the mainstream and the insurgent come together in illuminating ways. First, Barbara Winslow's Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for Change (2013), gives us a figure who both leveled a radical challenge and worked within U.S. politics, and fought her way in with integrity. And there is Chana Kai Lee's For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (1999), which also manages to hold on to both the critique of and the striving to gain state power. For yet another figure who just might thread that needle, I'd add Michelle Obama's memoir Becoming (2018). I can't say that Mrs. Obama is at the end of the day an insurgent, but she tells a story about how a black woman strikes a precarious balance when she engages with the mainstream. In this respect, her autobiography reaches all the way back to figures such as Sojourner Truth, black women who tried to make themselves legible to the nation by way of an intersectional analysis of their lives and of American political culture. 27

I'll pitch some biographies still to be written (better yet if they are being written at this very moment): Sarah Mapps Douglass, Jarena Lee, Sarah Parker Remond, Anna Julia Cooper, Julia A. J. Foote, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Nannie Helen Burroughs, and Eliza Ann Gardner all come immediately to mind as women whose lives we know a good deal about and, still, whose biographies would further our understanding of how black women came to politics. There is little room left, it's safe to say, for the old view that black women were not engaged with women's issues or that they somehow placed the interests of black men above their own.

Dubois : A few crucial figures have recently received their first scholarly biographies: Alva Belmont (Sylvia Hoffert's Alva Vanderbilt Belmont: Unlikely Champion of Women's Rights [2011]) and Anna Howard Shaw (Trisha Franzen's Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage [2014]). Franzen makes a strong case that much of what we thought we knew about Shaw comes to us through the unflattering lens of Carrie Chapman Catt's evaluation. The biographies and political studies of Ida B. Wells continue to accumulate (Mia Bay's To Tell the Truth Freely , Patricia A. Schechter's Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880–1930 [2001], and the very interesting work of Crystal N. Feimster in Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching [2011]). Among other leading African American suffragists, Fannie Barrier Williams (in Wanda A. Hendricks's Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race [2013]) and Mary McLeod Bethune (in Joyce A. Hanson's Mary McLeod Bethune: Black Women's Political Activism [2013]) now have their first biographies. Importantly, Alison Park is forthcoming with a new biography of Mary Church Terrell. Other especially compelling twentieth-century figures are also the subject of new biographies: Jeannette Rankin (Norma Smith's Jeannette Rankin: America's Conscience [2002]) and Inez Milholland (Linda J. Lumsden's Inez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland [2004]). 28

Ernestine Rose has a new and interesting biography (Bonnie S. Anderson's The Rabbi's Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer [2017]). I've also dug a little into biographies of lesser-known figures such as Lillie Devereux Blake (Grace Farrell's Lillie Devereux Blake: Retracing Life Erased [2002]), Belva Lockwood (Jill Norgren's Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President [2007]), and Emma Devoe (Jennifer M. Ross-Nazzal's Winning the West for Women: The Life of Suffragist Emma Smith DeVoe [2011]). There are several new studies of Alice Paul (Mary Walton's A Woman's Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot [2010], Christine Lunardini's Alice Paul: Equality for Women [2013], and Jill Zahniser and Amelia R. Fry's Alice Paul: Claiming Power [2014]), and one of Lucy Stone (Sally G. McMillan's Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life [2015]). I particularly note the absence from this list of books on working-class suffragists such as Leonora O'Reilly and Rose Schneiderman. There is now, however, a much-needed study of Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (Kathleen Nutter's The Necessity of Organization: Mary Kenney O'Sullivan and Trade Unionism for Women, 1892–1912 [2000]). 29

Two recent biographies have appeared (Lori D. Ginzberg's Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life [2009], and Vivian Gornick's The Solitude of Self: Thinking about Elizabeth Cady Stanton [2005]). With the publication of Ann D. Gordon's scrupulously edited and annotated six-volume Selected Letters of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (1997–2013), hopefully more should be forthcoming. Also in the category of important biographical resources, Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar's incredible Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600–2000 has done spectacular work in using crowd sourcing to build biographical dictionaries of relatively unknown African American suffragists, Congressional Union/National Woman's party militants, and the moderates of Nawsa . 30

JAH: How have historians' approaches to women's suffrage and women and the vote evolved since this first effusion of scholarship? What, if anything, has changed in the early twenty-first century?

Gidlow : I see the last twenty-five-years or so of scholarship as having replaced a single dominant narrative that was constrained and bounded with a profusion of perspectives that transcend many of those limits. In its purest form, the classic interpretation treated the suffrage struggle as a self-contained American story that began in 1848 in Seneca Falls and, after many trials and tribulations, was brought to a triumphant conclusion in 1920 by heroic middle-class and elite white women with ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Scholarship, mostly in the 1990s and early 2000s, chipped away at the temporal, geographical, racial, and class boundaries of the prevailing narrative through key works such as Ginzberg's Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman's Rights in Antebellum New York (2005), Cott's “Across the Great Divide” (1990), Anderson's Joyous Greetings (2000), Terborg-Penn's African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote (1998), Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore's Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 (1996), and DuBois's Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (1997). By the mid-2000s, the classic narrative gave way to bold new interpretations that borrowed insights from scholarship on historical memory, borders, and other fields. It was hardly possible to privilege 1848 after Tetrault's The Myth of Seneca Falls , or to see suffrage as a purely domestic political issue after Sneider's Suffragists in an Imperial Age . As the centennial of ratification approaches, more work is connecting woman suffrage to, or integrating it into, accounts of other key figures and issues in U.S. and global history, such as Charles Darwin and evolution (Kimberly A. Hamlin's From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women's Rights in Gilded Age America [2014]), and, in my own work, the mid-twentieth-century civil rights movement. These deep connections to other issues are powerful evidence, if any was needed, that “the” history of woman suffrage is not peripheral to national or transnational histories, but central and essential. 31

Katherine M. Marino : Numerous women's groups have pushed for the right to vote as one goal in multipronged and often-global platforms for birth control, labor rights, socialism, world peace, temperance, child welfare, freedom from sexual violence, antilynching legislation, and racial justice. Works that shine a light on the vital political work of African American women's rights activists that included and expanded beyond suffrage include Jones's All Bound Up Together ; Estelle B. Freedman's Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation (2013); Feimster's Southern Horrors ; Brittney C. Cooper's Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017); and Materson's For the Freedom of Her Race , in addition to already-named works by Terborg-Penn, Painter, and Giddings, and many others. 32

Vicki L. Ruiz's American Historical Review article on Luisa Capetillo and Luisa Moreno (“Class Acts: Latina Feminist Traditions, 1900–1930”), Maylei Blackwell's ¡Chicana Power! Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement (2011), Gabriela González's Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability, and Rights (2018), and Emma Pérez's The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (1999) have explored the political work of turn-of-the-century Mexican, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Latinx women who took up “the woman question” alongside other goals for the health, education, and safety of their communities. Works that demonstrate the interrelationship between suffrage organizing and international peace, labor, and socialist movements include Rupp's Worlds of Women ; Ellen DuBois's 1991 New Left Review essay “Woman Suffrage and the Left”; Julia L. Mickenberg's American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream (2017) and her 2014 JAH article, “Suffragettes and Soviets”; Anderson's The Rabbi's Atheist Daughter ; Annelise Orleck's Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900–1965 (1995); and Melissa R. Klapper's Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women's Activism, 1890–1940 (2013), to name just a few. 33

These histories show us that suffrage was not one movement, but multiple movements. They also challenge the wave metaphor, showing us that U.S. feminism in the early twentieth century was not defined by a quest for the Nineteenth Amendment. At the same time, demands for political rights and equality have been an integral and ongoing part of U.S. feminisms.

These readings have also been useful for my own work on Pan-American feminism in the interwar years. On the heels of the Nineteenth Amendment, Anglo-American women, believing they were the global leaders of feminism because of their recent suffrage victory, sought to dictate the terms of feminism to their Latin American counterparts. U.S. leaders often instructed Latin American feminists to make a single-minded push for suffrage. However, Latin American feminists exerted their own broader meanings of feminismo , defined not only by equality under the law but also by social and economic rights, and anti-imperialism, among other goals. Anti-imperialism was a driver of suffrage activism in Latin America, especially in Central America, in the 1910s and 1920s. In the mid-1930s–1950s period, when suffrage passed in most Latin American countries, antifascism and Popular Front coalitions of socialist and labor groups vitally energized women's suffrage campaigns. This Popular Front Pan-American feminist movement was critical to developing frameworks for international human rights. It advocated a broad meaning of international human rights—for political, civil, social, and economic rights for men and women, and antidiscrimination based on race, sex, class, or religion—that it pushed into inter-American venues and eventually into the founding of the United Nations. In the Un , a group of Latin American feminists were critical to inserting women's rights in the founding 1945 Un Charter and to promoting the inclusion of both women's and human rights. This is just one example of how it can be useful to de-center the United States, while also keeping in mind the relationship between U.S. suffrage and imperial histories. 34

Dubois : I have been impressed with several clusters of recent scholarship. Political scientists are delving into the theoretical foundations of suffrage thought and the impact of enfranchisement on voting rates. Counting Women's Ballots: Female Voters from Suffrage through the New Deal (2016), by J. Kevin Corder and Christina Wolbrecht, uses sophisticated new techniques to assess how women voted in their first presidential elections. They break the vote down by state and region and thus offer an alternative to the oversimplified, long-standing, and unsubstantiated claim that women did not make use of their new voting rights. They and others have suggested that we pay attention to the role played in the political realignment of 1932 by the massive expansion of the electorate that the Nineteenth Amendment effected. Republicans had long claimed to be the party that supported woman suffrage, but that claim had grown very thin by the late 1920s. It is not without significance that while Herbert Hoover promised the first woman cabinet member, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the one who appointed her. 35

I noted in my first answer that working-class suffragism could use more research. By contrast, there is much fine scholarship on upper-class suffragism. In addition to Sylvia Hoffert's Belmont biography already noted, Johanna Neuman has written about “Gilded Age socialites” ( Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women's Right to Vote , 2017), and Joan Marie Johnson has done very good work on suffrage philanthropy ( Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women's Movement, 1870–1967 , 2017). Somewhat related is Brooke Kroeger's work on male suffrage supporters ( The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote , 2017). Note that these last three books focus on New York suffragism, as does the work of Susan Goodier ( No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-suffrage Movement [2017] and, coauthored with Karen Pastorello, Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State [2017]). Almost every other state has yet to receive its own study, which will be of great help in understanding the grassroots of suffragism. 36

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu : I will focus on the value of citizenship, both for those excluded from eligibility and political rights due to race and immigration status as well as for those who had citizenship forced upon them by the U.S. Empire. These perspectives illuminate how whiteness and settler colonialism underlie so-called women's suffrage. I focus my comments primarily on Asian American and Pacific Islander women, although forms of racialized exclusion and forced colonization resonate more broadly.

The ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 happened just four years before the 1924 Immigration Act, which systematically codified earlier laws and court cases that denied Asian immigrants entry into the United States and deemed them “aliens ineligible for citizenship.” This designation, a legal status that influenced social and cultural representations of Asian people in the United States, held implications not only for the right to vote but also for the right to serve on juries, own property, marry interracially, and so on. For Asian women, whose status was “covered” by that of their husbands or fathers, their alienness by association not only translated to distinctly gendered barriers at the border (where they were monitored for gender-inappropriate behavior and suspected of prostitution) but also affected their legal rights (U.S.-born women would lose their citizenship if they married men who were aliens ineligible for citizenship). The scholarship of Sucheng Chan, Martha Gardner, Judy Yung, and others reveal how U.S. citizenship fundamentally represented racialized and gendered privileges, which were out of grasp for those deemed forever foreign. This issue continues to be relevant, given the substantial undocumented population in the United States, including Asian Americans, the fastest growing segment of this community. 37

It is also important to note instances of forced incorporation into the U.S. Empire, which conferred the unwanted gift of unequal legal rights. As Allison Sneider, Kristin Hoganson, and others argue, the U.S. women's suffrage campaign blossomed in the contexts of U.S. westward expansion and overseas empire. White suffragists insisted on their political rights in response to U.S. colonial endeavors. As Susan B. Anthony stated in her 1902 testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Women's Suffrage, “I think we are of as much importance as are the Filipinos, Porto Ricans, Hawaiians, Cubans, and all of the different sorts of men that you have before you. When you get those men, you have an ignorant and unlettered people, who know nothing about our institutions.” As the U.S. expanded into the Caribbean and across the Pacific, Filipinos became “nationals,” neither citizens nor aliens. The last Native Hawaiian monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, was forcibly deposed by a coalition of white businessmen, U.S. military forces, and Christian missionary interests. Given this history of U.S. Empire, coerced inclusion, and racialized arguments for white women's suffrage, what is the value of attaining “equal” rights within an inherently unjust nation? 38

To help address these legacies of racial exclusion and imperial incorporation, I especially appreciate the work of Cathleen Cahill, whose forthcoming book focuses on women of color, particularly indigenous, Latina, and Asian/American women who advocated for suffrage. I'm also in awe of the substantial black women's suffrage project that Dublin and Sklar have launched as part of the Women and Social Movements in the United States journal. 39

I explore the ramifications of race and empire in a political biography of Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color U.S. congressional representative and the namesake for Title IX. Mink was elected from Hawaii and lived through the islands' transition from “territory” to “state.” She also articulated what I describe as a Pacific feminism. Mink's denizenship from islands in the middle of the Pacific framed how she understood political issues, ranging from Cold War militarism, race relations, environmentalism, and women's politics. The racial, the colonial, and the international were intertwined for Mink, a third-generation Japanese American, as they are for other racialized individuals who arrived on U.S. shores or whose homelands were crossed by U.S. borders. 40

Tetrault : I appreciate Judy Wu's reminder that extension of suffrage “rights” also implied colonization in the lives of many. In my reading about native and indigenous peoples voting “rights,” gaining citizenship and the vote meant the loss or diminishment of tribal sovereignty. We need to be careful not to reify the whiteness of the standard narrative by cheerfully adding additional dates—when native women “got” the vote, for example—or by treating voting as if it is always, on the face of it, desirable. The latter idea betrays a kind of triumphant American exceptionalism that often runs through discussions about voting “rights.” More work is needed here. Certainly, once enfranchised, colonized people creatively figure out how to leverage the ballot in their lives, for resistance and survival. And this too is an important part of the story. 41

Leila J. Rupp posed this question: Liette Gidlow's comments about the breakdown of a dominant narrative of suffrage as a self-contained and American story, along with Judy Wu's focus on the history of both systematic exclusion and imperialist incorporation of Asian and other women of color, raises for me these questions: Do we have anything to celebrate about the suffrage victory? Given the complicated history of suffrage that has emerged, are there positive developments we can point to regarding women's enfranchisement? What did women's votes bring to politics?

Gidlow : There is a sense that somehow the Nineteenth Amendment was rather a disappointment, that it doubled the electorate but didn't really change anything, in part because many women did not vote, and because those who did vote did not vote as a bloc. That is, that the Nineteenth Amendment did not produce a “women's vote.”

I argue, however, that over time a women's voting bloc did emerge, one that is cross-class and stable, with high voter turnout and a sharp preference for one party. That bloc emerged not among white women, but rather among African American women. It took the better part of a century, but by the early twenty-first century “the” black women's vote had become transformative in U.S. politics, just as southern white supremacists who had feared woman suffrage a century ago had feared.

The fear that the Anthony Amendment would enfranchise southern black women and open the door to the return of southern African American men to the polls was central to the debate over the Anthony Amendment in the late 1910s in Congress and in 1920 in Tennessee. In 1915 the Richmond ( Va ) Evening Journal editorialized that if the Anthony Amendment became law, “twenty-nine counties will go under negro rule,” a development that would force “the men of Virginia to return to defending white supremacy through fraud and violence” and “return to the slimepit from which we dug ourselves.” As I pointed out in a 2018 article in the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , southern members of Congress routinely cited these concerns when they explained their opposition to sending the amendment to the states for ratification (“The Sequel: The Fifteenth Amendment, the Nineteenth Amendment, and Southern Black Women's Struggle to Vote”). Kimberley Hamlin develops evidence along these lines beautifully in her forthcoming book, Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener . And Elaine Weiss's account of the ratification battle in Tennessee ( The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote , 2018) shows frequent recourse to the fear of black women's—and men's—votes. When black women showed up in the fall of 1920 to register and vote—and they did show up—local papers reported near panic at their surging interest. 42

In some locations, the sheer number of registrants suggests that the mobilization of black women voters was cross-class. A letter writer to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( Naacp ) noted that six hundred African American women tried to register in Caddo Parish, Louisiana—a breadth that suggests working-class mobilization—but that fewer than five succeeded, most of those, as the letter-writer states, “on account of “thair propity.” In Jacksonville, Florida, thanks to painstaking data collection by Paul Ortiz, we have direct evidence of cross-class mobilization ( Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 , 2005). There, the occupations with the most female registered voters were laundry workers, maids, and cooks, but the list of registrants also included dressmakers, clerks, and teachers. 43

Voter registrars employed a variety of strategies to disfranchise middle- and upper-class African American women. They had the discretion to decide how to test applicants and whether they had done well enough to pass. Class status alone did not secure voting rights for African American women in the South after ratification. Some black women turned then to gender-based strategies, trying to enlist the help of white women who had worked and sacrificed to enact woman suffrage. They quickly learned that there was little gender solidarity across racial lines. The two major suffrage groups ( Nawsa , reconstituted in the summer of 1920 as the League of Women Voters, and the National Woman's party) both declined to get involved. 44

Class-based strategies did not work, and gender-based strategies did not work, so African American women redoubled their efforts to push forward race-based strategies, working with African American men through the Naacp , churches, institutions of higher education, and other organizations. They attacked the white primary and made for themselves a place in the “Roosevelt” Democratic party. Women such as Ella Baker and Septima Clark developed educational programs that helped community members pass literacy tests. After the Voting Rights Act, despite ongoing resistance, they registered and mobilized en masse. Their votes made a difference; sometimes they made the difference. 45

It took the better part of a century, but the Nineteenth Amendment did produce a “women's vote.” Since at least the 1990s, African American women have displayed the most intense partisan preference of any demographic group. In 2008 and 2012, they had the highest voter turnout of any group and made crucial contribution to Barack Obama's historic presidential wins. When southern white supremacists opposed the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, they feared the power of black women's votes. A century later we can see that their fears were well-founded.

Marino : When I teach U.S. women's and gender history, I trouble the assumption that the Nineteenth Amendment was the major turning point that students sometimes assume it was. I ask my students to consider a question my adviser Estelle Freedman instilled in us: “Which women?”—Which women benefitted from the Nineteenth Amendment? As Judy Wu has pointed out, immigration restrictions meant that most Asian and Asian American women did not. Polling taxes, literacy requirements, and violence constricted citizenship rights for many African Americans in the South. The deportation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the 1930s further eroded men's and women's citizenship rights. Relatedly, the racism of white suffrage organizations, their use of U.S. imperial expansion as justification for a federal suffrage amendment, and their failure to organize intersectionally in the wake of suffrage, challenge the notion that the Nineteenth Amendment was a major turning point. 46

At the same time, I also emphasize that movements for suffrage were extremely important in chipping away at the legal exclusion of women from political citizenship, and that suffrage demands were a key part of broader movements that upheld multiple goals. To understand the stakes of women's suffrage it helps to realize that figures as diverse and as radical as Sojourner Truth, Clara Zetkin, Ida B. Wells, and Jovita Idár were demanding it and to great effect. One example: In 1913, the same year she rejected white suffragists' instructions to march at the end of the Washington, D.C., parade, Wells founded the first African American suffrage organization in Chicago, the Alpha Suffrage Club. That club registered over seven thousand new African American women voters who helped elect the city's first black alderman. It is important to understand that Wells's suffrage and electoral activism was connected to her activism against lynching and sexual violence. 47

Tetrault : I appreciate Liette Gidlow's deft summary of the field: from a dominant, contained narrative to a profusion of narratives that can no longer be contained and now spill over into so many other stories. At the same time, this centennial is causing quite a bit of confusion, as the old, contained narrative of the Nineteenth Amendment extending the “right to vote” to women keeps intruding onto how we now brand the amendment. I think the conventional story has contributed negatively in unseen ways to understandings of American history, by lulling (often white) Americans into believing that a “right to vote” exists. Historians constantly refer to suffrage activism as women pursuing and then winning “the right to vote.” That framing enshrines this right as something that has been realized, when it has not. It's no surprise, then, that a majority of white Americans today think that voter suppression is not currently underway, even as it is sharply on the rise. 48

Bringing the text of the Nineteenth Amendment into anniversary discussions helps us see a place where we are still getting tripped up by older, inherited—and triumphant—narratives. When the amendment was drafted in 1878 it might have been worded affirmatively, as a directive: the federal government shall protect the right of women to the elective franchise. But it wasn't, owing to complicated factors. Instead, the Nineteenth Amendment, like the Fifteenth Amendment upon which it was modeled, is negatively worded. The Fifteenth Amendment says states can't bar voting on grounds of “race,” while the Nineteenth Amendment says states can't bar voting on grounds of “sex.” The Nineteenth Amendment doesn't enfranchise anyone directly. It works indirectly, by removing the word “male” from state constitutions, where voting qualifications were defined. That's it. It's true that the opening of the short, thirty-nine-word amendment (like the Fifteenth Amendment) references a “right to vote,” but that right did not, in fact, exist. It's an illusory referent point, something the amendment leaves imagined rather than demanded. The Constitution leaves the appointment of voters up to individual states. It does not contain the right to vote.

Leading white suffragists could have seen how flaccid the Fifteenth Amendment turned out to be in protecting black men's votes, as southern states legally disfranchised them on other grounds—something permitted by the very narrow and negative wording of that amendment. Yet, even as the shortcomings of the Fifteenth Amendment became clear over the 1880s and 1890s, neither Stanton nor Anthony, nor any other suffragists, sought to revise the text of the proposed federal amendment. They left it modeled on the Fifteenth Amendment, even as that amendment crumbled before them.

This wording is, I think, a concession to American racism. Historians talk about the amendment's effect but rarely about its creation. Stanton, in particular, had always believed that voting should be extended to the “educated” and kept from the “ignorant” (read, immigrants and many folks of color). Stanton supported discrimination in voting, and the amendment ultimately made allowances for that (explored in my current work). Future, mainstream white suffragists made these same allowances by not revising the amendment's text.

Removing “male” from state-defined voter qualifications, by declaring that requirement unconstitutional, was a huge victory, particularly in an era when discrimination on the grounds of sex was thought not only permissible but also necessary given that women and men were understood to be vastly different biological entities. But how can we tell a story today that doesn't falsely enshrine a “right to vote” and still honor this amendment? There, I think, we still have work to do.

Finally, that we still narrate the mainstream suffrage story as a story of the federal amendment is, I think, another legacy of the earlier dominant narrative that centers Stanton and Anthony. The federal amendment was their baby, but many other suffragists—especially in the forgotten American Woman Suffrage Association—thought it was unconstitutional, because the Constitution clearly gave authority over voting to the states, something not discussed in references to their promotion of a state strategy.

When the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, women were already voting, in some form, in all but eight states. We have very little history of how women on the ground, including women of color, were trying to create and safeguard a “right” to a ballot. What we do know is that we can't talk about women's first election as if it happened after 1920; millions of women were already voting before then.

If we broaden our focus beyond the federal amendment, we see that there is no single date when women gained ballot access. This is a more accurate, if a much less satisfying, story.

Dubois : It bears emphasis that the wording of the amendment that Lisa critiques was offered by senators, not by Stanton and Anthony. Through much of the 1870s, Stanton and Anthony advocated affirmative wording linking women's voting to universal national suffrage, but that phrasing received no support in Congress.

Should we celebrate the Nineteenth Amendment? I must say that I honestly don't understand how this question can be asked and so how to answer it. Perhaps it is intended as a productive provocation. Nonetheless, my strong position is that any significant political goal that women wished to achieve, any effort to effect social change for women or for the larger society, could not be secured without the fundamental tool of democratic society, the franchise. Would we want to envision a counterfactual history in which American women would wait, like the women of France, Italy, Mexico, Belgium, and many other countries, until after the Second World War to vote? Nor can we reasonably claim that these, or our, or virtually any other national enfranchisements of women could have occurred without the often-long-running, organized demands by women themselves.

The Fifteenth Amendment certainly did not secure African American men's right to vote against attack and required another century of struggle to fully reinstate it. Nonetheless, I doubt any of us would think it a better outcome if de jure suffrage rights had not been won during Reconstruction. In the modern world, where even autocratic leaders must make use of the popular vote, no one except an occasional far-right pundit seeking attention seriously asks whether women's enfranchisement should have happened. Women's votes are such a rich prize that all sides fight furiously to claim them.

Gidlow : Voting is hardly the whole story of American democracy and political participation. But there is a singular quality to enfranchisement because it certifies the enfranchised person's status as a legitimate decision maker in civic affairs. (Judith Shklar's classic 1991 work, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion , is so valuable here.) The imprimatur of official status matters, even if the act of voting does not achieve all we might wish. This is not to say that the import of enfranchisement is merely symbolic. When women cast votes, they are helping make decisions that everyone, including men, must abide. This power remains deeply contested, in politics and well beyond, even a century after ratification. 49

Jones : Should we celebrate the Nineteenth Amendment anniversary? I don't think “celebration” is a historian's approach to the past—it leans too far in the direction of hagiography for my tastes. I don't even think, as I've written elsewhere, that commemoration is the work of historians. On this point I am indebted to Michel-Rolph Trouillot and his devastating analysis of the 1992 “celebration” of Christopher Columbus in Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995). Anniversary dates are an opportunity to teach history to a broader public. Some of what we teach may encourage or fuel commemoration or celebration. But if we give in to the tug of mythmaking and sanitization that these sort of rituals require, we are doing something else. 50

JAH: In what ways have histories of women and the vote contributed to our broader understanding of U.S. history? What difference has this work made to the field at large?

Dubois : Regarding the beginning and end of the suffrage period, historians of the United States have done a modestly good job of paying attention to suffrage historiography. By beginning, I mean from the period of antislavery activism to the Reconstruction era, 1836–1876. The abolitionist origins of women's rights and the controversy surrounding woman suffrage and the Fifteenth Amendment have both drawn historians' attention. I recently noticed a very good law review article by Adam Winkler on the suffrage New Departure, which made an innovative constitutional argument for women's enfranchisement largely based on the Fourteenth Amendment, as an early and underappreciated episode in the reenvisioning of the Constitution as a “living document,” an approach not recognized by virtually any jurists at the time (“A Revolution Too Soon: Woman Suffragists and the ‘Living Constitution,’” 2001). By end, I mean the Progressive Era, 1900–1920. Women's political activism in those years is so central to the social welfare dimension of state and national policies, it is hard to ignore. 51

The middle period of suffrage activism has not been integrated into general U.S. history for two reasons. First, suffrage historiography is weak in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, perhaps because there is little suffrage radicalism to inspire modern students of the movement. Second, U.S. history overall is weak in this period, with no consensus on how to narrate the era, or even what to call it: the age of class division, the age of industrialization, the woman's era, the Gilded Age, the racial nadir, post-Reconstruction reaction?

Jones : One approach to this question is to ask more directly: How have histories of women's suffrage contributed to our understanding of women's politics and power? Once we do, at least two important things happen. First, our attention is drawn away from so-called women's suffrage associations, and we focus on sites where black women were struggling over their political rights and power. This is why, for example, the Ann D. Gordon's edited collection African American Women and the Vote, 1837–1965 (1997) ranges from the 1837 Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women to the Voting Rights Act. That volume examines black women not only in suffrage associations but also throughout African American public culture: in the colored convention movement, antislavery societies, churches, the antilynching movement, the club movement, and more. To answer the question directly, the history of women's suffrage (and its shortcomings) encouraged historians of black women to rewrite the histories of black public culture as histories of women and to better understand the full range of how and where women's politics unfolded. 52

Today, in the field of African American women's history, a great deal of important work is being done on women's politics and power, but not very much of this work focuses on the history of suffrage or of voting more generally. This stands in contrast to the great interest in contemporary voter suppression, treated in Carol Anderson's excellent One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy (2018). Still, we don't think of the era before the Nineteenth Amendment as one of “voter suppression” even as many black women were barred from the polls as women after the Civil War. The histories that stick closest to black women and the vote are those that are most concerned with black women's intellectual history, such as Cooper's Beyond Respectability and Treva Lindsey's Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C . (2017). 53

African American women's history opens up onto of a set of questions, we might even say a skepticism, about political histories that center too firmly on the vote, political parties, and the state. The vast, ubiquitous, and enduring ways racism and white supremacy have been woven into people, ideas, and institutions have required that the field always understand how black Americans critiqued and then worked against racism and white supremacy. That is to say that an essential counterpoint to histories of the vote are histories of how voting was not enough.

I see the exciting new work on black women's internationalism as the cutting edge of new histories of politics and power. Examples include Keisha N. Blain's Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (2018) and the volume edited by Blain and Tiffany M. Gill, To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (2019). These histories defy conventional frameworks such as that of the nation-state or of electoral politics. As Grace V. Leslie's essay in that collection (“‘United, We Build a Free World,’”) illustrates, even a figure such as Mary McLeod Bethune, whom I associate with the National Association of Colored Women and Fdr 's “black cabinet,” must be remembered for her broad political vision, which included a critique of racism and colonialism and was aimed at linking women across the black diaspora. The vantage point of this work dovetails importantly with that of Marino's new Feminism for the Americas . 54

Has the history of black women and the vote remade U.S. political history? The answer is yes and no, and perhaps that is just right. Certainly we have made the case for black women in mainstream politics—from suffrage to the vote, parties, and the state. We've helped expand the notion of political history by making the case for insurgent politics as part of the American story. And we've even pressed on the geographies of political history, insisting on a politics rooted in the United States but transnational in its vision and its aims.

Marino : Histories of women's politics have, on a fundamental level, contributed to a recognition that to understand politics or political citizenship, we need to understand gender, race, class, and ethnicity, among other hierarchies of power. Decades of scholarship have shown that these areas of focus are not separate. (Women's and gender histories, however, too often still get tokenized.)

To point to a few useful contributions, Paula Baker's 1984 AHR essay, “The Domestication of Politics,” demonstrated that a changing understanding of what counted as “politics” in the United States was wrought by women's Progressive Era civil and social engagement and by a burgeoning welfare state. This “domestication” of politics abetted the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. More recently, Dawn Langan Teele's book, Forging the Franchise: The Political Origins of the Women's Vote (2018), provides a fine-grained comparative analysis of how women's suffrage was accomplished in England, France, and the United States. It underscores the importance of strategic maneuverings and alliances between suffragists and political parties seeking to gain power. Blain's Set the World on Fire not only explores the range of black nationalist women's engagements in the United States and transnationally around a range of goals but it also places women at the center of black nationalism. 55

These histories have also increasingly demonstrated that the “personal” is indeed “political.” Freedman's Redefining Rape argues that the definition of rape—including the race-, class-, and gender-specific notions of who can perpetuate it and who be a victim of it—is fundamental to political citizenship. Her book underscores the connections between sexual violence, gender, race, the vote, and broad meanings of political citizenship. “Suffrage” is in the subtitle, and she examines a diverse group of female and male activists, black and white, including suffragists from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century who sought to expand the definition of “rape” beyond the typical one of this period: a forcible attack on a chaste white woman by a nonwhite male perpetrator. The book explores the importance of women's voting power at the state and national levels to the passage of statutory rape laws. It also explains how the right to serve on a jury for white women and African American men and women was critical both to addressing sexual violence and to changing this narrow definition. 56

As Freedman's work indicates, race and class often divided women's efforts. Although some white women sought to curb white male patriarchy, many more white suffragists sought to, in Freedman's words “empower white women.” Some, such as the southern temperance activist and suffragist Rebecca Latimer Felton, allied with forces that encouraged lynching black men to “protect white womanhood.” Feimster explores Felton in great depth in her excellent book Southern Horrors , which also centrally explores Ida B. Wells's antilynching activism and work for the protection of African American women. Feimster's book illuminates the history of women's engagement around sexual violence, lynching, and political power, while also shedding light more broadly on the history of race and politics of the postbellum United States. 57

Another bourgeoning body of scholarship has underscored the centrality of white women's political power to the rise of the New Right, modern conservatism, and modern white supremacist and antifeminist politics. These works include Catherine E. Rymph's Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right (2006); Michelle M. Nickerson's Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (2012); and Elizabeth Gillespie McRae's Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy (2018). Marjorie J. Spruill's Divided We Stand: The Battle over Women's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics (2017) highlights women's feminist and antifeminist activism around the 1977 National Women's Conference in Houston, a key moment when debates over the body, sexuality, reproduction, and “the family” fostered schisms that continue to shape our political landscape today. 58

Gidlow : Women's enfranchisement has not shaped the development of broad narratives in and beyond U.S. history nearly as much as it could. Historians searching for short-term results of women's new power to vote have generally been disappointed. The Nineteenth Amendment did not usher in a new and powerful wave of progressive reform. Former suffragists in the 1920s remained as divided as they were before ratification, now over questions of the equal rights amendment and labor protections. Lots of women failed to cast ballots. In short, the Nineteenth Amendment seems to have landed with a thud.

Looking for the effects of women's enfranchisement over a longer time frame, however, may suggest other questions historians might fruitfully pursue. How did various political institutions respond to the fact of women's enfranchisement, whether or not women actually could or did vote? For example, did women's enfranchisement contribute to the trend that Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter once called “politics by other means”—that is, the twentieth-century shift of decision making out of bodies that were directly accountable to voters to bureaucracies that are more insulated from the electorate ( Politics by Other Means: The Declining Importance of Elections in America , 1990)? Or, here's another: Once women had the vote, what happened to white men's privileged status as civic actors? If they lost some of that status, did they shore up their civic privilege in other ways? If they retained it, how did they do that? 59

In my own work on southern African American women's efforts to vote in the 1920s and beyond, I argue that the successes and the failures of aspiring southern African American voters in the 1920s, women but also men, resonated through the decades and helped change the American political landscape in important ways. Their surge to the polls after ratification triggered violent reprisals and helped fuel the growth of the second Ku Klux Klan. Their interest in voting forced a feeble southern Republican party to affirm its identity as a white party, laying the groundwork for the late twentieth-century realignment of southern white voters that made the Republican party dominant in the region by the 1980s. The failures of white former suffragists in the National Woman's party and the League of Women Voters to stand up for southern black women's voting rights cast a shadow long enough to darken the prospects for a truly collaborative women's liberation movement across the color line five decades later. 60

Wu : These questions are particularly relevant for my current work, a biography of a woman of color political advocate who very much believed in the promise and potential of political liberalism. I envision Patsy Mink trying to dismantle or at least significantly renovate the master's house with the master's tools. Mink's strategy of full inclusion and transformation, however, also exists in tension with Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander efforts to critique U.S. empire and Asian American settler colonialism. Full inclusion in the U.S. state meant continued occupation. For example, the campaign for statehood in Hawaii, which Mink advocated, foreclosed the possibility of independence for Hawaii. Asian Americans, although discriminated against in the plantation economy and the political state, nevertheless gained economic and political power that contributed to the dispossession of Native Hawaiians. Their status led Haunani-Kay Trask to describe Asian Americans as settlers who came to steal and take. Jodi Byrd distinguishes between “arrivants,” those who arrived as racialized subjects, and settlers. However, Dean Saranillio reminds us that being an “arrivant” does not absolve one of the responsibilities of challenging the settler state. 61

The tensions between racial/gender inclusion and settler colonialism remind me of two sets of conversations related to women's political rights. First, the political scientists Pam Paxton and Melanie M. Hughes have identified three different formulations of women's citizenship: formal, descriptive, and substantive citizenship ( Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective , 2017). Formal representation asks: Do women have the same rights as men to participate in politics? Descriptive representation asks: Does access to equal rights result in equal representation in terms of numbers? And substantive representation asks: Are women's interests being advocated in the political arena? Formal representation (the right to vote) clearly does not result in descriptive representation. The year 2018 marked record numbers of women in Congress: 102 women in the House and 25 in the Senate. Nearly one hundred years after the passage of suffrage, women constitute not quite 25 percent of the elected representatives in Congress and still have not cracked the glass ceiling of the White House. Despite these numbers, women and their allies have been able to secure legislation that addresses issues fundamentally important to women. Formal representation, coupled with a range of political strategies, could lead to substantive representation, despite the lack of descriptive representation. However, I look forward to the day when women might obtain proportionate representation to their demographics in the country. 62

Second, another way to consider why voting matters is to focus on the gendered and racialized process by which subjects of empire become subjects of republics. The works of Carole Pateman ( The Sexual Contract , 1988), Christine Keating ( Decolonizing Democracy: Transforming the Social Contract in India , 2011), and others emphasize the gendered dimensions of racialized state formation. Pateman argues that men who engage in political contracts to form democratic states also tended to reinforce a “hidden sexual contract” that affirms patriarchy. Keating argues that decolonizing states that transition political power from a white colonial elite to a nonwhite “native” male population may nevertheless reinforce gender, religious, and ethnic/racial hierarchies as a form of “compensatory domination.” Various postcolonial feminist scholars have pointed out how “native” women are overdetermined as symbols of the purity of home, nation, and culture as the political economies of developing nations “modernize.” These “hidden sexual contracts,” “compensatory [forms of] democracy,” and the privatization and valorization of womanhood create historical patterns of gendered political exclusion for decolonizing nations. 63

Scholars who focus on women's political exclusions and engagements have made multiple contributions to U.S. and global histories. I am struck by the continued resistance of those who persist in ignoring or tokenizing this scholarship. I'd like to quote Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress, advocating for federal funding for the 1977 National Women's Conference ( Nwc ). The supporters of the Nwc battled to receive $5 million, approximately 4 cents for every woman in the United States at the time. Female legislators constituted 4 percent of the House and 0 percent of the Senate in 1976, the U.S. bicentennial year. As Chisholm reminded her legislative colleagues, “I really do sincerely hope that the gentlemen will, for once in their lives, as this country approaches its 200th anniversary, realize that 51 percent or 52 percent of the population is a very important segment of the population.” I hope our historian colleagues will also keep these demographics in mind as they write lectures, assign readings, as well as make hiring and promotion decisions. 64

JAH: In this Interchange, we have looked back over the field of women's suffrage activism and enfranchisement. Before we close, let's look ahead. What gaps or holes remain to be filled in the history and historiographies of women and the vote? What do we have left to learn?

Rupp : There is still more to learn about how many and which women voted, how they voted, and why they voted the way they did, although I understand the difficulties of researching these questions. What might a systematic history of women's voting behavior tell us? Did antisuffrage women vote? Were those who thought women would vote the same way as their husbands, if they had them, right? When thinking of women and voting, it is difficult not to think of the contemporary question—Why did 53 percent of white women vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 election?

We also need to know much more about the impact of the final years of the suffrage movement on subsequent rounds of mobilization of all kinds of women's movements. We know that, among transnationally organized women, the winning of the vote in some places divided the movement into suffrage “haves” and “have-nots,” with consequences for debate about what were the most important issues for organizations to target. Should the movement move on to what the International Woman's Suffrage Alliance called “Equal Citizenship?” The International Woman's Suffrage Alliance in the 1920s took up the issue of women losing their citizenship if they married a noncitizen and the double standard of morality, and divided over the question of whether protective labor legislation for women was discriminatory. Increasingly, however, its focus turned to peace. 65

What did the winning of suffrage mean nationally, especially regarding social movement realignment? We know about the transformation of suffrage organizations into the League of Women Voters and the National Woman's party, but how did the Nineteenth Amendment affect the organized black women Martha Jones discusses, women in the labor movement, women in the peace movement, women in right-wing movements, and so many others?

Tetrault : We need to jettison the 1848–1920 framework and begin to tie this history to other dates and other developments. Only then can this rich and complicated history begin to grow into itself.

As just a few examples, Martha Jones has shown how important it was for churchwomen to be advocating for the vote inside their churches, as early as the 1870s, yet this is still not a conventional piece of suffrage history (“Overthrowing the ‘Monopoly of the Pulpit’: Race and the Rights of Church Women in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” 2005). Lori Ginzberg ( Untidy Origins ) and now Dawn Winters (“‘The Ladies Are Coming!’: A New History of Antebellum Temperance, Women's Rights, and Political Activism,” 2018) have shown that women were petitioning for the vote in 1846. In Winters's work that demand was coming out of temperance, not abolition, upending the standard narrative. The 1965 Voting Rights Act, when most women became enfranchised, was legislation that women fought for, alongside men. Vast expanses before and after 1920 are begging to be connected to this story, which will surely reposition 1920 as important, but not definitive. Meanwhile, without a positive assertion of the right to vote in our Constitution, voter disfranchisement proceeds apace, especially since the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. This story is, in fact, multiple stories, with multiple antecedents, and it is far from over. 66

Marino : I would like to make a special plug for U.S. historians to do more research outside the United States. Engaging seriously with histories of women's voting rights outside the United States promises not only to shed light on post-1920 activism, including that of women of color and women in the labor and peace movements, but also to stretch our understandings of what is politically possible. Exploring these histories would de-center the idea that the United States or Western Europe “invented” feminism and challenge U.S.-exceptionalist understandings of voting activism and feminism globally.

In my research on Latin American histories of suffrage, I have investigated frente popular (popular front groups) in Latin America, which were social movements, often electoral coalitions of political parties. Many of them believed that including women in the electorate would enhance frente popular political power nationally. In the 1930s and 1940s, these groups aligned with multiple causes: a new inter-American labor movement, the republican cause in the Spanish Civil War, Puerto Rican independence, solidarity with Ethiopia after Italy's invasion, antiracism, and, because of the power of inter-American feminism, women's rights, including women's voting rights. Popular front groups in Latin America had strong ties to labor activists and peace activists in the United States, and to women of color. These groups were aware of the antifeminism of right-wing dictatorships throughout the world. 67

Women's suffrage legislation passed throughout Latin America in the years after World War II, many times after new governments had overthrown dictatorships, often thanks to antifascist women's long-standing activism and international decrees such as the 1945 United Nations Charter and 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I'm currently researching Felicia Santizo, an Afro-Panamanian feminist and educator. A leading suffragist from the 1920s through 1930s, Santizo called for universal suffrage without race, class, or sex restrictions, which was adopted in Panama's 1946 constitution. She also organized an important new antifascist women's group that focused on school lunches for impoverished children and child and adult literacy programs. She later became a leader of the Partido del Pueblo (the communist party of Panama), which had vital transnational connections, including with the Women's International Democratic Federation.

Relatedly, it's important to continue interrogating how U.S. international suffrage debates mapped onto global empire. U.S. occupations in Central America, the Caribbean, and the Philippines utilized the idea that U.S. political culture was superior because of the supposed “freedoms” given to U.S. women. More research could be done in diplomatic and foreign relations archives to complement existing works on this topic. We still know more about British and French imperial feminism than about U.S. imperial feminism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Doing this work continues the project Leila Rupp laid out for us in Worlds of Women , of interrogating “who's in” and “who's out” of these international networks and how language, class, race, nation, among other categories, shaped these boundaries. 68

Language provides a particularly rich lens through which we can analyze transnational and imperial feminisms. I recently found that the Spanish feminist María Espinosa expressed outrage, in her 1920 book, Influencia del feminismo en la legislación contemporanea (Influence of feminism in contemporary legislation), that the International Alliance of Women had asked Spanish suffragists to host a conference in Spain but refused to include Spanish as an official language. Espinosa invoked a Pan-Hispanism that expressed solidarity with Latin America. At the same time, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spanish-speaking feminists were often imperialist in their own ways. They often excluded women who spoke indigenous languages. 69

From Tetrault's book The Myth of Seneca Falls I learned more about the founding of the International Council of Women by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in 1888. These large Euro-American-led organizations (the International Alliance of Women and International Council of Women) inspired feminists around the world, but they also forwarded the idea that Anglo-American leaders invented feminism. It would be useful to explore the reverberations of that idea. U.S. and Western European feminists' pretentions to superiority often encouraged women's groups in various parts of the world to ally with each other more strongly in opposition to empire. 70

These insights connect to points made in Tetrault's book and by Martha Jones when she invoked Trouillot's Silencing the Past . We need to continue thinking critically about who had the power and the resources to create the archives and to tell the story. We should consider how inequalities in historical preservation along lines of class and race, and between the “global North” and “global South,” have deeply shaped our historical understandings. Exploring transnational movements and non-U.S. histories sheds light on the vital work of activists and groups that did not always have the ability to create archives (or whose archives are not as easily accessible to U.S. researchers). They also help us de-center a history of feminism that places the United States, and Anglo-American players specifically, at the forefront, and avoid what the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has called “the danger of a single story.” 71

Dubois : I would identify three areas of future research. The most obvious is to dig into local records (starting with the History of Woman Suffrage ) to examine activism at the rank-and-file level. How will the interests and arguments of those involved, and the political activities at these levels, challenge or enlarge what we claim about the movement when we study national leaders and major state and city environments? Just as historians of the women's liberation movement have shown that New York City and Boston feminism is in no way representative of the national range of activism, so too can we do similar work for suffrage activism.

The second direction that I would like to see explored more closely are the devices used by national, state, and even local politicians to oppose woman suffrage demands. Suffrage historians have tended to look at factors internal to the suffrage movement to explain slow progress and repeated defeats. But the more I look, in virtually every period, suffragists confronted the deliberate mobilization of good old-fashioned political opposition. Doing this work will deepen historians' sense of suffrage as a genuinely political movement, using political tools.

Finally, I look forward to increasing scholarship on the post-1920 years and on the impact (or lack thereof) of the Nineteenth Amendment. Recently political scientists have begun the important work of digging into voting activity in the first two or three postsuffrage elections, with excellent results. We know southern African American women faced powerful tools of disfranchisement. What else can we learn? I would especially like to see more work done on the impact of women's enfranchisement on the dramatic political shift, four presidential elections later, from which emerged the modern Democratic party and the Roosevelt New Deal. Surely the doubling of the electorate had an impact.

Wu : As a scholar invested in analyzing immigration, race, and empire, I am interested in what histories of the long suffrage movement (before and after 1920, in and beyond U.S. national boundaries) might reveal about the meaning and practice of democracy. How is the political right to vote linked to or distinct from cultural and economic forms of citizenship? How does women's suffrage reinforce U.S. exceptionalism and justify settler colonialism and militarism? And, how do various women who occupy a range of marginal and privileged statuses simultaneously, due to intersecting forms of social hierarchy, position themselves to claim political power? I look forward to new scholarship to help us understand the complex relationship between suffrage, citizenship, and the nation-state.

Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Women's Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1959); Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920 (New York, 1965); Gerda Lerner, The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels against Slavery (Boston, 1967); Alan P. Grimes, The Puritan Ethic and Woman Suffrage (New York, 1967); Barbara J. Berg, The Remembered Gate: The Origins of American Feminism—The Woman and the City, 1800–1860 (New York, 1978); Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869 (Ithaca, 1978).

Rosalyn Terborg-Penn's dissertation had wide impact for years before the book appeared. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, “Afro-Americans in the Struggle for Woman Suffrage” (Ph.D. diss., Howard University, 1977); Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850–1920 (Bloomington, 1998).

Susan D. Becker, The Origins of the Equal Rights Amendment: American Feminism between the Wars (Westport, 1981); Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, 1987); Dorothy Sue Cobble, The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (Princeton, 2004); Cynthia Harrison, On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues, 1945–1968 (Berkeley, 1988); Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (New York, 1987).

Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement (Princeton, 1997), 48; Bonnie S. Anderson, Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement, 1830–1860 (New York, 2000); Allison L. Sneider, Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870–1929 (New York, 2008); Katherine M. Marino, Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement (Chapel Hill, 2019).

DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage .

Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman's Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven, 1977); Mari Jo Buhle, Women American Socialism, 1870–1920 (Urbana, 1981); Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: Birth Control in America (New York, 1976). Ellen DuBois, “The Radicalism of the Woman Suffrage Movement: Notes toward the Reconstruction of Nineteenth-Century Feminism,” Feminist Studies , 3 (Autumn 1975), 63–71.

Ellen Carol DuBois, “Outgrowing the Compact of the Fathers: Equal Rights, Woman Suffrage, and the United States Constitution, 1820–1878,” Journal of American History , 74 (Dec. 1987), 836–62; Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York, 1984); Terborg-Penn, “Afro-Americans in the Struggle for Woman Suffrage”; Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Right to Vote .

Buhle, Women and American Socialism ; Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860 (New York, 1986); Diane Balser, Sisterhood and Solidarity: Feminism and Labor in Modern Times (Boston, 1987); Carole Turbin, Gender, Class, and Community in Troy, New York, 1864–1886 (Urbana, 1992); Susan Levine, Labor's True Women: Carpet Weavers, Industrialization, and Labor Reform in the Gilded Age (Philadelphia, 1984).

Flexner, Century of Struggle ; DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage ; Terborg-Penn, “Afro-Americans in the Struggle for Woman Suffrage”; Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote .

Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al., eds., History of Woman Suffrage (6 vols., Rochester, 1881–1922). Lisa Tetrault, The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898 (Chapel Hill, 2014).

Giddings, When and Where I Enter , unpaginated front matter.

Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York, 1985); Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993).

Martha S. Jones, All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830–1900 (Chapel Hill, 2007).

DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage ; Ellen Carol DuBois, Woman Suffrage and Women's Rights (New York, 1998); Stanton et al., eds., History of Woman Suffrage .

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Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote .

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Elsa Barkley Brown, “Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom,” Public Culture , 7 (Fall 1994), 107–46; Barkley Brown, “To Catch the Vision of Freedom: Reconstructing Southern Black Women's Political History, 1865–1880,” in African-American Women and the Vote, 1837–1965 , ed. Ann D. Gordon (Amherst, Mass., 1997), 66–99. Eric Foner, “Rights and the Constitution in Black Life during the Civil War and Reconstruction,” Journal of American History , 74 (Dec. 1987), 863–83. Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post–Civil War North, 1865–1901 (Cambridge, Mass., 2001); Victoria Hattam, “Economic Visions and Political Strategies: American Labor and the State, 1865–1896,” in Studies in American Political Development , 4 (Spring 1990), 82–129; Victoria C. Hattam, Labor Visions and State Power: The Origins of Business Unionism in the United States (Princeton, 1993).

Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780–1920,” American Historical Review , 89 (June 1984), 620–47; Jean H. Baker, Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1983); Sarah Hunter Graham, Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy (New Haven, 1996); Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935 (New York, 1991). Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review , 91 (Dec. 1986), 1053–75; Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, “African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race,” Signs , 17 (Winter 1992), 251–74. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere , ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 109–43; Joseph R. Gusfield, The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order (Chicago, 1981); James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990); John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley (Urbana, 1980). Warren I. Sussman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1984); Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays , trans. Ben Brewster (London, 1971); Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture: Selected Essays (London, 1993); Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds. and trans., Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New York, 1972).

Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill, 2003); Katherine Mellen Charron, Freedom's Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark (Chapel Hill, 2009); Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent ; Lisa G. Materson, For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois, 1877–1932 (Chapel Hill, 2009).

Jane Rhodes, Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century (Bloomington, 1998); Melba Joyce Boyd, Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825–1911 (Detroit, 1994). H. M. Parkhurst, Proceedings of the Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention, Held at the Church of the Puritans, New York, May 10, 1866 (New York, 1866), 46.

Painter, Sojourner Truth .

Jean Fagan Yellin, Harriet Jacobs: A Life (Cambridge, Mass., 2004); Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom (New York, 2004); Kate Clifford Larson, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero (New York, 2004); Marilyn Richardson, ed., Maria Stewart, America's First Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches (Bloomington, 1987).

Mia Bay, To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells (New York, 2009); Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching (New York, 2008).

Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement ; Barbara Ransby, Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson (New Haven, 2013); Ula Yvette Taylor, The Veiled Garvey: The Life and Times of Amy Jacques Garvey (Chapel Hill, 2002); Ula Yvette Taylor, The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam (Chapel Hill, 2017); Sherie M. Randolph, Florynce “Flo” Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical (Chapel Hill, 2015).

Barbara Winslow, Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for Change (New York, 2013); Chana Kai Lee, For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (Urbana, 1999); Michelle Obama, Becoming (New York, 2018).

Sylvia Hoffert, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont: Unlikely Champion of Women's Rights (Bloomington, 2011); Trisha Franzen, Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage (Urbana, 2014); Bay, To Tell the Truth Freely ; Patricia A. Schechter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill, 2001); Crystal N. Feimster, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching (Cambridge, Mass., 2011); Wanda A. Hendricks, Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race (Urbana, 2013); Joyce A. Hanson, Mary McLeod Bethune: Black Women's Political Activism (Columbia, Mo., 2013); Norma Smith, Jeannette Rankin: America's Conscience (Helena, 2002); Linda J. Lumsden, Inez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland (Bloomington, 2004).

Bonnie S. Anderson, The Rabbi's Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer (New York, 2017); Grace Farrell, Lillie Devereux Blake: Retracing Life Erased (Amherst, Mass., 2002); Jill Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President (New York, 2007); Jennifer M. Ross-Nazzal, Winning the West for Women: The Life of Suffragist Emma Smith DeVoe (Seattle, 2011); Mary Walton, A Woman's Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot (New York, 2010); Christine Lunardini, Alice Paul: Equality for Women (Philadelphia, 2013); J. D. Zahniser and Amelia R. Fry, Alice Paul: Claiming Power (New York, 2014); Sally G. McMillan, Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life (New York, 2015); Kathleen Nutter, The Necessity of Organization: Mary Kenney O'Sullivan and Trade Unionism for Women, 1892–1912 (New York, 2000).

Lori D. Ginzberg, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life (New York, 2009); Vivian Gornick, The Solitude of Self: Thinking about Elizabeth Cady Stanton (New York, 2005); Ann D. Gordon, ed., Selected Letters of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (6 vols., New Brunswick, 1997–2013); Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar, Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600–2000 , http://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/ .

Lori D. Ginzberg, Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman's Rights in Antebellum New York (Chapel Hill, 2005); Nancy F. Cott, “Across the Great Divide: Women in Politics before and after 1920,” in Women, Politics, and Change , ed. Louise A. Tilly and Patricia Gurin (New York, 1990), 153–76; Anderson, Joyous Greetings ; Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote ; Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow ; Ellen Carol DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (New Haven, 1997); Tetrault, Myth of Seneca Falls ; Sneider, Suffragists in an Imperial Age ; Kimberly A. Hamlin, From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women's Rights in Gilded Age America (Chicago, 2014).

Jones, All Bound Up Together ; Estelle B. Freedman, Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation (Cambridge, Mass., 2013); Feimster, Southern Horrors ; Brittney C. Cooper, Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (Urbana, 2017); Materson, For the Freedom of Her Race .

Vicki L. Ruiz, “Class Acts: Latina Feminist Traditions, 1900–1930,” American Historical Review , 121 (Feb. 2016), 1–16; Maylei Blackwell, ¡Chicana Power! Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement (Austin, 2011); Gabriela González, Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability, and Rights (New York, 2018); Emma Pérez, The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (Bloomington, 1999); Rupp, Worlds of Women ; Ellen DuBois, “Woman Suffrage and the Left: An International Socialist-Feminist Perspective,” New Left Review (no. 186, March–April, 1991), 20–45; Julia L. Mickenberg, American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream (Chicago, 2017); Julia L. Mickenberg, “Suffragettes and Soviets: American Feminists and the Specter of Revolutionary Russia,” Journal of American History , 100 (March 2014), 1021–51; Anderson, Rabbi's Atheist Daughter ; Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900–1965 (Chapel Hill, 1995); Melissa R. Klapper, Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women's Activism, 1890–1940 (New York, 2013).

Katherine M. Marino, “Transnational Pan-American Feminism: The Friendship of Bertha Lutz and Mary Wilhelmine Williams, 1926–1944,” Journal of Women's History , 26 (Summer 2014), 63–87; Marino, Feminism for the Americas .

J. Kevin Corder and Christina Wolbrecht, Counting Women's Ballots: Female Voters from Suffrage through the New Deal (New York, 2016).

Hoffert, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont ; Johanna Neuman, Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women's Right to Vote (New York, 2017); Joan Marie Johnson, Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women's Movement, 1870–1967 (Chapel Hill, 2017); Brooke Kroeger, The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote (Albany, N.Y., 2017); Susan Goodier, No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-suffrage Movement (Urbana, 2017); Susan Goodier and Karen Pastorello, Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State (Ithaca, 2017).

Sucheng Chan, ed., Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943 (Philadelphia, 1991); Martha Gardner, The Qualities of Citizens: Women, Immigration, and Citizenship, 1870–1965 (Princeton, 2005); Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley, 1995).

Sneider, Suffragists in an Imperial Age ; Susan B. Anthony quoted in Kristin Hoganson, “‘As Badly off as the Filipinos’: U.S. Women's Suffragists and the Imperial Issue at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Women's History , 13 (Summer 2001), 17.

Cathleen D. Cahill, Raising Our Banners: Women of Color Challenge the Mainstream Suffrage Movement (Chapel Hill, forthcoming, 2020); Dublin and Sklar, Women and Social Movements in the United States .

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Gwendolyn Mink, The First Woman of Color in Congress: Patsy Takemoto Mink's Politics of Peace, Justice, and Feminism (New York, forthcoming).

Jeanette Wolfley, “Jim Crow, Indian Style: The Disenfranchisement of Native Americans,” American Indian Law Review , 16 (no. 1, 1991), 167–202; Jennifer L. Robinson, “The Right to Vote: A History of Voting Rights and American Indians,” in Minority Voting in the United States , ed. Kyle Kreider and Thomas Baldino (Santa Barbara, 2015); Daniel McCool, Susan M. Olson, and Jennifer L. Robinson, Native Vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights Act, and the Right to Vote (Cambridge, Eng., 2007).

Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (New York, 1993), 128; Liette Gidlow, “The Sequel: The Fifteenth Amendment, the Nineteenth Amendment, and Southern Black Women's Struggle to Vote,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , 17 (July 2018), 433–49. Kimberly Hamlin, Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener (New York, forthcoming, 2020); Elaine Weiss, The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote (New York, 2018). “Disfranchisement in Congress,” Crisis , 4 (Feb. 1921), 165.

T. G. Garrett to “The N.A.A.C.P.,” Oct. 30, 1920, Records of the Naacp (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Paul Ortiz, Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 (Berkeley, 2005).

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, “Clubwomen and Electoral Politics in the 1920s,” in African American Women and the Vote, 1837–1965 , ed. Ann D. Gordon and Bettye Collier-Thomas (Amherst, Mass., 1997), 150; Mrs. Lawrence Lewis to the Editor, Nation , March 26, 1921.

Charron, Freedom's Teacher ; Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement ; Steven F. Lawson, Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944–1969 (New York, 1976).

On the connections between U.S. empire, race, and suffrage, see, for instance, Sneider, Suffragists in an Imperial Age ; Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, “Enfranchasing Women of Color: Woman Suffragists as Agents of Imperialism,” in Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race , ed. Ruth Roach Pierson and Nupur Chaudhuri (Bloomington, 1998), 41–56; Louise Edwards and Mina Roces, eds., Women's Suffrage in Asia: Gender, Nationalism, and Democracy (London, 2004); Patricia Grimshaw, “Settler Anxieties, Indigenous Peoples, and Women's Suffrage in the Colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and Hawai'i, 1888 to 1902,” in Women's Suffrage in Asia , ed. Edwards and Roces, 220–39; Rumi Yamusake, “Re-franchising Women of Hawai'i, 1912–1920: The Politics of Gender, Sovereignty, Race, and Rank at the Crossroads of the Pacific,” in Gendering the Trans-Pacific World , ed. Catherine Ceniza Choy and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (Leiden, 2017), 114–39; Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, 1998); Gladys Jiménez-Muñoz, “Deconstructing Colonialist Discourse: Links between the Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States and Puerto Rico,” Phoebe , 5 (Spring 1993), 9–34; and Laura Prieto, “A Delicate Subject: Clemencia López, Civilized Womanhood, and the Politics of Anti-imperialism,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , 12 (April 2013), 199–233.

On the Alpha Suffrage Club work and voter registration, see Alfreda M. Duster, ed., Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (Chicago, 1970), 346; Giddings, Ida , 523–46; Susan Ware, Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote (Cambridge, Mass., 2019), 99–110; Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote , 139–40; and Materson, For the Freedom of Her Race .

Vann R. Newkirk II, “Voter Suppression Is Warping American Democracy,” Atlantic , July 17, 2018.

Judith Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, Mass., 1991).

Michel-Roph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, 1995).

Adam Winkler, “A Revolution Too Soon: Woman Suffragists and the ‘Living Constitution,’” New York University Law Review , 76 (Nov. 2001), 1456–1526.

Ann D. Gordon, ed., African American Women and the Vote, 1837–1965 (Amherst, Mass., 1997).

Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy (New York, 2018); Cooper, Beyond Respectability ; Treva Lindsey, Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C . (Urbana, 2017).

Keisha N. Blain, Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (Philadelphia, 2018); Keisha N. Blain and Tiffany M. Gill, eds., To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (Urbana, 2019); Grace V. Leslie, “‘United, We Build a Free World’: The Internationalism of Mary McLeod Bethune and the National Council of Negro Women,” ibid. , 192–218; Marino, Feminism for the Americas .

Baker, “Domestication of Politics”; Dawn Langan Teele, Forging the Franchise: The Political Origins of the Women's Vote (Princeton, 2018); Blain, Set the World on Fire .

Freedman, Redefining Rape .

Feimster, Southern Horrors .

Catherine E. Rymph, Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right (Chapel Hill, 2006); Michelle M. Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (Princeton, 2012); Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy (New York, 2018); Marjorie J. Spruill, Divided We Stand: The Battle over Women's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics (New York, 2017).

Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter, Politics by Other Means: The Declining Importance of Elections in America (New York, 1990).

Liette Gidlow, “More than Double: African American Women and the Rise of a ‘Women's Vote,’ Journal of Women's History , 32 (Spring 2020).

Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii (Honolulu, 1999); Jodi A. Byrd, The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism (Minneapolis, 2011); Dean Itsuji Saranillio, Unsustainable Empire: Alternative Histories of Hawai'i Statehood (Durham, N.C., 2018).

Pam Paxton and Melanie M. Hughes, Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective (2007; Los Angeles, 2017).

Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, 1988); Christine Keating, Decolonizing Democracy: Transforming the Social Contract in India (University Park, 2011). See also Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, 1999). Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres, eds., Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington, 1991); Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, N.C., 2003).

Shirley Chisholm, “Providing for a National Women's Conference,” Congressional Record—House , Dec. 10, 1975, H12201-2, folder 7, box 562, Patsy T. Mink Papers (Manuscript Division). These remarks are also available at Congressional Record , 94 Cong., 1 sess., Dec. 10, 1975, p. 39719.

On the International Woman's Suffrage Alliance and “equal citizenship,” see Rupp, Worlds of Women .

Martha S. Jones, “Overthrowing the ‘Monopoly of the Pulpit’: Race and the Rights of Church Women in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” in No Permanent Waves: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism (New Brunswick, 2010), 121–43; Ginzberg, Untidy Origins ; Dawn Winters, “The Ladies Are Coming!”: A New History of Antebellum Temperance, Women's Rights, and Political Activism” (Ph.D. diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 2018); Anderson, One Person, No Vote .

Numerous works have illuminated different national iterations of popular-front feminism in Latin America, including Yolanda Marco Serra, “Ser ciudadana en Panamá en la década de 1930” (Being a citizen in Panama in the 1930s), in Un siglo de luchas femeninas en América Latina (A century of female struggles in Latin America), ed. Asunción Lavrin and Eugenia Rodríguez Sáenz (San José, 2002), 71–86; Esperanza Tuñón Pablos, Mujeres que se organizan: El frente único pro derechos de la mujer, 1935–1938 (Women who organize: The single front for women's rights, 1935–1938) (Mexico City, 1992); Enriqueta Tuñón, ¡Por fin … ya podemos elegir y ser electas! El sufragio femenino en México, 1935–1953 (At last … we can now choose and be elected! Female suffrage in Mexico, 1935–1953) (Mexico City, 2002); Jocelyn Olcott, Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Durham, N.C., 2005); Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises: Political Cultures and the State in Chile, 1920–1950 (Chapel Hill, 2000); Corinne A. Antezana-Pernet, “Mobilizing Women in the Popular Front Era: Feminism, Class, and Politics in the Movimiento Pro-Emancipación de la Mujer Chilena (MEMCh), 1935–1950” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Irvine, 1996); Sandra McGee Deutsch, “Argentine Women against Fascism: The Junta de la Victoria, 1941–1947,” Politics, Religion, and Ideology 13 (no. 2, 2012), 221–36; Sandra McGee Deutsch, “The New School Lecture—‘An Army of Women’: Communist-Linked Solidarity Movements, Maternalism, and Political Consciousness in 1930s and 1940s Argentina,” Americas , 75 (Jan. 2018), 95–125; and Adriana María Valobra, “Formación de cuadros y frentes populares: Relaciones de clase y género en el Partido Comunista de Argentina, 1935–1951” (Formation of cadres and popular fronts: Class and gender in the Communist party of Argentina, 1935–1951), Revista Izquierdas (no. 23, April 2015), 127–56. On suffrage activism in Latin America, see Asunción Lavrin, Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, 1890–1940 (Lincoln, 1995); Francesca Miller, Latin American Women and the Search for Social Justice (Hanover, 1991); Christine Ehrick, The Shield of the Weak: Feminism and the State in Uruguay, 1903–1933 (Albuquerque, 2005); K. Lynn Stoner, From the House to the Streets: The Cuban Woman's Movement for Legal Reform, 1898–1940 (Durham, N.C., 1991); Rina Villars, Para la casa más que para el mundo: Sufragismo y feminismo en la historia de Honduras (For the house more than the world: Suffragism and feminism in the history of Honduras) (Tegucigalpa, 2001); June E. Hahner, Emancipating the Female Sex: The Struggle for Women's Rights in Brazil, 1850–1940 (Durham, N.C., 1990); Susan K. Besse, Restructuring Patriarchy: The Modernization of Gender Inequality in Brazil, 1914–1940 (Chapel Hill, 1996); Victoria González-Rivera, Before the Revolution: Women's Rights and Right-Wing Politics in Nicaragua, 1821–1979 (University Park, 2011); Elizabeth S. Manley, The Paradox of Paternalism: Women and the Politics of Authoritarianism in the Dominican Republic (Gainesville, 2017); Charity Coker Gonzalez, “Agitating for Their Rights: The Colombian Women's Movement, 1930–1957,” Pacific Historical Review , 69 (Nov. 2000), 689–706; Patricia Faith Harms, “Imagining a Place for Themselves: The Social and Political Roles of Guatemalan Women, 1871–1954” (Ph.D. diss., Arizona State University, 2007); Takkara Keosha Brunson, “Constructing Afro-Cuban Womanhood: Race, Gender, and Citizenship in Republican-Era Cuba, 1902–1958” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2011); and Grace Louise Sanders, “La Voix des Femmes: Haitian Women's Rights, National Politics, and Black Activism in Port-au-Prince and Montreal, 1934–1986” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2013).

Rupp, Worlds of Women .

María Espinosa, Influencia del feminismo en la legislación contemporanea (Influence of feminism in contemporary legislation) (Madrid, 1920).

Tetrault, Myth of Seneca Falls .

Trouillot, Silencing the Past ; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story,” July 2009, https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story .

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Key facts about women’s suffrage around the world, a century after U.S. ratified 19th Amendment

This year marks the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees women the right to vote. But the United States was hardly the first country to codify women’s suffrage, and barriers to vote persisted for some groups of U.S. women for decades. At least 20 nations preceded the U.S., according to a Pew Research Center analysis of women’s enfranchisement measures in 198 countries and self-administering territories. Today, none of these 198 countries and territories bar women from voting because of their sex; some countries do not hold national elections.

Here is a closer look at the history of women’s suffrage around the world. This analysis focuses on when women in each country won the right to vote in national elections, not regional or local elections.

A century after U.S. women gained the right to vote, we conducted this analysis to find out when women in other countries were first enfranchised at the national level. The analysis is based on information about 198 countries and self-administering territories from government publications, historical documents from organizations like the United Nations and the Inter-Parliamentary Union , and news reports. For each country or territory, the year in which women received the right is based on the date this right was codified in a law or constitution or officially granted as part of a United Nations plebiscite. The analysis looks only at when women gained the right to vote in national elections, not in regional or local elections. In some cases, data about when these measures were passed is incomplete, contradicted in other publications or difficult to find, so this analysis is as complete and accurate as possible within our research limitations.

Saudi Arabia and Brunei do not hold national elections, and Hong Kong and Macau do not participate in China’s elections. In all four of these jurisdictions, women are able to vote in local elections.

The 198 countries and self-administering territories covered by this analysis are home to more than 99.5% of the world’s population. They include 192 of the 193 member states of the United Nations (data for North Korea is not included), plus six self-administering territories: Kosovo, Hong Kong, Macau, the Palestinian territories, Taiwan and Western Sahara. Reporting on these territories does not imply any position on what their international political status should be, only recognition that the de facto situations in these territories require separate analysis.

New Zealand enfranchised its female citizens in 1893, making it the first nation or territory to formally allow women to vote in national elections. At least 19 other countries also did so prior to the U.S. passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, according to our analysis. These countries are spread across Europe and Asia, and about half first gave women this right while under Russian or Soviet control or shortly after independence from Russia. Russia itself extended the vote to women after demonstrations in 1917.

In at least eight additional countries, some women – but not all – gained equal voting rights in or before 1920.

More than half of the countries and territories we analyzed (129 out of 198) granted women the right to vote between 1893 and 1960. This includes all but six European nations. Some of the European nations that allowed universal suffrage after 1960 include Switzerland (1971), Portugal (1976) and Liechtenstein (1984).  

In other world regions, women secured the right to vote in national elections only after major cultural or governmental shifts. For example, 80% of the countries in Africa we analyzed granted citizens universal suffrage between 1950 and 1975 – a period of sweeping European decolonization for the continent (as well for parts of Asia and Latin America). Many newly independent nations adopted universal suffrage along with new governments and constitutions.

Bhutan, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are the most recent countries or territories to allow women to participate in national elections, although the picture is complicated. Bhutan and the UAE only established national elections recently. Bhutan shifted from a monarchy to a parliamentary democracy in 2007. The UAE allowed a small number of male and female citizens to vote in the country’s first national elections in 2006. In Kuwait, the country’s Parliament amended an election law in 2005; the change guaranteed women the right to vote and run for office.

In Saudi Arabia, women were enfranchised in local elections in 2015; the country does not hold national elections. South Sudan was established in 2011. It is not included among the most recent countries to give women the right to vote because women had this right starting in 1964, when the area was part of Sudan.

At least 19 nations – including the U.S. – initially restricted the right to vote for women of certain backgrounds based on demographic factors such as race, age, education level or marital status. Sometimes, decades passed before all citizens were enfranchised. In the U.S., for example, more than four decades passed between the ratification of the 19th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which took aim at discriminatory state and local restrictions intended to prevent Black Americans from voting.

Restrictions like these weren’t unique to the U.S. In Canada, for example, legislation in 1918 expanded suffrage to women , but it excluded Canadians from Asian Canadian and Indigenous backgrounds. Asian Canadians were not fully enfranchised until the 1940s, and Indigenous people could not vote until 1960.

In Australia, Indigenous women were not enfranchised until 1962 , six decades after non-Indigenous women were able to vote. In South Africa, more than 60 years passed between when White women won voting rights in 1930 and when Black women won them in 1993, following the end of apartheid.

When India first expanded voting rights to women in 1935, only those who were married to a male voter, or possessed specific literacy qualifications, could vote. Universal suffrage followed in 1950.

Some countries also initially set a higher minimum age for women voters than for their male counterparts. In 1915, for example, Icelandic women over age 40 gained the right to vote . Five years later, the voting age for women was lowered to 25, in line with the requirement for men.

Legal and cultural restrictions limited women’s voter participation in some countries and territories even after enfranchisement. Ecuador, for instance, became the first Latin American country to grant women voting rights in 1929, but it only extended the franchise to literate Ecuadorian women , and voting was not mandatory for women as it was for men. A new constitution in 1967 made voting mandatory for literate women, and it wasn’t until 1979 that the literacy requirement was dropped completely. Several other countries, such as Hungary and Guatemala, also imposed literacy requirements on women voters that were lifted later.

More recently, Samoa’s government system allowed only those with chiefly titles , known as matai, to vote in parliamentary elections, effectively excluding women from the vote. The island nation adopted universal suffrage in 1990.

In some places, women were able to vote in local elections before they were enfranchised at the national level – or vice versa. In Switzerland, for example, women secured the right to vote in national elections in 1971 but had been able to vote locally in some cantons, or states, since 1959. But in another canton, Appenzell Innerrhoden, women were only given the right to vote in local elections after a 1990 federal court ruling .

Few countries and territories have rescinded women’s voting rights after initially granting them, but there are some notable exceptions. Afghanistan, for instance, was an early adopter of women’s suffrage after winning independence from Britain in 1919. Government shifts and instability over the next almost 100 years resulted in women losing and formally regaining the right to participate in elections several times. Women have the right to vote in Afghanistan today, but there are still barriers in place that limit their participation.

In many countries, including the U.S., women often turn out to vote at higher rates than men.  American women have turned out to vote at slightly higher rates than men in every U.S. presidential election since 1984, according to a Pew Research Center analysis in August . The same pattern appears in other countries, too. A 2016 study of voting patterns in 58 countries by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that women’s voter turnout was higher than men’s in 21 countries.

• Discrimination & Prejudice
• Gender & Politics
• Gender Equality & Discrimination
• World Elections

Katherine Schaeffer is a research analyst at Pew Research Center .

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• Published: 13 August 2020

An intimate dialog between race and gender at Women’s Suffrage Centennial

• Mimi Yang 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  7 , Article number:  65 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Women’s Suffrage Centennial has arrived in a culturally divisive time in the United States as well as in a high-stakes presidential election year. All this is accompanied with the emergence of Black Lives Matter movement on a global-scale in the wake of the African American man George Floyd’s death under the knees of white police officers. In an “I cannot breathe” America at a new cultural awakening moment, is the Centennial a divider or unifier for American women in 2020? This article aims to answer the question by revisiting the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution and iconic figures like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, and Mary Church Terrell. In an interdisciplinary approach anchored in both historical and cultural studies, the article scrutinizes the split between the two visceral elements pertinent to cultural identity—gender and race—in Women’s Suffrage Movement, draws a pattern of their intersection, and maps out a “double consciousness” (to borrow W.E.B. DuBois’ term). The article argues that the women’s suffrage movement was indeed a gigantic step towards the American ideal of gender equality but it fell short of racial equality. There is a mixed legacy to embrace and to reevaluate at the same time. Therefore, Women’s Suffrage Centennial should not and cannot be a single-issue gender celebration, nor a one-size-fits-all symphony, but a landmark occasion for an intimate and nuanced dialog between gender and race. The article suggests that the Centennial should not only celebrate white American suffragists, but should be an opportunity to make a historic step to cross the color line that has cutoff African American women, as well as women of color from other races, ethnicities, and heritages from the power center.

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Introduction.

The right to vote defines constitutional citizenship. A century ago, the long-and-hard-fought victory of women’s right to vote culminated with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on August 18, 1920, thus completing a full circle of citizenship for woman. She could now vote like her (white) male counterparts as an equal and full citizen. On the surface, this is an indisputable narrative, and in fact, has found its way into textbooks and seeped through the nation’s imagination for a century. However, if the constitutional right to vote is a basic definition of a citizen, women of color were still not able to exercise their full citizenship in 1920 but until 45 years later in the era of the Civil Rights Movement, with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. As one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil right legislation, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 addressed manmade obstacles that had prevented African Americans and women of color in general from participating in nation’s political life. The 1965 Act eventually removed literacy tests, poll taxes, and requirement of property ownership among other “tactically” designed obstacles at state level, which had effectively stripped away African Americans and other minority individuals’ rightful right to vote. Granted in the 15th Amendment in 1870, voting rights of a citizen of color had not got exercised until 1965. History seems to have given birth to two Americas—the white one at the center, entitled of a “standard” narrative; the non-white one at the periphery, “unfit” to be counted on equal terms. Then, whose centennial of the women’s suffrage movement is this in 2020? Which America is relevant to the landmark event?

Elizabeth J. Clapp summarizes the characteristics of anniversaries of the women’ suffrage movement:

Traditionally, historians viewed the suffrage struggle as part of the history of democracy in the United States, an effort to widen the franchise to all Americans. They wrote organizational histories of the women’s rights movement, centering on the campaign for the vote, and biographers included suffragists among their projects. These pioneering histories paid attention to exceptional women who operated in the male world. They characterized them as white, middle class, and mostly living on the East Coast, which…reflected little of the diversity and regional variation… ( 2007 , p. 238).

It has indeed been a long-standing tradition and a well-accepted standard to celebrate women’s suffrage based on a single-issue of gender, with a group of iconic suffragists—white, middle class, and from the East Coast. The tradition has institutionalized a widespread cultural perception that the women’s suffrage movement is white or WASP (White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant); a “standard” celebration as such has “reflected little the diversity and regional variation”. So observed Clapp more than a decade ago. In 2020, however, a one-size-fits-all “white” celebration proves to be evidently inadequate, given the twenty-first century demographics, distinctively transformed as opposed to the one a century ago. The centennial of women’s suffrage movement presents a much needed platform to examine these transformations and their impact on the way in which we frame and celebrate each anniversary and now the centennial.

In reviewing Ellen Carol DuBois’ 2020 book Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote , Donna Seaman states, “The story of suffrage in the United States is dramatic, infuriating, paradoxical, and saturated with sexism and racism” (Seaman, 2020 , p. 18). It is not a black or white story but a gray one in different shades at different times. DuBois’ book explores in depth the links of the woman suffrage movement to the abolition of slavery and the complex make-up of “foremothers” of the suffrage movement Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth. DuBois points out, “The women suffrage movement had incredible range. It was sustained and transformed through massive political, social and economic changes in American life and carried forward at least by three generations of American women” (DuBois, 2020 , p. 2). The meaning of the suffrage for American women has thus never been set in stone; it morphs and alters as “hopes and fears for American democracy rise and fall” (p. 1). From the mid-nineteenth century to the Civil War, the Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, the Civil Rights Movement, the threshold of the global age, the post-colonial/post-industrial time, and the digital/informational universe, what means to be an American woman changes, evolves, and transforms. The word “woman” no longer signifies a white archetypal female who represents all female individuals. Because of demographic changes, sociopolitical transformations, and economic reconfigurations, women’s suffrage victory has never unfolded as a straightforward line, but we are taught to grasp it as a single-issue binary of women-defeating-men or feminism-defeating-sexism. Far from being “neat” and “fit” with our mental frames, women suffrage was a victory of feminism tainted by racism, of a gender-equality accomplishment that rejected racial equality.

Presently, we live in a racially susceptible, culturally divisive, and politically contentious time. 2020 not only marks Women’s Suffrage Centennial but also the year of a high-stakes presidential election, in the thick of an unprecedented Black-Lives-Matter movement. Gender and race are lined up to configure the current sociopolitical landscape; competing voices collide in hatred, bigotry and at times, in violence. Then the question is, are we equipped and ready for a race/gender dialog in the face of disconnect, distrust, and diatribe in 2020?

The answer is, not quite and not yet.

This article digs into historic and cultural depth for a root-cause examination of “why not yet” in 2020. As an interdisciplinary article, its narratives, analysis, arguments, and conclusions in the following sections are anchored in historical studies but for cultural studies engagement and outcome. Historicity, with facts and evidences, lays a tangible foundation for the weaving of cultural narratives and the extrapolating of cultural patterns. Footnote 1 An intimate dialog between gender and race occurs when we recognize familiar fear and bigotry from the past, and trace out similar divisive patterns in the current historical moment and the present sociopolitical landscape. Thus, as methodology, the article engages in research-based interpretations and analysis of context and text. Historicity delineates historical and sociopolitical contexts that have produced iconic figures, landmark events, and influential writings/texts. Conversely, documentations and written works left behind by those who made history provide textual evidence of the contexts that they lived, created, and shaped. In a symbiotic interplay, contexts and texts mirror one another to configure a cultural history that speaks to us today. At the conjuncture of history and culture and society, an intimate dialog between gender and race celebrates the centennial of women’s suffrage and dissects the racial injustice of the present day, as evidenced by George Floyd’s tragic death in May 2020. These events shape and configure American culture for the years to come.

Part 1—the missing link between gender and race in 2020: the binary and the color line

In the present time of political divisiveness and racial injustice, the link between gender and race is missing, let alone the dialog. In fact, it was severed a century ago by the collision between the power center and its periphery, the standard and the diverse, in American culture. Both sides were tripped over the impassable and perennial “color line”, to use W.E.B. DuBois’ term, which divides the nation in two since its inception. As a building block of American culture, the women’s suffrage movement was a gigantic sociopolitical and cultural step for women moving from the gender periphery to the patriarchal power center. However, this gigantic step is ironically not immune to forming an intersectional center/periphery binary within the women’s suffrage movement, with white women at the power center and African-American, as well as all other women of color at the periphery.

In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the Seneca Falls Convention to launch the movement for women’s rights in the United States. Subsequently, women around the country protested, picketed, and were imprisoned to secure their constitutional right to vote. That was a historic moment when women took on a patriarchal power structure that had been in place against them in the United States. While all men are born equal in this great country, American women of all races have had to fight for the right to vote in order to be a full citizen and an equal human being. The patriarchal oppression takes countless forms across cultures and for millennia along human history. The basic and universal form is however the binary and gender hierarchy of male/female. It takes courage and ingenuity to write history with a female hand. American women did precisely that in 1848 and set the nation on the path to gender equality. After 72 years, on June 4, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed by the Congress and granted women the right to vote for the first time in the U.S. history. Many trailblazers of the movement did not live to see the landmark fruit of their enduring struggle and prolonged fight. “Only two women who participated in the Seneca Falls convention were still alive when the Nineteenth Amendment went into effect” (Mintz, 2007 , p. 47). At the centennial, nationwide, museums, libraries, schools, and institutions celebrate the passing of the 19th Amendment with forums, exhibitions, seminars, lectures, and parties. Needless to say, this is the occasion of national gender celebration that moves American women in unison to honor the suffragists’ legacy. Everyone is expected to remember or learn what textbook teaches. There is a “standard” and “centralized” version of what happened a century ago and who were the protagonists. Individuals across political spectrums, genders, races, and age groups are brought together to admire the courageous, visionary, and resilient suffragists. The occasion is largely treated as a single-issue victory of gender equality and as a binary engagement of how feminism defeated sexism.

The long-held “mainstream” and “standard” celebration implies a one-size-fits-all assumption. WASP women are assumed to represent all women across races and heritages, embody the gender of the American female, and speak for all women in one voice of gender equality. The WASP uniformity and universality has been established by dismissing diversity and racial inequality within the realm of gender. Not all women were created equal in the U.S. history; the struggle for racial equality is encapsulated and often eclipsed in the struggle of gender equality. Keeping women of color in the periphery, in a support role or in irrelevance to white women’s suffrage, or simply discarding their existence are some of the mechanisms of the racial divide. It is not surprising that there is a canon that regards the WASP women as unquestionably perfect and flawless heroes, leaders, and saviors for all American women. This is the standard narrative rarely questioned and reevaluated in the suffrage history. However, after a century’s immigration and demographic shifting, in 2020, the terms “women” or “American women” expand to previously uncharted territories, while revolving around two reminiscent forces at play to define these terms: the one at the center that universalizes the terms in a vertical direction, and the one at the periphery that diversifies the term in a horizontal direction.

First, let us focus on the universalizing and vertical force. Upon the suffrage centennial, the term “American women” is still largely used in reference to the WASP women as in history. We have rarely pondered its cultural underpinnings. It is a widely accepted or acquiesced in cultural imagination that WASP women are the face and voice of all American women across races and heritages, of the women’s suffrage movement and of the centennial. Statues and monuments of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Amelia Mott and Lucy Stone grace national parks, cities and historical sites, institutionalizing the narrative that the women suffrage is “white”. Sojourner Truth was later included in one of the representations as a response to the criticism of exclusion of black suffragists. The universalizing force has much to do with the cultural “blueprint” that the WASPs set up at the birth of our nation. The “blueprint” has never been altered, in spite of the challenges of new cultural DNA pooled from the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement in particular. The men and women, programed in the initial WASP cultural design, inherit these cultural genes from generation to generation:

The central elements of that culture [American] can be defined in a variety of ways but include the Christian religion, Protestant values and moralism, a work ethic, the English language, British traditions of law, justice, and the limits of government power, and a legacy of European art, literature, philosophy and music (Huntington, 2004 , p. 40).

From a long Anglo-Saxon dominated culture and tradition in the United States, these element have been held as essential and fundamental; they are the “American Creed”. WASP women had been victimized by WASP men for centuries; WASP women stood up in the women’s suffrage movement and became a beacon for all oppressed women around the world to look up to. Nonetheless, to what extent do the WASP women share or reject Huntington’s monocutluralist view? Not clear. What is clear is that Huntington’s view has the WASPs’ cultural DNA as the standard, the norm, and the authority to shape and define American culture. In a paradoxical way, the WASP culture DNA left its undeletable print, through the suffragists themselves, in the women’s suffrage movement. Quite a few suffragist leaders themselves were abolitionist but turned to be racially vitriolic in fighting for (white) women’s rights. This paradox has helped with the WASP exclusive ownership of women’s suffrage history, as well as women’s fight for gender equality in general. The sense of exclusivity rejects groups of non-WASP heritages and divides citizens/women into the mainstream and the marginalized. Thus, pivoted on the WASP blueprint, within women rights movement, a culture wall is erected by the WASP elites for exclusion and a power binary of the center/the periphery—WASP women/African American women—is created.

Second, let us shift our focus to the diversifying and horizontal force. After a century of continuous, massive, and non-Anglo/Nordic immigration, which unavoidably sparked social and culture transformations, the year 2020 witnesses a “browner” and “flatter” America. As of the present day, there has been a significant increase of women of color; they now represent roughly 40% of U.S. women. Footnote 2 When American women come together on the occasion of the Suffrage Centennial, the togetherness is far from being the sameness, despite shared interest for gender equality. Throughout suffrage history, women of color were never much of a presence at best and they were discriminated and prevented from exercising their voting rights at worst. Then, what is Women’s Suffrage Centennial to a woman of color? Footnote 3 In the “browner” and “flatter” America of the present day, not only do white women continue their fight for gender equality in their professional and personal lives, but also a much broadened range of marginalized entities, defined by gender, as well as race, find themselves in day-to-day struggle for inclusion, equality, citizenship, and humanity. These include women and men of color, immigrants, LGBTQ Footnote 4 citizens, individuals from a non-Christian faith, and members of special needs. An unprecedentedly diverse and all-encompassing population, just like white women a century ago, is fighting to cross the power binary of the center/the periphery separated by the color line. However, their binary is different from the one that their WASP sisters faced; it is a double binary with a double center and a double periphery—racial and gender. A double divide prevents women of color from being a full citizen, as well as a full woman as their rights are alienable on both fronts. If the celebration of the centennial highlights white women’s leadership, contribution and achievements in universal terms, defined by vertical WASP values, then, many contemporary American women of color would certainly find themselves as “unfit” with the narrative of women suffrage; they would remain left out the nation’s history.

The confrontation of the universalizing force from the center and the diversifying force from the periphery not only drives the women suffrage centennial to the crossroads of gender and race, but also reveals a deeper split between the two in our present social milieu. A woman of color in 2020 is no longer in the image of a freedom-deprived slave working in a cotton field in the antebellum South. She can well be a highly-educated individual, a lawyer, an executive, an artist, or a medical doctor. By the Constitution, as white women, a woman of color has equal and “unalienable rights” of education, citizenship, and the pursuit of happiness. She may be from a long line of ancestors who witnessed the inception of this nation or may be a first or second generation immigrant. Either falls into at least one of these categories: Native-African-Asian-Hispanic-Muslim-LGBTQ Americans. These “non-white” and non-WASP identities, after 100 years of the struggle for gender equality, nonetheless, still have not yet crossed “the color line” to be accepted as inherently American. When an African-American woman speaks up, she would invite the perception of “an angry woman”. When a Hispanic-American woman is in charge, how “American” she is to deserve that position would be an unuttered question. When an Asian-American woman acts with self-confidence, she would be labeled as a “banana”—yellow outside and white inside. The notion that being a white is American or more American than a person of color is still prevalent.

Racism and color line in 2020 are not as raw and crude as the ones that characterized the society a century ago. They are well absorbed into institutional systems and continue to dehumanize people of color in the name of law, conventions, patriotism, and American values. Deep in the fabric of the society and in the core of the culture, the center continues to exercise its dominance; the wounds of the periphery reopen and continue to bleed, internally or externally, in the presence of an external trigger. As the latest in a long line of Black victims of systemic racism, George Floyd’s death has sparked racial hemorrhage not only in the US but globally. In a more subtle and covert fashion, the institutional racism has left its undeletable stain not only on women’s suffrage movement but on its anniversary celebrations. “Standard” women’s suffrage anniversaries have always been the celebration of iconic figures like Stanton, Mott, Anthony, and Stone, among others. Indeed, the vision, leadership, spirit, and accomplishment of these remarkable WASP women have transformed our society and reshaped American culture. In many significant ways in the struggle for gender equality, American women across races, ethnicities, religions and heritages are indebted to the history that the WASP women have made. Nonetheless, all this glory does not alter a racialized past and does not heal the internal wounds sustained over a century. The togetherness of American women no longer means gender homogeneity but gender diversity. That not all women are created equal still remains a reality in 2020. Not only the nation but also American feminism is still divided by the color line. The question “what is Women’s Suffrage Centennial to a ‘browner’ and ‘flatter’ America” confronts the “center” and the “standard”, reevaluates the “periphery” and the diverse, and redefines the term of “American women”. A historical examination how racial equality interacts with gender equality becomes indispensable in recasting the centennial celebrations.

Part 2—a blocked dialog between gender and race in history

A dialog takes at least two parties to exchange information and ideas, debate differences or teach/learn from one another in an interactive and generative back-and-forth process. In women’s suffrage, gender and race intersected as the two dialogic parties; instead of moving forward, they blocked each other, thus unsettling the dialogic binary that impacted cultural configuration. Over a century since women’s suffrage, various ideologies on race and gender have been dislodged. In a multicultural and multiracial society, the alignment or the derailment of an ideology never follows a straight line but winding and intertwining. There are always minefields and contingent contexts to be considered and cautioned, so much so that we often have to perform a still-walk, fossilized by fear, distrust, bigotry, and sometimes hate and violence. Intriguingly, as the two building blocks of American culture, gender and race reject or recognize one another other as two competitors in given political circumstances. Often, they are the elephant in the room, never in a comfortable position to acknowledge and articulate each other’s nature, significance, and above all, potential connections between them. They would rather avoid issues and themes associated with the other. Not unlike rivalry twins, race and gender, from the same parentage, compete for social attention, cultural representation, and legal voices at any given moment. While a landmark stride has been made towards equality and social justice, the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the Civil Rights Movement have never been culturally congruent and ideologically harmonious. As much as the ideological tracks associated with gender and race intend or are orchestrated to steer clear from one another, their trajectories in pursuing social justice become paralleled in the same direction sometimes and intersected in collision other times.

Then, what exactly has severed the link between gender and race and blocked the dialog? The question puts us in a soul-search process with historical reflections and self-examination. To search for the root cause, let us be galvanized by the ratifications of 14 th and the 15th Amendments to the Constitution that paralleled the trajectory of the women’s suffrage movement. The twists and turns of the movement split, as well as tangled gender and race. Let the long overdue dialog start from where the split occurred.

The Civil War (1861–65) brought two economic systems—the agrarian/plantation in the South and the industrial/urbanization in the North—into a life-and-death confrontation. Slavery institutions were not only the foundation of the southern economy but also a visible-to-the-naked-eye divide of two conflictive mindsets: freedom/equality to all human beings vs. freedom/equality to certain groups. Whether in the North or in the South, the two mindsets waged a cultural war because of the Civil War. The North won the war in the battlefield but left historic wounds unhealed, continuing to bleed for a long time after the war. The Reconstruction era (1865–1877), to the best definition of the word “reconstruction”, saw unprecedented efforts to heal racial wounds inflicted upon African American citizens and bridge cultural gaps created by economic disparity and social inequality. A number of racially egalitarian policies and laws put in place. The 14th and the 15th Amendments stood out as they tackle the issues central to Reconstruction head-on: restoring slaves’ fundamental human dignity, protecting their citizens’ rights, advancing racial equality, and pursuing economic justice in a bitterly heterogeneous society. These are monumental constitutional transformations, designed to evoke and embody the American ideal of freedom and equality. However, as constitutional laws, understandably, these governing documents did not sink into cultural and psychological depth as to provide an effective platform for a national dialog between gender and race. Unfortunately, the link between the two major building blocks of American culture is thus missed.

Let us examine the split between race and gender in the 14th Amendment. It states in Section 1:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Footnote 5

The 14th amendment was ratified in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War on July 9, 1868; it was a direct echo of the gunfire in the battlefield for the emancipation of slavery in this land. After almost a century, the language of “all persons” resonates unmistakably with “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, signed in 1776 at Pennsylvania State House. The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside”. Footnote 6 Recently freed former slaves were the main intended audience and included in “all persons”. In addition, the Amendment oversees and forbids states from denying any person’s “life, liberty or property, without due process of law” or to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”. Footnote 7 Once again, “life and liberty” coincides with “the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. Laudably, the Amendment granted the civil rights to African Americans and recognized them as equal citizens in the Constitution. In spite of the local states’ political maneuvering to defer African Americans’ constitutional rights, the 14th Amendment stands as the legal harbinger that foreshadowed the Civil Rights Movement a century later. According to legal experts, the Amendment is “the most commonly used—and frequently litigated—phrase in the amendment is ‘equal protection of the law’, which figures prominently in a wide variety of landmark cases”. Footnote 8 This is one of the most cited Amendment to enforce civil rights associated with race, gender, reproductive rights, affirmative actions. Not only African-Americans but all marginalized and dehumanized individuals have a chance to defend themselves thanks to the law of equal protection in the 14th Amendment. It sends a clear and loud message of racial equality.

While Section 1 in the 14th Amendment advocates and experiments interracial democracy by acknowledging African American rights with the clause “all persons born or naturalized in the United States”, it does not mention gender inclusion and equality. Are women not part of “all persons?” Section 2 of the Amendment, by particularly securing the male political representation and male citizens’ voting right, explicitly excludes women:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, […] But when the right to vote at any election […] is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, […] the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state. Footnote 9

It limits the right to vote to “the male inhabitants of such State, being 21 years of age, and citizens of the United States”. “Male inhabitants” implies the inclusion of African-American males during the period of national healing. Semantically, the document places African American men above (white) women in the suffrage movement. If black men are above black women, it would probably be just “fine” and “logic”. Now they are perceived above white women; white women were the universal representation of the gender at that time. Section 1 and Section 2 in the 14th Amendment together set the stage where the racial equality collides with gender equality. As a result, women suffrage becomes contentious between race and gender. Garth Pauley quoted the argument of the Stanton-Anthony wing in the suffrage movement:

…the cause of human freedom would be set back by an amendment that made it easier for the black man to vote while, by inserting the word male in the Constitution for the first time, it made it harder than before for women to get the ballot (cited in Pauley, 2000 , p. 386). Footnote 10

“The 14th Amendment strained the relationship between White women and Blacks” (Pauley, 2000 , p. 386). The male-vs.-female gender binary finds itself intersected with the racial binary of black-vs.-white. When African-American women stood in total absence, there was not such a gender equation as white women vs. black women, but a “chiasm” of white women vs. black men, in which two binaries on two different tracks crisscrossed: the gender and the race. This requires a gender/race joint approach to understanding both white female suffragists as well as black male suffragists, as they are situated in a chiasm crossing two different categories.

It is worth noting the invisibility of African-American women during the second half of the nineteenth century. Their absence was largely due to the double hurdle—gender and race—that they always had to encounter in order to enter into an equation and be counted in. They cross both gender and race categories, but neither gender nor race alone can represent a full identity of African-American women or any women of color for that matter. Only when gender and race are in dialog and intersect, can they be defined as a full citizen and a full woman. A simple one-on-one binary in gender or in race reduces their representational complexity and subjugates them to either sexism or racism. Therefore, they were/are the most vulnerable group in identity dismissal, when the dialog between gender and race is blocked. At the intersection of race and gender, the 14th Amendment, in pursuit of racial equality, split race from gender and missed the link between the two.

The split between gender and race become more evident when the 15th Amendment was ratified on February 3, 1870. 2020 marks its 150th anniversary, coinciding with women’s suffrage centennial. The text of the 15th Amendment reads: Footnote 11

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

More explicit than ever, the Amendment stresses an inclusive voting right that includes African-Americans, as well as all citizens of color in broad stroke. However, like the 14th, the 15th Amendment has no mention and no acknowledgement of women, which was perceived by the suffragists as dismissive and discriminatory. Subsequently, the 15th Amendment created a rock-paper-scissors situation that compelled suffragists to choose a position between gender or race, so that they could work towards their political conviction and personal priority, as fit and feasible. This sowed the seeds for the division of the women’s suffrage movement and of the polarization between gender and race in American culture. Some white citizens and politicians who made peace with their conscience and supported black suffrage. “This is the negro’s hour” was a rallying cry of the period and “became the universal response to the women’s appeal”. Footnote 12 Anthony and Stanton were deeply embittered by the “Negro’s hour”; as they strongly believed that a white educated woman was superior, far more qualified to vote than an African American man. As staunch fighters for women’s rights, they refused to support the amendment and founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). On the other hand, Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell, who were more inclined to universal suffrage, supported the amendment and founded the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The emergence of the two suffrage organizations symbolically and ideologically dichotomized race and gender.

The split between the NWSA and the AWSA brought to light the underlying divide—the color line—in the nation’s psyche: (white) women’s suffrage vs. Black (men’s) suffrage. Which one is the priority of emancipation, gender or race? The omission of gender in the 15th Amendment helped already widespread sexism; this outraged white female suffragist leaders. To fight back sexism, “instead of arguing for suffrage in terms of equal rights” (Mintz, 2007 , p. 47), the representatives of the NWSA, and, later, of the National American Women Suffrage Association, resorted to the ugly racism and xenophobia. By giving vote to (white) women, the leaders of these associations argued that “white, native born voters would” be guaranteed and “outnumbered immigrant and non-white voters” (Mintz, 2007 , p. 47). On a chiasm that crosses gender and race, neither sexism nor racism/xenophobia can carry out any dialog but harbor bigotry and mutual exclusion, thus blocking the dialog between gender and race.

The notion that the 15th Amendment was regarded to put African Americans’ voting rights before women’s indicated nineteenth-century men’s, black or white, representational power. White men represented all white individuals; in the same way, black men represented the entire black community. Conversely, white women were omitted as non-entities in the same way that black women were erased. These were shared sexist “syndromes” across black and white races. Prior to the 14th and the 15th Amendments, in spite of deeply rooted sexism and racism, black men and white women had made some strategic alliance to win the vote. Garth Pauley made a point of an unprincipled but convenient relation between white female suffragists and black men with a quote from black feminist bell hooks: Footnote 13

Prior to white male support of suffrage for black men, white women activists had believed it would further their cause o ally themselves with black political activists, but when it seemed that black men might get the vote while they remained disfranchised, political solidarity with black people was forgotten and they urged white men to allow racial solidarity to overshadow their plans to support black male suffrage. (Hooks, 1984 , p. 3, cited in Pauley, 2000 , p. 385)

The 14th and 15th Amendments made it “clear that the franchise would be granted only to African American men, many white suffragists spoke out against the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments” (Pauley, 2000 , p. 385). At this intersection, a one-to-one binary, whether white-vs.-black or men-vs.-women, does not hold; it blurs racial divide and deconstructs gender “logic”. If a white female suffragist holds onto racial solidarity, how would she combat her marginalized position by white males who had been the authority, the norm, and the standard to dehumanize her? If she embraces gender solidarity, how would she accept a black woman as her equal? Should she side with white men or black women to win her fight for the vote?

The one-to-one binary becomes destabilized and fluid in the intersection; it is no longer one-to-one but one-to-multiple or multiple-to-one or multiple-to-multiple. The fluidity of the multiplicity could have opened a purposeful dialog, but it did not happen. Prioritizing race over gender by the two Amendments fragments the coalition between white women and black men. Anthony and Stanton took a stand. In 1868, they met with members of American Equal Rights Association (AERA), including the first mayor of Boston Wendell Philips. When Philips expressed his support for black suffrage and explained why he believed the two Amendments offered what could prove to be the only chance for African-Americans, “Anthony objected vehemently” (Pauley, 2000 , p. 386). She raised up her right arm and proclaimed: “Look at this, all of you. And hear me swear that I will cutoff this right arm of mine before I will ever work for or demand the ballot for the negro and not the woman”. Footnote 14 Clearly, in Anthony’s vocabulary, “women” means white women only, and “the negro” signifies black men only. Thus, her way of splitting gender and race straightforwardly hierarchizes gender above the race. Anthony’s statement at the 1869 AERA convention vividly reflects the racism of her time, to which she was certainly not immune:

The old anti-slavery school say women must stand back and wait until the negroes shall be recognized. But we say, if you will not give the whole loaf of suffrage to the entire people give it to the most intelligent first. If intelligence, justice, and morality are to have precedence in the Government, let the question of woman be brought up first and that of the negro last. Footnote 15

Evidently, the universal noun “women” is reduced only to mean white women in Anthony and her contemporaries, who were more intelligent, judicious and moral than “negroes”. In the late nineteenth century U.S., white race was widely considered superior to any other races, and therefore, (white) “women” are naturally superior to the “negroes”. The fight for the voting right turned out to be a competition between gender and race. The NWSA not only turned away from Black suffrage, but also regarded African-Americans taking away the chance for white women to win their vote. Although many believed that both women suffrage and black suffrage were just and necessary, the Constitution would only allow one social transformation at a time. Groups that fall into both race and gender categories had no amendments nor social frames to define them and protect their rights. Women of color who cross gender and race boundaries would struggle to figure out if they should fight for women’s voting rights or racial equality? African-American women and women of color in general have been historically boxed into race or gender, but never both. The simple binary boxing mirrors the sociological, cultural, and political “split” of gender and race, institutionalized by the 14th and the 15th Amendments. At the end of the Reconstruction Era, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the reversal wave of interracial democracy wiped out the already faintly visible trace of African American women and women of color altogether from history. In the meantime, the (white) women’s suffrage movement was getting up steam and earning support nationwide. The 19th Amendment, ratified on August 18, 1920, finally granted American women the right to vote, ending almost a century of protest since 1848’s Seneca Falls Convention. The 19th Amendment, effective immediately in the same year as its ratification, is a landmark of the historic victory for (white) women. It defeated voting sexism and shook the U.S. culture at its core, but the core was not shaken hard enough to erase the color line and but continued to keep it intact.

The 14th and 15th Amendments heralded interracial democracy, granted citizens of color the defining and all-important right to vote, and assured them the constitutional protection. As much as the two documents intended to build racial equality, their scope and depth were severely limited as they were not designed to address the visceral color divide in the nation’s psyche. They left room for a retroactive surge of white supremacy in the late nineteenth century to undo the progressive ideal to heal and integrate the nation in the aftermath of the Civil War. Ironically, what blocked the dialog between gender and race is the very effort by the two Amendments to cross the color line, but the effort was limited to a simple racial binary, dismissing a pluralistic chiasm across both race and gender. Further, the cultural meaning of women or gender in the nineteenth century was white-centric. Women of color found themselves in a no-man’s land, regarded as irrelevant to the landmark social transformation, whereas they should have been the catalyst of the dialog between gender and race.

Part 3—at the intersection: Frederick Douglass’ dialog between gender and race

After having identified what blocked the dialog between gender and race, then, how should one engage in the dialog? Four million slaves were freed with the Union victory in the Civil War in 1865. Despite the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, the social and legal status of slaves stayed unchanged in day-to-day life and the slavery institution remained in full operation. Integrating former slaves into the nation’s political and cultural life and bringing the former rebel Southern states back with the Union sparked the need for an urgent sociopolitical and cultural dialog, at a national level, with former slaves, as well as with former slave owners.

As indicated previously, the Reconstruction era (1865–1877) generated a set of new laws and policies towards national healing and interracial equality. The 14th and the 15th Amendments paved the way for former slaves to participate in southern political life, as legal and equal citizens. For the first time the nation experimented an effort at federal level to attain a “black-and-white” interracial democracy. In that particular historic moment, the color line was eclipsed by the desire to reconstruct and reunify; the white world intersected with the black one, not as master-slave but as constitutional equals. However, the intersection was highly unstable and fragile to be pushed around when the KKK and the force of white supremacy reversed the course that the 14th and 15th Amendments were headed to. In less than a decade since the passage of the 15th Amendment, the color line violently cut back to dichotomize the white and the black. Racism continued to take root in both South and North. Neither the Civil War nor the Reconstruction was able to stitch the wound that the color line had cut. Under these complex and fluid circumstances, it was not surprising that Stanton and Anthony responded to the implied sexism in the 15th Amendment with racist outrage. Their prioritizing white women over black men in women’s suffrage movement not only alienated African Americans but also reflected the volatile race relations in the post-Civil War era. In the midst of the racism vented by the white suffragists that he admired, Frederick Douglass (1818–1891) took a different position; in doing so, he personified a dialog rather a diatribe at the intersection between race and gender.

From a mixed racial heritage, Frederick Douglass was an intercultural insider—a staunch supporter for women’s suffrage, as well as for black suffrage. As a former slave, an abolitionist, and editor of the Rochester North Star , he was one of the few men present, together with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, at the Seneca Falls convention in July 1848. It was a convention to champion women’s rights; the 300 women present saw it as a public declaration to fight for women’s constitutional right to vote as full U.S. citizens. Stanton drafted and presented “Declaration of Sentiments”, modeled on the Declaration of Independence; it described women’s grievances and demands. To parallel the struggles of the Founding Fathers, the “Declaration of Sentiments” summarized 11 resolutions on women’s rights, including women’s suffrage. All were resolved but women’s suffrage. Footnote 16 In a patriarchal society like the nineteenth century U.S., a woman could not own property or make financial and reproductive decisions for themselves, and had no equal divorce, education and employment opportunities. The idea for them to vote was met with ridicule and hostility. It sounded abnormal and heretic, hardly appealing to the predominantly Quake audience whose male attendees were dismissive of such an “unreasonable” demand. However, the African-American man, Douglass, was standing by Stanton’s side and defended women’s intellect, skills, and abilities to speak for herself and to stand up for herself. He described Stanton’s document as “the grand movement for attaining the civil, social, political, and religious rights of women”. Footnote 17 Stanton declares women’s rights by asserting gender equality:

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Footnote 18

Women were part of a patriarchal society, oppressed and suppressed; they were stripped of gender-equal rights and therefore they were never full citizens in a democracy. This was a problem and a bitter irony of democracy. The declaration forcefully argues that women be respected by the Constitution as full citizens of the United States and be granted the same rights and privileges granted to her male fellow citizens. Stanton’s declaration marked the beginning of the women’s rights movement in the country, laid groundwork for the suffrage movement, and galvanized American culture on an untrodden path to the passage of the 19th Amendment.

Although Douglass did not live to see the 19th Amendment in place, he deeply understood the magnitude and the impact of the women’s suffrage movement, perhaps more than any man in his time. At the Seneca Falls convention, when the resolution of women’s suffrage was just about to be defeated, Douglass asked for the floor and delivered a passionate and eloquent plea on behalf of women’s right to the elective franchise (Foner, 1976 , p. 14). His compelling words and persuasive power swayed the body into agreeing and adopting the resolution by a small margin. Stanton found an unexpected supporter in a black man.

To come to grips with Douglass’ intersection of race and gender, let’s hear his own voice in the speech “The Women’s Suffrage Movement”. given in April 1888 before the International Council of Women, in Washington D.C. In that speech, after 40 years of the Seneca Falls convention, he reflected upon his role in women’s suffrage movement, “I come to this platform with unusual diffidence”. Footnote 19 What is this “unusual” about? What enabled him to position women as men’s equals was not his “superior” male gender but his “inferior” African-American race. A mixed blood, an escaped slave, and a self-taught cultural thinker and writer, Douglass has firsthand experience of humiliation and dehumanization, and understands the existential need to be accepted and acknowledged as a dignified human being. He finds himself inside the mindsets of both the black and the white, the male and the female. Uniquely capable of relating African-American’s marginalization to the gender marginalization of white woman, he sees clearly that along the course of the suffrage movement, race and gender, two seemingly separate identifiers, have to march on paralleled tracks, together. In between the entwined steps, there has to be a shared dialog on inclusion, equality, citizenship, and humanity. From his black’s vintage point, a mutually recognizable and relatable position is possible. In other words, he identifies his racial struggle with white women’s gender struggle, both equally deprived of the right to be a full citizen and a full human being. Crossing a double boundary of race and gender, he stood up and defended white women in the same way in which he would defend himself and African-American citizens. “I say of her, as I say of the colored people, Give her fair play, and hands off’” (Douglass, 1888 ; Foner (ed) 1976 , p. 110), as such he carried on the fight on both racial and gender fronts.

Douglass’ position exemplifies an intersected dialog between gender and race. Fully aware that he belongs to a different gender and a different race, from a doubled otherness, he becomes “a women’s rights man”, to be precise, a white women’s rights man. He declares in the same speech in 1888, “this is an International Council, not of men, but of women, and woman should have all the say in it. This is her day in court” (Foner (ed) 1976 , p. 110). Douglass dismantles the gender binary of men vs. women and sided himself with women. At the same time, he also correlates the oppressed black race with the oppressed gender of the white race, thus demolishing the black-and-white racial binary. He sees a shared humanity undefinable by neither gender nor race, as it transcends beyond both. He asks men (white men) to relate to women by being quiet and listening to their voices as equals,

I believe no man, however gifted with thought and speech, can voice the wrongs and present the demands of women with the skill and effect, with the power and authority of woman herself. … Woman knows and feels her wrongs as man cannot know and feel them, and she also knows as well as he can know, what measures are needed to redress them. I grant all the claims at this point. She is her own best representative (Douglass, 1888 ; Foner (ed) 1976 , p. 108).

When Douglass claims “Her right to be and to do is as full, complete and perfect as the right of any man on earth” (Douglass, 1888; Foner, 1976 , p. 110), he touches the quintessential American ideal of true equality. To him, women’s suffrage is not about a women vs. men but a gender-equality vs. gender-inequality movement; black suffrage is not about black vs. white, but a racial equality vs. racial inequality struggle. Douglass has distilled these intersected paradigms from his own African-American and mixed racial combined experience, which had exposed him to many aspects of racial and social injustice as well as to the possibility to live in between the black and the white without having to be boxed in. His paradigm suggests mobility and fluidity, and explains his “unusual” position of race-gender crossover to support white women’s suffrage. In Douglass’ world, gender and race are not mutually exclusive but organically related. He correlates gender and race:

…it was a great thing for humane people to organize in opposition to slavery; but it was a much greater thing, in view of all the circumstances, for woman to organize herself in opposition to her exclusion from participation in government (Douglass, 1888 ; Foner (ed) 1976 , p. 112)

In contrast with Stanton and Anthony’s vitriolic racist rhetoric for the fear that black men would take away white women’s voting right, Douglass presents a relational posture and a visionary engagement. The simple binary deepens the split between gender and race and blocks the dialog; the crossover “chiasm” connects gender and race and opens the dialog. Douglass is gifted with a keen awareness of a shared framework by sexism and racism. He understands that the framework only allows the eye see the tangible and graspable reality in broad strokes and on the surface, not the intangible and nuanced inner world. The mental construct that perpetuates racism pivots on the skin color, not so much “the content of character” (in Martin Luther King’s term); the mental construct of sexism operates with a similar surface perception—the physical appearance and the biological make-up, devoid of intangible qualities. Douglass’ ability to link race and gender comes from an insider’s view of an “inferior” racial, as well as a “superior” gender background. He cautions men the difference between open evils and hidden miseries of women’s oppression:

The reason is obvious. War, intemperance and slavery are open, undisguised, palpable evils. The best feelings of human nature revolt at them. We could easily make men see the misery, the debasement, the terrible suffering caused by intemperance; we could easily make men see the desolation wrought by war and the hell-black horrors of chattel slavery; but the case was different in the movement for woman suffrage (Douglass, 1888 ; Foner (ed) 1976 , p. 112)

Women’s rights movement in the United States did not start like a Napoleonic war nor from a Satanic event. On the contrary, it emerged from domestic “loveliness” and peacefulness (Foner (ed) 1976 , p. 112), where

…everything in her condition was supposed to be lovely, just as it should be. She has no rights denied, no wrongs to redress. She herself along on the tide of life as her mother and grandmother had done before her (p. 112)

Because of veiled evil and disguised dehumanization, women’s suffering became silent, virtuous, and ideal. Many men in Douglass’ time failed to recognize the why of women’s suffrage movement. By pointing out the different nature of evil and misery, Douglass intends to create an “intersected” awareness of the intimacy between gender and race. He openly expressed his admiration for Stanton: “Mrs. Stanton, with an earnestness that I shall never forget, unfolded her view on this woman question precisely as she had in this Council” (Foner (ed) 1976 , p. 113). From a male and African-American perspective, Douglass’ intimate understanding of Stanton’s cause and mind defies any simple binary that dichotomizes:

She [Stanton] knew the ridicule, the rivalry, the criticism and the bitter aspersions which she and her co-laborers would have to meet and to endure. But she saw more clearly than most of us that the vital point to be made prominent, and the one that included all others, was the ballot, and she bravely said the word. It was not only necessary to break the silence of woman and make her voice heard, but she must have a clear, palpable and comprehensive measure set before her, one worthy of her highest ambition and her best exertions, and hence the ballot was brought to the front (p. 113).

Stanton’s suffering, humiliation, rivalry and criticism are relatable to what Douglass has experienced in his fight for racial equality; her focus and courage echoes his; her ambition to transform culture mirrors his own. Instead of being defined by gender or race, Douglass chooses something bigger than these identifiers:

When I ran away form slavery, it was for myself; when I advocated emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood up for the rights of woman, self was out of the question, and I found a little nobility in the act (p. 113).

What he stands for is a pure human and humanistic spirit devoid of colors and shapes, outside the bounds of gender and race. With a clear consciousness that he represents something much larger that his own life, Douglass is convinced that the cause that Stanton and Anthony fight for is also much larger than any individual’s life and more enduring than the historic moment. Galvanized by spirituality, Douglass’ dialog between gender and race takes place.

However, the dialog is blocked again due to race tensions. There is a bitter color line between Douglass and Stanton. Stanton prioritizes (white) women’s “wealth, education, and refinement”, and ridicules black and immigrants’ “pauperism, ignorance, and degradation” (Griffith, 1985 , p. 124), they are “’Sambo’ walk[ing] into the kingdom” of the right to vote (Kern, 2001 , p. 111). She suggests that non-WASP voters would negatively affect the political system and erode American values (Griffith, 1985 , p. 124). Therefore, she calls for “an educated suffrage” (Baker, 2005 , pp. 122), which helps justify literacy test in later years to exclude African American voters. Stanton’s racism is clearly intended to cut a bleeding wound between race and gender, so that gender (white women) can be placed over race (black men). Douglass publicly disagreed with Stanton and Anthony’s priority of “whiteness” in the name of gender equality. This leads critics to depict Doulgass as an African-American man who “naturally” weighs race over gender, thus the exact opposite of Stanton and Anthony. Such an approach to Douglass may be “neat” and “fit” in a racial dichotomy, but falls out what Douglass represents—a human spirit, not meant to be defined by black or white, gender or race. He is in dialog with both:

…[Women] is the victim of abuse, to be sure, but it cannot be pretended I think that her cause is as urgent as ours (black suffrage). …The principal is: that no Negro shall be enfranchised while woman is not. Now in considering that white men have been enfranchised always, and colored men not, the conduct of these white women, whose husbands, fathers, and brothers are voters, does not seem generous (Douglass, Foner (ed) 1975 , pp. 212–213)

What differentiates Douglass from Stanton and Anthony is the ability to go beyond a simple binary and engage crossover chiasms. At various intersections, Douglass integrates black and white, gender and race; trapped by a single one-to-one binary, Stanton and Anthony wage anti-sexist campaign with racist rhetoric. While all three shared the same cause to attain the American ideal of freedom and equality, they are separated by the color line. One side of the line is stuck with the surface differences between race and gender and regards them as mutually exclusive. The other side discerns the underlying similarities and consistencies between race and gender, and connects and intersects them organically. Stanton and Anthony’s vitriolic intolerance towards black suffrage contrasts with Douglass’ unwavering support for women’s rights and suffrage.

Fast forwarding to the suffrage centennial, no one wants to “tarnish” iconic figures like Stanton and Anthony. However, what makes them great is not their perfection but their humanity. When they broke with their abolitionist backgrounds after the Civil War to oppose the 14th and 15th Amendments, they showed fear, anger, territorial nature, prejudice, a shifting sense of white superiority, and vulnerability. They pioneered abolition movement but blocked the dialog between gender and race that Douglass intended. They were full of self-contradictions, humanly and understandably. By acknowledging Stanton and Anthony’s extraordinariness while allowing them to be human with flaws and self-contradictions, many individuals across genders and races can have a human face to relate to. By celebrating an African American man, Douglass, at the centennial, we open a new modality of race as part of gender celebration. This dialog between gender and race needs to take place in 2020.

Part 4—the legacy of the gender/race dialog: the double consciousness

Women’s Suffrage Centennial is an occasion to examine how Douglass’ intersected dialog between race and gender has evolved to become cultural consciousness. It also presents a historic moment for an in-depth look at how the double consciousness has sustained women and men of color in their survival and coexistence in a multicultural and multiracial society during and beyond the suffrage movement. When gender diversity merges with racial diversity, an individual of color finds oneself in a landscape made for a pluralistic identity and “camouflage” skills. S/he is prone to develop a set of instinctive skills to “camouflage” for self-preservation and self-protection in a terrain where his/her skin color stands out, exposed to danger. “Camouflaging” blends one in the background and is capable of multiplicity and simultaneity. Equipped with the ability to “camouflage” culturally, Douglass, while crossing his race and gender, blended himself with white female suffragists, empathized with women’s suffrage and defended it as his own cause.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the cultural camouflaging was theorized with the publication of The Souls of the Black Folk in 1903 by W.E.B. DuBois (1868–1963). Like Douglass, DuBois is also from mixed blood and heritages, leading a personal, intellectual, and cultural life in between different worlds. Throughout the book, the term “double consciousness” is recurrently coined to describe the existential nature and culture of African Americans. To be fit and accepted in the white society, they must develop two mindsets, two fields of vision, two languages, two perceptive modes, and two ways of living, that is, self-knowledge and the knowledge of being perceived. DuBois uses the metaphor of a transparent veil that allows a double perception from both sides so the viewer is viewed at the same time:

After the Egyptians and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world with yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of the others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn sunder (DuBois, [1903] 1964 , pp. 16–17).

Douglass’ intersected dialog of race and gender would have not been possible without DuBois’ “doubleness”. A black and a white at once, a feminist and an antiracist at once, he dreamed an American Dream of a just and democratic society for women and black folks. Douglass had already exemplified the double consciousness half a century ago before the term was coined by DuBois. Unlike a fixed and centralized cultural position held by racism or sexism, individuals like Douglass and DuBois leap back and forth in multiple spaces of race and gender, with mobility and malleability enabled by the double consciousness. Their cultural indeterminacy sets them on constant move and constant search for a home in the American narrative. Neither Douglass nor DuBois represents or falls into one single definition; they are self-willed and self-invented, caught between being and becoming.

When it comes to male support for women’s suffrage movement, Valethia Watkins accurately points out:

Douglass “was arguably the highest profile man of any race consistently involved in the suffrage movement, and he was unwavering in his advocacy of voting rights for women from the inception of the organized movement in the United States in 1848 until his death in 1895 (Watkins, 2016 , p. 4)

DuBois was also “a woman’s rights man” in the tradition of Frederick Douglass“ (Watkins, 2016 , p. 4). Footnote 20 Almost a mirror image of Douglass, DuBois continues the intersected dialog between race and gender with the same cultural agility and the same spirit that set him free from the “curse” of “the color line”, another term repeatedly used in his The Souls of the Blake Folk . He assimilates invisibility and vulnerability in both black people and white women and declares in Douglassian manner:

I am resolved to be ready at all times and in all places to bear witness with pen, voice, money and deed against… the wrong disenfranchisement for race or sex… (Wilson, 1970 , pp. 105–106, cited in Watkins, 2016 , p. 4)

The dialog between gender and race embodies the double consciousness and crosses the color line “through the revelation of the other world” (DuBois, 1990 , p. 8). It is not defined by our biological make-up but our mental horizon. In the dialog, the observer is observed in action. The Douglass/DuBois double consciousness sinks into not only the souls of the black folk but all citizens, men and women, of color.

Sigma Delta Theta—the only organization that black women took part in—carried the dialog of gender and race in women’s suffrage movement on a national stage in 1913’s Women’s Suffrage Parade. Suffrage (white) leader Alice Paul organized 5000 women marching along the Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. on Monday, March 3, 1913, one day before the 28th President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. At the heart of the U.S. government, the women were campaigning for the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote (ratified in 1920). The brave women did it in the face of police’s brutality; many of them were insulted, spat upon and physically injured. What made the event extraordinary was not only white women’s courage and bravery, but also black women’s participation together with their white sisters. Nonetheless, the white-and-black togetherness a la Douglass in no way was a natural come-together but a hard-fought one.

In her Washington Post article “Despite the tremendous risk, African American women marched for suffrage, too”, Michelle Bernard ( 2013 ) detailed the participation of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority:

Marching against the status quo was not easy for white women, but it was even more difficult for African American women because of the racist sentiment of the day, as well as white suffragists who did not favor suffrage for black women. Footnote 21

With a double consciousness, the African-American women had to fight for racial equality before gender equality in order to be part of the procession. The racist backlash as a reaction towards the 15th Amendment lingered on in the Women Suffrage Parade. Alice Paul did not like a mixed black-and-white women parade; she preferred an only white parade. She confided her fears to a sympathetic editor: “As far as I can see, we must have a white procession, or a Negro procession, or no procession at all”. Footnote 22 Other white suffragists could not either accept black women, side by side, as equals in their fight for women’s rights. The white suffragists’ feminism was vitiated by racism in a reversed double consciousness. Black women’s right to vote was not considered on an equal footing with white women’s; black women did not belong to the cause of justice championed by white women, who would not comprise their racial superiority for gender equality. Paul’s “negro-exclusion” deepened the split between race and gender. She insisted “that the disenfranchisement of black woman was a race, not sex, matter” (DuBois, 2020 , p. 289), and was “uninterested in a racially inclusive women’s enfranchisement” (p. 289). The women’s suffrage movement thus drew again the color line: white vs. black. With white women as gender and black women as race, the dialog between the two was again stagnated. White sisters’ racism proved without failing that not all women were born equal in the early twentieth century America. Nonetheless, black suffragists marched on for both gender and racial equality. Bernard goes on to describe:

So, despite the fact that the right to vote was no less important to black women than it was to black men and white women, African American women were told to march at the back of the parade with a black procession.

Despite all of this, the 22 founders of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority marched. It was the only African American women’s organization to participate. Footnote 23

From the back of the parade—a visual testament to racism, black suffragists led by Mary Church Terrell marched on and sent a message of racial equality to the front, in the same struggle for gender equality. Delta Sigma Theta’s presence showed, although in a compromised way, gender unity could overweigh racism and defeat sexism, not otherwise as preferred by some of their white sisters. In spite of all, women, black and white, although separately, traveled across the country anyway to make their voices heard and showed what is to be an American woman to win gender equality. In action, the dialog between gender and race was carried out by Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. It heightened the awareness that they were “the only group in this country that has two such huge obstacles to surmount… sex and race”, Footnote 24 because of the color of their skin. A race-gender double consciousness in the line of Douglass and DuBois thus lived on.

In black women’s suffrage, Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) emerged as a pivotal dialog participant on gender and race. Like Douglass and DuBois, Terrell is from a mixed ancestry. A daughter of former slaves, then becoming a well-to-do family, she has financial means, coupled with a well-educated background. In the suffragist circles of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)—the integration of NWSA and AWSA, Terrell’s path crosses with Susan B. Anthony’s. They developed a “delightful, helpful friendship” (Adams and Keene, 2008 , p. 98), which lasted until Anthony’s death in 1906. As discussed in Part 2, early suffragists had hoped to link gender equality and racial justice because of the abolitionist background of leaders like Stanton and Anthony. However, the 14th and the 15th Amendments created a split between race and gender, and forced a rift/competition between women’s rights and blacks’ rights. Towards the later years of Anthony’s life, her goal of women’s suffrage “was eclipsed by a near-universal racism in the United States” (Wheeler, 1995 , p. 147). The racism within the NAWSA did not allow black women to create their own chapter with the organization. This propelled Terrell to found an independent organization in 1896 for black women to fight for both gender and race—the National Association of Colored Women. For the first time in history, African-American women found an institutional space for their voice and fight. Terrell served as its first national president. African-American women’s disenfranchisement was a main issue for the Association to tackle. As one of the few women of color in the (white) women’s suffrage circle, Terrell acted as de facto African-American women’s representative and an outside trailblazer in the white world. Well versed and trained, Terrell, like Douglass and DuBois, gave numerous speeches and did numerous writings. Among them, “The Progress of Colored Women”, “What it Means to be Colored in the Capital of the U.S.”, “In Union There is Strength”, and “A Colored Woman in a White World” caught public attention and got her invited back to the ANWSA. Thus, she set a renewed stage for a continued dialog between gender and race. In this dialog, she confessed her racial and cultural ambiguity, personal struggles as an African-American woman, and her way to link both worlds by using her white-passing “camouflaging” skills. In activism and writing, Terrell is a female version of Douglass’ intersection and DuBois’ double consciousness in gender and race.

The 14th and 15th Amendments granted African American men the right to vote but not women, and unwittingly created tension between gender and race. The 19th Amendment granted women’s voting right but with long deferred implementation for women of color. These landmark constitutional measures have indeed reshuffled the deck but have never erased the visceral and indestructible color line in our culture. The Civil War, Reconstruction, the large-scale capitalism and the unstoppable industrialism haven shaken our universe and shattered the ground of sexism and racism. In the present global age and during this particular moment of the Trump era and the Black Lives Matter movement, the color line finds an internalized and systemic space, and perpetuates the division from within and opens the wounds wrapped with the “Make America Great Again” banner. In a “browner” and “flatter” America in 2020, a compartmentalized view on the suffrage centennial and a one-sided approach to its iconic heroes and protagonists further dislink gender and race. As of now, the celebration of the Centennial of Women’s Suffrage bears relevance still largely to a specific group—the WASP and proud women. Then, should women of color, men of color, and all historically underrepresented groups be celebrating the Centennial with the same pride and the same sense of achievement? The split between gender and race remains an open-ended topic for dialog if 2020 promises to be a more integrated society and a more inclusive culture.

Pivoting on the double consciousness, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Mary Church Terrell have construed and sustained an intersected dialog between race and gender. If there is a contemporary carrier of the double consciousness, Simon Gikandi directs our attention to President Barack Obama. “In this regard, Obama is probably the quintessential subject of what W.E.B. Du Bois famously described as ‘double consciousness’” (Gikandi, 2012 , p. 211). President Obama, our nation’s first African-American commander in chief also comes from a mixed racial background and multicultural upbringing. Unlike any other white president, he had to endure cultural distrust and racial humiliation targeted by the “Birthers”, because he is on the other side of the color line and thus his citizenship was questioned. “It is ironic that in an age that celebrates cosmopolitanism and rootlessness, Obama is vulnerable simply because he can claim to belong to different worlds, cultures, and traditions” (Gikandi, 2012 , p. 213). Between the highest office in the land and his historically discriminated race, Obama has to rely on the double consciousness to negotiate his location and dispel his dislocation in the American narrative. Like Douglass, DuBois, and Terrell, Obama is an insider of both black and white culture circles and operates with a double mindset. Then, the first African American First Lady Michelle Obama faces a similar double consciousness in her dialog of gender and race to deal with vitriolic racism towards her persona and sexism towards her professional identity.

In our postmodern era, the double consciousness does not only pertain to politicians and presidents, but it also has been making inroads to the still-defining field of Cultural Studies. Kimberlé Crenshaw is one of the earliest theoreticians on race/gender intersectionality. She questioned the convenient binaries of black/white, male/female, and theorized the “multidimensionality of Black women’s experience” (Crenshaw, p. 139) in her 1989 paper, written for The University of Chicago Legal Forum , “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics”. Her entire scholarship consistently argues about a modern-day double consciousness—that the experience of being a black woman cannot be understood in terms of being black and of being a woman considered independently, but must include the interactions between the two, as they “diverge from the standard” and “present some sort of hybrid claim” (p.145). Lawmakers are not quite equipped with such cultural sophistication and nuances yet, in Crenshaw’s view.

Back to the “browner” and “flatter” America in 2020, the position of African American women opens a broader question: does Women’s Suffrage Centennial belong to women of color in other racial groups? Is it another reminder of the double oppression of sexism and racism? Chinese-American women had never been considered citizens on equal terms with white women either; they just started their fight for racial justice with the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, when they were allowed to become citizens to enjoy the voting right. Women’s suffrage had been one of the remotest topics for their citizenship and constitutional rights. The Chinese exclusion act, implemented in 1882, spurred later the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 to effectively ban all immigrants from Asia. Japanese, Hindu and East Indians, Middle Easterners were deemed to be exotic and unfit groups for a WASP dominated nation and heresies for American culture. Today, do Asian-American women own Women Suffrage Centennial? Do they have a comparable victory to celebrate like WASP women? Then, Native American women are another group of ambiguity. The 15th Amendment, passed in 1870, granted all U.S. citizens the right to vote regardless of race, but Native Americans were prevented from participating in elections because the Constitution left it up to the states to decide who has the right to vote. Native American men and women had endured brutality, segregation, and discrimination not unlike African-Americans. After the passage of the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act, it would still take over 40 years for all 50 states to allow Native Americans to vote. Native American women had long been denied citizenship prior to 1920 when white women became equal citizens like their male counterparts. Women from these racial groups had been systematically denied the citizenship that grants the right to vote; they had to fight against racism first before they could fight against sexism. Mexican/Hispanic-American women had to go through a triple struggle in order to be franchised—racial, gender, and linguistic barriers. The linguistic barrier for Hispanic voters did resonate with the literacy test that African Americans and underprivileged white citizens had had to take in order to be eligible to vote. For women of color, being franchised was more than a basic civil right; it meant an acknowledgement of her gender and race as a full human being. The African-American men and women’s fight culminated in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which led to landmark legislation that transformed American voting rights. Together with African-Americans, other groups and individuals of color gradually gained their full citizenship by participating in elections. In the long journey of women’s suffrage, while working in tandem, African Americans set up a cultural model for other minority groups, men and women of color, to emulate in their struggles for racial and gender equality.

In a “browner” and “flatter” America in 2020, when racial and gender diversity collides with sexist and racist establishments, the “whiter” and “vertical” America still reckons with perpetual division and exclusion, so much so that white nationalism, nativism, and right-wing populism have reemerged in an attempt to pull the country back to the antebellum era, so that they can “make America great again”. It has become increasingly difficult to ignore the attempt to restore a WASP centered America, to “purify” American values, and to guard racial homogeneity. The attempt stokes fear, widens division, and fuels hatred and intolerance. George Floyd’s death is the latest of a long line of racial injustice. During Women’s Suffrage Centennial, a cultural war has ensued while a new awakening to the American ideal of equality is on the horizon. In a context like this, singing a centennial celebratory symphony highlights the heroic and extraordinary side of the story and makes it “standardized” and “perfect”. This approach runs the risk of creating a female version of Anglo-centrism and WASP-centrism within twenty-first century feminism. A one-sided celebration also reduces suffragists’ humanity to a single-dimensional abstraction and denies their flesh-and-blood complexities. At the intersection of gender and race, the double consciousness however gives fluid and relatable meanings to the words “women” and “American women”, and resonates with women across races and cultures. Nowadays in the nation’s political life, female mayors, Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress and governors—black, white, Latina, Asian, American Indian, and of all religions—are a fact of life. All of the changes and transformation occurred because of the brave women, black, brown and white, who have fought for their constitutional citizenship before and after the passage of the 19th Amendment. Let them be at the centennial table for a dialog.

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Yang, M. An intimate dialog between race and gender at Women’s Suffrage Centennial. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 7 , 65 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00554-3

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WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE, POLITICAL RESPONSIVENESS, AND CHILD SURVIVAL IN AMERICAN HISTORY *

Associated data.

Women’s choices appear to emphasize child welfare more than those of men. This paper presents new evidence on how suffrage rights for American women helped children to benefit from the scientific breakthroughs of the bacteriological revolution. Consistent with standard models of electoral competition, suffrage laws were followed by immediate shifts in legislative behavior and large, sudden increases in local public health spending. This growth in public health spending fueled large-scale door-to-door hygiene campaigns, and child mortality declined by 8-15% (or 20,000 annual child deaths nationwide) as cause-specific reductions occurred exclusively among infectious childhood killers sensitive to hygienic conditions.

I. Introduction

Women’s choices appear to systematically differ from those of men ( Byrnes, Miller, and Schafer 1999 ; Niederle and Vesterlund 2007 ). The underlying causes of these differences remain unclear, but a growing body of evidence suggests that women place relatively greater weight on child welfare and the provision of public goods (Thomas 1990 , 1994 ; Duflo 2003 ). Such sex differences are now leading many to view the promotion of gender equality as a potent means of human development in poor countries (not simply an important end) ( United Nations 2005 ). In particular, ‘empowering’ women is believed to increase investments in children ( World Bank 2001 ).

Despite recent interest, this issue is not new; a long history links the status of women with child well-being. For example, the nineteenth century bacteriological discoveries of Ignaz Semmelweis, Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, Robert Koch, and others revolutionized scientific knowledge about disease, but it was decades before the public at large (and children in particular) enjoyed their most immediate benefits. Principal among them were the basics of good household hygiene: hand and food washing, water and milk boiling, meat refrigeration, and breastfeeding ( Duffy 1990 ; Meckel 1990 ). In the United States, good household hygiene was promoted through large-scale door-to-door hygiene campaigns – and through charitable organizations and then government, women were their leading advocates ( Meckel 1990 ; Skocpol 1992 ; Tomes 1998 ). 1 Public health historians clearly link the success of hygiene campaigns to the rising influence of women ( Lemons 1973 ; Tomes 1998 ).

This paper investigates how a historical milestone in the advancement of American women – their enfranchisement – influenced child survival, drawing out new quantitative lessons where there is rich qualitative history. Specifically, it relates the sharp timing of state-level women’s suffrage laws enacted between 1869 and 1920 to state-level trend breaks in the voting behavior of legislators, state and local public spending, and age- and cause-specific mortality. This approach has a number of attractive features. First, America’s system of federalism created considerable variation across states and over time in laws governing women’s suffrage. Second, although many related studies have focused on lump-sum transfers to women, many policies and programs that ‘empower’ women have nuanced incentives with theoretically ambiguous consequences for children ( Becker 1981 ). 2 Women’s suffrage rights provide a salient example. Third, data from the early twentieth century United States is rich in comparison with developing country vital statistics, public finance records, and legislative roll call data.

In general, I find that the extension of suffrage rights to American women appears to have helped children benefit from the scientific breakthroughs of the bacteriological revolution. Consistent with standard models of electoral competition ( Duverger 1954 ; Downs 1957 ; Shepsle 1991 ), politicians responded immediately to shifts in electoral preferences as voting rights were extended to women. 3 Within a year of suffrage law enactment, patterns of legislative roll call voting shifted, and local public health spending rose by roughly 35%. These findings are consistent with historical accounts: describing the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921 (a landmark federal public health appropriation immediately following the 19 th Amendment in 1920), Richard Meckel (1990) observes that “fear of being punished at the polls by American women, not conviction of the bill’s necessity, seems to have motivated Congress to vote for it. As one senator admitted to a reporter from the Ladies Home Journal , ‘if the members of Congress could have voted on the measure in their cloak rooms, it would have been killed as emphatically as it was finally passed out in the open’” ( Selden 1922 ). Growth in public health spending, in turn, was critical for scaling-up intensive door-to-door hygiene campaigns. Child mortality declined by 8-15% with the enactment of suffrage laws, and causes of death that responded were exclusively infectious killers of children sensitive to hygienic conditions (diarrheal diseases, diphtheria, and meningitis). Nationwide, these reductions translate into roughly 20,000 averted child deaths each year, explaining about 10% of the child mortality reduction between 1900 and 1930. 4

A variety of informal validity tests bolster this paper’s findings. Specifically, there is little evidence of: (1) relative increases or decreases in child mortality, public spending, or ‘Progressive’ legislative behavior just before suffrage laws were enacted, (2) meaningful relationships between the timing of suffrage laws and the timing of other major Progressive Era events, (3) suffrage estimates differing between states choosing to grant suffrage rights to women and states having it imposed on them by the 19 th Amendment; (4) changes in child survival, public spending, or ‘Progressive’ legislative behavior accompanying important women’s rights initiatives not ultimately leading to voting rights (i.e., ‘placebo’ experiments); (5) a systematic relationships between suffrage laws and internal migration; or (6) confounding changes in the composition of births or fertile age women. Taken together, this evidence suggests that the extension of suffrage rights to women may have itself been responsible for substantial improvements in child survival. Given the economic and epidemiological similarities between historical America and less-developed countries today, I conclude by briefly considering this paper’s implications for contemporary public health and development challenges.

II. Background

Ii.a. the historical advancement of american women and the women’s suffrage movement, “separate spheres” ideology and women’s voluntary organizations.

With the rise of industrialization during the nineteenth century, the social and economic “spheres” of American men and women became more distinct and segregated as men were disproportionately drawn into jobs away from the home. Women responded to this segregation by seizing the civic possibilities of their separate sphere and building voluntary organizations to promote ‘feminine virtues’ – both for their own benefit and for the good of society. Some were comprised of elite, urban women, but more often they were grounded in religion and joined middle class women across numerous localities. 5 Despite their heterogeneity, women’s voluntary organizations collectively capitalized on the perception of women’s moral superiority as homemakers and caregivers to promote broad public welfare agendas. A term popularized by women’s organizations – “municipal housekeeping” – provides a clear example of this strategy: “Woman’s place is in the home… But Home is not contained within the four walls of an individual home. Home is the community. The city full of people is the Family” ( Dorr 1910 ). 6 This “municipal housekeeping” ideology provided a philosophical foundation for the women’s suffrage movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and voluntary organizations supplied critical organizational infrastructure. They also provided a means of advancing a new child health and hygiene agenda during the Progressive Era ( Smith-Rosenberg 1985 ; Skocpol 1992 ).

The Women’s Suffrage Movement

The birth of the women’s suffrage movement went hand-in-hand with the birth of women’s voluntary organizations. Broad new ideals about women’s public and private roles were manifest both in emerging voluntary organizations and in the agenda articulated by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the famous women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York during the summer of 1848. The end of the Civil War invigorated the women’s suffrage movement as the emancipation of slaves and the (ostensible) extension of voting rights to black men in 1870 under the 15 th Amendment drew new public attention to the expansion of the electorate ( Flexner and Fitzpatrick 1959 ).

State-level suffrage efforts during the late 19 th century were poorly coordinated and generally proclaimed social justice as the basis for enfranchising women. There were several unanticipated early successes in the west (in the territories of Wyoming in 1869 and Utah in 1870 and later in Colorado and Idaho), surprising both proponents and opponents alike ( Flexner and Fitzpatrick 1959 ; DuBois 1998 ). However, these early victories were followed by a period of stagnation, leading to better coordinated local efforts and a more pragmatic appeal to municipal housekeeping as the rationale for enfranchising women ( McCammon and Campbell 2001 ; King, Cornwall, and Dahlin 2005 ). The result was a new string of new successes: prior to the ratification of the19 th Amendment in 1920, 29 of 48 states had extended suffrage rights to women. Figure I shows the timing of suffrage laws in American states, and Section III.A. and the data appendix discuss the nuances of these laws.

The Timing of Women’s Suffrage Rights in American States

Data obtained from Lott and Kenny (1999) and Cornwall (2003) . Years shown are for first suffrage laws, which extended full suffrage rights to women with the exception of presidential suffrage only laws in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wisconsin and primary suffrage only laws in Arkansas and Texas.

Explaining the Spatial and Temporal Pattern of State-Level Women’s Suffrage Laws

Understanding the timing of state-level suffrage laws is important for evaluating the validity of this paper’s empirical strategy (as probed in greater detail in Section V). The most obvious pattern is geographic – all else equal, women in western states could vote before women elsewhere in America. Some historians suggest that frontier conditions were amenable to women’s suffrage because women supported restrictions on common western vices (drunkenness, gambling, and prostitution) or because the harsh realities of frontier life made it impossible to maintain traditional gender roles ( Brown 1958 ; Grimes 1967 ). 7 Many others argue that idiosyncratic circumstances in each state resulted in the vote for women ( Larson 1971 ; Beeton 1986 ), citing rich historical evidence in support of this view. 8 Quantitative studies yield strikingly inconclusive results ( Cornwall, Dahlin, King, and Schiffman 2004 ). The single robust correlate of suffrage law enactment emerging from these studies is the share of women working in non-agricultural occupations ( King, Cornwall, and Dahlin 2005 ). Although this presumably reflects changing social norms about the role of women, it evolved very gradually over time ( Smith and Ward 1985 ; Goldin 1990 ) and can be distinguished econometrically from abrupt year-to-year legislative changes governing women’s right to vote.

II.B. Women, Hygiene Campaigns, and the ‘New Public Health’ 9

Early public health efforts targeting infants and children generally emphasized the provision of pure milk to mothers through local milk stations ( Ferrie and Troesken forthcoming ; Lee 2007 ). In 1906, however, a critical assessment of milk station activities led the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (and the New York Milk Committee) to conclude that providing clean milk to infants just scratched the surface of the potential health benefits of good hygiene – and that educating mothers about household hygiene more broadly was the most promising approach for improving infant and child survival ( Phillips 1909 ). This conclusion heralded the beginning of a ‘new public health’: milk stations and sanitary engineering had fulfilled much of their promise, and further health improvements depended critically on providing widespread information about the benefits of good personal and household hygiene. 10 This ideological shift was accompanied by demonstrated results; the widely publicized effectiveness of the New York Milk Committee’s household hygiene modification program quickly led to copycat programs around the country ( Meckel 1990 ).

However, hygienic home modification required regular home visits and individualized health education. Charitable organizations were already conducting these activities on a small scale, but in 1910, the newly formed American Association for Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality argued that only government had the authority, resources, and centralized administrative capacity to effectively coordinate large-scale hygiene campaigns ( AASPIM 1910 ). 11 What developed were public-private partnerships – local public funds supporting door-to-door hygiene campaigns that built upon the existing infrastructure of philanthropic organizations ( Neff 1910 ; Meckel 1990 ). The ability to channel new public sector appropriations into standing charitable programs made rapid health improvement possible.

Although physicians and lay health workers were employed, community-based nurses were the backbone of household hygiene campaigns. Nurses were each assigned a district and made responsible for all families in that district with babies born between the end of May and the beginning of September (when infectious disease incidence and infant/child mortality rates peaked). Learning of a birth from either departmental records or door-to-door canvassing, nurses visited the new mother, examined the infant and other children in the household, encouraged breastfeeding, and provided intensive individualized education about hygienic practices. The nurse would continue visiting the household throughout the summer, monitoring hygienic conditions and the health of all household children. The growing ‘ideology of instructed motherhood’ also created fertile soil for hygiene campaigns to succeed – nurses overwhelmingly reported that when the benefits of improved hygiene were demonstrated, mothers eagerly embraced them ( Meckel 1990 ). 12

Historians are relatively silent about the relationship between state-level women’s suffrage laws and local hygiene campaigns, but they are outspoken about this relationship at the national level. A salient example is the case of the 1921 Sheppard-Towner Act, a landmark five-year public health appropriation and the single most dramatic expansion of the federal Children’s Bureau. Women’s organizations lobbied hard for passage of the act, and the long-standing perception of women’s superior morality made it difficult for legislators to ignore their demands ( Skocpol 1992 ). Not coincidentally, it was passed immediately after all American women were given the right to vote under the 19 th Amendment in 1920 – even before actual patterns of female voting had become clear. In the words of one historian, the “principal force moving Congress was fear of being punished at the polls. Politicians feared that women voters would cast a bloc vote or remain aloof from the regular parties” if their convictions about child welfare were not heeded ( Lemons 1973 ). 13

III. Data and Empirical Strategy

Iii.a. data 14.

I obtained dates that women gained the legal right to vote in each state from Lott and Kenny (1999) and have supplemented these dates with more detailed information collected from the legislative archives of forty-eight states by Marie Cornwall and colleagues ( Cornwall 2003 ). In this paper, I follow Lott and Kenny (1999) by not distinguishing partial and full suffrage rights, recognizing the flux of electoral rules during this period and uncertainty among politicians about the inevitability of full enfranchisement following partial suffrage laws. 15 Sensitivity analyses presented in Section V suggest that drawing this distinction does not substantively alter the conclusions drawn from this paper’s analyses.

To investigate how women’s suffrage was related to child survival, state-level mortality data by age/sex and by cause is needed. However, there was no national system of death records in the United States prior to 1933 ( Haines 2001 ). The Bureau of the Census first established an official ‘Death Registration Area’ in 1880 and began publishing its annual Mortality Statistics for death registration states (those deemed to have adequate death registration systems) with 1900 ( US Bureau of the Census 1906 through 1938 ; Haines 2001 ). The registration area grew from ten states in 1900 to include all forty-eight states in 1933. Using the published historical series, I have constructed an unbalanced panel of annual state-level deaths by age/sex and by cause for years 1900-1936. 16 Descriptive Statistics are shown in Panels A and B of Table I .

Descriptive Statistics

Decennial mortality data by age (in Panel A) and by cause (in Panel B) are from the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ decennial Census of Population and Housing (and are the same mortality statistics reported in the Bureau of the Census’ annual Mortality Statistics ). Municipal public finance data (Panel C) are from the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ Financial Statistics of Cities Having a Population of Over 30,000 , which are unavailable for 1900 and 1920. State public finance data (Panel D) is from Sylla, Legler, and Wallis ICPSR Study # 9728 (1900 and 1910) and the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ Financial Statistics of States (1930), which are unavailable for 1920.

To explore how women’s suffrage was related to the size and composition of public spending, I also matched local and state public finance data with the legislative records. For hygiene campaigns, local health department spending was most important. To examine how suffrage laws were related to changes in local public finance, I digitized annual nominal health-related spending data for all cities with populations exceeding 30,000 listed in the Statistics of Cities (1905-1908) and the Financial Statistics of Cities (1909-1913, 1915-1919, and 1921-1930) to the state level. 17 The specific health-related spending categories that can be harmonized across years include health conservation and sanitation spending; health conservation and sanitation infrastructure investment; charities, corrections, and hospital spending; and charities, corrections, and hospital infrastructure investment. Local funds supporting public-private hygiene campaigns (that built on existing charitable infrastructure) are primarily captured by spending for charities, corrections, and hospitals. Descriptive statistics for the city-level public finance data are shown in Panel C of Table I .

State spending was also important for bolstering local health department activities. Annual information about real state spending and revenue between 1900 and 1930 in broad sectoral categories was provided by Larry Kenny and John Lott ( Lott and Kenny 1999 ). State health board spending captured by the social service spending category was commonly directed toward establishing or strengthening city public health departments. Descriptive statistics for the state-level public finance data are shown in Panel D of Table I .

Finally, although many key public health appropriations during the Progressive Era were made at the local and state level, local and state legislative roll call data have not been systematically compiled to the best of my knowledge (and many important public health spending decisions are made at the committee and subcommittee level). Nevertheless, legislative responses to women’s suffrage laws should also be evident at the federal level. I obtained roll call data for all votes brought to the Senate and House floors between 1900 and 1930 (during the 56 th through 71 st Congressional sessions) from the Voteview database compiled by Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal ( www.voteview.com ). Because women’s voluntary organizations were leading promoters of the Progressive Era reform agenda, each Senate and House bill was coded according to whether or not it was broadly consistent with this agenda. Votes were then aggregated across legislators and bills to the state-year level for each chamber, yielding the share of possible votes cast by legislators that were ‘Progressive.’

III.B. Empirical Strategy

Exploiting rich spatial and temporal variation in the timing of state-level women’s suffrage laws after 1900, I use a simple difference-in-difference approach to estimate changes in public spending, ‘Progressive’ voting among legislators, and mortality by age/sex and cause associated with suffrage rights. Specifically, for states s and years y , I estimate equations of the following general form:

where d is an outcome of interest (public spending, ‘Progressive’ voting, or deaths by age/sex or cause) in state s and year y , v is a dummy variable indicating whether or not women could legally vote, δ s and δ y are state and year fixed effects, and δ s × t represents state-specific linear time trends. The parameter of interest in this simple specification is β .

In this econometric framework, only the timing of state suffrage laws is assumed to be exogenous. Fixed differences across states, common factors varying non-linearly over time (such as the establishment of the Children’s Bureau in 1912), and state-specific differences that vary linearly over time are all purged from the estimate of β . Only trend breaks in the outcomes of interest that coincide precisely with the timing of women’s suffrage laws are captured by this parameter. The validity of the identifying assumption is explored in detail in Section V.

A brief note on the use of deaths rather than death rates as dependent variables is also warranted. Because state-level population counts by age are not available annually between decennial population censuses, annual mortality rates cannot be constructed directly from annual deaths. Population projection techniques commonly used by demographers can be used estimate denominators for these rates, but they are essentially sophisticated methods of interpolation that employ no additional intercensal information. The inclusion of state fixed effects and state-specific time trends therefore accomplishes the same general objective.

IV. Results

Iv.a. political responsiveness to women’s suffrage.

Historical accounts suggest that women’s enfranchisement improved child survival through its impact on public spending and that local public health spending growth fueled the Progressive Era’s unprecedented door-to-door hygiene campaigns. This section provides direct evidence on how public spending and legislative behavior changed with suffrage laws, and Section IV.B. then traces these changes in political economy through to child health outcomes.

Public Spending

Assuming that the policy preferences of men and women differ, standard models of electoral competition predict that the extension of voting rights to women should cause politicians’ support-maximizing policy positions to shift immediately to better reflect women’s preferences. These immediate shifts should be based on politicians’ expectations of how women will vote – even before women’s voting patterns are actually observed. Following historical accounts, I first investigate changes in the size and composition of municipal public spending related to public health and hygiene. Using residual city public finance measures obtained by estimating equation 1 without the suffrage dummy (and with city rather than state fixed effects), Figure II plots residual means for the five years preceding and following suffrage law enactment (indexed to the year that women gained voting rights in each state – defined as year 0). It shows no relative increase or decrease in local spending prior to suffrage laws followed by sharp increases that coincide precisely with the laws. The immediacy of these increases is consistent with theoretical predictions. 18 Although hygiene campaign spending is not detailed in the historical public finance data, the primary category capturing hygiene spending is spending for charities, corrections, and hospitals. As noted earlier, this is because hygiene campaigns grew as public-private partnerships with public funds scaling-up pre-existing charitable efforts through charitable infrastructure and are therefore reflected in charity spending. 19

Municipal Public Spending and Women’s Suffrage Law Timing

Municipal public finance data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ Statistics of Cities Having a Population of Over 30,000 and Financial Statistics of Cities Having a Population of Over 30,000. Residual means shown relative to the year of women’s suffrage laws in each state (year 0) obtained by estimating equation 1 without the suffrage dummy variable and with city rather than state fixed effects.

To examine changes in the size and composition of municipal spending parametrically, variants of equation 1 (with city rather than state fixed effects) were estimated with local public finance measures as dependent variables. Because the dependent variables are in logarithmic form, the coefficient estimates can roughly be interpreted as percent changes. Panel A of Table II shows these results. Women’s suffrage is associated with an 8% increase in total municipal spending, a 6% increase in spending on health conservation and sanitation, and strikingly, a 36% increase in spending for charities, hospitals, and corrections. 20 Appendix Table A.1 also shows the dynamics of these increases over time. Panel B of Table II then reports estimates for state spending. The enfranchisement of women is associated with a 24% increase in state social service spending, but not with changes in any other state public finance measure. 21 Although state spending was not directly targeted toward hygiene campaigns, state health boards played important roles in developing the capacity of local public health departments.

Women’s Suffrage Laws and Municipal and State Public Finance

Municipal public finance data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ Statistics of Cities Having a Population of Over 30,000 and Financial Statistics of Cities Having a Population of Over 30,000 ; state public finance data from Sylla, Legler, and Wallis ICPSR Study # 9728 and the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ Financial Statistics of States . Estimates and standard errors (in parentheses, clustered by state) shown for the women’s suffrage law dummy variable obtained by estimating equation 1 (controlling for state and year fixed effects and state-specific linear time trends, with city fixed effects subsitituted for state fixed effects in the municipal public finance regressions). The municipal public finance sample contains city-year observations from years 1905-1909, 1909-1913, 1915-1919, and 1921-1930; the state public finance sample contains state-year observations from years 1900-1919 and 1921-1930. Spending (“cost payments”) are defined as “payments of cities and other municipalities for their expenses, interest, and outlays, less amounts which have been returned or are to be returned by reason of error or otherwise.” Infrastructure investment (“outlays”) are defined as “the costs of property, including land, buildings and equipment, and public improvements more or less permanent in character.”

Voter Turn-out and Legislative Roll Call Behavior

The public finance changes shown in Figure II and Table II – which were instrumental in bringing the hygienic benefits of the bacteriological revolution to the American public – reflect changes in legislative behavior. This section provides direct evidence on changes in the political economy of states, building on evidence provided by Lott and Kenny (1999) that state-level voter participation among adults ages 21+ increased by 44% the year after women were enfranchised. This pattern of electoral participation is consistent with expectations among legislators that female voting would be an important strategic consideration in selecting support-maximizing policy positions.

Political responses should be directly evident in the voting behavior of legislators. To further test the prediction of immediate changes in political behavior, I use Congressional roll call data. My specific hypothesis is that as women gained the right to vote in individual states, Congressional representatives from those states should immediately alter their roll call voting to better reflect perceived women’s preferences. Because bills pertaining to local public health and hygiene are seldom introduced at the federal level, I instead assess the consistency of Congressional voting with the broad ‘Progressive’ Era reform agenda promoted by highly-visible women’s voluntary organizations.

Figure III (constructed the same way as Figure II ) shows ‘Progressive’ voting among legislators in the Senate and the House of Representatives as women gained the right to vote in legislators’ home states. 22 With the passage of these laws, roll call voting among senators immediately became more ‘Progressive;’ no such response is evident in the House. Although the reason for this difference in behavioral response by legislative body is unclear, the overall pattern is again generally consistent with theoretical predictions. 23 Parametric estimates of β in equation 1 for the entire period 1900-1930 (shown in Table III ) suggest that women’s suffrage was associated with a 23% increase in ‘Progressive’ voting in the Senate. Appendix Table A.1 also shows the dynamics of this shift in legislator Progressivity over time.

‘Progressive’ State Votes and Women’s Suffrage Law Timing

Legislative roll call data from the Voteview database; coding of Progressive voting done by author as described in the data appendix . Residual means shown relative to the year of women’s suffrage laws in each state (year 0) obtained by estimating equation 1 without the suffrage dummy variable.

Women’s Suffrage Laws and Legislative Behavior

Legislative roll call data from the Voteview database; coding of Progressive voting done by author as described in the data appendix . Estimates and standard errors (in parentheses, clustered by state) shown for the women’s suffrage law dummy variable obtained by estimating equation 1 (controlling for state and year fixed effects and state-specific linear time trends). The Voteview sample contains state-year observations from years 1900-1930.

IV.B. Mortality by Age/Sex and Cause

My ultimate interest is to trace changes in American political economy linked to women’s suffrage through to changes in child survival. Using residuals obtained by estimating equation 1 without the suffrage dummy, Figure IV plots residual means for age-specific mortality by gender for years relative to women’s enfranchisement. In general, it shows rapid mortality declines for both boys and girls when suffrage legislation was enacted. 24 The timing of these reductions is again consistent with the proposition that suffrage led to abrupt increases in local public health spending that fueled the Progressive Era’s unprecedented door-to-door hygiene campaigns.

Deaths by Age and Sex and the Timing of Suffrage Laws

Mortality data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ annual Mortality Statistics . Residual means shown relative to the year of women’s suffrage laws in each state (year 0) obtained by estimating equation 1 without the suffrage dummy variable.

Figure V shows parametric estimates of β obtained by estimating equation 1 for deaths by sex in each age interval reported consistently over time between 1900 and 1936 (0-1, 1-4, 4-9, 10-14, etc.). Women’s suffrage is generally associated with mortality reductions for children at all ages between age one and age nineteen, but not for infants (defined as those under age one) or for adults at any age. 25 In contrast with contemporary evidence on shifts in women’s bargaining power within the household in developing countries, there are no meaningful gender differences in the survival gains associated with women’s suffrage ( Duflo 2003 ; Qian forthcoming ). Appendix Table A.1 then shows the dynamics of age-specific reductions in death over time.

Women’s Suffrage Laws and Mortality Estimates by Age and Sex

Mortality data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ annual Mortality Statistics . Estimates and 95% confidence intervals (standard errors clustered by state) for β obtained by estimating equation 1 with state-year observations for deaths by sex in each age interval reported consistently over time between 1900 and 1936 (0-1, 1-4, 4-9, 10-14, etc.).

These child mortality reductions are large, with point estimates ranging from 8% to 15%. 26 Because child mortality is heavily concentrated at young ages, the great majority of absolute gains in child survival occurred at young ages. To place these estimates in context, mortality rates in death registration states fell by 72% for children ages 1 to 4 and 59% for children ages 5 to 9 between 1900 and 1930. The proportions of these declines explained by the estimates in Figure V are 5% and 10%, respectively. 27 In absolute terms, these reductions imply approximately 20,000 averted child deaths nationwide each year relative to mortality before suffrage laws were enacted. 28

I then investigate specific causes of death that declined as women gained the right to vote. State-level mortality data disaggregated both by age and by cause is reported erratically between 1900 and 1936, but changes in cause-specific mortality at all ages can reasonably be attributed to children given that I find little evidence of adult mortality change. Moreover, certain infectious diseases explicitly reported were notorious child-killers that did not strike adults. Table IV shows suffrage estimates obtained by re-estimating equation 1 with cause-specific deaths as dependent variables. The only causes of death that responded to suffrage laws were diarrheal diseases (under age two – a reporting anomaly), meningitis, and diphtheria, with reductions of 11%, 23%, and 24%, respectively. All three were leading infectious killers of children (but not adults) during the Progressive Era, and importantly, all three can be effectively combated through good household hygiene. 29

Women’s Suffrage Laws and Cause-Specific Mortality

Mortality data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ annual Mortality Statistics . Single cause estimates and standard errors (in parentheses, clustered by state) shown for the women’s suffrage law dummy variable obtained by estimating equation 1 (controlling for state and year fixed effects and state-specific linear time trends) for each individual cause of death using the unbalanced mortality sample with state-year observations, 1900-1936. Grouped cause estimates and standard errors (in parentheses, clustered by state) in the bottom two rows obtained by regressing ln(deaths ) on individual cause dummy variables, cause-specific linear time trends, state fixed effects, and year fixed effects separately for infectious childhood diseases (diphtheria, meningitis, diarrhea under age two, measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, and whooping cough) and other causes (typhoid fever, malaria, pneumonia, diabetes, circulatory disease, Bright’s disease/nephritis, cancer/tumors, accidents/violent deaths, and suicide) using the unbalanced sample of cause-state-year observations, 1900-1936.

Because cause-specific deaths are noisy, I also pool across causes to construct aggregate disease categories: childhood infectious diseases (the ones most sensitive to hygiene) and other diseases. 30 The bottom two rows of Table IV show estimates obtained by using cause-state-year observations to regress ln(deaths) on a women’s suffrage dummy, cause-specific dummies, cause-specific time trends, and state and year fixed effects. Women’s suffrage is associated with an 18% decline in childhood infectious diseases but not with the changes in other deaths.

V. Informal Validity Tests and Robustness 31

Natural concerns with this paper’s empirical strategy include the possibility of endogenous state-level suffrage legislation, ‘Progressive’ legislators enacting many ‘Progressive’ laws simultaneously, and confounding changes in the composition of state populations. This section presents a range of tests that investigate – but generally fail to corroborate – such concerns.

First, I assess whether or not there were relative decreases in child mortality, cause-specific mortality, state and local public spending, or ‘Progressive’ voting just before women’s suffrage laws were adopted (which might reflect differentially liberalizing state policy environments.) To test for trend breaks at various points prior to the passage of laws, dummy variables denoting intervals two, four, and six years before suffrage were included in variants of equation 1 . For all dependent variables found to be related to women’s suffrage, the resulting estimates are statistically indistinguishable from zero (as shown in Online Appendix Table 3 ).

Second, I investigate how suffrage law dates were related to social, economic, and demographic conditions in 1900 (literacy, employment, manufacturing wages, and workforce share in manufacturing), the dates of other major Progressive Era laws (governing divorce/alimony rights, mother’s pensions, minimum wage and maximum hours of work for women, prohibition, and workers’ compensation), and the dates that GFWC chapters were established in each state. Online Appendix Figure 1 suggests no discernable relationship between suffrage laws and other major Progressive Era events (suggesting that ‘Progressive’ reforms were not temporally clustered), and Online Appendix Table 4 also generally suggests no relationship with other state-level laws or characteristics in 1900.

Third, if changes in state social or political environments fostered both women’s suffrage and better child health – or if reformers enacted many ‘Progressive’ changes simultaneously – estimates of β in equation 1 should differ between states that voluntarily extended suffrage to women and those that had it imposed on them by the 19 th Amendment. Following Lott and Kenny (1999) , I define voluntary states as those that passed state-level suffrage laws or that voted to ratify the 19 th Amendment. Online Appendix Table 5 shows interaction terms between women’s suffrage and a dummy variable for voluntary suffrage. All are insignificant, suggesting statistically identical estimates in voluntary and mandatory states.

Fourth, if this paper’s major results were due to unobserved state-level social liberalization over time, there should also be detectable changes during other women’s rights efforts not ultimately resulting in suffrage laws. Online Appendix Table 6 shows results obtained by replacing suffrage dummy variables with dummies for failed (but in many cases promising) women’s rights campaigns (ballot referenda and campaigns lobbying state constitutional conventions). None are statistically meaningful. 32

Fifth, the enactment of suffrage laws could have induced internal migration, altering the composition of residents in states with suffrage rights relative to those without them. Using IPUMS 1% population census samples from 1900, 1910, and 1920, Online Appendix Table 7 reports estimates obtained by regressing the share of state residents who report being born in that state on cumulative years of women’s suffrage and other state-level socio-economic characteristics. 33 Little evidence of confounding patterns of internal migration emerges.

Sixth, I consider confounding fertility responses to suffrage laws. 34 Exploiting the fact that any fertility response should vary by women’s age when suffrage rights were introduced (and not be present at all among women first able to vote after menopause), I use the IPUMS 1% 1940 population census sample to make comparisons simultaneously among women the same age but born in different states and among different-aged women born in the same state. 35 Online Appendix Figure 2 shows the resulting estimates, suggesting little econometric evidence that women’s fertility responded to suffrage laws.

Finally, I assess the robustness of the results using a variety of alternative specifications as shown in Appendix Table A.2 ( Online Appendix Tables 8 – 11 show results for a broader set of dependent variables). Because Figure I suggests a regional pattern of suffrage laws, column (2) reports suffrage estimates obtained by including census region×year fixed effects in equation 1 . The results are not generally consistent with unobserved regional shocks (not identified in the historical literature) explaining the paper’s basic findings. Column (3) reports estimates from equation 1 with standard errors calculated to allow spatial correlation according to geographic distance between states, following Conley (1999) , suggesting that doing so does not substantially alter the inferences drawn. 36 Column (4) assesses the results’ sensitivity to conditioning on time-varying state level covariates. They are generally robust to the inclusion of these covariates, although many state socio-economic characteristics are available only for decennial census years. 37 Column (5) reports estimates obtained by re-coding partial states as not enfranchising women until full-suffrage rights were extended (generally 1920); column (6) shows results obtained by excluding states enfranchising women in 1920; and column (7) shows estimates from samples restricted to states present in the mortality data at least five years before suffrage law enactment. With a handful of exceptions, the paper’s main findings are robust across these alternative specifications.

VI. Conclusion

This paper argues that the extension of suffrage rights to American women allowed children to benefit more fully (or rapidly) from the scientific breakthroughs of the bacteriological revolution. Simple hygienic practices – including hand and food washing, water and milk boiling, meat refrigeration, and renewed emphasis on breastfeeding – were among the most important innovations of this revolution in knowledge about disease. Communicating their importance to the American public required large-scale door-to-door hygiene campaigns, which women championed at first through voluntary organizations and then through government. Consistent with the predictions of standard models of electoral competition, support-maximizing politicians responded immediately to perceived changes in the distribution of electorate policy preferences as women gained the right to vote. The result was greater local public health spending that fueled hygiene campaigns, leading to fewer deaths from leading infectious childhood killers of the day. 38

Given the common failures of health education campaigns in developing countries today, further research is needed to reconcile contemporary difficulties with this historical success. A wide variety of candidate explanations are possible. First, relative to other types of health behaviors such as avoiding sexual contact, reducing diets high in saturated fats, and quitting smoking, hygienic behaviors may not be costly to change. Second, in an environment of competing risks, complementary sanitary reforms (like drinking water disinfection) occurring during this period raised the return to simple hygienic health behaviors. Third, the absence of curative measures a century ago strengthened incentives for prevention (i.e., less moral hazard). Fourth, effective health education campaigns are generally labor intensive, and labor inputs in this setting were particularly inexpensive. 39 Fifth, there was considerable latent demand for child health. As Meckel (1990) notes, the emphasis on maternal health education was strongly reinforced by the emerging ‘cult of motherhood’ ( Ladd-Taylor 1986 ).

This paper’s findings also suggest at least two broader conclusions relevant to contemporary development challenges. One is that strengthening the expression of women’s preferences can improve child health and welfare beyond the special case of lump-sum transfers targeted to women. Unlike such transfers, many policies and programs seeking to ‘empower’ women introduce nuanced incentives with theoretically ambiguous consequences for children ( Becker 1981 ). As a case in point, opponents of women’s suffrage in the United States often supported their position by invoking the potential neglect of children ( Flexner and Fitzpatrick 1959 ).

The other is that demand-oriented health improvement strategies may deserve more careful attention. In developing countries today, over 10 million children die each year from preventable causes ( World Health Organization 2002 ; Black, Morris, and Bryce 2003 ). Although international health efforts have traditionally emphasized shifting the supply of health technologies outward, demand for these technologies is also puzzlingly low in many contexts ( Bonair, Rosenfield, and Tengvald 1989 ; Scrimshaw 2001 ). Promoting gender equality may be an important means of increasing household demand for simple, highly beneficial health technologies.

Supplementary Material

Online appendix, data appendix 40, women’s suffrage dates – legislation, constitutional conventions, and referenda.

As shown in Figure I , twenty-nine states extended the right to vote to women before Nineteenth Amendment was approved in 1920. Among the other nineteen states, seven approved the amendment and twelve had suffrage imposed on them. Dates of state-level women’s suffrage laws were obtained from Lott and Kenny (1999) and supplemented with extensive archival project data provided by Marie Cornwall that was collected from the legislative archives of the forty-eight continental states (with support from the National Science Foundation through grants NSF 0095224 and NSF 9876519) ( Cornwall 2003 ). The Lott and Kenny (1999) data provides first suffrage law dates but does not distinguish between full and partial suffrage laws. However, the Cornwall data do make this distinction. Presidential-only suffrage laws were enacted in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wisconsin (Michigan passed a Presidential-only law and then a full suffrage law the following year before the 19 th Amendment). Primary-only suffrage laws were enacted in Arkansas and Texas.

Several validity tests also examine unsuccessful state-level efforts to enfranchise women. These efforts generally took the form of lobbying leading up to state constitutional conventions and ballot initiatives/referenda. On constitutional conventions, Marie Cornwall and colleagues identified all constitutional conventions held in states between 1848 and 1919 and coded each according to whether or not a suffrage proposal was introduced at the convention. On referenda, the Cornwall data identify every year during this period that a state held a referendum on the question of woman suffrage. Votes for and against enfranchisement were recorded for each referendum as available.

Historical Mortality Statistics

No national system of death records existed in the United States prior to 1933 ( Haines 2001 ). However, the Bureau of the Census established an official ‘death registration area’ in 1880 and began publishing its annual Mortality Statistics for death registration states (those deemed to have adequate death registration systems) in 1900 ( US Bureau of the Census 1900 – 1936 , Haines 2001 ). As Online Appendix Figure 3 shows, the registration area grew from ten states in 1900 to include all forty-eight states in 1933. (Delaware technically entered the death registration area in 1890 but does not appear in the annual Mortality Statistics until 1919.)

I have digitized these published mortality statistics for all registration area states for all years 1900-1936 by age and sex and by cause. For males and females, specific age groups are under 1 (infant mortality), 1-4, 5-9, …, 90-94, and 95+. The causes of death followed consistently over time are: typhoid fever, malaria, smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, whooping cough, meningitis, diarrhea (under age two), diphtheria, influenza, pneumonia, puerperal fever and childbirth-related complications, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, cancer, accidents, suicide, and all other causes. Because of changes over time in the Bureau of the Census’ cause of death reporting, some conservative assumptions were also necessary to harmonize this information across years 1900 – 1936.

In addition to quality control efforts in the data entry work (double entry and spot checking), I also verified that summations across age- and cause-specific deaths equaled provided totals. This process revealed a small number of inconsistencies in the printed historical mortality tables, which are summarized in the Online Data Appendix Supplement .

Historical Municipal Public Finance Data

Annual data on nominal municipal-level health-related spending were digitized for cities with populations exceeding 30,000 using the Statistics of Cities for years 1905-1908 and the Financial Statistics of Cities for years 1909-1913, 1915-1919, and 1921-1930 . The specific categories of health-related city spending harmonized across years include health conservation and sanitation cost payments; health conservation and sanitation outlays; charities, corrections, and hospital cost payments; and charities, corrections, and hospital outlays. Total cost payments and total outlays were collected and included as well. The US Bureau of the Census (1914) defined cost payments as “payments of cities and other municipalities for their expenses, interest, and outlays, less amounts which have been returned or are to be returned by reason of error or otherwise.” Outlays are defined as “the costs of property, including land, buildings and equipment, and public improvements more or less permanent in character.” Throughout the paper I refer to cost payments as “spending” and outlays as “infrastructure investment.” Although more disaggregated data is provided in some years (health conservation and sanitation separately rather than combined, for example), the categories constructed are the most disaggregated that can be harmonized across all years.

Missing data also cannot be distinguished from true zeros. For cities present in a given year, if all empty cells are assumed to reflect missing data rather than true zeros, variable-specific missing data rates do not exceed 10% – with the exception of outlays for charities, corrections, and hospitals, for which missing data rates can exceed 70% (analyses of this outlay category should therefore be interpreted with caution and do not make a substantive contribution to this paper’s findings). The Online Data Appendix Supplement summarizes the number of cities present in each year.

Historical State Public Finance Data

Historical information about annual state revenue and spending in real 1967 dollars per capita was provided by John Lott and Larry Kenny and is the same state public finance data used in Lott and Kenny (1999) . This data harmonizes state public finance information from a large archival project conducted by Richard Sylla, John Legler, and John Wallis with support from National Science Foundation (see Sylla, Legler, and Wallis ICPSR Study # 9728, “Sources and Uses of Funds in State and Local Governments, 1790-1915”) with data from the Financial Statistics of States for years 1915-1919 and 1921-1931 . It also includes pre-1915 data provided by John Wallis not available in ICPSR Study # 9728 from Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, and West Virginia.

The specific categories of per capita revenue and spending that are comparable over time include: total public spending, public revenue, property tax revenue, transportation spending (which combines current and capital expenditures on highways), education spending (which combines current and capital expenditures on elementary and secondary schools) and social service spending (which combines current expenditures on state health boards, charities, hospitals, and corrections).

Voteview Congressional Roll Call Data

Key public health appropriations during the Progressive Era were primarily made at the state and especially the local level. To the best of my knowledge, state and local legislative roll call data have not been systematically compiled (and critical appropriations decisions are made at the committee and subcommittee level anyway). Nevertheless, legislative responses to women’s suffrage laws should also be evident at the federal level in the Senate and the House of Representatives. I therefore obtained roll call data for all votes brought to the Senate and House floors roughly between 1900 and 1930 (for the 56 th through 71 st Congressional sessions) from the publicly available Voteview database ( www.voteview.com ) maintained by Keith Poole. This data includes the date that each bill was brought to a vote, how each representative voted on each bill, the home state of each representative, and a brief description of each bill’s substantive legislative proposal.

Because women’s voluntary organizations were outspoken advocates of the Progressive Era reform agenda, each Senate and House bill was coded according to whether or not it was broadly consistent with this agenda. In deciding whether or not a bill was ‘Progressive,’ I adopted the following definition of Progressivism taken from http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/progressivism/index.cfm: “Progressivism is an umbrella label for a wide range of economic, political, social, and moral reforms. These included efforts to outlaw the sale of alcohol; regulate child labor and sweatshops; scientifically manage natural resources; ensure pure and wholesome water and milk; Americanize immigrants or restrict immigration altogether; and bust or regulate trusts. Drawing support from the urban, college-educated middle class, Progressive reformers sought to eliminate corruption in government, regulate business practices, address health hazards, improve working conditions, and give the public more direct control over government through direct primaries to nominate candidates for public office, direct election of Senators, the initiative, referendum, and recall, and women’s suffrage.” Using this definition, each bill was specifically coded as ‘Progressive,’ ‘Anti-Progressive,’ or neither. Agreement between the two individuals coding these bills in a 10% sample of all bills was approximately 75%.

Next, the share of all possible votes cast by representatives from each state in each year that were coded as ‘Progressive’ was calculated. Using legislator by bill observations, each representative’s vote was first coded as “Yea,” “Nay,” “Not voting,” or “Other”. Yea includes “Yea,” “Paired Yea,” and “Announced Yea,” and Nay includes “Nay,” “Paired Nay,” and “Announced Nay.” A vote was considered ‘Progressive’ if it was a Yea vote for a ‘Progressive’ bill or as Nay vote for an ‘Anti-Progressive’ bill. Using each legislator’s home state, votes were then aggregated across legislators and bills to the state-year level, yielding the number of ‘Progressive’ votes cast by legislators from each state in each year. Dividing these numbers by the total possible number of votes yields the share of votes that were ‘Progressive’ for each state and year by legislative body. The total possible number of votes was calculated to account for legislator deaths and states gaining statehood between 1900 and 1930.

* I am grateful to Duane Alwin, Martha Bailey, Jay Bhattacharya, Louis Cain, Will Dow, Frederico Finan, Catherine Fitch, John Gerring, Michael Haines, Larry Katz, Ted Miguel, Mushfiq Mobarak, Pam Nickless, Ben Olken, Leah Platt Boustan, Eric Schickler, Ebonya Washington, Paul Wise, four anonymous referees, and numerous seminar participants for helpful comments and suggestions. Marie Cornwall, Larry Kenny, and John Lott generously provided data, and Jason Bautista, Laura Carwile, Liz Kreiner, Peter Richmond, and especially Nicole Smith provided outstanding research assistance. All historical statistics digitized for this project are available upon request. This project was supported by NICHD grant number R03-HD054682. I am responsible for all errors.

1 According to Richard Easterlin (1999) , “At first, the new knowledge was promoted especially by women reformers through voluntary organizations. But public health agencies assumed an increasing role…” Explaining this shift in responsibility is a central objective of this paper.

2 Opponents of women’s enfranchisement often supported their position with arguments about the potential neglect of children ( Flexner and Fitzpatrick 1959 ). Many empirical studies of women’s status and child welfare have grown from tests of unitary models of household behavior, focusing on lump-sum transfers targeted to women (Thomas 1990 , 1994 ; Rangel 2006 ). Notable exceptions include Luke and Munshi (2007) and Qian (forthcoming) .

3 There are important problems with the traditional Downsian framework ( Besley 2007 ), but these do not imply that politicians are unresponsive to large shifts in voter preferences in predicted directions.

4 In 1900, one in five children did not survive to age five ( US Bureau of the Census 1906 ). By the 1930s, the probability of dying by age five had declined by 65%, and life expectancy at birth had risen from 47 to 63 ( US Bureau of the Census 1938 ; Preston and Haines 1991 ; Haines 2001 ). Much of this mortality decline is explained by reductions in infectious disease deaths as America underwent its epidemiological transition.

5 Prominent voluntary organizations included the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and the National Congress of Mothers (later to become the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, or the PTA).

6 When “men and women divide the work of governing and administering, each according to his special capacities and natural abilities,” the city “will be like a great, well-ordered, comfortable, sanitary household. Everything will be as clean as in a good home. Every one, as in a family, will have enough to eat, clothes to wear, and a good bed to sleep on. There will be no slums, no sweat shops, no sad women and children toiling in tenement rooms. There will be no babies dying because of an impure milk supply. There will be no ‘lung blocks’ poisoning human beings that landlords may pile up sordid profits. No painted girls, with hunger gnawing their empty stomachs, will walk in the shadows” ( Dorr 1910 ).

7 The earliest efforts in western territories also sought to attract female settlers to offset gender imbalances among frontier populations ( Marilley 1996 ).

8 Many historians invoke the remarkably poor correspondence between suffrage movement strength and the enactment of suffrage laws in support of this position, including: (1) The absence of an organized movement in Wyoming (where the first suffrage law was passed); (2) The absence of a suffrage law in Connecticut (where the first state women’s suffrage organization was established) prior to the 19 th Amendment; (3) Equivalent suffrage organization membership in the West and the South (where suffrage efforts were most and least successful, respectively); (4) Early suffrage mobilization in eastern states not followed by early suffrage law enactment; and (5) The correlation between movement strength and suffrage bill introduction not extending to bill passage ( Baumgartner and Leech 1998 ; McCammon and Campbell 2001 ).

9 This section draws heavily on Meckel (1990) .

10 According to the newly-formed federal Children’s Bureau, “It is useless to send pure milk into a dirty home to be handled by an ignorant, dirty mother or older child. It is necessary to reach the mothers, not only to teach them how to care for their baby’s milk, but also to convince them of the necessity of cleanliness” ( U.S. Children’s Bureau 1914 ). For additional information about the emphasis on household hygiene during the Progressive Era, see Ravenel (1921) , Kramer (1948) , and Tomes (1990) .

11 According to Richard Easterlin (1999) , “In the case of infectious disease control… The most important decision-making units have been households and governments… Of the two, governments have been more fundamental than households, because the adoption of new household methods required education programmes that were largely promoted by governmental agencies.”

12 A 1914 Children’s Bureau pamphlet on infant and child care became the best-selling publication ever issued by the Government Printing Office ( Preston and Haines 1991 ).

13 Although Progressive Era data on women’s actual voting behavior following enfranchisement is not available to the best of my knowledge, historians suggest that the widely anticipated ‘gender gap’ in voting did not emerge as expected ( expectations of systematic gender differences in voting are sufficient to produce the hypothesized changes). Politicians recognized this by the late 1920s, allowing the Sheppard-Towner Act to expire in 1929 (although new federal funds were again appropriated under the New Deal) ( Harvey 1998 ). One rare piece of early data – a 1932 study conducted by the National League of Women Voters in thirty-seven states – did find, however, that a larger share of women than men had voted for Norman Thomas (a socialist) in the 1932 presidential election ( Robinson 1933 ). Analyzing data beginning in 1964, Edlund and Pande (2002) find that a gender gap in voting emerged in the 1970s.

14 See the data appendix for a more detailed description of the data used in this paper’s analyses.

15 Although most laws passed before the 19 th Amendment extended full suffrage rights to women, some extended only partial rights (presidential- and primary-only voting rights). These partial suffrage laws were generally enacted in the Midwest shortly before the 19 th Amendment. Specifically, presidential-only suffrage laws were enacted in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Primary-only suffrage laws were enacted in Arkansas and Texas. This paper’s results are not generally sensitive to how suffrage rights in these states are coded (see Appendix Table A.2 ). Given this and historical suggestion that local politicians commonly believed full suffrage to be imminent following partial suffrage laws, I use the dates of first suffrage laws of any type throughout the paper.

16 Conducting analyses with an unbalanced panel of state-level deaths raises the concern that entry into the death registration area was might be correlated with the timing of women’s suffrage laws (or their social, demographic, or economic determinants). To explore this possibility, regressions of registration area entry dates were run on state socio-economic characteristics in 1900 (literacy, employment, manufacturing sector wages, and workforce share in the manufacturing sector), the dates of major Progressive Era events (laws governing women’s suffrage, divorce/alimony rights, mother’s pensions, minimum wage and maximum hours of work for women, prohibition, workers’ compensation, child labor, and compulsory education), and the dates that GFWC chapters were founded in each state. The results suggest no statistically meaningful relationships (see Online Appendix Table 1 ). Online Appendix Table 2 shows states present in the unbalanced mortality sample by year relative to women’s suffrage law enactment. Finally, Section V and Appendix Table A.2 present sensitivity analyses restricted to a constant sample of states as suffrage laws were enacted.

17 I use samples with cities present in all years, but the results are insensitive to including cities that enter and exit during the 1905-1930 period as well.

18 Lee, Moretti, and Butler (2004) provide evidence that political selection was more salient than political competition in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1946 and 1995. Given that suffrage laws do not always occur in election years, this paper’s results are more consistent with political competition. These two mechanisms are not mutually exclusive, and they lead to the same eventual outcomes.

19 Hospitals made negligible contributions to population health until the development of sulfa drugs in the 1930s, and it is doubtful that corrections spending would influence only childhood infectious diseases sensitive to hygienic conditions (see the mortality results presented in Section IV.B.).

20 Table II also shows a large increase in infrastructure investment for charities, corrections, and hospitals, but many cities are missing data for this variable.

21 State social service spending includes appropriations for hospitals, charities, corrections, and state health boards. Given that social service spending is a small share of total spending, increases in total spending are presumably difficult to detect. Lott and Kenny (1999) report a significant increase in total state spending.

22 The direct election of Senators began in 1913 with the ratification of the 17 th Amendment.

23 Lott and Kenny (1999) report an increase in “liberal” voting in both the House and Senate with women’s suffrage. One possible explanation for Progressive voting results varying by chamber is that because members of the House represent smaller areas, they know their constituents better than do Senators – and better anticipated that a ‘gender gap’ in voting would not emerge as originally expected. For a historical analysis of this recognition in the late 1920s, see Harvey (1998) . I thank Pam Nickless for suggesting this explanation.

24 Deaths under age 1 appear somewhat lower the year before suffrage laws, but Online Appendix Table 3 shows that this drop is not statistically meaningful. More generally, there is no statistically meaningful association between suffrage laws and infant deaths reported in the main results (see Figure V ).

25 Because most infant deaths are birth-related and are concentrated in the neonatal period (the first 28 days following birth), the absence of statistically meaningful infant mortality estimates is not surprising given the rudimentary state of early twentieth century obstetrics (even relative to other specialties). Midwives delivered a large share of babies but were incapable of managing common complications of childbirth and managed hygiene poorly in birth settings ( Meckel 1990 ; Preston and Haines 1991 ). Despite the large shift of childbirth from home to hospital between 1900 and 1930, birth conditions did not improve during this period; maternal mortality rates did not decline in absolute terms until the mid-1930s ( Thomasson and Treber 2004 ). Public health campaigns emphasizing hygiene within homes did not address birth conditions.

26 Excluding states in which women were unable to vote until the 19 th Amendment was ratified in 1920 yields the same pattern of results.

27 To calculate these shares, the fraction of years women could vote in each state between 1900 and 1930 was used to weight the mortality reductions shown in Figure V . See Table I for levels and changes in mortality by age and cause during this period.

28 This number is obtained by multiplying mean age-specific deaths the year before suffrage laws were enacted at ages for which statistically significant estimates are shown in Figure V by the corresponding point estimates in Figure V , multiplying by 48 to obtain implied nationwide magnitudes at each age, and then summing across ages.

29 Meningitis is an inflammation of the membrane surrounded the brain and spinal column generally caused by any of roughly fifty types of bacteria. Good household hygiene was the best prevention at the time (it is transmitted by respiratory droplets and other bodily fluids), although there were some early therapeutic successes with intrathecal equine meningococcal antiserum before the advent of sulfa drugs and modern antibiotics. Diphtheria is an upper respiratory tract illness caused by airborne bacteria. A partially effective antitoxin became available in the 1890s, but its use was not widespread; sulfa drugs became the most effective modern therapy. Specific types of diarrheal disease are not reported in the historical mortality statistics (other than typhoid fever); the best preventive household measures were hand and food washing and water and milk boiling.

30 Childhood infectious diseases include diphtheria, meningitis, diarrhea under age two, measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, and whooping cough. All other causes include typhoid fever, malaria, pneumonia, diabetes, circulatory disease, Bright’s disease/nephritis, cancer/tumors, violent accidents, and suicide.

31 The results described in this section but not included in the paper are available online as supplementary appendix materials at: www.stanford.edu/~ngmiller .

32 The single exception is deaths among females ages 15-19 with constitutional conventions (and the point estimate for female deaths at ages 15-19 in Figure V is itself not statistically different from zero). The data used to analyze failed women’s rights initiatives was obtained from Marie Cornwall ( Cornwall 2003 ) and is described in the online data appendix .

33 These are: proportion of urban residents; proportion of home ownership; mean household size; mean number of own children per household; proportion of the population at ages 0-4, 5-14, 15-24, 25-44, and over 45; proportion of males; proportion of married residents; population shares white, black, native American; literacy rate among those ages 10+; labor force participation rate among those ages 16+; and mean Duncan socio-economic index score.

34 This concern is not relevant to mortality among older children, and the absence of changes in adult mortality suggests that the composition of potential mothers did not change.

35 Because the Bureau of the Census’ birth registration area was not established until 1915 and was incomplete until 1933, fertility responses to suffrage laws must be investigated using population census data. My approach is based on women’s state of birth rather than state of residence. Using individual ever-married sample-line women w born in states s and who were age a in the 1940 population census (and who were in a five-year age interval i =15-19, 20-24, …, 50-54 when a suffrage law was enacted in their state of birth), I estimate: b was = α + ∑ i β i ν ias + δ s + δ a + δ s × t + ε was , where b is the number of lifetime births reported by each woman, v is a dummy variable indicating whether or not a woman could first legally vote in a given age interval i , δ s and δ a represent state and age (or birth cohort) fixed effects, and δ s × t represents state-specific linear time (or age) trends. Because lifetime births can reasonably be modeled as count data and the distribution of lifetime births is left-censored at zero, I estimate this equation by maximum likelihood using a negative binomial model.

36 Specifically, I allow for spatial correlation among states within one standard deviation of each other in the distribution of distance between state centroids (using code posted at: http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/timothy.conley/research/gmmcode/x_ols.ado ).

37 Interpolation is used to obtain data for intercensal years. These variables combine extensive data assembled by Michael Haines (made available as ICPSR Study # 2896 ) and Adriana Lleras-Muney (posted at http://www.princeton.edu/~alleras/papers/state2.dta ) and include: population over age 10 in gainful occupations, population over age 10 in clerical occupations, total population, urban population (in cities with 25,000 or more), total black population, total male population, fraction of girls ages 10-15 enrolled in school, fraction of boys ages 10-15 enrolled in school, total illiterate population over age 10, average value per acre of farmland and buildings, average acres per farm, population density, population share foreign born, rural surface road mileage per 1,000 population, value of all crops, and total number of farms.

38 Although this paper’s estimated mortality reductions are large, more powerful forces appear to have been at work during the early twentieth century. Cutler and Miller (2005) report larger mortality reductions in American cities linked to drinking water disinfection, for example.

39 Campaign organizers recruited school nurses to work during the summer, provided the desirable contemporary equivalent of residency training to otherwise unpaid doctors, and enlisted large cadres of volunteers.

40 Additional supplemental information about the data used in this paper’s analyses is available in online at www.stanford.edu/~ngmiller .

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Images from Schlesinger Library

The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted women the right to vote and was ratified by the states on August 18, 1920. The passage and effects of the Nineteenth Amendment are documented in the Schlesinger Library's holdings through archival collections, published materials, and visual materials such as photographs and posters. More information about searching for visual materials can be found on the Photographs page of this research guide.

In the summer of 2020, the Schlesinger Library launched the Suffrage School , a platform where a broad array of researchers, writers, and teachers have been invited to create a series of digital teaching modules. Each lesson in the Suffrage School connects in rich and unpredictable ways to the Library’s Long 19th Amendment Project , which tackles the tangled history of gender and American citizenship.

This page includes links to materials from the Library's collections that are available online as well as links to some external resources. Please consult the other pages in this guide for information about other materials that are not yet available online.

Archival Collections

• Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) Best known for her lifelong crusade for woman’s suffrage, Susan B. Anthony was first active in the temperance and anti-slavery movements. Discrimination within these movements, as well as the influence of her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton, helped to convinced Anthony that women could not fully participate in social action until equal rights were first secured. She helped organize the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869 and served as the second president of the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) from 1891-1900. In 1872, Anthony cast a vote for which she was arrested and tried. She died in March 1906 at the age of 86, fourteen years before the Nineteenth Amendment gave American women the right to vote. This collection has been digitized and is available through the Susan B. Anthony research guide .
• Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950) This collection consists of one autograph letter signed from Blackwell to Anna Child Bird concerning Bird's voting as a presidential elector and mentioning anti-suffragists as electors, including Elizabeth Lowell Putnam. The letter can be viewed online .
• Blackwell-Stone Family collections Materials relating to Lucy Stone and her family's work on the cause of suffrage can be found through a number of Blackwell family collections. All of the collections have been digitized and are available through the Blackwell Family research guide .
• Alice Paul (1885-1977) This collection is digitized. Visit the finding aid for the Alice Paul collection (Call#: MC 399) for access to the digitized content. Alice Paul was a Quaker, lawyer, and lifelong activist for women’s rights. She was active in the Women’s Social and Political Union in England, where she was arrested and jailed repeatedly as a participant in the campaign for women’s rights led by Emmeline Pankhurst. After returning to the United States in 1910, Paul was appointed chair of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1912. In June 1916, Paul founded the National Woman’s Party (NWP), its sole plank a resolution calling for immediate passage of the federal amendment guaranteeing the enfranchisement of women. After the ratification of the suffrage amendment in 1920, the NWP began a long battle to end all legal discrimination against women in the United States and to raise the legal, social, and economic status of women around the world.
• Alice Paul: Jailed for Freedom This book was written by Doris Stevens about Alice Paul's work toward the Nineteenth Amendment. A digitized copy of Alice Paul: Jailed for Freedom can be accessed online .
• The Story of the Woman's Party This book was written by Inez Haynes Gillmore in 1921. A digitized copy of The Story of the Woman's Party can be accessed online .
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Article contents

The woman suffrage movement in the united states.

• Rebecca J. Mead Rebecca J. Mead Department of History, Northern Michigan University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.17
• Published online: 28 March 2018

Woman suffragists in the United States engaged in a sustained, difficult, and multigenerational struggle: seventy-two years elapsed between the Seneca Falls convention (1848) and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment (1920). During these years, activists gained confidence, developed skills, mobilized resources, learned to maneuver through the political process, and built a social movement. This essay describes key turning points and addresses internal tensions as well as external obstacles in the U.S. woman suffrage movement. It identifies important strategic, tactical, and rhetorical approaches that supported women’s claims for the vote and influenced public opinion, and shows how the movement was deeply connected to contemporaneous social, economic, and political contexts.

• woman suffrage
• voting rights
• women’s rights
• women’s movements
• constitutional amendments

Winning woman suffrage in the United States was a long, arduous process that required the dedication and hard work of several generations of women. Before the Civil War, most activists were radical pioneers frequently involved in the antislavery or other reform movements. Later, educational advances and the growth of the women’s-club movement mobilized large numbers of middle-class women, while wage work and trade-union participation galvanized working-class women. In the early 20th century , woman suffrage became a mass movement that effectively utilized modern publicity and outreach methods. Woman suffrage was never a “gift.” Skillful organization, mobilization, and activism were required to build a powerful social movement and achieve the long-sought goal.

Woman suffrage was a radical idea in the 19th century . Suffrage for non-elite white men was still limited in most countries and became the norm in the United States only in the decades before the Civil War—a time when women and people of color were considered deficient in the rational capacities and independent judgment necessary for responsible citizenship. Woman suffrage challenged the legal principle of coverture, which subsumed a married woman’s political and economic identity into her husband’s; it also challenged dominant gender roles that confined women to the domestic sphere. Additionally, suffragists often associated themselves with other radical or reformist political groups who supported the demand as a basic right, a strategy for enhancing democracy, or a practical way to gain allies.

Women’s Status and Women’s Rights in the New Republic

Prior to the American Revolution, property restrictions limited even white male suffrage. Yet some colonial women voted if they paid taxes, owned property, or functioned as independent heads of households, although this was uncommon. The idea of universal suffrage (i.e., voting rights for all citizens) arose from the democratic ideology of the Enlightenment. Revolutionary rhetoric did not automatically result in equal citizenship rights, but it did provide powerful philosophical arguments that supported future struggles. In 1776 , New Jersey enfranchised “all inhabitants” who were worth “fifty pounds” and had resided in the county for a year prior to an election. Coverture still prevented married New Jersey women from voting. But especially after 1797 , unmarried women voted with enough frequency to generate complaints about “petticoat electors” who played critical roles in contested elections, and in 1807 New Jersey disenfranchised women altogether as well as African Americans and aliens. 1

The American Revolution gave rise to the ideal of the “Republican Mother” who educated her children to become future citizens and exerted beneficial moral influences within her family, an ideal that ultimately held important implications for citizenship and voting. To meet the new country’s need for responsible citizens, many schools were established for women (although they did not meet the standards of comparable men’s schools), while the expansion of public elementary education increased the demand for female teachers. By definition, women farmers, slaves, textile-mill operatives, and indigents could not meet emerging middle-class norms of female domesticity. 2

Rapid economic, political, and social change exacerbated prostitution, excessive alcohol consumption, and other problems associated with poverty, particularly in the urbanizing northeast. In response, some urban middle-class women became involved in “moral reform” societies, the most significant of which was the antislavery movement. Both white and African American abolitionist women formed female antislavery societies, but they were criticized when they assumed public roles. Most famously, when Sarah and Angelina Grimké, the transplanted daughters of a slave owner, began to speak before large mixed-race and mixed-sex (“promiscuous”) audiences, they were harshly, even violently, attacked. When the Massachusetts Council of Congregational Ministers issued a pastoral letter in 1837 denouncing their behavior as unwomanly, the sisters responded by defending equality of conscience, emphasizing the importance of female participation in the abolitionist movement, and drawing parallels between slavery and the disadvantaged status of women. 3

The Seneca Falls Convention and the Beginnings of an Organized Women’s Movement

Elizabeth Cady was already deeply embedded in various reform networks in upstate New York when she married fellow activist Henry Stanton and accompanied him to London to attend the World Anti-Slavery Conference in 1840 . At the meeting, a fierce debate erupted over seating female delegates, and the women were forced to retreat to the gallery, where William Lloyd Garrison, the most prominent and radical of the American abolitionists, joined them in protest. Furious, Stanton discussed this injustice with another attendee, Quaker reformer Lucretia Mott, and the two conceived the idea of holding a women’s-rights convention. For the next few years, Stanton was preoccupied with her growing family, but she and Mott met again in 1848 and decided to organize a women’s-rights convention in the small town of Seneca Falls. They placed an announcement in the local newspaper and were astonished when 300 people showed up (including 40 men, most notably Frederick Douglass, a former slave and the country’s most prominent black abolitionist). Stanton opened the meeting by reading the “Declaration of Sentiments,” a document she had prepared by adapting the Declaration of Independence to address women’s issues. Stanton listed many grievances, including lack of access to education, employment opportunities, and an independent political voice for women. Companion resolutions were all approved unanimously except the demand for woman suffrage, which passed by a small margin after a vigorous discussion. The convention at Seneca Falls is traditionally seen as the beginning of the American women’s-rights movement, as well as launching Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s long career as its premier intellectual force. The enthusiasm generated at Seneca Falls quickly led to more women’s-rights conventions. Beginning in 1850 , similar gatherings were held nearly every year of the decade. 4

Conventions and new women’s-rights publications, including The Lily (Amelia Bloomer) and The Una (Paulina Wright Davis), helped activists stay in contact, discuss ideas, develop leadership skills, gain publicity, and attract new recruits, including Susan B. Anthony, a Quaker, temperance activist, and abolitionist. Initial efforts focused on convincing state legislatures to rectify married women’s legal disadvantages with regard to property rights, child guardianship, and divorce. In 1854 , Anthony traveled throughout New York State, organized a petition drive, planned a women’s-rights convention, and secured a hearing before the legislature that was addressed by Stanton. Thus Anthony and Stanton began their fifty-year partnership.

1a. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, ca 1891. Their partnership lasted for over 50 years, although neither lived to see the final accomplishment of their goal.

1b. “The Apotheosis of Suffrage” (1896). Stanton and Anthony’s founding role in the women rights movements is acknowledged by their elevation to the national pantheon by their NAWSA colleagues.

Other important early white activists included Lucy Stone, Abby Kelley Foster, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Clarina Howard Nichols, and Frances Gage. Important African American suffragists included Sojourner Truth, Sarah Redmond, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Amelia Shadd, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Harriet Forten Purvis, Charlotte Forten, and Margaretta Forten. 5 The early women’s-rights movement included both black and white activists, yet relations sometimes became tense when white women ignored or appropriated African American experiences to suit their own purposes. For example, at a women’s-rights convention in 1851 , Sojourner Truth made brief remarks describing the hard work of slave women and citing religious examples to support women’s rights. Some accounts report resistance to allowing Truth to speak and introducing slavery references, but convention president Frances Gage intervened. Gage subsequently edited and reported Truth’s speech in the form of the famous “Ain’t I a Woman” version, which is problematic in its use of dialect and other editorial interventions. 6 After the Civil War, connections between race and gender equity became more problematic as racial attitudes hardened. Racial violence escalated during Reconstruction and continued for decades, while legal discrimination became firmly entrenched, legitimated by scientific racialist theories.

Reconstruction, Civil Rights, and Woman Suffrage

Women’s-rights advocates interrupted their efforts during the Civil War to concentrate on war work, but subsequent debates over the Reconstruction Amendments created new opportunities to reintroduce demands for women’s enfranchisement. Woman suffragists objected strenuously when the Fourteenth Amendment defined national citizenship and voting requirements by introducing the word “male” into the Constitution for the first time. The Fifteenth Amendment established the right of freed black men to vote, but failed to extend the vote to any women, creating a controversy that split the suffrage movement. Some suffragists, including Lucy Stone, her husband and fellow reformer Henry Blackwell, and most (but not all) prominent black activists supported the Fifteenth Amendment, arguing that black men needed the vote more urgently than women did, and expressing concerns that woman suffrage might prevent the amendment from passing. Stanton and Anthony vehemently disagreed and publicly opposed the amendment as they continued to demand universal suffrage. The American Equal Rights Association (AERA), organized in 1866 to promote both causes, supported the Reconstruction Amendments, and proposed the submission of a separate woman-suffrage amendment, first introduced as a Senate resolution in December 1868 . 7

In 1867 , the AERA became involved in two Kansas state suffrage referenda relating to woman and African American suffrage amendments. Stone, Blackwell, Stanton, and Anthony all actively participated, but the growing rift among suffragists soon became evident. The AERA tried to link the issues of black and women’s rights, but suffragists were disappointed when the Republican Party publicly opposed the woman-suffrage referendum. Stanton and Anthony’s overtures to dissenting Democrats—especially George Francis Train, an Irish Democrat, controversial financier, and outspoken racist, generated additional controversy. After a bitter struggle, the Kansas referenda for woman and black suffrage both failed. This crucial campaign effectively severed the connection between voting rights for blacks and women. 8

Convinced by their Kansas experiences that male political support was unreliable, Stanton and Anthony established the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), an independent women’s-rights organization under female leadership, in 1869 . Several months later, Stone, Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, and others established the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Initially these two groups pursued different strategies. A federal woman-suffrage amendment seemed unlikely to pass, so the AWSA concentrated on changing state constitutions. The NWSA articulated a broader women’s-rights agenda and sought suffrage at the federal level. The two organizations worked independently until they merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890 . Each group published a women’s-rights journal. With Train’s financial backing, Anthony founded The Revolution early in 1868 and published many articles related to the problems of working women, prostitution, the sexual double standard, discriminatory divorce laws, criticisms of established religion, and denunciations of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Revolution was very influential but unable to compete with the Woman’s Journal , introduced by the AWSA in 1870 . Although the Woman’s Journal was widely read until it ceased publication in 1931 , it was only one of many women’s-rights periodicals published during this period. 9

As part of its federal strategy, the NWSA also proposed a bold reinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the “New Departure,” arguing that suffrage was a right of national citizenship and since women were citizens they should be able to vote. The Revolution urged women to go to their local polls and use the New Departure argument to try to vote, and a few succeeded. Anthony’s own attempt led to her trial and conviction for violating election laws, but she was not punished (except for a $50 fine, which she refused to pay), eliminating the possibility of legal appeal. In 1875 , the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the New Departure, reasoning in Minor v. Happersett . A Missouri suffrage leader, Virginia Minor, had sued the state for the right to vote, but the court unanimously held that while Minor was indeed a citizen, the right to vote was not one of the “privileges and immunities” that the Constitution granted to citizens. 10

The national woman-suffrage organizations were influential, but there were many independent, often regional, journalists and activists who addressed women’s rights during the postwar period. Few were as colorful or sensational as Victoria Woodhull, who addressed the House Judiciary Committee in 1871 —the first woman ever to do so—and made powerful constitutional arguments that persuaded a minority of representatives. Both Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, aroused controversy. At various times one or both were journalists, stockbrokers, Spiritualists, and labor activists, but Woodhull’s public advocacy of “free love” generated the most vehement criticism. Her basic position was that the right to divorce, remarry, and bear children should be individual decisions, but most of her contemporaries considered these ideas quite scandalous. Woodhull ran for president in 1872 as the nominee of the Equal Rights party, the first woman to do so. Initially Woodhull received some support from other suffragists, but as her notoriety grew, so did suffragists’ concerns about being compromised by association, and many began to repudiate or distance themselves from her ideas and activities (at least in public). 11

Social Change, Women’s Organizations, and Suffrage in the Late 19th Century

Many women became interested in suffrage through their membership in other activities and organizations, especially as a result of the rapid growth of the women’s-club movement. When the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) was established in 1890 , it represented 200 groups and 20,000 women; by 1900 , the GFWC claimed 150,000 members. Often initiated for educational or cultural purposes, discussions frequently turned to social issues such as child welfare, temperance, poverty, and public health. Women who became interested in reform soon realized that they had little political influence without the vote. The GFWC did not officially endorse suffrage until 1914 , however, because the diversity of its constituent groups made the subject contentious and consensus difficult.

African American clubwomen, barred from membership in white women’s organizations, formed the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 . In addition to community work and suffrage agitation, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, and other prominent black women challenged contemporary negative stereotypes about African Americans and worked to increase public awareness of racial segregation, disfranchisement, and violence.

2. Ida B. Wells-Barnett (L) and Mary Church Terrell (R). Both women were prominent African American journalists and activists. Both were founding members of the NAACP and active in NAWSA. Among their many achievements, Wells-Barnett established the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago, while Terrell was the first president of the National Association of Colored Women.

Many white women were indifferent to these issues, however, and some openly expressed the prejudices of the dominant society in their exclusionary rhetoric and organizational policies. 12

The largest of the many new national women’s organizations was the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), established in 1874 . Under the dynamic leadership of Frances Willard, the WCTU emphasized the impact of alcohol abuse on women and families in its agenda of “home protection,” but quickly adopted a much broader social-welfare program, established alliances with labor and reform groups, and supported woman suffrage as a means to achieve its goals. Liquor-control efforts provoked powerful opposition, leading many woman suffragists to distance themselves publicly from the temperance movement even as they appreciated the dedication of WCTU suffragists. 13

The expansion of women’s opportunities for higher education provided another catalyst for suffrage activism. In addition to the many public agricultural and technical colleges established under the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Act, the establishment of a number of private women’s colleges began with Vassar in 1861 . Believing that education would be the key to women’s advancement, founders and administrators set high standards and offered curricula very similar to those at men’s institutions. After graduation, many women who found themselves largely excluded from professional training and employment opportunities channeled their skills and energies into civic engagement and social reform, especially with the rapid expansion of the American settlement house movement after the establishment of Hull House in Chicago in 1889 . As community centers located in poor neighborhoods, settlement houses offered a variety of classes and services, but when social workers realized that their efforts alone could not eradicate problems related to chronic poverty, many became active in reform politics. In addition, new protective and industrial associations tried to help impoverished working women living alone in the cities. While middle-class moral judgments often alienated their intended beneficiaries, these efforts began to establish ties with working-class constituencies and labor organizations that would eventually gain support for woman suffrage. 14

As industrial development, urbanization, and immigration increased, the growing numbers of women in the work force provided new arguments for woman suffrage. Working men understood that few working-class women could depend upon adequate male support, but they were hostile to low-wage female competition because it undermined their own abilities to fulfill the dominant male gender role of family breadwinner. The skilled trades and craft unions discouraged or discriminated against women, although the more progressive Knights of Labor included minorities and women. Urban working-class men were understandably reluctant to grant more power to middle-class women who condemned them as dirty, drunken immigrants and/or violent radicals. Their opposition defeated many state campaigns until working-class suffragists began to characterize the vote as a way to protect female wage earners and to empower the working class as a whole. 15

These socioeconomic and political developments would eventually strengthen support for woman suffrage, but suffragists still faced enormous difficulties. Small, poorly funded groups gathered signatures on petitions and lobbied state legislators to authorize public referenda on the right of women to vote. When successful, they faced the daunting challenge of organizing a statewide campaign. Many suffragists were politically inexperienced and criticized for violating prescriptive gender norms, but over time they built organizations, developed management and leadership skills, articulated effective arguments, and learned to maneuver through the political system. They experienced many disappointing defeats in the process: between 1870 and 1910 , seventeen states held referenda on woman suffrage, but most failed. By 1911 , only twenty-nine states allowed some form of partial woman suffrage: school, tax, bond, municipal, primary, or presidential. Partial suffrage was better than nothing, but it reduced the pressure for full suffrage and did not always motivate women to vote; when women did not turn out to vote, opponents asserted that they were not interested in politics. 16

Women Win the Vote in the West

Reviewing the record in 1916 , NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt counted 480 state legislative campaigns and forty-one state referenda resulting in only nine state or territorial victories, all in the western United States. 17 Indeed, by the end of 1914 , almost every western state and territory had enfranchised its female citizens.

3. “The Awakening” by Henry Mayer (1915). This poster highlights the significance of the western woman suffrage state victories, which enfranchised four million women in the region and established important examples and precedents.

These western successes stand in profound contrast to the east, where few women voted until after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment ( 1920 ), and to the South, where no women could vote and most African American men were effectively disfranchised. Early explanations attributed this unusual history to a putative “frontier” effect (a combination of greater female freedom and respect for women’s contributions to regional development), or western boosterism (efforts to attract settlers), but these reasons are too simplistic. 18 Western women gained the right to vote largely due to the unsettled state of regional politics, the complex nature of race relations, broad alliances between suffragists and farmer-labor-progressive reformers, and sophisticated activism by western women. The success of woman suffrage required building a strong movement, but it was inseparable from the larger political environment, and the west provided suffragists with unusual opportunities. 19

Initially the territorial status of most western areas gave Congress and tiny territorial legislatures the power to decide who could vote. Every application for statehood required a proposed constitution, and the process always involved debates about voting qualifications. Wyoming Territory surprised the nation by adopting woman suffrage in 1869 , although its reasons for doing so remain unclear since there were some dedicated individuals, but no organized movement and little prior discussion. Most likely, the Democratic legislature hoped to embarrass the Republican governor, who signed the bill partly in deference to his wife. In Utah woman suffrage became entangled in the polygamy controversy. Determined to abolish this practice, some Republicans in the U.S. Congress suggested the enfranchisement of Utah women so that they could vote against polygamy. State Democratic Mormon politicians believed correctly that Utah women would vote to support polygamy and authorized woman suffrage in 1870 . In 1887 , Congress punitively disfranchised all Utah voters until the Mormons repudiated polygamy in 1890 , and the church leadership capitulated. The men of Utah were re-enfranchised in 1893 , but women had to wait until statehood in 1896 . In 1883 , the Washington territorial legislature passed a woman suffrage with bipartisan support, as an experiment which could be corrected, if necessary, when Washington became a state. Feeling threatened, vice and liquor interests organized a series of court challenges until the territorial supreme court finally dismissed the law in 1888 . Delegates to the 1889 constitutional convention refused to include the provision because they feared rejection by Congress, but the convention authorized separate suffrage and prohibition referenda on the ratification ballot. Organizers had little time to prepare for statewide campaigns, and both measures met firm defeat. 20

In the 1890s, the rise of the Populist movement provided the context for the first two successful state referenda in Colorado ( 1893 ) and Idaho ( 1896 ). Largely characterized as a western agrarian insurgency advocating an anti-monopoly and democratization agenda, Populism arose from predecessor organizations, such as the Grange and the Farmers Alliances, in which women were actively involved. At the state level, Populist suffragists had some success convincing their colleagues, but at the national level Populists sacrificed their more radical demands to gain broader support, especially after they merged with the Democratic Party in 1896 . Woman suffrage referenda failed in South Dakota in 1890 , and in Kansas and Washington in 1894 despite energetic efforts. NAWSA organizer Carrie Chapman Catt rose to national prominence as a result of her work in the 1893 Colorado campaign, and in 1896 , Susan B. Anthony personally took charge in California. During these campaigns, Anthony and other suffragists made strenuous and sometimes successful efforts to gain endorsements from political parties, but they already knew from bitter experience that unless all the parties supported the measure, the issue of woman suffrage succumbed to divisive partisanship. 21

Challenges and Opportunities at the Turn of the Century

These disappointments had a chilling effect on the suffrage movement leading to a period sometimes described as “the doldrums.” The older first-generation radicals passed on (Stanton died in 1902 , Anthony in 1906 ), and most of the younger leaders (e.g., Rachel Foster Avery, May Wright Sewall, and Harriet Taylor Upton)—privileged women who shared prevailing notions about proper female behavior and resisted radical public-outreach methods—failed to bring innovative new ideas and strategies to the movement. They also alienated key constituencies by complaining publicly that they could not vote but “inferior” (racial-ethnic, working-class, immigrant) men could. Suffrage leaders used economic arguments focused on the growing population of “self-supporting women,” but they rarely cooperated with working-class women and usually chose avoidance or discrimination over collaboration with African American suffragist colleagues. 22

In the 1890s, NASWA turned its attention to the South. Activists in that region’s nascent movement argued that enfranchising white women would provide a gentler way to maintain white supremacy than the harsh measures being implemented to disfranchise African American men. Anti-black sentiments had marred the suffrage movement for many years. Indeed, Southern suffragists like Kate Gordon and Laura Clay protested that the presence of African American women in the suffrage movement undermined their strategy of enfranchising and mobilizing white women to outvote African Americans in order to preserve white hegemony. Personally uncomfortable with these attitudes, Anthony endeavored to keep the race issue separate from woman suffrage, but she did so by reluctantly endorsing “educated suffrage” (i.e., literacy qualifications) and rejecting appeals for help from black suffragists. She even asked her old friend, Frederick Douglass, not to attend the 1895 NAWSA convention in Atlanta for fear of offending southern suffragists. In New Orleans in 1903 , the NAWSA convention excluded black suffragists and approved of literacy requirements, though it was already clear that this “southern strategy” was not working. In the 1890s, southern states passed many measures to disfranchise black men but firmly rejected woman suffrage even with literacy and other restrictions attached. NAWSA retreated from blatant racism and from hopeless Southern state campaigns, but continued to tolerate segregationist policies within the organization and blocked efforts to address issues of racial injustice. NAWSA’s racist practices persisted throughout the struggle for a federal woman suffrage amendment and into the ratification process partly due to the difficulty of overcoming the implacable opposition of conservative states’ rights Southern politicians. 23

During the 1890s, state anti-suffrage organizations began to form, and the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS) was established in New York in 1911 . Suffragists routinely blamed their losses on the “liquor interests” (although political bosses and manufacturers also worried about the consequences of enfranchising reform-minded women) and dismissed women who opposed suffrage as pawns of these interests, but this was not always the case. Some female anti-suffragists supported reform more broadly, belonged to the same clubs as suffragists, and adopted many of the same innovative public-outreach and mass-marketing techniques. Yet many anti-suffragists opposed enfranchisement because they believed that direct female engagement in the dirty business of party politics and voting would deprive women of their claims to moral superiority and nonpartisanship. 24

Modern Suffragists and the Progressive Movement

By 1900 , a new generation of suffragists was growing impatient with what they perceived as timid leaders and tired, ineffective methods and began to employ more assertive public tactics. It was a period of massive political discontent throughout the entire country as many people felt disoriented by rapid modernization and concerned about its consequences. Ideas that had seemed too radical or regional when articulated by Populists in the 1890s now found mainstream support among middle-class urbanites involved in the Progressive reform movement. In the 1890s, Populism failed as a national political force, but it remained influential locally and regionally and appeared, reincarnated, in western Progressivism. 25 Although similar developments were occurring in the east, politically innovative western environments once again contributed to suffrage success. The breakthrough suffrage victories occurred in Washington state ( 1910 ) and California ( 1911 ), quickly followed by Oregon and Arizona ( 1912 ), and Nevada and Montana ( 1914 ). In Washington state, NAWSA organizer Emma Smith DeVoe became the leader of the state organization. DeVoe stressed the importance of good publicity and systematic canvassing while insisting upon ladylike decorum. Suffragists attended meetings of churches and ethnic associations and won endorsements from farmer and labor groups, often through the activism of working-class women. Those who rejected DeVoe’s leadership or moderate approach worked independently, often organizing parades and large public meetings. In 1910 , the referendum passed in every county and city in Washington state, breathing new life into the movement. 26

In California, where a strong progressive political insurgency won the referendum in 1911 , suffragists organized a massive public campaign. They held large public rallies, used automobiles to give speeches on street corners and in front of factories, produced a flood of printed material utilizing striking designs and colors, and coordinated professional press work. Working-class women organized their own suffrage group, the Wage Earners Suffrage League, while Chinese, Italian, African American, and Latina suffragists also worked within their communities. The NAWSA provided foreign-language literature generated locally by the members of the College Equal Suffrage League. Members of the WCTU worked vigorously but quietly. On election day, volunteers carefully watched polling places to discourage fraud, then held their breath for two days until they learned that the measure had passed by a mere 3,587 votes. They realized that victory would not have been possible without an impressive increase in urban working-class support since the last failed referendum in 1896 . 27

These new campaign tactics were quickly adopted by suffragists in other western states, frequently causing tensions between cautious older women and younger activists. In Oregon, for example, the region’s pioneer veteran suffragist, Abigail Scott Duniway, rejected public campaigns, arguing that they alerted and mobilized powerful opponents (mainly the liquor and vice interests). She insisted upon what she called the “still hunt” approach: quiet lobbying and speaking to groups to gain endorsements. Duniway also antagonized WCTU activists by insisting on a strict separation between suffrage and prohibition, especially if both measures were on the same ballot.

In 1902 , Oregon was the second state to adopt the initiative, a Progressive reform that allowed reformers to bypass uncooperative legislature and place measures directly on the ballot. Oregon suffragists subsequently utilized this process to place woman suffrage before voters every two years, but it did not pass until 1912 after frustrated younger women finally wrested control of the state organization from Duniway and implemented the modern model. 28

By 1915 , all western states and territories except New Mexico had adopted woman suffrage. These successes validated the efficacy of dramatic new tactics and created four million new women voters who could be enlisted to support the revived struggle for the federal amendment. In addition, many experienced western suffragists headed east, where similar developments were occurring, most notably in the rise of the National Woman’s Party, but where the opposition was also better organized and funded.

Catalyzed by the Progressive impetus and the excitement surrounding the 1912 presidential campaign, six states held suffrage referenda that year. Three western successes in Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona were counterbalanced by defeats in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan. In Ohio, the “liquor interests” publicly boasted of defeating the measure; failure in Wisconsin was also attributed to the opposition of the state’s important brewing industry. In Michigan, massive electoral irregularities turned initial reports of victory into a loss (by only 760 votes). In 1914 , two western states approved woman suffrage (Montana and Nevada), but in North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, and Ohio, hard-fought campaigns resulted in defeat. In 1915 , there were referenda in four major eastern states, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. If any of these large, urbanized, industrial states passed the measure, the eastern stalemate would be broken, but all failed in spite of massive efforts. The opposition seemed insurmountable in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, where state laws prohibited immediate resubmission, thus suffragists focused on New York, the most heavily industrialized, urbanized, and populated state, and the one with more representatives in Congress than any of the others. 29

The NAWSA Struggles to Keep Up

The still quite frequent assertion that the U.S. suffrage movement was languishing in “the doldrums” during these years rests partly on unquestioned and erroneous assumptions that “the suffrage movement” means events in the east and the activities of the NAWSA. Indeed, the NAWSA leadership seemed to lack the ability to develop more successful strategies and tactics, could not consolidate or focus the energies and innovations of the new generation of suffragists, and were often resistant or openly hostile to their ideas and methods. When Anthony relinquished the NAWSA presidency in 1900 , two women emerged as potential successors, Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw. For several years, Catt had urged major administrative changes and systematic campaign plans coordinated by a strong central state organization under national supervision. Shaw was an old friend of Anthony who had overcome an impoverished background to earn divinity and medical degrees. She has often been described as a brilliant orator but a poor administrator, but a recent study has challenged this conclusion (while not completely overturning it) by noting that this judgment reflects biases in the original sources and overlooks the growth and diversification of the NAWSA membership, its increasingly sophisticated organizational structure, improved fund-raising techniques, and other significant developments during the decade of Shaw’s leadership. 30 Shaw succeeded Catt as president in 1904 when family health issues forced Catt to “retire,” but she remained actively involved in the international suffrage movement and later reestablished herself on the national scene through her work in New York state.

Transnational connections and influences had been important from the earliest days of the movement. In 1888 , American leaders established the International Council of Women (ICW) hoping to promote international suffrage activism, but were disappointed because the organization avoided controversial issues (like suffrage) to focus on moral reform and pacifism. In 1902 , Catt and other frustrated suffragists established the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA). The topic of transnational suffrage activism has received significant scholarly attention recently, revealing extensive and dynamic connections among suffragists worldwide from the mid-1800s well into the 20th century . 31

By the time Catt returned to the U.S. movement in New York in 1909 , she observed many promising developments, especially the growing numbers of women at work and involved in various social-reform activities. Suffragists used affiliations with labor unions and reform groups to form cross-class suffrage coalitions and to appeal to urban working-class voters. They largely abandoned elitist, nativist, and racist rhetoric (at least in public) and emphasized arguments that linked political rights and economic justice for women of all classes. In New York, Harriot Stanton Blatch (Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s daughter) formed the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women in 1907 , which included experienced women trade unionists and suffragists like Leonora O’Reilly and Rosa Schneiderman. Blatch, a suffragist with strong labor and socialist sympathies, had previously lived in England and formed close associations with the British suffragettes. American suffragists consciously repudiated British militancy and violence, however, preferring clever, creative, and colorful activities that gained public attention and sympathy, like the annual suffrage parades Blatch began organizing in 1910 .

4. Suffrage parade in New York City, 23 Oct. 1915. In the early 1900s, the struggle for woman suffrage became a mass and public movement. Suffragists organized highly visible and colorful events, such as this pre-referendum parade in which 20,000 women marched in clear order to send a clear message of their determined purpose.

The basic demand for equal economic justice did not eliminate internal class conflict, however. Late in 1910 , the Equality League became the Women’s Political Union (WPU), indicating a shift to elite leadership and increasing British influence. In 1911 , O’Reilly left to form a separate Wage Earners’ League for Woman Suffrage. 32

In 1909 , Catt formed the Woman Suffrage Party (WSP) hoping to channel these energies and coordinate the movement under her direction. She soon controlled the state association and consolidated most of the state suffrage groups (with the notable exception of the WPU). After an intense lobbying effort, the legislature authorized a referendum vote in 1915 , and the suffragists mounted a huge campaign over the next ten months. They held thousands of outdoor meetings and events, targeted outreach to crucial constituencies, and flooded the state with literature. Catt’s plans included systematic door-to-door canvassing, which eventually reached over half the state’s voters. On election day, the measure lost by a narrow margin, but within days suffragists raised $100,000 and began the work all over again. After another massive campaign, woman suffrage passed in New York in 1917 by over 100,000 votes. The same year, seven states, including Arkansas, granted some form of partial suffrage. In 1918 , woman-suffrage referenda passed in Michigan, South Dakota, and Oklahoma. The eastern blockade was broken, and the South had begun to crack. 33

While Catt exercised masterful managerial and strategic skills in New York, the NAWSA was having trouble keeping up, and Shaw came under increasing criticism from her NAWSA colleagues. Prominent suffragists such as Katherine McCormick, Harriet Laidlaw, and Jane Addams attempted to fill the perceived leadership gap, but many believed that Catt was the only one with the organizational skills to rescue what she herself described as a “bankrupt concern.” Catt resumed the NAWSA presidency in 1915 and began implementing her ideas for bureaucratic reorganization, legislative and partisan lobbying, and systematic campaigning. The previous year, Catt had secretly introduced her “Winning Plan,” which included winning a few targeted campaigns in the east and South under national direction, gaining party endorsements, and renewing the struggle for a federal amendment. Women voters were instructed to lobby their legislators; suffragists in states where referenda successes were considered possible were to coordinate their efforts under national direction; and the goal in the South was some form of partial suffrage. 34 None of these were new ideas, but Catt brought them together in this master plan, which she eventually implemented with remarkable success, but her hostility to militancy, independent activism, and rival leaders intensified when confronted with a dynamic new force, Alice Paul.

Alice Paul and the Congressional Union

Paul did not single-handedly reinvigorate a moribund U.S. suffrage movement, but she was a brilliant organizer and an inspiring leader who soon attracted a cadre of radical and committed activists frustrated by the apparent conservatism and inefficacy of the NAWSA leadership. Determined to win the federal amendment, they aimed to make life miserable for politicians until they achieved their objective. Paul learned this strategy from the British suffragettes during her involvement with them and transplanted it to the United States. As a Quaker, however, Paul rejected their violent tactics and developed other provocative and militant methods. She had an extraordinary talent for organizing highly public suffrage events. Her spirit was contagious and her goal compelling even for mainstream suffragists opposed to radical tactics.

Early in 1913 , Paul and her friend Lucy Burns revived the NAWSA’s quiescent Congressional Committee, initially with that organization’s blessing, but controversy and schism soon followed. Within two months of their arrival in Washington, DC, they had organized a massive suffrage parade, held on March 3, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s presidential inauguration. When the marchers were attacked by a mob and the police failed to protect them, the suffrage movement gained massive publicity and considerable sympathy. In April, Paul and Burns formed an independent organization, the Congressional Union (CU), quickly gathered 200,000 signatures on petitions, and started lobbying President Wilson and other prominent politicians. Paul lost her position as chair of the NAWSA Congressional Committee at the 1913 convention because she defied the national leadership’s efforts to tame her, and she rejected all subsequent reconciliatory approaches. 35

The split deepened when the CU implemented the British suffragette policy of “holding the party in power responsible” by sending organizers into nine western states to persuade women voters to oppose Democratic candidates during the 1914 election. Although politicians insisted that this effort had no impact on their campaigns, half of them lost, and soon thereafter woman suffrage was reintroduced in Congress for the first time in two decades. The proposed Shafroth-Palmer Amendment was not the “Anthony Amendment,” however, which since 1878 had simply stated that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” The Shafroth-Palmer Amendment defined woman suffrage as a “states’ rights” issue, dictated a return to arduous state campaigns (which had largely been unsuccessful), and allowed discrimination against black women. The current NAWSA Congressional Committee chair, Hannah McCormick, endorsed it without consulting the organization’s board, and the proposal received some support from suffragists who saw no alternative to compromise with the Southern states’ rights bloc in Congress. Most suffragists rejected it, however, and continued to demand action at the federal level. After formally organizing the National Woman’s Party (NWP), Paul’s group reprised their attacks on western Democrats in the 1916 election.

5. “Women of Colorado” (1916). One of the first efforts of the NWP was to “hold the party in power” (i.e., the Democrats) responsible for lack of progress on the woman suffrage amendment. In 1914, their efforts to persuade western women voters to vote against the Democratic party were not very effective, but frightened politicians soon moved the amendment forward in Congress. In 1916, the NWP repeated this operation and posted this billboard.

This tactic infuriated Catt since it undermined her efforts to lobby politicians to gain their support. 36

Suffrage during World War I

When the United States entered the war in April 1917 , neither organization abandoned the suffrage struggle. In spite of earlier pacifist activism by Catt and others, the NAWSA urged women to engage in both war work and suffrage agitation, hoping that patriotic efforts would gain additional public support for the cause. The NWP concentrated exclusively on suffrage, continued using militant tactics, and introduced propaganda ridiculing claims that America could fight for democracy while denying women at home the right to vote. Most famously, in January 1917 the NWP began silent picketing outside the White House. Initially tolerated by the Wilson administration, harassment and violence by onlookers escalated, and in June arrests of the picketers began, ultimately affecting 218 women.

6. Picketing the White House. By August 1917, the Congressional Union (later the NWP) had been silently picketing the White House since January, tensions were running high, and crowd attacks on picketers increased. Arrests had begun in June, followed by months-long prison sentences, for the charge of “obstructing traffic.”

At first, charges were dismissed or sentences minimal, but penalties increased over the next few months. Some of the women began hunger strikes to protest the heavy punishment, bad conditions, and brutal treatment in prison; in response, authorities subjected them to forced feeding. Faced with terrible publicity, officials finally released all picketers in late November. That fall, both houses of Congress began to move toward voting on a federal amendment. By this time, all suffragists were focused intently on the federal amendment, but the NWP activists made it clear that they were not going to stop until they got it or died trying. 37

Women’s contributions to national war efforts did affect public opinion, but female enfranchisement did not follow immediately or easily. In January 1918 , President Wilson endorsed suffrage the day before the House of Representatives would vote again on the federal amendment, but the outcome was highly uncertain. Great efforts were made to guarantee every positive vote: several ailing representatives dragged themselves or were carried in, while another left his wife’s deathbed (at her urging), then returned for her funeral. Three roll calls were necessary to establish that the measure had passed with exactly the required two-thirds majority, supported by a significant number of western congressmen responding to pressure from enfranchised female constituents.

The Final Struggle for the Federal Amendment

Hopes for a quick victory were soon shattered. Wilson was preoccupied with the war, so an impatient NWP resumed militant demonstrations that generated more arrests, jail sentences, and publicity. It took a year and a half for the Senate to vote, and only at the instigation of hostile senators confident that it would lose. On September 30, Wilson took the unusual step of addressing the Senate during the debate, describing enfranchisement as only fair considering all the contributions women had made to the war effort, but states’-rights advocates remained adamantly opposed, and it lost by two votes. By December, even the NAWSA threatened to mobilize against unsympathetic politicians in the 1918 elections, and both suffrage organizations did so. In February 1919 , the Senate defeated the amendment again—by one vote—but six more state legislatures had granted women the vote by the time Wilson called Congress into special session in May. This time the measure carried in the House by a wide majority (thanks to the election of over one hundred new pro-suffrage legislators) and passed the Senate on June 4 by a two-vote majority. 38

Ratification of the amendment required another long struggle. It came quickly in states where suffrage organizations remained active, but the process dragged on into 1920 . Finally only one more state was needed, but most of the holdouts were in the South. The battle came to a head in August in Tennessee, with relentless lobbying by pro- and anti-suffrage forces and reports of threats, bribes, and drunken legislators. The state senate passed the measure easily, but in the house there were numerous delays engineered by the opposition, and suffragists believed that they lacked the last votes needed for passage. When the roll call reached Harry Burn, a young Republican from the eastern mountains, he unexpectedly voted “aye,” later explaining that his mother had written urging him to support the measure.

7. Alice Paul and NWP members in August 1920 celebrating passage of the Nineteenth Amendment with a toast to the final 36 th star on the woman suffrage flag.

Thus the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution squeaked to victory. 39

Gaining the right to vote was a huge accomplishment, but it did not automatically guarantee women other political rights (e.g., running for office or serving on juries), nor did it rectify many other discriminatory practices embedded in the law. To address these issues, the NWP introduced the federal Equal Rights Amendment in 1923 , but nearly a century later, it remains unratified. To prepare women for their new civic responsibilities, in 1920 Catt converted the NAWSA into the League of Women Voters (LWV), an organization still dedicated to nonpartisan educational activity. Until recently, analyses of the impact of female enfranchisement focused on the national level during the conservative decade of the 1920s and found little to report: women did not form a solid voting bloc, so major parties soon lost interest in cultivating their support, and few women were elected to office. More recent research suggests a more complicated dynamic, especially at the state level. Although technically enfranchised, spurious restrictions and violence prevented African American women and men from voting for decades, especially in the South. Thus winning the vote did not guarantee all American women full equality, but it recognized their fundamental right of self-representation, permanently changed the composition of the polity, and provided the necessary foundation for subsequent achievements.

Discussion of the Literature

There has been relatively little scholarly interest in the U.S. suffrage movement in recent years. Since this topic was the primary focus of attention as the field of women’s history began to develop, perhaps people think it has been thoroughly examined. That assumption is incorrect for at least two reasons. First, more recent research has identified and investigated previously unexplored aspects, resulting in many new insights, while other topics still deserve fuller attention. Second, we still lack an up-to-date synthetic account that incorporates the findings of these studies, although several excellent essay collections are available. Scholars continue to rely upon the monumental work, The History of Woman Suffrage , compiled by NAWSA activists conscious of the need to document their historic struggle, but it is best treated with caution as a collection of primary sources. In 1959 , Eleanor Flexner published a now-classic synthesis, Century of Struggle (enlarged by Ellen Fitzpatrick and reprinted in 1996 ). This book remains the standard account, but it includes discussions of various contributing factors that have since been well studied as separate topics (e.g., women’s access to education and wage work). No one since has taken on the daunting task of producing a comprehensive account of this vitally important movement.

With surprisingly few modifications, the narrative of the U.S. suffrage struggle has remained static: the Seneca Falls convention was the moment the movement began; it split over controversies precipitated by the Reconstruction Amendments, western victories were anomalous, and the “doldrums” of the 20th century were followed by reinvigoration in the 1910s, culminating in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. The many summary essays available online and books for young people may or may not integrate recent findings, but they all repeat this dominant narrative, so it is past time for a new synthesis that amends, refines, and expands our understanding of this long, complicated, and difficult struggle.

Heavily influenced by the publication of Aileen Kraditor’s book, The Ideas of the Woman’s Suffrage Movement ( 1965 ), subsequent studies thoroughly disrupted any lingering notions about a coherent suffrage “sisterhood.” Kraditor argued that late 19th-century suffragists stopped emphasizing the “justice” of their cause in favor of “expediency” arguments focused on how the vote could be used to achieve other goals. This argument set up a false dichotomy since suffrage arguments based on rights and justice continued to be frequently and powerfully employed, while the exercise of the vote has always been a commonly accepted means to achieve political objectives. Yet there is no doubt that Kraditor’s work made a huge contribution by revealing a movement deeply affected by the elitism, racism, and nativism of many suffragists. It stimulated extensive investigation into problematic tensions among different groups of suffragists as well as analyses of the negative impacts on their audiences.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the feminist movement revived interest in women’s history and in the suffrage movement. The connections to a contemporaneous women’s-rights struggle led some writers to adopt an excessively heroic interpretation, but it did rescue several major figures from relative obscurity, most notably Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul. Beginning in 1975 with the publication of Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869 , Ellen DuBois produced a series of carefully researched works that have had a major impact on the field. For several decades, many studies appeared that identified various groups of previously unrecognized activists (especially African American women, but also anti-suffragists), produced detailed regional studies, examined the influence of suffrage journalism, traced transnational suffrage connections, and reevaluated the consequences of female enfranchisement. In addition, many other scholars considered suffrage as an important element of other women’s reform initiatives, or examined the vote in the context of larger discussions of citizenship. Suffrage itself has not always fared well in these analyses. Was it a narrow goal that diverted attention and energy away from a larger feminist agenda? Ultimately was it even much of an achievement? These questions have received much attention in recent scholarship, especially those considering the impacts of women voters on political processes.

Regional studies of the South and the west have expanded our knowledge of suffrage activity beyond a narrow, eastern-based, focus on NAWSA, but this information remains inadequately integrated into “national” histories of the movement. Ironically, Southern stumbling blocks and the baneful effects of the “southern strategy” are better understood than the contributions of western victories to ultimate success. Many of the most recent studies examine important but previously overlooked state leaders and organizations, but they remain largely isolated from the national context. Some scholars have explored beyond U.S. borders, examining suffrage movements in other countries, the importance of transnational interconnections from the beginning of the movement, and associations with U.S. imperialism. Suffrage rhetoric, media strategies, advertising, and imagery have also received attention, but many texts present pictures and narrative without much analysis, especially those written for popular audiences.

Historians who study woman suffrage tend to focus on women’s organizations and activities, including efforts to build coalitions and influence politicians. Studies by political scientists have often focused on identifying the situations and processes by which the idea appealed to some groups of men and worked its way through the political system. Early efforts to find correlations between demographic characteristics and voting patterns on other issues found few links (with the exception of support for prohibition, even though the suffragists were aware of how problematic that relationship could be). Corinne McConnaughy’s recent book, The Woman Suffrage Movement in America , analyzed the successes and/or failures of efforts to establish political or reform coalitions and influence legislators, but her study is limited to five states and the U.S. Congress. An extensive body of work of Holly J. McCammon and others has emphasized the “various political and gendered opportunities” that encouraged the mobilization of women, as well as and the ways in which they adapted their tactics to fit specific circumstances and framed their arguments to appeal to particular groups. Thus better interdisciplinary integration would be valuable in future research and essential in any new synthetic account.

Currently, much of the interest in suffrage relates to its impact after the vote was won, with considerable debate over the consequences. Such studies examine female voter turnout, women’s relationships with the major political parties, their success (or lack thereof) in running for office, and the impact of the vote on achieving various reforms. Several recent publications by Kristi Anderson, Melanie Gustafson, and others reveal a great deal of female political involvement in the 1920s, usually at the local, state, or regional levels. Other analysts, including Nancy Cott and Anna Harvey, are more pessimistic in discussing how the national women’s movement split and fizzled out in the 1920s once the common goal had been achieved, racial and class divisions increased, political parties became indifferent, and inexperienced women voters adapted poorly to partisan politics.

In a recent essay, “Getting Right with Women’s Suffrage,” Jean Baker reviewed these various developments and suggested ways to revitalize suffrage studies. These include: better integration into survey courses and related examinations of the American political system, renewed attention to organizational requirements for individual and associational leadership, expanded emphasis on transnational activism, and continued discussion of suffrage in the context of citizenship definitions and nation building. Additional work on specialized aspects will always be welcome, but better integration of our existing knowledge is necessary to provide a firmer foundation for future scholarship in this important field.

Primary Sources

The best collection of primary sources remains the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage , edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper. Keenly aware of the historic significance of their work, suffragists thoroughly documented their efforts and published the first volume in 1887 . As a collection of reports, conference proceedings, state histories, and other material, it remains invaluable. Because the authors were themselves activists in the suffrage movement, however, this volume also reveals their biases and rivalries and must be used carefully in conjunction with other sources. It is available in a reprint edition, as a CD, and online ( Internet Archive ). 40 A selection of these materials is available in The Concise History of Woman Suffrage, edited by Mari Jo and Paul Buhle. A more recent book of primary sources is Women’s Suffrage in America , edited by Elizabeth Frost-Knappman and Kathryn Cullen-Dupont , which combines a variety of documents with introductory essays and chronologies. 41

Available on microfilm are The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and History of Women Microfilm Collection . 42

Major archival repositories include the following: the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, DC, contains the Susan B. Anthony Papers, Blackwell Family Papers, Nannie Helen Burroughs Papers, Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Mary Church Terrell Papers, National American Woman Suffrage Association Records, the National Woman’s Party Papers, and the League of Women Voters Collection. The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, holds the Blackwell Family Papers, Carrie Chapman Catt papers, Olympia Brown Papers (microfilm), Elizabeth Boynton Harbert Papers, Harriet Burton Laidlaw Papers, Catharine Waugh McCulloch Papers, Leonora O’Reilly Papers, Anna Howard Shaw Papers, Sue Shelton White Papers, Matilda Joslyn Gage Papers, Maud Wood Park Papers (microfilm), New York Association Opposed to Political Suffrage for Women Papers, and the Women’s Rights Collection. Many of these collections are available on microfilm.

Other major repositories holding specific archival collections, and much additional related material, include the New York Public Library and the Sophia Smith Collection, Women’s History Archives at Smith College, Northampton, MA. A wealth of information can be found all over the country in university collections, and in state and local historical societies and archives.

Links to Digital Materials

• The Library of Congress , The Seneca Falls Convention.
• The Library of Congress , Woman Suffrage Teacher’s Guide .
• National Archives: Teaching With Documents: Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment .
• National Women’s History Museum , including online exhibits on “Political Culture and Imagery of American Woman Suffrage” and “Votes for Women”.
• The History Channel , “History of Woman’s Suffrage in America”.
• “The Fight for Woman Suffrage” .
• PBS , “Not for Ourselves Alone.”
• Alexander Street Press , “‘Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600–2000” (database available through subscription only).

Further Reading

• Adams, Katherine H. , and Michael L. Keene . Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign . Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008.
• Anderson, Bonnie . Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830–1860 . New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Anderson, Kristi . After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics before the New Deal . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
• Baker, Jean H. , ed. Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited . New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Baker, Jean H. “Getting Right with Women’s Suffrage.” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 5.1 (January 2006): 7–17.
• Beeton, Beverly . Women Vote in the West: The Woman Suffrage Movement, 1869–1896 . New York: Garland Press, 1986.
• Cott, Nancy F. The Grounding of Modern Feminism . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.
• DuBois, Ellen Carol . Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869 . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978.
• DuBois, Ellen Carol . Woman Suffrage and Women’s Rights . New York: New York University Press, 1998.
• Finnegan, Margaret . Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women . New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
• Flexner, Eleanor , and Ellen Fitzpatrick . Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States . Revised edition. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1996.
• Gordon, Ann D. , and Bettye Collier-Thomas , eds. African American Women and the Vote, 1837–1965 . Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997.
• Graham, Sara Hunter . Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
• Green, Elna C. Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
• Gustafson, Melanie , Kristie Miller , and Elisabeth Israels Perry , eds. We Have Come to Stay: American Women and Political Parties, 1880–1960 . Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.
• Harvey, Anna L. Voters without Leverage: Women in American Politics, 1920–1970 . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
• Kraditor, Aileen S. The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920 . New York: W. W. Norton, 1965.
• McConnaughy, Corrine M. The Woman Suffrage Movement in America: A Reassessment . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
• Marilley, Suzanne M. Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States, 1820–1920 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
• Materson, Lisa G. For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois, 1877–1932 . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
• Mead, Rebecca J. How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868–1914 . New York: New York University Press, 2004.
• Scott, Anne F. , and Andrew W. Scott . One Half the People: The Fight for Woman Suffrage . New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1975.
• Sherr, Lynn . Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words . New York: Random House, 1995.
• Sneider, Allison . Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870–1929 . New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn . African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850–1920 . Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998.
• Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill . New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States . New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
• Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill , ed. One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement . Troutdale, OR: New Sage Press, 1995.
• Zahniser, J. D. , and Amelia Fry . Alice Paul: Claiming Power . New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

1. Jan Ellen Lewis , “Rethinking Women’s Suffrage in New Jersey, 1776–1807,” Rutgers Law Review 63.3 (2011): 1017–1035.

2. Linda Kerber , Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998); and Margaret A. Nash , Women’s Education in the United States, 1790– 1840 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

3. Kathryn Kish Sklar , Women’s Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830–1870: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2000).

4. Many authors have addressed these events and their significance; see, for example, Ellen Carol DuBois , Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 21–52, and Sally M. McMillen , Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). In addition to Stanton’s autobiography, there are many biographies, most recently Lori Ginzberg , Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life (New York: Hill and Wang, 2009).

5. Eleanor Flexner , Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Movement in the United States , rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1975), 82–92; and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn , African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850–1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 13–35.

6. There is no definitive version of the text and no agreement whether Truth was met with approval or resistance when she rose to speak. It took almost 150 years for the historical record to be corrected; see Nell Irvin Painter , “Representing Truth: Sojourner Truth’s Knowing and Becoming Known,” The Journal of American History 81.2 (September 1994): 461–492.

7. DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage , 52–78, 162–202; Terborg-Penn, African American Women , 23–35; and Flexner, Century of StruggleI , 145–152.

8. DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage , 84–103.

9. DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage , 79–161; Flexner, Century of Struggle , 153–156; and Martha M. Solomon , ed., A Voice of Their Own: The Woman Suffrage Press, 1840–1910 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002).

10. Ellen Carol DuBois , “Taking the Law into Our Own Hands: Bradwell, Minor, and Suffrage Militance in the 1870s,” in Woman Suffrage and Women’s Rights , ed. Ellen Carol DuBois (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 114–138; and Flexner, Century of Struggle , 156–158;

11. For a recent review of several biographies of Woodhull, see Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz , “A Victoria Woodhull for the 1990s,” Reviews in American History 27.1 (March 1999): 87–97.

12. Karen J. Blair , The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–1914 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980).

13. Ruth Bordin , Frances Willard: A Biography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986).

14. Barbara Miller Solomon , In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986); Robyn Muncy , Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform: 1890–1935 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1991); and Kathryn Kish Sklar , Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

15. Flexner, Century of Struggle , 134–144, 197–207, 236–240.

16. Flexner, Century of Struggle , 228, 269–270, 300, 319–320.

17. NAWSA , Victory: How the Women Won It: A Centennial Symposium (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1940), 53, 72–73.

18. Alan P. Grimes , The Puritan Ethic and Woman Suffrage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967); T. A. Larson produced many articles about woman suffrage in various states that are still factually informative, but the analytical arguments of both these authors are now considered obsolete.

19. Rebecca J. Mead , How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868–1914 (New York: New York University Press, 2004); Holly J. McCammon and Karen E. Campbell , “Winning the Vote in the West: The Political Successes of the Women’s Suffrage Movements, 1866–1919,” Gender and Society 15.1 (February 2001): 55–82; and Beverly Beeton , Women Vote in the West: The Woman Suffrage Movement, 1869–1896 (New York: Garland Press, 1986).

20. Mead, How the Vote Was Won ; 35–52; and Allison L. Sneider , Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870–1929 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 57–86.

21. Mead, How the Vote Was Won , 53–95; Suzanne M. Marilley , Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States, 1820– 1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 124–158; Flexner, Century of Struggle , 228–231; Michael L. Goldberg , An Army of Women: Gender and Politics in Gilded Age Kansas (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); and Susan Scheiber Edelman , “‘A Red Hot Suffrage Campaign’: The Woman Suffrage Cause in California, 1896,” California Supreme Court Historical Society Yearbook 2 (1995): 51–131.

22. Aileen S. Kraditor , The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965), 123–218.

23. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement , 213–214; and Terborg-Penn, African American Women , 109–135. The Southern suffrage movement was not monolithic in its goals and methods, but it was dominated by elite women, some more volubly racist or conservative than others. See Marjorie Spruill Wheeler , New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993); and Elna C. Green , Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

24. Susan E. Marshall , Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Campaign against Woman Suffrage (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997); and Susan Goodier , No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-suffrage Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013).

25. The Progressive movement has been studied exhaustively, and there are many studies describing women’s involvement. For a general review of its impact on woman suffrage, see Eileen L. McDonagh and H. Douglas Price , “Woman Suffrage in the Progressive Era: Patterns of Opposition and Support in Referenda Voting, 1910–1918,” American Political Science Review 79.2 (June 1985): 415–435.

26. Mead, How the Vote Was Won , 97–118. After winning the vote, DeVoe organized a National Council of Women Voters to focus the power of western women voters on the federal amendment effort, working briefly with the Congressional Union until shifting to support Catt’s Winning Plan; see Jennifer M. Ross-Nazzal , Winning the West for Women: The Life of Suffragist Emma Smith DeVoe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011).

27. Mead, How the Vote Was Won , 119–149; Gayle Anne Gullett , Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women’s Movement, 1880–1911 (Urbana, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000); and Susan Englander , Class Coalition and Class Conflict in the California Woman Suffrage Movement, 1907–1912: The San Francisco Wage Earners’ Suffrage League (Lewiston, NY: Mellen Research University Press, 1989).

28. Mead, How the Vote Was Won , 101–107; see also Ruth Barnes Moynihan , Rebel for Rights: Abigail Scott Duniway (London: Yale University Press, 1983).

29. Flexner, Century of Struggle , 269–270, 279–281.

30. Trisha Franzen , Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 1–15.

31. See, for example, Bonnie Anderson , Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Leila J. Rupp , Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); and Patricia Greenwood Harrison , Connecting Links: The British and American Woman Suffrage Movements, 1900–1914 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000).

32. Ellen Carol DuBois , Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 88–147; and Annelise Orleck , Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900–1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 87–113.

33. Flexner, Century of Struggle , 258–263, 281, 300–301. DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch , 88–181. Convinced that a second campaign in 1917 would fail, Blatch did not participate.

34. Flexner, Century of Struggle , 266–267, 281–285; and Robert Booth Fowler, “Carrie Chapman Catt, Strategist,” in One Woman, One Vote , ed. Wheeler, 295–314. There are several biographies of Catt available; see, for example, Jacqueline Van Voris , Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life (New York: Feminist Press of the City University of New York, 1987).

35. J. D. Zahniser and Amelia Fry , Alice Paul: Claiming Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); and Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene , Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008).

36. Adams and Keene, Alice Paul , 141–156; Inez Haynes Irwin Gilmore , The Story of the Woman’s Party . Reprint. (New York: Kraus Reprint, 1971); and Linda G. Ford , “Álice Paul and the Triumph of Militancy,” in One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement , ed. Marjorie Spruill Wheeler (Troutdale, OR: New Sage Press: 1995), 277–294.

37. Adams and Keene, Alice Paul , 157–241; see also Kimberly Jensen , Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008).

38. Eileen L. McDonagh , “Issues and Constituencies in the Progressive Era: House Roll Call Voting on the Nineteenth Amendment, 1913–1919,” Journal of Politics 51.1 (February 1989): 119–136.

39. Flexner, Century of Struggle , 286–303, 317–337.

40. Salem, NY: Ayer, 1985; and Louisville, KT: Bank of Wisdom.

41. Facts on File Eyewitness History Series (2005).

42. The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony , eds. Patricia G. Holland and Ann D. Gordon (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, c. 1991); History of Women Microfilm Collection (New Haven, CT, Research Publications, 1976–1979).

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Women's Rights

The 19th Amendment guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation. Beginning in the mid-19th century, woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered radical change.

First introduced in Congress in 1878, a woman suffrage amendment was continuously proposed for the next 41 years until it passed both houses of Congress in 1919 and was ratified by the states in 1920. The campaign for woman suffrage was long, difficult, and sometimes dramatic, yet ratification did not ensure full enfranchisement. Many women remained unable to vote long into the 20th century because of discriminatory laws.

Explore photographs, textual, and other records related to suffrage in the National Archives Catalog.

Educational Resources

Explore teaching and learning resources for the Women's Suffrage, including primary sources, online tools, lesson plans, and multimedia on DocsTeach.org, our online tool for teaching with documents.

• Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment, Primary Source Set
• DocsTeach: Women’s Suffrage
• DocsTeach:  Petitions & Letters in Support of Women's Suffrage
• DocsTeach:  Photos of Women's Suffrage Protests & Activities
• DocsTeach:  Women of Color in the Suffrage Movement
• DocsTeach:  The Anti-Suffrage Movement
• DocsTeach:  Passage & Ratification of the 19th Amendment

Research at the National Archives: Suffrage

While many resources are available online for research, there are many more records to discover in National Archives’ research rooms across the country. The following records have been described at the Series and File Unit level, but have not yet been digitized. This list is not exhaustive; please consult our Catalog to browse more records, and contact the Reference Unit listed in each description for more information.

• The Committee on Woman Suffrage was created in 1917 and continued to exist until 1927, when it was abolished during the 70th Congress. The resolution to establish the committee gave it jurisdiction over all proposed legislation touching the subject of woman suffrage, a subject that had been in the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee. Committee Papers, 1919 - 1920 : This series contains the committee papers for the Committee on Woman Suffrage from the 66th Congress.
• Petitions of the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections, 3/10/1871 - 1946 . The records of the committee include woman suffrage, voting rights, direct election of Senators, and campaign financing.

Articles, Blog Posts, and Other Resources:

• Woman’s Place in America: Congress and Woman Suffrage
• A Petition for Universal Suffrage
• 19th Amendment
• The Making of Women’s Equality Day : NARAtions blog
• Putting the “Rat” in Ratification – Tennessee’s role in the 19th amendment : Pieces of History blog
• The Women of World War I in photographs : The Unwritten Record blog
• Taking a Stand for Voting Rights : Prologue Magazine

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Women’s Suffrage

By: History.com Editors

Updated: May 2, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

The women’s suffrage movement was a decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy: Disagreements over strategy threatened to cripple the movement more than once. But on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

Women’s Rights Movement Begins

The campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War . During the 1820s and '30s, most states had extended the franchise to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had.

At the same time, all sorts of reform groups were proliferating across the United States— temperance leagues , religious movements, moral-reform societies, anti- slavery organizations—and in many of these, women played a prominent role.

Meanwhile, many American women were beginning to chafe against what historians have called the “Cult of True Womanhood”: that is, the idea that the only “true” woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family.

Put together, all of these contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen of the United States.

Seneca Falls Convention

In 1848, a group of abolitionist activists—mostly women, but some men—gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the problem of women’s rights. They were invited there by the reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott .

Most of the delegates to the Seneca Falls Convention agreed: American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” proclaimed the Declaration of Sentiments that the delegates produced, “that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

What this meant, among other things, was that they believed women should have the right to vote.

Civil Rights and Women's Rights During the Civil War

During the 1850s, the women’s rights movement gathered steam, but lost momentum when the Civil War began. Almost immediately after the war ended, the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution raised familiar questions of suffrage and citizenship.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, extends the Constitution’s protection to all citizens—and defines “citizens” as “male”; the 15th, ratified in 1870, guarantees Black men the right to vote.

Some women’s suffrage advocates believed that this was their chance to push lawmakers for truly universal suffrage. As a result, they refused to support the 15th Amendment and even allied with racist Southerners who argued that white women’s votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African Americans.

In 1869, a new group called the National Woman Suffrage Association was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. They began to fight for a universal-suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Others argued that it was unfair to endanger Black enfranchisement by tying it to the markedly less popular campaign for female suffrage. This pro-15th-Amendment faction formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association and fought for the franchise on a state-by-state basis.

Gallery: The Progressive Campaign for Suffrage

This animosity eventually faded, and in 1890 the two groups merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the organization’s first president.

By then, the suffragists’ approach had changed. Instead of arguing that women deserved the same rights and responsibilities as men because women and men were “created equal,” the new generation of activists argued that women deserved the vote because they were different from men.

They could make their domesticity into a political virtue, using the franchise to create a purer, more moral “maternal commonwealth.”

This argument served many political agendas: Temperance advocates, for instance, wanted women to have the vote because they thought it would mobilize an enormous voting bloc on behalf of their cause, and many middle-class white people were swayed once again by the argument that the enfranchisement of white women would “ensure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained.”

Did you know? In 1923, the National Woman's Party proposed an amendment to the Constitution that prohibited all discrimination on the basis of sex. The so-called Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified.

Winning the Vote at Last

Starting in 1910, some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the first time in almost 20 years. Idaho and Utah had given women the right to vote at the end of the 19th century.

Still, southern and eastern states resisted. In 1916, NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt unveiled what she called a “Winning Plan” to get the vote at last: a blitz campaign that mobilized state and local suffrage organizations all over the country, with a special focus on those recalcitrant regions.

Meanwhile, a splinter group called the National Woman’s Party founded by Alice Paul focused on more radical, militant tactics—hunger strikes and White House pickets, for instance—aimed at winning dramatic publicity for their cause.

World War I slowed the suffragists’ campaign but helped them advance their argument nonetheless: Women’s work on behalf of the war effort, activists pointed out, proved that they were just as patriotic and deserving of citizenship as men.

Finally, on August 18, 1920 , the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. And on November 2 of that year, more than 8 million women across the United States voted in elections for the first time.

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The Economics of Women's Rights

Two centuries ago, in most countries around the world, women were unable to vote, had no say over their own children or property, and could not obtain a divorce. Women have gradually gained rights in many areas of life, and this legal expansion has been closely intertwined with economic development. We aim to understand the drivers behind these reforms. To this end, we distinguish between four types of women’s rights—economic, political, labor, and body—and document their evolution over the past 50 years across countries. We summarize the political-economy mechanisms that link economic development to changes in women's rights and show empirically that these mechanisms account for a large share of the variation in women's rights across countries and over time.

Manuscript in preparation for the Marshall Lecture to be published in the Journal of the European Economic Association. We thank Elizabeth Boyle and Irem Ebetürk for kindly sharing their data. Our gratitude goes to Ursula Behresheim and Yasar Ceylan for excellent research assistance. We thank Graziella Bertocchi, Alice Evans, Rohini Pande, Todd Schoellman, and the editor Romain Wacziarg for helpful comments. Financial support from the German Research Foundation (through the CRC-TR-224 project A3 and Leibniz prize TE966/2-1) is gratefully acknowledged. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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While American women had been fighting for the right to vote for decades prior to the ratification of the 19th Amendment on August 18, 1920, it was not until World War I that their cause for political independence regained momentum, says Stanford legal scholar Pamela S. Karlan .

Stanford Professor Pamela S. Karlan on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, during the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Selma-Montgomery march for voting rights. (Image credit: Courtesy Pamela S. Karlan)

As women filled jobs vacated by men fighting the war overseas, public attitudes toward women’s role in American democracy began to shift dramatically. By 1918, President Woodrow Wilson acknowledged to Congress that women’s role in the war effort was vital to the war effort, explained Karlan.

“Suffragists conscripted rhetorical claims advanced in favor of the war, and pointed to women’s key role on the home front, to bolster their arguments in favor of domestic expansion of voting rights,” said Karlan, the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law in an interview with Stanford News Service. “Times of crisis can be opportunities to make real progress.”

Here, Karlan discusses what the 19th Amendment accomplished and the challenges that persist today. For example, while white women have encountered few legal obstacles to voting since the amendment’s ratification, Black Americans have endured persistent racial discrimination – despite the 15th Amendment’s parallel prohibition against denying citizens the right to vote on account of race or color.

Karlan is one of the nation’s leading experts on voting and the political process. She has served as a commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission, an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and a deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Karlan is the co-author of leading casebooks on constitutional law, constitutional litigation and the law of democracy, as well as numerous scholarly articles.

What did the 19th Amendment accomplish?

The 19th Amendment guaranteed that women throughout the United States would have the right to vote on equal terms with men. Prior to the 19th Amendment, while many western states had given women the right to vote, most states east of the Mississippi River restricted the right to vote only to men.

What does the 19th Amendment symbolize to you?

It symbolizes that women in the United States are full citizens, entitled like all others to participate actively in self-government.

1917 poster for the New York state campaign for voting rights for women. (Image credit: U.S. Poster Collection, Hoover Institution Library & Archives)

The franchise did not happen overnight, but through decades of campaigning by women’s suffragists. What makes constitutional change, especially the franchise, so challenging? What resistance and obstacles did these activists encounter?

The Supreme Court held, in the Minor v. Happersett case, in 1874, that the Constitution did not prohibit restricting the franchise to men. What made formal constitutional change hard to accomplish was, in part, that the existing electorate in most of the country was entirely male and the mechanism for formally amending the Constitution runs through existing legislative bodies – many of which were entirely, or predominantly, elected by men. What made changes in constitutional interpretation – for example, in interpreting the equal protection clause – so difficult, was that public attitudes often treated women as less rational and independent than men, and therefore less qualified to participate in public affairs.

What might activists today learn from the suffrage movement?

Sometimes, activists don’t recognize that times of crisis can be opportunities to make real progress. The suffrage movement seemed stalled by the first decade of the 20th century. But World War I changed the dynamic and ultimately strengthened the suffrage movement. The industrial demands of modern war meant that women moved into the labor force and contributed to the war effort on the home front. In 1918, President Wilson, who had ignored suffrage completely in his 1916 address to Congress, gave an address in which he supported suffrage “as a war measure,” noting that the war could not be fought effectively without women’s participation.

Moreover, the United States claimed it had gone to war to make the world “safe for democracy.” Suffragists conscripted rhetorical claims advanced in favor of the war, and pointed to women’s key role on the home front, to bolster their arguments in favor of domestic expansion of voting rights, For example, in her article about suffrage and the 19th Amendment , Justice O’Connor reports that “when the new Russian Republic extended the vote to women following its revolution, suffragists taunted President Wilson with the lack of similar progress in the United States.”

“Constitutional change comes about through people … pressing for their rights.” —Pamela S. Karlan The Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law

What did the 19th Amendment fail to accomplish, and what can be done to continue to promote the franchise among voters?

In narrow terms, the 19th Amendment was stunningly successful, especially in comparison to the 15th Amendment, which in essentially identical language forbid denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color. White women throughout the U.S. have faced very few legal barriers to voting since the amendment’s ratification. By contrast, racial discrimination in voting – the form of discrimination prohibited by the 15th Amendment – persisted in a prevalent and explicit form for essentially a century, essentially denying Black women in the South the right to vote until passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And even today we continue to see all kinds of barriers to full and equal participation by minority citizens.

The United States has a decentralized, politicized system for regulating the franchise that stands in sharp contrast to most other developed democracies. We need to enact laws with real teeth in them that enable every citizen to register, to cast a ballot and to have that ballot counted.

What do you tell your students about the 19th Amendment?

I often start my Constitutional Law course with two things – a short video of the House of Representatives opening its session by reading the Constitution, in which Rep. John Lewis was invited to read the 13th Amendment, and an excerpted version of the opinion in Minor v. Happersett . This is designed to remind them that there are many methods of interpreting the Constitution – Minor showcases them all – and that constitutional change comes about through people – some of them, like Lewis, younger than my students even – pressing for their rights outside the courts.

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Course: US history   >   Unit 7

The nineteenth amendment.

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• The Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920. It declares that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
• The amendment, which granted women the right to vote, represented the pinnacle of the women’s suffrage movement, which was led by the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
• In their decades-long struggle for female enfranchisement, women’s rights advocates met with strong opposition from anti-suffrage activists.

The women’s suffrage movement

Opposition to women’s suffrage, what do you think.

• For more on the Seneca Falls Convention, see Sally McMillen, Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
• Ellen Carol DuBois, Woman Suffrage and Women’s Rights (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 10.
• Corrine M. McConnaughy, The Woman Suffrage Movement in America: A Reassessment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 2-3.
• For more on the anti-suffrage movement, see Anne Myra Benjamin, Women Against Equality: A History of the Anti-Suffrage Movement in the United States from 1895 to 1920 (Raleigh, NC: Lulu Publishing Services, 2014).
• For more on the women’s rights movement, see Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1996).

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Women’s Suffrage in California: What One Document Reveals

Almost a decade before the Nineteenth Amendment enfranchised women nationally, California became the sixth US state where women could vote alongside with men. This post looks at a piece of ephemera from the California Historical Society’s collection that illuminates the campaign for women’s suffrage.

On October 10, 1911, California became the sixth US state where women could vote equally with men, nine years before the Nineteenth Amendment enfranchised women nationally.

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The battle for suffrage had been long, with many dramatic highs and lows. In 1893 the California Legislature passed a bill recognizing women’s suffrage rights, only to have the governor veto it. Three years later, in 1896, suffrage made it onto the ballot as California Amendment 6, only to fail with 44.6 percent support.

One artifact from the California Historical Society’s collection can tell us quite a lot about the campaign for women’s suffrage. It’s a piece of ephemera, specifically what was once known as a broadside—a paper printed on one side and intended to be posted, publicly distributed, or sold. Although undated, we can tell that it was created in support of the 1911 campaign and not the earlier one in 1896 because of the other states and countries it lists. (Specifically, women in Washington State obtained suffrage in 1910.) We also glean from it that the fight for suffrage was not just happening in the United States; it was a global movement, and California appears here situated in that much wider international context.

This particular piece of campaign material was created by the College Equal Suffrage League, a national organization begun in 1900. A prominent member was Maria de Lopez, whose father had come from Mexico to the San Gabriel Valley in 1849. De Lopez was a member of the Los Angeles–based Votes for Women Club and president of her local College Equal Suffrage League in 1911, when campaigning was at a fever pitch. Thanks to her, suffrage leaflets were translated into Spanish, fifty thousand of which were distributed by election day. She gave speeches from Ventura to Pasadena in both English and Spanish, and a week before the election she drew a crowd of thousands at a rally in Los Angeles Plaza.

Earlier campaigns, such as the one in 1896, were predominantly led by white, middle-to upper-class women, but the 1911 campaign would never had succeeded had it continued in that vein. Working women such as Selina Solomons, labor activists such as Maude Younger, women of color such as Sarah Massey Overton, single women, church groups, women’s clubs—they all came together as a coalition. There were indeed divisions, there were disagreements, and there were exclusions, but leaders had learned from earlier failures that victory required partnerships among those who shared a desire for progress.

  Surviving broadsides, pamphlets, flyers, buttons, and other materials are all evidence of the incredible amount of work that went into the 1911 campaign—the organizing, the coordination, the fundraising, the publicity and promotion, the strategies, the messaging. In small print at the very bottom of our broadside we can make out the words “10 cents the hundred.” Supporters would buy them in bulk and distribute them as far and wide as possible.

Because of the demographics of earlier campaigns, their meetings were mainly held in private homes. The 1911 campaign was grassroots and far more public, and involved large meetings in public spaces, marches in the streets, speeches in churches and union halls, and plenty of door-to-door work. Like the message in this broadside, the 1911 campaign was big and bold and visible.

Our broadside also brings to our attention the different kinds of suffrage that were part of the conversation at the time: “full suffrage” versus “municipal suffrage” or “school suffrage.” Women would be given voting rights in some arenas, such as the local school district or at the level of city government. In 1893, California’s governor vetoed a bill granting women even the right to vote in school elections, remarking that they could not be trusted to go to the booth for one purpose and not try to vote in other matters.

By bringing up comparisons with other states, this broadside prompts the question of what the California movement learned from other states’ campaigns. One takeaway was the previously underestimated importance of the rural vote. In 1869, forty-two years before California women could vote, Wyoming legislators passed a suffrage act giving women in the territory the right to vote and hold public office (when the territory became a state in 1890, women retained the right to vote). Lawmakers wanted to bring more women to the sparsely populated region, and recognized that if women had a say in how the territory was run, they would be more willing to settle there.

Leading up to 1911, women’s suffrage was strongly contested in densely populated areas, particularly San Francisco, Oakland, and Alameda. These were the places heavily influenced by the liquor trade, and where saloon owners virulently opposed female suffrage, convinced that women would vote for prohibition. Knowing that the cities would be a tight call, and knowing that women’s suffrage had passed in states with more rural voters, California suffrage leaders very strategically went after the rural vote. Public speakers were mobilized and sent to every town with at least two hundred residents.

And indeed, on Election Day, October 10, 1911, San Francisco and Alameda counties voted down the measure, and it just barely passed in Los Angeles. But when votes from the rural districts were tallied days later, suffrage had come out on top by a difference of 3,587 votes—a hairsbreadth of just 0.73 percent. The strategy had paid off. Men from the San Fernando, San Joaquin, and Sacramento Valleys, the state’s three major farming areas, had overwhelmingly voted to give women the vote.  

Other states now had fresh impetus to push forward with their own campaigns. Note this 1912 broadside from the Oregon chapter of the College Equal Suffrage League, which cites California as a success story!

To read more about the often overlooked role of Asian American, African American, and Native American women in California’s women’s suffrage movement, see the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls website: https://women.ca.gov/women-of-color-and-the-fight-for-womens-suffrage/ .

Unlocking growth: The untapped power of women in political leadership

Tea trumbic, silvana koch-mehrin, dominik weh.

Progress towards legal gender equality has stalled in many parts of the world. The data published earlier this year by Women, Business, and the Law report reveals that women, on average, have less than two-thirds of the legal protections that men have, down from a previous estimate of just over three-quarters. This stark reality is a sobering reminder of the challenges that still lie ahead.

For example, the absence of legislation prohibiting sexual harassment in public spaces, such as mass transit, hampers women's ability to access employment opportunities and fully participate in the workforce. The lack of services and financing for parents with young children places a disproportionate burden on women. Furthermore, the effectiveness of gender-sensitive legislation is often undermined by inadequate enforcement mechanisms. In many regions, women's limited political clout fuels a self-perpetuating cycle of restricted legal rights and reduced economic empowerment.

Recognizing the importance of women's representation in political leadership, the World Bank, represented by the Women Business and the Law (WBL) report , Women Political Leaders (WPL) , and the Oliver Wyman Forum (OWF) , have joined forces to address the challenges faced by women in political leadership positions. Our collaborative efforts under the Representation Matters program aim to foster women’s participation in decision-making positions, and to promote legal equality and economic opportunities not only for women, but for everyone.

The initiative comes at a critical time. Achieving equal opportunity is not only a fundamental human right for half of the world's population; it is also an opportunity to drive faster economic growth, fostering prosperity for all.

Expanding research on women's political representation. The Representation Matters program will focus its efforts on analyzing the impact of bolstering women's political representation on laws and policies that foster economic and legal gender equality. These insights could turn the vicious circle of limited legal rights and diminished economic empowerment into a virtuous one in which women participate at a higher rate in the political process, step into leadership and decision-making positions, and promote laws and policies that empower women.  

The dividends of cultivating such a virtuous circle can be substantial. Several World Bank programs have demonstrated that empowering women through information and cash transfers improves children's health and educational outcomes and makes economies more resilient. The World Bank estimates that eliminating discrimination against women could increase the global GDP by 20% over the next decade.

Nevertheless, the political landscape remains challenging for women. Instigating a positive shift will require changes in culture and political institutions. Numerous legislative bodies still lack provisions for paid maternity leave or paternity leave, while gender balance remains elusive in many governing chambers. Hostile environments can often drive many women away from politics, with a significant proportion leaving after just one term. A global survey of female parliamentarians revealed widespread psychological violence, including sexist remarks and imagery, with 44% of respondents facing threats of death, rape, or abduction.

Political institutions could learn from the private sector. While not flawless, leading companies are actively evaluating their policies and work environments to attract and retain talent across genders, while closely monitoring recruitment performance. The recent Oliver Wyman Forum's Global Consumer Sentiment survey showed a shift in attitudes, with fewer Gen Z women than men expressing disinterest in political leadership—a first among all current generations.

The partnership seeks to amplify the message that increased female representation enhances overall progress and countries’ performances in the Women, Business and the Law index through joint research, analysis, and strategic outreach. The expected outcomes include:

The Representation Matters program marks a pivotal stride in the journey toward gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. By leveraging our collective expertise, resources, and networks, we are committed to producing data-driven evidence, raising awareness, and shaping policy dialogues. Through this joint effort, we seek to create a more inclusive and equitable society where women's voices are heard, and their contributions are valued. Together, we can build a future where representation truly matters.

To learn more about the program, please visit Representation Matters .

• Women, Business, and the Law

Women, Business and the Law project Program Manager

President and Founder of Women Political Leaders

Partner, Public Sector, Finance & Risk, Oliver Wyman

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Empowering voters & defending democracy: Celebrating 104 years of women’s voting rights

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - It has now been over 100 years since women were given the right to vote in the U.S.

Today, women play a vital role in our government, both in national and local elections.

“For 104 years, this has been an uphill battle,” League of Women Voters of Wisconsin’s Executive Director Debra Cronmiller said.

104 years has passed since the ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.

Cronmiller said it’s also been more than a century since the League of Women Voters was formed.

“We’ve made it our mission for all these years to provide education about candidates and voting, voting process, motivate individuals to participate politically,” she said.

Cronmiller says we have too few people participating in the political process. The League is trying to change that.

When it comes to voting, the League of Women Voters (LWV) empowers people to be a part of our democracy and to get out and vote for who they want to see in office.

“It’s all about helping people access the information they need and to help them feel like their vote counts, that it matters,” Cronmiller said.

Cronmiller adds, with a number of women running for office in both state and local races this upcoming spring election, it’s important that voters get out to support the women candidates.

“Interestingly, when women run for office, they oftentimes are elected. We have a very good success rate,” she said. “We just don’t have enough women running for office.”

LWV is working to break down barriers for years to come in politics and women’s history.

“We’re excited as an organization to see more women in rooms where decisions are being made, not just in political office but in corporations and in all walks of life,” Cronmiller said. “We’re not there yet. There’s still a lot of glass ceiling, there’s still a lot of doors that are closed to women. But it’s great every year to have a month where we can celebrate the successes of women...”

The 2024 spring primary election is on Tuesday, April 2.

The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan, grassroots political organization established in 1920. For more information about the organization, click here .

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guest essay

Is There a Constitutional Right to Talk About Abortion?

By Linda Greenhouse

Ms. Greenhouse, the recipient of a 1998 Pulitzer Prize, reported on the Supreme Court for The Times from 1978 to 2008 and was a contributing Opinion writer from 2009 to 2021.

There has hardly ever been as fierce a defender of free speech as the current Supreme Court.

Since John Roberts became chief justice almost 19 years ago, the court has expanded the protective net of the First Amendment to cover such activities as selling videos depicting animal torture, spending unlimited amounts of money in support of political candidates and refusing to pay dues (or a dues-like fee) to a public employee union.

This last decision, Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, overturned a 41-year-old precedent and led a dissenting justice, Elena Kagan, to accuse the majority of “weaponizing the First Amendment.” In the 303 Creative case last year, the court gave a Christian web designer the First Amendment right not to do business with would-be customers whose same-sex wedding websites would violate her views about marriage.

The court’s version of free speech has become a powerful tool against government regulation. Six years ago, effectively striking down a California law, the court gave so-called crisis pregnancy centers — offices that try to imitate abortion clinics but strive to persuade women to continue their pregnancies — a First Amendment right not to provide information on where a woman could actually get an abortion. The state said the notice was needed to help women who came to such centers under the false impression that they provided abortions. In his majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas said the “unduly burdensome” requirement amounted to unconstitutionally compelled speech.

Now the question is whether the court’s solicitude toward those who would rather not talk about abortion extends in the other direction. What about state laws that prohibit rather than require offering information about where to get an abortion?

While there is not yet such a case on the Supreme Court’s docket, lower courts have been tightening a First Amendment noose around efforts by anti-abortion states to curb the flow of information about how to obtain legal abortion care across state lines. Federal District Courts in Indiana and Alabama both ruled this month that while states in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise can ban abortion, they cannot make it illegal to give abortion-related advice, including advice to minors seeking abortions without parental consent.

A federal magistrate judge issued a similar ruling last November on Idaho’s abortion law, one of the most extreme in the country, which makes it a crime to assist a minor in obtaining an abortion in any state without a parent’s consent. Idaho could criminalize abortion, the judge, Debora Grasham, wrote. “What the state cannot do,” she went on, “is craft a statute muzzling the speech and expressive activities of a particular viewpoint with which the state disagrees under the guise of parental rights.” The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard Idaho’s appeal on May 7.

With the Supreme Court extremely unlikely to revisit its decision 23 months ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that eradicated the constitutional right to abortion, the question of how far states can go to prevent their citizens from finding alternative ways to terminate a pregnancy will become increasingly urgent. In his concurring opinion in the Dobbs case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised the question of whether a state could now “bar a resident of that state from traveling to another state to obtain an abortion.” The answer was “no,” he continued, “based on the constitutional right to interstate travel.” It is worth noting that Justice Kavanaugh wrote only for himself; none of the other conservatives who made up the Dobbs majority joined him. “Other abortion-related legal questions may emerge in the future,” Justice Kavanaugh offered noncommittally.

The future arrived quickly enough in the form of the two abortion-related cases awaiting decision before the court’s current term, which concludes at the end of June or in early July. Both are anomalous in that they involve questions of federal rather than state authority.

One, Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine , concerns the government’s approval of the expanded use of the medication that first received F.D.A. approval 24 years ago. Medication abortion now accounts for more than half of abortions in the United States. The case contains an off-ramp for the court that, based on the argument in March, the justices appear likely to take: Because the anti-abortion doctors, dentists and medical groups who challenged the F.D.A. suffered no harm from the availability of the medication, and are unlikely to suffer harm in the future, they never had standing to bring the case in the first place.

The other, Moyle v. United States, results from a clash between the federal government and Idaho over whether federal law requires the state to provide emergency abortion care in its hospitals. The outcome largely depends on whether the court accepts the Biden administration’s view that there is no abortion exception to the law at issue, which prohibits hospitals from turning away people who need emergency care.

In the abortion cases in Indiana, Idaho and Alabama that may yet find their way to the Supreme Court, the justices would face the acute dilemma of reconciling their fealty to the First Amendment with the profound anti-abortion sentiment the Dobbs majority opinion displayed.

In defending their laws, the states argue that what they are prohibiting is not actually speech but conduct, namely inducing criminal activity. Rejecting this argument in the Indiana case, Judge Sarah Evans Barker of Federal District Court wrote that the Planned Parenthood affiliate that challenged the law simply “seeks to provide truthful information to clients regarding out-of-state options and medical referrals to out-of-state providers for abortion services that are legal in those states.” A prohibition on providing such information, the judge said, “does not further any interest Indiana may have in investigating criminal conduct within its borders.” In the Alabama case, another Federal District Court judge, Myron Thompson, observed that “unable to proscribe out-of-state abortions, the attorney general interprets state law as punishing the speech necessary to obtain them.”

From the cases they are in the process of deciding this term, the justices are well aware that their effort to wash their hands of the nettlesome business of abortion has failed. One or more of the First Amendment cases is likely to reach the court during its next term. I wonder if the justices have a clue about how much pain lies ahead when they have to decide whether the right to speak inevitably encompasses the right to choose.

Linda Greenhouse, the recipient of a 1998 Pulitzer Prize, reported on the Supreme Court for The Times from 1978 to 2008 and was a contributing Opinion writer from 2009 to 2021.

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