Women's Suffrage Flashcards
How did women support the Populist Party and farmers?
Greater food production was held in the 1870s and railways threatened small-medium farms. Farmers tended to support the Populist Party and Elizabeth Lease was an orator for this; women showed support for the Grange movement and Farmers’ Alliance. Protests were held in defence of farmers.
What was the Charity Organisation Society?
The Charity Organisation Society was an outlet for urban women to become public representatives of charities. Educated women established settlement houses in the 1880s with 400 built offering classes for women. Alongside this, in the 1900s women lobbied for states to pass pension legislation to protect divorced and widowed women.
How did feminists distance from the civil rights movement?
In 1866 the American Equal Rights Association was set up to secure rights for women and African Americans. The Fourteenth Amendment intervened with states trying to deny men the right to vote, and the Fifteenth Amendment stopped states banning voting according to race, colour, and previous servitude. The abolitionist movement put civil rights at the forefront of their goals and women became increasingly distanced from the movement.
What was opposition to suffrage?
In 1911 the National Association Opposed to Women’s Suffrage formed, arguing against offering women the vote as supported by the Remonstrance Journal. Many women argued that having political equality would reduce their value in being angels of the hearth, and Catholic immigrants, supported by their priests, argued that voting would weaken the family. Southern Democrats feared the pushing for labour protection or action against the Jim Crow laws.
Which states first legalised voting and what happened when Susan B Anthony tried to vote?
The federal system meant in 1869 Wyoming legalised the vote for women, and Utah in 1870, with Mormons practising polygamy and not wanting women to appear exploited. In 1871-2 Susan B Anthony and 150 women tried to test the 14th and 15th amendments and were arrested for electoral malpractise, refused the right to speak at trial. The jury deemed them guilty.
How did the women’s campaign for the vote change throughout the 1880s-90s?
Throughout the late 1880s-1900s there were small steps made in local voting. Only twenty states permitted widowed women with school-age children to vote, but men saw it as a distraction from their domestic duties, and hostile crowds prevented women from voting.
Women moved away from focus on civil rights to discuss how they could provide insight to family and domestic issues such as temperance, social reform, and working conditions improvement, alongside raising children.
Who was Elizabeth Cady Stanton?
Elizabeth Cady Stanton worked closely with Susan B Anthony to secure the right for women to vote, giving property rights to married women, and the right for divorced/separated women to have access to their children, alongside liberalisation of divorce laws.
Who was Susan B Anthony?
Susan B Anthony was a founding member of the American Equal Rights Association in 1866 and published the journal Revolution. She also tried to vote illegally in 1872 and campaigned against abortion, a threat to women’s health.
How did the suffrage campaign originate and when was AWSA founded?
1848 - Women’s rights campaign begins with Stanton and Mott founding the Women Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, NY.
Lucy Stone founded AWSA, The American Women’s Suffrage Association, focusing on gaining voting rights for African Americans and moderate approach to gaining the right to vote for women on a state level.
What was the NWSA and when did NAWSA form?
NWSA: National Women’s Suffrage Association founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony in 1869.
NAWSA: AWSA and NWSA merged in 1890 to form the National American Women’s Suffrage Association. By 1905 it had 17,000 members increasing to 100,000 by 1915 but only 1/2 of people involved with temperance supported it.
Who was Carrie Chapman Scott ? (NAWSA)
1900 - Carrie Chapman Scott replaced Susan B Anthony and took moderate approach to gaining suffrage through lobbying politicians, making headway state by state, distributing leaflets, and holding marches/public meetings.
Who was Alice Paul? (CUWS)
Alice Paul visited Britain in 1906 and co-founded the Congressional Union for Women’s Suffrage, (CUWS), inspired by suffragettes, and held mass demonstrations and daily picketing of the white house. She received a seven month sentence in prison for illegally voting in a presidential election and went on hunger strike.
By 1918 NAWSA achieved 20 states giving women the right to vote in state elections.
When did women gain the vote?
Women on the Home Front during WWI led to President Wilson in 1918 calling for a Constitutional Amendment, given in 1919. The Nineteenth Amendment was set in 1920 when 36 states ratified it.
How successful was NAWSA?
NAWSA did gain some African American and immigrant women support but was largely a white middle class organisation. The women’s movement was splintered as women disagreed over acceptable spheres of activity outside the home. Interest of women in political attitudes was very limited, and the extent to which mass American women valued the vote was a matter of debate.
