So we're ready to get into the meat of the efforts for women's suffrage in the 20th century. So we'll look at the tactics that they used, some more of the tactics that they used, and some responses and outcomes. So let's see. So we know that women had been attempting not only to get suffrage, but just to have to make public it. um, gestures, uh, toward this effort to let people know that this was going on, um, in addition to introducing amendments into Congress.
So they, we, women started introducing women's suffrage amendments as early as 1868, then again in 1878, then again in 1887. And sometimes these would pass the House, but not the Senate. Um, women are trying to vote as sort of a, you could say a stunt, right? So as early as 1872, you have Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth both trying to vote.
In 1887, 172 women in New Jersey bring their own ballot box and ballots to the polls as a protest. And so, you know, women were trying and doing things publicly for a long time. But this sort of ramped up, you could say, in the early 20th century.
And so what were some of the responses to this, these efforts? So there was a lot of opposition from various quarters, including some women, some elite women, upper class women opposed suffrage and even organized against it. For a couple of reasons. They thought that women's proper role was as a moral influence.
And so that would be decreased if they get involved with politics through voting, sort of a zero sum game in their eyes. And they worried that, quote unquote, unfit women would get the right to vote. Probably you could say classist, elitist, potentially racist arguments. Right. The liquor industry was also opposed to this because women were at the forefront of the temperance and prohibition movements against alcohol consumption.
And so they didn't want those women to then have the ability to vote and potentially regulate the liquor industry or even shut it down. Industrial manufacturers opposed women's right to vote because they were employing and in some cases exploiting. women's and children's labor, and again, didn't want regulations voted on by women.
And then there was even an organization, the National Association Opposed to Women's Suffrage. And this had typically an interesting argument. It was what we would call an essentialist argument that women are inherently different than men, specifically.
being maternal, so that their intrinsic being and role is of being mothers, and that this is, you know, a fixed difference with women and that their place is in the context of the home and family. The interesting thing is, is this essentialist argument could also be made in the other direction for suffrage. For example, Florence Kelly advocated for suffrage based on the fact that, yes, women are different and that women have, therefore, unique needs that required representation in Congress and in the vote, in the ballots.
So really fascinating opposing views using the same argument. But this gives you a picture of the range of people involved in opposition to suffrage. And how did they do this? So they promoted these ideas through print materials quite often.
So this is a really fascinating pamphlet from the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. And it's amazing rhetorically because it's using all of this sort of domestic rhetoric, this these words and images. So there's a little cozy little cottage on the cover.
And it's called Household Hints and it's addressed to housewives. And it includes, you know, spot removers. you know, literally how to remove stains from clothing. But then at the bottom of that, it says there is, however, no method known by which mud-stained reputations may be cleaned after bitter political campaigns, right?
So they're using this rhetoric of housework to argue for women to vote no on suffrage. Other arguments were less nice, let's say. It was quite common for, especially in the visual arts, postcards and posters and cartoons to be very derogatory towards suffragists.
And it was very common to make them look ugly, as you can see in some of these examples. And it was implied that they were loveless. So...
They were old maids who wanted husbands. You know, nobody loves me, guess I'll be a suffragette, says this little image in the center here. So very sort of derogatory.
Well, not sort of, very derogatory toward suffragists. There were also sort of these visual arts arguments about the outcome of women's right to vote. And typically they... argued that that maternalism that was supposedly inherent in women would be damaged and the family would be damaged.
So babies would be crying for their moms because they weren't home. And fathers especially would be left holding the baby while the mother is going out to vote. The image on the left says, on the image that's supposed to be on the wall above the husband there.
What is a suffragette without a suffering household? So kind of a play on words about suffragette and suffering. So very sort of compelling visual arguments against suffrage.
And then this last group is kind of funny. This depiction of cats, photos of cats dressed up as if they are going to vote. I could almost argue that they were meant to sort of make it lighthearted and not necessarily so negative, but I think on the whole they were negative.
This one on the right with the cat that says votes for women on the sign around its neck, the caption is, I'm a catty suffragette. I scratch and fight the police. So long as they withhold the vote, my warfare will not cease.
So this is pointing to that militant. more violent, those tactics by suffragists. So that's probably, I think you could argue, opposing these suffragists.
So what were some of the suffragists'then response? How were they trying to make their efforts attractive to especially other women? So there was this effort to make suffrage attractive to the modern woman, right? So it's This is not about our foremothers like Susan B. Anthony. This is now the 20th century, and we are young, modern women who want the vote, right?
And this is very much influenced by the British suffragist movement, appealing less to this elite group of women that typically dominated the suffrage movement, more toward middle class women who were interested in reform and working class women who were interested in representation and power, right? And so they used their clothing and depictions of their clothing and their conduct in some cases to make themselves look respectable, but also modern, right? So you see in this image on the right, of a suffrage parade in 1912 with a woman pushing her baby in a stroller, right?
So it's like she's saying, yes, I'm a mother. I have this maternalism, but I also want the vote, right? So it's advertising also. NASA was slower to accept this.
It's more dominated by the old guard and the younger generation who are more militant-like. Lucy Burns and Alice Paul are pushing this different vision, and that's part of why they broke off and created their own organizations. So, one of the things that Alice Paul and Lucy Burns did was lead this procession, this parade in Washington, D.C.
in 1913. So they organized this. And it is a huge spectacle, right? This is an event.
It is held the day before President Wilson is inaugurated. So it's in Washington, D.C. There's lots of people in town there for the inauguration, and this parade is massive. It's over 500 women marching. There are 20 floats and nine music bands and four mounted brigades, and it's in the newspapers.
There's tons of photos taken. There's lots of imagery that we'll look at in a second. And so it's this big spectacle, this big deal. And it is a site of violence yet again.
A hundred people were put in the hospital as a result of violent opposition while this parade was going on. So this is not just a lovely, peaceful event. It is also met with violence. But the way that this parade is promoted and enacted is fascinating. And we have photographs, right?
So these two are incredible photographs. The one on the left is this woman wearing the costume of Columbia. So this is the symbol of the United States as a woman. And she has got sort of this Roman look. It's a very traditional.
image, a symbol of the United States from antiquity, calling from antiquity. So she's very militaristic in a sense, right? You can see she's got armor and a helmet and a staff. It looks like it has an eagle on the top, right?
So very, very much recalling some of the imagery of the Roman Republic that was very popular at the very beginning of the US. in the late 1700s and early 1800s. And then on the right here we have a woman dressed up as Liberty and her attendants. So again, she's dressed kind of like a Roman woman from antiquity as a symbol of liberty.
So they're still relying on images of women, classical women, who are beautiful but also powerful. and patriotic. These are symbols of the country, right?
But on a less beautiful note, there was segregation, racial segregation at this parade, at this march. Alice Paul herself argued that there could be a white procession or a black procession or none at all. So not integrated. But...
Black women's organizations pressured them to allow women to march, just march, period. And Alice Paul agreed, but she said, y'all can march in the back. So it's like back of the bus, right, in a more modern context. So this is part of the suffrage movement in general, that there was segregation.
We've talked before about women being Black women being able to be members of suffrage organizations, but often segregated on the local level. It's also part of, generally speaking, the suffrage movement's southern strategy, quote unquote, that was trying to appeal to white women in the South who were pro-segregation. So they didn't want to lose that support among white women. But you had these Black women and their organizations demanding to be present at this march. And this beautiful photo is of Delta Sigma Theta, a sorority at Howard University, historically Black university, that marched.
And they marched next to the New York delegation. So they refused to accept. physical separation in the march.
And the same could be said for Ida B. Wells Barnett, who is this famous journalist who is one of the things she's most well known for is writing and publicizing about the scourge of lynching of Black people in the United States. And she was a suffragist and founded a suffrage group in Chicago and came to this march in Washington, and she was told, well, you have to march in the back. And she said, well, I'm not going to do that. So she waited on the sidelines until her state delegation came by, the Illinois delegation, and she stepped in with her white colleagues. And she said, I am not taking this stand because I personally wish for recognition.
I am doing it for the future benefit of my whole life. whole race. So there's this pushback by Black women against this segregation in the suffrage movement.
Unfortunately, this is pretty pervasive, not only in U.S. culture at the time, but in the suffrage movement, because the women's suffrage movement included women with all kinds of political beliefs and ideologies. including overtly white supremacist women who were even members of the Ku Klux Klan. And this is the case that the Ku Klux Klan had lots of women members. You can see a parade with them a little bit later in 1928 here in this picture, parading down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. with their KKK robes on.
So this is... unfortunately a part of the suffrage movement as well. The Southern legislatures and municipalities had been, and counties had been suppressing, voter suppressing Black men, even though they had been enfranchised by the 15th Amendment. And there was this concern among them that the Southern white people that if you enfranchise women, you'll end up with more Black voters because that's more Black women that can vote, right?
And so white suffragists then would argue that, oh no, we just want to extend the vote to white women, not Black women. So it's a pervasive issue in the suffrage movement at this time. So to quickly sum up, there were these efforts. for modernizing the suffrage campaign, targeting politicians who could lose female voters if their own states, you know, if they weren't supporting suffrage.
It's modernizing the look of the movement toward younger women. It's being opposed, though, by lots of opponents mobilizing themselves as well, including women, using essentialist arguments about women and maternal status being mothers, and that's used both to oppose and support suffrage. And then this exclusion of Black women from the suffrage movement broadly, but also even more so in the South. in order to maintain the support of Southern white women.
So really a lot going on in the early 20th century for suffrage, increasingly in the public eye.