Suffrage!

So many anonymous women…

“First Wave” feminism It took decades for women to obtain the vote—and they fought hard for it! Early beginnings—women leaders in Abolitionist movement Parallel between slavery and marriage (married woman was “civilly dead”)

Sojourner Truth That man over there say women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches—and ain’t I a woman? I could work as much as a man and bear the lash as well—and ain’t I a woman? I have borne five children and seen them almost all off into slavery and when I cried out with a woman’s grief, none but Jesus hear—and ain’t I a woman? (cited on www.feminist.com/resources).

Sarah Moore Grimke

Grimke sisters broke the rules! Left the South because slavery was so abhorrent to them Spoke to both men and women—1830s Denounced by ministers "men and women were CREATED EQUAL.... Whatever is right for a man to do, is right for woman....I seek no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God destined us to occupy”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Stanton’s childhood When she was four, her little sister was born. She heard so many of her parents’ friends saying “What a pity it is she’s a girl!” that she felt sorry for the baby. “True,” she wrote, “our family consisted of five girls and only one boy, but I did not understand at that time that girls were considered an inferior order of beings.”

If only she were a boy Later when her only brother died, she approached her father when he was sitting by the coffin. He embraced her and said, “Oh, my daughter, I wish you were a boy!” and she responded by saying that she would “try to be all my brother was.” She tried her best to get her father to say one day, “Well, a girl is as good as a boy, after all” but he never did. Despite her academic achievements, he would only say, “Ah, you should have been a boy!”

Seneca Falls speech by Stanton We have met To uplift woman's fallen divinity Upon an even pedestal with man's.

Susan B. Anthony

Anthony quote Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval

Women lobbied for decades Here was an army of young Amazons who looked them straight in the eye, who were absolutely informed, who knew their rights, who were not to be frightened by bluster, put off by rudeness, or thwarted either by delay or political trickery. They never lost their tempers and they never gave up…They were young and they believed they could do the impossible…

Alice Paul—wrote the ERA

Prison

Forced feeding The authorities responded by first placing her in a psychiatric ward, then later force feeding her. This method consisted of using a metal clamp to force her mouth open for the tube, thus prompting the name for her: Iron-Jawed Angel. She still continued the hunger strike for weeks

Iron-Jawed Angel

Dorothy Day showing off her old prison dress

She got arrested in 1917 Social activist—Catholic Worker Movement (advocated for the poor) Picketed outside the White House in 1917 as part of Silent Sentinels Arrested—in jail for 10 days (7 on hunger strike) “I saw Dorothy Day brought in. She is a frail girl. The two men handling her were twisting her arms above her head. Then suddenly they lifted her up and banged her down over the arm of an iron bench – twice.” Later became a Catholic, but never wanted to be canonized---“Don’t call me a saint,” she once said, “I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”

Not just white women

Opposition to women’s right to vote Women belong in the home, not the public sphere Women are not smart enough to vote Why else would somebody oppose this social change?

Activism before the internet

Determination

First vote!!!

It took courage to stand up

Getting heckled

Newspaper office--Suffragist

Youngest parader in NYC

Rep. Jeanette Rankin (left)

Pro-suffrage cartoon

She did her homework!

Suffragette with attitude