In Honor of Women’s Equality Day: 9 Badass Suffragists
In Honor of Womens Equality Day: 9 Badass Suffragists
August 26 is Womens Equality Day, commemorating the date in 1920 that American women officially secured the right to vote. While Elizabeth Cady Stanton first rallied women to the cause of suffrage during the Seneca Falls convention, eventually inspiring her good friend and fellow activist Susan B. Anthony to take up the fight as well, many other women both preceded and succeeded them in the battle for the ballot box.
Here are nine American women who spoke out for womens rights and womens suffrage from the earliest days of the republic until the passage of the 19th Amendment.
Judith Sargent Murray:
The daughter of a wealthy merchant, Murray taught herself from the family library while her brother prepared for Harvard University, a future barred to Murray. In her influential essay On the Equality of the Sexes, completed and published years before Mary Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Murray argued that the only intellectual hurdle women faced was not their limited intelligence, but their lack of access to equal education. Will it be said that the judgment of a male of 2 years old, is more sage than that of a females of the same age? she asked rhetorically in her essay. I believe the reverse is generally observed to be true.
How is the one exalted, and the other depressed, by the contrary modes of education which are adopted! The one is taught to aspire, and the other is early confined and limited. As their years increase, the sister must be wholly domesticated, while the brother is led by the hand through all the flowery paths of science.
The Grimke Sisters:
Sarah_Moore_Grimke
Angelina Grimke
The Grimke sisters, born in the early 1800s, were not only some of the first white women from a slave-holding Southern family to publicly fight for emancipation, but they were also among the first to tie womens rights to abolition. Younger sister Angelina was a powerful orator whose anti-slavery message was occasionally obscured by her scandalous decision to speak in front of mixed crowds of both men and women, a practice branded promiscuous in her time. Sarah, older and a great influence on Angelina, became a well-known writer after her original plan to attend Yale Law School was scuttled by family and society.
. . . .
Victoria Woodhull
Not being able to vote herself didnt stop the colorful Woodhull from running for president. In 1872, she jumped in the presidential race on the Equal Rights party ticket supported by Anthonys National Womens Suffrage Association, claiming Frederick Douglass as her veep (whether the famed anti-slavery advocate knew anything about his political run is debatable). That was just one of the ways thVictoria_Woodhulle flashy free-love pioneer garnered publicity for her earnest interest in womens rights. While Woodhull was popular in her day, publishing a radical, pro-suffrage newspaper with her sister and frequently speaking for the cause, her eccentric life and courting of controversy soured her appeal to Anthony and other contemporaries. Thats too bad, because in addition to being the first American woman to run for president, Woodhull was also the first female stockbroker on Wall Street (along with her sister), and the first to appear before a U.S. congressional committee.
. . . . . .
Mary Church Terrell
In many discussions of American womens history, theres a glaring lack of color. One of the sad reasons for this is that though womens suffrage was closely tied to the abolition movement early on, ingrained racism, the split over the 15th Amendment and a concerted effort to distance the suffrage movement from African American women in the 20th century largely shut out women of color and minorities. The daughter of freed slaves turned successful business owners, Terrell moved from Tennessee to Washington D.C. in the 1890s after becoming one of the first African American woman to graduate from college. Though she was deeply committed to womens suffrage, her activism was not embraced among D.C. suffragists, which only made her more outspoken. Terrell eventually formed the National Association for Colored Women with other prominent African American women activists, including Harriet Tubman and Ida B. Wells, and became the organizations first president. While supporting womens suffrage, the NACW also worked to eliminate lynchings and Jim Crow laws and promoted integration. Though white womens battle for the ballot box ended in 1920, African American women worked for decades more to enjoy the same right just as freely.
. . . .
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2015/08/26/in-honor-of-womens-equality-day-9-badass-suffragists/
question everything
(47,271 posts)who do not realize the struggle that these pioneers endured.