The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote " Elaine Weiss (rec'd by HRC)
The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote " Elaine Weiss (rec'd by HRC)
The Inconceivable Becomes the Inevitable: Women's Suffrage
March 17, 2018
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
Weiss's spirited prose keeps the reader on the edge of his/her seat while recounting the ratification of the19th Amendment. Although 26 nations had already granted their female citizens the vote, it wasn't until 1920 that MOST American women could partake in national elections.
In 1848, Seneca Falls, NY hosted the First Women's Rights Convention. Based on the Declaration of Independence, the attendees drafted 8 sentiments of equal rights that women desired. It was a man, Frederick Douglass, who urged the Convention to add a 9th sentiment: the right to vote. Douglass asserted that true citizenship could not be attained without the right to the ballot. With this, the Suffragette movement in the USA was born.
The Susan B. Anthony Amendment (#19) passed by one vote in both houses of Congress in 1919. Within a year, a two-thirds majority of the existing states needed to ratify the Amendment i.e. 36 states. By June of 1920, 9 states rejected the Amendment, 3 states refused to even consider ratification, and 35 states ratified the Amendment. (The reader will be amazed at which states voted no.) The fate of women's suffrage was left to ratification in the Tennessee legislature. The author introduces fascinating details about the many players in this drama: Tennessee politicians, Republican and Democrat, a sitting President and candidates running in the 1920 Presidential election, Anti-Suffragettes and Suffragettes. (What a shock to learn that both Eleanor Roosevelt and Edith Wilson were on the side of the Anti's!) Many of the Suffragettes had earned their political chops as Abolishionists. They were fighting for the vote for all women regardless of race. Anti's raised the alarm about the dissipation of state's rights and the polluting nature of politics on motherhood and southern family life. They preached to the prejudice against Negro women having the vote. Tensions mounted in the Tennessee summer heat, as both sides exhorted to lies, influence peddling and bribery. By whom and how were legislators in both Tennessee houses influenced? The vote was a cliff hanger!
Ten million women voted for the first time on November 2,1920, but two states denied black women the right to vote. From Boston to Orlando, barriers were created to prevent black women from voting and some blacks, men and women, were killed in their attempts to vote. In Chapter 23, entitled Election Day, Weiss chronicles the delayed suffrage for other minorities in America. She highlights the current political efforts to disenfranchise blocs of US citizens. The battle for the ballot, begun so long ago, rages on.
https://www.amazon.com/Womans-Hour-Great-Fight-Vote/dp/0525429727
