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The town of Orange, New Jersey sent Lucy Stone a tax bill in 1857. She returned it with a note that began: "Enclosed I return my tax bill, without paying it. My reason for doing so is that women suffer taxation, and yet have no representation, which…

New Jersey was a slave state. Throughout the 18th century and well into the 19th, people in New Jersey were enslaved and sold. New Jersey had plantations and Black codes--it also has a Confederate cemetery, but that’s another story. In the middle of…

It feels appropriate to end the suffrage centennial year with a week in New Jersey. Yeah, yeah, second prize is two weeks in Jersey… but in all seriousness, respect is due. New Jersey was first.  Image: “Women at the polls in New Jersey in the good…

When your origin story is on the #WrongSideOfHistory, it tends to get whitewashed.  Such is the case with the @CooperHewitt, a marvelous museum to visit, even digitally. Their website tells the story of its founding sisters, but doesn’t mention their…

What does this guy have to do with this woman? Hint: dynastic politics. Charles S. Whitman was elected Governor of New York in 1914.  By that time he was a committed suffragist. His wife Olive belonged to the Women’s Political Union, which was the…

Look who's wearing a white suit!!!!

Catholics from Atlantic coast states can provide political stability with inclusive, calm, wise leadership. I’m talking about Margaret Brent. Businesswoman, lawyer, and trusted agent of the governor of Maryland, she demanded the right to vote in…

I try to imagine what it felt like to have no vote. Not an insignificant vote, not a challenged vote, not a gerrymandered vote. No vote. To imagine how it felt to be a woman or an enslaved person in 1856, during a three-way race among pro-slavery…

These women are being arrested for poll watching while female. It’s New York City, September 1910, the Democratic primary. Before the day is over six women at four different precincts in Hell’s Kitchen have been hauled before the magistrate court.…

We don’t have an affirmative right to vote under the Constitution. There is no explicit promise that citizen = voter. But from 1868-1872, after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, hundreds of white and Black women personally attempted to…