Happy birthday, Mary Ritter Beard
I love this photo, though I doubt the accuracy of its caption. I love that the young African-American man (boy?) is the only one aware of being photographed. I love the woman in the right foreground, mid-sentence. 🧵 <br /><br />The @<a href="https://twitter.com/librarycongress" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">librarycongress</a> says the speaker is Mary Beard, speaking in March 1913, facing the Dept of Interior Building (now @<a href="https://twitter.com/smithsoniannpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">smithsoniannpg</a>). Beard is identified as a board member of the Congressional Union, which was formed in April of that year (see yesterday's post). <br /><br />The LOC says a duplicate image in the file identifies the speaker as Mrs. Glendower Evans and Mrs. [Nina] Allender. Another copy says Mary Beard, speaking on March 3. That’s the day of the Inaugural march, when elaborate tableaux were staged outside the Treasury, one block away. <br /><br />Could this be that same day? Is it Evans or Allender or Beard? @TinaCassidy @<a href="https://twitter.com/tinacassidy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">kclemay</a> any clues? It’s item mnwp000335 Even if it’s not her, happy birthday Mary Ritter Beard. #WomensVote100 #19thAmendment <br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Happy Birthday Mary Ritter Beard, born <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/OTD?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#OTD</a> in1876. Beard was a historian, woman suffrage activist, & established the World Center for Women’s Archives in 1935. 1/3 <a href="https://t.co/RIsINIJIUp">pic.twitter.com/RIsINIJIUp</a></p>
— History & Philosophy (@PNW_HistPhil) <a href="https://twitter.com/PNW_HistPhil/status/1291035283337748490?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 5, 2020</a></blockquote>
Daily Suffragist
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05/08/2020
Car Parade!
On July 31, 1913, suffragists commandeered the Senate floor for more than two hours. It was the first time since 1887 that women’s voting rights had been discussed there. How’d they get there? They drove! 🧵 <br /><br />Rosalie Jones’ pilgrimage to Washington for the Inauguration march had gotten a lot of press, so Alice Paul devised larger-scale caravans from multiple states. Women traveled by car, on foot, on horseback, by train. The Virginia delegation came up the Potomac by boat. <br /><br />The caravans gathered at a ballpark in Hyattsville, Maryland. There they were joined by members of the Senate Woman Suffrage Committee, which had just issued its first positive report in years. The supportive Senators rode with the suffragists in an auto parade to the Capitol. <br /><br />Cars were open-air then, festooned with banners for the occasion. Spectators lined the streets. The DC police escorted them the whole way, eager to show they could control the crowd better than on the day before the Inauguration. <br /><br />Arriving at the Capitol, the supportive Senators took over “morning business†and made it a morning about suffrage. Senators from more than a dozen states read petitions and made floor statements in support of their women constituents. <br /><br />One reason suffragists believed a federal suffrage amendment was possible was the recent passage of the 17th Amdt. Take 3 minutes <a href="https://www.pbs.org/video/17th-amendment-x1bfyy/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">👇for context on that, plus some great footage of how Washington, DC looked in 1913.</a> #Suffrage100 #19thAmendment #KenBurnsÂ
Daily Suffragist
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31/07/2020
Taking over the Senate
Passage of the 16th & 17th Amdts in 1913 - especially the 17th, which expanded voting rights over opposition from the deep south - proved a federal amendment strategy was viable. So Alice Paul & Lucy Burns spent a hot July plotting to force their way onto the Senate floor. 🧵 <br /><br />The Senate Woman Suffrage Committee had just issued a positive report, its first in years. It cited the recent amendments as proof the Constitution was a living document, and affirmed: “In this Republic, the people constitute the Government…‘The people’ includes women.†<br /><br />Alice & Lucy asked those Senators to help them prove this true, beginning with another massive public event. "General" Rosalie Jones’ pilgrimage to Washington for the Inauguration march had gotten a lot of press, so Alice devised larger-scale caravans from multiple states. <br /><br />Women traveled by car, on foot, on horseback, by train; the Virginia delegation came up the Potomac by boat! The caravans gathered at a ballpark in Hyattsville, MD on July 31, undeterred by a huge storm the day before.<a href="https://hyattsvillelife.com/unearthing-history/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> See photo above</a> & via @<a href="https://twitter.com/HvilleTimes" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">HvilleTimes</a> <br /><br />2020The supportive Senators joined them there, and rode with the suffragists in an auto parade to the Capitol. Spectators lined the streets. The DC police escorted them the whole way, eager to show they could do better than they had the day before the Inauguration.<br /><br />Arriving at the Senate, they took over “morning business.†Suffragists packed the gallery while pages delivered petitions with 10,000s of names. 25 Senators presented the petitions from their states, and most of them spoke on the floor in favor of suffrage.<br /><br />On July 31, 1913, suffragists commandeered the Senate floor for more than two hours. It was the first time since 1887 that women’s voting rights had been discussed there. #CenturyofStruggle #19thamendment #VotesforWomen #Suffrage100Â
Daily Suffragist
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18/07/2020
Presidential Suffrage
Ida B. Wells could vote for President years before Alice Paul or Carrie Chapman Catt. How? Read on <br /><br />Changing state constitutions is hard. Who votes & who doesn’t is determined by each state; big changes almost always need constitutional amendment. Of course, this is why the state-by-state fight took so damn long. But in 1913, Illinois successfully used a different strategy. <br /><br />Lucy Stone’s husband Henry Blackwell began pushing for “presidential suffrage” back in the 1880s. It was a clever idea: a way to get states to let women vote for President without the laborious process of amending their constitution. Here's how:<br /><br />As we know all too well, the President of the United States is chosen by Electors, not voters. Each state makes its own rules about HOW to choose its Electors, and it can usually change those rules with a majority vote of the state legislature. <br /><br />If a state legislature let women vote for Electors it was a kind of proxy vote for President. Illinois women won “school suffrage”--voting for school board--in 1891. Almost immediately, a Chicago lawyer named Catharine Waugh McCulloch began pushing to add presidential suffrage. <br /><br />McCulloch was a lawyer and a feminist. She graduated in 1886 from @<a href="https://twitter.com/NorthwesternLaw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NorthwesternLaw</a>; when she joined her husband’s law firm they renamed it McCulloch & McCulloch. Rev. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw performed their wedding. ‼️ Catharine was admitted to the Supreme Court Bar in 1898.<br /><br />Catharine McCulloch wrote state legislation giving women equal guardianship of their children (1901) and raising the age of consent (1905). For two decades as a leader of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Assoc. she lobbied in Springfield for presidential suffrage.<br /><br />She was a Justice of the Peace in Evanston, the first woman elected to the job. She was also a friend of #IdaBWells. Paula Giddings notes: “both exhibited a bulldog determination and did not suffer fools lightly.” <br /><br />In 1912, Grace Trout took over from Catharine as head of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Assoc. Trout was more mainstream, less threatening to legislators and potential supporters. She was not a friend of Ida's - she’s the one who tries to eject Ida from the Washington, DC march. <br /><br />Immediately after the DC march, Trout led a huge mobilization of women to Springfield. They got the presidential suffrage bill passed. Their effort included phone banking that rang the speaker of the House every 15 minutes for 3 days; whipping floor votes and sending taxicabs to fetch absent legislators, and a cohort of Black lobbyists led by Ida. Ida’s group wasn’t there only for suffrage. <br /><br />Three anti-Black bills were also pending: an anti-miscegenation bill, a streetcar segregation bill, and a bill to help white unions oust Black railroad employees. Ida and several hundred Black women successfully defeated all three bills. <br /><br />[The Chicago Defender reported that the author of the Jim Crow transportation bill was quite awed - “he declared he had never met so many brilliant persons of color before” and regretted the whole thing.]<br /><br />We can assume that Ida’s group lobbied for suffrage - some of them were members of the Alpha Suffrage Club that Ida, Belle Squire, and Virginia Brooks had founded at the beginning of that year. I don’t know if Squire & Brooks went to Springfield. @<a href="https://twitter.com/LOsborne615" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">LOsborne615</a> do you? <br /><br />I don’t know if they or any other white women lobbied against the racist bills. I know they all celebrated together when they won. The Governor signed the bill in June 1913, and an automobile procession drove Michigan Avenue with more than 100 cars, marching bands, and flags. <br /><br />A car parade sounds funny today, but cars were still a bit of a novelty then, and all open-air so they felt more like floats wrapped in bunting. Ida was a parade marshal, and five of the cars carried Alpha Suffrage Club members. <br /><br />Alpha & the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association held celebrations that summer - they both honored Robert L. Jackson, the only Black legislator, who spoke in favor of the suffrage bill on the floor, and Catharine Waugh McCulloch. This is Catharine, after the win. <br /><br />So within months of the 1913 Washington, DC Inauguration march where Black women were relegated to the back, #IdaBWells and the other women from Illinois had secured their right to vote for President. #BlackSuffragists #Suffrage100 #19thAmendment
Daily Suffragist
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16/07/2020
The 17th Amendment
<a href="https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/items/show/449" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Unsurprisingly, DailySuffragist readers know their amendments.</a> As 62% of you knew, the 16th Amdt allowed Congress to levy a direct income tax. They needed to amend the Constitution to repudiate a Supreme Court decision that blocked a progressive tax law. The other one? Read on. <br /><br />The 17th Amendment expanded voting rights. Yup, you heard that right. By 1913 more than ½ of the states let voters choose their Senators more or less directly. In the rest, Senators were still picked by the state legislature, as the Constitution originally designed. <br /><br />There's an interesting scholarly debate about whether direct election of Senators produced more representative results, or substantially different results at all. Either way, the change did nothing for the vast majority of US women, nor for Black men in southern states.<br /><br />The ratification of the 17th Amendment in the spring of 1913 is worth another moment of contemplation, perhaps fury. It was the height of the Progressive era. Democrats controlled Congress, and with the election of Wilson they now held the presidency. <br /><br />Women had been lobbying for the vote for more than 60 years. If their cause had once been fringe, by 1913 it was mainstream and widely-discussed. By 1913 all of the states of the Deep South had adopted white primaries. What's that? Exactly what it sounds like. <br /><br />Northern legislators understood that southern states had been politically enriched by the Civil War. Instead of a stolen representation bonus of ⅗ of a person, southern states now counted ALL of their Black citizens for apportionment of House seats and Electors - without votes. <br /><br />But in 1913 the white men of Congress looked at what needed changing about voting in America, and that wasn’t it. Nor that most of the women in the country couldn’t vote. The fact that some white men had more power to choose their Senators than others - well, THAT was unfair.
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1283217739423916033" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
14/07/2020
Amendment Jeopardy!
Two amendments were added to the Constitution in 1913. Two. While women were scraping to get a federal suffrage amendment out of committee, Congress ratified the 16th & 17th Amendments. Without peeking, can you identify them?
Daily Suffragist
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13/07/2020
First suffragist meetings with the President
Two weeks after Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, Alice Paul led a delegation to the White House for suffragists’ first-ever meeting with a US President. <br /><br />It did not go well. 🧵 <br /><br />They were seeking Wilson’s support for suffrage. Their ask: that he mention suffrage in his first address to Congress, literally putting a federal Constitutional amendment on the agenda. <br /><br />In the Oval Office, the delegation was seated in a row, as if in a classroom. <br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/tinacassidy2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@tinacassidy2</a> describes the meeting vividly. After Alice opened, Anna Kelton Wiley👇reminded Wilson of women’s value to progressive reforms. Genevieve Stone described how western suffrage states were thriving with women’s participation. <br /><br />Then Ida Husted Harper opened a book. <br /><br />It was a collection of Wilson campaign speeches. Ida read aloud: “If any part of our people want to be wards, if they want to have guardians put over them, if they want to be children patronized by the government, I am sorry for them, because it will sap the manhood of America.†<br /><br />Wilson looked ashen, embarrassed at his obvious hypocrisy, and being caught admitting that he didn’t think of women as “part of our people.†He resolved to support suffrage on the spot. <br /><br />KIDDING!🤣He said nothing. <br /><br />Mary Bartlett Dixon pointed out that supporting suffrage would one-up Republicans, showing Democrats too could be a party of enfranchisement. <br /><br />Wilson was unmoved. He said he had more important things to include in his message to Congress, like currency revision and tax reform. <br /><br />Alice Paul looked him in the eye. <br /><br />“But Mr. President, do you not understand that the administration has no right to legislate for currency, tariff, and any other reform without first getting the consent of women?†<br /><br />No, actually. He didn't understand - apparently this had never occurred to him. Accounts describe Wilson as visibly taken aback. <br /><br />He threw the women a tiny crumb and promised to consider the issue. He also asked that they not take his silence as opposition. <br /><br />A week later Alice returned to the White House, this time with members of the College Equal Suffrage League, including Elsie Hill (far right, top; Genevieve Stone is in front of her; Alice is front ctr). <br /><br />Again Wilson told them his priorities were taxes and currency reform.<br /><br />Three days later, with the address nearing, Alice Paul took nine women to the White House. Again he promised nothing. <br /><br />Alice learned something about Wilson in these fruitless meetings. Wilson should have learned something about Alice.#Suffrage100 #19thamendment #CenturyofStruggle Jul 13, 2020
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1282477954606538754" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
12/07/2020
The last decade always feels fast
The fight for a federal amendment was so painfully slow that everything after the 1913 Inauguration march looks like a sprint to the finish line. It was a turning point, for sure. But it reminds me of what folks would say to me when they learned I was an LGBT rights lawyer. <br /><br />they'd say: “Marriage equality has happened so fast!” The last decade was fast, I would respond. The first 50 years were slow. #Suffrage100 #CenturyofStruggle #19thAmendment
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1281389374018641920" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
09/07/2020
A genius for publicity
Had the 1913 march gone flawlessly it would have been less of a success. Alice Paul immediately realized that the violent disruption and police indifference were a gift. <br /><br />On Inauguration Day, suffrage dominated the headlines. 🧵 <br /><br />“WILSON TAKES OFFICE TO-DAY AS 28TH PRESIDENT--Slips Quietly Into the Capital While Suffragists Are Parading†@<a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">nytimes</a> on March 4, 1913 <br /><br />While Wilson gave his inaugural address, suffragists leafleted the crowd demanding a Congressional inquiry. <br /><br />A Senate subcommittee began investigating before the week was over. This kept the march in the news for weeks. <br /><br />Friday, March 7: “Police Idly Watched Abuse of Women--Shocking Insults to Suffrage Paraders Testified To at Washington Inquiry†-NYTimes <br /><br />Monday, March 10--a full week later: The Sacramento Bee ran a photo above the fold 👇 <br /><br />The Senate inquiry went on for a month. 40 women testified, of the 8,000 women who marched, as did numerous spectators and police officers. The proceedings were chaired by Sen. Wesley Jones of Washington. He was accountable to women in his state, who had won the vote in 1910. <br /><br />The full inquest was published - it ran to 600 pages. Great descriptions in <a href="https://twitter.com/tinacassidy2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@tinacassidy2</a> & <a href="https://twitter.com/EllenDubois10" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@EllenDuBois10</a>’s recent books: while the Senate found the police had acted with indifference, Chief Wm Sylvester was exonerated. This infuriated the suffragists, generating more protest. <br /><br />The long-dormant Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage was reinstated -- and composed of Senators from the suffrage states. Alice Paul & Lucy Burns had clamped jumper cables to the federal effort, and restarted it. #Suffrage100 #CenturyofStruggle #VotesforWomen
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1279201124688580609" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
03/07/2020
The Original Women's March
The 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession really was the original Women’s March. It called women from around the country to Washington, DC for Inauguration Day. They were there to send a message to the newly elected President, who won his office with a minority of national support.🧵 <br /><br />It wasn’t the first parade down the avenues of our 51st state, but it was the first civil rights protest. As Rebecca Boggs Roberts says in her overview of the march, every cause that has marched on Washington literally followed in their footsteps. <a href="https://www.womensvote100.org/the-suff-buffs-blog/2020/4/1/the-great-suffrage-parade-of-1913" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://t.co/jfbzYFjszU</a> <br /><br />Alice Paul & Lucy Burns get credit and blame for nearly every detail of the elaborate planning, its genius as well as its racist exclusions. Two documents @<a href="https://twitter.com/librarycongress" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">LibraryCongress</a> displayed in their lavish exhibit “Shall Not Be Denied†that capture some of the massive planning effort.👇 <br /><br />First, a photo of women leafleting on the street in DC to advertise the march. For so much of the suffrage movement we can only imagine events, not see them. After the turn of the century we begin to have action shots of suffragists at work, which are thrilling. <br /><br />Second, a Pledge to March form, with logistics like timing for special suffrage trains from New York. And at the top, <br /><br />WHY YOU MUST MARCH <br /><br />*Because this is the most conspicuous and important demonstration that has ever been attempted by suffragists in this country. <br /><br />*Because this parade will be taken to indicate the importance of the suffrage movement by the press of the country and the thousands of spectators from all over the United States gathered in Washington for the Inauguration. <br /><br />*Because by marching in Washington you will help the cause of votes for women in every State were suffrage has not yet been won. #Suffrage100 #CenturyofStruggleÂ
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1278501359629864962" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
01/07/2020
<p class="BlogItem-title"><a href="https://www.womensvote100.org/the-suff-buffs-blog/2020/4/1/the-great-suffrage-parade-of-1913" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Great Suffrage Parade of 1913</a></p>
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