Browse Items (24 total)

Rose Schneiderman and Leonora O’Reilly were featured speakers at NAWSA conventions as early as 1907. The leaders of the suffrage mainstream warmed to working class women when they saw how these fiery activists could ignite a crowd. [New thread!] But…

Renounce: To give up, to resign, to surrender; esp. to give up in a complete and formal manner. Laura Clay ran the Kentucky Woman Suffrage Assoc. from its founding in 1881 until 1912. Kate Gordon, left, ran Louisiana’s suffrage association from…

The end of legal slavery didn’t make a dent in white Americans’ racism. The opposite, really: after the Civil War Northern whites patted themselves on the back for being so virtuous, then turned around and passed laws making it harder for…

When Anna Howard Shaw was a young woman, she wore pants and short hair. She gave it up eventually because she got too many comments, but she couldn’t hide her ambition, and her certainty she could do better than a man. Turn-of-the-century thread. She…

At the turn of the century, leading white suffragists deluded themselves into thinking that colluding with racists would help their cause. Spoiler alert: it didn’t.Thread. The new generation of suffrage leaders - with the blessing of the old guard -…

Annual conventions belong in the nation’s capital--at least as far as the National Woman Suffrage Assoc was concerned. But the American WSA had always rotated among states, so a few years after the merger, NAWSA began to alternate: even years in…

Doldrums: a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or depression. Or, the women’s suffrage movement at the turn of the 20th century. Of course, it didn’t feel that way at the time. 🧵 By the end of the 19th century, the movement had unified…

Why did the American Woman Suffrage Association merge with its longtime rival, the National Woman Suffrage Association? They had distinct strategies & political philosophies. Neither had much money nor particularly large membership. So why? In a…

Must be a busy day for my friends @SuffrageBdays! Both Frederick Douglass & Anna Howard Shaw were born #OTD. #DouglassDay celebrations this year are devoted to Anna Julia Cooper, feminist and suffragist - more on her in months ahead! See @CCP_org…

In suffrage summaries, the 1890 merger of the National & American Woman Suffrage Assoc. is described in neutral or positive terms. It’s an inevitability, even the healthy repair of a breach. Sentimental bonus: it was negotiated by daughters of…