New Jersey stood alone
Everything is legal in New Jersey. Including, til 1807 voting by white women who owned property & were unmarried. If married, their legal existence (and property) disappeared into their husband. If Black, they were likely enslaved: NJ clung to slavery until 1846. #StateOfTheWeek
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1167452199355596801" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
30/08/2019
Radical Women, New Jersey
Opening THURSDAY & open all year @<a href="https://twitter.com/NewarkLibrary" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NewarkLibrary</a>. This exhibit is really going to be a treat. Not just historical documents, art installations too! I've been following curator NoelleLorraineWilliams as she put it together and I can't wait to see it. #BlackSuffragists #Suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1220203453856780288" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
22/01/2020
New Jersey voters
One of the original 13 states let some women vote. Some doubted women actually did so. 🤣 @<a href="https://twitter.com/jennyschuessler" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">jennyschuessler</a> has the receipts, thread👇 But you have to read her whole article (linked below) for my favorite detail... <br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Historians have long puzzled over ‘the NJ exception.’ How did this happen? And how many women actually *did* vote? Newspapers of the period were filled with hot debate over incompetent ‘petticoat electors.’ But weirdly, there was virtually no direct evidence of women voting 🤔...</p>
— Jennifer Schuessler (@jennyschuessler) <a href="https://twitter.com/jennyschuessler/status/1231932056860610560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1232149793088188416" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
24/02/2020
Senator Warren drops out
No US woman could vote, except some in New Jersey, in: <br /><br />1776 <br />1777 <br />1778 <br />1779 <br />1780 <br />1781 <br />1782 <br />1783 <br />1784 <br />1785 <br />1786 <br />1787 <br />1788 <br />1789 <br />1790 <br />1791 <br />1792 <br />1793 <br />1794 <br />1795 <br />1796 <br />1797 <br />1798 <br />1799 <br />1800 <br />1801 <br />1802 <br />1803 <br />1804 <br />1805 <br />1806 <br />1807 <br /><br />No US woman could vote in: <br /><br />1808 <br />1809 <br />1810 <br />1811 <br />1812 <br />1813 <br />1814 <br />1815 <br />1816 <br />1817 <br />1818 <br />1819 <br />1820 <br />1821 <br />1822 <br />1823 <br />1824 <br />1825 <br />1826 <br />1827 <br />1828 <br />1829 <br />1830 <br />1831 <br />1832 <br />1833 <br />1834 <br />1835 <br />1836 <br />1837 <br />1838 <br />1839 <br />1840 <br />1841 <br />1842 <br />1843 <br />1844 <br />1845 <br />1846 <br />1847 <br />1848 <br />1849 <br />1850 <br />1851 <br />1852 <br />1853 <br />1854 <br />1855 <br />1856 <br />1857 <br />1858 <br />1859 <br />1860 <br />1861 <br />1862 <br />1863 <br />1864 <br />1865 <br />1866 <br />1867 <br />1868 <br />1869 <br /><br />No US women could vote fully, except some in Wyoming and Utah, in: <br />1870 <br />1871 <br />1872 <br />1873 <br />1874 <br />1875 <br />1876 <br />1877 <br />1878 <br />1879 <br />1880 <br />1881 <br />1882 <br />1883 <br />1884 <br />1885 <br />1886 <br /><br />No US woman could vote fully, except some in WY, in: <br />1887 <br />1888 <br />1889 <br />1890 <br />1891 <br />1892 <br />1893 <br /><br />No US woman could vote fully, except some in WY & Colorado, in: <br />1894 <br />1895 <br /><br />No US woman could vote fully, except some in 4 states, in: <br />1896 <br />1897 <br />1898 <br />1899 <br />1900 <br />1901 <br />1902 <br />1903 <br />1904 <br />1905 <br />1906 <br />1907 <br />1908 <br />1910 <br /><br />Most US women could not vote in: <br />1911 <br />1912 <br />1913 <br />1914 <br />1915 <br />1916 <br />1917 <br />1918 <br />1919 <br /><br />Native American women could not vote until 1924. Puerto Rican women could not vote until 1935. Immigrant women from throughout Asia could not vote until 1952. African-American women in the South could not vote until 1965. Many formerly incarcerated women cannot vote today. <br /><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Please stop calling all of us Native and Indigenous women “Native American”. Our nations reject this Fed created (in the 1950s) colonized term.</p>
— ndngenuity (@ndngenuity) <a href="https://twitter.com/ndngenuity/status/1235866756272410624?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 6, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1235718817386463233" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
05/03/2020
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<h1 id="link-28a38c1a" class="css-19rw7kf e1h9rw200"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/opinion/elizabeth-warren-women-president.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">I Am Burning With Fury and Grief Over Elizabeth Warren. And I Am Not Alone.</a></h1>
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Newark, Albany, South Dakota
We are stuck more firmly in one place than ever, while talking easily with everywhere and anywhere. Ergo, an appreciation of three intensely place-specific works of suffrage public history that women are making. Reply w/more! <br /><br />NEWARK - Noelle Lorraine Williams still brings Newark history to life on Instagram every day. When I can cross the Hudson again I’m going to her “Radical Women" exhibit at the @<a href="https://twitter.com/NewarkLibrary" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NewarkLibrary</a>, which fuses voting rights past & present w/great art. <br /><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Noelle does such amazing work as a scholar, artist, public historian, and activist! Check out my interview with her for <a href="https://twitter.com/QueerNewark?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@QueerNewark</a> & you can find her on Instagram: @black_abolitionists_newark <a href="https://t.co/vjXWp0JMSM">https://t.co/vjXWp0JMSM</a></p>
— Kristyn Scorsone (@ykristyn) <a href="https://twitter.com/ykristyn/status/1115300414130274310?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 8, 2019</a></blockquote>
<br /><br />ALBANY - @<a href="https://twitter.com/albanymuskrat" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AlbanyMuskrat</a> Julie O’Connor <a href="https://friendsofalbanyhistory.wordpress.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">writes beautiful longform essays</a> 👇 And she reconstructed Albany suffrage history by tracking down every woman who voted in 1880s schoolboard elections AND those turned away--more than 150 white and Black women. <br /><br />SOUTH DAKOTA - The landscape is majestic and so is @<a href="https://twitter.com/LizAlmlie" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">LizAlmlie’s</a> website. <a href="https://twitter.com/LizAlmlie" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">SoDak's suffrage story in detail,</a> organized beautifully, with timeline, biographies, places, primary & secondary sources. And she made the art!
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1263318309992386560" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
20/05/2020
Dynastic politics
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">What does this guy have to do with this woman?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Hint: dynastic politics.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Charles S. Whitman was elected Governor of New York in 1914. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">By that time he was a committed suffragist. His wife Olive belonged to the Women’s Political Union, which was the spunkiest of New York’s white suffrage groups, founded by Harriot Stanton Blatch.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">As the race for governor heated up in the summer of 1914, the Women’s Political Union was determined to get public commitments from the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Progressive Party. It was a crucial year.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Suffragists were at the midpoint of a multi-year attempt to amend the New York State constitution to add women voters. The amendment had passed the legislature once; it needed to pass again in the upcoming session and then be put to a statewide men’s referendum.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The Democrats and Republicans were both holding their conventions in Saratoga Springs. The WPU set up camp at the United States Hotel. They strung a 30’ banner across the hotel courtyard: “Women’s Political Union -- Votes for Women” and another one reading “Victory in 1915.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Once Whitman’s support & the GOP platform were assured, they displayed huge posters: “Republicans Declare for Woman Suffrage.” Imagine the bunting in purple, green, and white: Harriot’s group borrowed the colors of the radical British suffragettes who inspired her.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Charles Whitman’s support for suffrage isn’t what got him elected - that would become clear when the statewide suffrage referendum failed a year later. Rather, he won on his reputation for fighting corruption as Manhattan District Attorney, where he had challenged corrupt police.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Despite that, he served only four years. When women could finally vote in New York, they didn’t turn out for Whitman. He lost in 1918 to Alfred E. Smith, the up-and-coming Catholic Democrat who was buoyed by the growing political power of NYC immigrants, male and female. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Whitman’s son became a judge, and his grandson John became a banker. In 1974 John married a woman named Christie Todd, whose family was prominent in New Jersey Republican politics. Their first date was President Nixon’s inaugural ball. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Christine Todd Whitman was elected governor of New Jersey 79 years after her husband’s grandfather was elected to the same office in New York. For the record, @GovCTW endorsed Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.<br /><br />#suffrage100</span></p>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1327067952001249281" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
November 12, 2020
New Jersey was first
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">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. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Image: “</span><span style="font-weight:400;">Women at the polls in New Jersey in the good old times.” Harper's Weekly, Nov 13, 1880</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Women could vote in New Jersey from the beginning. After the Revolution, each state made its own choices about who got to vote. Women were excluded everywhere--except New Jersey. There, unmarried women, including women (and men) of color, could vote if they could meet the standard property requirement.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The Museum of the American Revolution @amrevmuseum searched for these voters, found them, and recreated their world in <a href="https://www.amrevmuseum.org/virtualexhibits/when-women-lost-the-vote-a-revolutionary-story" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">an amazing exhibit that is now fully online</a>. The site explains how women and men of color got the vote in NJ and how they lost it. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The textiles are particularly spectacular: look for 18th-century women’s pockets; a shortgown worn by free woman of color Elizabeth Dorn, with a video explaining its significance; and an 1876 dress that may have been present when suffragists stormed the centennial stage.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Settle in - you can spend as much time at the online exhibit as you would if we could all go to the museum in Phila. Start with the opening video, where a dozen historians make the case that these women voting in the Revolutionary period really mattered. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">When @jennyschuessler wrote about the exhibit early this year, she shared the questions historians asked for years: did any NJ women really vote? Only elite women? The exhibit answers clearly: “Ordinary women--Black and white--when they were given the chance to vote, they did it.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">So what went wrong? Well, you’re not gonna believe this but… The state grew, and more women, people of color & immigrants began turning out. Politicians who were threatened by this responded by suppressing the vote: limiting polling places, intimidating voters. Then they outright accused the voters of fraud.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Eventually, the white men in the legislature brokered a deal that preserved their own power and scapegoated women and people of color. In 1807, New Jersey changed its voter laws to exclude them, and to _broaden_ the group of white men who could vote. More tomorrow...</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">#Suffrage100 </span></p>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1343414275759595521" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
December 27, 2020
Free People of Color in New Jersey
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">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 the state, a Black community grew. Thread.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">In central New Jersey, free People of Color settled on the Sourland Mountain. It’s actually more of a hill, but half of the name was true: the soil was poor. William Stives, who fought in the American Revolution, lived there. So did Friday Truehart, who arrived in 1780 accompanying a minister who was his enslaver.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Truehart’s fourth-great-granddaughter is Sourland historian Beverly Mills. Mills and Elaine Buck have spent the past decade documenting the community and creating a new museum, the <a href="https://www.ssaamuseum.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum</a> @SSAAmuseum. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Among their many extraordinary finds, they know that some men in the community voted: their names are on the rolls found by @amrevmuseum. Don’t miss >> </span><a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1343414280092266498"><span style="font-weight:400;">https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1343414280092266498</span></a><span style="font-weight:400;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The @SSAAmuseum has not (yet!) identified women from that community who voted. Only unmarried women who owned property could vote until 1807, at which point most New Jersians of color were still enslaved. The @AmRevMuseum exhibit includes Black women voters from elsewhere in NJ.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Don’t miss this really wonderful video about the @SSAAmuseum, which is going strong in the pandemic with archaeological digs and more. The video explains the history of the AME Church that houses the museum, plus eye-popping photos of the community over the past century.</span></p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/ngDH6zNel5M"><span style="font-weight:400;">https://youtu.be/ngDH6zNel5M</span></a></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">I learned about the Sourland Mountain, the Stoutsburg Cemetery, and the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum from <a href="https://twitter.com/jennyschuessler/status/1341736533255213056" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@jennyschuessler</a>, who is on a mission to repair the errors of New York Times reporters past.<br /></span></p>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1343761024588066817" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
December 28, 2020
Taxation in New Jersey
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The town of Orange, New Jersey sent Lucy Stone a tax bill in 1857. She returned it with a note that began:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">"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 is not only unjust to one-half the adult population, but is contrary to our theory of government."</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">She promised that when women had equal suffrage, “Then shall we cheerfully pay our taxes—not till then.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The town responded by entering Stone’s house in January 1858 and seizing household goods to satisfy her debt. They took a table and chairs, and engraved portraits of two of the most famous abolitionists in the US, William Lloyd Garrison and Salmon P. Chase. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Perhaps these, made in 1855 by Leopold Grozelier. Via </span><span style="font-weight:400;">@SmithsonianNPG </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">According to Linda Kerber, Stone’s friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson teased her: “The selection of these portraits will be so melodramatic for your biography that I suspect you of having bribed the sheriff to seize them.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Lucy Stone sent that letter to the Orange, New Jersey tax authorities on Dec 18, 1858. They seized her tables and chairs and 2 portraits and sold them at auction to satisfy her tax debt. <br /><br />#Suffrage100 #VotesforWomen </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">[My original post said incorrectly that it was Dec 1858; it was 1857 and the seizure was in January ‘58.]</span></p>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1344131405203333120" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
December 29, 2020
Mary Philbrook's lawsuit
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Suffragists didn’t sue very often. After the Supreme Court scoffed at suffrage in 1874, court challenges to women’s disenfranchisement were few. But in 1911, New Jersey suffragists sued--based on the fact of their right to vote at the state’s founding. It didn’t go well. Thread.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Mary Philbrook brought the case on behalf of Harriet Carpenter, a teacher and property owner in Passaic Township who had tried to register to vote. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Philbrook was the first woman lawyer in New Jersey. She passed the bar in 1895 after lobbying the legislature to let women sit for the exam. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">If you’re keeping score, this is 15-20 years after Myra Bradwell and <a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1181657772829663234" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Belva Lockwood</a> campaigned for admission to the Illinois and federal bars. Progress in one jurisdiction meant progress in one jurisdiction. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight:400;">Philbrook argued that because the 1776 state constitution allowed women to vote, subsequent restrictions were unconstitutional, and the 1844 constitutional convention was invalid. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">New Jersey’s Supreme Court mocked these claims as “inaccurate and fallacious.” The court not only rejected the argument, it denied that anything notable had ever happened in New Jersey.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Justice Samuel Kalisch insisted: “There is nothing in the constitution of 1776 which confers on women the right to vote.” As for the 1790 and 1797 amendments that explicitly referred to voters as “he or she,” Kalisch dismissed them as merely “a privilege emanating from a legislative act.” In other words, not a right.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The court went on to insist that the 1844 constitutional convention, further embedding all-male, all-white voting, was flawless. How? It represented the sovereign will of the people. The people chose the delegates, the delegates wrote the constitution, and the constitution was submitted to the voters. A closed loop of exclusion. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The court could have acknowledged New Jersey’s unique history of enfranchisement and said its hands were tied, that the remedy was in the legislature. Instead, the decision directly attacked Philbrook, the most famous woman lawyer in the state, and insisted that voting rights past were a figment.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Three years later, New Jersey suffragists took their case to the voting men of the state, and lost. It took until the 19th Amendment for New Jersey women to win back what they lost in 1807.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The @amrevmuseum documents all of this beautifully in their exhibit <a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1343414280092266498" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">When Women Lost the Vote</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The cautionary tale here -- voting rights need constant defense -- is as subtle as a neon sign. But in addition to looking ahead and continuing to fight voter suppression, it’s worth reflecting on what a massive loss this story represents.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">One of the first states in this Union said voters could be “he or she” - acknowledged that women were citizens! And after 31 years we lost it, and fought for more than 100 years to get it back. <br /><br />What if New Jersey had persisted? What if it had started a trend in the other direction? What if we told the story of the loss over and over again? What if everyone knew that some women voted in 1776? <br /><br />Like Reconstruction, it was a moment of democratic expansion. Losing it, and then losing the memory of it, means that every time we try to move forward, we begin from square one. Expanding power beyond white men requires not just political strategy but imagination. In the year ahead, let us keep our history close. If we do, perhaps we won't have to repeat it afresh quite so often.<br /></span></p>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1345133987673608195" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
January 1, 2021