Losing New York, 1915
Dissecting the failed 1915 New York suffrage referendum is like reliving the 2016 election. It’s still too soon. But take a deep breath and let’s dive in . .<br /><br />Winning New York would require a three-step process: suffragists needed to pass a bill through the state Senate and the Assembly in 1913, pass the same bill in 1915, and then win a popular referendum with the men of the state. <br /><br />We really thought we had it. Harriot Stanton Blatch & Carrie Chapman Catt, two towering figures in suffrage politics, devoted themselves to winning. They undertook more than three years of meticulous planning, fundraising, lobbying in Albany, and organizing throughout the state. <br /><br />Carrie Chapman Catt had been focused on int’l suffrage for years, and now shifted her energy to NY. Catt & Harriot Stanton Blatch were oil & water. Catt liked total control; Blatch found Catt’s cautious conservatism enraging. They reached a chilly detente for the 1915 campaign. <br /><br />Fundraising began in 1912 with a ball for 2,000, at the accessible price of 50c per ticket. The next year they sold out the Armory, mixing hoi polloi with “shabby little cash girls, waltzing in shirt waists†-- NY Tribune. The campaign raised more than $4 million in today’s $$. <br /><br />Harriot Stanton Blatch spent 1913 and the winter of 1915 in Albany, shepherding the bill through with an army of lobbyists. When Sen. Elon Brown said that fewer than a dozen women in his district supported suffrage, activist Helen Todd arrived at his office trailed by hundreds. <br /><br />The bill passed both chambers in 1913; and again in 1915. In 1915 it passed the Assembly 113-0. It was time to go to the voters. <br /><br />Catt divided the state into 12 districts, and ran “suffrage schools†for organizers, who were assigned all the way down to the neighborhood level. Actions were organized with military precision. In addition to public meetings and leafleting, suffragists used new creative tactics. <br /><br />Huge crowds gathered on a sidewalk near St. Patrick’s Cathedral to watch a “voiceless speech†-- a woman standing in a store window, slowly turning placards on an easel. Blatch’s group parked a Votes for Women lunch wagon on Wall Street and gave soapbox speeches from May to Nov. <br /><br />They provided free child care at public events - which had the double benefit of capturing parents’ attention and demonstrating the kind of world women would make with their power.👇Suffolk County Fair, Long Island, 1914. <br /><br />They canvassed relentlessly. Catt estimated that they reached 60% of NYC voters directly. A caravan traveled the width of the state, from Montauk Point to Lake Erie, bearing a suffrage torch. Victory seemed within reach. <br /><br />But in November 1915, they lost the popular vote. Badly. Only 43% of the men in New York supported suffrage. All five boroughs of New York City voted against. Why? Well, sharing the ballot with an unpopular measure about a Constitutional Convention didn’t help. <br /><br />But the only concrete reason for such a resounding defeat was that most of the men in New York didn’t want women to vote. Carrie Chapman Catt began preparing immediately for a new referendum. Not Harriot. <br /><br />Harriot Stanton Blatch was done asking every man in each state if she could vote. From now on, she would devote herself to the Federal Amendment. #CenturyofStruggle #19thAmendmentÂ
Daily Suffragist
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25/07/2020
Wealthy women in the movement
It’s easier to research rich suffragists than poor ones. Wealthy women’s contributions to the movement were well-documented, their correspondence is more likely to be preserved, and they were profiled and gossiped about in the papers. One rich woman’s contribution... 🧵 <br /><br />Katherine Duer Mackay’s life seems ripped from the pages of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel: outrageous wealth, a scandalous divorce, and more. Given her extreme privilege and narrow, conformist social circle, her approach to suffrage and public welfare is notable. <br /><br />Mrs. Mackay, as she was known, joined the cause in 1908. She consulted leading suffragists like Harriot Stanton Blatch to devise a plan. Mackay wasn’t interested in joining NAWSA’s dull NY chapter, nor Blatch’s deliberately cross-class Equality League of Self-Supporting Women. She wanted her own project. In creating the Equal Franchise Society, Mrs. Mackay recruited a board of serious and capable suffragists (including Blatch), and began funding lobbying in Albany as early as 1910. <br /><br />Few resources for New York legislative work existed then. Her funding laid the groundwork for the 1915 New York referendum, and eventually the 1917 win. Along with better-known Alva Belmont, her involvement made suffrage seem safe for prominent society women who had hesitated to be associated with a cause that threatened patriarchy. <br /><br />Mrs. Mackay’s upper-crust viewpoint sometimes left her at odds with her own organization -- for example, when she insisted that the Albany headquarters be a suite at the posh Ten Eyck Hotel, not a storefront on State Street. Mackay was deeply dismayed when the Franchise Society board voted to join the first big NYC suffrage march, in May 1910. She feared that street demonstrations threatened the movement’s respectability. <br /><br />See 👉 <a href="https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/items/show/404" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">How we learned to protest</a> <br /><br />But to her credit, she accepted the decision -- and cared to see the Society would show up handsomely, though she herself refused to attend! <br /><br />Wealthy doesn’t really begin to describe Katherine’s lifestyle. Shortly after she married gold/telegraph/financier Clarence Mackay, they hired Stanford White to design their Long Island estate. Katherine worked closely with White on the design and construction of Harbor Hill, a castle on 648 acres. <br /><br />Katherine’s efforts on behalf of the local community were genuine. She donated funds to renovate the public library, and then in 1905 ran for school board. She served 5 years, the first woman ever elected. <br /><br />And she sent her children to public school! As she told the newspaper: “If we wish to establish confidence in the public school system, it is necessary for the rich as well as the poor to patronize them. If we draw such caste distinctions as in the past, it is inconsistent to preach the benefits to be derived from government aid in education.†<br /><br />Katherine had stepped back from active involvement with suffrage by the time her cousin Alice Duer Miller began publishing her witty suffrage column “Are Women People?†in the New York Tribune. <br /><br />See 👉 <a href="https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/items/show/458" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Why We Oppose Pockets for Women</a><br /><br />That year Katherine’s life got much more complicated. She fell in love with a doctor who had treated her husband, and sought a divorce. She lost custody of her children, and was stripped of her American citizenship when she and the doctor moved to Paris. After the war they returned to New York & later divorced. Katherine’s private life was extensively covered in the papers, always in a tone viciously judgmental of her. She died of cancer in 1930 at age 51. <br /><br />A footnote for all the new theater folks following tonight - Katherine’s daughter Ellin Mackay married Irving Berlin! Then her father disowned her because he was Jewish.😣 Father & daughter later reconciled, and Irving & Ellin were married 62 years. #Suffrage100 #19thAmendmentÂ
Daily Suffragist
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13/08/2020
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
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November 12, 2020
Alpha Epsilon Phi
Guest post! Thrilled to welcome @<a href="https://twitter.com/shiram19" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shiram19</a> to tell us about the suffrage roots of an early Jewish sorority. Read on..<br /><br />On October 24, 1909, Helen Phillips invited 6 friends into her dorm room at Barnard College in NYC. While her friends commuted, she lived on campus & “wanted something to keep her in closer contact with her friends.” That evening, the Alpha Epsilon Phi (AEPhi) sorority was born. <br /><br />Alpha Epsilon was technically not the first Jewish sorority. In 1903, Iota Alpha Pi began at Hunter College. Their purpose was similar to that of AEPhi – to provide camaraderie for young Jewish female collegians, who were few & far between at the turn of the 20th century! <br /><br />Because there’s no easy “I” sound in English to begin an acronym, the IAPi sorority women called themselves “the JAPs,” no relation to either the derogatory term Jewish American Princess or the slur used against Japanese people. <br /><br />AEPhi, like the other Jewish sororities that formed over the course of the 1910s, rose out of a need for Jewish female collegians to gain social and emotional support on college campuses that were often fraught with antisemitism, from the admissions processes to the social scene. <br /><br />Historically Protestant fraternities and sororities that closed their doors to Jewish women were the dominant campus social outlets on colleges across the country. Black and white Catholic women encountered similar exclusion and formed their own sororities during this time too. <br /><br />But back to AEPhi: apparently, Helen and her friends were quite busy because the evening immediately following the formation of AEPhi, the girls served as ushers for a big event happening in midtown – an appearance by UK suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst to discuss women’s equality. <br /><br />Reminiscing about AEPhi’s early years in 1963, founder Tina Hess Solomon brought up what suffrage meant to them: “We were young & full of college spirit…we had serious discussion groups concerned with the events of the day. The most important one was ‘Women’s Suffrage.’” <br /><br />It is slightly ironic that <a href="https://twitter.com/BarnardCollege" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@BarnardCollege</a> served as the site of AEPhi’s founding and as the institution that gave these young Jewish women the inspiration for furthering their interest in suffrage by their participation in the Pankhurst rally. <br /><br />As @DailySuffragist has previously reported, the founder of Barnard, Annie Meyer Nathan, was a notorious anti-suffragist, though her older sister Maud Nathan warmly embraced the cause and was a visible figure within it, as Melissa Klapper has shown.<br /><br />For the founders of AEPhi, women should not only be granted the right to vote, but needed to be informed voters. Shortly after NY finally adopted suffrage in 1917, the @AEPhi Quarterly magazine urged its readership to take voting seriously & become educated on political affairs.<br /><br />In 1918, the Quarterly wrote that in suffrage, “an all-important power has been given to us...the right to vote…Care must be taken to prove the fallacy of the anti-suffrage argument that women voters will only double the number of unintelligent ballots.”<br /><br />Furthermore, AEPhi believed that its membership offered unique knowledge and services to female voters and their civic education due to their higher education and knowledge of “governmental affairs.” <br /><br />Later in 1918, prior to the passage and ratification of the 19th amendment, AEPhi’s Quarterly reminded members that “it is incumbent upon every woman to avail herself of the right of franchise bestowed upon her. It is not only her privilege to vote, but it is also a duty.” <br /><br />By 1918, AEPhi had one of their very own members running for New York office. Attorney Myra Marks was on the Democratic ticket for Member of Assembly in the 15th District. She lost by only 93 votes.<br /><br />AEPhi launched as a Jewish group for women with an investment in political issues & for the next century, the sorority engaged w/ all of the major social and political movements America witnessed, from assisting refugees fleeing Nazism to postwar anticommunism and civil rights.<br /><br />For more on AEPhi and the other historically Jewish sororities, see work by Shira Kohn or Marianne Sanua’s book on Jewish fraternities. For more on Jewish women and suffrage, see Melissa Klapper’s Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace. Cited material courtesy of AEPhi Archives
Daily Suffragist and Dr. Shira Kohn
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11/07/2020