Browse Items (16 total)

Work. Throughout the 19th century, even suffragists saw paid work as something poor women _had_ to do, not something women would _want_ to do. Most of the movement’s full-time activists (both white and Black) had family money or a husband who…

Women got the chance to learn typesetting when owners needed scabs. Augusta Lewis realized we'd do better unionized, and in 1868 she created Women's Typographical Union 1. It met @ the office of Susan B Anthony's newspaper Revolution. #Suffrage100…

Devoting all week to working women. Stories fr labor historian Barbara Mayer Wertheimer's 1976 book. "She always believed that it was women who 'will be the ones to organize other women...to transmit enthusiasm and confidence in trade unionism.'"…

Remember Elizabeth Meriwether, the suffragist who helped start the Memphis chapter of the Ku Klux Klan? She shared her home with her brother- & sister-in-law, Lide Smith Meriwether. Lide was as devoted a suffragist as Elizabeth, and more…

In 1893, men in Colorado voted to let women vote - the first time such a thing had ever happened. 16 years earlier a referendum failed in CO - just like in KS, MI, NE, OR, RI, WA & SD. So how'd we finally win? [1/2] #StateOfTheWeek…

In Dec 1909, Socialist suffragists convened a party conference to debate whether they should work with the mainstream suffrage groups. Rose Schneiderman & Leonora O’Reilly thought the movement was too small for purity tests, and women should be…

South Dakota became a state in 1899. Its motto: “Under God the People Rule.” National suffrage leaders converged on the state immediately to campaign for a doomed suffrage amendment. Its motto: “Women Are People.” A #StateOfTheWeek thread White women…

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…

Why do some tragedies generate change and others don’t? 109 years ago today the Triangle Shirtwaist fire killed 146 people - mostly Jewish & Italian immigrant women. The fire was key to winning labor & safety laws. The political power women…

Pauline Newman was dykier than Rose. At 16 she led the biggest rent strike in NYC. After scores of friends died in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, she helped write & enforce NY safety laws. Led women in WTUL & ILGWU for decades. There's so much…