But were they really doldrums?

Title

But were they really doldrums?

Description

How long did “the doldrums” last? The doldrums: the period at the end of the 19th c./beg. of the 20th in which the suffrage movement seemed to make no progress: no statewide victories, death of the old guard, uninspiring new leaders, embrace of explicitly racist policies. 🧵

Popular narratives skip over this period - one minute we’re winning Colorado & Utah in the 1890s, then Stanton & Anthony die, and boom Alice Paul & Lucy Burns come back from England and are picketing the White House. If only.

When did the doldrums end, and what ended them? There’s consensus that the gloom lifts by 1910, when the women of Washington state push a successful referendum. That same year Ida B Wells founds a suffrage club in Chicago, and the 1st suffrage parade marches down 5th Ave, NYC.

But sweeping suffrage histories - old ones like Eleanor Flexner’s Century of Struggle, new ones like @EllenDubois10’s Suffrage and @kate_c_lemay's @smithsoniannpg catalog - pin the shift to points both earlier and later: 1906, 1907, 1912. Thoughts on when? And on why it matters? 

Creator

Daily Suffragist

Date

30/04/2020

Files

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Tags

Citation

Daily Suffragist, “But were they really doldrums?,” Daily Suffragist, accessed March 28, 2024, https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/items/show/366.

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