Women, Their Rights, and Nothing Less

The People of the Movement

American women all over the country go to polls to vote for president.  It's a normal thing now.  But a hundred years ago, it wasn't.  We're able to do this because brave American women stood up and fought to get the right to vote.  Their names are in our history books, on the Internet.  But not everyone truly knows the story of how women got the right to vote.  

"No self respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores herself." -Susan B. Anthony. Susan Brownell Anthony was born on February 15th, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts. Her father, a farmer by the name of Daniel Anthony, and her mother, where Quakers. Quakers are a religious group. Their services are called "Quaker Meetings of Friends." The members sit in a circle, and men and women speak equally, something that was rare at that time period. Anthony attended a Quaker boarding school near Philadelphia. She began teaching at the age of 15. Anthony left home in order to do so, and later wrote to her mother that her new dress had three colors. This was, to Anthony, a big change, for Quakers dressed somberly. Anthony found her speaking start in the temperance cause. She joined the Daughters of Temperance, with whom she spoke out against alcoholism. The temperance cause is closely linked with women's rights. This was where Anthony's roots in women suffrage were planted. The newspaper she later created was named The Revolution.

In 1876, Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton began to write The History of Woman Suffrage. Elizabeth Cady was born on November 12, 1815. Her parents were Daniel and Margaret Cady. Daniel Cady was a lawyer and a judge in upstate New York. She attended Troy Female Seminary. Anthony and Stanton met in May of 1851 (Elizabeth Cady married Henry Stanton on May 1st, 1840, and had taken his last name as her own. As thus, she was Elizabeth Cady Stanton when she met Anthony). Cady Stanton didn't like immigrants, and was racist.

Lucy Stone was a country girl, different from Anthony and Stanton. Stone was born on August 13th, 1818, near West Brookfield, Massachusetts, to Francis and Hannah Stone. She attended two schools, Oberlin College, and Mount Holyoke College. She was the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. Along with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she was one of the leaders of the women's suffrage movement.

Alice Paul was a second generation suffragist. She had gone to England to study the suffragette strategy used there, and came back ready to train a generation of suffragists. Many of the older suffragists disapproved of her actions because they were militant. Paul was born on January 11th, 1885, in Moorestown, New Jersey. Her father was William Paul, her mother, Tacie Paul. Paul attended three colleges.

Carrie Chapman Catt was president of NAWSA for several years. She served twice, in fact. Catt was president of the NAWSA during 1920, which is important for reasons later discussed.

Not all of the women who worked for women's rights were involved in suffragist parties. Some where not even suffragists. Mary Walker, for instance, was one of few female doctors on the Civil War battlefield, and Clara Barton pioneered women's nurse work during the Civil War.

There was Nellie Tayloe Ross. Ross was the first woman governor from Wyoming, and the first woman to be in charge of the US Mint. Wyoming gave women the right to vote when it was still a territory.

Matilda Joslyn Gage played a part in the movement as well. Gage, Stanton, and Anthony rewrote the Declaration of the Rights of Women, which was originally Declaration of Sentiments. Victoria Claflin Woodhull was the first woman to run for president. That was in 1872- women wouldn't get the vote for another 48 years.

It wasn't only white women working for the vote, either. Mary Church Terrell, an African American, was the first woman to serve on a school board in Washington, D.C. Ida Wells Barnett was an African American journalist. She marched in a suffrage parade with the white women, acting against racism as well as participating in the suffrage movement. Sojourner Truth, an ex-slave, spoke for women's suffrage in churches. She wanted the vote in 1877, and she intended to make a fuss for it. Her most famous suffrage speech, "Ain't I a Woman?" was actually modified by white suffragists in order to make Truth into a more stereotypical black woman. On the other end from Truth was Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Harper didn't give figs for what the white women wanted her to be like. "I can not choose which part of me is more oppressed- the part that is a woman or the part that is black," she once said.

England, too, had a suffrage movement. The English suffragists called themselves "suffragettes." Emmeline Pankhurst was the "head" of the movement, along with her daughters, Sylvia and Christabel. Pankhurst was much admired by Burns. Another famous suffragette is Emily Davidson. Davidson was killed on a horse racetrack, trying to attach a women's suffrage flag to a horse's bridle in 1913.

There were men who believed that women should get the vote. Among them was Thomas W. Ferry, the Vice President of the United States of America in 1876; William Lloyd Garrison, an early advocate for women's equality; and George Francis Train, a crude millionaire who was never without his lavender gloves. Men who thought about giving women equal rights were few and far between.