Women’s Suffrage and Civil Rights

1. Women’s Suffrage and Civil Rights Modern America

2. Women’s Rights before the Civil War The “cult of true womanhood” portrayed the ideal woman as “pious, pure, domestic, and submissive.”

3. Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Wright, and Margaret Fuller believed that giving women an equal education to that of men would do more to improve women’s position in society than voting rights.

4. The Temperance Crusade

5. The radical abolition movement had the greatest impact on women’s rights.

6. Women in the abolition movement recognized parallels between the legal condition of slaves and that of women.

7. 1840: The World Anti-Slavery Society denied women delegates the right to speak.

8. Elizabeth Cady Stanton attended the 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention and her experience led her into the struggle for women’s rights. "We resolved to hold a convention as soon as we returned home, and form a society to advocate the rights of women."

9. The Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention, 1848

10. The demand for woman suffrage presented a vision of independent women that seemed to threaten social structures.

11. Two new demands: 1848: New York passed a Married Woman’s Property Act—other states followed. But calls for divorce reform were less successful.

12. War, and the Reconstruction that followed, split the Women’s Rights movement.

13. Impact of Reconstruction: • Radical Republicans demanded black male suffrage—but not universal suffrage for all adults. • To enfranchise women, black and white, would give the vote to large numbers of white Southern women, who would probably vote Democratic.

14. Both Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were furious that Congress had given the vote to black men but denied it to women. This image made the point that, in being denied the vote, respectable, accomplished women were reduced to the level of the disenfranchised outcasts of society.

15. Black male suffrage v. Universal adult suffrage • National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) • Founded by Anthony and Stanton • The more radical woman's suffrage group. • Accepted only women and opposed the Fifteenth Amendment since it only enfranchised African-American men. • American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) • More moderate in its views than the NWSA. • Allowed men to join and rallied behind the Fifteenth Amendment as a step in the right direction toward greater civil rights for women. • Leaders of the AWSA included Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone.

16. When the two groups reunited in 1890, the new National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) followed the direction set by Anthony and Stanton.

17. A New Argument for Woman Suffrage • The nation needed women voters because of their special moral leadership. Blanche Ames, Two Good Votes Are Better Than One, Woman’s Journal (October, 1915)

18. A New Argument for Woman Suffrage • Female voters could “sweep out the scoundrels” • Female voters could ensure that reforms in child labor, temperance, and women’s work would occur. • Only a woman who was truly a citizen could teach citizenship to her children.

19. Suffrage supporters began to adopt the class and race prejudices of their white, middle class base. “The enfranchisement of women would insure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly obtained.” Belle Kearney

20. Overt racism expressed by many suffragists created an atmosphere hostile to the participation of black women. Some African-American suffragistsfounded their own separate suffrage associations.

22. The initial success of the post-Civil War suffrage movement came on the frontier. Women voting in Wyoming, 1869

25. Why the West? • Special frontier conditions?—the Turner thesis. • Women’s vote would offset votes of black men? • Women’s vote would attract women settlers to the West?

26. The second Western territory to grant women the vote was Utah, in 1870. Emmeline Wells and other Mormon suffragists in Utah.

27. A close correlation exists between the success of woman suffrage and states where men voted in large numbers for Populist, Progressive, or Socialist party candidates. • Colorado (1893) • Idaho (1896) • Washington (1910) • California (1911) • Kansas (1912) • Oregon (1912) • Arizona (1912) • Montana (1914) • Nevada (1917) • North Dakota (1917) • Nebraska (1917)

28. After 1890, increasing competition among political parties made women’s suffrage a hot political issue.

29. Between 1900 and 1920, the woman suffrage movement modernized, adopting new tactics of lobbying, advertising, and grass-roots organizing under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt. Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947), women's suffrage leader

30. "The Stomach Tube" "The sensation is most painful," reported a victim in 1909. "The drums of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a horrible pain in the throat and breast. The tube is pushed down twenty inches; [it] must go below the breastbone." The prisoners were generally fed a solution of milk and eggs.

31. The Woman’s Party was one of the first groups in the United States to employ the techniques of classic non-violent protest.

32. The actions of the NWP made the NAWSA seem moderate and reasonable by comparison.

33. In 1916, neither party endorsed woman suffrage in its platform, but both parties called on the states to give women the vote.

34. Civil Rights in the Early 1900s • Review: After the Civil war the 13TH, 14TH, AND 15TH amendments were passed by congress. • 13- Freed the Slaves • 14- Citizenship to all MEN • 15- Voting rights for MEN. What happened during reconstruction: - For a while Black citizens were given new freedoms and the rights to vote - Groups like the KKK formed, which interfered with voting rights. - By 1900 the conditions for the black citizens had reached a new low.

35. Conditions for Black Americans in 1900 • Plessey V. Ferguson: “Separate but equal” • Jim Crow Laws: de jour laws that enforced Plessey v. Ferguson. • Segregated schools, stores, busses, etc. • Blatant Racism, especially in the South • Groups like the KKK were basically given a free pass.

36. Jim Crow Laws Made segregation legal. Allowed people to segregate everything Gave white American’s a sense of justification that what they were doing was ok. Permitted racism 

37. African American Lives in 1900 Black Citizens had very few rights. Many did not own land, could not vote, and feared for their safety. -Lynching Abject Poverty Mostly farmers or industrial workers

38. Ida B. Wells Led anti-lynching crusades Worked with early Black leaders to start the civil rights movement.

39. W.E.B. Dubois Harvard Graduate who promoted African America rights . Founded the NAACP

40. NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Founded in 1909 after the NIAGRA CONVENTION "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination"